The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

by Robin Alexander

Election 2015: here we stand

And so we come full circle. In 2010 the Cambridge Primary Review presented party leaders with eleven post-election policy priorities for primary education. Distilled from the Review’s evidence and from public discussion of its final report, these urged a more principled approach to election perennials such as curriculum, assessment, standards and accountability while asking political leaders to frame such vital matters by something a bit more visionary than ‘zero tolerance’, ‘tough’, ‘relentless’ and those other pugilistic epithets of political choice that betray such a limited view of the education of young children. Judging by the 2015 manifestos, even that was too much to ask.

Yet during the early days of the coalition government we sensed encouraging movement on several of CPR’s priorities. The Pupil Premium aimed to tackle the twin challenges of social disadvantage and educational underperformance, challenges that headed our 2010 list; government enquiries were initiated on curriculum, assessment, professional standards and primary school staffing – the last of these specifically at CPR’s request and with CPR involvement; and the new government’s ministers promised to re-empower teachers after 13 years of Labour prescription and micro-management.

But the honeymoon was short, the enquiries’ outcomes were pre-empted by narrow terms of reference and disdain for evidence and genuine debate, and the old language and mindsets soon reasserted themselves.  With a vengeance, indeed, for the national curriculum became narrower, testing became more obsessive, accountability more punitive, and ministerial interventions more abusive. As for the vision of 21st century primary education that CPR had offered but policymakers had evaded, this advanced no further than the PISA league tables: a reasonable aspiration in terms of standards in the basics, certainly, but hardly a rounded education.

Consequently, when the Cambridge Primary Review Trust was launched in 2013, we felt obliged to retain some of CPR’s 2010 priorities alongside others that the new organisation wished to pursue. So in the current list of CPRT priorities, to which I return below, curriculum and assessment remain in need of genuine reform rather than the ideological gerrymandering to which we have been treated, and closing the wealth/wellbeing/attainment gap is still at the top of our list because what government has given with one hand via the Pupil Premium it has taken away with another through economic and social policies that have made Britain the most unequal OECD country in Europe in terms of income distribution, with 3.5 million of its children living in poverty (with numbers predicted to rise further) and one million people dependent on food banks.

That is not all. At the end of CPR’s final report we noted the intense pressures to which by 2009 primary schools were subject but applauded their vital communal role in a changing, fractured and unequal society and their maintenance, against the odds, of a stable core of humane and enlightened values. This being so – and it was an outstanding achievement – we felt able to conclude that on balance the condition of England’s primary education system, though severely stressed and in need of rebalancing, was sound.

Others, though agreeing with CPR’s judgement about individual schools, were less sanguine about the system as a whole. If in 2010 this was open to debate, in 2015 it no longer is. For the word ‘system’ implies unity, coherence, consistency and hence equity, and in England these conditions no longer apply.

Thus the checks and balances vital to education in a democracy have been swept away, and without local mediation schools have little protection from ministers’ caprice, megalomania or what NAHT’s Russell Hobby calls their ‘crazy schemes’ – those back-of-the-envelope bids for media headlines that teachers and school leaders are forced by legislation or Ofsted’s compliance checks to implement, regardless of their cost to children’s education or teachers’ self-esteem.

The schooling structure itself is deeply fractured by gross discrepancies in the level and quality of local support on which schools can draw, and the ideological drive for academies and free schools. This sector, expanded by dint of grand promises, ominous threats and questionable evidence, is privileged by greater freedoms, grandiose management titles, inflated top salaries and, some suggest, gongs in return for compliance. Meanwhile, rank and file staff are under unprecedented pressure and the number of teachers prematurely leaving the profession is at a ten-year high. Not only mid-career burnout either: though the exact number is disputed, it is clear that many teachers leave within a year of qualifying.

Hardly a ‘system’ worthy of the name, then, let alone one which it is at ease with itself.

Yet the paradox identified in the Cambridge Primary Review final report – of individual schools doing wondrous things for and with their pupils, not least in circumstances of exceptional social challenge and against a background of system fragmentation and policy folly – continues to apply. These blogs have so far included reports from two such schools with which CPRT is working closely, and the blog that will follow this one provides inspiring evidence from a third, Sarah Rutty’s school in Leeds. What is doubly impressive is that Sarah, together with Jo Evans and Iain Erskine, who provided the earlier blogs from schools, so manage the taxing circumstances of education in 2015 that they are able both to lead outstanding schools and to give time, energy and experience to supporting the work of CPRT.

But those wider social challenges are not receding and one of them, population growth and the widening gap between the number of school places required – 900,000 over the next decade – and the number available – is likely to become very pressing indeed during the next parliamentary term.

Indeed it already is. In some local authorities, only a minority of parents secure their first choice of primary school for their children, and this transfers pressure from schools to families, with children facing longer journeys to and from school, siblings attending different schools, increased traffic congestion, and diminishing opportunities for friendships made within school to be maintained outside it. Primary schools, meanwhile, get bigger and bigger.  They cope, as our schools always do, with this as with other externally-induced challenges. Yet at what cost to children and teachers?

Which brings us to the election manifestos. In this last matter there is widespread concern that the coming crisis over primary school places has neither registered with the political parties nor been included in their costings. Maintaining school spending at current levels won’t be enough. Is this policy lacuna emblematic of a more general loss of touch with reality?

The manifestos themselves were helpfully prefigured in Greg Frame’s recent blog and detailed in the BBC’s excellent policy guide, while the blogs of both Warwick Mansell and Stephanie Northen drew attention to the conflicting languages, within both the Conservative and Labour manfestos, of support and retribution.

It is of course easy to dismiss manifestos as cynical posturing; worse, as in the case of the LibDems’ 2010 commitment to scrapping university tuition fees, as promises waiting to be broken. It is certainly the case that what matters is what political parties do, not what they say they will do. The promise most regularly and predictably broken by both Conservative and Labour is to reduce government prescription and give teaching back to teachers. Fine sentiments in opposition, but observe what happens when your friendly ministerial wannabe succumbs to the power of the big desk, ministerial car, obsequious officials, callow advisers and hungry press: ‘For I also am set under authority … and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.’ Small wonder that most ministers lose touch with reality within a few minutes of arriving in Sanctuary Buildings.

At this election, then, those voters for whom education matters would do well to pay greater attention to each party’s record than to their manifesto promises. It’s an exercise from which none of the three main parties emerges unscathed. And after this election we must hope that what may be a novel chemistry of votes, personalities and minority parties will create political space for what really matters. Such as, of course, the priorities that CPRT has been pursuing since 2013. Here they are again:

  • Equity. Tackle the continuing challenge of social and educational disadvantage, and find practical ways to help schools to close the associated gaps in educational attainment.
  • Voice. Advance children’s voice and rights in school and classroom in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
  • Community. Promote community engagement and cohesion through school-community links and a community curriculum that supplements and enriches the national curriculum, and by developing communal values in school and classroom.
  • Sustainability. Embed sustainability and global citizenship in educational policy and practice, linking to the UN agenda for global education after 2015.
  • Aims. Develop and apply a coherent vision for 21st century primary education; enact CPR’s aims through curriculum, pedagogy and the wider life of the school.
  • Curriculum. Develop a broad, balanced and rich entitlement curriculum which responds to both national and local need, eliminates the damaging division of status and quality between core and non-core, and teaches every subject, domain or aspect to the highest possible standard.
  • Pedagogy. Develop a pedagogy of repertoire, rigour, evidence and principle, rather than mere compliance, with a particular emphasis on fostering the high quality classroom talk which children’s development, learning and attainment require.
  • Assessment. Encourage approaches to assessment that enhance learning as well as test it, that support rather than distort the curriculum and that pursue standards and quality in all areas of learning, not just the core subjects.

To which, in light of the experience of the past five years, I propose two more. One is from CPR’s 2010 list of policy priorities which seems as remote a possibility now as it was then, yet for that very reason needs to be repeated. The other arises from the discussion above.

  • Policy. Reverse the centralising thrust of recent policy. End government micro-management of teaching. Re-invigorate parental and community engagement. Replace myth, spin and the selective use of evidence by genuine debate. Restore the checks and balances which are vital to the formulation of sound policy.
  • The education system. Call a halt to those policies that have so severely fragmented England’s education system, setting school against school, increasing inequalities in provision, encouraging bullying and scapegoating in the name of accountability, and destroying professional morale. Aim instead for coherence, consistency, the equitable distribution of resources, accountability for policy as well as teaching, and a culture of mutual support and respect. Replace political posturing and ministerial machismo by a sustainable vision for children, their world and their education.

Yet, and to return to that judgement about the state of England’s education system in the Cambridge Primary Review final report, if the policy process requires reform far more radical than anything ministers have imposed on schools, it’s the schools themselves that continue to provide the best grounds for optimism.  So it’s fitting that this rather depressing assessment of the national scene will be followed, in CPRT’s next blog, by news of an utterly inspiring kind from a primary school in Leeds whose head has joined the CPRT community and is leading one of its networks.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

As with all CPRT blogs, the views expressed above are the author’s own and, apart from the quoted CPRT priorities, do not necessarily reflect the position of the Trust as a whole.

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

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

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

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

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

Conservative Party

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

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

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

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

Labour Party

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

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

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

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

Liberal Democrats

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

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

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

Ukip

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

Green Party

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

Where does that leave us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact

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