Counterblast
Is Every Child Mattering?
Sylvia McNamara
Click here for a print version of this article.
The term Every Child Matters is seductive. No one surely can resist agreeing. Yes, we all think that
every child matters, but what are the implications of this?
The emotional and social cost of the way we do things now
There is an emotional and social cost to the way we do things at the moment for children. We know
that there are very vulnerable children who do badly at school: Looked After Children, children with
learning disabilities, African Caribbean boys. These groups of youngsters not only do not achieve
well academically and are more likely to be excluded, but they fare even worse after school. We also
know that failing such children is expensive for society, both during their teenage years but especially
in adulthood. Those who fail at school are more likely to commit crimes and end up in reform
institutions or prison.
In addition, there is an emotional and social cost for society. 'Crime and Grime' are the two aspects
of living in cities that citizens cite over and again in local surveys as contributing to their feelings of
being unsafe, and therefore unhappy with what they regard as legitimate local and national
government services. The elderly, in particular, feel very threatened by the anti-social behaviour of
those who have not succeeded in education and who start to demonstrate their frustration through
their noisy or even threatening street behaviour. If we were able to change the outcomes for the most
vulnerable children we would also change the outcomes for other citizens.
We know that interventions after the event are expensive, that intervening at a young age, for
example with pre-school, nursery and reception age children, is less costly than intervening with
teenagers. Yet funding in the education system is clearly stacked in favour of post-16 pupils, with an
ever diminishing amount available as the children get younger. In order to ensure that intervention is
both timely and cost-effective, are we really prepared to change our funding systems to children in
schools so that the younger receive more?
Taking risks to do things differently
Some interventions seem to be remarkably successful. In Birmingham recently I was privileged to
attend the final live performance of 'Romeo and Juliet' which was the culmination of the eighteen
month project titled Ballet Hoo!
The performance grew out of a project which has allowed young people to make transformations in
their lives, attitudes and skills through personal development and dance. Phase One of the project
involved working with 200 young people, who were identified as having talent in dance or expressed
a desire to be taught dance. A therapeutic organisation and one hundred life coaches were available
to provide support. This phase culminated in an initial performance. Phase Two involved some 80
young people who were part of the final performance of 'Romeo and Juliet'.
The project cost over a million pounds and arose from a partnership of Youth at Risk, Channel Four's
Diverse Productions, Birmingham Royal Ballet and the local authorities of Birmingham, Dudley,
Wolverhampton and Sandwell.
The key to the success of this project seemed to be the combination of:
- the real life performance and the work with professionals
- the 'talking therapy' which tried to help young people address the root causes of their
difficulties, take responsibility for their behaviour, and move on
- the life coaches who could work on a day to day basis to support the young people to put
these changes in place.
The performance with its requisite discipline, commitment and self- organisation demonstrated
palpably how these young people did indeed change their lives and begin to realise their potential.
The continuing stories of these young people show that the changes have led to work, further
training, and higher education courses that before would never have been entertained.
In Birmingham we have speculated about the 'savings' that investment in such a project for our 2,050
Looked After Children and our 680 young people in alternative education could bring about. It is not
only cost effective in terms of the here and now, but also in the long term. When we succeed in
turning around a young person's life so that they no longer fight against the community in which they
live, but rather make a positive contribution to that community and develop a sense of economic well
being, we are more or less ensuring that the next generation is less vulnerable and more confidently
creative too.
Management of change: the big people agenda
Decisions to redirect resources in this way seem high risk at the time. We have to find additional
resources to fund the new project, and continue with the old way of doing things until the new way
proves itself to be successful over a discernable period. The impact of such decisions is twofold.
One, the more obvious, is ensuring a better set of outcomes for a young person or group of young
people. The second is, inevitably, that a group of adults who are employed currently to work with
young people in a particular way (in a special school or a special unit, or in an additional resources
base) will need to work in a different way, possibly in a different setting, and possibly with fewer of
them. This implies that this group of adults needs to include a wider range of experiences and skills:
life coaches, artists, therapists for example.
It is this aspect of the management of change that seems to be most difficult and the aspect that has
received very little publicity. To do things differently is a 'big people' agenda as well as a 'little
people' agenda. Managing adults through change which requires them to do things differently is
exhausting and challenging. This may mean that some adults - headteachers, senior leaders in
schools, care workers - will retreat from change and stay with the way they have always done things.
There is, after all, enough work and exhaustion in doing things the same way, without consciously
and overtly trying to do things differently and thus inviting yet more personal challenge.
A third consequence of redirecting resources is likely to result in less investment for those who are
currently doing relatively well in the school system. This could well create opposition from the young
people, their parents, and some school leaders unless we also change the way that this group can
better access opportunities and routes for learning. There are good reasons to explore this option.
Transforming education
Birmingham is embarking on a whole-scale review of the curriculum, both the curriculum offered and
the way youngsters are taught, to support young people to access learning in ways which best meet
their needs. There are some key national changes in secondary education that we are using as
levers to bring about change.
One involves the introduction of the new specialised Diplomas beginning in 2008. This demands a
level of specialism by secondary schools, and a collaboration between schools on an unprecedented
scale to ensure that the range of high quality specialist provision is available to all. The proposed
structure of the Diplomas also allows for the possibility of a different approach to timetabling and
curriculum modelling. Whole-day placements in other settings for those who opt for Specialised
Diplomas will have an impact on the timetabling of the core subjects for all pupils.
Another lever for change is the Academies programme. In Birmingham, we are to develop seven
Academies to work with their six Area Networks. These networks are groups of schools making up
the 76 secondary schools across the city. Each Birmingham Academy will have a business
organisation as its main sponsor linked to one of the commercial growth sectors. In this way, each
Academy will develop a different specialism. This will allow a more strategically managed relationship
between businesses, other organisations and schools than currently exists.
The transformation that headteachers of secondary schools and Birmingham businesses want to see
is that more 'real-life' problem solving experiences are effectively included as essential elements of
the core curriculum. This could mean a cohort of students taking responsibility for the production of a
local journal as part of their English course, or the design of a media facility for the community for
their maths GCSE work.
We know from examples of these close links between curriculum and real-life work in the USA and
Australia that there can be significant improvements in attendance, perseverance and commitment of
the young people. All young people gain these attributes, including the most vulnerable. These are
also the very attributes employers seek.
Additionally, these closer strategic links with local businesses could lead to more work experience
and work-based learning on school sites. This would mean that young people would gain a greater
awareness of what is possible in the world of work. Conversations with young people indicate that
this is necessary. Among the biggest employers in Birmingham are the Healthcare Trusts. Most
young people still think this means doctors and nurses whereas in fact hospitals are like small towns
requiring helicopter pilots, florists, accountants, construction workers, chefs, and personnel workers.
We know that once young people realise what is possible in the world of work and, through work
experiences, decide on a career, they become more motivated to achieve.
When Lady Macmillan came on stage at the end of Ballet Hoo!, she spoke movingly and powerfully of
the fact that the young people, through the work that resulted in their performance, had developed
the skills and attributes of discipline and commitment. With these skills they could do, and succeed
in, virtually anything they wanted and that no-one could take these skills away from them. The
audience erupted. Family and friends of the young people knew this to be true.
Working collaboratively
This close work with the business sector or arts organisations brings with it
- increased awareness of the world of work
- the development of school specialisms
- real-life problem solving.
All this could be brought into the primary setting.
In addition, it may be advantageous to primary age pupils to spend some time in other settings:
residential experiences with other schools and work experiences in other schools. In this way,
primary schools could develop specialisms that all children in their area could benefit from. In
Birmingham, the concept of 'extended schools' is typically groups of five to six schools which form the
basis of the childcare offer in that locality. As part of our Primary Pathfinder initiative for capital
funding, we shall be exploring ways in which curriculum specialisms - design, music, sports,
languages - can be developed in the extended schools cluster, and pilot ways in which young people
can access these. This includes:
- teachers moving from school to school
- video conferencing
- pod casting
- pupil exchange
- timetabled events for pupils to move to the specialist school.
Traditionally, moving from place to place has been seen as a negative experience for pupils of all
ages, and most headteachers have sought to find solutions to avoid this travel 'problem'. Turning
travel itself into an experience that contributes to independence and self-directed learning could be a
more positive approach. Changing location, experiencing different settings for learning, and working
within a variety of community contexts are potential gains for all young people in the emerging Every
Child Matters agenda.
The ethos of the school has been seen as a hallmark of an effective school, but something that is
unique to one school can be susceptible to erosion if the children start to move from school to
school. The next step to ensure that Every Child Matters becomes a reality for all learners could be
for schools in a cluster to work together to establish common rights and responsibilities. These would
be taught to all children in the individual schools, and then become the expected norm as behaviours
from all the children, regardless of the physical setting, so that there are shared, explicit aspects of
ethos that everyone, adults included, adhere to.
Clearly, collaboration between schools - rather than competition - is needed for young people to
benefit from the group of local schools in their area. In Birmingham, high levels of collaboration and
collegiality have been developed between groups of primary schools and groups of secondary
schools. However, in furthering this collaborative approach we are not helped by the government's
current line on admissions and parental preferences: less popular schools to expand and failing
schools to close. In Birmingham we have taken the view that for every child to matter there needs to
be:
- a primary school in every community, no matter how small that makes its school; the sharing
of specialisms to be central to the agreed policy of supporting small schools
- a secondary school in the neighbourhood which is so good that parents would prefer to send
their children to that school.
Therefore our approach to secondary schools with challenges has been to help all schools in the
network to collaborate to raise the standard in the 'below floor target' school.
We have 76 secondary schools in Birmingham. We had 30 schools below the 30% GCSE floor target
five years ago. This year, we had no school below the 25% floor target and only three schools below
the 30% floor target. The effect of this is that parents are starting to prefer their community school
and we are not closing any mainstream secondary schools.
Changing universal services
This approach to transformation is about changing universal services. In Birmingham, we are using
another driver to bring about this change: the capital funding for schools. There are three additional
sources of funding for buildings at the moment:
- BSF( Building School for the Future) which is for secondary schools
- Academies programme, also for secondary schools
- Primary Capital Pot, for primary schools.
These funded projects provide further opportunities for us all to reflect on the needs of young people
over the next two decades and the provision of learning opportunities which will be needed to support
them. We have instigated workshops and discussions with head teachers, deputy head teachers,
governors, pupils, school staffs about the needs of young people for the future. If we were to carry
out the biggest intervention of all, a reformed school curriculum, a learning environment in the
universal services setting which enabled 80-90% of the total pupil population to gain a level two
qualification either on leaving school or sometime later, there would be far less need to focus solely
upon the targeted and specialist schools we currently require.
Let me return at this point to Ballet Hoo! As I have already mentioned, Ballet Hoo! relied on three
components that could provide a model for this reformed curriculum and learning environment:
- the real-life nature of the performance with expert professionals who could teach and coach
the young people into developing the skills they needed, building on and nurturing the talent
they already had
- the proliferation of life coaches
- the therapeutic expertise of Youth at Risk.
In the years ahead, universal services could work with targeted and specialist services to provide
precisely this mix of:
- young adults who could be developed into life coaches, including volunteers from businesses
and organisations
- specialised therapists.
Head teachers are already crying out for more help from community and mental health services, quite
rightly diagnosing the needs of some young people within schools as being that requiring support for
mental health issues. There is also a realisation within the Health Service that 'talking therapies' are
not only more effective but also cost effective for so many of those in the system who are currently
receiving drug therapy.
There needs to be a sufficiently high degree of partnership work that enables young people of all
ages to stay in an environment that challenges and builds self discipline and commitment, whilst at
the same time providing support to confront underlying issues and draw on the structured support of
peers to develop resilience. From the Ballet Hoo! experience, this is evidently not just an effective
way forward for young people of all ages, it is also a realistic way of achieving the transition from
universal, targeted, specialist services separation to a more blended universal service, supported by
specialists. This has to be the ideal to aim for. Any specialist or targeted service that remains
separate runs the risk that the young person thinks she or he is different, not normal, and develops
low self worth or learned helplessness.
These life coaches and therapists could in turn be the young people themselves. What if we
developed a stream of assistant lunchtime supervisors, assistant teaching assistants, assistant
learning mentors? We know from the research on peer mentoring how much young people gain from
helping others in such situations. They grow mentally, emotionally and socially, they increase in self
esteem and locus of control, becoming more mature, reliable and confidant.
Changing the adult role
The real challenge here again is with the adults. To realise such visions, a change needs to happen
in the relationship between teachers and pupils. It needs to shift from 'parent to child' to 'adult to
adult'. As long as we expect young people to behave badly and unreliably, to need adults to police
them, then they will behave accordingly. However, if we
- have high expectations of young people
- clearly share with them the criteria for success, which is what assessment for learning is
about
- create real-life problem solving in high responsibility, real consequences situations
then the young people are much more likely to behave in a proactive and responsible way.
This does mean moving away from the current situation of many classrooms where the delineation of
power, authority and responsibility is very clear and is in reality with the adults. In this situation, for
young people to take the initiative is not easy.
This shift in the relationship between pupils and teachers whereby pupils are empowered, trusted and
given more responsibility is not just a challenge for teachers. If every child is really going to matter
and universal services are to become more personalised, then young people of all ages need to gain
access to the therapeutic and mentoring support they need. This must mean that more adults need to
work alongside young people in the universal setting rather than in a specialist setting. Work with
other partners – health, voluntary sector, police - needs to be so strong that real collaborative work
alongside the youngster can take place. Currently, this is rare in Birmingham and not significantly in
evidence in other parts of the country.
Most partnership work takes place in specialist settings not universal mainstream settings. So again
we are back to the issue of adults changing their practice and, sometimes for the first time, effectively
co-operating with other professions and players.
Our experience in Birmingham is that radical shifts in curriculum models which build in partnership
working from the outset - such as the very successful Creative Partnerships - mean that pupils are
more likely to be motivated to learn than they would be with a merely 'bolt-on' approach. Nowhere is
this clearer than in the area of special needs. The best practice in Birmingham classrooms is when it
is difficult to know who are the teachers and who are the learning assistants, because they are all
working effectively alongside children. The least good practice is when a teacher is clearly in charge,
usually standing by or at the front of the class, and the assistants are standing in a huddle looking for
an opportunity to talk to each other. The former is a strategic collaborative approach to planning; the
latter is the bolt on approach.
Every child is mattering
In the meantime, before such a vision is actually implemented there is clearly a need for:
- support for individuals pupils - peer mentoring
- fully effective school councils
- community mental health services
- support and challenge for those who bully or coerce at all levels
- increased work on emotional intelligence for schools, pupils, and parents
- support for effective parenting and parents' relationships with schools.
Ultimately the success of Every Child Matters, ensuring that every child is mattering, depends on the
ability of adults to develop and create new ways of working so that young people are supported to
become ever more independent in their understanding of themselves, others and what is required of
each of them in order to attain, achieve and succeed.
|
