I arrived late for a workshop session at a conference – not one I was leading, you understand – and was handed a piece of Winnie-the-Pooh to read out. I love this stuff and the Bear has been my companion these 57 years. 

​“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.”

The quotation introduces the interim report of ASCL’s new Commission called The Forgotten Third. It is apposite.
Each year in England over half a million 16-year-olds take their GCSEs. A third of these students do not achieve at least a standard pass (grade 4) in English and mathematics.

The commission is asking some pointed questions, common to all subjects:

1. Why is it that a third of 16-year-olds, after twelve years of compulsory schooling, cannot reach what the Department for Education (DfE) describes as ‘standard pass’ level?
2. Why is there not proper recognition of the progress these young people have made as they move on to further education and employment?
3. At age 11, as they leave primary school, a similar third of children fail to reach expected national standards in reading, writing and mathematics. What is happening in homes and schools that means too many children and young people are judged not to be competent at a basic level?
4. Does the answer lie with: a. the students; b. their parents; c. teachers; d. the content of the GCSEs e. the design of the examination system; f. the national accountability measures?
5. As one 17-year-old student, with a grade 3 in English Language, asked the Commission: “Do a third of us always have to fail so that two-thirds pass?”

​A thinking nation should be asking all of these questions. Might I suggest some answers?

A very small number of children will underachieve because they haven’t worked hard enough. Adolescence is distracting. I’m leaving them on one side.  

Some children may appear to be underachieving, but actually they’re doing pretty well, because their KS2 grade may not reflect their true ability in year 6. This is for two reasons. First, published performance tables do terrible things to education: watch Monday 25 March 2019’s Panorama for more on this. Second, national progression data works well in big datasets but is hopeless at individual progress level.  

The very concept of a GCSE ‘pass’ at grade 4 standard or grade 5 higher is troubling. We have a single examination to assess every child at all levels of aptitude for testing. So why do some grades have more intrinsic worth than others? Again, two reasons. There are levels of skill that are obviously important for adult life. If you’re secure at that level, you may find adult life easier. Employers expect a level of competence, fair enough. Not all jobs, however, require this level and not all children progress at the same speed. 

The real reason for the ‘pass’ nomenclature is a combination of elitism and international comparison. Singapore or Ontario or Finland or Shanghai have a certain proportion of children able to do certain things by the age of 16, so the UK will only be globally competitive if we do too. That’s a superficially attractive argument, but it wobbles in the slightest breeze, like Winnie-the-Pooh’s spelling. Other jurisdictions aren’t committed to inclusive schooling where every child is included in the common school system and its measured outcomes. Other jurisdictions are not beset by a zombie obsession with selection at 11 which serves no educational purpose and depresses the achievement of children in selective areas. Other jurisdictions are not beset by class obsession with private education which undermines national pride in our common schools. 

And finally, the very slightly improved accountability measure of P8 itself remains shamefully dismissive of children’s endeavour. ‘Comparable outcomes’ require some children to fail so that others may succeed. It has to produces a failed bottom third if it has willed that the top two-thirds pass.

We value what we measure. In England we appear to value ranking and blame, and their brothers elitism and failure.  It’s no way to model human value. We could make a very small step in the right direction by refusing to use the word ‘pass’ altogether. We could make a bigger step by finally, permanently rejecting any threshold measure in school performance. We could change the world by valuing perseverance and effort over accidents of birth and social standing.   
    
I’m happy that people should have to pass a driving test.  I’m happy that children should learn how to work hard and stick at it.  I’m furious that only the two-thirds who are good at tests are allowed to value their effort and experience after 12 years of compulsory schooling. This can’t be what we intended. As Winnie says:

“When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

This is one of them. 

My title is the incomparable Beachcomber’s parody of one of A A Milne’s more sugary poems, but it captures the DfE’s view of 170 000 of our young people, every year. Look again, Secretary of State.
 
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5.4.19

Last night was options evening, a reasonably jolly occasion. It’s the first time that children really get a choice about what they study and it’s always interesting to see how they respond. Options had an added soupçon of excitement for us this year as our advent visitors from Ofsted Towers gave us a Paddington stare on the matter. Pray tell us why, they said, you have a three-year key stage four when you know we disapprove? Enlighten us, would you, as to its purpose? And what, for the love of Mike, are you doing with year 9? As I’ve said before, we had ready answers. As I’ve said before, they raised their eyebrows and narrowed their eyes a little. Then it appeared in the Things To Do list they kindly left us.  

After Ms Dedman, Tyla and Engen had spoken (admirably plainly and passionately) I addressed the assembled families in the hall. Reporting on the Lead Inspector’s thousand-yard stare I asked parents to tell me what they thought. Half a dozen sought me out, all of who approved of what we did and liked the early choice. They talked about motivation and freedom and taking on adult responsibility. Their children nodded sagely – but they don’t know anything else.

Some parents rested their weary elbows on the canteen pundit benches and probed gently. Why did we introduce a three-year key stage four, then? Well, it was before my time, but in an era when it was not only common practice in schools, but admired good practice. It gave children the chance to study for (sometimes modular) GCSEs in a flexible way, perhaps resitting where necessary, or even passing something in year 10 and doing new courses in year 11. It helped maximise results.

Most of those conditions have gone now. GCSEs have much more content, the modules are gone, and the chance of assimilating enough content and knowledge before the end of year 11 is frankly unlikely. Schools don’t do so many GCSEs and it’s not possible to hoist up results that way in any case anymore. Not that that was ever a justification.

Tallis has found itself in an interesting position. When I arrived in 2013, the first year of year 8 options, many staff begged me to return to options in year 9. I prefer to take a long view and had no experience of a three year key stage four, so I didn’t act precipitously.  By the time we got to a second year, and certainly by the time the revised specifications for GCSE appeared, Tallis teachers had grown fond of the new division and much preferred it. Three years at key stage four gives you time to take the higher levels of content more slowly. It means that year 9 can be a foundation year, where children are spared exam questions and can really immerse themselves in the subject and what it means.

However, the visitors didn’t quite experience it like that. They were left with the impression that too many children are doing exam practice for too long. We shouldn’t be doing that. Fair point.

There’s another matter too. Three years is a long time to study one thing. It’s as long as a degree, but with much less lounging about. A thirteen-year-old is a different beast to a sixteen-year-old and there’s a risk of them forgetting by year 11 everything that they knew in year 9 (as well as their name, address, PE kit, timetable, friends, enemies and sandwiches). The year 9 introduction year works really well if it’s a foundation year, but the exam prep really should be left to year 11.

Why don’t we just stop it and go back to three-year key stage three?  Well, three years is as long as a degree and they’re too young for all that coffee. Year 9 in a subject you can’t wait to drop is a long year, at just the wrong developmental age, when you find it really hard to concentrate on anything except yourself and are just getting into your stride as Outraged of Greenwich. Perhaps we should do something else with year 9 altogether?
So we’ve got a working group together and we’re thinking of both obvious and creative solutions. Everything is on the table and we’ll decide what to do by October, ready for next year. We’ll invite parents’ views too: watch this space.     

But the really nice thing about options evening, like any parents’ evening is seeing our inmates with their elders, the way they talk to one another, lean on each other, tut and roll their eyes at each other, gasp in blank incomprehension at each other then leave arm-in-arm. Love takes so many forms, some of which are also confusion and worry. We need families to have patience, and keep talking , and make their good choices together, no matter how old they are.

I’m glad to be part of the same human family as New Zealand. When their PM’s ready, would she like to come and sort us out?  
 
CR
21.3.19

A practical lesson today as I thought you’d like to know what we do at GCSE time. We teach them, obviously, for years on end and practice exams, you know all that. We nag away at them and warn them about deadlines and tell them how to revise. But how is it actually done, in the Sports Hall, on the day, child v examiner?

A big school has a well-staffed Exams Office so they do the legwork with the boards: Pearson, AQA and OCR.  They’re huge businesses. We spend towards £200k a year on exams alone. If you were starting from scratch, is that how you’d do it? Private companies, who also write the textbooks? Isn’t examining compulsory education part of the state’s responsibilities so shouldn’t exams come down with the rations? If they did, would it be more flexible? Could we make educational choices that weren’t affected by business interests and competition? Do we actually need GCSEs now that everyone stays on? 
    
Sorry, anyway, exam boards have rules and we comply with all of them. The Exams team has an army of hourly-paid invigilators trained up and ready to be set loose in the exam rooms. Teachers used to do this, but workforce reforms of the early 2000s decided it wasn’t a very good use of their time. (Despite many of us fearing that unfamiliar faces would lead to mayhem in exam rooms, it didn’t. Mind, it’s an extra unfunded expense.)
​
Timetables are devised once we have national timings and rooms allocated. We have a lot of children who need extra time or special provision. Some need scribes to write down what they know, some need readers and writers.  Some need amanuenses to help them or nudge them to complete. The basic extra-time children are in the main exam hall with the others: the special provisions are spread out around the school.  We’re very full with a high room-use ratio so every room used for an exam displaces a class. Is Spanish in English? is an entirely sensible question in May. 
  
Every exam room needs equipping. The desks so far apart, wall displays covered or removed, exam warning notices put up, corridors outside festooned with QUIET PLEASE, shushers activated.

Immediately before the exam candidates gather in the dining room for counting, sorting, and calming. The subject leader reminds them of the dastardly tricks examiners play, and which questions they should answer. Odd but important - we don’t want a child to take a sudden notion to answer on Buddhism instead of Christianity, or Richard the Third instead of Romeo and Juliet. This morning Madam French said remember the van and while I was in a retro Citroen bucketing around the Peripherique in my head, the youth were nodding sagely and thinking verb, adjective, noun agreements.

We walk them up the stairs in silence and they dispose of phones, bags, watches, waterbottle labels, opaque pencil cases. There’s a photo on each, and berth-finding takes a while. We allow time for the checking of pens, calculators or not, extraneous items on the floor, right papers in the right places. Head of Year is despatched to find latecomers (30 minutes or no exam). Finally, final instructions: don’t sniff, don’t gaze about, don’t ask to go to the toilet, Good Luck and the big number for the finish goes on the board.

Even exam time passes, the standard-time finishers tiptoe out and all flop about a bit on the yard before going to class, a revision session or home. Phew. 
   
Teachers aren’t allowed in exam rooms anymore, so often the first they hear of what was on the paper is when children debrief each other. This can cause palpitations. Is it worse to hear that the paper was easy or hard? Is it helpful to spot a child banging his forehead with a cry of energy, not glucose, aargh?

Last week’s Guardian had a piece about GCSEs and the effect of the exams on the young. It included all sorts of worrying things about stress and the physical effects of exam terror. It cited schools where character education is all about resilience so that children cope with harder, linear exams, and I don’t like the sound of that at all. It talked about the pressures schools pile on and how ticking countdown clocks turn stout young souls to jelly.

I can be smug and say that we try not to be too, well, extra about it. We don’t have pictures up of children who do the best and we don’t spread terror stories about what happens if you don’t get a 4. Life doesn’t actually end at 16 and some of that stuff is just disrespectful to people who aren’t doctors or high court judges, which is most of us.
It’s a really hard circle to square. Post-16 life requires results so GCSEs are a gateway, for good or ill. Has the pressure got worse? Undoubtedly. Does it cause mental illness? Yes. Can we do anything about it?  I’m not sure, if we insist, as a nation, on judging children by educational achievement. For every school panicking about its results there are parents who also have their hearts set on particular grades. For every stressed child there’s an indolent one who needs to be coaxed and hassled to work.

When does raising aspirations turn into unreasonable pressure? When does a reminder of how long there is to go turn from a countdown to a time bomb? How do you deliver different messages in classes of 30 and assemblies of 300? How do we balance the cost of student support services against the price of maths teachers? One hour 45 to answer, use both sides of the paper, show your working.  
 
CR
18.5.18
 
 
 
 
Who’d put children through this?

I like a bit of punctuation and envy the sticky apostrophe first aid kits carried by obsessives. Similarly (to use a recognised connective) I challenged the overeducated amongst whom I spent the Bank Hol to define a fronted adverbial. Year 5 can, and these guys were way older than that. All night long, we bickered. Grammar matters too.  A well-turned sentence is a creative act in itself and we need to keep our standards up as darkness falls: Churchillian in the blitz.

There’s anger about the approach to writing represented by the fronted adverbial thing, and you should tread warily near a primary school teacher as it really isn’t a joke. I’m part of the generation who weren’t taught any English grammar at primary in the late sixties and secondary in the seventies. We were taught to spell and to write with structure, clarity and creativity, but not how to take the stuff apart and analyse it. I took German O level and was properly bamboozled by the sheer tonnage of grammar required accurately to describe a Danube steamer. (I cannot tell you how useful that’s been). In the mother tongue we were expected to write well because we read widely. It was a bit of a devil-take-the-hindmost approach and those whose lives weren’t full of books by background or inclination fended for themselves. That’s not fair education.

This month we approach the new GCSEs in English and maths. They’ve been attractively described as big and fat, meaning that a huge amount of knowledge and understanding is required and young people have to be able to manipulate their learning to perform well. Government, Ofsted and the exam boards are putting on a show of being reasonable about expectations. Everyone hopes they’re working hard to create a system in which children’s learning can be sensibly structured and assessed and, so far, tarantara, no-one’s said that everyone has to be above average.

A visitor came to see me about knowledge and we chewed the fat for a bit. We talked about the journey of the last seven years and the importance of putting knowledge and learning, rather than assessment and school performance, front and centre of the curriculum. We walked around school and I felt a bit of a fraud because everyone was doing exams and testing, but it is May. The artists and dancers were actually being examined, but all exuded a zen-like calm.

We wondered what will the new government do about the Ebacc? I formulated a view. When the curriculum was being weakened by performance incentives there had to be a way of stopping it. That turned out to be a debate about what’s important to learn and how we should assess it. It’s still a work in progress but the structural impediments have been adjusted: therefore, does the Ebacc need to be pushed all the way? Can the nation not devise a way to work together with trusted school leaders to judge if a school has a solid and sensible curriculum without a binary judgement? Ebacc good, Nobacc bad?

I understand entirely the notion of entitlement. A child should get, at any school, a curriculum that enables him to compete with the unreasonably privileged. But the Ebacc raises so many insurmountables: no teachers, no money, skewed calibration of GCSE languages which make them exceptionally daunting to slower acquirers, brexitty populism, overloading of English and maths, preservation of the arts and not enough time. I worry that the big fat specifications will be unmanageable for human students of all abilities unless we can really learn some new language about what constitutes progress.

However, young people have their own imperatives. Two year seven girls wielded a clipboard of their own devising at me, action researching into that great mystery, the pronunciation of Primark. I supported the majority view. The Guitar Night ended with some blues and an arrangement of the Game of Thrones theme beautifully played by young peoples 11-18 of all shapes and sizes. Our own politics is marginally less blood-sodden, I suppose.
Thursday’s Evening Standard headline was a marvel of punctuation: