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by Robin Alexander

PISA 2012: Time to Grow Up?

On December 3rd 2013 – PISA Day – OECD published its 2012 test results in maths, reading and science for a sample of 15 year olds in 65 countries, together with attendant league tables and analysis. Except that politicians and media mostly targeted the league tables and ignored OECD’s analysis, preferring to substitute their own. As with PISA 2009, 2006 and 2003, this was heavy on blame and naive attributions of educational cause and economic effect, and light on acknowledgement of PISA’s limitations and the contextual, cultural and demographic factors that OECD itself is careful to emphasise. There was also much talk of the need to recover lost educational rigour, which one commentator tellingly spelled ‘rigor’.

These tests are undeniably important in the snapshots they provide of selected aspects of the UK’s educational performance in relation to that of other OECD member and partner countries. If there’s evidence that standards are stagnating or falling then we must act. And because primary schools lay the foundations for later attainment we hope that CPRT associates and followers will be as keen as their secondary colleagues to inform themselves about PISA’s outcomes and implications. The links below provide both findings and comment. Here’s one finding to take us beyond the league tables: in maths, differences in performance at age 15 within countries are often greater – the equivalent of over seven years of schooling – than differences between them. Sounds familiar? Those with long memories will recall that Cockcroft diagnosed the seven-year maths gap in England and Wales back in 1982, and among 11 year olds, not 15. Successful countries may not close the gap but they reduce the variation and increase the proportion of high attainers.

So it’s time for Westminster to grow up and give us something more enlightened than Punch and Judy exchanges and exhortations to copy whichever country or jurisdiction, regardless of its politics and culture, happens for now to head the PISA league table. If Westminster continues to prefer its own myths, nostrums and playground taunts to proper analysis, including that provided by OECD itself, we might well ask ‘What’s the point of PISA?’

But ‘time to grow up’ has a deeper resonance, for each successive wave of PISA panic produces a reflex tightening of the screws on children’s time for the rich, balanced and no less rigorous education which not only serves them best but also, as it happens, supports the drive to raise standards; their time, indeed, for childhood.

We hope that primary professionals and school leaders, who lay the foundations for what PISA tests and, crucially, for what it does not test, will study the evidence and reclaim the debate. Start with the links below…

www.robinalexander.org.uk

by Robin Alexander

Nearly There (but is it the right destination?)

We are now at the final stage of England’s latest National Curriculum review. On 8 July, the UK government published the draft legislative Order with a consultation closing date of 8 August. The next version, in October, will be the real thing. The Cambridge Primary Review and the CPR Trust have responded to the proposals at every stage since the current national curriculum review was launched in 2011. However, unless there’s a dramatic parliamentary intervention all the changes that the government is prepared to concede have now been made, so we shall not be submitting further comments at this stage. You will find the draft legislative order and consultation form atwww.education.gov.uk/nationalcurriculum.

On the matter of consultation, it is instructive to view DfE’s analysis of responses to the previous stage and assess their impact on the latest proposals. DfE consultations provoke a great deal of routine cynicism and DfE itself has now provided the data to enable us to assess how far this is justified. You will find DfE’s analysis and the government’s reaction at www.education.gov.uk/consultations.

Here’s a positive example. CPRT has exerted considerable pressure, both through the formal consultations and directly with ministers and officials, to raise the curriculum profile of spoken language in accordance with its crucially important role in education, employment and life. Hitherto, the proposals have been, in our view, woefully inadequate and ill-conceived (see ‘The power of talk’ in the News column). The 8 July version doesn’t go as far as we would like in this regard, but is a considerable improvement on its predecessors, and we recognise the source of much of the programme of study for spoken language that DfE has belatedly inserted.

DfE has also confirmed that most of the existing national curriculum will be ‘disapplied’ for the year 2013-14 in order to help schools make the transition. CPRT is aware that for wholly understandable reasons there is some professional support for this decision, though from DfE’s response figures not enough to justify ploughing ahead regardless. We remind DfE that the last time this device was deployed (in 1998, to get schools to concentrate on the previous government’s flagship national literacy and numeracy strategies), Ofsted reported that in many primary schools it inflicted serious damage on the quality of the non-core curriculum experienced by a generation of the nation’s children. During 2013-14 we might keep this episode, and its warnings, in mind.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

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Our Response to the Government’s Proposals

The Cambridge Primary Review Trust (as we now are) has submitted to DfE its response to the National Curriculum proposals for England published by the UK Government in February 2013.

CPRT’s response is comprehensive: it addresses every question on the consultation form and comments on all of the subject proposals. Some of the subject comments are brief, some are longer, and they should be read in conjunction with those from the subject and primary associations, which we hope will also be released. To its responses to DfE’s specific questions CPRT has added a general commentary on the proposals, and the curriculum, as a whole.

Read CPRT’s National Curriculum response in full.

Although CPRT gives DfE credit where it is due, and is not as dismissive of the proposals as some other organisations have been, it is far from happy with the proposals as a framework for educating the next generation of young children. Thus, the CPRT response ends with this statement:

We find the proposals in many respects educationally unsound and evidentially questionable. They are based on a flawed critique of existing arrangements and an overly selective response to international data. Their lack of serious educational rationale is confirmed by the decision to add an essentially cosmetic statement of aims after the priorities and content have been determined. They perpetuate some of the most damaging aspects of current and past arrangements, notably a curriculum which is divided not only in time but also as to quality and seriousness of purpose, especially where the arts and humanities are concerned. The proposals rightly prioritise knowledge but wrongly reduce it to unchallengeable proposition. They disregard both research evidence and expert opinion on matters such as spoken language and the teaching of reading, history and citizenship. They belittle or ignore aspects of cultural life and human development – such as drama, dance and the exploration of faith and belief – which ought to feature in any national curriculum. While claiming modernity they fail adequately to reflect the profound social and educational implications of the digital revolution … We cannot disguise our sense of the immense gulf that exists between what, in terms of the quality of consultation, evidence and vision, the Government has effected and what the Cambridge Primary Review aspired to and achieved.

by Robin Alexander

Are we nearly there yet?

First there was the ‘Expert Panel’, rising and sinking without trace save for a few disgruntled bubbles. Then, in June 2012, we had the first draft of the proposals for English, maths and science, though silence on the rest of the curriculum (which conveyed a pretty clear message about what matters politically and what does not).

Now, on 7 February 2013, we have the draft of the entire curriculum, core and non-core, secondary as well as primary. DfE invites us to submit comments by 16 April 2013. We hope readers will suspend their understandable cynicism about curriculum consultations, study the proposals and tell DfE what they think. Saying nothing will be construed as approval.

The consultation form lists the questions the DfE would like us to answer. You may feel that there are other questions to be asked. For example, why no citizenship at Key Stages 1 and 2? Are drama and dance adequately handled? Does that overused phrase ‘breadth and balance’ have any meaning in this case? Have CPR’s criticisms of the previous draft relating to aims, spoken language and a host of other matters – see this page – been addressed? The questions posed by DfE are certainly pertinent, but don’t be restricted by them.

The Cambridge Primary Review offers no other comment at this stage. We shall do so later. For now we believe that it is more important to encourage the entire professional community to get involved. We owe our children nothing less.

On the other hand, if you want to test the DfE proposals against a genuinely visionary and evidence-based approach to educational aims and the primary curriculum, read Children, their World, their Education: final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review, chapters 12, 13 and 14.

Further information about the government’s national curriculum consultation can be found here.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

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The power of talk: good for politicians but not for children?

One aspect of the programmes of study on which Robin Alexander does comment is the handling of spoken language (‘speaking and listening’ in the current national curriculum). Rather than raise the profile of spoken language as was urgently needed (and as CPR’s final report recommended), ministers have effectively downgraded it, thus rejecting an unassailable body of evidence that demonstrates the essential place of talk in children’s development, thinking and learning across the board as well as, self-evidently, in their literacy and those vital skills of communication whose inadequacy among school leavers the nation’s employers regularly deplore.

Today’s politicians understand only too well the persuasive power of talk. Could it be that they don’t wish to share that power with tomorrow’s voters?

Read Robin Alexander’s response to the Secretary of State’s letter outlining the government’s national curriculum proposals:
2012_06_29NC_Review_SoS_letter.pdf

Read Robin Alexander’s paper for DfE on spoken language in the national curriculum:
2012_02_20DfE_oracy_Alexander

Read reports on the DfE consultations with teachers hosted by CPR on 20 and 29 June:
2012_06_20DfE_CPR_NC_WMidlands_consultation.pdf
2012_06_29DfE_CPR_NC_Herts_consultation.pdf

by Robin Alexander

National Curriculum: The Plot Thickens

Following our alert of 10 June about the Secretary of State’s proposals for England’s (primary) national curriculum, we now draw colleaguesʼ attention to evidence of serious differences both within the governmentʼs National Curriculum Review Expert Panel and between some members of that panel and ministers. Andrew Pollardʼs blog and published correspondence between Pollard, Mary James and the Secretary of State reveal considerable tensions behind the scenes, and for some readers this will raise questions about the validity of the entire review exercise. It certainly prompts a necessary question about accountability. Who exactly are the hitherto anonymous ʻexpertsʼ behind the proposed English, maths and science programmes of study?

These revelations, moreover, are not the whole story, as we and other organisations involved in the review can confirm. 
Having said that, it is important to retain a sense of historical perspective.
 CPR’s final report showed that educational decision-making under the previous government was no less problematic, and CPR itself was at the receiving end of what looked like government-led wrecking tactics where its findings on curriculum and assessment were concerned. The problem now, as then, is the probity and efficiency of England’s educational policy process as a whole, and the questions people are raising today about the current national curriculum review apply with no less force to the period 1997-2010. (Readers may care to look again at the analysis of all this in Children, their World, their Education, chapters 3 and 23).

In any event, during the period between now and late July when consultation on the new proposals remains open, professional eyes should stay wide open too.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

 

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Neither national nor a curriculum?

Since 11 June, when the Secretary of State’s latest national curriculum proposals were published, we’ve been going through a curious phase of what DfE calls ‘pre-consultation’. Alongside a lengthy letter from the Secretary of State, DfE published draft programmes of study for KS1/2 English, maths and science, and these have provoked widespread and often critical comment even though the formal consultation doesn’t begin until the autumn. Yet DfE has actively sought reaction to the proposals, inviting CPR to host sessions with heads, teachers and teacher trainers on 20th and 29th June, and it has told us that these ‘pre-consultations’ matter as much as any government consultation ever does (which cynics would say is not a lot). CPR is certainly taking the process seriously, and we urge you to do likewise; we understand that DfE’s deadline for comment on the proposals is early August.

Being both detailed and controversial, the programmes of study have attracted most attention. The response from Robin Alexander, CPR’s director, concentrates instead on the Secretary of State’s letter, for this is the closest we get to a government view of the national curriculum as a whole … which is not very close at all, for what the government has proposed seems to be neither truly national nor a curriculum.

by Robin Alexander

More international comparisons: Benchmark the Arts too

Just when we are being urged to ʻbenchmarkʼ our childrenʼs schooling against  systems like Singapore and Hong Kong which do well in the PISA tests of ʻkey  competenciesʼ in reading, maths and science, we have a major report from the  United States that reminds us that while these three areas of learning are crucial and  non-negotiable, ʻkey competenciesʼ for a 21st century education system need to be  more broadly defined.

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