 |
The UK's Leading Education 'Do-Tank' |
Search |
|
The National Education Trust is an independent charitable foundation dedicated to the promotion and sharing of excellent practice and innovation in education. |
| The Best of Times, the Worst of Times Bill Laar Click here for a print version of this article. There are, at present, two widely diverging perceptions of the state of primary education. There is a claim, on the one hand, for a current golden age of high achievement and development in terms of leadership, teaching and learning, self-regulation and professional competence and, on the other, a system judged to be in thrall to an externally imposed educational regimen, limited in vision, utilitarian in intent and constraining for teachers and pupils alike. This dichotomy, however far fetched, encapsulates concerns that are worth identifying and considering. Let me begin with the golden age judgement to which, personally, I largely subscribe. I do so, increasingly, more as an observer than a participant, and, as they used to say of hurling in the rural Ireland where I grew up, ‘The watcher on the ditch sees only half the game.’ The further one moves from the heart of the matter, the more one tends to be amazed and delighted by what is taking place, in contrast to what one knew before, and, as a result to take insufficient account of present shortcomings. That said, let me set out briefly some of the advances and achievements that justify the most positive view of primary education here and now. Leadership There is substantial evidence from sources such as Ofsted and NCSL that the quality of leadership in primary schools has never been higher and is possibly unmatched internationally. And we are talking not about a simplistic model of institutional leadership, invested in a sole individual and delivered downward, but of dispersed and distributed leadership that provides not merely for accountability but for guidance, instruction, support and mutual enrichment. Accountability A new accountability provides, at its best, for rigorous monitoring and evaluation, in a constructive context that ensures not merely attainment, achievement and progression but a dynamic and creative approach to institutional and individual growth and development. It is this aspect of primary education, possibly more than any other, apart from assessment, that impresses me as the most profound advance during the course of my time observing schools. We gather there is, in influential quarters, a growing belief that the exhaustive body of data now available will soon make formal inspection redundant. I prefer to think that the rigorous and authentic nature of internal school accountability will do so even more effectively. Management I believe that the introduction of LMS with its new freedoms, opportunities and responsibilities eventually bred, released and nurtured enhanced dimensions of managerial confidence and skill in headteachers that led, in turn, to institutions enriched and extended in a diversity of ways. There is prolific material for a doctoral thesis on the developments wrought in schools by headteachers who, freed by LMS, have demonstrated outstanding and creative management of finance, resources and plant. In fanciful moments I sometimes wonder whether the financial calamities that have attended some of our great national institutions in recent years might have been averted had they had applied to them something of the managerial competence and rigour driving most of our primary schools. Pedagogy Teachers have never been more pedagogically assured, more technically accomplished, better informed about the complexities of teaching and learning, nor more committed to preparation and planning - the latter to a degree that sometimes borders on the fanatical and beyond necessity or the call of duty. The factors that contribute to such proficiency include:
Schools have responded remarkably to the formidable expectations of the National Inclusion Policy, linked to the Every Child Matters agenda. In many cases they have done so in adverse and highly challenging circumstances, not always wholly comprehended or adequately acknowledged by external agencies. Workforce Reform I shall confine myself to just one aspect of this major development, the place of teaching/ learning assistants. I had long hoped for such support for teachers, working in the isolation of their classroom and striving to provide for an immense range and diversity of learning need. I was impelled by the conviction that the more informed and sympathetic adults you put in front of children, working collaboratively to common educational practices and programmes, in a shared context, the more likely it would be that the children would make significant progress – or as we should now say – the more likely we are to achieve that most elusive of all aspirations: personalised learning. However, I confess that, when it came, I greeted the massive expansion of the TA/LA force with unease. I feared that circumstances, ever changing so unpredictably and treacherously, as they do with time, might lead to occasions when teachers and para-educators became inter-changeable, a development that could only diminish the quality and status of primary education. Now, due to the vision of school leaders and the steps they are taking to train, develop and deploy this new force, the more schools are significantly enabled and children’s education enriched by the initiative. Here I rest the case for a golden age. I have no doubt that schools could add significantly to my list. I have probably missed, nor fully appreciated, nor even recognised, other developments as significant as those I have highlighted. What I do believe is that primary education has been marked since the onset of the great reforms of the 1980s, by advances that are nothing less than breathtaking, advances that have been brought about by the schools themselves and the teachers who lead and shape them. **** Now to turn to a differing perception, what appears to me, for all I have already said, and to some colleagues at least, to be serious concerns about primary education. An authoritative and highly successful headteacher recently went as far as to predict that the profession would look back a decade hence and wonder incredulously how it could have been deluded (coerced was the term he used) into adopting, wholesale, policies and practices essentially inimical to the genuine education of children, and reductionist in terms of the nature, extent and quality of what is available to them in school. Many, conscious of the immense advances brought about by the reforms of the last two decades, will reject that as alarmist, even extreme. Nevertheless, the concerns and anxieties implicit in the assertion certainly coincide with some of those I am about to outline. They need to be aired, mindful that shared consideration and discussion might well prove them to be illusory or of no great moment or, at least, open to solution. The concerns are these. There is reason to believe the government is increasingly concerned about aspects of secondary education. Their worries, largely based on Ofsted inspection and examination data, relate to the significant proportion of schools deemed to be underachieving, the numbers of pupils finishing their secondary education without any accredited attainment, particularly in English and mathematics, and unacceptably high and continuing levels of truancy. I suggest that, as a consequence, it is probable that government interest, emphasis and commitment will now focus predominantly on the secondary sector and will be reflected in disproportionate funding and resourcing at the expense of primary education. The unrelenting drive to maintain the implementation of the Academy initiative, with the quite prodigal costs involved, is symptomatic of this. And all at a time when the unprecedentedly high levels of public services expenditure of the last decade will almost certainly significantly reduce, and continue to do so, for the foreseeable future. But my concern is less about the matter of funding, critical though it is, than the danger that government, in its absorption with the secondary sector, may have concluded that the whole matter of primary education is satisfactorily resolved, so comprehensively regulated, ordered and secured that it can be safely left. Certainly government continues to point to primary inspection and SATs outcomes as evidence of the success of reforms and initiatives and the massive financial investment that underpinned them. But it is those very areas, designed to provide quality assurance, and their application of them, that most strongly contribute to practitioners’ unease.
- does not match up to claims that, because of its brevity, it is a less harrowing regimen, since, with no indication of when it is likely to occur it tends to loom like a permanent shadow over schools and teachers. Some headteachers feel that the standing of their schools, and indeed their personal careers are irrevocably, and often fatally, decided in the course of the two days, or even the single day, of an inspection. As, it is reported, one Chief Education officer succinctly put it to the Authority’s heads, perhaps in an unguarded moment: ‘You are one hour from the sack!' Is this a view of inspection widely held? If so, then it is hardly likely to be liberating for schools and the education they are attempting to provide.
Is it possible, too, that apart from workload and issues of discipline, the unrelenting pressure of meeting national targets for value-added to the attainment of a specific cohort, apparently determined by the demand to surpass the attainment of a previous, completely different cohort, is a strong contributing factor in the significant haemorrhage of teachers from the profession, within the first five years of their careers? Let me end the concerns with this further focus. A decade ago the Times Educational Supplement celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Plowden report with a special issue which included comments from invited writers about aspects and areas of education that were likely, in their opinion, to be emerging, or developing, causes for concern to which Government would need to pay urgent attention. I wrote then that failure by successive governments, since the end of the war (despite their best intentions and efforts including the making of a great welfare state) to deal with the issue of widespread socio-economic deprivation among sections of the population had created seriously disadvantaged and increasingly defeated and alienated communities, a kind of under-class. I suggested this was a trend that would continue and escalate. That, in turn, would result inevitably in disadvantaged schools, an endangered section, more and more on the edge of being overwhelmed by the educational and social needs of such communities. I had seen schools struggling heroically, and often with remarkable success, to turn the tide. Nevertheless I felt it likely then, that the severity of the challenge and adversity they faced would grow rather than diminish, the problems become more complex and resistant to resolution. I envisaged that, for many embroiled in such circumstances, energy and morale would erode, the recruitment and retention of able and committed staff would become more difficult and a sense of the futility of the struggle would become endemic. I wondered how soon it would be before many schools became as disadvantaged as the areas they served. It will be argued, of course, that evaluation systems are now so sophisticated, and the determination of value-added so refined, that judgement of school performance takes scrupulous account of even the most radical differences, in socio-economic terms, between institutions. I suggest, however that what may not be so confidently measured and accounted for are the repercussions and consequences of matters such as parental and community antipathy, of high pupil mobility and the impact in some cases of unanticipated cohorts of children with major social, emotional and linguistic needs, of endemic pre-school deprivation and perennially impoverished out of school experience and lack of opportunity, of the significantly earlier onset of adolescence for many children of primary age and the sometimes malign influence of aspects of contemporary culture on their values, attitudes and outlook. I am not convinced that we are yet in a position to evaluate the magnitude of the challenges facing schools in such circumstances. Perhaps they may never be fully resolved until schools are able to work as part of a coordinated and comprehensive network of family and child welfare agencies, ideally on shared sites. However, that is no note to finish on. After all, for myself, I subscribe largely to the notion of a golden age. But even then, as always, things remain to be done that can further enrich us and the children we teach. Whatever we seem to do, however great our efforts, the fact is that perhaps a fifth of primary age children are failing in, or being failed by the system. From the following brief list of suggestions we may perhaps draw material for further reflection, debate and action.
Bill Laar has been a teacher, headteacher, local authority chief inspector and observer of primary education for more than five decades. The text here is based on a recent National Education Trust conference speech. Readers may contact him via |
| Phone (44) (0)207 702 0707 |
Follow us on  |
Support NET
|
Join our mailing list |
Buy NET products online |
| Copyright © National Education Trust 2012 The National Education Trust asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this web site. Unless otherwise specified, all material on this website may be used for non-commercial purposes, on condition that the source is acknowledged. The National Education Trust is not responsible for the content of external websites. |
|||