The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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Compliant, collegial or Clint? What type of school leaders do we need?

In its chapter on professional leadership and workforce reform, the Cambridge Primary Review final report described a working environment in which ‘head teachers, once the undisputed and independent leaders of their schools, now operate in a culture of compliance and one that, borrowing the language of business, exhorts them by turns to be “visionary”, “invitational”, “democratic”, “strategic”, “instructional” or “transformational”’. Reflecting on the conceptual shift in primary school leadership over the last 50 years, the report highlighted the move from an absolutist, paternalistic (or even grand-paternalistic, with the head teacher leading a ‘three-generation family’) model of headship to the more collegial professional relations of recent times (Children, their World, their Education, pp 437-9).

The six years since the final report was published have seen both a continuation of these trends and the introduction of new dimensions into the school leadership landscape. The pressure on head teachers to be all things to all people has certainly not gone away – and to the list above we can now add, courtesy of Sir Michael Wilshaw, the suggestion that head teachers should be ‘bruisers’, ‘battleaxes’ and, as if that weren’t enough, ‘more like Clint Eastwood’.

The concept of compliance, though, is an interesting one. The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) is unequivocal in its belief that, if we are to create a truly self-improving school system, we must move away from a model based on compliance with central direction to one in which schools work together to build capacity and drive continuing improvement.

In many ways, we have made important strides over the last six years away from a compliance-based model of school leadership. The hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute direction of the school day through the primary national strategies is no more. National Curriculum levels have gone, with schools now able to assess attainment and track progress between key stages as they see fit. Ofsted is at pains to point out that its inspectors do not expect teachers to plan or mark in a particular way, or school leaders to evaluate their schools using a specific format. And schools that convert to academy status can choose to reject central prescription in more radical ways, such as moving away from the National Curriculum or adopting different term times.

Increased autonomy (along with its joined-at-the-hip bedfellow, accountability) is, we are constantly reminded, the holy grail of current education policy. Nick Gibb, minister of state for school standards, rarely misses an opportunity to extol the benefits of autonomy. He spoke at a conference earlier this year of the emergence of a system of education in England in which ‘autonomous schools are able to break free from the intellectual and bureaucratic constraints of the past, allowing school leaders to beat a new path of previously unimaginable success’. The government has, apparently, taken ‘clear and purposeful action to free heads from … meddling’, liberating them to ‘focus on what is best for raising pupil outcomes’.

The lived experience of teachers and school leaders, of course, doesn’t always match high-flown political rhetoric. Levels and the primary strategy ‘lunchboxes’ may have gone, but in their place are detailed ‘interim’ assessment frameworks, and statutory national assessments in three out of the six years of primary education.

The dangled carrot of autonomy through embracing academy status may also be something of a mirage. The National Curriculum may not be compulsory for the 20 per cent of primary schools that are now academies, but it’s a brave head teacher who strays too far from the ‘expected standards’ against which both children and schools are held to account. And some head teachers are finding they are actually more closely managed in a multi-academy trust than they ever were by their shrinking local authority. There are many good reasons to consider joining a MAT, but increased autonomy is not one of them. (See Warwick Mansell’s CPRT report, Academies: autonomy, accountability, quality and evidence, for more in-depth analysis of the dimensions and realities of academy autonomy.)

Compliance is clearly not what we should be aiming for. As one of the most often quoted phrases from the Cambridge Primary Review puts it, how can we expect children to think for themselves if their teachers simply do what they are told? And, by extension, how can we expect teachers to think for themselves if school leaders simply do what they are told?

But neither, perhaps, is autonomy all it’s cracked up to be. There is an increasing body of evidence that genuine improvement, whether at an individual school or a system level, happens when schools work together to plan learning, solve problems and create the right solutions to local needs.

In our increasingly fragmented system, the answer to tackling the culture of compliance is not a proliferation of ‘hero heads’, but school leaders coming together to shape not only their own schools, but the education system as a whole. Lone warriors need not apply.

Julie McCulloch is Primary and Governance Specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL). She is also a member of the Board of CPRT.

Embodying the ‘collegial’ leader are the two winners of the CPRT ASCL award for evidence-informed leadership, presented at CPRT’s national conference. Find out more about Graham Chisnell and Iain Erskine here.

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Assessment, testing and accountability: a suggestion for an alternative framework

The data from the new 2016 tests for 11 year olds in England is gradually trickling out. We have been informed that 48 percent of the children did not reach the new expected standards in reading, writing and mathematics combined (compared to 35 percent in 2015 under the old system) and are at risk of being labelled ‘failures’. In addition, the calculations have been done to identify each Y6 child’s scaled score and progress measure. Parents have been told something like ‘In reading your child got 99 on the scaled score against the expected standard and 1.6 progress score’. Not terrifically helpful, particularly if the parent has become familiar with Levels over the last 28 years.

Combined with the anecdotal evidence about the problems children had with the reading test, and the abandonment of the grammar test for seven year olds after it was inadvertently leaked, it is no surprise that more and more educationists, parents and organisations are calling for a fundamental review.

I have written in previous blogs about the current system and its shortcomings, now exacerbated by the 2016 experience, drawing on Wynne Harlen’s 2014 research report for CPRT Assessment, Standards and Quality of Leaning In Primary Education which outlines the evidence concerning the impact of high stakes testing and compares England’s system with those of a number of other countries. Harlen’s key point that ‘the system …. for primary schools in England still suffers from over-dependence on testing and the use of end of Key Stage 2 tests for too many purposes’ (p. 32) indicates that we must consider a fundamentally different approach .

In this blog I outline the key strands which I think would need to be considered  under any review, with some suggestions concerning what should be incorporated, based on the available evidence.

The three strands for a comprehensive system of assessment and accountability are at individual child level, school level and national level.

At individual child level the focus must be assessment for learning and assessment of learning (i.e. formative and summative assessment). Assessment must be used to help children while they are learning and to find out what they have learned at a particular point in time.  Testing can be a part of this as it can inform overall teacher assessment and help to identify any potential gaps in learning.  However tests cannot give all the information needed to take a rounded view of what children need to learn and what they know and can do. As Harlen states: ‘the evidence shows that when teachers draw on a range of sources of evidence, then discuss and moderate with other teachers, assessment is more accurate’. Depending on the score from an externally marked, single test of reading at 11, for example, to identify reading ability is simply not enough evidence to make a reliable judgement.

As a first move in this direction, the system currently used for seven year olds should be adopted at the end of KS2; teacher assessment based on a range of evidence, including but not determined by a formal test.

In addition the plethora of evidence-based assessment resources available should be utilised to underpin an approach that is qualitative as well as quantitative. For example there are the CLPE/UKLA et al Reading and Writing Scales which can be used for identifying children’s progress as well as indicating next steps for learning. It is also worth looking at the end of each of these scales where there is an extensive bibliography showing how they are firmly based in research evidence. Something DfE might consider doing.

In summary, the principle that assessment of any kind should ultimately improve learning for children is central and should be the criterion against which all assessment practices in and beyond school should be judged.

At school level the focus must be on partnership in assessment as well as accountability. Firstly, that means not only being accountable to parents and the local community the school serves, but also working systematically with them as partners.

Parents have a key role to play in assessment which goes beyond being regularly reported to and includes the sharing of information about the progress of their children both within and beyond school to obtain a fully informed picture. This would be followed by discussions concerning what the school is doing more generally to promote learning across all aspects of learning.

Schools should hold themselves to account through systematic self evaluation. This self evaluation should be externally moderated by local partners, crucially through strengthened local authorities, and nationally through a properly independent HMI. However the system should not feel, as it does to many schools under the current arrangements, as punitive, but developmental and supportive, including when a school is not doing as well as it should.  Any moderated self evaluation should be formative for the school as well as demonstrating accountability.

CPRT responded by making assessment reform one of its eight priorities, aiming to

Encourage approaches to assessment that enhance learning as well as test it, that support rather than distort the curriculum and that pursue standards and quality in all areas of learning, not just the core subjects.

CPRT’s Priorities in Action assessment webpage lists our multifaceted response to this priority including reports, briefings, blogs, parliamentary and government submissions and purpose-designed CPD for schools.

The final report of the Cambridge Primary Review was also clear that inspection needed to change (p. 500) and recommended that a new model be explored which focussed much more on classroom practice, pupil learning and the curriculum as a whole.

In any review of assessment, the accountability system must be reviewed at the same time. That goes for accountability at national level too.

Current arrangements at primary level are both narrow, only focusing on some aspects of core subjects, and useless for making comparisons across time as the criteria and tests keep changing. A system of sample surveys should be formulated to monitor national standards. These would be based on a large number of components and be able to extend well beyond the core subjects if a rolling programme was organised. England would then be able to judge whether primary education as a whole, in all its aspects, based on a comprehensive set of aims, was being successful and was improving over time. Currently this is impossible to do.

Thus is not surprising that more and more people and organisations are, alongside CPRT, calling for a fundamental review of assessment, testing and accountability and that a major campaign is about to get underway. This campaign is to be called ‘More than A Score’ and a major conference has been announced for December 3rd. CPRT fully supports this campaign.

This move to a more effective approach would not be a simple process. As CPR’s final report stated in 2010 ‘Moving to a valid, reliable and properly moderated procedures for a broader approach to assessment will require careful research and deliberation’ (p. 498)

It will take some time, but I believe, for all involved, it will be well worth the effort.

Just as this blog was being prepared, Justine Greening, Secretary of State for Education, made an announcement about primary school assessment. This included a commitment to ‘ setting out steps to improve and simplify assessment arrangements’, the abandonment of Y7 resits, and no new tests to be introduced before the 2018/19 academic year. There is a welcome acknowledgement in the tone of the statement that current arrangements are not working, although the last point has alarming implications about the introduction of further, unnecessary, high stakes tests.

The Secretary of State also announced another consultation, to take place next year, on assessment, testing and accountability. We have seen many of these so called ‘consultations’ before where the views of educationalists and the evidence from research and experience have been completely ignored.

Another ‘consultation’ is not needed, What is needed is a thorough, independent, review where all stakeholders are represented and a government that is prepared to listen and respond positively.

David Reedy is a co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, and General Secretary of the United Kingdom Literacy Association.

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Can data really define ‘coasting’?

For me, this is the question of the moment, with the Education and Adoption Bill, whose first section is on the charmingly-worded but as-yet-undefined term ‘coasting schools’, having started its passage through Parliament.

The bill promises to sweep a new category of these schools into the reach of the ‘intervention’ powers of the Secretary of State, which include issuing academy orders forcing schools into the arms of new sponsors.

In a blunt exchange at Education Questions in the House of Commons this week, Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, reminded her Labour shadow, Tristram Hunt, that the definition of coasting schools would not come until part-way through the passage of the bill, at its committee stage. But I’ve already had a steer on its likely content. The Department for Education’s press office has told me that the ‘coasting’ definition will focus on data, and specifically the school’s performance over time. The idea, I was told – these are not my words – was to home in on schools which have failed to fulfil their pupils’ potential.

If ‘coasting schools’ are to be defined entirely in terms of results data, I think this will be the first time that formal intervention powers by central government will have been triggered completely by assessment statistics. This already appears to be a departure both from a promise reportedly made by David Cameron before the election and from the contents of the Conservatives’ election manifesto.

In March, the Daily Mail warned that ‘coasting schools’ would be targeted under a new Conservative government, with the Prime Minister quoted – depressingly, though predictably given our experience of the past 20 years of education policy-making – as ‘waging all-out war on mediocrity’.

However, the definition of ‘coasting’ suggested in that piece was an Ofsted judgement. Schools falling in the inspectorate’s ‘requires improvement’ category would ‘automatically be considered’ for turning into academies. Only if they could demonstrate clear plans for improvement, as judged by the Regional Schools Commissioners – England’s new cadre of officials appointed by the Secretary of State, taking decisions in private – would they avoid a change of leadership. The manifesto backed this up, saying: ‘Any school judged by Ofsted to be requiring improvement will be taken over…unless it can demonstrate that it has a plan to improve rapidly.’

But there were indications post-election that the definition was changing. Now it appears that results statistics are going to be the key driver. And that, of course, has big implications.

First, I think it has repercussions for the very controversial language used. A little diversion might be in order here, into the perhaps simpler realm of football.

Imagine, say, a football team, without any great history of success, which gets promoted to the Premier League one season. In its first year in the top tier, it finishes, say, 12th. This is seen as a big achievement, as the club beats many longer-established, richer outfits and comfortably avoids the relegation that comes with finishing 18th or lower. The following season, results are even better, with a 10th place finish the reward. The next two seasons, consistency seems to have been achieved, with 11th and 13th places secured.

However, any outsider looking only at the club’s end of season position over the years might conclude that it has been drifting. Someone could almost call it a ‘coasting’ club in its last two seasons, based on data alone. But while the possible reaction to the club’s statistical direction of travel – sack the manager – may or may not be right, any implication that it was ‘coasting’ and therefore not trying, would be to over-interpret the results. For faced with that ‘coasting’ slur, the club’s manager and any of his coaching staff or players would be incensed. The manager arrives at his desk at 6.30 every morning, hardly has a holiday in the summer and the attention to detail on the training ground is phenomenal.

But the manager does not have total control over the performances of his players and is up against other teams who may be trying similarly hard. He argues that, in a league where he will never have the budgets of the big clubs, survival in the Premier League is success. While results, then, might suggest non-progress, this is based on anything but a sense that the manager is just taking things easy: it is a real triumph.

In contrast, there was the case of a real Premier League football club recently, again having established itself comfortably in mid-table following promotion, where the manager was said by the club’s board to be too laid-back about training. He was replaced by a former player, who has marginally improved its overall position. ‘Coasting’ might have been a more appropriate word in that case, if the characterisation of the former manager’s attitude was right.

My point is that data alone will never tell you whether a football club, or indeed a school, is ‘coasting’ or not. ‘Coasting’ suggests a lack of effort but all we have, with results data, is a statistical end product: the output numbers. Teachers could be working phenomenally hard, and yet failing to improve results as much as outsiders might wish, because schools, in reality, do not have full control over results. These are, inevitably, subject to unpredictability, from the motivation and ability of pupils to ‘perform’ on the big day to the vagaries of marking. And there may be a sense of a zero-sum game: ‘below-average’ schools will always be penalised, even if all schools are working very hard, if the indicators used are based on comparing one school’s results to others’.

Are we really happy, I wonder, to bandy around a word, with all its dismissive implications for the professionals whom our system has spent years training and paying, and with whom we entrust our children, when we are unsure of its accuracy in individual cases?

So to use the results as indicators of underlying effort is as lazy – is this ‘coasting’ policy merely following the assumptions of its accustomed comfort-zone? – as it is potentially misleading. And, in implicitly being brazenly unconcerned about who gets labelled in this way, policy-makers seem to compound the insult that the word ‘coasting’ undoubtedly provokes in many in the profession.

I have to say, surveying the school accountability regime as I do, that I find it very hard to believe that many, if any, schools can truly be said to be ‘coasting’. There are, surely, already too many penalties for those schools which fail to improve their pupils’ results, starting with the head losing his or her job following a failing Ofsted, for any of them to take it easy, I reason. And surveys of teacher workload surely make unarguable the case that most professionals are putting in very long hours in term-time – and often adding to them in the holidays – often under considerable pressure.

And yet here have we have the phrase ‘coasting schools’ backed not only by the Prime Minister and his Education Secretary, but written on the face of an education bill, in its first clause.

Individuals whom I respect, working more closely with schools than I am, have countered that there are some institutions which are not working as hard as they could to provide the best possible education for their pupils. Fair enough. But my point remains: data alone will not tell us which ones they are, because there is no straight read-across from outcome data to teacher commitment and motivation. This seems to me be to be another example of policy-makers making heroic assumptions of what can be read into results statistics alone.

We will have to wait until we have a definition in full – if, indeed during this bill’s passage, we get all the details which will be used in reality by those taking decisions on schools – in order to judge the technical reliability of the datasets being used. But with the futures of more schools poised to hinge on results statistics, this is likely to place even greater weight on, for example, marking reliability. Can it withstand the pressures being placed upon it? Again, the assumption is always that it can. But national curriculum tests and GCSEs, for example, have not been designed with the intention that institutions’ existence could rest on them.

A final implication should be obvious to anyone who is interested in the unintended consequences of assessment-driven accountability. Allowing schools to be placed as, in the language of the bill, ‘eligible for intervention’ – in other words, available for a management takeover – on the basis of results data alone will, surely, accentuate teaching to the test. With so much riding on performance on a particular set of indicators, the incentive for schools to concentrate even more narrowly on doing whatever it takes to maximise performance on those particular indicators will be underlined. If, on the other hand, the statistical definition of ‘coasting’ is not precise, teaching to particular indicators may be more tricky but then Regional Schools Commissioners stand to be accused of arbitrariness in selecting which schools count as ‘coasting’.

To ministers and those defending these plans, this is all to the good. The ‘war on mediocrity’ really will force institutions and those working in them to raise their game, with the implication that countless previous reforms in the same vein have not fully succeeded in doing so. Labelling schools, then, as ‘coasting’ – even if the label is in some cases inaccurate – is not a problem and will just reinvigorate professionals who need a bit of a push. And focusing on particular indicators is fine, as these centrally-defined metrics will just spur teachers to prioritise aspects of education which are important.

To this observer, who sees teachers for the hard-working, often stressed individuals they are, and wonders about the message being sent to this and the next generation of professionals about their efforts and about the alienation of policy-making from its implications on the ground, there is a sense of despair.

As ever, and as evidenced and articulated by the Cambridge Primary Review, the hope is that professionals can still educate pupils well in spite of policy-making, rather than because of it.

Warwick Mansell, one of CPRT’s regular bloggers, is a freelance journalist and author of ‘Education by Numbers: the tyranny of testing’ (Methuen, 2007).

For other blogs by Warwick Mansell click here and/or download CPRT’s book Primary Colours.

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Cambridge Primary Review Trust - Email: administrator@cprtrust.org.uk