I was one of the speakers at this weekend’s Policy Exchange conference which posed the question, ‘What should the political parties promise on education in 2015?’
Though I work in the education sector, I was there in a personal capacity to offer a Lib Dem perspective; very kindly Policy Exchange had invited Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt as warm-up acts for my seven minutes. You can watch what I had to say in the video at the foot of this post, starting at 2 mins in, or just read on… (If you check against delivery you’ll see I’ve tidied up some of my sentences, such as self-censoring my request to the next Secretary of State for Education to “stop dicking about” with school structures.)
The estimable teacher-blogger Tom Bennett, covering the event for the TES, commented: “Stephen Tall suggested we summon the LEA back from the grave and was self-effacing enough to make me hope that the Liberal Democrats don’t actually die out after next election. Like the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, you don’t start thinking how much you’ll miss them until they start to approach extinction.” Well, mountain gorillas are a step up from cockroaches, I guess.
Anyway, here’s what I said (or at least what I would have said if I’d read out my notes in full)…
A delight though it is to be asked by Policy Exchange to speak, I confess my heart sank a little when I saw the topic: school structures. Because if there’s one issue that already dominates the thinking and policies of parties too much, it’s school structures. In fact, if you want a top-line for what I’m going to say, it’s “Stop talking about school structures!” However, I realise you might want me to flesh that out a little…
I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that politicians have got more interested in education policy as they’ve realised they have little control over the economy. Prime Minister Jim Callaghan’s famous “secret garden” speech was the same year, 1976, as the IMF financial crisis. Government began to realise it couldn’t any more guarantee jobs for life to its citizens and that low-skill manual jobs were on the decline. Future prosperity, national and individual, required a highly educated workforce to power a knowledge economy.
The diagnosis was right. The problem has been the solution applied by successive governments, Labour and Conservative as well as the current Coalition. Each in turn has made two fundamental errors. First, the belief that Whitehall can pull a lever which automatically raises school standards. Secondly, the belief that the top priority for better education is to prototype the model of a good school and replicate this across the country.
The first error I’ll characterise as “Only government can save!” and is Labour’s knee-jerk response: a highly prescriptive national curriculum, prescribed literacy hours, and so on. No problem couldn’t be solved by an extra bit of legislation or by an extra dollop of ring-fenced funding.
The second error – which I’ll characterise as “We must have new schools!” – stems from the Conservative belief that the main problem with state schools is that they’re not private schools. I enjoy pointing out to my Conservative friends that that the same PISA 2009 study they use to berate the last Labour government as evidence of stalling educational standards also showed that the quality of teaching is the same in the private and publicly funded sectors. And given the average class size in the private sector is half that in the public sector (13 vs 25) it’s more than arguable that the quality of teaching is better in the state sector. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to expect teachers to be qualified or working towards a teaching qualification after all? It’s strange how that PISA finding is cheerfully ignored because it doesn’t fit the right-wing agenda.
I’m not saying schools don’t matter: of course they do. But what matters more is the quality of teaching that takes place within those schools. I’ll go further: it’s the only thing that really matters. In the classrooms of the best teachers children learn at twice the rate they do in the classrooms of average teachers. In other words, they learn in six months what it takes children taught by an average teacher one year to learn. In the classrooms of the least effective teachers, the same teaching takes two years. And in the classrooms of the most effective teachers, children from disadvantaged backgrounds learn just as much as those from advantaged backgrounds. (Source: Dylan Wiliam, Teacher quality: how to get more of it (Spectator ‘Schools Revolution’ conference, March 2010).)
What does a good school look like? Here are some familiar characteristics: effective leadership and governance, well-qualified and well-motivated staff, high expectations, firm discipline, an embrace of research and innovation, engaged parents. And there are good schools up and down the country which have these characteristics. You can recognise them from the signs outside – some say ‘community school’, others say ‘academy school’, and I’m sure in the future some will say ‘free school’. It’s not the structures which matter: it’s what happens within the school.That means there has to be a real focus on improving the overall quality of teaching. That’s hard in a mass-entry profession like teaching, with 450,000 professionals distributed across the country. It’s perhaps because it’s so hard that politicians have shied away from it. Getting to grips with dry-but-crucial issues like high-quality CPD for the teaching profession isn’t half as exciting as being photographed cutting the ribbon on a brand new Norman Foster-designed academy school. And, let’s be honest, voters are more likely to like the idea of a brand new local school. As ever, we get the politicians and political decisions we deserve.
We cannot, of course, forget the issue of funding. Six-in-10 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds leave school at 16 without the basic qualifications of five GCSEs at grade C or higher, including English and Maths. That isn’t just shaming for a wealthy country like ours, it’s suicide for a country that wants to remain wealthy. Educational inequality here is worse in the UK than in most other OECD countries. It is this scar which Pupil Premium funding – more than £6 billion across this Parliament – seeks to heal. Success has many parents: that so many, including Policy Exchange and the Tories, are keen to claim credit for the Pupil Premium is fine by me. It’s a good policy, one which I hope will survive the 2015 election (even if the Lib Dems don’t).
Final point… We were asked by Policy Exchange to reflect on “ongoing and planned future changes to the middle tier”: if I must. I have looked on at the Tory and Labour contortions on this topic with bemusement. The Tories propose their regional headteacher boards, each with a chancellor, overseeing academies and free schools. Labour proposes their independent directors of school standards. Never before has so much civil service brainpower and think-tank intellectual juice been wasted on trying to avoid the obvious solution of local education authorities. This is, though, sadly typical of the Tory/Labour determination to continue running schools from Whitehall, avoiding real accountability to the voters whose taxes fund the service. Yes, there will be LEAs which fail – just as there are academy chains which fail. And I’ve even heard whispers some free schools might fail, too. That is why professional accountability to a properly functioning and fully independent Ofsted is also critical.
To re-cap. My plea to the next Secretary of State for Education is to stop tinkering with school structures in a doomed attempt to create the perfect school in Whitehall. Instead, let’s focus on what will really make a difference to the educational outcomes of our children: improving teacher quality, fair funding, and local and professional accountability.
Video of Schools Panel on Structures (available here)
Stephen Tall, Editor, Lib Dem Voice; Mary Bousted, General Secretary, Association of Teachers and Lecturers; James O’Shaughnessy, Managing Director, Floreat Education; Alasdair Smith, National Secretary, Anti Academies Alliance; (CHAIR) Ann Mroz, Editor, TES.
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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12 Comments
Abolish religious schools
Agreed. This obsession with structures has been a servere distraction from allowing schools to achieve the good governance you mention.
I’d like to abolish religious schools too. But it’s a pointlessly politically expensive distraction when it comes to improving the education system.
The thing I’d like to see happen in Education is less interference, and more listening to teachers and letting them do their job. The idea that Gove, or any other education minister, is better placed to improve our education than someone with twenty years experience in the classroom is just kinda silly.
We also need to make a serious decision about what education is actually for. Are we trying to prepare workers of tomorrow? Prepare people for a life of work? Create well-rounded individuals? Allow people to be all they can be? Instil a basic set of ideas and abilities we think everyone should have into every child? Without a debate on the function of education we will always be at risk of talking at cross purposes.
Stephen Tall
” My plea to the next Secretary of State for Education is to stop tinkering with school structures in a doomed attempt to create the perfect school in Whitehall. Instead, let’s focus on what will really make a difference to the educational outcomes of our children: improving teacher quality, fair funding, and local and professional accountability.”
If you are suggesting that Secretaries of State like Gove haven’t messed around with teacher-training and ‘teacher-quality’ you would be in error, because the previous Labour Government and now Gove have tinkered around with this aswell.
We have seen university teacher-training departments close as Gove makes available more and more ‘Schools Direct’ places. His desperate attempt to undermine university teacher-training because of his obsession with ‘left-wing’ lecturers with progressive ideas, means more students are being trained ‘on the job’. This means children are being used as guinea pigs for these ‘teachers’ and the teachers themselves are not given the time and space to learn the necessary background theory and methodologies of teaching with expert advice.
If the Lib Dems are going down the same route as Gove in making up new ways to train teachers, I would be opposed to this.
Also Stephen, I can’t help but notice that you are arguing for more intervention in teaching itself in advocating quantifiable outcomes of above average teachers to average teachers – obviously you are alluding to exam results as a measurable outcome of success. Labour came up with a ‘value-added’ test but this is not mentioned here. Gove and Laws are more interested in ‘results’ because ‘hard data’ and stats are much easier to deal with in Whitehall.
There is no reference in this article to variable quality of children in front of the teacher – their intelligence, their readiness to learn, their social and economic background. None of this matters? Why is this not accounted for?
Once again, teachers are solely responsible for outcomes. If you have ever taught in a school, you would know that blaming teachers or ‘holding teachers accountable’ solely for results, betrays the fact that politicians conveniently ignore the reality of children’s lives, the lives of parents and families. it also ignores the fact that teachers spend much of their time as pastoral tutors and helping children with their problems. None of this work is even acknowledged by politicians.
There is no mention of vocational education in this article. Not all children want to go to university – a hard fact for Oxbridge-educated political researchers to get their head around. it worries me that even the Lib Dems (judging by this article) are obsessing about outcomes and results, while ignoring those who are vocationally -minded. Also there is no mention of Special Needs children – not all children are academically high achievers, no matter how much input a teacher gives to them – this is the reality!
You mentioned that politicians have taken a greater interest in education because of our need to compete globally. Politicians have now moved into the classroom – they tell teachers what to teach and how to teach, yet have not a clue about what it is like to teach. They ignore the actual teachers, dismissing them as ‘special interests.’
I predict that if the next government tinker and interfere with teaching as much as this government has, the average career of a teacher will decrease from it’s average now of five years, to two or three – it’s becoming impossible to the job and lead a balanced life, because the political expectations are beyond reasonable.
Correction to previous comment: ” it’s becoming impossible to do the job and lead a balanced life, because the political expectations are beyond reasonable.”
“Six-in-10 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds leave school at 16 without the basic qualifications of five GCSEs at grade C or higher, including English and Maths. That isn’t just shaming for a wealthy country like ours, it’s suicide for a country that wants to remain wealthy. Educational inequality here is worse in the UK than in most other OECD countries.”
Here’s a little exercise for you all. Try correlating expenditure per pupil with percentage of pupils achieving five GSCSEs at grade C or higher. When I did it, there was a small negative correlation of around -0.3. Sadly, I can’t find the links to the data, which appeared in The Guardian.
I’m certainly not suggesting that higher spending causes lower attainment or that spending per pupil should be cut, but blind faith that more spending inevitably lifts outcomes is unsupported by the facts. I think that one of the problems we face is a cultural one, outside schools, where families in some cultures often do not value education as much as others. For example, children living in the UK from Indian and Chinese backgrounds outperform those from other groups. How we change cultural attitudes, however, is a much wider question, but it should be a major part of our debate on the future of education.
@ Helen Tedcastle – You seem to have read an awful lot into stuff I haven’t written here. “If you are suggesting…”: I wasn’t. “You are arguing for more intervention in teaching”: I’m not. “Blaming teachers…”: I didn’t.
Quickly on a couple of points… while initial teacher training does matter, yes, my stress was quite deliberately on the importance of continuing professional development for the benefit of teachers already within the profession, not just the ones now entering it. One of the persistent complaints I hear from teachers is (1) lack of time to undertake it, and (2) the poor quality of CPD that’s on offer. We need to deal with both those issues. There wasn’t time to go into specifics though I like a number of the ideas in CentreForum’s “To teach, to learn”: http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/teacher-cpd-web.pdf
Of course the background of the children makes a difference – it’s why I think the emphasis on Pupil Premium funding for disadvantaged children matters. Schools and teachers can’t solve all the problems of educational inequality, but they can make a big difference – and many already are, so we need to learn from what’s happening in the hundreds of schools where pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting the results they need to enable them to get on in life.
Whether young people want to follow vocational or academic routes they will still need to be both literate and numerate. The life chances of those who leave school without basic competency in those areas are sadly all too predictable, which is why it’s right we do focus on those outcomes to give them the best chance of success in whatever they want to do.
@ RC – “Try correlating expenditure per pupil with percentage of pupils achieving five GSCSEs at grade C or higher. When I did it, there was a small negative correlation of around -0.3.”
In general, schools in disadvantaged areas get more funding. In general they also get poorer results. Neither fact is that surprising.
However, you’re certainly right to say “blind faith that more spending inevitably lifts outcomes is unsupported by the facts”. Obviously schools need enough money, but it isn’t enough in itself.
It’s true that white British children are generally lagging pupils from BAME communities. Yet it’s also the case that (eg) children from the same part of Bangladesh do far better in Tower Hamlets than in Bradford. The transformation in London state schools over the past 15 years is truly remarkable.
Successful education needs to be defined and it is not solely about the acquisition of qualifications. I would define education as:
“The transfer of knowledge and skills to the pupil to enable them to successfully use and challenge that knowledge in the outside world.”
It is important to remember the ‘challenge’ part of that as new knowledge is created by the ability to challenge existing knowledge. Rote learning does little to provide such tools.
To enable this process to happen successfully requires three stakeholders: teacher, parents and pupil. When all three are engaged, then education is successful. We can all quote examples where these three are not engaged and we can see the results of that.
Every pupil is unique and requires a unique teaching pattern. The best person to make that decision is a good quality teacher, in conjunction with engaged pupil and parents.
“We cannot, of course, forget the issue of funding. Six-in-10 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds leave school at 16 without the basic qualifications of five GCSEs at grade C or higher, including English and Maths.”
How much impact can the pupil premium actually have? Money may pay for the best teachers, but does it bring the engagement of the pupil or parents? How does money create that engagement? That is the key: empowering children to love school and learning and that comes through parents and peers as well as through the teachers.
So the structures do matter: they need to be flexible to the needs of every child, and from birth onwards. We need a new approach, one that is focussed on maximising the achievement for every child (and not just in academic measures) and one that values education in the eyes of every person.
Stephen,
Like yourself I would just like to see an end to the endless tinkering and education secretary who followed evidence based policies. IMO both Labour and the Tories have treated education as a political tool for self promotion. So maybe steps to devolve power from the education secretary to experts. I have no idea who the transport secretary is but this is mainly because he doesn’t try to design roads and cars. or dictate the driving test,
Abolish Ofsted, sack Michael Gove, stop attacking Student Exam success, restore grants for Universities, remove charitable status and tax breaks for private schools , celebrate comprehensive education, abolish SATS tests ,allow children a real education with less stress and more work experience and links to small and large business. Oh Yes and lets have less privately educated Eton & Westminster school types running the party and the country. (SACK CLEGG)
@ Stephen Tall
Thanks for your response Stephen.
Credit where credit is due to you for this: ” One of the persistent complaints I hear from teachers is (1) lack of time to undertake it, and (2) the poor quality of CPD that’s on offer. We need to deal with both those issues.”
You are right. The quality and quantity of on-going in-service training is variable and is often the first area to be cut when schools and LEAs are trying to make savings. My view is that this is one of the main reasons for teachers’ inability to maintain their standards over time. Unlike other professions, in-service training is talked about as essential but not ring-fenced, so classroom teachers can go for years without opportunities to develop themselves as professionals. This is often due to the fact that supply teachers have to be paid to cover lessons while the teacher is away and this is expensive.
However, it is a scandal really that governments don’t invest in their teachers, especially when so many leave the profession after only a few years.
I still think we are not on the same page regarding initial teacher-training. I believe that teachers should be qualified and trained at HE level – the old-fashioned idea that teaching is a craft that can be learned ‘on the job’ works for some people but is dependent on the quality of the teacher-mentor and the sheer resilience of the trainee.
In some subjects, often less well-resourced and with less specialist teachers than others, it will be difficult to find many departments of sufficiently high quality to train large numbers of trainees. This is due to long-term specialist teacher shortages in these areas eg: modern languages, Geography, RE. This is due to chronic under-funding of places over time and in the case of RE, deliberate cuts of bursaries to trainee-specialists, (by Gove of course).
The only way in my view to raise standards, to support trainees properly and give them the tools for a very demanding career, is to train them as post-graduates.