Category: Oecd

A Promised Land

5/12/2023

I don’t listen to talk radio. Not that I doubt the wisdom of my fellow citizens, but I’m not short of advice. Year 7 tell me how to save the planet, year 9 tell me I’m unjust, y11 that GCSEs should be abolished, y12 that I am personally complicit in all wars. Teachers have a view on everything. The local authority tell me what matters in Greenwich and the Department has views on whatever matters to The Party at the time. (Who’d have thought that the rather obscure matter of whether schools are using PSHE materials whose copyright means they can’t share them with parents would be such a cause celebre. What about other textbooks?). Him indoors has had an opinion on literally everything for the last 44 years.

So enough. I don’t listen to Any Questions or Answers and I don’t watch Question Time. Anything that requires viewer voting – off it goes. I’ll leave a room to avoid listening to any media discussion of schooling (that doesn’t involve me). I don’t even watch or listen to myself when I’m on.

However, I was sitting in a cab yesterday and couldn’t avoid LBC. James O’Brien, who I’m happy to read in print, was interviewing Jim Knight about the NEU’s Beyond Ofsted report. I like this Knight, Schools Minister a lifetime ago. I even took out my airpods (Barack Obama reading A Promised Land, if you must know) to follow the chat. Headlines:

Because Ofsted is no longer trusted and significant, change is needed. In a better future, every school will conduct its own nationally-set self-evaluation to report to stakeholders, working with an external school improvement partner (SIP) on an action plan. The SIP would also validate the school’s exam performance reviews. (This isn’t new, but we could do it better).

Inspectors would focus on this process, intervening where it goes wrong. They would not routinely inspect teaching or pupil outcomes but they would be sufficiently skilled to build capacity in school leadership teams. They’d be fully independent and hold government, policies and the effects of policies to account through system-wide thematic inspections. This would include teacher supply. (Bonza scheme).

Safeguarding audits would be conducted annually under the oversight of a different national body. (Ditto)
So, routine inspections should be immediately paused to reset and regain the trust of the profession. A national duty of care is due to teachers so they may develop collaborative learning cultures which generate excellent professional skills and competencies. This should be at the heart of any reform. (Nicely put, Sir)

At the same time, another v interesting report landed from IPPR: Improvement through Empowerment. They start with:

Policymakers in recent decades have pursued a top-down approach to improving public services. inspired by new public management (NPM), which argued that the absence of market forces in public services meant they suffered from weak or misaligned incentives.

These seem to be able to change public services from poor to good enough, but not good enough to great. For example, teachers in OECD countries with excellent education systems get 100 hours of professional development a year. Us? 30 hours, left up to schools, so it tends to the idiosyncratic.

This makes it harder for them to do their job properly and undermines retention – damaging pupils in the process and resulting in unsustainable costs to taxpayer.

They go on to make other, less radical remarks about Ofsted.

Both of the above reports offer simple solutions that cost a bit of money, but if they stem the tide of people leaving teaching or refusing to be Heads, it would be well spent.

I’m musing on ‘weak and misaligned incentives’. I can see that strong and aligned incentives are crucial to production lines but strong alignment to outcomes or Ofsted has skewed education over thirty-odd years. Besides, what are the incentives? Better pay’s only part of the story. Teachers leave because they don’t have time to think and they’re treated like fools. The incentive to being a teacher is deep in the heart. They want to serve children and change the world that way. They want to model a good life and give their charges the chance of reflection, self-motivation and – with luck – prosperity. It’s hard to systematise incentives around that.

I’d hope that Ofsted review and teacher CPD might be on the parties’ agenda as the election trots toward us. They could certainly do it in the time they’d save by decommissioning the banned lists of people who criticise government policy.

I looked out of the window as a visiting football team crosses the yard, looking slightly bemused. All schools are the same but so different. I hope these little chaps had a good experience while being kindly trounced. Later, I’m stopped on the corridor for a minor interrogation as to why I’m retiring. Age mystifies the young. I told them I was 62 but they’d have believed me if I’d said I was 50 or 104. They wanted the name of the new head, and were frankly shocked when I said the job hadn’t been advertised yet. How could such things be left in the air?

Bigger things are left in the air, my dears. Education policy is only one of them.

CR
21.11.23

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Stand up together

7/12/2019

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May I recommend some musical chaps? There’s a folky outfit called The Young ‘Uns who have a great line in singing the zeitgeist. I first encountered their song ‘Benefits Street’ and am pretty au fait with the whole catalogue now. As I write this in the aftermath of Fishmongers’ Hall I’m particularly thinking about ‘Carriage 12’ about the 2015 attack on the Thalys Train 9364 to Paris. One of the main reasons I like them, though, is that they are Teessiders so they sing with my accent. A bit like Steph McGovern crossed with Reeves and Mortimer.

I’m not blessed with the clearest of speech. I stutter when I’m not speaking at volume and it seems that people (by which I mean southerners) find the accent initially hard to assimilate. It’s like flat Geordie or Yorkshire spoken by a Liverpudlian. My grandmother, late of Tyneside, moved to Teesside in 1930 and would accept none of it. She suppressed her native Geordie and sent my mother to elocution lessons to inflate her vowels. Cash which could, frankly, have been put to better use.

My childhood didn’t require me to learn Received Pronunciation and I met few who spoke it. I didn’t have to reflect much on the matter until I went to London and mixed with some posh types. One of those, ironically set to welcome new undergraduates, looked over my head at another second-year and said ‘You know, I can’t understand a word this girl says’. I’d won trophies for debating and reading aloud and have never been backward in coming forward but I didn’t say what was clearly required: ‘I beg your pardon? How rude.’ Still today, I see blank incomprehension wash across the faces of people who expect that someone like me will speak something like them and have to resign themselves to actually listening.

I can place a northeastern accent pretty accurately, for what it’s worth, from beautifully-moderated Northumbrian and exuberant Geordie through light Wearside to the guttural tones of the Boro. Educated, grammatical, precise, accented: clearly comprehensible, music to my ears. I overheard some experienced gents in the staff briefing discussing a common heritage in the dialects of Staffordshire, placing different tones in different towns.

These both are of limited utility in south-east London, which is probably a good thing. While adult accents here are rich and varied, the melting-pot tones of the young when talking to each other are joyously similar. Far from decrying the common estuarine-isation of future generations it rather fills me with hope. Perhaps if we all spoke alike we’d find common cause more easily, another barrier broken down. We couldn’t make crass judgments about class, wealth or character, as if they’re linked, as soon as someone opens their mouth.

Why is this on my mind? The tragedy of Fishmongers’ Hall has been painful in so many ways. People killed while serving others. Political capital being made against the explicit will of a family. Shallow reactions in ludicrous lurid headlines blaming impossible causes. Such events are reported in the way these things are, but I’m also troubled by what might seem an insignificant detail. Both of the principled young people killed have been endlessly described as ‘Cambridge graduates’. So they were, both having done an excellent further degree which helped them in their dream of saving the lost. They were, however, also a Manchester graduate and an Anglia Ruskin graduate - so why the emphasis on Cambridge? Outrage that even people from ancient universities aren’t safe from wickedness? Surprise that such people might find themselves in danger? An attempt unhelpfully to tribalise? Is a Cambridge graduate assumed to be worth more in memory than another? I’m pretty sure Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt didn’t think that.

The new PISA report tells us that ‘life satisfaction’ of 15-year-olds across the UK has fallen faster than in any other country with comparable data over the last three years. Students in the UK were also much less likely to report a ‘sense of meaning in life’ than their peers. The report notes a correlation between life satisfaction and 15-year-olds’ fear of failing is stronger for the UK than the OECD average. In fact, its stronger than almost every other country. One proffered explanation is that UK young people take PISA tests in the build-up to high-stakes GCSE exams. When else could they take them? Almost any point in schooling is now part of a run-up to high-stakes exams.
And so our commodification of the young obliterates their innate value. They worry, they lose hope, they feel their life has little meaning and even in tragic death are described by the educational brand still stamped on them. Jack and Saskia had a vision for a better society, in which a person’s quality might be judged by their ability to change, to learn, to start again and to endure. Anything we put in the way of that, any crass, shallow, populist, elitist, cheap or divisive measurement makes our children miserable and undermines our collective future. Let our national memorial to these two principled people be society based on equality, understanding and hope.

CR 6.12.19

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Vain and vapid

21/6/2019

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One of Jane Austen’s nastier creations is the ghastly Sir Walter Elliott in Persuasion. Vain, vapid, disregarding, flimsy and partial, he wafts about in a cloud of debt preferring his horrible daughter to his good one. At one point early in the book he’s told by his agent that he must retrench and move to Bath because a gentlemen may live cheaply there. Off he goes and devotes his time to his rich relations. Long story.

Retrenchment aptly describes schools and their budgets since 2010. Beginning with austerity (formerly known as public sector cuts) funding has plummeted. Governments since 2010 have tried doggedly to avoid solving the problem.

First, they said there wasn‘t a problem and school leaders should stop going on about it and do their jobs properly.
Second, they said that there well may be a problem, but that because the money was hiding in clumps and not fairly distributed. The National Fair Funding Formula would sort this out so everyone would be happy. Then the NFFF lost it’s Fair and set about redistributing only the money that was already in the system.

Third, they said that there was, actually, literally loads more money in the system so, like, what is the problem, really? The UK Statistics Agency took a dim view of this. In the interest of balance, they were critical of a union counter-narrative called School Cuts which gave crude and scary headline figures slightly detached from the context. They then issued four rebukes to the DfE along the lines of ‘I am sure you share my concerns that instances such as these do not help to promote trust and confidence in official data, and indeed risk undermining them’. Do the sums properly, would you?

Fourth, Lord Agnew put some embarrassed civil servants on the road to go over our budgets with a bottle of champagne promised to any head where they couldn’t find savings. Churchill Pol Roger at £150 or Co-op Les Pionniers at £19.99? I don’t think anybody knows.

As a top-notch strategy for a major public service, guaranteed to bring about the world-class system which politicians apparently desire this is flaky. Schools have had to devote a disproportionate amount of time – and therefore cost – to dealing with the terrible effects of the 8% drop in funding and trying to gather counter-arguments. ASCL cost it at an extra £5.7 billion to deliver basic expectations: £40.2 billion compared to the allocation of £34.5 billion. The Worth Less? campaign has mobilised the reasonable, the parents and the Tory shires.

It is perhaps hopeful therefore, that the next PM will allegedly make school funding a Thing? None of them have looked closely at what heads are saying but all of them are frightened that the ballot box will be impeded by the begging bowls of headteachers. None of them will say: ‘we didn’t care so much about schools, we don’t really care now but I’ll say anything if you PLEASE elect me. And by the way? We’ve spent the money on Brexit, on nothing.’
Notwithstanding, Gove has said he will spend an extra one billion on schools. Javid promises “billions more for education”. Johnson will spend at least £5,000 on every secondary pupil (which wouldn’t help us in London). Even the hapless May is reportedly setting a £27 billion education “spending trap” for whoever follows her. What should they spend it on?

As part of the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), teachers in England (and elsewhere) were asked precisely this: 'thinking about education as a whole, if the budget were to be increased by 5%, how would you rate the importance of the following spending priorities?’

The answers are clear.

Recruit more support staff to reduce teachers’ administrative loads
Recruit more teachers to reduce class sizes

Teachers in England want these more than they want a pay rise. Politicians, it seems, will say anything to get a clap. I’m not hopeful but always ready to unlock the coffers and await the coinage.

I’m surrounded by adolescents all of whose brains are being rewired as they go about. It means that they take risks, push boundaries and – some of them – like the PM contenders, will say anything to get out of trouble. I was showing a Dignitary around this week when we chanced upon an altercation in which intemperate language was used by a youth. I was the net winner in this tussle, one phone the richer as I whisked off to a calmer spot. The youth had to be confined to (our in-house) barracks and as part of the punishment, apologise honestly to me. This he did. It might not stick, but it was properly done.

Adults can do it too. A parent was agitated and spoke with asperity. Time elapsed and an apology appeared: time to think, heat of the moment, sorry. Can we pick up where we were before I lost it?

A group of 18-year-olds, in sight of the final A levels, gather to chat on the yard. Eight years of their education has been sacrificed to shallow, doctrinaire, fearful and punitive spending cuts. Above them a small child pelts along the empty bridge at full throttle, full of energy and on a mission. Perhaps he’ll be luckier.

Sir Walter was a foolish spendthrift and the capable Anne was rescued from his stupidity by the Austen’s best hero, Captain Wentworth. He’s described as having ‘spirit and brilliance but no fine friends to recommend him’ much like the state schools of the nation. We don’t need a hero to rescue us, but we need honesty, openness, truth, trust, justice, wisdom, service and an apology. How dare they use the children as a bargaining token in their vain and vapid competition?

CR
19.6.19

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Cultural Revolution

1/3/2015

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Bob and Roberta Smith, Portrait of Michael Gove, 2013

Genuinely, I like politicians and take my hat off to those who throw themselves into public service. Sure, there’s a risk of self-aggrandisement, but that’s true of any job requiring a bit of performance. You should meet some headteachers. You won’t be surprised to know that this one is a Radio 4 listener who has her horizons widened by arts programming.

So, knee-deep in half term’s laundry (my own, you understand, I don’t take in washing for the community) I heard young Miliband explaining his aim to beef up arts, culture and creativity, a response to the Warwick Report demonstrating how creative and cultural opportunities for young people have vanished from schools. He cursed Gove and all Goveites and set out on a mission “to guarantee every young person, from whatever background, access to the arts and culture: a universal entitlement to a creative education for every child”. OFSTED bloodhounds will seek it out.

Hmm, I said to the socks. In 2011 Darren Henley (Classic FM and the Arts Council) produced the excellent Cultural Education in England for the DfE and DCMS. It made 24 recommendations, 15 directly involving schools. So what happened to culture in school?

Gove’s Ebacc was too small. It didn’t include an arts or practical subject. I assume this was so it wouldn’t look like the National Curriculum, which enshrined an entitlement to the broad and balanced curriculum including the arts. So, this happened. The requirements of the NC were lifted, pressures to increase results every year increased, schools focused time and money on English and maths, undervalued arts withered and died. No one banned arts, but everything else was compulsory. Labour and Coalition trussed up schools in the lunatic knitting of cash flow and the performance tables.

Arts decline easily. Despite our pre-eminence as a creative nation, we leave culture to the same divisive market forces as everything else. We don’t prioritise access to the arts in school because Secretaries of State say things like ‘I want England to be top five PISA for English and maths by 2020’. They don’t realise that if state schools have to increase time and funding for maths and English then other things go and the arts deficit isn’t made up by children going to the opera with their parents.

As I remarked to the tea towels, politicians misunderstand the purpose of education and are diverted by falsehoods. Here are 7 that were comprehensively debunked by the OECD earlier this month.

Disadvantaged pupils always do badly in school: no, successful systems mitigate social inequalities.
Immigrants lower results: no, not anywhere.
It’s all about money: no, there is no correlation.
Smaller class sizes raise standards: no, teacher quality and workload reduction raise standards.
Comprehensive systems are fair but you need academic selection for higher results: no, there is no tracking, streaming or grade repetition in top performing systems.
The digital world needs new subjects and a wider curriculum: no, in top systems the curriculum is rigorous, with subjects taught well and in great depth.
Success is about being born talented: no, all children can achieve at very high levels. Top systems "level up" so that all students meet standards formerly expected only from elite students.

So if the current SoS wants to be top 5 she’s going to have to look coolly at some vote-losing issues:

Stop describing poor families as a drain on the system
Stop talking rubbish about immigration
Stop fiddling with school funding
Sort out teacher recruitment and workload
Value comprehensive schools
Stop adding things to the curriculum
Believe that all children can learn

A more equal society raises standards and a less equal one depresses them. Schools should enable children to build a better future and wedge the doors open to their cultural birthright, starting with the arts. Systematically open up the palaces of privilege and high culture. Dial down the exclusive rhetoric on STEM and the economic functionality of education, talk up the balance of things that help children fly. Architects need artistry, maths and music go hand in hand, science needs philosophy, drama explains everything and what is life without poetry?

At Tallis every week is culture week but children still need persuading that this is theirs too. So this week we've hosted a world famous violinist, 100 year 8s have made a film, year 9 premiered a National Theatre competition performance, sixth form artists are in Berlin, we hosted hundreds of little dancers from primary schools yesterday and trained colleagues from a nearby PRU. We value equality and justice and culture opens doors. Education to understand the world and change it for the better.

CR

26.2.15

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

A Promised Land

Stand up together

Vain and vapid

Cultural Revolution

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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