The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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We’re all global citizens now

Migrants are rarely out of the news – mostly with negative words attached: ‘threat’, ‘invaders’,  ‘illegal’, ‘flood’, ‘swarm’, ‘crisis’,  ‘chaos’ ‘influx’, ‘sham’, ‘terrorist’ ‘suspected’. This is particularly so at present, with immigration a key issue in the EU debate. Voters have been exhorted to consider the security threat posed by migrants. Spreading fear of migrants, as human rights campaigners point out in a recent letter to the Guardian, ‘ is an age-old racist tool designed to stoke division’.

What effect does this kind of inflammatory scare-mongering have on children?  And how as educators should we respond? At a basic level, there are direct implications for schools arising from population growth: migration puts pressure on school places. But it isn’t just a question of numbers. In their recent CPRT research review on diversity, Ainscow and his colleagues report that during the last decade the percentage of the primary cohort who were from minority ethnic groups (that is, not classified as white British) rose from 19.3 to 30.4 percent.  Schools are in the frontline of response to these demographic changes, dealing, for example, with children who are non-English speakers or who have been traumatised by their earlier experiences.

Arguably however, the most difficult challenge ensuing from anti-migrant propaganda is its insidious effect on the attitudes of children themselves. This permeates all schools, not just those directly involved in receiving migrants. The controversial DfE policy which requires schools to reinforce British identity through fundamental British values, which in its turn was triggered by the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair involving Birmingham schools, is unlikely to help in this regard.

Our first concern might be to consider how to protect children from any propaganda they are exposed to. But we need to go further. Negative stereotypes need to be countered with approaches that not only redress untruths and misrepresentations, but also shift children’s gaze to the common values of humanity, generating compassion, empathy and understanding. Schools are uniquely positioned to provide such positive influences on children and their communities.

In their CPRT research review on diversity Ainscow et al makes the same point, reminding us of the opportunities for schools offered by rapid demographic change. Migrant Help aims to address the moral panic and embrace such opportunities. It argues that historically the UK has welcomed economic migrants and those fleeing war or persecution and it seeks to promote a culture of tolerance and acceptance, and the kind of community which aspires to the Bantu notion of ‘ubuntu’. Ubuntu is a central African word that means human kindness; it includes the understanding that every human action has implications for all around us and that our identities are shaped by the past and present lives of others. This concept, and the values that underpin it, resonates with no fewer than three of CPRT’s priorities: equity, community and Sustainability.

Under the ‘ubuntu’ umbrella, Jonathan Barnes and Alex Ntung of Migrant Help Education are involved in projects that directly address these values and priorities.  One of them draws on the work of Bern O’Donoghue, an artist who addresses perceptions of migrants through her art, challenging myths and prejudice about immigration. Bern places fact-filled paper boats in public places for people to find.  So far 7000 tiny origami paper boats inscribed with little known facts about migrants have been placed around Europe and the USA (translated into 6 languages) in nooks and crannies, bus shelters, on fence posts, wall cracks and signboards in the hope that passers-by will pick them up and read them.

Bern has been working with 9 – 11 years old in Hastings primary schools associated with the Education Futures Trust. When introducing the subject of refugee boats in the Mediterranean, Bern asked children to consider parallel situations in their own lives – being in a new place, moving house, changing schools – and what might help them settle in. This drew them into conversations about what ‘our’ (European), response should/could be to migrants fleeing war and persecution.  Children too made origami boats to carry messages, and were then involved in the analysis and discussion of the messages they and others had created. Common themes emerged including friendship, kindness, fairness, home and safety – all suggestive of understanding and clarity about humanitarian values.

This small research project seemed highly meaningful to the participants, perhaps because it involved a current emotive issue that had already engaged the children at a profound emotional level and involved the application of values to an authentic context.

For the education team at Migrant Help UK there was more learning. They were reminded that youngsters are often much more generous in their responses than adults. The threat-laden language of the tabloids and ultra-nationalists was entirely missing from the children’s responses. The team reflected on how much adults have learned to live with values-compromises, values-inconsistencies, values-conflicts and values-suspension on a daily basis. Perhaps we should listen to the moral guidance of 9 year olds more often.    

Another CPRT research report, on global learning and sustainability from Doug Bourn and his IoE colleagues, reminds us of the capacities that young children have for reasoning and discussion of complex or controversial topics. They say (p23): ‘With regard to cultural diversity, research indicates that while children begin to develop prejudices at an early age, they also start to understand concepts of fairness, empathy and justice early too.’  However, the report observes that schools tend to prioritise global and sustainability themes in order to foster empathy, rather than taking a more critical approach to controversial issues such as injustice and inequality. Early intervention, the CPRT Bourn report suggests, ‘can challenge negative stereotypes before they become entrenched, and provide a scaffold into which more complex themes can be added at a later age or stage of schooling’.

While evidence from the Cambridge Primary Review Community Soundings suggested that primary aged children are generally aware of and concerned about these issues, Bourn et al note that a good deal of research shows that teachers feel less comfortable with tackling controversial issues in the classroom, perhaps fearing backlash from parents or – given recent events – government. At the NUT conference in April 2015, executive member Alex Kenny commented:  ‘The government’s promotion of “British values”, the Prevent agenda and the use of Ofsted to monitor these is having the effect of closing down spaces for such discussion and many school staff are now unwilling to allow discussions in their classroom for fear of the consequences.’

School leaders need to take their courage in their hands and counteract this prevailing culture of fear, especially with the prospect of Brexit triumphing on 23rd June.

Vanessa Young and Jonathan Barnes lecture at Canterbury Christ Church University and Vanessa is Regional Co-ordinator for CPRT South East. Find out more about the activities of this very active network and its member primary schools, and how you can join in.

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Learning from difference

Based on a review of research evidence, our forthcoming report, commissioned by the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, concludes that current national policy is limiting the capacity of the English primary education system to respond to pupil diversity. In so doing, it is failing to build on many promising practices that exist in schools.  As also shown in CPRT’s recent report on educational inequality from Kate Pickett and Laura Vanderbloemen, all of this is tending to create further levels of segregation within the system, to the particular disadvantage of learners from minority and economically poorer backgrounds. The report provides an analysis of the factors that are creating these difficulties, taking into account underlying population diversity and the impact of recent changes.

The primary school system has, of course, long had to respond to demographic change – not just inward migration, but within-country migration and population growth. Likewise, schools themselves have had to find ways of educating children from very different backgrounds within the same institution and in the same classroom. Indeed, the most apparently homogeneous classroom is in fact diverse simply because no two children are identical in educational terms.

The most overt markers of difference, such as ethnicity or social class, are simply indicators of the underlying diversity that characterises schools and classrooms. Rapid changes in patterns of diversity, whether they are attributable to migration, population growth, gentrification or any other cause, are important because they present immediate challenges – and opportunities – to the school system. However, the presence or absence of such changes does not alter the fundamental task of schools to educate children who are different one from another.

We believe that it is encouraging that schools now enjoy an enhanced level of autonomy that provides space for them to determine their own responses. They are less beholden to central initiatives, less constrained by detailed curriculum and pedagogical guidance, and more likely to be operating independently of local authority oversight. There are, therefore, undoubtedly opportunities for schools to respond to the diversity of their populations in creative ways. However, our concern is that national accountability requirements are as powerful as ever, limiting creativity and risk-taking by their focus on a narrow conceptualisation of the purposes of education.

We are also concerned that alongside the reduction of external constraints there is far less of the support to schools that went with them. Schools are more likely to be working in isolation, or as part of academy chains, federations and other networks that may or may not provide effective support. Moreover, whilst school budgets have been protected, they have failed to keep pace with rising costs, and the distribution of ‘additional’ funding does not match the educational challenges facing schools as their profile of pupil diversity expands. In this context, much depends on what individual head teachers choose to do – and what the accountability systems will allow them to do. As a result, the school system is a more fragmented one, in which substantial social segregation is reflected and reproduced.

In the report we go on to explain that despite the barriers created by national policy there are primary schools that find creative ways of responding to diversity. In order to build on these promising developments, there is a need for radical new thinking that will encourage greater collaboration and experimentation across the education service. This requires a recognition that differences can act as a catalyst for innovation in ways that have the potential to benefit all pupils, whatever their personal characteristics and home circumstances.  In terms of national policy, this requires a move way from narrow definitions of the purposes of education as criticised by the Cambridge Primary Review, CPRT and, most recently, in Robin Alexander’s submission to the current House of Commons Education Committee enquiry into the purposes and quality of education in England.  There is also a need to create a system in which schools are no longer divided one from another, and from their local communities.

With this in mind, we propose a different way of responding to learner diversity, one that is viewed in relation to what we describe as an ‘ecology of equity’.  By this we mean that the extent to which pupils’ experiences and outcomes are equitable is not dependent only on the educational practices of their schools.  Instead, it depends on a whole range of interacting processes that reach into the school from outside.  These include both the ways in which the local school system operates to support or undermine individual schools, and the underlying social and economic processes that shape the experiences of children and their families.

This suggests that in responding to pupil diversity it is necessary to address three interlinked sets of factors that bear on the learning of children.  These relate to: within-school factors to do with existing policies and practices; between-school factors that arise from the characteristics of local school systems; and beyond-school factors, including the demographics, economics, cultures and histories of local areas.  In the report we consider each of these in turn in order to develop our argument as to what needs to happen in order to strengthen primary schools’ capacity for responding to pupil diversity.

The introduction of this new thinking has major implications for national policy. In particular, it means that those who are closest to children and their communities must have the space and encouragement to make decisions about how all their pupils can be best educated. Crucially, it must allow practitioners to explore new ways of working without fear of the consequences if outcomes are not immediately improved. It should also encourage greater collaboration between schools in order to make the best practices available to a wider number of pupils. This, in turn, requires the development of an intermediary layer capable of interpreting national purposes at the local level; of promoting the networking of schools with each other and with other agencies; and able to learn from creative developments at the local level and feed them back into national policy.

Mel Ainscow wrote this blog in collaboration with Alan Dyson and Lise Hopwood. All three work at The University of Manchester Institute of Education.  Their jointly-authored CPRT research report ‘Primary schools responding to diversity: barriers and possibilities’ will be published early in 2016. It complements the CPRT report from Kate Pickett and Laura Vanderbloemen ‘Mind the Gap: tackling social and educational inequality’ which we published last September. 

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Education is safe in their hands

Last Wednesday, one of the main lecture theatres at The University of Manchester resounded to loud cheers, a standing ovation and the rapturous applause of over 400 trainee teachers and NQTs.

Was this an enthusiastic response to the thought-provoking keynote speeches in which experienced headteachers shared their words of wisdom, or to the dextrous ad-libbing of wordsmith Lemm Sissay?  No, it was an unprompted outburst of delight for the two songs performed by the Makaton choir of the Bridge College, Manchester, a college which supports young people with a range of learning disabilities and communication disorders. For the gathered audience of emerging teachers, it was the exuberance of the life, the personalities and the music of the Bridge Makaton choir that gave meaning to the conference theme of ‘Inclusion and Inspiration: education for social justice’.

Education, the media, politicians and Joe-public alike prefer to work with neatly identified categories of groups of people and, indeed, invitations for this conference were sent out according to the university’s labelled groups of trainees: the primary PGCE trainees; the secondary PGCE trainees; School Direct trainees; Teach First trainees; and our last year’s trainees who are now NQTs.

However, the message of the keynotes and the twenty-four seminars on offer was incontestably that behind all the educational labels that trip off the tongue so easily are individuals with individual gifts and individual challenges.  Gathering our trainees together in mixed phase seminars provided an opportunity for each trainee to step out beyond their designated peer group and to learn how trainees in other classrooms, other key stages and other contexts  might address the practical classroom challenge of responding to the diversity of learners in our schools.

Last week’s CPRT blog by Branwen Bingle focussed on the need to recognise and support the gendered individuality of children and families so that they may be enabled to‘celebrate who they and their families really are’.   The Manchester ‘Inclusion and inspiration’ conference had a similar goal of understanding and celebrating the educational and social diversity of individual children in our classrooms. Some of the seminars aimed to extend trainee understanding of the needs that might lie behind such labels as autism, children’s mental health, pupils with EAL, dyslexia and dyscalculia. Other seminars presented classroom-based approaches such as de-escalation strategies, growth mindsets, philosophy for children, and the UNICEF rights respecting framework, all of which can be used to support access to learning for as wide a group of children as possible.  The choice of seminars served to emphasise the range of diverse needs that pupils bring with them to school and the immense task each teacher faces as they construct appropriate learning opportunities for all.

One trainee emailed me after the conference to say, ‘II just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the session at the conference last week on working with EAL pupils. It really got me to think more about the pupils behind the “language barrier”, rather than just strategies for helping them.’

We noticed that some trainees started the day with specific questions about practical strategies for  ‘dealing with’ children’s educational, emotional and social needs as this can be the immediate, albeit short-term, response to a specific individual in a placement class.  However, many more trainees ended the day expressing the realisation that the starting point for any teacher is actually the professional need to ensure that each pupil feels ‘valued, cared for, respected and listened to’; precisely those values highlighted by Carol Robinson’s 2014 CPRT report on Children’s Voice.

As earlier CPRT blogs from Stephanie Northen and Sadie Phillips have reminded us, time to learn how to value and listen to each child as an individual is all too often squeezed out by the intensity of the PGCE course and the daily practical demands laid on trainee and NQT alike.  Delivering high quality and effective teaching in lesson after lesson requires a stock-exchange trader’s sharpness of focus and a portfolio of finely honed time management skills.   But – and there’s always a but when working with young people – for a new teacher to learn how to take each individual child beyond the labels that are assigned to them takes time.  It takes time to talk to individuals; it takes time to think about individuals; it takes time to talk to colleagues and parents and siblings about individuals; it takes time to read about the experiences of others working with the individual diversity of our pupil populations.   A quick glance through the CPRT priorities shows how the impact of individual diversity in our schools lies at the heart of so much in education. Systematic advances in equality and access, in pupil achievement and enrichment rely on teachers gaining and applying increasing professional insight into the reality of the individual diversity of their pupils.

The response of Manchester’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed trainee teachers to the Bridge choir showed in no uncertain terms that those choosing to embark on the professional pathway of a teacher are doing so because they already value what children and young people can offer.  We don’t need to convince new or not-so–new teachers that children have the potential to amaze and delight.  Rather what we do need to do is to enable our newest recruits to hold on to their enthusiasm by giving them the time, the support and the opportunities to build their professional insight.

This does not happen overnight nor does it happen in the odd few moments snatched between lesson preparation and assessment record keeping. The ‘inclusion and inspiration’ of children depend on teachers having time to learn to listen to them as individuals with unique needs not merely as representatives of labelled groups.   All that then remains is to persuade educational policymakers that the future of education really is safe in the hands of those who by inclination and by training seek to put the needs of children first.

Lise Hopwood leads the English primary PGCE at The University of Manchester and is the new co-ordinator of CPRT’s Great Manchester network. If you would like to join Lise in developing the network’s regional activities, contact her here.

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