The biggest moment of the week for me in the Lords this week was the Schools White Paper statement. On these occasions it falls on the Lords minister to read out verbatim the words of the Commons minister. So the likeable Lord Hill read out the words of Michael Gove. They didn’t sound right coming from the mouth of such a decent consensual minister as Jonathan Hill.
For a start there was the usual abuse of statistics, following hard on the Prime Minister’s dodgy stats on school sport in the PMQs. The schools statement claimed that social mobility has gone backwards but as the Sutton Trust found this April things have narrowed a little, though not enough.
More worrying was the use in the statement, and the PM’s foreword to the White Paper, of stats from the 2006 PISA study comparing educational performance internationally. England’s poor performance in those tests was the reason for all these reforms. But why not use the more recent 2007 TIMSS comparisons that showed English pupils as the best in Europe for Maths, and consistently improving over the last 12 years? What will ministers say on December 7th if the results of the 2009 PISA tests (which the Department will already know) show that English children are actually doing relatively well?
The content of the White Paper itself was mixed.
The desire to go back to the old days of blazers, prefects and Latin will be applauded by some in the press but are unlikely to do anything to increase pupils’ enthusiasm for going to school and learning. Reversing the use of modular exams also showed a regressive emphasis on academic over practical learning.
The new stuff of the English Baccalaureate could work, but used in tables will again alienate the disengaged. Teaching schools, like teaching hospitals, sounds OK. The pupil premium is also fine in principle but with the real terms reduction in per pupil funding will end up moving money from poor areas to richer ones. And the levelling down of post-sixteen funding so schools and colleges get the same amount will damage our most successful state schools severely.
The borrowed measures around behaviour have largely been done already, as has the rebranding of Transition to Teaching (which included ex-servicemen) into Teach Next.
The worrying stuff is the blue ideological element. The free market school reforms will either fail because people don’t end up wanting to start their own school, or will go the way of similar reforms in the US and Sweden where there have been as many losers as winners.
The White Paper has been spun as the most radical school reform since the 1944 Butler Act. I think it more of a dog’s breakfast that misses the really important stuff: parents are the biggest determinant of the success of a child and there was nothing about parental engagement in individual children’s learning. And not a word on the technology that is changing the way children learn and the way parents get involved.
Oh didums.
The problems are simple.
There is no money. You wasted it all and more.
There will be no more money. You’ve borrowed 6,900 billion.
You’re still spending too much. 115 million a year would fund quite a few schools. Instead its lunches, expenses, foreign trips, second homes, employing the wives etc.
However, your right. It’s parental involvement that matters. So why not get parents involved? Give them a voucher for a pro rata share of the schools education budget to be spent at a school of their choice. They are now involved.
Of course the problem is that they won’t pick the shit schools. They will by and large go to good ones, or top up with extra cash. You can’t tolerate choice. So you force people to accept the unacceptable.
Lord Blagger I’m afraid you don’t know what you are talking about. Around 90% of the schools budget goes straight to schools and I don’t believe they are wasting it, by and large. The effect of choice on school improvement is marginal but it is important to give parents the ability to move their children if they are dissatisfied.
“Parents are the biggest determinant of the success of a child and there was nothing about parental engagement in individual children’s learning.”
So please explain to me, why parents were ignored by Ed Balls regime, why it took my Tory MP to get something done not only about a School failing it`s pupils and mistreating them but totally ignoring parents evidence. Why it took over a year for something to be done, why it meant moving my 13 year old to another School at an important time in her life. Why I met plenty more parents in a similar position both online and off all over the Country.
Education was a shambles under Labour and I don`t suppose it will be better under this Government.
You may state everything has improved but that really depends on how things are measured doesn`t it. I know kids who got A*`s who still cannot fill in a form or understand a wage packet. The exam results are not worth a light, I think under Labour most kids got a C just for turning up.
Under Labour Schools became a law unto themselves, Councils could do little, DCSF wasn`t listening infact it was farcical. Only with the willingness of my MP was something done and eventually the head was sacked and 5 suspended. It took over a year and extremely persistant parenting for the sake of the friends my daughter left behind.
And you of all people have no right to talk of “dodgy”, Mr signed it after.
There is plenty I am proud of in terms of the improvement in schools, although I entirely respect your poor experience. There is also more we should have done on parental engagement but extended schools did just that and have been found to have the been one of the most effective actions in helping children from poorer homes.
“For a start there was the usual abuse of statistics…”
Well, the education department has previous on this one. When it was called DCSF, Ed Balls was keen to promote the Badman review on home education, despite the CSF Select Committee (and plenty of parents) noting the dubious nature of the statistics contained therein.
As for parental involvement, that same sorry fiasco made it quite clear that parents were not to be trusted and that any children not at school were obviously automatically at high risk of abuse and needed to be monitored. Gove is at least trying to reverse some of the worst intrusions by the state into private life.
To those with children who don’t like what he’s doing to schools, follow in the footsteps of those who didn’t like what his predecessors did, and opt out. At least he’s (so far) supportive of that, even if local councils have yet to catch up.
Home education if fine for those who want it but you are talking about a tiny minority of people who are able to do it or believe it is the best thing for their child. Some parents can opt out by home educating. Others opt out by sending their children to private schools but the real issue is how the vast majority of parents whose children go to normal state schools can get properly involved in their children’s learning. Teachers and parents have to work together – schools need to respect and support parents, parents need to understand what goes on in schools and respect the professionalism of teachers. Schools need to be forced to work with ALL parents (the shouty ones and the “difficult ones” but also the very quiet ones they tend to ignore)and take their views into account. The last government was beginning to recognise this despite some fairly forceful resistance from the teaching unions. This government simply does not understand why parents are important in children’s learning. All children deserve great teaching – they also need their teachers to work with their parents.
You’ve hit on the important point – the involvement of parents in the education of their children is directly related to the achievement. That is what I believe Gove is trying to achieve. I have my doubts as to whether what he’s doing will succeed, but at least he’s starting with good intentions. To me, this attitude towards parents is the biggest and most important change from his predecessors. If the parents of the children on the sink estates took an interest and encouraged and helped their children to learn despite attending a failing school, there would be a huge improvement. Unfortunately I don’t think providing more nursery places for ever-younger children is going to do this because it just encourages parents to push their children out of the door to the state-funded childcare and take even less interest in their progress.
Home education can be looked at as the extreme end of the ‘taking an interest’, where parents have decided that doing the job themselves is the best way to get it done, ignoring the dafter requirements of the National Curriculum and letting their children progress at their own speed rather than at the speed the government has decreed.
The problem with socialism is that it always assumes there is wealth to be distributed. Its no good creating a nation full of potential PhD’s when every one of them is risk averse. The struggle from nothing to everything is what drives people to success. When you start with nothing there is nothing to loose so risk can be accommodated; when you start with something it can be lost so why take the risk of loosing it?
http://www.political-facts.co.uk/education_after_8years_Labour_government.htm
http://www.socialequality.org.uk/~sepuk/content/britain-business-education-under-labour%E2%80%94part-3
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7121937/Education-gap-between-poorest-pupils-widens-under-Labour.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6939885.ece
Which bit are you proud of ? The Massage room Ed Balls had installed ? Or the staircase perhaps ?
Perhaps the collequial name of the Department, The Department for Curtains and Soft Furnishings ?
Carl – the massage room was really a workplace gym, don’t believe everything you read in newspapers. The gap between richest and poorest narrowed significantly at school level but only narrowly at pupil level, on that we should have done better. But we saw the first significant increase in reading scores for 11 year olds for 30 years. The numbers getting at least five higher level grades at GCSE went from 36% to 50%. The numbers going to higher education went from 44,000 to almost 300,000. The waste paper bins in classrooms no longer catch leaks they catch waste paper.
The DCSF stated
“The ‘massage room’ is in fact a windowless box room in the basement, unfit for office space and part of the staff-funded gym,” said a spokesman. “It has a camp bed and a chair, and staff with injuries can be treated there – any treatment is paid for by the users, at no cost to the taxpayer.”
And what of the “contemplation suite”?
“DCSF provides small prayer rooms for staff on all four sites,” he said. “It is not the law, but it is good practice to provide a space for staff who need to pray at certain times of the day.”
A Staff funded Gym! So staff were paying for rental of the this highly prized piece of London real estate ? And had enough to hire trained professional massage staff who would presumably be full time employees ?
The numbers getting higher grades is easily explained since most of those I`ve spoken to with A*`s, as I already stated, are less educated than I was at leaving school at 15 with no quals. Since most of the judging in education was done by the DCSF it can be taken with a large pinch of salt. Since results & finances were intertwined in one way or another, results were fiddled and I can tell you now of teachers actually completing work for students as negative results would reflect on them.
The numbers going to higher education increased because of a number of reasons, children got wiser, only had to attend two days a week and could laze the rest of the time. The EMA meant they got beer money and pocket money without having pay keep at home. Parental pressure, in some cases to keep benefits for two years longer in others parents knew there were no jobs. I think the last statistics I saw was less than 30% passed their higher education courses mostly due to the fact it was somewhere they didn`t really want to be and maybe sometimes weren`t and the courses in most cases were silly or just fads. The favourite of the last couple of years has been Forensic Science, lots of girlies have been taking that, including my grand daughter without a hope of passing because they don`t really care.
The waste paper bins are still catching leaks in some cases- See Mr Goves later for the reason why.
Many independent sources verify the improvement. Michael Gove regularly confirms we have the best generation of teachers ever and we have over 30,000 more. Lets agree to disagree bog this down with over long posts.
Since PISA and TIMSS are not directly comparable the important data if you want to make your point is the imminent PISA 2009 figures.
“The desire to go back to the old days of blazers, prefects and Latin will be applauded by some in the press but are unlikely to do anything to increase pupils’ enthusiasm for going to school and learning.”
I see to remember a minister in the last government admitting that pupils were more unhappy than previously after the ‘reforms’. Can’t remember his name off hand though!
‘Reversing the use of modular exams also showed a regressive emphasis on academic over practical learning.’
I suspect many universities and I know many employers (who despair) would like more emphasis as they can’t separate the able from the excellent under the present system of grade inflation – in part caused by the sit/re-sit effect.
“The new stuff of the English Baccalaureate could work, but used in tables will again alienate the disengaged.”
Oh come now you can’t seriously say your tables for GCSEs/A-L don’t alienate the disengaged but the new government including the IB/IGCSE will cause plague across the land!
“parents are the biggest determinant of the success of a child and there was nothing about parental engagement in individual children’s learning.”
And how exactly does excluding IGCSE etc from the tables help parents ability to make reasonable comparisons of the school best for their child. That choice is one of the most fundamental they can make.
The necessity to be brief in a blog means leaving out a lot of explanation. We undoubtedly need to better reflect the way children are naturally learning now – collaboratively and using growing on-line research skills. This in turn will better develop the softer skills that employers and universities want, along side the basics of reading, writing and numeracy. In order to move towards a teaching style that is more welcoming to collaboration, leadership and presentation skills we need new assessment techniques that are emerging around the world and are highly effective. That in turn needs us to move away from the testing and tables regime to a wider measure of school performance that includes measures of academic, practical, sporting, & behaviour performance, plus parental satisfaction. I sanctioned the use of IB but not iGCSE because it didn’t reflect the national curriculum that the statutory tests are supposed to test, now however it is right to move away from a prescriptive national curriculum.
The worrying stuff is the blue ideological element. The free market school reforms will either fail because people don’t end up wanting to start their own school
I’ve arrived a bit late for this conversation since the Howell Family schools ran from 1946-75, so I know a little bit about it.
There is very much a social-‘ist’ side to starting schools, and not state socialism either, which is necessarily the angle of the noble lord.
In Wales particularly of recent date,(five or six years ago) a Welsh speaking group of parents wished to opt out of English speaking primary schooling
and tried to start a Co-operative venture, with what ultimate success, I am not up to date, but there may be very sound reasons for doing so.
Reading Ladylords post Home edders, have an anarcho syndicalist champion in Ivan Illich, whose theories on state organisation should always be refered to in the context.
He does not seem to have a successor,but ministers for Corruption (ie rooting it out) may be an answer in some nation states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
I have a great deal in common with his thought since he even studied histopathology which is a very long tradition of thought in our family, dating back 8-9 generations,and was a scholar of a number of Latin vernacular languages. The Royal College of Pathologists was founded in the 1950s.
A fine thinker.
De schooling society was Illich’s work on Education and schooling.
Obviously blogs are limited in what you can cover it’s tricky.
While I doubt anyone has an objection to trying to measure softer skills you still need to measure the basics rigorously. I’ve yet to meet an employer who doesn’t moan about the lack of basics even from, supposedly, the best qualified students. I think people are cynical that the igcse decision had more to do with the politics of grade inflation and selective school rankings than a real objection of the igcse. We will of course see what happens as the new tables come in.
Well this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11929277
Seem`s to put pay to your idea our schools are doing well.
What it shows is that they are not making enough progress. When you read the report on England from the OECD it shows that the performance of English pupils remained broadly the same as 2006 while some other countries made progress. Different studies use different methodologies – the previous benchmark test for Maths under a different methodology showed us as the best in Europe for Maths and 4th in the world.
Was that one where, in order to avoid the stigma of not knowing the answer, incorrect responses were given equal marks with correct responses?
it was the TIMMS assessment, that the Government has continued agreed to participate in. Incidentally you will have noticed that those countries that the current reforms are most closely following – the USA and Sweden – do no better than us in any of these comparisons
I’m not convinced that the reforms go far enough, there’s still too much political correctness and emphasis on passing the test rather than encouraging children to think and understand.
I should point out that I opted out several years ago and home educate, because I don’t think modern schooling, with its emphasis on a ‘balanced’ education where everyone has to learn the same things at exactly the same rate, is the correct way to go about things. Children learn best when they’re ready, which is not necessarily coincident with the time the government decrees they should be.