The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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Load and bless with fruit the vines

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in pleasantly autumnal Leeds. We are enjoying the familiar tropes of seasonal change: the trips to the local park, avoiding the litter and dog-mess please Year 4, to collect the ‘lovely, lively, golden leaves laughing like a sun’ (thank you Blue 1 for this flourish of figurative language); the celebration of the bounty of our local shops for harvest festival (nothing perishable, as the vermin infestation in church has finally outwitted the best laid plans of the men – and women – of the clergy team, so, this year, the homeless can eat only canned food), and the first explosive outbursts of randomly thrown fireworks, a daily herald of the onslaught of Bonfire Night itself.

And, alongside the expected events that shape the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ here in the inner city, there are some more singular ones to enjoy: the glory of our Year 6 school residential trip; a meeting of headteacher colleagues to discuss how research-based school practice might give our families and children a voice in developing the landscape of learning and opportunity across our highly diverse city; the publication of the latest Cambridge Primary Review Trust research report by Kate Pickett and Laura Vanderbloemen, Mind the Gap – Tackling Social and Educational Inequality. All these have provided occasion to reflect on the importance of creating rich learning experiences, so that all our children achieve their best potential and thrive in their school settings. To indulge in one more Keatsian metaphor (and this the end of them, I promise): to ensure that we ‘load and bless with fruit the vines’ – in this case the rich harvest of our primary-aged children.

It is, as they say, a no-brainer, that we would want the best for all our children and that we would aim for 100 per cent of them to be a blooming top crop. Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, in her speech to the Conservative Party conference earlier this month, clearly shares these principles:

The commitment to meritocracy means nothing if we don’t give every child the chance to succeed … For us social justice and One Nation are not just buzzwords. They explain all we’ve done and all we’re going to do to extend opportunity to every single child.

Hear, hear, I say: a noble ambition and clearly stated; bravo Ms Morgan. But, as I read further through the speech, I begin to feel a little nagging unease, that somehow Nicky and I are not quite on the same page about how we might achieve this. Ms Morgan believes that

(the) belief in equality of opportunity has been our guiding principle for five years …Look at what we have achieved. We’ve raised the bar on standards in schools with a rigour revolution:… a tough new national curriculum that fosters a love for literature, a grasp of arithmetic and an appreciation of our history. 120,000 more six year olds on track to become confident readers thanks to our focus on phonics and record numbers of 11 year olds mastering the 3Rs.

There’s talk of ‘grit and spark’ and ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ and there is a clarion cry for a new breed of teachers to shape the destiny of the next generation. Ms Morgan even name checks her own encouraging teacher ‘without whom I wouldn’t be standing here today – thank you Mrs Thynne’.

It is heart-warming stuff indeed and I feel even more churlish about my growing sense of misgiving. I want to agree, but I can’t. And not out of some misplaced political ideology, but because of the reality of another inner-city autumn; the return of the year 6 residential trip; the content of the headteacher meeting about creating an equal landscape for children’s voice and choice in Leeds, and the most recent CPRT report. Essentially, I can’t agree, because, as a teacher, I know that good learning and education are not merely about being relentless and focussed; they are about trying to create adaptive and creative outcomes so that each child can flourish in their learning, in spite of some of the daily challenges with which they have to contend beyond the school gate. Sadly, unlike Ms Morgan, I do not believe that what characterises the best schools ‘is that when you walk through the door the first thing that they talk about is where their students are going, not where they have come from’. Experience – and research – tell me that seeing children in their social context is critical if we are to attempt to close the gaps which will otherwise prejudice their future success. We need to realise the enormity of this task if we want our children to achieve their best potential in the warmth and love of a community of learning, in spite of the messiness of their own home backgrounds.

The CPRT report mentioned above – Mind the Gap  – makes this point clearly. Among its conclusions it finds that:

  • The most important influence on educational attainment, on how well a child develops in the early years, performs in school, in later education and in adulthood, is family background.
  • Average levels of educational attainment and children’s engagement in education are better in more equal societies. [The report shows that the UK is among the most unequal of the OECD countries – p 7, fig 3]
  • Targeted spending such as the Pupil Premium can certainly make a difference … yet targeted spending is not sufficient on its own to close the attainment gap and reduce educational inequalities.
  • Reducing educational inequality will ultimately depend on reducing social and economic inequality.

As a headteacher, I can – and relentlessly do – set the aspirational tone for a ‘Bankside Best’ attitude to all that we do and learn at school. We expect the ‘best for and the best from’ every member of our learning community, thank you very much – ask anyone in the school, or indeed who has ever spent more than 10 minutes in conversation with me (one puzzled visitor, after my nth reference to ‘Bankside Best’ enquired if it was a brand of bitter I was about to offer him). As a leadership team, we can insist, as Ms Morgan urges, that we root out poor education ‘wherever it lurks’ and we do. We are proud of our learning community where children make exceptional progress because of this, from very low starting points to attainment in line with – and in many cases above – national average at KS2. A school where we actively create conditions for meta-cognitive understanding so that, once again, from the very beginning of school children understand the importance of being resilient learners (we are ‘have a go hippos’ even in nursery) and value how they learn, as well as what they learn. Holy Moly, we are wonderful here in LS8.

However, what we cannot do, even with the support of our excellent governing body, local authority and other multi-agency partners, is change the demographic we serve. We can spend Pupil Premium on taking our Year 6 children on school residentials (and indeed all our children on trips and outings as a matter of school routine) to enrich their learning experiences and widen their sense of self and ambition. We cannot, however, prevent the personal distress and upset that one of those children experienced on their return, to discover that her older brother’s remand arrangements had changed and that he might be returning to the area imminently. The turmoil and upset this created for this child and her family far outweighed the benefits of a trip away. And, with all deference to Ms Morgan’s faith in the social importance of 11 year olds mastering the 3Rs, appreciating history and grasping arithmetic to ensure a country that is ‘fair… wise… and great’, the older boy in question had flourished at school fuelled by our belief (shared with Ms Morgan) that ‘children only get one shot at education and we owe to them to give them the best one’. From well below age-related starting points he left Bankside with very good KS2 results, appreciating and grasping concepts and knowledge like a good ‘un. This may have been why he was able to shine so brightly within the local crime scene.

My point is this: high academic results alone, in contradiction to current educational ideology, cannot possibly close all the necessary gaps that will ensure the ‘security of our country’, as Ms Morgan’s comments suggested, whilst social inequality is so prevalent.

I will finish with a few thoughts about our headteachers’ meeting, looking at some of the very issues that underpin this blog. ‘Gaps’ to be closed in educational and social outcomes do not begin at the age of 3 or 4, when a child first arrives in school; they begin from the very start of life itself. The first 1001 days of a child’s life, from conception to the age of 2, are the most powerful determiners of a child’s long term success, both socially and in terms of educational outcomes. Our group was reading Building Great Britons, the report, published earlier this year, of the cross-party First 1001 Days All Parliamentary Group, where the first (of nine) recommendations is that

Achieving the very best experience for children in their first 1001 days should be a mainstream undertaking by all political parties … Recognising its influence on the nature of our future society, the priority given to the first 1001 days should be elevated to the same level as Defence of the Realm.

Stirring stuff – and all of it resonates more powerfully with me, as a leader of learning in a very deprived area of the country, than the call to create a ‘supercharged approach’ by Nicky Morgan – which appears to be another means to create a world of stand-alone academies and free schools, rather than address the key social causes of poor academic achievement.

We are very proud of the work that we do so passionately to close the gaps in learning at our school; we recognise that we need to do this as soon as possible. Over the last two years we have developed an extended early years team – to start working with our potential students from the very beginning of their life – in our mission to create learners from ‘Birth to Bankside’ (B2B – we love a good brand here). To this end we work, as the 1001 report recommends, in strong partnership with our local authority partners: public health, NHS, and colleagues in early years and children services. The need for a strong and committed public sector has never been more critical to achieve this (read the 1001 report and see for yourself). It worries me that if we focus solely on raising standards in stand-alone schools we will not be ‘the spark to light a fire’ to paraphrase Ms Morgan’s final thoughts at conference. Rather, without looking at the bigger, more complex and divisive social picture, we could be the fuse that ignites further inequality.

Since I have started typing this blog over 20 fireworks have screamed and blasted their way through the quietness of a post-school evening. I know for certain that these are thrown not by teenagers who have all been failed by education (many of them attended this school and ‘did well’) but by young people who do not have the advantages of coming from a home where, according to the CPRT report, they have a greater chance of life-long success. Homes where ‘parents have higher incomes and higher levels of education and … they have a place to study, where there are reference books and newspapers.’ Are we going to let the future of these children go up in ideological smoke, at the expense of really closing the gap, as we focus on outcomes and not on root causes? I sincerely hope not.

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 blog here. 

If you work in or near Leeds and wish to become involved in its CPRT network, contact administrator@cprtrust.org.uk.

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Divide and Rule

A mark of a successful primary school career is, according to the Conservatives, the ability to do long division. As our privately-educated Education Secretary Nicky Morgan explained, long division is at the heart of giving ‘every child the chance to master the basics and succeed in life,’ something that is a ‘fundamental duty’ of government.

This is interesting for many reasons. Here’s one. Finland, long-time star of the education world, has clearly decided it wants its children to fail. Shockingly, it is deleting long division from its national curriculum and replacing it with coding.  The change is part of a drive, says Liisa Pohjolainen, head of education in Helsinki, to provide ‘a different kind of education’. Long division is being cast into the long grass because ‘young people now use quite advanced computers. In the past the banks had lots of clerks totting up figures but now that has totally changed’.

British technologist Conrad Wolfram makes the same point more bluntly. Long division, he says, is being used ‘as a badge of honour of what the government calls rigour when in fact it’s a prime example of mindless manual processing’. Marcus de Sautoy, professor for the public understanding of science, agrees: ‘Most people think that maths is about long division to lots of decimal places. Really, though, a mathematician is someone who looks at structure and pattern – and in a sense that’s how everyone reads the world: we’re all mathematicians at heart.’

All these comments echo the the Cambridge Primary Review final report which argued that ‘primary mathematics escapes the critical scrutiny to which other domains are subject’, and urged teachers and curriculum planners to ‘address with some rigour the question of what aspects of mathematics are truly essential and foundational in the primary phase’ (p271).  Long division is neither. It’s not what maths is about. It’s what Tory politicians believe their voters believe maths is about.  Hyping up the importance of long division in primary schools is yet another example of playing politics with education – as is labelling schools ‘coasting’ in order to create more academies. Statements of the bleeding obvious, maybe, but bleeding obvious statements clearly aren’t being made often or forcefully enough. If they were, changes that are bad for children and ultimately for all of us would not keep happening.

But back to the question of long division and the ethical issues it raises. Do I teach it knowing that I should not? Answer: a woeful yes. My profession is not trusted to decide what maths is best for young children. In that case, how do I teach it? My one year of training did not actually cover long division – or coding for that matter. My Finnish colleagues can, of course, teach both simultaneously while standing on their woolly-hatted heads. I calculate, using my mathematical skills, that this is because that they had five times more training than I did.

So, guiltily, I am relieved to discover that the way I was taught in (secondary) school is back in vogue.  However, as we know, being able to do something is a far cry from being able to teach it. The CPR final report’s chapter on pedagogy (pp 279-310) makes excellent reading on this topic – as well as underlining the need for ‘teaching to be removed from political control’. But I am under political control so I dutifully draw my bus stop and pop the numbers in. For example, 7,236 divided by 36. I start the mantra: ‘First you divide 36 into 7. Won’t go. So next try 36 into 72.’ Half the class stare at me blankly. ‘They don’t know what you mean, by “into”,’ the TA whispers helpfully.

Oh, ok. ‘Let’s try how many 36s are there in 72?’ Still blank. Hmm. ‘If I had 72 sweets to share between 36 children, how many sweets would they have each?’ Hands wave excitedly. I get excited too. ‘Write your answers on your whiteboards, please, and hold them up.’ Oops. The mathematically able children are fine, but the rest hold up a random display of answers: 3, 4 and, bizarrely, 7.6.

I catch my TA’s eye. We are thinking the same thing. Back to basics once more for those who are struggling. But I am also aware that Asian maths teaching methods, most definitely approved of by the current administration, expect all children to progress at roughly the same pace. Lessons are repetitive, short and thorough. So do I force my able mathematicians to do what they can already do, over and over again, or do I differentiate by stretching them with more interesting challenges? If only Nicky Morgan would tell me. Interestingly, if you ask Google to search ‘differentiation and Nicky Morgan’ the top hit is a reference to a 2 per cent pay rise for the ‘best’ teachers. Guess that’s not me!

Similar questions cloud times tables teaching – another ‘basic’ that holds the key to a successful life, according to Mrs (don’t ask me 7×8) Morgan. Half my class know them inside out and back to front. Another quarter know them if they are given time to think. And another quarter is as doubtful as Mrs Morgan herself. Sometimes I yearn for the hot-house pressure of Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea where parents drill their children in their times tables and demand homework. Children in my class tell me in all seriousness that they have been too busy to do one piece of homework in a week. Perhaps they are right. Hopefully they have been too busy being children to bother learning that the internal angles of every triangle in the universe add up to 180, or that 7×8 is and always will be 56, or that 7,236 divided by 36 equals 201.

Conservative politicians also complain that too many children don’t understand fractions. I have a feeling that there might be a reason for this. It goes like this. 1⁄10 of population of the UK controls 1⁄2 of the wealth. Globally 1⁄100 controls 1⁄2 of world’s wealth. Try this one, 1⁄3 of children in the UK live in poverty. Yes, I agree with the government. Fractions are important when it comes to succeeding in life.

Stephanie Northen is a teacher and journalist. She contributed to the Cambridge Primary Review final report and is a member of the Board of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.  Read other blogs by Stephanie in CPRT’s recent downloadable collection Primary Colours .

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And the octopus won

I held an election at the school recently. It happened just the day before a similar event took place nationally. The two candidates were an octopus (plastic) and a clown (wooden). This was not intended as a reflection on national politics, they were simply the toys that came to hand as I raced out of the classroom and down to the hall for assembly.

This term the theme for assemblies has been fairness. As I lined the pupils up with their voting slips in front of a cardboard ballot box, I explained that we had gone back in time 200 years. Lord Sam (Year 6) and Duke Timothy (Year 5) were to be in charge of this election and would decide who was to vote. The young aristos very much enjoyed turning away all the pupils, except their two wealthy land-owning mates (Cameron, Year 5, and Freddie, Year 4). And so we carried on, conducting elections right through till 1969 when finally everyone was allowed to vote.

The children, particularly the girls, were refreshingly indignant about the denial of their democratic rights. But what was more interesting was the way they became embroiled in the contest. Who was going to win? Was it going to be the octopus or the clown? Factions quickly developed. Arguments erupted in the corners of the hall. Some were passionate in their advocacy of a particular toy. Some came close to tears when a friend rebelled and voted for the opposition. Yet no policies had been discussed. No one knew what the octopus or the clown stood for despite this being an election to decide the leadership of the school.

You get my point, I’m sure. It was reinforced after the general election when the children told me gleefully that Sats were to be abolished. Yes, I said, but did they know that they were to be replaced with more and harder ‘exams’? They didn’t know and they were, for once, silent. I suspect they would also be silent if they read the Conservative manifesto. In a few bleak words the government outlines its priorities for primary education: ‘Every 11-year-old to know their times tables off by heart and be able to perform long division and complex multiplication. They should be able to read a book and write a short story with accurate punctuation, spelling and grammar.’ That the potential achievements of an 11-year-old should be so stale, flat and unprofitable is heart breaking.

I assume no child was involved in drawing up these priorities. What self-respecting young person would sign up to such dreary targets? A very different set of aims emerges when young people are consulted. The Cambridge Primary Review listened carefully to its many ‘prominent and thoughtful’ child witnesses. Its final report (p 489) recommended that in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ‘children should be actively engaged in decisions which affect their education’ and that schools should increasingly work to ensure pupils’ opinions are listened to in a meaningful way. Children told CPR researchers (final report, p 148) that they ‘relish a challenge,’ that they ‘enjoy succeeding’ and that they like ‘hands-on active learning’ in lessons that are full of variety. They dislike ‘mundane and repetitive’ learning, copying and ‘drill and practice’ exercises.

Children are begging for a broad, balanced and rich curriculum, as sought by CPR and CPRT. They may not express it in those words, but they do express in their actions. They triumphantly find fossils in the school garden. They catch bugs, beetles and dead butterflies and bring them in to show and discuss. They make up great stories while stirring a magic mud potion. They adore playing with electrical circuits and making bits of paper fly off motor spindles. They copy a Turner painting and say ‘Wow, Miss, I didn’t know I was good at art’. They wonder why bruises happen and why we shiver or say things like ‘I know it’s a silly question, Miss, but why did lions evolve?’ They love acting, will volunteer for anything, relish funny books (I wonder if ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ is the kind of book the Tories have in mind) and, of course, some go wild for long division and complex multiplication. ‘Please can I stay in at break and do more maths, Miss?’

So once more, as Warwick Mansell pointed out last week in his CPRT blog, we are back to the ‘basics versus breadth’ debate. Except that there is no debate at government level. The only debate is at school level as heads and teachers struggle to square the circle and reinforce the basics while not losing the breadth. Despite their efforts, largely via intervention programmes run by dedicated TAs and squeezed into every nook and cranny of a school day, some children will not meet those manifesto targets. They will not pass the new Year 6 ‘exams’. Their fate is to have to retake them in Year 7 – how humiliating is that for poor souls struggling to find their feet in their first year at secondary school?

Primary schools will be blamed for failing these children, but the truth is that they have a special need. It will not gain them exemption from the exams, though it ought to. These children are victims of a disadvantaged background where for myriad reasons there is no one at home prepared to listen to times tables or to buy a book, let alone to read it. Primary schools do an awful lot for these children – not least making them feel safe and valued for 30 hours a week. But they cannot and should not run them ragged to meet flawed targets set by a government that doesn’t listen to children and doesn’t have their best interests at heart.

If children had the vote I wonder if the Tory manifesto would have been different.

By the way, the octopus (plastic) won the school election. Make of that what you will.

Stephanie Northen is a teacher and journalist. 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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Education reform: Jekyll or Hyde?

Education policy-making is two-faced, and perhaps never more so – surprise, surprise – than during the run-up to a general election.

It has a kindly aspect, which talks soothingly about helping teachers to make this the best country in the world in which to educate children. And – as Stephanie Northen illustrated in last week’s CPRT blog – it has a tougher side, or what could be called a Robocop ‘20 seconds to comply’ mode for fans of late 1980s sci-fi, in which politicians boast of having ‘zero tolerance of failure.’

This contrast was illustrated for me perhaps more vividly than ever in this week’s launch of the Conservative Party manifesto. But it also sits underneath what seems a different vision being put forward by the other party that may be in position to lead a government from May: Labour.

So, to the Tory manifesto first. And I must avoid getting sidetracked here by its highly questionable claims about recent governments’ education records, such as on the performance of UK pupils in international tests; on the record of sponsored academies; and on the management of free schools.

But what struck me first about this document was the juxtaposition, in the bullet points with which the education section starts, of the manifesto’s plan to ‘help teachers’ with its insistence that there would be ‘zero tolerance of failure’ in primary schools. Meanwhile, there would be takeovers of ‘failing and coasting’ secondaries, which would automatically be turned into academies.

This latter move, by the way, is what is needed as the evidence shows overwhelmingly that academy status is the only way of improving schools. (Not really. See here and here).

The question is whether it is possible to talk meaningfully about supporting teachers to do their jobs well while at the same time espousing ‘zero tolerance of failure’ when the schools in which they work underperform.

I think this is a very difficult circle to square, in the reality of how schools operate: the hunch must be that if you use ‘zero tolerance’, so making schools extremely fearful as to their next bad set of results, you probably will make them unattractive workplaces for many teachers or would-be teachers.

In fact, the Conservatives’ tough talk seems to crowd out more narrowly-framed statements which might be seen as more supportive, from a teacher’s viewpoint, in this document.

Its promise about ‘helping teachers’ is followed by the words ‘to make Britain the best country in the world for developing maths, engineering, science and computing skills’. This strangely implies that these named subjects are to be privileged: is world class status for the others not something at which to aim?

And while the manifesto pledges to cut the time teachers spend on paperwork and to reduce the burden of Ofsted, no further details are provided.

Instead, under ‘zero tolerance of failure”, there is talk of “ensuring our best headteachers take control of failing primary schools’, and a factually dubious statement that ‘nearly 800 of the worst-performing primary schools have been taken over by experienced academy sponsors with a proven track record of success’.

Any school judged to require improvement by Ofsted would be ‘taken over by the best headteachers’ , with ‘coasting schools’ ‘forced’ to accept new leadership. This last promise, by the way, comes despite the current Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, telling the House of Commons Education Select Committee in October that she was ‘not really a forcing type of person’.

That other f-word – ‘failure’ – stalks this document, with promises that pupils unable to meet ‘required standards’ in primary school will re-sit tests at the start of secondary, ‘to make sure [a heroic assumption, on which books could be written] that no pupil is left behind’.

The document adds: ‘We will expect every 11-year-old to know their times tables off by heart and be able to perform long division and complex multiplication,’ without admitting that one of those implied stipulations – the teaching of long division in primary – was opposed by virtually every maths educator I know as counterproductive.

Readers can make their own judgement on whether what seems to me to be the stress-infusing atmosphere which this continuation of our present policy regime implies in schools will help create the right kind of learning environment for our children. As suggested above, I am sceptical, to say the least. I think this document is certainly out of line with the more thoughtful, much less top-down vision of the Cambridge Primary Review, which talks – particularly in chapter 23 of its final report –  about bullying policy centralisation.

This document reminds me again that the tough, posturing, unilaterally-decided and shallow incentives of ultra-politicised policy-making in England are in collision with what might be seen as some of education’s more nurturing, positive and consensual ideals. Yet, tragically perhaps, politicised policy-making usually wins.

A contrast with Labour’s recent policy pronouncements is revealing. Labour’s manifesto itself is striking in its brevity – only two pages on the detail of schools policy – though its statements that ‘children develop and learn best when they are secure and happy’ and that ‘education is vital to achieving personal fulfilment [as well as] economic prosperity’ are  worth noting.

I found the speech of Tristram Hunt, shadow education secretary, to the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers last month more interesting.

Mr Hunt pledged that the negativity of recent policy-making, which he attributed in particular to Michael Gove through the latter’s attacks on educationists as ‘enemies of promise’, would end. Mr Hunt said: ‘I promise you today: this deplorable, hostile, almost militaristic rhetoric towards the profession dies alongside this Tory government’.

He added: ‘The idea that our children’s potential can be fulfilled if we just raise the targets, stamp our feet and demand one more heave is now, surely, approaching its end stages.’ The days of education by diktat were over, he vowed, with Labour moving schools away from the ‘narrow, “exam factory” vision of recent years’.

Mr Hunt concluded that he wanted to ‘remove this centrally-controlling, profession-bating, target-obsessed government from inflicting five more years of evidence-free market mania on our children’s future’.

Cynics – and readers of Cambridge Primary Review reports from 2007-9 and ministers’ responses to them – might wonder if the last quotation could apply almost equally to the last Labour government. But the real question for Labour, should it lead the next administration, is whether its warmer words about standing back and supporting teachers will withstand alternative policy-making pressures.

Specifically, will central government be able to back off even slightly from tough-sounding interventions in schools, predicated as they always are on being intolerant of failure?

Even in Mr Hunt’s speech there was a glimpse of that tension, as he talked of a reformed Ofsted but which needed to be ‘an interventionist inspectorate tasked with rooting out underperformance wherever it lies’.

So, is it possible to preside over a national government pledging to raise standards without resorting to macho – and shallow – ‘zero tolerance’ in its rhetoric and in the detail of its policy-making? I think so, and that an alternative vision is possible for our schools, which moves away from policy-making’s notorious ‘discourse of derision’ towards something more supportive. But it will need some courage from the politicians.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance journalist and author of  Education by Numbers: the tyranny of testing (Methuen, 2007).

 

 

We have indeed been there before. Read chapters 2 and 23 of ‘Children, their World, their Education: final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review’, for an analysis of educational policy and the language of educational policy under Labour between 1997 and 2010. Similar threats and promises, almost identical rhetoric. Indeed, the CPR final report noted (pages 21-25) not just the ‘discourse of derision’ referred to by Warwick, but also the discourse of dichotomy (education’s complexities reduced to a starkly polarised choice between just two alternatives, good and bad, us and them), and the discourses of myth and meaninglessness.

Regular readers will by now have noticed that recent CPRT blogs have concentrated, in these last few weeks before the 2015 UK general election, on the politics of primary education; and they have done so by reference to England rather than Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales because it is in England that heavy-handed government intervention and tough or vapid ministerial rhetoric seem to take their most extreme forms.

In the week before the election we shall pull all these blogs together into a special CPRT policy supplement which will include a re-assessment, with the next government in mind, of the policy priorities proposed by CPR and CPRT. After the election we’ll try to restrict this depressing talk about policy and return to children and their education.

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General Election 2015: what’s the story of primary education?

Parliament will be dissolved on Monday 30 March, and the starting gun for the election campaign will be fired. Thus far, education has not dominated the story of the 2015 general election, one of the most unpredictable in recent memory.

There has been a flurry of announcements in recent weeks from the Conservatives and Labour about what they will do should they secure the keys to Downing Street on May 7th (a possibility that appears unlikely without the support of Nigel Farage, Nicola Sturgeon or Nick Clegg), but nothing approaching the blizzard that has been afforded the economy, the issue that is likely to determine the outcome.

The narrative framework that has dominated the long election campaign is this rather simple distinction: keep the Tories behind the wheel and let them steer us to economic security and a balanced budget, or give the keys to Labour and allow them to stop along the way to share the proceeds of recovery with all of those who have been left at the side of the road by zero hours contracts, welfare reform and the ‘bedroom tax’. Education has, it must be said, been something of a subplot to this story.

In advance of the publication of the party manifestos and CPRT’s own priorities for the next government, I will outline what each of the major parties in England have to say on education, and how this sits in relation to the broader narratives they have sought to spin.

Conservative Party

The Conservatives are looking to continue their existing policies by establishing many more free schools and academies outside the control of local authorities.

On March 9th, David Cameron pledged to open at least a further 500 free schools in England should the Conservative Party secure a majority. This is being pursued even though there is little evidence to support it: not only have there have been two high-profile failures of free schools (Al-Madinah in Derbyshire and Discovery in Sussex), there is also no evidence to support Cameron’s claim that ‘free schools don’t just raise the performance of their own pupils – they raise standards in surrounding schools in the area too.’

Similarly, as Warwick Mansell suggested in his recent blog on the subject, there is plenty of evidence to contradict the Government claim that sponsored academies are improving faster than the national average. Nevertheless, Cameron also announced on March 9th that all primary and secondary schools rated as ‘requiring improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted would be forced to become academies.

This, coupled with the usual tough talking about ‘the basics’ of reading, writing, and maths, and a utilitarian approach to education driven by the party’s subservience to neoliberal dogma (hence Cameron’s declaration that all children ‘should be taught how to turn a profit’), and the Tory approach to education after 2015 represents a perpetuation of what has come before: pursuing an ideologically-driven agenda despite the mounting evidence against these policies. More important than evidence, it seems, is the maintenance of a carefully-cultivated image of being simultaneously opposed to state intervention in most areas of public life, while retaining an authoritarian streak when it comes to ensuring ‘higher standards’.

Labour Party

Many in education are disenchanted with the Labour Party’s unwillingness to commit to changing course substantially from what the Coalition has pursued. It is this caution that has dogged Labour’s approach to opposition since 2010, but it is entirely in keeping with its broader attempt to cultivate an image of being a slightly more agreeable version of its Tory opponent in all matters (and education is one of them).

With this in mind, Labour has pledged to restore local oversight of schools to ensure ‘high standards’, with a particular emphasis on improving teachers’ access to high quality professional development in order to appear supportive and ‘on the side’ of teachers as they face increased pressure to deliver better results and higher standards, working longer hours for comparatively less pay than other professions.

To sweeten the pill further, Ed Miliband recently committed a future Labour government to strengthening creative education in schools, ‘guaranteeing every young person access to the arts and culture’. Of course this is a move welcomed by CPRT which is committed to a broad, balanced curriculum and has specifically campaigned for the arts, but we would echo the concern expressed by the NUT that creative education cannot be a ‘simple add-on to a system which is otherwise left unchanged.’

This particular policy could be viewed, if one were so cynically minded, as merely a further attempt by Labour to widen the miniscule shaft of light that exists between the two larger parties.  While it has been noted that Labour and the Tories are more ideologically distinct now than they have been for at least two decades, Labour is keen to ensure that the image they project, particularly on the economy but also on education, is one of broad similarity with the Conservatives (‘tough on standards’). In so doing, they hope to retain electoral credibility, although whether such a strategy can be successful remains to be seen.

Liberal Democrats

The image the Liberal Democrats have sought to cultivate is of a calming, moderating influence on the extremes represented by the two major parties: more fiscally prudent than Labour, less heartless than the Conservatives. The Lib Dems have been particularly keen to emphasise their distinction from the Tories in this regard, trumpeting their achievements in Government in the areas of Early Years (free school meals for all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, and 15 hours free early education to all three-to-four year-olds and 40 per cent of two-year-olds), and establishing a £2.5 billion Pupil Premium aimed at assisting those pupils who most need it.

What would they do if they secured a majority? David Laws reiterated recently that their number one priority will be to protect the education budget, something the Conservatives have not guaranteed. Their two flagship achievements while in Government will likely be extended, with more money pledged for disadvantaged children and free childcare for all two year olds.

This is welcomed by CPRT which remains committed to tackling social and educational disadvantage and helping schools to find practical ways to address these problems, and has two research projects in this area currently in progress. However, it remains obvious that such initiatives will only meet with limited success when broader economic policy is destined (if not explicitly designed) to further exacerbate inequality. This argument, strongly presented in CPR’s final report, is even more urgent following five years of economic austerity that shows little sign of abating whatever the makeup of the next government.

Ukip

As increasing poll numbers have forced Ukip to develop policies in areas other than immigration, so the party’s inclination towards an uncomplicated restoration of a supposedly more simple, stable and glorious past has made itself even more apparent. In keeping with this, its pledges in education involve allowing existing schools to become grammar schools (with one established in every town) and a ‘back to basics’ approach that focuses on the 3 Rs. Given its policies in higher education, where students pursuing STEM subjects will be offered tuition fee waivers, it is clear that UKIP is not committed to a broad and balanced curriculum but rather a relentless and dogmatic focus on ‘standards’ with a curriculum skewed heavily towards the sciences. Most disturbing, however, is the recent announcement from Nigel Farage that children of new immigrants should be prevented from attending state schools for up to five years.

Green Party

The Green Party, the membership of which has soared in recent months as left-leaning voters grow increasingly disgruntled with Labour, has committed to a series of measures that will likely prove popular with the profession: scrapping Ofsted and replacing it with a ‘collaborative system of monitoring school performance’, allowing teachers, schools and local authorities to work together to maintain high standards. They also advocate replacing the national curriculum with a set of ‘learning entitlements’ in order to liberate teachers to adapt classes to the needs of their pupils and deliver a more ‘enriching and rewarding’ experience. They aim to bring free schools and academies back under local authority control, abolish Sats and league tables, and make school optional until age 7. Most encouraging, however, is the determination that schools should nurture students’ potential and not merely become clearing houses for the ‘next generation of workers’.

Where does that leave us?

The disenchantment with the Labour Party’s unwillingness to challenge the Conservative ‘consensus’ in all matters, not just education, is symptomatic of a wider crisis of vision in politics. As economist Will Hutton and satirist Armando Iannucci have lamented in recent weeks, our politicians have become little more than glorified bean-counters obsessed with the budget deficit, while steadily handing over power and responsibility to the market under the guise of allowing citizens more freedom from central control.

These developments are disturbing not just in the immediate context of the upcoming election, but also in the longer term. This hardly needs further reiteration, but we are undergoing rapid and potentially seismic changes that are likely to have a huge impact on this (and the next) generation of children: the size and constitution of Britain’s population, the pervasiveness and power of digital technologies and the escalating consequences of climate change, all of which are indicative of the continued and increasing impact of globalisation.

If these conversations are being had, they are not loud enough, or they are viewed solely through the prisms of other factors: the economic ‘global race’ consistently emphasised by the Conservatives which posits a disturbingly utilitarian view of education (again exposed by CPR), or the apparent dangers of uncontrolled immigration from Ukip, and the pressure this will put on the education system.

What this summary of policies indicates is that not only is the debate about education occurring on a small and diminishing patch of turf but that it is not tied anywhere near substantially enough to the wider concerns our society faces in the coming years beyond the desire for a secure and growing economy. Those wider concerns are one of the three pillars of the Cambridge Primary Review and CPRT, hence ‘Children, their world, their education’.

So what’s the story of primary education in 2015? It seems much like those we have heard before, and it fails to address many of these challenges.

There are other avenues that demand exploration: during the past year CPRT has, in accordance with its eight priorities, offered critiques of the Government’s policies on curriculum, assessment, academies and its use of both national and international evidence. It has pressed the case for children’s voices as an essential component of educational practice, endorsed the UN’s vision of ‘a sustainable future with dignity for all’, called for a curriculum that takes seriously the concept of global citizenship, shed light on the plight of children who by necessity take on responsibilities for loved ones with little acknowledgement or support, and publicised the enormous challenges faced by primary schools in areas of rapid demographic change. And it has backed these critiques and campaigns with research projects, reports and practical action through its regional networks and schools alliance. All this work is summarised on the Priorities in Action page of CPRT’s website and much of it can be downloaded for circulation and discussion.

CPRT’s priorities address some of the genuine and most urgent challenges we face, but instead of substantive debate about them and compelling visions of the future, most of our politicians are obsessed with their images and preoccupied with each other’s kitchens. Cutting through this sound and fury is our first task.

Greg Frame is Administrator of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and part-time Teaching Fellow in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. 

Contact

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