The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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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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Getting to know the world

In April I wrote for CPRT about the sort of aims and approaches needed for ‘learning global.’  Since then, the world has moved on dramatically, and the question of what it means to ‘know’ the world has become more acute.

The world’s most pressing questions now find themselves in a ‘post-truth’ environment.  How can we best ‘deliberate the issues’ with primary children? I think this goes far beyond ‘core knowledge.’

The following news stories will help explain some of the difficulties involved in getting to know the world.  I would not use them with children, but what makes them difficult for us as adults also helps clarify our own understanding.

On 12th September 2011, a fire ripped through the settlement of Sinai, in Nairobi, Kenya.  It was caused by an oil pipeline leak, and many people were killed. On the same day, a British couple were attacked while on holiday on the Northern Kenyan coast. The husband was shot dead; his wife was kidnapped.

The story about the British couple was widely reported in the UK and remained in the news for many days. After a few reports on the day itself, the story about the Nairobi fire dropped out of the UK news. The amount of information that people received about these two events was quite different. What could be known or valued was determined by what seemed ‘newsworthy.’

What we get from the media (or a national curriculum) can only ever be a selection from the world: a selection usually made by others on our behalf.  That is one problem about knowing, and especially about what gets counted as ‘core’.

Initial news reports from the Kenyan fire talked of ‘dozens killed’, and later ‘at least 75’.  Because Sinai is an informal settlement, the real figure may well be unknowable.  It is hard too to know the consequences of all this for an already marginal community, in terms of the loss of homes and livelihoods, let alone at a psychological and emotional level.

It is hard to know these things, but as I write this I can start to imagine – and that is another sort of knowing.  It has to be handled with care (there is a risk of projecting our own assumptions onto this situation), but it has its place.

After the fire, people began to look at where the responsibility lay (or, as Voice of America reported, ‘Blame-Game Follows Nairobi Pipeline Blast’).

The newspaper and chat rooms were full of differing accounts: warnings about too many people living near the pipeline; government officials’ failure to relocate families; some blamed the residents for staying there; others pointed out that many had been displaced from elsewhere; many expressed fury at the Kenya Pipeline Company; at least one commentator talked of the murky politics behind the situation. BBC Nairobi correspondent, Caroline Karobia, said: ‘For the slum-dwellers, though, the reason is obvious: Poverty.’

How do we know which of these accounts to believe, many of them conflicting, some simplistic, some teetering on the edge of conspiracy theories? Can we know what really happened, and why?

I think that is possible to know: to seek truth, to find out, and come up with answers – often provisional, often contestable, but answers nonetheless.

What it means to know when we are dealing with contested knowledge, something so emotive, requires critical interrogation, exploration, debate, investigation and enquiry.  It may well also require an element of ‘facts’ (where these places are, key statistics), but we need far more.

It also requires the sort of knowing that comes from the imagination: to not lose sight of the central injustices in this story, of the reasons why people might say what they say, do what they do.  This story matters because it speaks to our humanity: it is not, cannot, merely become a case study.  We need both ‘felt understandings’ and cool analysis.

There is a further risk when we are dealing with a story like this one: it becomes part of what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called a ‘single story’: a narrative where the UK is ‘developed’ but Africa is ‘undeveloped’, full of poverty and indecipherable otherness.

The information we get is often distorted, unsubstantiated … and always partial.  We think we know things, but our sources are sometimes unreliable, restricted, biased.  We – and children – need spaces where we can critically explore crucial questions of reliability, accuracy and motive.

Here are some pointers to consider as part of a repertoire for helping children know the world.

Above all, we need narrative modes of understanding. Drama and story can help us see patterns, look for what is said and unsaid, explore different perspectives, detect bias and engage with the issues in an empathetic manner.  We can deliberately seek out alternative texts and counter-narratives (‘different stories’), first-hand accounts, or news reports from around the world.

We need to be careful about ‘balance,’ as not every voice is equally authentic or evidenced (for example, the very small proportion of scientists arguing against man-made climate change).  Children need to interrogate historical and contemporary texts (including visual and web media) – what is evidenced? what is opinion? why was it written?

Stories like Anthony Browne’s ‘Voices in the Park’ offer excellent opportunities for exploring events from different viewpoints, as do ‘flipped’ stories like ‘Maleficent,’ ‘The True Story of the Three Little Pigs’ and some of Roald Dahl’s ‘Revolting Rhymes.’

Drama, especially, gets under the skin of a story, exploring how people think and feel in demanding situations.  Role-play techniques like ‘freeze framing’ offer children opportunities to explore people’s viewpoints and feelings.  Debating-in-role gives them the opportunity to create an argument from a perspective other than their own, as can writing a persuasive text in role.

Even very young children can interrogate visual images: creating thought or word bubbles for a picture (are the thoughts and words always the same?); extending a photograph beyond its frame; considering where the photographer is in every image.  They can create their own images for different purposes: to show a friend their home area, attract tourists or encourage the council to spend more.  How do these images differ and why?

Such opportunities for questioning, dialogue and enquiry can bring light, as well as heat, to the difficult business of getting to know the world … and ultimately, enable resilience in the face of demagoguery.

Ben Ballin is a consultant to Tide~ global learning, and the Geographical Association. These ideas were initially developed for Big Brum TIE.

 

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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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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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The times they are a-changin’

Several years ago, in a life before teaching, a colleague of mine, who had drunk thirstily at the wellspring of self-improvement books, declared herself to be ‘made positively kryptonite’ by the language of paradigm shifts, synergisation and pro-activity. I have thought subsequently what an asset she might have been to the world of education. Being forged of the stuff that would bring Superman to his knees would be a very handy teacher attribute to possess; especially at this time of settling into a new school year.

Over the last five weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the grown-ups who work in education probably do require a dash of the superhero in their DNA, to be able to deal with the vicissitudes that all throng together at the starting gate of an Autumn Term. It is self-evident that the core business of education is transacted in the territory of change and challenge (the two things that human beings find the most difficult to deal with), the beginning of a new school year makes this even clearer. Every day brings some element of change to a school and the people within it: new teachers; new children; new uniforms; new classrooms; the first-time-ever drama of the lost lunch box or the missing PE kit; the first wet play; the first windy play; anxious mummies and daddies: ‘someone’s “stolen” his jumper and I can’t find it in lost property – they all look the same’ (the first lesson in the power of labelling); more anxious mummies and daddies pleading that their little ones should not have to suffer the life-threatening risk of playing with paint/water/sand/bikes as they will most likely come home a bit messy and liable to catch any number of a range of unspecified (but potentially pretty fatal) diseases carried by paint/water/sand/bikes. These episodes of tiny turbulence ripple through the daily current of school life, until things have settled down, a bit, by half term; children have survived the onslaught of learning through play in early years; routines have been carefully established; teachers and children have lost the, sometimes distracting, patina of novelty.

So here we are, at this stage in the term, looking forward to the calmer waters ahead of us; confident of bringing our children to the safe haven of the National Curriculum’s statutory end of year expectations. A place where all children over the age of six know that exclamations must begin with the word ‘what’ or ‘how’; where children over the age of ten ought, should, must and could use modal verbs to illuminate their writing and where pretty much everyone writes with a neat cursive hand – and so our course is set fair at Bankside. Teachers are now fully in command of change and challenge, having moved beyond its mere management at the start of the year. For learning is indeed about the process of creating transformational change in our children’s understanding, responses or knowledge. And the most powerful way to do this is through challenging their current ideas and moving them onwards and upwards in the process of their self-actualisation.

Except those unforeseen pesky changes just keep coming back to haunt us, on a local level: Dad’s left; Uncle’s come back; the police came round last night; Mummy’s had a baby; Nana died at the weekend; my new stepbrother has been unkind to me; we didn’t have any dinner last night (or the night before); you’ve inadvertently put the book back in the library box that I have loved reading for the last week and now it isn’t here and I am going to let you and everyone else that I am not happy about this. Massive changes; tiny changes, our children’s lives are constructed and framed entirely by these: it is the very nature of being a child and ‘growing up’. And teachers are employed not only to deal with the daily ramifications of all this but also to add to it, through the careful preparation and delivery of life-changing and challenging learning. Life in school is often defined by the ever-present ‘fine line’ between coping with turbulent change and promoting transformational change. And making this the engine of our professional moral purpose.

And more change at a national level presents further challenge to these adults tasked with creating happy, resilient, adaptive and successful schools.  Imagine my surprise when, preparing for the predictable unpredictability of a new school year, I learnt that we can now look forward to all secondary schools being able to become selective grammar schools – and all in the name of social mobility.  I applaud, of course, the aim of any educational policy that intends to address the growing social divide between rich and poor. I am slightly surprised that no headteacher I know seems to have been consulted about this lofty decision; perhaps there was a kindly assumption that we would not want to be troubled by such high-minded stuff – best left to the experts no doubt.

The ambition to close the gaps in educational – and social – outcomes for all our children is a key driver for Bankside and the reason that we are a proud member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance. We want our children to be the best learners that they can be; we use the themes and principles of CPRT as guiding lights to achieve this.  I do wonder how the changes involved in the grammar school proposition (which seems based on a belief that, because of uniform selection at eleven, all children may be better equipped to throw off the shackles of poverty) sit with the carefully researched and pedagogically considered findings of the Cambridge Primary Review’s final report. This is a document designed to support transformational educational practice, to ensure equality for all. The introduction of an 11+ exam, with a pass/fail matrix may transform the lives of those who pass, but, for those who do not, the more predictable outcome of the turbulence associated with failure is a very real prospect,  for all children – even the middle class ones – who underperform on the day of the test.

I would look to a truly transformational educational system, such as that in Finland, to be a model to create more socially equal learners.  A country where there is no selection until 16 and where children run the gamut of the dangers of paint/water/sand/bike play-based learning until the age of seven. Perhaps we might ask the headteachers there, rather than the politicians, how this has been achieved amidst the quotidian hurly burly of the change and challenge of the ‘day job’ – with all the pesky predictable unpredictabilities, and not a grammar school in sight.

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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The call of the wild

So at last what many of us have instinctively understood is backed by evidence from England’s largest outdoor learning project. The weight of evidence is compelling. A hefty 95 percent of children surveyed said outdoor learning makes lessons more enjoyable, 90 percent said they felt happier and 72 percent said that they got on better with others.

These findings are from the four year Natural Connections Demonstration project to help over 40,000 primary and secondary school children – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds – from 125 urban and rural schools to experience the benefits of the natural environment by empowering teachers, who often lack confidence in teaching outside, to use the outdoors to support everyday learning.

93 percent of schools said outdoor learning improves pupils’ social skills, 92 percent said it improves pupils’ health and wellbeing and engages them with learning, and 82 percent saw a positive impact on behaviour.

The evidence for teachers is impressive too. 79 percent of teachers surveyed said outdoor learning had a positive impact on their teaching practice, 69 percent said it had a positive impact on their professional development, 72 percent said outdoor learning improved their health and wellbeing and 69 percent said it had a positive impact on their job satisfaction.

But with evidence from the Monitoring of Engagement with Natural Environment (MENE) survey that only 8 percent of children (aged 6-15) in England visited the natural environment with their schools in an average month during 2013-2015, there is a real need to change perceptions about the value of outdoor learning. A blog from Natural England’s Principal Adviser for Outdoor Learning, Jim Burt, on Busting the myths on outdoor learning in schools goes a long way towards removing the barriers. For me, it’s the final myth ‘unless we can show outdoor learning has an impact on exam results we won’t be able to convince schools’ that will have the most traction with school leaders. Jim Burt writes

Obviously attainment is critical. Even in the relatively short time frame of the project, nearly 57 per cent of schools reported a positive impact on attainment that they felt was attributable to outdoor learning. Much higher percentages of teachers reported positive impacts on the other areas such as a child’s engagement and their motivation to learn, commenting that these underpinned academic performance. This reflects a growing body of evidence highlighting the important contribution that personal attributes such as resilience, self-esteem and self-efficacy make to a child’s overall performance.

These findings chime well with the CPRT aims relating to those individual qualities and capacities which schools should foster and build upon in every child, and which infuse the work of some of CPRT’s alliance schools. Making the most of outdoor learning opportunities, children from The Spinney Primary School, Cambridge, regularly enjoy play based learning in their little Wild Wood whilst children from Shrubland Street Primary School, Leamington Spa make the most of their playground whilst also regularly visiting their local green spaces.

The Natural Connections Demonstration Project enabled the participating teachers and their schools to make the most of their local outdoors. Environment Minister Rory Stewart said

What’s clever about this project is it listens to teachers, it works with the grain of an individual school, and it works out how to get children into the outdoors while improving their curriculum experience.

All teachers and school leaders can benefit from the project’s learning. Published this week, a teacher’s guide Transforming Outdoor Learning in Schools-Lessons from the Natural Connections Demonstration Project features teachers and pupils across the project talking about the benefits the project brought to their school, alongside practical advice on how teachers can successfully embed outdoor learning in their school.

Speaking at Wallscourt Farm Academy, Bristol, at the launch of the project’s findings, Natural England’s Chairman, Andrew Sells said

The Natural Connections project has empowered teachers to make the most of what’s right on their doorstep and helped children experience the joy of the natural environment. It’s brought a real culture change into schools, making learning in the outdoors a regular part of school life – and it’s inspiring to see children more engaged with learning and happier and healthier as a result.

With such a mandate as educators, and particularly at this time when primary schools in England are spending increasing time and energy on preparing their children to meet the new standards in reading, writing and mathematics, let’s consider the importance with which some countries with high ranking education systems treat outdoor learning. See Jim Burt’s blog yesterday Are we at the turning point for outdoor learning? With such a groundswell of evidence, how can one afford to resist the call of the wild?

For other CPRT blogs by Marianne Cutler click here.

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Reading for pleasure: just window dressing?

Since reading for pleasure was mandated in the national curriculum, its profile has risen exponentially. This is assuredly good news, and many schools are seeking ways to demonstrate their commitment to this agenda. But as the pressure to raise reading scores persists, there is surely a danger that schools will only find the time to pay lip service to reading for pleasure, constructing it as little more than an act of institutional window dressing in our highly performative culture.

The requirement that children should be ‘taught to find pleasure in reading’ appears to have prompted many schools to refurbish/reclaim their libraries and buy new books. Some have even purchased double decker buses, tents, tree houses and caravans to deck out as school libraries, as well as garden sheds, boats, baths and sofas to enrich classroom reading areas. These physical spaces overtly indicate to parents, governors, Ofsted inspectors and the children that the school values reading, but is this institutional demonstration enough?

In other ways too, with the best of intentions, schools can be sucked into performing reading for pleasure. Institution-wide competitions exist aplenty, including for example: extravagant dressing-up competitions on World Book Day, and competitions to read books for the school. There are also class awards (for example Reader of the Week), and inter-class competitions such as the number of books reviewed each month. In one school I know the children’s home-reading records are turned into class percentages each week and the winning class, announced in assembly, is rewarded with extra break time. Such competitions act as extrinsic motivators – encouraging children to read for recognition, for reward, for their parents, their teachers and/or the school, but not perhaps for themselves. Yet we know that reading for pleasure is more closely associated with intrinsic motivation and some research suggests extrinsic motivation has a detrimental effect on children’s comprehension.

Physically attractive reading environments can be enticing to children and are part of the reading for pleasure pedagogy described by the UKLA Teachers as Readers study, alongside reading aloud, own reading time, and informal book talk. However their ability to influence the dispositions and engagement of young readers cannot be guaranteed. Much will depend on the quality and diversity of the texts available, the degree of choice and agency offered, and the time set aside for informal talk and interaction. Many classrooms, responding to children’s 21st century reading preferences and practices, now have comics, magazines, newspapers and digital books readily available. Some schools also annually order the children’s literature shortlisted for the UKLA Children’s Book Awards or the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards to ensure new books are encountered by staff and children. Such texts can unquestionably make a difference, as can the nature of the physical space, but if the reading environment is not inherently social, reciprocal and interactive, then the cost and labour involved in showcasing the school’s commitment to reading surely has to be questioned.

How reading spaces are used, who owns them, who made them and who has access to them, (when and how frequently), are all questions worth asking and monitoring over time. The kinds of opportunities these spaces afford for conversations and book recommendations are also worth documenting. It is all too easy to assume reading environments represent an institutional ‘good’ and are being fully used, but the intense pressure of the standards agenda tends to reduce the time teachers feel they can set aside for children’s volitional reading practices.

In recent research undertaken in areas of social and economic disadvantage, in schools renowned locally for their work on reading for pleasure, the OU team found that the class reading areas and the sometimes fabulous school libraries were, in all but one of the four schools, simply used as text repositories. While children did borrow books from their class reading areas, predominantly they were used for ‘time out’ and as additional work spaces. No text related talk was heard in them. No browsing or relaxed reading was observed within them. Furthermore, the displays in these areas tended to represent reading as a technical skill; showcasing comprehension strategies and reading domains, and displaying proficiency ladders denoting the children’s ‘abilities’ as readers.

In other classrooms and schools, reading displays may be interactive, profiling particular texts, authors, genres, questions, artefacts and children’s work, all of which can serve to trigger text talk.  Displays that feature personal, home and community aspects of reading (e.g. through photos of ‘who reads at home, where and what we read at home’) can also enrich reading areas and libraries. These carry significant messages about actual readers, not reading, and position children, teachers, teaching assistants and parents as members of the community of readers.

To be effective, reading environments need to be much more than physically appealing. Critically they need to be socially inviting, foregrounding the role of dialogue, and offering a myriad of opportunities to talk about texts, to hear books read aloud, to develop class ‘texts in common’ and to read alone and with others. As the Cambridge Primary Review final report highlighted six years ago, ‘talking must be part of reading and writing rather than an optional extra’ (p. 269). Indeed reading, like learning, is a social and collaborative act of participation, as well as an individual one, a point which Goswami also underscores in the CPRT research review into Children’s Cognitive Development and Learning.

In order to avoid reading for pleasure becoming little more than a colourful visual laid across the landscape of schools, we must ensure the social environment receives more attention, but not through more high profile competitions. Talking about texts, their possible meanings and interpretations, and informal conversations about reading and oneself as a reader deserve to be placed at the very heart of the reading curriculum. Such talk brings the landscape to life and helps to build communities of engaged readers.

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

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The power of the arts in primary schools

The arts are essential in life. They can shape and define who we are and how we understand ourselves and our possible selves.  It is a travesty that in some quarters the arts in schools are increasingly regarded as unnecessary.  We see dance, drama, music and visual arts as fundamental to cultural engagement and personal development.  Artistic experience fuels imagination and in turn imagination fuels creativity. Within CPR’s curriculum framework, the arts are linked to creativity as one of eight essential curriculum domains – although CPR emphasises that creativity is not regarded as exclusive to the arts.

The instrumental argument for the inclusion of the arts in education is that they foster transferable skills and boost overall academic achievement, leading to better future work opportunities, enhanced well-being and self-esteem.  In contrast, the essentialist view, underlined in an earlier blog from Robin Alexander, is that the arts are valuable for their own sake and should not just be seen merely as tools for other kinds of learning. Elliot Eisner’s ten lessons the arts teach resonate beautifully with CPR’s aims.  They propose that the arts provide space for personal judgement; help problem-posing and thinking outside the box; promote diversity, respect and intercultural understanding; show that making mistakes can be liberating and open up new opportunities; encourage looking at details and thinking in depth; allow the creation of a personal reality; provide therapeutic benefits and support emotional literacy and make us feel alive.

Children don’t experience learning as separate parcels of knowledge to be opened. They flow from one form, with different ways of exploring and expressing, to another.  They use what Loris Malaguzzi calls ‘100 languages’.  In relation to CPRT’s values and vision, we suggest that positive connections between the arts, as well as non-arts subjects, can maximise creative learning.  Although we may more commonly talk about learning in and through different art forms, the work of Lars Lindström usefully draws attention to also learning about and with the art form.  These distinctions emphasise a wonderful world of possibilities for both teaching and learning.

However, promoted by the DfE, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit  tells us that arts participation has low impact on ‘academic learning’.  This worries us on two counts: firstly, the type of research approaches used to gather this evidence can never fully capture the subtle qualities of learning in the arts; secondly, it is grossly inaccurate to imply that the arts are non-academic.  Also, we are deeply troubled when it is seen as perfectly acceptable to relegate the arts to extra-curricular activity, seemingly the view taken in the DfE White Paper Educational Excellence Everywhere. In any event, evidence from a much larger body of research  than the single project cited by EEF shows that arts education does indeed have a positive and significant ‘academic’ impact.

Our work with the South West Research Schools connects closely to four of CPRT’s priorities: community, curriculum, voice and pedagogy.  These schools are fully committed to providing rich and stimulating learning experiences and recognise that the arts have much to offer in contributing to this aspiration.

In the Power of the Arts event recently held at Bath’s Royal Literary and Scientific Institute, six of CPRT’s South West Research Schools shared their research findings to date, which led to wider discussions about teaching and learning in the arts and, more generally, a creative school ethos.  Significant messages arising from the discussions underlined the importance of both teachers and children learning as researchers, and the potential of working with the ‘habits of mind’ of artists and creative professionals to develop creative learning skills.

David Allinson, Head Teacher of St Vigor and St John Primary School, Chilcompton, Somerset talked about:

… believing in children’s ideas, with research as a habit of mind – catching learning. We became fascinated in how children’s drawings help them to put ideas together and grow – in how can ideas be revealed, connected and grow through drawing. Some important things came out from what we saw.  The children’s language was more developed, their imagination had grown into a fantastical language, children were catching ideas from each other. The ideas changed because we gave children time, we gave them space to do it in, and gave them attention from a teacher who was very interested in what they were doing, showed attention by writing things down, taking photos. As teachers we need to step back and ask questions about the things that fascinate us. We saw the story unravelling – we were then interested in how we could give children the time space and attention they needed.

Professor Nick Sorensen, Associate Dean, Institute for Education, Bath Spa University closed the day:

Thank you to the primary head teachers who have generously shared their innovative approaches to learning, teaching and professional development, showing how artists and teachers work together to increase children’s self-esteem, self-confidence and independence with the vision to expand the imaginative potential of children and supporting them to become independent learners.

Post Brexit, here is much healing that has to be done and what you’re doing is really important work.  Artists and teachers are united by the fact that they are social beings; their actions have an impact on what happens in society and they reflect what is going on in society. The work that you, and others, are doing takes on a much broader significance and importance given that the context we are working in has changed radically.

What I am interested in is practice, in what great artists and teachers do.  Practice doesn’t exist in isolation but comes out of a culture.  We need to engage in a process of analysis not just to document that what we do which is of value, but to collectively legitimise those practices that may appear to be marginal in order to resolve the tensions between policy expectations and practical realities, between a restricted and restrictive National Curriculum and the stuff that children immediately recognise as ‘real learning’. We need to be able to provide evidence for those practices that foster understanding, cooperation, cross-cultural perspectives and cross-disciplinary learning.

5x5x5=creativity aspires to research and support creativity in children’s learning to increase their aspirations and life skills.  Partnerships between schools and cultural organisations are essential at this time, as we need to draw on our collective imagination to make a real difference to children’s lives.  With determination and a growing sense of community and shared endeavour, we can together ensure that children’s experiences of primary school are enlivened and enriched by the arts.

We agree with artist Bob and Roberta Smith, that ‘art makes children powerful’ and would add that it can also make teachers, as learning and research partners, powerful too.

Emese Hall (University of Exeter) and Penny Hay (Bath Spa University) jointly co-ordinate CPRT’s South West regional network, which includes the South West Research Schools Network and its current focus on the arts and creativity in primary schools. Contact them here for more information.

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Learning global

Before you’ve finished your breakfast this morning, you’ll have relied on half the world. (Martin Luther-King)

The Cambridge Primary Review Trust prioritises a rounded primary education that does not shirk the ‘everyday complexity’ of the contemporary world. In February 2016, it published the report Primary Education for Global Learning and Sustainability, which called for further work on ‘the development of a pedagogy of global and environmental social justice.’

The following are some thoughts about what ‘learning global’ looks like. It draws on insights from a project at Tide~ global learning which involves teachers from the UK, Spain, Kenya and The Gambia.

What are we trying to do?

CPRT’s February 2016 report points out that ‘learning about global and sustainability themes raises wider points regarding the purpose of education.’

Our aims will dictate the approaches that we take. Most serious commentators on the purpose of education go beyond test results to consider both individual and societal purposes. CPRT aims for ‘Self, others and the wider world’ are particularly (but not exclusively) relevant here. The following two aims deserve a careful reading:

Promoting interdependence and sustainability. To develop children’s understanding of humanity’s dependence for well-being and survival on equitable relationships between individuals, groups, communities and nations, and on a sustainable relationship with the natural world, and help children to move from understanding to positive action in order that they can make a difference and know that they have the power to do so.

Empowering local, national and global citizenship. To help children to become active citizens by encouraging their full participation in decision-making within the classroom and school, especially where their own learning is concerned, and to advance their understanding of human rights, democratic engagement, diversity, conflict resolution and social justice. To develop a sense that human interdependence and the fragility of the world order require a concept of citizenship which is global is well as local and national.

It is also worth noting that a set of outward-looking aims are also now enshrined within the globally-agreed UN Sustainable Development Goals as SDG 4.7.

What are our theories of knowledge and learning?

The next step on our pedagogical journey is to consider knowledge itself. How do we know the world?

Let’s take the issue of climate change as an example. Knowledge about it is contentious. Scientific predictions and solutions vary. We are dealing with change itself, so new knowledge is coming into being all the time. Our response therefore needs to be flexible, rather than fixed.

With an issue like this (or conflict, the refugee crisis etc) Mr Gradgrind’s ‘facts’ are only going to get us so far. If we think that human suffering, injustice and environmental devastation actually matter, we need something more.

Since climate change is already a pressing reality for millions of human beings, meaningful knowledge about it is not just a moral imperative but a growing necessity. It is not accidental that countries like Bangladesh have made it a compulsory element in their National Curriculum.

It is that wider narrative that makes all the messy information meaningful. However, a nine year old child may need specific stories to access that big picture: the polar bear stranded on an ice floe; the teenager generating renewable energy from a hamster wheel; the Maldives’ president holding an underwater press conference to draw attention to his islands’ plight; a demonstration or a summit that brings people together around a call for change. Some of those stories will want to counter potential pessimism with tales of hopeful action.

If we are to make sense of big, messy issues, then we are most likely to do so as active makers of meaning. We can start to make sense of the stories and information we encounter through investigation, comparison, experimentation, experience, dialogue, drama, debate, critical reflection, synthesis and application. To borrow from Jerome Bruner, we will mostly be using ‘narrative’ ways of understanding the world.

Learning may ultimately happen in each individual brain, but the business of effective global learning is a social activity. As CPRT’s final aim and seventh priority remind us, dialogue is paramount. Our ideas – and the values that inform them – are in play with those of other people. We make meaning together.

Rather than imagining a helpful and omniscient answer-book for big global issues, I like Edward Said’s idea of thinking ‘contrapuntally.’ He takes his metaphor from an orchestra, and how its individual instruments play distinctive lines that together make a greater whole.

In the example of climate change, these instrumental lines can be played by different subjects (Science, Geography, Citizenship etc), by accounts from contrasting parts of the world (big carbon emitters like the USA, vulnerable countries like The Gambia, rapidly-industrialising countries like India), or by the stories of people with different roles and viewpoints (the climate scientist, the fuel company employee, the Alaskan villager needing to move her home). When we put them together, we make a bigger whole, and in so doing we avoid the trap of ‘the single story.’

How do we connect action to learning?

If we are talking about global learning, challenging pessimism and fostering hope, then we are not only talking about understanding but about positive action.

I think that it is best to imagine action and learning in a dialectical relationship, where one constantly leads on to the other. Positive action, as part of a learning process, is not only informed by new knowledge, but leads on to further knowledge.

Seen this way, positive action can serve as a way into deeper learning. For example, a Year 4 class adopts a simple energy-saving measure, switching lights off in empty classrooms. This only makes sense if pupils locate what they are doing within the bigger picture of climate change and energy use. (‘We are doing this because …’)

Pupils can then subject their idea to scrutiny. Is this the best course of action, given the big picture? How much energy does it save? Where does the electricity come from? (e.g. if it is all generated from renewable sources, is it having any effect on climate change?)  Are there safety or security benefits to sometimes leaving lights on? If so, is there a way around this (e.g. installing movement sensors)? And so forth …

In this instance, positive action leads to legitimate learning, and thus to further action. All-knowing adults are not grooming children into predetermined forms of ‘behaviour change’ (where switching off the lights is always an unquestionable good), but empowering them to arrive at their own ideas about what is responsible and effective. Children are acting as agents both of their own learning and of social and environmental change.

Moreover, 2016’s solutions are unlikely to be those of 2056, so children’s growing ability to criticise, analyse and imagine plausible courses of action is not only educationally richer, but more likely to be useful and sustainable. Professor Bill Scott describes this as ‘learning as sustainability.’

Global learning lenses – a useful scaffold?

The following offers some useful pedagogical scaffolding. It comes courtesy of Tide~’s Spanish project partners at FERE-CECA in Madrid, and takes the form of four ‘global learning lenses.’ These can help us look into any global issue, for example the international food trade.

The Magnifying Glass opens up the issues, including becoming aware of hidden questions about values and the way we use language. We might start by looking at food labels, identifying where things have come from, and finding the places on the map.  Using a questioning framework like the Development Compass Rose we can investigate images of growers and producers in some of these places. We could give them thought or speech bubbles, freeze frame the images, and discuss why they are thinking or saying those things.

The 3D Glasses offer diverse perspectives. These could be subject or place perspectives, the viewpoints of different people in the production cycle. Who earns what from growing a banana?  We could debate-in-role as a banana grower, an importer and a supermarket manager. Are the processes just? Older pupils could look at an international news website and consider what people in different countries are saying about the latest trade talks.

The Microscope looks deeper and more critically into the issues. What would happen if we were to fill a lunchbox using different criteria, such as trading fairly, being environmentally friendly, healthy eating, living on a budget, tastiness?  What would go into only one box? Into all? Which would we opt for and why?  Older children might look at the way a big supermarket chain or a leading brand works. Who is involved and what are the processes?

The Telescope envisions solutions and engages us in ‘utopian thinking’. We might write or draw an imaginary classroom, school or community of the near future where all its food is provided fairly and with the environment in mind. From this, we might decide to set up a food growing project at the school, or to support a particular producer, and present our work to peers and parents. Outputs of this kind not only concentrate and focus learning, but lend it real purpose.

Like any pedagogical journey, we need to consider our aims, the kind of approaches that best suit the content (and the children) and to have some useful tools at our disposal. I look forward to hearing how readers’ global learning journeys go.

Ben Ballin works for the educational charity Tide~ global learning. He is also a consultant to the Geographical Association and Big Brum Theatre in Education.

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Baseline assessment – we’re not buying

Last autumn hundreds of thousands of four-year-old children, as diverse as any group pulled from the population, were each assigned a single number score which purported to predict their future progress in learning. They had been baselined.

They arrived in reception classes from school nurseries, from private or voluntary nurseries, from childminders, and from homes where they had no previous experience of early years provision.  They came from families awash with books, talk and outings, from families struggling with the economic and emotional pressures of life, and from troubled backgrounds and foster care.  Some were hale and hearty while others had a range of health conditions or special needs.  Some were fluent in English and some spoke other languages with little or no English.  And some were nearly a year older than the youngest, 25 percent of their life at that age. Yet with no quarter given for such differences, they were labelled with a simple number score within six weeks of arriving at school.

In the face of widespread and vehement opposition (including from CPRT’s directors) DfE had decided on baseline assessment not to support children’s learning, but as a primary school accountability measure for judging schools when these children reach Year 6. Unsurprisingly, recent press reports indicate that lack of comparability between the three approved schemes may mean the baseline policy will be scrapped – possibly in favour of a simple ‘readiness check’.  Frying pans and fires come to mind.

The fact is, there is no simple measure that can accurately predict the trajectory of a group of such young children. This is not to deny a central role for assessment.  Teachers assess children on arrival in a formative process of understanding who they are, what they know and understand, how they feel and what makes them tick, in the service of teaching them more effectively.

As CPRT has frequently pointed out in its evidence to government assessment reviews and consultations, the confusion of assessment with accountability results in a simplistic number score which ignores the range and complexity of individual learning and development, over-emphasises the core areas of literacy and maths required by the DfE, and places a significant additional burden on teachers in those important early weeks of forming relationships and establishing the life of a class.

Recent research by the Institute of Education into the implementation of baseline assessment confirms that teachers found the process added to their workloads, yet only 7.7 percent thought it was an ‘accurate and fair way to assess children’ and 6.7 percent agreed it was ‘a good way to assess how primary schools perform’.

What is the harm?  Aside from the waste of millions of pounds of public money going to the private baseline providers, there is concern about the impact of the resulting expectations on children who receive a low score within their first weeks in school, and who may start out at age four wearing an ‘invisible dunce’s cap’. CPRT drew attention to this risk in its response to the accountability consultation, saying ‘Notions of fixed ability would be exacerbated by a baseline assessment in reception that claimed to reliably predict future attainment.’ For children whose life circumstances place them at risk of low achievement in school, being placed in groups for the ‘slower’ children and subjected to an intense diet of literacy and numeracy designed to help them ‘catch up’ will deny them the rich experiences that should be at the heart of their early years in school to provide them with the foundation they need.

Better Without Baseline echoes CPR’s statement on assessment in its 2010 list of policy priorities for the Coalition government. CPR urged ministers to:

Stop treating testing and assessment as synonymous … The issue is not whether children should be assessed or schools should be accountable – they should – but how and in relation to what.

Unfortunately policy makers are seduced by the illusion of scientific measurement of progress, using children’s scores to judge the quality of schools.  Yet there are more valid ways to approach accountability.  Arguing for a more comprehensive framework, Wynne Harlen said in her excellent research report for CPRT:

What is clearly needed is a better match between the standards we aim for and the ones we actually measure (measuring what we value, not valuing what we measure). And it is important to recognise that value judgements are unavoidable in setting standards based on ‘what ought to be’ rather than ‘what is’.

Baseline assessment is not a statutory requirement, and this year some 2000 schools decided not to opt in; that remains a principled option for the future.  We can hope that government will think again, and remove the pressure on schools to buy one of the current schemes.   What is needed is not a quick substitute of another inappropriate scheme such as a ‘readiness check’, but a full and detailed review of assessment and accountability from the early years onward, where education professionals come together to discuss and define what matters.  The aim should be to design a system of measurement that is respected, useful and truly supports accountability not only for public investment but most importantly to the learners we serve.

Nancy Stewart is Deputy Chair of TACTYC, the Association for Professional Development in Early Years.

Contact

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