The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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We need to talk about structures

It has been a seductive slogan, for several reasons. But ‘standards, not structures,’ the oft-invoked rallying cry of those who want to cast themselves as fair-minded pragmatists in the now-very-inflamed academies debate, has been an error, I think. For, as has been becoming clearer in recent days, last week’s white paper spelling out the policy of forcing schools towards academy status has at last pushed serious questions about the detail of the academies policy to the fore, and we do need to talk about structures.

The phrase ‘standards, not structures’ – first made popular during Tony Blair’s first term in office – is an attempt to take what is seen as ideology out of the debate as to how state-funded schools should be run. Instead of viewing one type of organisational arrangement – local authority versus academy – as superior and then defending it to the end, the argument goes that we should be agnostic on that. Instead, we should worry only about the quality of education provided to pupils; acknowledge the obvious truth that good practice, or not, exists on either side of this ideological debate; and then move on. In terms of what kind of organisational structure we have in English education, basically we should join the majority of the public and not care: what happens in the classroom is all that matters.

As I say, this argument, set out in those terms, is very powerful. My perception is that ‘standards, not structures’ is used principally, and to a certain extent very effectively, as a weapon against ministers who have been seen to favour academies as an end in themselves. It is very difficult to argue that this is not their position, when a white paper has been published which says all schools are to be turned into academies, but when there is no clear research evidence in favour of the policy. (My last blog discussed this, and it will be set out in detail in my forthcoming research review for the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, especially in relation to primary schools.)

‘Standards, not structures’, was deployed again in Sunday’s Observer newspaper by David Blunkett, who introduced the original academies policy back in 2000. Here, in a well-argued analysis of many of the central problems of this extraordinary white paper, Blunkett said it was part of an ‘ideological agenda that put the structure of our school system before classroom standards’.

He’s right, of course. A government which really cared above all about the quality of what went on in schools, took seriously all the evidence it had and genuinely put children rather than politics first, as the white paper claims to do, would not be proceeding in this manner. Before pushing thousands of schools through a costly and energy-diverting change such as this, it would want to know for sure that improvement would follow. If you want a further insight into the fragility of the evidence base, by the way, just consider Nicky Morgan’s first response when asked about it on last Thursday’s BBC Question Time. The main piece of evidence she could muster on academy quality was a set of statistics embracing changing Ofsted grades for all schools, academies or not.

So the implementation of this policy is, of course, ideological. But that does not mean that arguments about it should stop at a consideration of supposedly ideology-neutral statistics. In fact, we do need to consider arguments away from pure ‘standards’ questions, too.

A personal view is that the obsession over, say, whether school test and exam results are better on the academy or non-academy side, or whether either is improving Ofsted results faster, though important, has obscured real debate about the detail of the really quite fundamental structural changes schools go through in moving to academy status.

And I find myself increasingly thinking about structures – is this the best way of setting up our schools system, irrespective of often small movements in data? – when fielding calls from whistleblowers as I do when writing news stories about the academies system. I would highlight a few structural issues now.

Structure of control

The academies policy, of course, originated under Labour as the suggested answer to usually long-standing problems in inner-city secondary schools. Where institutions had struggled for many years, if not decades, the thinking was that something bold and new had to be tried. The answer was to give great influence to an outside sponsor who, initially usually in response to a promise to donate £2 million, would be given effective control over the school, with only the Secretary of State, overseeing matters from Whitehall, as a democratic backstop.

This was controversial, as it took schools away from local democratic influence and gave great power to sometimes controversial individuals who might have been seen by the ministers backing the scheme to be dynamic. However, if there were worries about an over-concentration of power, they might have been viewed by ministers as a price worth paying in the hope of finally bringing about improvement.

Fast forward to 2016, though, and this, effectively, is the model being proposed for every state-funded school in England by 2022. Academy trusts can be set up with a very small number of ‘members’ – sometimes, only three – at the apex of their governance structures. They can appoint and dismiss the other governors.

It is true that academy trusts can be set up in a much more democratic manner. Yet some of the larger current multi-academy trusts clearly are run as described above, with a small number of individuals having great power. This is made possible because the essential overarching philosophy of the way they are set up has not changed from the original scheme under Labour.

This is not just an abstract debate, either, in my experience. In recent years, as a journalist contacted by people raising concerns, I’ve heard about: a prominent couple running an academy chain, who have particular views as to what should be in the curriculum, imposing that curriculum on schools despite opposition from professionally-trained teachers; an American firm which is influential in running a school ensuring that ‘its’ curriculum is taught in that school; and high remuneration packages finding their way to two individuals who are both among only three or four controlling ‘members’ of the academy chain paying their salaries. This looks to me to suggest an over-concentration of power with regard to taxpayer-funded bodies, serving many pupils.

A key structural question might, then, be: is the original architecture of academy governance, set up for the very particular circumstances of a small number of secondary schools which had struggled, now right for all English  primary and secondary schools?

Autonomy for individual schools

This is probably a key one for school governing bodies considering how to react. The white paper effectively spells the end of the settlement between local authorities and individual institutions, ironically  set up by the Conservatives in 1988, whereby autonomy was given to headteachers and governing bodies, but with the local authority influencing in the background.

Now, the favoured multi-academy trusts can run a whole chain of schools in a top-down manner if they choose. Schools contemplating joining one would be well advised to try to pin down MATs on precisely what freedoms they might be allowed if they join them.

Complaints when things go wrong

It’s a fast-solidifying view of mine that worrying about ‘standards, not structures’, is fine so long as all is well in an institution. It is when things start to go wrong that there are problems. For, over the past four years I’ve been contacted by many people concerned about various goings-on within academies. These include staff bullying, inappropriate spending, the ‘gaming’ of Ofsted inspections, pupils going missing from the system and institutionalised exam cheating.

A refrain of many of these whistleblowers has been concern as to who academies are accountable to. In theory, central government, through the Education Funding Agency and Department for Education, investigates. But we have often found that these remote Whitehall agencies, who, after all, now have thousands of institutions to oversee, are not interested. Nor, by the way, generally is the new intermediate tier of academy oversight, the Regional Schools Commissioner.  To be sure, local authorities, a natural first port of call for a whistleblower in the past, are far from perfect. Yet the ability of an individual to complain, for example, to their local councillor about a particular issue with a local authority school, will be lost in a move to an all-academy system. The general concept of an appeal to a truly local body outside of the instititution itself has fallen by the wayside. The white paper promises that local authorities will focus on protecting, for example, the needs of ‘vulnerable’ children. But without real power, how are they to do this?

These are just a few structural issues. I could mention more, such as questions about the merits of teacher pay and conditions deregulation – is it really best for the taxpayer to have a kind of ‘race to the top’ going on in terms of academy chief executive pay, with salaries in the range of £200-£400,000 now not unheard-of? – the now-well-discussed removal of parents from academy governance structures or the fact that much education law can now be formulated privately, away from the Parliamentary gaze, in the form of academy funding agreements with the Secretary of State.

The bigger issue is that all of these structural changes, which may centre on the de-democratisation and deregulation of state schooling, are important. They should not be seen as subservient to questions about often small changes in test and exam results, for example, or Ofsted outcomes. The country needs to ask itself whether these structural reforms are really in the best interest of pupils. In making this whole issue much more contentious, by proclaiming that all schools are to be forced into the status, ministers  may actually have done this debate a favour. At least now these questions might get more attention.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance journalist and author of ‘Education by Numbers: the tyranny of testing’ (Methuen, 2007). His CPRT research report on recent systemic reforms in the primary sector will be published next term. This blog, a sequel to the one posted on 4 March, was prompted by the publication on 17 March of the White Paper ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’.

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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.

by Robin Alexander

True Grit – the sequel

Last January I noted Secretary of State Nicky Morgan’s ambition, surfing the wave of educational fashion, to make Britain ‘a global leader in teaching character … ensuring that young people not only grow academically, but also build character, resilience and grit.’ To that end, DfE invited bids for projects showing how her version of ‘character’ might be built, and on 16 March there was a grand ceremony at which the 2015 Character Awards of £15,000 each were presented to the 27 winners, with an additional £20,000 prize for the lucky best of the best.

In my blog of 30 January I traced the American roots of the current trade in grit – serious thinking about what it takes to cope with today’s world all but swamped by corporatism, psychobabble and John Wayne – and its curious melding with ‘play up, play up and play the game’, that very British but decidedly passé transmogrification of life’s experiences and vicissitudes into a public school playing field peopled by muscular males. I also reported Jeffrey Snyder’s objection to ‘grit and resilience’ as currently formulated on the grounds that it is ‘untethered from morals, values and ethics’, and John White’s concern, rather underlined by the DfE awards themselves, that instead it is ‘tied to an ideology of winners and losers.’

Having now seen the list of awards I must eat some though not all of my words, for among the winners are some undoubtedly impressive and indeed moving initiatives, including several schools striving to raise disadvantaged children’s self-esteem, and these are reassuringly remote from the headline-grabbing crudity of the Nicky Morgan paradigm.

Yet even before the results were announced there were rumblings about the competition procedure, which required interested schools to nominate themselves and then justify their claims to a prize by briefly answering six questions.  One of these asked for evidence of the impact of their character-forming strategies on their students, but critics of the scheme claimed that such evidence counted for less than the eloquence of schools’ answers, that these were not independently checked for accuracy, and that the provision of genuinely verifiable evidence was optional.

We have not been told how many of England’s schools entered this somewhat bizarre competition, but we can safely assume that the overwhelming majority did not.  Most, quite simply, will have been too busy to do so.  Some will have been unwilling to have their names linked to what looked suspiciously like a pre-election political stunt. Others will have been justly offended by the implication that schools don’t attend to their students’ personal and interpersonal development unless DfE instructs them to, and that even then they require a £15,000 incentive. Others again, as my January blog suggested, will have objected to being told to replace their carefully conceived and sensitively nurtured efforts in this direction by a recipe from which ethics, communality, plurality, social responsibility and global understanding were apparently to be excluded.  And, for that matter, the CPR aims of respect, reciprocity, interdependence, sustainability, culture and community?

The ingredients, in fact, of citizenship. But then, Ms Morgan’s government has made citizenship optional at Key Stages 1 and 2.

Which is not to say, as I’ve stressed above, that the winners did not deserve to be recognised for the work they do. But equally deserving of recognition, surely, are the thousands of schools whose teachers value and nurture  ‘character’ with no less commitment and success, but perhaps more consistently manifest that character by not competing with others to advertise the fact.

All of which raises a troubling question about the government’s cynical view of professional motivation. Not only are there many more awards for teaching now than there were, say, thirty years ago – in itself no bad thing in a country that has tended to take this most essential of professions for granted – but the award industry has become increasingly and dangerously politicised, with what Warwick Mansell has calculated as a disproportionate showering of gongs on academy heads at the tendency’s apex.

Fortunately, most teachers are motivated by something more profound and less self-serving than the hope or expectation of such baubles. Indeed, in the matter of leading our children by example, we might argue that it’s the unsung thousands of teachers who disdain ministerial threats and bribes who most truly manifest grit and resilience.

Nicky Morgan modestly lauded her character-building wheeze as ‘a landmark step for our education system.’ If we add together all the landmark steps announced by recent education ministers we’ll have a veritable staircase. Does it, I wonder, lead up or down?

www.robinalexander.org.uk

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

 

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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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Can data really define ‘coasting’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Robin Alexander

True grit

Those who thought that the departure of Michael Gove might give schools a breather before the 2015 election, liberating them from the weekly explosion of initiatives and insults, reckoned without the ambition of his successor. These days, few education secretaries of state are content to do a good job, deeming it more important to leave an indelible mark in the name of ‘reform’. To this lamppost tendency Nicky Morgan appears to be no exception.

Her wheeze, and it’s a biggish one, is to make Britain ‘a global leader in teaching character and resilience … ensuring that young people not only grow academically, but also build character, resilience and grit.’ To that end, DfE has invited bids for projects showing how ‘character’ can be built, and on 16 March there’ll be a grand ceremony at which the 2015 Character Awards of £15,000 each will be presented to 27 schools, with a £20,000 prize for the best of the best. Morgan modestly defines her chosen legacy as ‘a landmark step for our education system.’

In the same way that New Labour claimed, witheringly but inaccurately, that before the imposition of its national literacy and numeracy strategies England’s primary teachers were ‘professionally uninformed’, so Nicky Morgan’s happy discovery of something called ‘character’ implies that schools have hitherto ignored everything except children’s academic development; and that creativity, PSHE, moral education, religious education and citizenship, not to mention those values that loom large in school prospectuses, websites and assemblies and above all in teachers’ daily dealings with their pupils, were to do with something else entirely. Remember the not-so-hidden ‘hidden curriculum’? If there is a ‘landmark step’ then, it is not character education but its political appropriation and repackaging.

So what, in Morgan’s book, constitutes ‘character’? Its main ingredients, as listed in the guidance to applicants for the DfE grants and character awards, are ‘perseverance, resilience and grit, confidence and optimism, motivation, drive and ambition.’ (Readers will recognize ‘resilience’ as one of the most overused words of 2014). Rather lower down the list come ‘neighbourliness’, ‘community spirit’, ‘tolerance’ and ‘respect.’

Like so much in recent English education policy, this account of character is imported from the United States. The Morgan character attributes are almost identical to those in the eponymous Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed: grit, curiosity and the hidden power of character, and in Dave Levin’s evangelising Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). Here, then, we have a melding of the no-holds-barred values of corporate America with that fabled frontier spirit portrayed by John Wayne. ‘Grit’ anchors the education of character in both worlds.

But there’s a third element. In a speech in Birmingham last November prefiguring the DfE announcement, Morgan said pupils should ‘leave school with the perseverance to strive to win … to revel in the achievement of victory but honour the principles of fair play, to win with grace and to learn the lessons of defeat with acceptance and humility.’ No prizes for spotting the source of that little homily. These are unambiguously the values of England’s nineteenth century public schools: values directed not to the nurturing of mind but to physical prowess on the games field, an education veritably conceived as no more or less than a game of rugby or cricket. And not just education: life and death too, as immortalised in the Newbolt poem in which the playing field morphs into the trenches of 1914-18: ‘There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight / Ten to make and the match to win / The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead / Play up, play up and play the game.’

If character is important, which it surely is, is such an idiosyncratic and unreconstructedly male account of it good enough, and is it for government to impose this or any other notion of character on every child in the land, of whatever inclination, personality, gender or culture? In one of two excellent blogs on this subject that I urge prospective applicants for the DfE awards to read, John White thinks not. He says: ‘Nicky Morgan is not wrong to focus on personal qualities, only about the set she advocates. This is tied to an ideology of winners and losers.’ (As, appropriately, is DfE’s Character Awards scheme itself). He reminds us of the considerably more rounded values framework appended to the version of the national curriculum that was introduced in 2000 and superseded last September, and he argues that ‘no politician has the right to steer a whole education system in this or any other partisan direction.’ For White, Morgan’s foray into character education is further confirmation of the need for curriculum decisions to be taken out of the hands of politicians and given to a body which is more representative, more knowledgeable and culturally more sensitive.

The other recent must-read blog on character education is by Jeffrey Snyder in the United States. He cites evidence that ‘character’ is more likely to be determined by genetically-determined personality traits than the efforts of teachers, and indeed he argues that anyway nobody really knows how to teach it. In this context it’s worth asking what those pupils subjected to 1850s/1950s character-building really learned, and whether there is indeed a correspondence between success on the playing field, in work and in adult life. And since you ask, did fagging and flogging really make for manliness (whatever that is) or were they merely perversions by another name?

Snyder argues, too, that the ‘perseverence, resilience and grit’ account of character ‘promotes an amoral and careerist “looking out for number one” point of view’ adding, tellingly: ‘Never has character education been so completely untethered from morals, values and ethics.’ As a result, ‘character’ is as likely to be harnessed to the pursuit of ends that are evil as to those that are good. ‘Gone’, adds Snyder, ‘is the impetus to bring youngsters into a fold of community that is larger than themselves … When character education fails to distinguish doctors and terrorists, heroes and villains, it would appear to have a basic flaw.’

Snyder’s third objection, and it applies equally to the Morgan view of character and to the Gove definition of essential knowledge, is the sheer narrowness of the educational vision being promoted. In this context, it’s worth asking how the Cambridge Primary Review’s 12 educational aims might be classified. Are ‘wellbeing’, ‘engagement’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘autonomy’ about character or something else? Do such responsive and responsible CPR aims as ‘encouraging respect and reciprocity’, ‘promoting interdependence and sustainability’, ‘empowering local, national and global citizenship’ and ‘celebrating culture and community’ have anything to with resilience and grit?

Actually they do, for it takes considerable grit and resilience to live the values of reciprocity, interdependence and community in a culture of winner-takes-all individualism; or to champion sustainability when the prevailing ethic is rampant materialism and unfettered economic growth; or, as so many educationists have learned to their cost, to hold firm to a principled vision of children’s education in the teeth of government atavism and disdain. Captains of industry and sports personalities do not, as Morgan appears to believe, have a monopoly of courage and determination. In any event, the imperative here is to tie perseverance, grit and resilience to socially defensible aims and values, for, as Snyder noted, that for which we teach children to strive must be educationally worthwhile.

It will be interesting to see what accounts of character, and what strategies for promoting it, DfE rewards when it distributes its grants and prizes for character education on 16 March. With the national strategies Labour gave us what one CPR witness called a ‘state theory of learning’. Will the coalition government’s bequest be a state theory of character? (Which, for those who know about vospitanie in Russian and Soviet education, has similar political overtones). Let’s hope that Morgan’s judges put vision, ethics, social responsibility and plurality back into the frame.

We can presumably trust that proposals to reintroduce fagging and flogging are unlikely to be shortlisted, though these days one never knows.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

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