A festival for journos, an unhelpful distraction for everyone else
Education policy has created a number of seasonal events for journalists to get excited about. Christmas comes in August for the hacks, when the release of GCSE and A-level results prompt images of happy middle-class teenagers opening their presents, sorry results letters.
Well, now we seem to have a new one – admissions day.
It plays right into the heart of parents’ anxieties about the education of their kids. Will they get into a ‘good school’ or be held back by not getting their first choice. The fears are being stoked already, with the Conservatives releasing figures that suggest over 100,000 families missed out of their first choice school last year. That information was obtained through Freedom of Information Act. This year the government plan to publish official figures to the obvious delight of some in the media.
However, if you thought the exam rituals were played-out, this new festival of column-inches is in danger of being irrelevant before it even gets going. This week a report was released indicating that where middle-class students attended schools with challenging intakes which performed at below the average, it had little if any effect on their educational outcomes.
This would appear to support to the thinking of the School Admissions Adjudicator, Philip Hunter, who has made attempts to avoid ‘unacceptable segregation’ in regards to admissions between rich and poor students.
My worry is that, like in so many other areas, we again end up with education policy driven by the media. Experience tells us that the truly damaging effect of this can be to channel expenditure into achieving ends which provide no real educational benefit for young people while, for the lack of a quotable stat, short-changing the really important initiatives like the promotion of creativity in all schools.
Ambition and Ability
American politicians often like big goals and lofty aspirations which can be summed up in a sentence. To be the first to send a person to the moon is one that springs to mind. And it’s the proof of course, that sometimes they get there.
No Child Left Behind is just one such lofty aspiration. It aims to ensure that every child in the US achieves a basic level of literacy by 2014 – that no child is left behind. While literacy is a focus, it seeks to drive up standards in the American public school system in a range of other areas too.
Since its introduction in 2001, this federal legislation has been controversial. It seeks to create robust accountability for primary and secondary schools through the use of targets, rewards for high performance while forcing under-performing schools to offer students the choice of an alternative provider, or extra tuition.
Its critics say, amongst other things, that the legislation punishes schools in need of support, narrows the curriculum offered to young people, that it’s overly focused on standardized testing, and that its attempts to offer a choice of provider are difficult to implement.
Supporters tend to argue that in fact NCLB’s emphasis on testing provides the only real data that can uncover under-performance in relation to basic skills, and that direct accountability is the best route available to performance enhancement.
It’s a fascinating debate, and one with real resonances with our experience in this country.
So it is with pleasure that we will welcome Ray Simon, US Deputy Secretary of State for Education to the RSA to talk about the issue on the 27th February as one of our series of lectures arranged in association with Edge. Follow this link to find out more, book your place, and take part in the discussion already running on the RSA site.
Ian
Stuck in the past
One of the big problems for education in this country was illustrated yet again today with the publication of the report from the Centre for Policy Studies’ on re-training military service people to work as teachers in schools.
First, for clarity, I am not implying there is any reason that people with a background in the military can’t re-train to become wonderful teachers. Secondly, I am commenting less on the substance of the report itself. Rather, what concerns me is the public story that accompanies the report, and some of the response to it from members of the public and politicians.
It is just one more demonstration that the public imagination about school is stuck in destructive notions of the ideal classroom being about silence, acquiesence to authority enforced with the threat of sanction, and absorbing knowledge from one point at the front of the class.
The idea things should be this way is contradicted by the schools we know using Opening Minds, or one of a number of other innovative approaches. These schools are seeking to help young people become creative, independent learners, active citizens, and people who can take the opportunities afforded them in a fast moving economy.
They show the possibility and benefits of actively engaging learners, whatever their background, in buzzing, noisy but focussed classrooms. They create healthy communities which encourage exploration, peer interaction, and most of all excitement about learning.
Disadvantaged young people might ‘respond to raw physical power’ (who doesn’t?!) but they respond better in caring communities of learning.
And that’s the image we need to see in the media, and getting positive responses from politicians. Perhaps we need to shout louder to get that point across?
Off to a good start
Just a quick end-of-the-day post to follow on from yesterday’s event.
First – thanks to all involved in the day, notably the Innovation Unit and all our speakers on the day.
It was by turns an exciting, complex, useful, and encouraging day.
Exciting because the appetite to work together to do something new and ambitious was definitely there.
Complex because not only did we seek to identify the issues that will be important for the future of schooling (!) but there were a group of people in the room who don’t often meet -people from schools, business, technologists, academics, futurists and more. Together we had to find a way to talk about tough, nuanced issues together.
Useful and encouraging because the results of some really hard work were brilliant – we got a good sense of our themes, and about how schools want to work together. The feedback we have received so far has been very positive.
Now the RSA’s job is, having opened up the debate, to narrow it back down again and start talking about the concrete next steps for the network. You’ll hear more soon from us on this.
In the meantime, comment on your thoughts on the day, or on the Future Schools Network more generally.
First of many…
Excitement has been building here at John Adam Street as we make the final preparations for the first event in life of the Future School Network. Thanks to all those here and at the Innovation Unit who helped with the preparations.
I will blog again soon to let you know how it goes, but we are even more determined to make it a success after a day when government figures have provided another powerful reminder of the importance of change in education.
It would be great to hear your thoughts on what we are trying to do.
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