The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

by Robin Alexander

Onwards and upwards

In my blog on 3 March I confirmed what we intimated at CPRT’s national conference in November: the Trust is closing but we have negotiated arrangements for securing its legacy and enabling interested groups and individuals to continue the CPR/CPRT-inspired work they have started. I can now provide further details.

Winding up

CPRT has ceased trading as a not-for-profit company and during the next two months will wind up its affairs.

  • Some CPRT regional networks may wish to continue their good work, and we hope they will, though they won’t be doing so under the banner of CPRT.
  • The CPRT Schools Alliance is disbanded as a CPRT entity, but some Alliance schools will wish, under different auspices, to maintain the regional and national links they have forged and the activities they have initiated. Again, we encourage them to do so.
  • There is one more CPRT publication in the pipeline and we’ll tell you about this when it appears.
  • The CPRT website will remain live for at least the next two years in order that its resources continue to be universally available. There may even be the occasional post and update.
  • The combined physical and electronic archive of the Cambridge Primary Review and the Cambridge Primary Review Trust has been lodged permanently in the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, with access for bona fide researchers. The collection includes CPR/CPRT publications, committee papers, media coverage and official correspondence and much else, and is a rich – and vast – research resource. Find out more here.

Carrying on

The agreement between CPRT and the Chartered College of Teaching (CCoT) has now been ratified.

  •  A smaller but still substantial archive, containing electronic copies of all CPR and CPRT reports and briefings and many other publications, is in the process of being copied to CCoT where it will have inaugural pride of place on the ‘knowledge platform’ through which CCoT aims to support evidence-informed practice. CCoT will curate the CPR/CPRT publications bank; that is to say, they will sort, index and link our material to other evidence on the knowledge platform, and they will actively promote it as a key resource for thinking primary teachers and their schools.
  • Those who are not teachers or CCoT members will still be able to access CPR/CPRT publications via either the CPRT website or the Borthwick Institute.
  • Teachers on CPRT’s mailing list, who work in CPRT Schools Alliance schools, or are associated with CPRT regional networks, may apply to become Founding Members of the College at a preferential rate. Find out about CCoT membership here.
  • In addition to the advertised benefits of membership of England’s new national professional body, including of course access to the knowledge platform, members will be offered generous discounts on the two CPR publications that are not available electronically – Children, their World, their Education and The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys . They will also be able freely to download Primary Curriculum 2014 , which hitherto has been available only as a hard copy purchase. We are grateful to Routledge and Pearson for these offers.
  • A group drawn from three of CPRT’s regional networks has been exploring possibilities for a new network, possibly under the auspices of CCoT, which itself will be encouraging and supporting such ventures. Anyone interested in joining this group should contact Julia Flutter.
  • Julia – formerly of CPR and CPRT and now on the staff of CCoT – has also offered to handle any questions about the CCoT membership offer and opportunities for post-CPRT networking.

by Robin Alexander

Over but not out

We mentioned at our highly successful national conference last November that the future of Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT) has been under discussion.

During the past ten years CPRT and its predecessor the Cambridge Primary Review have established an unrivalled foundation of educational evidence, vision and principle for those to whom such things matter (which, dispiritingly, excludes many of our political leaders), and the 2016 conference reminded us of what can be achieved if we are prepared to transcend institutional and professional boundaries and act together.

CPRT was always expected to be time-limited rather than a permanent fixture, a way of giving the spirit and messages of the Review a final push before releasing them to find their own place in the landscape of primary education.  The national map is patchy, but there’s no doubt that in many quarters that place is secure, so the Review’s tenth anniversary was a time not just to celebrate, as we did last November, but also to take stock.

The stock-taking is now complete. Rather than run the risk of fading away through over-familiarity, and mindful of our increasing reliance on voluntary effort, we have decided that the time to stop is now, and that we’ll go out on a high.

Better still, we have been able to secure a deal which will maintain the Trust’s voice, presence and resources for the foreseeable future, albeit in another guise.

Here’s how it will work. CPRT will shortly cease to operate as a company. Its remaining financial assets will be transferred to a holding account to cover outstanding bills and keep its website alive and fully accessible for the next two years.  Meanwhile, the new Chartered College of Teaching (CCoT) has agreed to take over curation of the combined online resource bank of Cambridge Primary Review and Cambridge Primary Review Trust – over 100 publications plus a host of official submissions and other material – and ensure that as a mainstay of CCoT’s ‘knowledge platform’ it continues as an exemplary source of ideas, information and evidence relating to the development and education of young children, and a standard-bearer for what matters as well as what works.

Further, those teachers who have been engaged with CPRT – whether as recipients of our e-mailings or as members of CPRT regional networks and Schools Alliance – will be able to join CCoT at the College’s founding rate. At the same time we are hoping that at least some of our regional networks and alliance schools will take up the opportunity to transform themselves into CCoT regional communities.

Though the timing looks perfect, it isn’t as serendipitous as it may seem. Robin Alexander (CPR Director and CPRT Chair) and Alison Peacock (CCoT’s first Chief Executive) not only worked together during 2010-12 to disseminate CPR’s messages but were also party to the initial discussions in 2013-14 about what is now CCoT, while during 2016 Robin was a member of CCoT’s Research and Evidence Advisory Group. Common to both CPRT and CCoT is the re-empowerment of teachers after two decades of enforced dependency and compliance. The desired shift is encapsulated in that familiar quote from the CPR final report (p 496) that ‘children will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are merely expected to do as they are told’ and its less familiar exegesis (also p 496):

We need to move to a position where research-grounded teaching repertoires and principles are introduced through initial training and refined and extended through experience and CPD, and teachers acquire as much command of the evidence and principles which underpin the repertoires as they do of the skills needed in their use. The test of this alternative view of professionalism is that teachers should be able to give a coherent justification for their practices citing (i) evidence, (ii) pedagogical principle and (iii) educational aim, rather than offering the unsafe defence of compliance with what others expect. Anything less is educationally unsound.

At the time there were those who found CPR’s definition of professionalism somewhat daunting, though it made perfect sense to professions such as medicine, law and engineering with which teaching claimed parity. In any event, the belief that true professional empowerment and school improvement are conditional on evidence and teachers’ willingness to seek, create and apply it became an increasingly mainstream aspiration. It was incorporated into government rhetoric (though with one recent Secretary of State expressing open contempt for expertise I daren’t rate official endorsement higher than that) and the mission statements of CCoT.  So with CPR/CPRT approaching its tenth anniversary and the professional context of primary teaching looking rather different now than in 2006, joining forces in this way seemed wholly appropriate. We are particularly pleased that it is with the CPR/CPRT evidence bank that the knowledge platform of the Chartered College of Teaching will be launched.

This blog will be one of CPRT’s last. Our next one, we hope, will formally confirm the new arrangements and no doubt offer some valedictory comments.

For now, stay with us and watch this space.

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Education after Brexit

Amanda Spielman, the new Chief Inspector of Schools, has recently suggested, with exquisite understatement, that the next few years are ‘not going to be easy’ for schools as political focus is likely ‘to shift away from education as the government’s time and attention (is) consumed by the process of Britain leaving the EU.’ While a period of calm and consolidation after the hyper-reform of the Gove years might be welcome, it is hard to see the economic uncertainty of Brexit doing anything but exacerbating current pressures in the system, particularly the looming crisis in school funding.

More immediate fears were in evidence at the recent ‘Cradle to Grave’ Conference held by the University and College Union. Speaker after speaker addressed the post-Brexit rise in hate crime, the insecurity of  EU nationals working and studying in Britain, the enduring anxiety of refugees already settled here and the sheer meanness of the government’s decision to rescind its commitment, under the Dubs amendment, to take in three thousand child refugees.

One questioner from the floor crystallised the anxiety felt by many when she asked the hall: ‘Is this fascism?’  Others highlighted the newly important role that educators, from the primary phase through to postgraduate studies, will play in the coming years, not just in helping vulnerable students but in promoting deeper understanding of current developments and more tolerant debate.

Of course Brexit has already had a huge impact on the education landscape, with the government’s decision to lift the ban on expanding selective education, rejecting the consensus of the Coalition years that the way forward was to support non-selective free schools and academies.  In September, the government published its Green Paper consultation on the question – the rather inappropriately titled, ’Schools that Work for Everyone’.

As Comprehensive Future pointed out in its official response to the document, every question was framed around the assumption that more selection is the right way forward, with respondents asked only to offer suggestions as to how this might work best.

What’s clear is that the Brexit vote has emboldened, and promoted, a cohort of politicians sidelined during the Gove/Morgan years, all of whom believe passionately in grammars. Several of them, David Davis, Michael Fallon and Boris Johnson, have key roles on the front bench. Those with long memories will recall that Fallon has form. As an education minister in 1991 he attacked primary schools for promoting ‘much happiness but little learning,’ as if the two are mutually exclusive. Other leading Eurosceptics and pro-grammar supporters, like Graham Brady MP,  Chair of the powerful backbench 1922 Committee, now have more influence on education policy than they have done for years.

In short, a very different kind of Tory is currently in charge. Out with the golden public school boys of the Cameron era who fell in love with the proto-traditional Gove-ian vision of comprehensive education: in with the striving less well-off Conservatives who put their own rise up the ranks down to the miracles of the post-war selective system, itself largely swept away by comprehensive reform.

May’s arguments for the expansion of grammars have deliberate echoes of this earlier period when selection was seen as the means by which the less privileged could make it up the class ladder.  The trouble is, there is no tangible evidence for this claim and in a clear echo of the Brexit debate itself,  all evidence that contradicts it, then and now, is simply disregarded.

Such evidence points unequivocally in one direction: selection divides communities, profoundly harms the education and life chances of poorer children, and hands superior state resources, at a time of scarcity, to the already affluent, with a catastrophic impact on primary aged education. Nor will the government ever find the ‘holy grail’ of a class-blind 11-plus test that it seeks. The plan currently being mooted –  to admit more poorer pupils by lowering the pass mark –  will surely founder on the anger of those middle-class families that treat grammars, and other forms of socially biased admissions arrangements, as their right.

Leading academics, numerous school heads, Chief Inspectors past and present, have spoken out against the plan to such an extent that even media and public opinion has now shifted on the issue. Only this week the Education Select Committee declared the policy ‘deficient in evidence’ and a distraction from the clear tasks facing our cash-strapped school system.

For all this the government ploughs on, having allocated £50 million a year to the scheme, with officials and ministers consulting existing grammar school heads on further expansion of selection throughout the country.

For now, then, our main hope must lie in resistance in Parliament if and when a new Education Bill, overturning the decades-long consensus on selective education, is introduced. We know the Labour Party, and other opposition groups, are fiercely opposed and that a significant group of Tory MPs are deeply uneasy at the proposals. Many in the Lords are also plainly unhappy at the plan.

In the coming months, therefore, it is vital that we all put pressure on MPs and Lords to counter this move in any way possible. We have won the public argument. That government is not listening makes it all the more vital that we win the vote.

Melissa Benn is a writer and campaigner and current Chair of Comprehensive Future, a cross-party campaign to end selective education. She was a keynote speaker at CPRT’s 2016 national conference. 

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Bumps, birth and beyond

‘Good news; bad news’ on the educational front this term. Good news: extra funding to ensure that more 3 and 4 year olds can access 30 hours of provision a week. Bad news: the pot of £50m will create only 9,000 places across a possible 200 settings, initially in just six areas of ‘social mobility’. Even worse news: in my humble opinion, it’s all too little and too late.  By which I do not mean that the government’s response is untimely: I mean that additional educational provision for children at the age of 4 or even 3 is rather too late for those most at risk from the impact of poverty.

It’s simple. For children to do well at school, to gain good qualifications and to succeed as socially and economically competent adults, we need to support them before they arrive at school. One of the most predictive factors in a child’s likelihood of educational success is the quality of their first 1001 days of life: from bump to birth to beyond. Skills development during the first three years of a child’s life happen at an accelerated rate – lots going on, lots to learn.

Children who routinely share books at home are far more likely to come to school with ‘age-related’ reading behaviours; children who don’t, quite obviously, won’t. Nor will they come with all the other skills supported by simple, book-sharing routines: a range of vocabulary; social and emotional skills developed by empathising with characters in a book; the ability to listen and respond, to consider and articulate their own opinions (‘How do you think Max felt when he saw his supper was still hot?’ ‘Which one of the wild things did you like the look of most?’). All of this undercover learning, from the rich brain-growing loam of a simple 15 minute story, gives our toddlers the best chance to succeed once they arrive at ‘big’ school. Imagine the even greater benefits if said child toddles off with their grown-up to the local library once a week and chooses some of these books for him/herself: independence of choice; articulation of selection; physical development in negotiating the different textures of pavement/path/library steps; chances to interact with other children. So much learning from a simple library visit with the benefits of a book to share too.

But it is not all about books: physical development is also key to life-long learning. Toddlers who are physically active have brains far better developed for learning than those who have been kept inert but safe, inside, coddled in a world of iPads and Kiddie-vision.  Brains that have enjoyed a visit to the park and had to work out how to climb the steps of the slide without falling off; how to use arms/legs as props/stabilisers to ensure that rolling down a grassy bank is a brilliant, rather than bruising, experience; how to jump safely across the gap in the little park wall, where the bin used to be, to demonstrate super-heroic powers worthy of Spiderman – all these brains will be ready to access more structured learning required when they arrive at school at 3 or 4. If their early experiences, both inside and outside, have not helped the synaptic development of their neural pathways then they will be playing catch-up to close the gaps from the minute they put on their first school jumper.

I am much exercised by this topic of pre-school-school this week, as we celebrate the first anniversary of the Children’s Centre at school, working with parents in our neighbourhood to support their children’s learning from bump to birth. We also welcomed our second cohort of two year olds into the nursery. There we read books together, we went to the library, and came back via the park – parents, toddlers, babies and all.  For more than half of the group this was the first time they had undertaken such an epic outing (the library is an eight-minute walk away; the park a scant five-minute stroll).  Our families are not neglectful, but they are cautious; they are not forgetful about reading, but need to know that sharing a book with a child who cannot yet read is not a ‘silly thing to do’; they are not anti-open air activities but they need to understand that rolling down a grassy slope is not necessarily dangerous and dirty but actually fodder for the brain.

The sort of ordinary activities that many children and families consider to be part of family life are, quite simply, extraordinary for others. These are the families with gaps to be closed from the outset and who require more than the option (where it exists) of extra hours of provision at the age of 3.   As a headteacher who is passionate about the underlying principles of CPRT, I believe it is our moral and educational duty to support these children before school, if we are to avoid handing out a multiplicity of labels stating ‘well below age-related’ when they arrive in nursery.  As a Leeds headteacher, I am fortunate to work for a local authority which actively promotes the importance of ‘babies, brains and bonding’ as part of a city-wide Best Start plan for our families. A core part of the training for practitioners from a range of sectors is research around infant brain development, with the stark reminder that we must create opportunities for our babies and toddlers to learn.

N.B. If somebody at the back just muttered ‘Surestart’ please could they come and wait outside my office at lunchtime? ‘Use it or lose it’ indeed…

Sarah Rutty is Head Teacher of Bankside Primary School in Leeds, part-time Adviser for Leeds City Council Children’s Services, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance, and Co-ordinator of CPRT’s Leeds/West Yorkshire network. Read her previous blogs here.

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Evidence-informed practice: the affirming power of research

Life in a busy school can sometimes make us feel like a startled herd of gazelles, darting every which way as the educational landscape changes; swiftly changing direction as the needs of children change, as the leadership of the school evolves, as each framework from Ofsted is introduced, as each new curriculum test forms new challenges for our most vulnerable pupils, as the government introduce another White Paper… As professionals, we need time to stop for a moment, to look around at the landscape, to learn from each other and to deepen our understanding of what truly works in education and why. Is it possible at a time of such educational flux that some kind of research-informed practice can give teachers and schools a renewed authority to create their own destiny and to provide an environment in which teachers and pupils thrive?

What does it mean for practice to be research-informed? Gary Jones argues that it is not about trying to create generalisable findings like large-scale, academic research projects but it is concerned with making decisions informed by rigorous, relevant research evidence in order to improve pupil outcomes. A better way of thinking about it might be what Phil Taylor calls ‘practice-based enquiry’. This kind of enquiry, Taylor suggests, is a form of ‘situated learning’ that is firmly rooted in the school context. The process not only draws upon published research findings, but also re-contextualises them, making research ‘useable’ within the school’s community of learners. This not only acknowledges that ‘what works best’ will not be exactly the same in every situation, but also suggests that we should be asking why something works or not.

Creating space for research

As a school leader I have found that the key to engaging school staff in this kind of enquiry is to create a time where the noise of every day life in school is stilled.  While we continue with our myriad of roles and responsibilities in school our minds are filled with ‘stuff to do’.  A more reflective and enquiring approach is only possible when we still this noise; when we spend time reading and researching; take time to deeply reflect on our own practice; ask challenging questions and engage in highly focused observations.

How was I to provide the time for my staff to engage in evidence-informed practice?  In order to create space for my staff, I had to take something away. Evaluating the impact of the training days, I concluded that although they provided valuable time for staff to be together to discuss practice and learn key skills, days like this appeared more beneficial for specific groups rather than the whole staff. As a result, I decided to translate the three training days into fifteen hours of research time for each teacher across the school. The teachers were charged with accruing these hours of research across the year.  In order to ensure teachers had a clear goal for their enquiry, I asked each teacher to publish or present their findings formally through: a research paper; leading a staff meeting; writing a blog; or presenting at a Teach Meet.

Formal Research Networks

In order to lend rigour to our evidence-informed practice, we joined the CPRT Schools Network South East Region led by Vanessa Young from Canterbury Christ Church University.  The CPRT, gathers together research-active schools in the region to share practice and link with other schools and research bodies nationally. This group has provided our school with powerful models of research and case study examples focusing on key priorities of the CPRT. A key CPRT priority area for us was one of pedagogy and quality and effectiveness in teaching and learning, including of course, teachers’ learning.

Using Appraisal to Develop a Culture of Evidence-informed Practice

Appraisal offers a powerful tool with which to target evidence-informed practice.  We trained senior staff as mentor-coaches and used the principles of ‘mentor-coaching’ and ‘appreciative enquiry’ to allow the teachers to devise an enquiry target that would develop their practice and enhance pupil learning. These enquiry targets were varied and included: looking into the impact of parental involvement with early reading; use of Google Docs to enhance learning; the impact of Twitter on professional development. We adopted a digital appraisal and CPD tracking system called Blue Sky. This allowed appraisal targets and related training activity to be linked to the school’s key priorities, and tracked. The programme also allowed staff to track their own research time and upload any evidence, while their reviewer was able to give a gentle nudge to staff who had been less than active over a period of time. The enquiry targets proved challenging: some teachers found it hard to grapple with the rigour of research approaches whilst others were trepidatious about presenting their findings. The engagement of teachers in their enquiry was tracked through the year by their mentors to ensure there was a systematic approach to the research and outcomes were disseminated across the school community.  The process saw staff grow in confidence and we noted how teaching practices were enriched by the insights gleaned from these enquiries.

The Learning Ticket

Each teacher was given a ‘Learning Ticket’ with a cash value of £150 which was to be spent on their appraisal enquiry target. In addition to the Learning Ticket, three ‘research bursaries’ were made available for teachers to bid for.  Each had a cash value of £500 and teachers could bid collectively for these.  One teacher bid for a research bursary to investigate ‘The Impact of Lego in story writing’ while another undertook an international research project into ‘The Teaching of Phonics in the USA, Japan and Finland’.

Teach Meets

With an enquiry appraisal target in place for each teacher and mentors tracking progress towards the targets, teachers developed a variety of new practices based on the research undertaken.  We needed a forum to share this practice and celebrate the success across the school and beyond school.  We therefore used the ‘teach meet’ model to provide a platform for the research outcomes for staff.  Teachers met to share their practice in short ‘micro-presentations’.  Our first teach meet focused on Irresistible Writing and the second on Irresistible Learning and shared a range of practices across the school arising from the teachers’ enquiries. The teach meet has been an exciting and engaging way of celebrating the success of research-informed practice and sharing practice within our school, across schools locally, and beyond.

Where to now?

Working in a school where enquiry-based practice is becoming embedded is a real privilege. Engaging with CPRT has allowed our staff to deepen the rigour and effectiveness of their research and has led us, as a school, to develop a culture of evidence-informed practice that helps engage our staff, raise standards for our pupils and draw high quality staff to our appointments.  The process is not easy for staff, their research often challenges their practice and the practice of colleagues. The process is, however, deeply rewarding and affirming.

As a school leader, it’s not enough just to lead and manage such an approach. I was acutely aware that I also needed to engage in the same way.  It was important to make time to be reflective myself as well as my staff. Being disciplined to find this time was a real challenge for me as principal.  I initially felt it took me away from the management roles across the school but I have grown to see the rich importance this. Finding and making time is not a luxury, it is essential.

We now intend to continue to work with the CPRT to grow the number of research-active schools in the South East. We will work with Canterbury Christ Church University to develop our research practice and Kent College to develop research with our non-teaching staff. As Julie McCulloch (at the Association of School and College Leaders – ASCL) pointed out in her recent CPRT blog 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. We will continue to support schools in our locality as a National Support School and share our evidence-informed outcomes through publications and teach meets. We will also publish our most significant research outcomes in our own research journal this summer.

If we are to create an exciting, engaging and engaged education system, we must continue to ask questions that encourage us gently to push boundaries and give us the conviction to create our own path towards the horizon.  By providing our staff with the space to engage in evidence-informed research in our exponentially busy life within school, the benefits to our school, our staff and our children are palpable.  It has allowed us to stop for a moment, look around and breathe before creating our path ahead. Enjoy the journey!

Graham Chisnell is principal of Warden House Primary School in Kent. He was one of two recipients of the CPRT ASCL Award for Evidence-Informed Leadership awarded at CPRT’s National Conference in November 2016.

Vanessa Young is the South East Regional Coordinator of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and a senior lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University.

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Education in spite of policy: further reflections on the 2016 CPRT conference

It encapsulated probably the defining contrast I have seen in nearly 20 years covering education: the under-rated commitment and thoughtfulness of much of the teaching profession versus the endless dysfunction, self-centredness and dishonesty of policymakers and the policy process itself.

Here, in the day-long get-together that was the Cambridge Primary Review Trust’s 10th anniversary conference last Friday in London, was an event to convince any observer of the multi-layered professionalism present at least in potential in England’s schools system.

Yet central to the day’s valedictory keynote by Robin Alexander – he is stepping down at the end of next month after 10 years as this remarkable review’s guiding presence – was the force against which the profession seems so often to be battling. This is the largely shallow, frequently failing and usually self-referential Westminster/Whitehall/think tank policy-spewing machine.

‘Education in spite of policy’ was the strapline to Robin’s speech. This is about as good a five-word summary of the state of play in English schooling in 2016 as it gets.1

‘Ever since the 1988 Education Reform Act started transferring hitherto devolved powers from local authorities and schools to Westminster, policy has become ever more inescapable, intrusive and impervious to criticism,’ he said.

What was needed, then, was not more ‘education reform’ but reform of the policy process itself. Hear, hear.

The Cambridge Primary Review’s Final Report, published in 2009, was unflinchingly critical of the above characteristics in a Labour government which, Robin reminded us, sent documents on the teaching of literacy at the rate of roughly one a week to primary schools in the seven years to 2004. Yet there were some aspects which contributors to the review had welcomed: Labour’s Children’s Plan, Sure Start, Narrowing the Gap and the expansion of early childhood care and education.2

The more relevant question now is whether policymaking has worsened since 2010. While Robin welcomed the concept of the pupil premium, he said the current grammar schools proposal flew in the face of evidence, dating back as far as the 1960s, as to its likely damaging impact on those not selected. ‘To have two initiatives from the same government department pulling in opposite directions, both in the name of narrowing the gap, is bizarre. But hey, that’s policy.’

On four of CPRT’s priorities – aims, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment – policy is worse in 2016 than when the report was published in 2009, he suggested. ‘Aims remain a yawning gap between perfunctory rhetoric and impoverished political reality. The new national curriculum is considerably less enlightened than the one it replaced … national assessment … is now even more confused and confusing than it was; and most government forays into pedagogy are naïve, ill-founded and doctrinaire.’

Policymakers can also be a very bad advert for the concept of education in itself, at least when they step away from the soothing rhetoric. Robin reminded us of this with reference to Michael ‘had enough of experts’ Gove and his famous observation that those teachers and academics who disagreed with him were ‘enemies of promise’ and Marxists ‘hell bent on destroying our schools.’

Listening to the speech, and sitting in on a couple of seminars and the day’s final plenary, was to be reminded of another contrast: between the decades of experience many contributors to the conference had to offer and the callowness of those often now shaping policy. I am loth to personalise, but to listen to Robin and to set his isolation from substantial involvement in policy 3 against the likes of Rachel Wolf, now opining on ‘the next round of education reform’ and the revelation that policymakers ‘must focus on what goes on inside the classroom’ a few years into a career almost entirely free of experience outside the policy bubble is to despair.4

So what of the depth elsewhere in the conference? I was fascinated by talks on the merits of philosophy in primary schools; and on the phenomenally popular, Cambridge University-based NRICH maths programme, whose director, Ems Lord, asked the provocative question: ‘is [maths] mastery enough?’ I found presentations on the ideas behind Learning without Limits,5 by academics at the universities of Cambridge, East Anglia and Edinburgh, as about the most thought-provoking I have heard.

And the final plenary, offering the thoughts of author/journalist Melissa Benn, another distinguished academic in Andrew Pollard and a headteacher in Sarah Rutty, offered much good sense. I was taken by Melissa’s description of a ‘brilliant’ – ie it sounded great – speech in 2013 by Gove, on the subject of primary education, which nevertheless showed a ‘wilful ignorance of the history of education’; welcome to post-truth politics. I was also struck by Andrew’s notion of evidence-informed, rather than evidence-based education, as the former implied the use of value judgement, which was important. However, in relation to policy, in stating that the Department for Education runs ‘consultations which turn out to be pseudo-consultations’, he reminded us how distant any kind of evidence can often feel from the directives.

Finally, Sarah launched into a quickfire, and bleakly humorous, tour de force on what it felt like to be on the end of policy suffused by a ‘lack of trust, lack of empathy, lack of joined-up thinking’, including those endless, and sometimes, she suggested, borderline incomprehensible missives from the Standards and Testing Agency about assessment changes.

‘As a headteacher, I feel a bit bullied if I’m honest. The government are not listening to our voices. They are certainly not listening to the voices of the children,’ she said.

The title of the final report of the Cambridge Primary Review, of course, was ‘Children, their World, their Education.’ Yet policy, in imposing constant change on schools because this fits both its own internal logic and the political needs of those in charge, staggeringly rarely, in reality, stops to consider the effects on those it is meant to help.

If it did, why would it have introduced major increases in the number of children likely to be deemed failing at 11 as a result of changes in the national assessment and curriculum systems without, as far as I know, having carried out any impact study as to the possible effects on pupils?

If it did, why would it have tried to force major disruptive and expensive structural change on thousands of primary schools without any good evidence that this will help pupils?

If it did, why would it publish a green paper on increasing selection without, seemingly, any consideration of the potential impact on pupils not deemed academic enough to pass a selective test?

Professionalism in spite of policy remains, sadly, the only hope for England’s schools.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance journalist and author of ‘Education by Numbers: the tyranny of testing’ (Methuen, 2007) and the recent CPRT report ‘Academies: autonomy, accountability, quality and evidence‘  (May 2016). Read more CPRT blogs by Warwick here.

 

1 – As is also implicit in a blog I wrote in the spring.

2 – CPR was not alone in this view. Another major review, the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training, England and Wales led by Richard Pring, also concluded in 2009. It investigated the notion that ‘there have been too many fragmented and disconnected interventions by government which do not cohere in some overall sense of purpose’.

3 – He has reminded me that as well as the 1991-2 ‘three wise men’ enquiry’ he has served on quangos such as CATE and QCA while his persistence over spoken language, in the face of that notorious ministerial objection that classroom talk is no more than ‘idle chatter’, succeeded in getting it reinstated, albeit reluctantly, in the current national curriculum. But my general point stands: on the one hand we have the rich but largely untapped experience and expertise that this conference brought together in abundance; on the other the supplanting of such experience and expertise by ideologically compliant special advisers and ‘expert groups’.

4 – Among several remarkable claims in Rachel Wolf’s blog is that ‘too many schools still resist testing as an “evil”’.   Really? No, they’d no doubt like to resist some of the more damaging impacts of high-stakes testing, but policymaking hangs all on test results, so…

5 – The papers on Learning without Limits will be on the programme’s website from next week.

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Education in spite of policy: reflections on the 2016 CPRT conference

‘It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.’ So observed American science fiction writer Philip K Dick, way back in 1981. Dick, whose work inspired the cult movie Blade Runner, was not talking about education. Thirty-five years ago, such a comment would not have been relevant to schools. It is now.

The current ‘reality’ of primary education is convincing many teachers that insanity might be an inevitable and actually a preferable outcome to continuing in this crazy world where what is educationally wrong is held up as right by those who must be obeyed.

For those of us who daily engage in this topsy-turvy turmoil, the 10th anniversary conference of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust on November 18th was deeply reassuring. It was also by turns depressing, alarming and inspiring, but most of all, for an ordinary classroom teacher such as myself, it was reassuring.

We don’t get out enough. Maybe once a term we escape to talk and share the Catch 22 dilemmas of our working lives. (Don’t teach to the test, but don’t you dare do anything else…) The rest of the time we inhabit classrooms with glass ceilings through which we are scrutinised by Lord Data, he who really must be obeyed, and his many acolytes. Some of these come in paper form, some have only a virtual existence, some, sadly, are only too human. They gaze through the ceiling, tut-tutting and often disagreeing with each other, but we can’t answer back.

Thus it was so heartening to read: ‘What works and what matters: education in spite of policy’ – the title of the conference keynote. Not only was it a relief to be able to applaud the sentiment, but it was also inspiring to realise it was being said in big letters to a hall full of people who all agreed! There was, for example, the new headteacher who took on the job with no training and little experience but who had the guts to get rid of all those time-wasting tracker tick-boxes. There was another head, insistent that she ‘doesn’t want to play their games’, but uncertain how long she can hold out in the face of indifferent Year 6 Sats results. There was the full-time teacher now embarked on a full-time PhD in order to bring philosophic questioning to the primary classroom.

And, of course, there were so many eager to celebrate the moral, ethical, social and cultural aspects of primary education. They daily risk their mental health subverting the accountability systems imposed by politicians, inspectors and academy chain executives to do the right – and sane – thing. As one teacher said: ‘I had my worst time ever as a teacher in May 2016. Those Year 6 Sats ran counter to everything I went into education for.‘ How has this happened? Well, it’s down to a surreal combination of what mad Lord Data says can be measured and what 18th century politicians say 21st century children need to know.

The insanity that is reality was summed up best by Robin Alexander, chair of the Trust, in his keynote speech. Policy is now ‘dangerously counterproductive’. It has become ‘ ever more inescapable, intrusive and impervious to criticism’. Classroom priorities are dictated by politicians increasingly susceptible to personal whim. One only has to remember Michael Gove, responsible for exhuming fronted adverbials, burying calculators and the re-examination of long-dead questions. As Alexander said of an edict from one of Gove’s colleagues: ‘Is it really essential … that every Year 6 pupil should know who shot England’s King William II, especially when this is a question that no historian can answer?’

Such madness is everywhere. Teachers battle with a national curriculum that is, to quote Alexander, neither national nor a curriculum. In the scary era of post-truth politics, the problem is also ‘the sheer dishonesty of the government’s approach’ to what is taught, claiming breadth and balance whilst setting high-stakes tests that enshrine ‘minimalism, narrow instrumentalism and a disdain for culture’. Such machinations are never welcome given that they do a profound disservice to the country’s young children. In times of Brexit and Trump, they are horribly reckless.

And what stands between the children and the reckless politicians? Obviously CPRT with its enlightened curriculum based on ‘reliable evidence and clear and valid vision’. Some campaigners on the side of the sane – for example Melissa Benn seeing hope in a middle-class rebellion and protests such as More than a Score.

And then there’s us – the classroom teachers.  As Robin Alexander said:

It’s the teachers who have heeded this message that the Cambridge Primary Review Trust celebrates. Their insistence on professional autonomy underpinned by reflection, evidence and vision underlines the force of another often-repeated quote from the final report: ‘Children will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers merely do as they are told.’

Teachers do continue to heed the message of the final report of the CPR. All those at the 10th anniversary conference know it is the right way to go and that it is based on evidence not increasingly dodgy ‘data’. They continue to not merely do as they are told. But, make no mistake, this is a heavy responsibility for the overworked and not-terribly-well-paid teacher to shoulder. How much better if we could make sure, as Shakespeare urged, that: ‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.’

Stephanie Northen is a primary teacher and journalist and one of our regular bloggers. She contributed to the Cambridge Primary Review final report and is a member of the Board of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.

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After Trump, what next?

President Donald J. Trump!

My mind reels, stomach churns and spirit despairs.  I’m disoriented and confused, as are about half the country.  I’ve only met one Trump supporter in the three months I’ve been in the United States; who are the other 59 million people who cast their ballots for him?  What just happened?  What comes next?  And what does it mean for us educators?

It’s hard to see this election outcome as anything but a systemic failure of the democratic process.  Hillary Clinton was not an ideal candidate, but Trump?  Here’s part of the editors of non-partisan The Atlantic summary of his candidacy:

 …has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse…

I’d add to that list Trump’s fundamental lack of respect for democratic norms, perhaps best captured by the chilling exchange in the second presidential debate in which Trump threatened Clinton with ‘if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation’.

In response, Clinton noted that ‘it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country’.

‘Because you’d be in jail’, Trump quipped, to audience applause.

Similarly, he’s encouraged violence at his rallies, questioned the integrity of a federal judge on account of his ethnic ancestry, advocated barring Muslims from entering the U.S., sought to undermine the legitimacy of the elections (when it appeared he was losing), and embraced torture ‘even if it doesn’t work’.  There’s plenty more – see for example Andrew Sullivan’s essay on the dangers to democracy of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.

So what happened?  Recalling the Brexit vote, it appears that a combination of identity politics, economic insecurity, fear of foreigners, patriotic nostalgia, and a loss of faith in government led white working class voters to overwhelmingly support Trump.  Voters wanted an ‘outsider’ who would ‘shake things up’; Hillary Clinton appeared as the ultimate insider and continuation of Obama. Trump’s name-calling and lies undoubtedly contributed to Clinton’s troubles.  Also, I fear, sexism and racism.

But understanding the Trump phenomenon requires that we go beyond the specific demographics, attitudes, issues and campaign strategies to consider the root conditions that enabled such a fundamentally flawed candidacy to develop and thrive.  I have in mind, first and foremost, the media environment that legitimated and even rewarded political behaviors that the pundits considered to be candidacy-destroying.

To help think about this media environment, and its educational implications, I recommend Neil Postman’s extraordinarily prescient book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, about how television shapes our political culture.  Though published over thirty years ago – before cable, reality television, social media, or smartphones – the book’s relevance has only grown with age. Postman argues that television is better suited to entertain than inform, better at communicating images than arguments, and better at spectacle than deliberation. Moreover, since its (economic) success is measured in viewer ratings rather than their enlightenment, spectacle, images and entertainment dominate our television culture. Postman argues that one consequence of this cultural change is a change in our relationship to the truth:

If on television, credibility replaces reality as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude. I suspect, for example, that the dishonor that now shrouds Richard Nixon results not from the fact that he lied but that on television he looked like a liar. Which, if true, should bring no comfort to anyone, not even veteran Nixon-haters. For the alternative possibilities are that one may look like a liar but be telling the truth; or even worse, look like a truth-teller but in fact be lying.

No matter that Trump out-lied Clinton at a rate of 67 to 9 in the first two debates; he lied confidently and unapologetically, all the while dragging ‘Crooked Hillary’ through the mud of outlandish, false accusations.

Trump, the veteran reality television star grasped that image is more important than ideas, and that drama sells.  Consider, for example, the ‘you’d be in jail’ incident: as democratic politics, it was an appalling threat to abuse presidential powers; as dramatic spectacle, it was riveting.  Moreover, it further cemented Trump’s image as the straight-talking, no-holds-barred boss from the boardroom of The Apprentice.

When Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, U.S. television was controlled by the three networks.  Now it is fragmented into hundreds of cable channels, which are amplified and echoed by innumerable social media accounts.  One consequence of this fragmentation is that Democrats and Republicans are getting their news, ideas and images from different sources, further eroding the possibility of achieving a common truth, a common good, or a public conversation.  I’m crushed today by the outcome of the election, terrified by the prospect of the Trump presidency, but I’m also aware that had Clinton performed two percentage points better in a handful of states the other half of the electorate would have been equally crushed and terrified. American democracy cannot survive that divide.

The quality of public discourse is a democratic problem, of course, but it is also an educational problem. Who we are and what we think is to a large extent shaped by the discourses we participate in and are exposed to – on the television no less than in the classroom. Our sense of what is true and right, and conversely what is crazy and outrageous, is at least partially affected by the combative and ugly discourse that pervades the televised public sphere.

Six weeks before the U.S. election I joined over 250 teachers at the Teaching About the 2016 Elections conference at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Many participants were concerned about how to respond to the hateful rhetoric to which their students were exposed while also maintaining a neutral, non-partisan stance. Moreover, they were particularly worried about the ‘Trump Effect‘: ‘an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color… [and] an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail’.

At the opening panel at the conference, Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings advised teachers to fill the void created by popular culture: to shift the focus from the cult of personality to deliberating the issues, from the presidential race to local and congressional elections, and from the here and now to international and historical understanding of the elections.

Ladson-Billings’ advice makes sense as a way of teaching in the heat of the elections, constructively and in a non-partisan manner.  But addressing the radical problems of a dysfunctional public sphere and a deeply divided electorate requires more fundamental rethinking of the form and aims of education for democratic participation.  Learning how to live democratically is facilitated by, in the words of the Cambridge Primary Review, helping ‘children to become active citizens by encouraging their full participation in decision-making within the classroom and school’. This includes bringing into the classroom controversial issues, in order to learn how to discuss them democratically: that is, respectfully, with people we disagree with, based on evidence and argument, and with a genuine openness to hear, consider, and try to address the others’ concerns.  Furthermore, if Postman’s analysis is on target, pupils also need to learn to look critically at the media environment: to become accustomed to assessing the quality of claims, to develop awareness of how they’re influenced, and to go beyond the identification of the features of different genres (as is currently popular) to assess their advantages and limitations.  I suggest these practices not as another supplement to an already crowded curriculum, but as principles for the teaching and learning of existing texts and topics.

Unfortunately, the urgent need for this democratic and critical educational agenda will likely grow under the Trump administration.

Adam Lefstein is Associate Professor of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Find out more about his book Better than Best Practice at www.dialogicpedagogy.com

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North and South

This blog takes us to two beautiful corners of the UK, one to the north and one in the far south. We begin with the south, on England’s largest and second most populous island, the Isle of Wight. As the controversy surrounding former Ofsted Chair David Hoare’s recent comments about the Island vividly demonstrates, raising matters like educational disadvantage can be dangerous ground. Whilst Mr Hoare was right to draw attention to the serious problems in coastal England which have continuously slipped under the radar when it comes to funding and interventions, solutions are not to be found in public speeches shaming or blaming those unfortunate enough to be at the sharp end of disadvantage. Labelling children and families as products of inbreeding and their homes as ghettoes was not only scurrilous but neatly diverted attention away from an educational system that seems to have failed them. Whilst Ofsted data suggests the Island’s schools are steadily improving, only 64% of its primary children attend schools categorised as good or outstanding, placing the local authority fourth from the lowest rung on the national ‘league table’.

Yet for many who visit Tennyson’s ‘Enchanted Isle’, Mr Hoare’s description may well have come as a shock. Holidaymakers go there to enjoy the Island’s natural beauty and architectural heritage, testimony to its fashionable heyday when Queen Victoria commissioned Osborne House. Official statistics, however, paint a rather different, sombre view of the Island, with high unemployment and poverty, low aspirations and educational underachievement afflicting many Islanders’ lives. The Island’s fall from prosperity is sadly mirrored in many other coastal areas around the UK. Cheap air travel tempted tourists to resorts overseas decades ago and recession in other maritime industries has left many seaside resorts struggling to survive. Finding ways to address such complex, pervasive problems is not easy and quick-fix solutions have proved to be illusive but clearly education must lie at the heart of community regeneration efforts if they are to succeed in the long term.

Turning our attention northwards, an interesting success story can be found in the Scottish Lowlands, 45 miles south of Glasgow, and it may offer inspiration to other areas battling against the economic tide. CPRT was recently invited to attend an Education Day at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, where we heard about a heritage-led regeneration project instigated by His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales. This innovative project is reinvigorating its local community through a cohesive strategy involving the conservation and reuse of Dumfries House, an 18th century mansion and its estate, to provide employment and educational opportunities, and to rekindle local pride and aspirations. Heritage-led regeneration initiatives like this one can serve as catalysts for economic and social improvement: although the link between heritage-led regeneration and education may not seem immediately apparent, educators know that what happens in schools and classrooms is inseparably interwoven with the culture and conditions of the communities they serve.  Aware of this crucial link, the Dumfries House project is focusing its attention on education and is working closely with schools from across the region and beyond to effect positive change.

Linked to the objectives of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, the Dumfries House Education programme has six centres providing opportunities for children and adults to engage with a wide range of hands-on learning experiences and training for employability. The Pierburg Building and Kaufmann Gardens have been designed for children to experience the delights of planting, harvesting and eating their own vegetables, a learning opportunity that keys into the Curriculum for Excellence sustainability requirements. For many of the primary school children who come here this will be the first time they have dug the soil, picked sugar-snap peas fresh from the plant or tasted soup made with vegetables they have grown themselves. The Morphy Richards Engineering Centre has an imaginatively-designed Harmony playpark and well-equipped teaching area where children explore topics relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities are designed to challenge children, ‘…to imagine, design, build and test solutions to real world problems’.

However, it is perhaps the House and its estate which are likely to inspire children’s curiosity and imagination most. Just as the 5th Earl of Dumfries intended, the beautiful 18th century house and its landscaped grounds leave an indelible impression. The House breathes life into history, introducing children to a fascinating collection of artefacts and furnishings (including The Grand Orrery which is spellbinding to visitors of any age!); the landscaped gardens and the arboretum encourage children to explore and discover the extraordinary diversity of the natural world. Without the regeneration project all this would have been lost and future Ayrshire generations would have been denied these precious opportunities to wander and wonder, and to engage with their community’s heritage.

The Dumfries House Education programme reminds us that inspiring curiosity and imagination is one of the aims for primary education proposed in the Cambridge Primary Review final report, Children, Their World, Their Education. In England, the current primary curriculum has placed greater emphasis on narrowly-defined ‘core skills’, reducing opportunities for giving attention to broader aspects of knowledge, and to developing capacities for creativity, imagination and understanding. Schools should be places that allow space and time for wandering and wondering. There must be sufficient time allowed for children to imagine and to ask questions because solutions to problems and new knowledge are created through divergent thought, curious questions and imaginatively-inspired action. More urgently than ever, we need these qualities to enable us to find solutions to the dilemmas we face, whether in our own, local communities or on a global plane.

The heritage-led regeneration work at Dumfries House is just one, small example of an imaginative starting point but it offers a positive model for areas facing similar challenges and one which accepts the unique qualities of a place and its people as valuable assets. Working in tandem with Scotland’s curriculum based on clearly-articulated aims ‘to develop successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors’, Dumfries House and its Education programme are becoming part of a coherent approach seeking to establish a brighter, more sustainable future for the region.

Returning to the south, the problems identified in the Isle of Wight and other disadvantaged areas need a similarly holistic approach and their problems highlight the importance of tackling the CPRT’s priorities, particularly those regarding:

We’ve seen that it’s possible to start addressing these priorities if joined-up thinking, determination and imagination are used to kickstart change, and if we use the positive attributes of a locality and its people as starting points. It’s also worth reminding ourselves that the CPR’s curriculum model calls for around 30 per cent of teaching time to be devoted to locally proposed, non-statutory programmes of study (‘the Community Curriculum’) to respond to local interests. The CPR Final Report argued that a Community Curriculum could be:

…planned locally by community curriculum partnerships (CCPs) convened by each local authority, or where this is desirable and appropriate by local authorities acting together; each panel includes school representatives, community representatives and experts in the contributory disciplines, and its work must involve consultation with children (CPR Final Report, p. 276).

The Report goes on to say:

…by building on children’s knowledge and experience, by engaging children educationally with the local culture and environment in a variety of ways, and by involving children in discussion of the local component through school councils and the world of the CCPs, the community curriculum would both give real meaning to children’s voices and begin the process of community enrichment and regeneration where it matters (CPR Final Report, p. 275).

Wherever their home is within the UK – north, south, east or west – children have a right to succeed and fulfil their potential. We urgently need to increase our efforts to ensure that these rights are achieved for every child.

Details of the year-round educational programme can be found on the Dumfries House Education website. The programme offers an extensive range of educational opportunities for schools and organisations, including residential courses.

Julia Flutter is a Co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.

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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.

Contact

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