Category: Statistics

‘The Forgotten: how white working class pupils have been let down, and how to change it’ HC85

26/6/2021

Quite a week, then. Having worked us into a frenzy over Teacher Assessed Grades, everyone submitted them on the 18th then mopped themselves down ready for the next excitement, samples of evidence to go to the board. The message promised on Monday (21st) with a 48-hour turnaround uploading time arrived at about 2200 but with the same window as if it had arrived 14 hours earlier. We don’t think so, said the nation’s Deputy Heads. Shall we call it Thursday morning?. ‘Oh, sorry, didn’t think, yes’. The exam boards have been writing to us about this since Trump was in the White House. They had one job: send us a request on time. Ah well.

I’ve worked with some unbelievably fussy people in my time. People who straighten pictures or match their hair bobble to their underwear (I’m told), people who calculate the time lag developing between school clocks and the BBC and tell the Head exactly how many seconds need finding; statisticians in their upstairs cupboards for whom a progress prediction to three decimal places is evidence of sloppy thinking. You’d imagine exam boards have loads of those folks, but where are they? Locked in a drawer? Messages don’t send themselves. They have to be primed and fired, like those in the Education Select Committee Report published this week.
In the interests of balance, I’ll tell you what’s good about it first.

The giant problem of the underachievement of poor white children and blighted generations in endemically disadvantaged places certainly needs close attention.
Teachers have not been blamed entirely, which is a novelty: poverty, alienation, isolation and disempowerment are all mentioned.
It is good to see a tidy focus on early years and careers.
The report’s recurring emphasis on the need for live deprivation statistics accurate to neighbourhood level so they can be used to target particular needs is long overdue.
There is a knockabout routine involving pointy questions on the curriculum and the Minister of State’s rambly answers which would be amusing if it weren’t depressing.

However,

This government has been in power for 11 years and needs to take responsibility for the prevailing conditions. Austerity is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon, like cold weather at the Summer Solstice.
The teacher supply nightmare is unaddressed. A pandemic bounce won’t sustain us for long.
The extremely successful New Labour Sure Start early years intervention didn’t close itself. If you dig something out, do you expect the wound to heal over or fester?
If a government strips the Office of National Statistics, argues with every release and generalises inaccurately about big datasets rather than neighbourhood information, the stats are compromised. Go figure.
Curriculum matters. An untargeted focus on academic learning brings an EBacc-heavy curriculum that doesn’t engage children who need a different way into school success. Also, only 37% of poor white children get a grade 4 in English or Maths. The minister says: we need more time to check that everyone’s doing it right, teaching phonics in the one true way, only using approved maths methods. The report says: 25% EBacc isn’t much to show for eleven years. This curriculum drains all the life out of learning unless you happen to love writing and exams above all things. Schools are too timid to broaden the subjects offered in case their progress score doesn’t stack up: it is assumed this is the way of things.

The report covers the ground. Until this point, it’s probably better than nothing. Some feet are held to a warm-ish flame. But all documents are products of their time and I don’t suppose this one could get to the photocopier without being checked for culture-war dog-whistles. In a document of 154 paragraphs, 8 are about ‘White Privilege’, 6% of the total. Why?

The report argues that any school talking about white privilege has been duped by shady academics into divisive (‘pernicious’) thinking that is meaningless to most white people, especially the most disadvantaged. This hides the level of disadvantage they are suffering from the poor white people themselves. Schools should stop talking about race and focus on disadvantage.

What? I was born in Middlesbrough and I’ve worked in Sunderland, Hartlepool and on the outer estates and former mining towns of the Midlands. Disadvantage is not in short supply: there is plenty to go around. Identifying disadvantage in one group does not take suffering away from another and restricting disadvantage, as if only a few people deserve it, is strange thinking.

The National Curriculum starts with these words:

Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which:
• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

Given the state of the world, doesn’t this include talking about racism? And gender, democracy, economics and the climate emergency?

It cannot possibly be the case that the DfE want to quash critical thinking in schools. Creativity and argumentativeness are pretty fundamental British values as well as tolerance, respect, democracy and the rule of law. Individual liberty is one of those values: surely that includes the freedom to criticise, discuss, hypothesise, understand and think?

Its second lunch and year 9 are charging about like five-year olds, temporarily oblivious to the divisions being sown amongst them while year 7 participants in the Peace Game are staring it in the face. This report seems to suggest that if we just stop talking about racism, the poorest in the country will do much better. With respect, Mr Halfon, if that were true we wouldn’t be in this mess.

CR
25.6.21

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Go to the window

23/11/2019

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I often tell you that I’m looking out of the window. I wouldn’t want you to think that’s all I did, but my window – as is befitting – is a particularly interesting one with much to see. It’s sometimes so interesting that I have to intervene. On Wednesday I looked up and saw a small person sitting on a bench at A Time Not Authorised for Sitting Outside. Fortunately a teacher much more experienced with the older sort skidded to a halt and parked himself. I watched their deep conversation during which it transpired that she’d taken being ‘sent out’ literally. Children in the northeast used always to describe being sent out as being ‘flung out’, conjuring an image of centrifugal force, but even that didn’t extend to leaving the building.

You never know what they don’t know. We discovered some 16-year-olds yesterday who’d never played a board game, had no idea of the conventions, didn’t know any card games. They were offered this chance as part of the Tallis Choices Community Day. Younger year groups had time on sustainability, relationships, violence, drugs and careers, but year 11 get a bit of support in how to make the right choices in a year full of exams. This included what to do to relax, on the grounds that many of them are a bit anxious, and mocks start in a fortnight. Yoga, team games, board games, relaxation, meditation and a bit of optional crochet.

But you never know how they see themselves. One chap who’d opted for the crochet fetched up in XFN Study Hall (expectations, effort, engagement) with it later and calmly sat down to while away an hour with the wool. XFN isn’t optional and it’s only for those who’re strangers to the flashcard. You don’t have time to crochet quotations from An Inspector Calls even in 1 hour 45 exam, so that little bit of creativity had to be suppressed. Kindly. There are places to relax and there are places to work.

And places where sitting zipped into your puffa with your bag on your back ready to spring is a little unnerving. Year 12 were debating all day and I muscled in to judge the final. The chair was inexperienced and keen to learn, but didn’t look very relaxed and also had to be warned about applauding one side more than the other. Be more Bercow, I advised. On the way in I followed some people so tall I couldn’t see their heads, boys whom the gutter press would characterise as arrogant yobboes, clinging to one another in case they have to articulate an unprepared thought. ‘I’m going to sit next to you. I can’t speak out loud even if I’m asked’. Mind, off-the cuff may make more sense than another who confidently told me ‘you can catch death from meningitis’.

Either of which were preferable to year 11 on healthy eating. How was it? ‘It’s all about the poo, Miss. You’ve got to get it just right.’ Thank you, indeed it is. Oh look, there’s someone I can talk to about the weather.

Or politics! Which brings me neatly to heads’ priorities for school funding which I’d like to share with you in the necessary purdah-imperative spirit of impartiality, having taken my puffa off.

An adequately-funded National Funding Formula for all schools
Proper funding for SEND and High Needs provision which is in crisis
Adequate post-16 per pupil funding rising from £4000 to £4760, not £4188 as planned
Funding for social care, policing, counselling, behaviour support and all the other unfunded extras now expected and required of schools

A published 10 Year funding plan as recommended by the Education Select Committee
Clarity about future costs and future revenue streams
Salary increases fully funded by new money.
An independently verified benchmarking tool for school funding
Independent statistical analysis so the system doesn’t have to rely on the IFS and EPI for accurate and unvarnished funding analysis. (On this last, government have referred to a headline investment of £14 billion into schools and the UK Statistics Agency riposted “There is, however, a risk that the figures could mislead: for example, people who read no further might expect that the headline figure of £14 billion refers to an annual increase. We therefore encourage the Department and Ministers to continue to provide appropriate context when making statements on school funding.”

Does this sound unreasonable? I don’t think so. If we really cared about children we’d have 10-year funding plans which couldn’t be unpicked by governments. Children’s futures are too important to leave to politicians.

I discovered a brilliant poem two weeks ago, Anne Carson on Troy. It ends

Morning arrives. Troy is still there. You hear from below the clatter of everyone putting on their armour. You go to the window.

My window shows me a community training and arming its young for honourable, truthful and kind citizenship in a sustainable democracy. When I go to that window I’m full of hope: when I look the other way out into the world the clatter is there, but the armour is all wrong.

CR
22.11.19

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Tell us the truth

23/9/2019

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Week three and some small girls accost me with a legitimate grievance. They offer documentation in support. ‘Miss, it says in the uniform list in the planner that you can’t wear false eyelashes or nails, but we’ve seen loads of people wearing them.’ They’re right on all counts. I tell them I’ll do better in future. Revision required. Truth to power, bang to rights.

Truth matters. HM Government has been reprimanded in the past by the Office of National Statistics for telling untruths about school funding. Because of this track record of mendacity the recent funding undertakings have been met with moderate enthusiasm by Heads. So, today, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a second annual report on education spending in England, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. I only quote the bits that affect children in our age group, but it is worth a read.

Spending by local authorities on services for children and young people is increasingly focused on mandatory elements and responses to crises. Spending on children looked after by the state is up nearly 20% since 2010 and spending on children’s social care is up 9%. However, spending on preventative services has been cut significantly. Spending on Sure Start is down 62% and spending on services for young people is down 65%.

Extra funding announced in the spending round effectively reverses past cuts to school spending per pupil [but that’s all it does].

Total per-pupil spending on schools in England has fallen by about 8% in real terms since 2009–10. This is largely driven by a 57% cut in spending per pupil on services provided by local authorities and a cut of more than 20% in sixth-form funding per pupil.
Funding per pupil in primary and secondary schools fell by 5% in real terms between 2015–16 and 2019–20.
The government proposes teacher starting salaries of £30,000 for 2022, an increase of about £6,000 or 23% on current levels. Few details are available on how this will be delivered, but such details will be very important in determining likely pressures on school budgets.
Despite the increase announced for 2020, funding per student aged 16–18 has seen the biggest squeeze of all stages of education in recent years. School sixth forms have faced budget cuts of 23% per student since their peak in 2010–11. The 2019 Spending Round allocated a further £300 million for 2020–21. This represents a 4% real-terms increase in spending per student, but will still leave spending per student in further education over 7% down on 2010.
Student numbers are growing, so an additional £300 million on top of current plans would be required by 2022–23 just to avoid further cuts in per-student funding. Fully reversing cuts since 2010–11 would cost £1.1 billion on top of current plans by 2022–23.

It may be better than nothing. It may look really encouraging, but school funding isn’t index linked, it doesn’t go up with inflation. This proposed increase, however welcome, is less than the rate at which costs are rising. Will the promise mean additional teachers, resources or extra staff? Will it cut down Tallis sixth form class sizes or reduce our teacher workload? I shouldn’t think so.

The little ones have got more confident and are picking up speed. Long shiny corridors are irresistible to an 11-year old in new trainers and our day is punctuated by cries of ‘Walk!’ I direct some to Drama every day: ‘Go through all the double doors until you hit the wall then look for your class on the left.’ One looks impatiently at me, as to an eccentric who’s gone too far. ‘I don’t really think we need to hit the wall, Miss.’

Year 11 are facing up to a misspent year 10. Some are being given extra support in Study Hall after school every day, not entirely voluntarily. Some have sought to elude this, outraged by the sheer persistence of adults in league against their frittering away the year. We bring them a motivational speaker of unashamed cheesiness: he’s captivating, and they love it. I sit in on a debate about sex and religion in RE which is loud and beautifully respectful, though distracted by gay penguins. ‘Really?’

I talk to the sixth form about the Supreme Court, and Fuller’s 17th Century dictum be ye never so high, the law is above you. I tell them we live in extraordinary times but they assume that all times are like this and can’t imagine a calmer way to regulate national life, can’t imagine a world in which truth is reliable, systematic, embedded, irrepressible.

We claim of ourselves at Tallis that we mean what we say. The small girls are asking me if it’s true, or if we’re just some more adults who promise one thing but mean something else. They’d really like an answer. I have high hopes for them.

CR
19.1.19

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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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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

‘The Forgotten: how white working class pupils have been let down, and how to change it’ HC85

Go to the window

Tell us the truth

Vain and vapid

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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