.
I'm struggling to keep up with what's been happening in the whacky world of education, what with announcements from the Tories about scrapping KS2 SATs so that Primary children can start enjoying school again, New Labour announcing they're scrapping the national literacy strategy, and everybody seeming to agree that education should be handed back to the professionals to ensure that children receive a relevant and appropriate education. Surely 2009 is becoming the glad new dawn we've been hoping for?
Last week Jenni Russell published an excellent article pointing out how and why more and more children are being forced into private tutoring and coaching for tests, which is creating ever greater inequality – at least in terms of test results. The only way to deal with this is through getting away from the idea that tests tell us anything other than how well children cope with tests. In my view, what's needed are proper systems for assessing and tracking pupil progress through appropriate sets of learning targets. Good schools already do this, whilst recognising that children are all different and progress at different rates.
See Jenni's column at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/20/private-tuition-education .
Out of nursery, into the rat race.
“Private tuition distorts exam results, disadvantages poorer families and obscures the real problems in our schools.
It's the naked competitiveness and target obsession of our education system that has pushed people into tutoring in such large numbers.
Now that pupils are being graded from the age of five, children who might have been allowed to develop at their own pace in the past are being told they're falling behind, and because they're being made to panic by anxious teachers, parents feel they have to respond too.
Parents believe that teachers are trying their best, but fear that staff are worn out and over-burdened by the ceaseless flow of bureaucracy and government initiatives.
First, the prevalence of tutoring means that the government's league tables tell parents very little about the teaching at a school. High scores indicate only one thing with certainty; that this school has a parent body who will give their children whatever support they need to do well in their exams. It isn't an assurance that the school itself will deliver those results.
Secondly, it means that poorer or less knowledgeable parents will fall behind in the competition, because they are unable to afford to do the same thing, or are unaware that it is an option. A fifth of parents from professional backgrounds have had their children tutored, while 5% of working-class parents have done the same. And thirdly, it successfully prevents a national discussion about real failings in the education system, because they are not being publicly recognised.
The question of what's been bought, what's fair, and what deserves reward is at the heart of our anguished debate about our education system. On the one hand, skills and education are undoubtedly good for the individual and for the country. On the other, they are also chips in an increasingly intense competition. Many parents are in a constant and uneasy debate with themselves and one another about the advantages they are buying or forgoing. Parents who condemn private education as securing privilege may think nothing of moving house, tutoring in five subjects, and doing their children's coursework for them.
Tiny differences in exam results can determine lives. When others start raising the stakes by engaging tutors then everyone else feels intense pressure to follow suit.
Schools happily collude in it, because it gets them what they want; better grades without the effort of it.
Only a fundamental reform to the system - less cramming, smaller classes, an education based on less testing and more on learning to think - is going to make any difference to this trend. If I had to make another forecast, it would be this - in five years, the proportion of tutored children is going to be sharply up again.”
----------------------------------------------------
Please read the whole article, and then ask yourself how you feel about having it followed on the Guardian website by three advertisements for personal tutors. You certainly can't fault the Guardian for its business acumen, at least. The ads people obviously believed that Jenni's piece, by drawing attention to private tutors, might add a few more runners to the educational rat race, as do the advertisers themselves, of course.
I guess egalitarians are just voices in the wilderness. Very few Brits, at least, seem to give a damn about social justice or the long-term destructive effects on our children (and teachers) of so-called 'driving up standards'. Nobody wants to consider the fact that time spent on cramming for tests is time lost on developing creativity, imagination and a love of learning for its own sake. Our children are forcefully prevented from following their own learning agendas and discovering the things that matter to them as individuals. Imagine how we'd feel if someone did that to us? There's no stopping this juggernaut, though, is there?
I guess the thing we need to turn our attention to is what more we can do to provide good things and more opportunities for the children whose parents can't afford to, or choose not to, employ personal tutors. I'm now more certain than ever that every school ought to resource an extra hour or two at the end of the day for all the children who wish to to come together in rooms, libraries, etc, equipped with books and with wireless laptops on which they can enthusiastically follow up their own interests with the support of trained adults (possibly volunteer or paid teachers, and paid learning assistants).
'Catch-up' maths and literacy could also be individually and sensitively taught where there is agreement with the child (and his/her parents). During those sessions the children, even at Primary level, can have a lot of fun learning how to edit digital photos and video, how to create slide shows and Powerpoints, how to carry out more efficient web searches, how to copy and paste text from websites, etc, etc.
What parents can do, of course, is to encourage their children to read regularly – the best picture books and literature available. They need to read to their children very regularly from an early age. They need to encourage their children to write regularly, and for their own enjoyment. They also need to act as scribes for children who have things to say (which is all of them) but can't be bothered to struggle with composition. Use digital voice recorders whenever possible. This also implies that parents should talk and discuss everything under the sun with their children, letting them realise that they have individual voices, and thoughts and opinions worth listening to.
-----------------------------------------------
On Friday Jenni had another excellent column in the Guardian:
On education, Labour failed our children.
The government has finally acknowledged that its centralised control of schools doesn't work – but for many, it's too late.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/labour-schools-national-strategy?commentpage=3&commentposted=1
There comes a point, it seems, when even the most obstinately blinkered of ministers and departments can no longer avoid the facts. One by one the totems of Labour's disastrous education policies are being dismantled.
Today's Guardian reports that the government is to abandon its national strategies for schools when it announces its white paper on education next week. That means that the much-loathed literacy and numeracy hours in primaries, with their rigid, minute-by-minute dictation of how every teacher must structure and deliver their lesson, will stop being compulsory from 2011. Instead schools will be able to make their own choices about what their children need and how they should teach.
This, coming from a department whose controlling and centralising instincts would have been applauded in a Soviet state, is truly revolutionary. It is a (very) belated recognition that treating children and classrooms as if they were car parts and assembly lines is a strategy that simply doesn't produce skilled, or educated, or motivated pupils.
The strategies don't work at any level other than the most superficial.
Teachers feel helpless when they are in front of classes that aren't grasping the points at the speed the national timetable lays down. There is no flexibility. The national plan compels a teacher to move on, no matter how many children are being left behind. Frantic booster classes at ages seven and 11 teach children the short-term tricks they must know to get them through Sats tests.
Even those who can keep up find the lessons stultifying. Some years ago English teachers in secondaries started reporting that 11-year-old children were arriving saying they hated the subject.
Should we be pleased that the government has finally recognised this truth?
I don't think so. I think the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years.
--------------------------------------
Oxzen posted this response:
Good article, Jenni, and I agree with your conclusion - “the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years”.
Throughout these years you've been a very consistent voice criticising the government for the policies which they've now belatedly abandoned - although, as Onthespot points out, the national literacy and numeracy strategies were never compulsory, even though most schools and most LAs acted as though they were.
I think it's also fair to point out that the national numeracy strategy was never considered, by most Primary teachers, as particularly bad or inappropriate. It's the English strategy that was a total disaster. Its methodology was never researched or trialled to any significant degree, and never proven superior to the successful approaches researched and promoted by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, amongst other places, as well as respected educationalists like Prof Harold Rosen.
Ofsted's own research (“Yes He Can - Schools Where Boys Write Well”) produced a set of conclusions and recommendations that are totally at odds with the NLS approach. You can read them on Page 9 of the downloadable PDF: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Forms-and-guidance/Browse-all-by/Other/General/Yes-he-can-Schools-where-boys-write-well . I would strongly recommend schools that now wish to reconsider their adherence to the literacy strategy (as all schools should) to start with this document as a focus for their discussions. And don't wait till 2011, for the sake of the pupils.
More than ever we need young people who read widely for pleasure and information, who write capably and enthusiastically for a variety of purposes, including their own self-expression, who love learning for its own sake, who have a thirst for knowledge, who have a well-developed imagination and an ability to work creatively, and who have a well-developed set of life skills and thinking skills whose development has been enhanced and promoted by the study and sharing of great literature.
All of these outcomes of real education have been retarded and often negated by the arrogance and stupidity of politicians of all parties, plus their Whitehall & LA flunkeys, who have willfully and uncritically been flogging the culture of didacticism, target-setting, endless testing, league tables and punitive inspections these many years. Schools must now band together to develop their own best practices, to offer real education, and resolve never to forget the fury they felt for this regime and all that it did to pupils, teachers and schools. Never, ever, let it happen again.
.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Layer 172 Young & McGuinn, Working for the Teachers, Working for the Government.
.
Neil Young is a monster. A great, lurching, raucous bear of a man. Headlining at Glastonbury this evening he ended his set with an amazing version of 'A Day In The Life'. Where the hell did that come from? He made this Beatles classic - this Sergeant Pepper climax - rock and roll in a way the four moptops would never have dreamed of. He blasted and crashed his way through it, ending in a cacophony of noise, with the strings of his black Gibson totally busted and broken. That's something I've never seen. I've seen guitars that were beaten up, smashed and dead, but this was something quite different. A guitar that was still intact, only with all its strings snapped and zapped.
Having watched Neil's power and emotion and originality it was almost impossible to deal with the rest of the TV coverage of today's acts at Glastonbury – a horrible bunch of derivative prats wailing and whining their way through their 'original' compositions – every single tune instantly forgettable, as were the performances.
Bruce Springsteen is the headline act tomorrow, and the press seems full of condescending articles proclaiming that Bruce is suddenly, somehow, COOL! In his 60th year the tossers who inhabit Planet Rock these days have seemingly latched on to the fact that The Boss really is the boss. How has that happened? Where was the crack that allowed reality to creep into the consciousness of these lickspittles, these cringe-making creeps? As if Bruce gives a toss what they think anyway.
Oh dear. Oh dear. A bunch of schoolkids called The White Lies just tried to perform 'Dancing In The Dark'. Not cool at all. Fine maybe for their local youth club, but surely not the nation's premier music festival, on national TV. Oh dearie me. They just did a song called Death.
----------------------------------------
Interestingly, Roger McGuinn had name-checked the Beatles several times during his set at the Cadogan Hall, just off Sloane Square, earlier in the evening. He did a retrospective of his musical life and times, playing and singing solo, using an acoustic 7-string Martin and a beautiful electric 12-string Rickenbacker. He acknowledged the influence of the Beatles in his arrangement of Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man for The Byrds – their first monster hit. He kept referring to the 'Beatles Beat' in all his early songs and arrangements of folk tunes. Dylan gave him the lyrics for 'Ballad of Easy Rider', knowing McGuinn would Beatle them for the film. He ended his set with a magnificent version of Eight Miles High. Excellent.
----------------------------------------
Prior to the concert I'd had to drag my old friend J out of the panini bar where he'd taken refuge from the Sloanes. Initially he refused to budge, claiming he was too tired to go back out into the heat of the evening and the weirdness of the streets. However, after I'd made it clear there was no way I was staying in a soulless bloody sandwich bar when I was desperate for a pint of decent ale he decided to tag along to the pub we managed to stumbled upon a few streets away where we had portions of chicken cassoulet - a two for a tenner deal. The beer was excellent.
Chelsea is bonkers. Straight out of the tube, which had transported me from the real world to the Emerald City via the circle line/whirlwind, I came across a huge black Jag limo driven by a gorgeous chauffeuse wearing black gloves and a miniskirt. Not too many of those in the East End . . .
J, meanwhile, on the other side of the square, outside the Peter Jones department store, had been practically knocked off the pavement by several flunkeys carrying rolls of fabric from the store out to parked limos in which rich old biddies were sitting, waiting to examine the wares.
By the way, according to J, who's of the faith, it's impossible for Jewish people to catch swine flu, since it's not Kosher. On the other hand, gefilte fish flu is apparently causing havoc, and as for the chicken noodle flu epidemic . . .
-------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw was on Desert Island Discs this morning. His choice of music was complete pants, but this is what he said about his education:
“I loathed school. I had the impression I was working for the teachers – not for myself. There were only two enlightened teachers. The rest were idiots, and why would I work for them?”
As I said in Layer 171, we need to “agree on how children should get access to the best and most relevant curriculum, and how they should learn.”
It's a complete outrage that children have been badgered and bored by teachers in the name of 'driving up standards', and certainly have not been working and learning for themselves. In a word, they've been USED. And abused.
--------------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw also spoke about “Yearning for something outside the physical”.
It's also a matter of needing, not just yearning. Does anyone seriously doubt that humans need to connect with the metaphysical and the spiritual?
If we agree on this need to connect,
-----------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw again -
“The great philosophers and teachers have said, Know Thyself.”
Our schools don't, by and large, give a damn about enabling children to know themselves. Where does it say in the national curriculum that children should know themselves? And so they don't get any opportunity or encouragement to look within, to meditate, to reflect, to perceive themselves through their own eyes, as well as the eyes of others. How can they be expected to understand themselves without time, opportunity or encouragement?
------------------------------------------
From today's Guardian:
Labour to junk Tony Blair's flagship school reform
Headteachers to get more powers as era of centralised control ends.
The government is to abandon the most significant education reform of the New Labour era in order to end the centralised control of schools and grant headteachers more powers, the Guardian has learned.
In a totemic break from the Blair years, next week's education white paper will signal the end of Labour's national strategies for schools, which includes oversight of the literacy and numeracy hours in primaries. The changes will strip away centralised prescription of teaching methods and dramatically cut the use of private consultants currently employed to improve schools.
They will give schools more freedom and establish new networks of school-to-school support to help drive up standards in what will be described as a "new era of localism".
Ed Balls, the schools secretary, has masterminded the plan, which could save the government up to £100m a year on its contract with the private company Capita, which delivers the national strategies. It forms part of an efficiency drive to slim down government bureaucracy.
So there we have it. This isn't for the benefit of the children. This is to save money. What a bunch of shits. They will never, ever, admit that the national literacy strategy has been a total waste of money, time and effort. Worse than that, it's fucked up decades of hard work trying to help teachers appreciate what subtle and sensitive practices are required in order to help all children become fully literate and absolutely passionate about reading and writing.
.
Neil Young is a monster. A great, lurching, raucous bear of a man. Headlining at Glastonbury this evening he ended his set with an amazing version of 'A Day In The Life'. Where the hell did that come from? He made this Beatles classic - this Sergeant Pepper climax - rock and roll in a way the four moptops would never have dreamed of. He blasted and crashed his way through it, ending in a cacophony of noise, with the strings of his black Gibson totally busted and broken. That's something I've never seen. I've seen guitars that were beaten up, smashed and dead, but this was something quite different. A guitar that was still intact, only with all its strings snapped and zapped.
Having watched Neil's power and emotion and originality it was almost impossible to deal with the rest of the TV coverage of today's acts at Glastonbury – a horrible bunch of derivative prats wailing and whining their way through their 'original' compositions – every single tune instantly forgettable, as were the performances.
Bruce Springsteen is the headline act tomorrow, and the press seems full of condescending articles proclaiming that Bruce is suddenly, somehow, COOL! In his 60th year the tossers who inhabit Planet Rock these days have seemingly latched on to the fact that The Boss really is the boss. How has that happened? Where was the crack that allowed reality to creep into the consciousness of these lickspittles, these cringe-making creeps? As if Bruce gives a toss what they think anyway.
Oh dear. Oh dear. A bunch of schoolkids called The White Lies just tried to perform 'Dancing In The Dark'. Not cool at all. Fine maybe for their local youth club, but surely not the nation's premier music festival, on national TV. Oh dearie me. They just did a song called Death.
----------------------------------------
Interestingly, Roger McGuinn had name-checked the Beatles several times during his set at the Cadogan Hall, just off Sloane Square, earlier in the evening. He did a retrospective of his musical life and times, playing and singing solo, using an acoustic 7-string Martin and a beautiful electric 12-string Rickenbacker. He acknowledged the influence of the Beatles in his arrangement of Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man for The Byrds – their first monster hit. He kept referring to the 'Beatles Beat' in all his early songs and arrangements of folk tunes. Dylan gave him the lyrics for 'Ballad of Easy Rider', knowing McGuinn would Beatle them for the film. He ended his set with a magnificent version of Eight Miles High. Excellent.
----------------------------------------
Prior to the concert I'd had to drag my old friend J out of the panini bar where he'd taken refuge from the Sloanes. Initially he refused to budge, claiming he was too tired to go back out into the heat of the evening and the weirdness of the streets. However, after I'd made it clear there was no way I was staying in a soulless bloody sandwich bar when I was desperate for a pint of decent ale he decided to tag along to the pub we managed to stumbled upon a few streets away where we had portions of chicken cassoulet - a two for a tenner deal. The beer was excellent.
Chelsea is bonkers. Straight out of the tube, which had transported me from the real world to the Emerald City via the circle line/whirlwind, I came across a huge black Jag limo driven by a gorgeous chauffeuse wearing black gloves and a miniskirt. Not too many of those in the East End . . .
J, meanwhile, on the other side of the square, outside the Peter Jones department store, had been practically knocked off the pavement by several flunkeys carrying rolls of fabric from the store out to parked limos in which rich old biddies were sitting, waiting to examine the wares.
By the way, according to J, who's of the faith, it's impossible for Jewish people to catch swine flu, since it's not Kosher. On the other hand, gefilte fish flu is apparently causing havoc, and as for the chicken noodle flu epidemic . . .
-------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw was on Desert Island Discs this morning. His choice of music was complete pants, but this is what he said about his education:
“I loathed school. I had the impression I was working for the teachers – not for myself. There were only two enlightened teachers. The rest were idiots, and why would I work for them?”
As I said in Layer 171, we need to “agree on how children should get access to the best and most relevant curriculum, and how they should learn.”
- Why are so many teachers 'idiots' – whatever that might mean?
- Is it right that children should feel they're not doing things for their own benefit, only for the teacher, the school, the LA, the government, etc?
- Why do so many children loathe school?
- How much ability and talent is under-developed and wasted because children aren't allowed to travel their own pathways, on their own learning journeys?
It's a complete outrage that children have been badgered and bored by teachers in the name of 'driving up standards', and certainly have not been working and learning for themselves. In a word, they've been USED. And abused.
--------------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw also spoke about “Yearning for something outside the physical”.
It's also a matter of needing, not just yearning. Does anyone seriously doubt that humans need to connect with the metaphysical and the spiritual?
If we agree on this need to connect,
- How can we go about it?
- Does it need to involve “God”?
- How do we equip people, through education to begin their quest for the metaphysical, and become better able to engage with it?
- Do schools even attempt to do so, beyond tokenistic RE lessons and ritualistic assemblies?
- How many children leave school without even knowing the terms 'metaphysical' and 'spiritual', let alone understand what they might mean?
-----------------------------------------------
Martin Shaw again -
“The great philosophers and teachers have said, Know Thyself.”
Our schools don't, by and large, give a damn about enabling children to know themselves. Where does it say in the national curriculum that children should know themselves? And so they don't get any opportunity or encouragement to look within, to meditate, to reflect, to perceive themselves through their own eyes, as well as the eyes of others. How can they be expected to understand themselves without time, opportunity or encouragement?
------------------------------------------
From today's Guardian:
Labour to junk Tony Blair's flagship school reform
Headteachers to get more powers as era of centralised control ends.
The government is to abandon the most significant education reform of the New Labour era in order to end the centralised control of schools and grant headteachers more powers, the Guardian has learned.
In a totemic break from the Blair years, next week's education white paper will signal the end of Labour's national strategies for schools, which includes oversight of the literacy and numeracy hours in primaries. The changes will strip away centralised prescription of teaching methods and dramatically cut the use of private consultants currently employed to improve schools.
They will give schools more freedom and establish new networks of school-to-school support to help drive up standards in what will be described as a "new era of localism".
Ed Balls, the schools secretary, has masterminded the plan, which could save the government up to £100m a year on its contract with the private company Capita, which delivers the national strategies. It forms part of an efficiency drive to slim down government bureaucracy.
So there we have it. This isn't for the benefit of the children. This is to save money. What a bunch of shits. They will never, ever, admit that the national literacy strategy has been a total waste of money, time and effort. Worse than that, it's fucked up decades of hard work trying to help teachers appreciate what subtle and sensitive practices are required in order to help all children become fully literate and absolutely passionate about reading and writing.
.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Layer 171 Education: A Whole Lot To Answer For.
.
Thinking about last week's publication of the Nuffield Review (Layer 169), and about the state of our schools, I came across a piece I wrote just over a year ago, and I'm putting it in here as an addendum to the thoughts on Nuffield.
------------------------------------------------
"He had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth".
Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter 2.
In the final analysis, education is incredibly important and has a lot to answer for. Because it’s not only the fact of having a decent education system that makes our country or our planet, or anyone else’s country, what it is, or can be, or whatever it aspires to be - it’s also the type of education we provide that matters, and how it impacts on children and therefore on future generations of adults, and therefore on our society. It’s not only a matter of investing adequately in education, it’s a matter of investing effectively and ensuring that there is a proper consensus about what you’re expecting to gain from the investment.
It’s not just about the quantity and quality of education. Because how do we define quality? Is your definition the same as mine? Quality is about what’s taught in schools, and how it’s taught. We can have lots of good schools teaching mainly the wrong things to a very high standard. We could have those same schools trying to teach the right things but doing it very badly indeed. In the past 50 years we’ve had both of these in Britain. In my view many schools continue to teach the wrong things, and few of the right things, and also do it very badly. A great many of these schools pride themselves on very good inspection reports and an elevated position in so-called league tables.
It seems obvious that what we need are lots of very good schools teaching the right things in the right way to a very high standard. The problem is we can’t seem to agree on what the right things are, or how to teach them. Or rather, putting it the other way round and seeing it from the pupils’ perspective, agree on how children should get access to the best and most relevant curriculum, and how they should learn.
Now surely we’re intelligent people and we can agree on these things, at least 90% of the time? Sadly, it seems not, and things are getting worse - may have to get worse - before they get better.
History
In the time of Dickens the world of state education seemed very simple. “Teach these boys and girls facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Nothing else will ever be of service to them”.[1] So said the headmaster, Thomas Gradgrind. On this there seemed to be consensus. The teacher, the government inspector, and the nation seemed to agree.
In due course this utilitarian view of education was challenged, not least by Charles Dickens, and exposed as vile and against the interests of all of those who aspire to the development of higher aspects of children and adults - the intellect, the spirit and the soul.
But in the late 20th Century and early 21st century England and Wales, almost uniquely in Europe, and unlike the rest of the much smarter nations who were making tracks elsewhere, our nation returned in its wisdom to the utilitarian view. “Give these children A stars, 5 GCSEs, Level 4 by the age of 11 - or they won’t be ready to enter the job market.” Over several frustrating years I have heard literally dozens of teachers and headteachers, and scores of ignorant politicians and bureaucrats, express this view, and show themselves unable to imagine what else might comprise a decent education, what other aims we might have, and what other skills and attitudes might be required in the 21st Century, in order for people to be able to cope with life’s challenges and live lives to the full. I heard those poor, timid, brainwashed voices parroting useless ideas about equipping children (even Primary children) for the jobs market.
To anyone who cares about children and how they experience their schools and their lives, this is an appalling state of affairs. Unicef has condemned our country for producing a generation of unhappy, deprived and exploited children, and books like Toxic Childhood[2] provide details of what’s going wrong in the way we nurture and educate our children. And still the utilitarians cling to their mantras that ‘standards’ (meaning test and exam scores) have to be ‘driven up’ (meaning more and more children have to be cajoled, threatened, or somehow motivated to subscribe to the notion that cramming and memorising for tests, usually to the exclusion of more worthwhile activities, is necessary and desirable and crucial for their success in life). It goes without saying that teachers, heads of schools and school governors must also be cajoled, threatened and motivated to accept this pathetic, harsh and impoverished view of what education is for and how it should be carried out.
These people cling to their certainties that a harsh regime of testing, inspecting and naming and shaming in league tables is making us a better country and better at giving our children what they need. The politicians are even shameless enough to claim that they say the toxic things they say in the name of deprived children living in our most challenging inner-city areas. Well how else are these poor little buggers going to get jobs? Surely they need a fistful of exam passes, even if they’ve been given nothing else? What else could they possibly need? What else could education be for? What else would enable them to ‘escape’ from the council estates and their childhood communities and their families and move into starter homes in the suburbs?
A Learning Revolution
A very important event took place in the middle of the 1960s that caused a great many teachers and parents to begin to question the utilitarian view of children and learning. A committee of enquiry under the chairmanship of Lady Plowden was set up to report to government on what was happening in the world of Primary education, and make recommendations to government on what the system needed to do to improve our Primary schools. Their recommendations had, in some places, far-reaching and radical effects on how the business of education was carried on in Primary schools, since individual children were put at the heart of our approach to learning, and learning was made to serve their individual needs, rather than the needs of a national or international system that demanded that workers had specific skills and knowledge in order for our nation (which was deemed to be homogenous) to be ‘competitive’ and prosperous.
Whilst it might sound like a proper and decent way of conducting education, putting children’s broad developmental needs at the heart of what we do in schools has come to be discarded in a politically-motivated rush to ‘drive up standards’ by forcing teachers and children to do more and more of the things that can be easily measured and less and less of the things that enable them to be confident, motivated and creative life-long learners with high levels of intelligence - intellectual, spiritual, social, emotional and physical/instinctual.
We now have a desperate need for a new learning revolution. In my view, and that of many of our serious thinkers about education, we need to follow the lead of high-achieving countries such as Finland and Canada, where they have never seen any need for a draconian system of inspections, annual summative tests and league tables. We need to follow the lead of China, which had retrained its teachers in line with the methodology which is very well summed up in a book called The New Learning Revolution[3]. For the sake of all our children we need to make education fit their real needs and prepare them properly, effectively, for all their futures[4].
[1] Charles Dickens. Hard Times. 1854 Page 1, Chapter 1.
[2] Toxic Childhood - How the Modern World is Damaging our Children and What We Can Do About It.
Sue Palmer 2006
[3] The New Learning Revolution. Gordon Dryden and Dr Jeannette Vos. 2005.
[4] See also All Our Futures. DfES 1999. National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education Web address: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/naccce/index1.shtml
.
Thinking about last week's publication of the Nuffield Review (Layer 169), and about the state of our schools, I came across a piece I wrote just over a year ago, and I'm putting it in here as an addendum to the thoughts on Nuffield.
------------------------------------------------
"He had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth".
Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter 2.
In the final analysis, education is incredibly important and has a lot to answer for. Because it’s not only the fact of having a decent education system that makes our country or our planet, or anyone else’s country, what it is, or can be, or whatever it aspires to be - it’s also the type of education we provide that matters, and how it impacts on children and therefore on future generations of adults, and therefore on our society. It’s not only a matter of investing adequately in education, it’s a matter of investing effectively and ensuring that there is a proper consensus about what you’re expecting to gain from the investment.
It’s not just about the quantity and quality of education. Because how do we define quality? Is your definition the same as mine? Quality is about what’s taught in schools, and how it’s taught. We can have lots of good schools teaching mainly the wrong things to a very high standard. We could have those same schools trying to teach the right things but doing it very badly indeed. In the past 50 years we’ve had both of these in Britain. In my view many schools continue to teach the wrong things, and few of the right things, and also do it very badly. A great many of these schools pride themselves on very good inspection reports and an elevated position in so-called league tables.
It seems obvious that what we need are lots of very good schools teaching the right things in the right way to a very high standard. The problem is we can’t seem to agree on what the right things are, or how to teach them. Or rather, putting it the other way round and seeing it from the pupils’ perspective, agree on how children should get access to the best and most relevant curriculum, and how they should learn.
Now surely we’re intelligent people and we can agree on these things, at least 90% of the time? Sadly, it seems not, and things are getting worse - may have to get worse - before they get better.
History
In the time of Dickens the world of state education seemed very simple. “Teach these boys and girls facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Nothing else will ever be of service to them”.[1] So said the headmaster, Thomas Gradgrind. On this there seemed to be consensus. The teacher, the government inspector, and the nation seemed to agree.
In due course this utilitarian view of education was challenged, not least by Charles Dickens, and exposed as vile and against the interests of all of those who aspire to the development of higher aspects of children and adults - the intellect, the spirit and the soul.
But in the late 20th Century and early 21st century England and Wales, almost uniquely in Europe, and unlike the rest of the much smarter nations who were making tracks elsewhere, our nation returned in its wisdom to the utilitarian view. “Give these children A stars, 5 GCSEs, Level 4 by the age of 11 - or they won’t be ready to enter the job market.” Over several frustrating years I have heard literally dozens of teachers and headteachers, and scores of ignorant politicians and bureaucrats, express this view, and show themselves unable to imagine what else might comprise a decent education, what other aims we might have, and what other skills and attitudes might be required in the 21st Century, in order for people to be able to cope with life’s challenges and live lives to the full. I heard those poor, timid, brainwashed voices parroting useless ideas about equipping children (even Primary children) for the jobs market.
To anyone who cares about children and how they experience their schools and their lives, this is an appalling state of affairs. Unicef has condemned our country for producing a generation of unhappy, deprived and exploited children, and books like Toxic Childhood[2] provide details of what’s going wrong in the way we nurture and educate our children. And still the utilitarians cling to their mantras that ‘standards’ (meaning test and exam scores) have to be ‘driven up’ (meaning more and more children have to be cajoled, threatened, or somehow motivated to subscribe to the notion that cramming and memorising for tests, usually to the exclusion of more worthwhile activities, is necessary and desirable and crucial for their success in life). It goes without saying that teachers, heads of schools and school governors must also be cajoled, threatened and motivated to accept this pathetic, harsh and impoverished view of what education is for and how it should be carried out.
These people cling to their certainties that a harsh regime of testing, inspecting and naming and shaming in league tables is making us a better country and better at giving our children what they need. The politicians are even shameless enough to claim that they say the toxic things they say in the name of deprived children living in our most challenging inner-city areas. Well how else are these poor little buggers going to get jobs? Surely they need a fistful of exam passes, even if they’ve been given nothing else? What else could they possibly need? What else could education be for? What else would enable them to ‘escape’ from the council estates and their childhood communities and their families and move into starter homes in the suburbs?
A Learning Revolution
A very important event took place in the middle of the 1960s that caused a great many teachers and parents to begin to question the utilitarian view of children and learning. A committee of enquiry under the chairmanship of Lady Plowden was set up to report to government on what was happening in the world of Primary education, and make recommendations to government on what the system needed to do to improve our Primary schools. Their recommendations had, in some places, far-reaching and radical effects on how the business of education was carried on in Primary schools, since individual children were put at the heart of our approach to learning, and learning was made to serve their individual needs, rather than the needs of a national or international system that demanded that workers had specific skills and knowledge in order for our nation (which was deemed to be homogenous) to be ‘competitive’ and prosperous.
Whilst it might sound like a proper and decent way of conducting education, putting children’s broad developmental needs at the heart of what we do in schools has come to be discarded in a politically-motivated rush to ‘drive up standards’ by forcing teachers and children to do more and more of the things that can be easily measured and less and less of the things that enable them to be confident, motivated and creative life-long learners with high levels of intelligence - intellectual, spiritual, social, emotional and physical/instinctual.
We now have a desperate need for a new learning revolution. In my view, and that of many of our serious thinkers about education, we need to follow the lead of high-achieving countries such as Finland and Canada, where they have never seen any need for a draconian system of inspections, annual summative tests and league tables. We need to follow the lead of China, which had retrained its teachers in line with the methodology which is very well summed up in a book called The New Learning Revolution[3]. For the sake of all our children we need to make education fit their real needs and prepare them properly, effectively, for all their futures[4].
[1] Charles Dickens. Hard Times. 1854 Page 1, Chapter 1.
[2] Toxic Childhood - How the Modern World is Damaging our Children and What We Can Do About It.
Sue Palmer 2006
[3] The New Learning Revolution. Gordon Dryden and Dr Jeannette Vos. 2005.
[4] See also All Our Futures. DfES 1999. National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education Web address: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/naccce/index1.shtml
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