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Shaping Ideas.... Shaping Lives
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:
- subject content – skills, concepts and knowledge – has been identified
and codified to an extent that provides a secure framework for
progression and continuity in pupils’ learning
- the obvious corollary of a subject base, where all possibilities and options
are mapped, is greatly enhanced knowledge, insight and certainty on the
part of the teacher
- a common shared vocabulary about teaching, learning and the curriculum
at large, an open book shared by all teachers
- the mastery and application of sophisticated models of formative
assessment at the heart of the teaching and learning process, making
pupils active partners in their own cognitive development
- the readiness of teachers to make themselves open to and learn from
regular professional evaluation
- the creative use of new technology
- workforce reform that has provided non-contact opportunity for
professional study, reflection and planning, together with enhanced
classroom support.
- continuing and progressive professional development
- the opportunity and requirement for all staff to be part of institutional
aspirations and targets.
Inclusion
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.
- An inspection system so brief and truncated, so predicated on and
predetermined by data, and so largely and narrowly focused on a
core curriculum, confined in effect to literacy and numeracy, that it
cannot take account of the real value and worth of schools and the
true nature of their achievement. It is felt by many that, by its very
nature, the current inspection system:
- conveys an unequivocal message that a broad curriculum is of less
importance than one, however circumscribed, that is more likely to
achieve desired political targets.
- 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.
- Schools have long made assessment, summative and formative,
central to children’s attainment and progress. They regard it as
integral to effective teaching and learning and are unequivocally
committed to it.
But SATs, and the league tables inextricably bound up with them, are
another matter. Many practitioners believe that their emphasis on narrow
outcomes:
- leads to a diminished, even impoverished curriculum, and thereby
to the particular disadvantage of socially and economically less
fortunate children
- obscures and misrepresents the true value of schools
- places undue pressure on children, is antipathetic to their
confidence, self-esteem and development, and runs counter to
the spirit and intentions of Every Child Matters
- represents a zeitgeist, a climate that may be a root cause of the
reluctance of teachers, trained, qualified, equipped and eligible
for headship, as they are, to assume the responsibility.
If that is so, let us be clear about the implications: we are simply running
out of headteachers. In the not too distant future there will not be enough
to manage our primary schools. All the talk in the world, however
plausible and enticing, about different forms of federated leadership
cannot disguise the gravity of that situation.
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.
- Foster the development of networks of 6-8 schools, working
collaboratively about a secondary partner. Involve an institute or a
college of education in the partnership. Such a process would
create, among much else, enhanced opportunity for teachers to
be CPD architects and providers, and be a natural framework for
the realisation of truly effective transition at 11+.
- Establish routines whereby schools inspect and evaluate over
periods of time, aspects of each other’s work, practice and
systems. Such a process, again, would valuably enhance
teachers’ professional development, contribute to the amassing of
substantial and valuable evidence, lead to an advisory input
absent from conventional Ofsted inspections, and do much to
minimise the trauma of one-off inspection.
- Pin your faith and base your practice on a broad, worthwhile
curriculum, not merely to provide for children’s rights and
entitlement but to demonstrate to external investigation its crucial
impact on attainment in literacy and numeracy.
- Require of Ofsted that adequate time is allocated to the evaluation
of children’s written work across the curriculum over extended
periods of time. Such work represents the most vital and
substantial evidence of children’s learning and attainment, of their
developing metacognition, of the true value added to their
attainment, of continuity and progression in their learning, of
teachers’ informed and sensitive formative assessment and
creative target setting.
- Vitally, using every resource available, ensure that, in terms of
reading, children can ‘crack the code’ by Year 5. Children who do
not feel they are readers by that stage are in high danger of losing
their way as learners, with major repercussions for schools as a
whole. As part of this process encourage headteacher and
teacher associations to prevail upon government to review their
present prescribed practice on the teaching of writing. It is my
opinion that it is misguided in important respects, its expectations
about attainment at particular stages misplaced, and its apparent
perception of reading and writing as similar processes mistaken
and unhelpful. Present expectations and demands in relation to it
may well be proving more an impediment than an impetus to the
development of literacy.
- Put narrative at the heart of the teaching of English. Establish
policy and resources that provide a minimum of twenty minutes a
day for the provision of story for children from the moment they
enter, to their leaving school.
- Develop and enhance teachers’ proficiency in the teaching of
English as an additional language.
- Persevere in the face of any external pressure for minimalisation,
to produce SEFs that truly represent and convey the whole rich
diversity of your school.
- Above all let us concentrate all our expertise, intelligence and
experience on the matter of perennial underachievement, of too
low standards of attainment and achievement on the part of
significant cohorts of children. A classic example here is our
failure, for well over half a century, to teach all our children to
read.
Teachers have transformed schools for the better in countless marvellous
ways. Primary schools are probably the only institutions left where children
can be assured of being unfailingly cherished in the best sense. But while a
sizeable proportion of the children who are educated within them continues
to fall below reasonable and acceptable academic standards, then perhaps
we must be content for a time with being ‘almost a golden age.’
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 office@nationaleducationtrust.net
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