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Should we raise, lower, or abolish the bar in education?

July 16, 2009 by Louise Thomas
Filed under: Education 

Matthew Taylor has blogged an open letter to Michael Gove, which has given rise to some really interesting discussion of the notion of what we mean by raising or lowering the bar in education.

I think we need to be clear about what we mean by ‘bar’ when we talk about raising it or lowering it – do we mean bar to participation (or further post-compulsory participation) in education, bar to some kind of educational success during compulsory schooling, or bar to what we consider excellence/high achievement in the traditional sense (academia, the arts, sport)?

The debate on standards gets very murky partly because these definitions of ‘bar’ are confused.

If we are talking about participation in compulsory schooling then the argument that setting the bar high raises standards across the board rests on an assumption that when told they’re not good enough, children will simply work harder to be good enough, rather than disengage. I’m not sure that experience of lower achieving children in schools will bear this out (note statistics on the correlation between school exclusions and learning difficulties). Raising the bar to participation in education is by definition exclusionary and supports the notion that only a select few should be allowed access to the benefits of further or higher education – or even GCSEs.

If we are talking about educational success for every child in school then there is a problem that those who think that all children deserve to have their interests served by schools, and to be encouraged and supported to be as good as they can be at whatever it is that they’re good at are accused of lowering the ‘bar’. The assumption being that valuing the abilities of every child lowers expectations so achievement and excellence and standards are not encouraged.

I don’t believe that this is true. I think that excellence and achievement and standards are lower than they could be because the interests and talents of so many children are not being developed to their full because those children are not up to the expected narrowly defined bar in certain areas of learning defined by government as important for the economy and our culture.

Finally, if we are talking about the bar being set at a level where universities, employers and parents can tell who the ‘achievers’ are, and differentiate them from the rest then do we want this to be *the* bar? Can it not just be *a* bar for *a* route to success and a fulfilled and useful life? Would it being *the* bar not imply (as it has done in the past) that some have ‘made it’, are a ’success’ and some haven’t? Should school these days really be about separating the wheat from the chaff as in the old days, or should it be about supporting every child to fulfil their positive potential? I would be very surprised if most of those who advocate having just one bar thus defined would also accept the view of society that emerges as a consequence of doing so: one of winners and losers, elites and masses, powerful and powerless.

There has to be a question about what the bar represents (being good at what?) and whether we need one at all if every child is being encouraged to succeed at the top of their ability to do so. Perhaps what we in fact need is a more differentiated measure and to move away from a linear and universal notion of standards, bars and achievement.


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9 Comments on Should we raise, lower, or abolish the bar in education?

  1. matthew taylor on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 8:35 am

    2. Thanks Louise. An important debate but one which I fear most memebrs of the public only understand in terms of the dumbing down allegation.

  2. Marbury on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 10:46 am

    3. Matthew considers the poor public too dumb to understand the nuances of dumbing down, though he doesn’t say where he stands on it. I think that the public’s fundamental concern might just be the right one.

    Louise’s approach is a counsel of despair: if you raise the bar higher – then children won’t bother leaping for it! To my mind, this is dangerously close to writing them off. If they’re taught in the right way – in a way that encourages and rewards effort – they will leap for it, and be glad they did so afterwards.

    Louise, you seem to think it impossible that we might agree a set of things – a core curriculum, in the jargon – that draws from our amazing heritage of knowledge, that we want all children to have access to, and to aspire to. I don’t. Perhaps I have more faith in the idea of a shared culture than you.

  3. Louise Thomas on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 11:32 am

    4. Not at all!

    My point is not that all children should not be given real access to what is often referred to as ‘the best that has been thought and written’ – quite the opposite. My objection is not to a shared culture, a core curriculum, or the deepest learning and the highest achievement (defined more broadly than, but not excluding academic success).

    I simply don’t see a single, arbitrary standard as synonymous with success, achievement, learning or culture, but rather too often as a barrier to these things. Objecting to the ‘bar’ is not the same as objecting to success or aspiration – but to the way that we value and measure it.

    I doubt the utility of the concept of a ‘bar’ in helping all young people to achieve their full potential in accessing our heritage, or any other field of achievement that we value. Why the image of a horizontal line to jump, implying not only a divide in society, but also a single point at which success is achieved, which in turn implies a single thing that we are measuring?

    The bar does not represent success itself, but an easy, measurable and often arbitrary way of seeing who is doing better than someone else.

    Are there not more useful metaphors we can come up with that demonstrate our aspiration for every child (including those below and above the bar currently) to access the richness of culture, science and knowledge, and their own worlds, at the very top of their potential, celebrating the fulfillment of that potential wherever it leads?

    If we have high aspirations for our young people – as you and I do – let us think of a better means of inspiring them to achieve.

  4. Marbury on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 12:54 pm

    5. Louise, I’m sorry if I misrepresented your point.

    Perhaps it’s just the metaphor itself, in its rather crude suggestion of a single measure that kids either pass or fail at , that’s the problem.

    I’m just trying to express, perhaps not very well, my feeling that we’re not expecting enough of our children – of ourselves. That the public’s fear of a deterioration in standards is real and justified and not a Daily Mail hoax. That we’ve overvalued ‘relevance’ and undervalued ‘difficulty’. And that we’ve taken the ‘different strokes for different folks’ theory of education too far. I would like students to have reached common standards – in literacy and maths….and to be able to read the periodic table or know their way around Hamlet or know that the Magna Carta preceded the Civil War…etc. There’s nothing arbitrary or unfair about that. And, without wishing to simplify things to pass/fail, we have to be able to measure achievement somehow – right?

  5. Louise Thomas on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 1:27 pm

    6. As so often happens when one gets down to it I believe we agree more than we disagree! Characterisation of those with concerns about standards as hapless victims of a Daily Mail conspiracy is as unhelpful as the characterisation of those who question the importance of narrow measures of standards as wooly headed progressives.

    I do not have the overview to know whether – as a whole – the education system is overvaluing difficulty or relevance (I suspect both in different ways) but I do take your point that there is a danger that relevance is used not to deepen understanding but to avoid it.

    I would like students to have everything you list. However, I’d rather they weren’t branded as failures should they not reach a single bench mark on the journey to it.

    I would also like to believe that relevant learning can be a means of accessing the more difficult stuff, while at the same time valuing the experience of the individual learner such that they see the point in doing so for themselves and their lives. To use an oft-cited example, does Romeo and Juliet lose value if it is taught with reference to modern day gang culture? If students therefore engage with the play, the difficult concepts and the language because they understand what it means to them or to other young people today is this dumbing down, or is it just what we’ve always called excellent teaching?

    If students are equipped by schools with the skills and relationships they require to take that deep understanding of the universal themes in Shakespeare and apply it wisely to their own situation, culture and modern day problems then I believe that that is what we call success. How do we measure it though? I think the answer to that question depends on who we are measuring it for.

    The problem is that I am a shameless optimist and believe that we can have it all! I’m fully aware that this may not last however, so do watch this space…thanks for the really interesting discussion.

  6. Liza on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 2:13 pm

    7. Having experienced a country with rigid, strict and high academic standards (Singapore), it appears like people don’t seem to appreciate the breadth of choice and options available here in the UK. I was able to go to music college based on my experience playing rock gigs rather than whether I was a qualified grade 8 classical musician already, and take up fashion classes if I want to – people can engage with education via many entry points. Leave school at 16 – they can always come back later, without paying high fees or social stigma of being a ‘dropout’, and are likely to be able to study a subject or vocation they like. In Singapore, the choice of subjects at A level was very limited – under ‘arts’ you only had History, Economics, Geography and English, and maths was compulsory, and only one college in the entire country offered Theatre Studies!

    This may not relate directly with your post, but just thought I’d like to give an outsider’s perspective.

    I’m not sure how high existing standards are – the ‘bar’ as it were – but relevance is key to getting kids engaged. The Opening Minds curriculum is intriguing and sounds wonderful in principle, and I hope in the future there’ll be concrete proof that it works.

    Let’s also not forget how important parental input is in fostering self-belief in children.

  7. Louise Thomas on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 2:22 pm

    8. Thanks for this Liza – it’s so nice to be encouraged to reflect on what is good about our system for once! We do have a very diverse system, and a dizzying amount of opportunity.

    I think the problem comes when we realise that many of our young people (or adults for that matter) are unable or unwilling to access and maximise these opportunities, especially when this is so closely correlated with relative disadvantage. Different people inevitably attribute the apparent waste of potential to different real and perceived problems with the school system, with young people themselves, with their parents and with government.

    You’ll be glad to hear that we are planning some really exciting research into Opening Minds (funding permitting) so do keep an eye out for that!

  8. Ian McGimpsey on Sun, 19th Jul 2009 10:42 am

    9. My experience of grammar school as a student has been that the other problem with ‘the bar’ is that it creates a ceiling for many successful students. The bar re-inforces precisely the instrumentalist notions of education that Michael Gove says he wants to leave behind – they may be confident about learning, but school is still about learning a set amount of content in set areas to get 10 GCSEs and 3 or 4 A-levels.

    I don’t think that is good enough for them. I knew many people who went on to breeze through university, not realising its privilege or opportunity because they were so jaded about formal learning.

    Incidentally, some high performing schools use Opening Minds precisely to ‘lift the ceiling off’ the learning of these students.

  9. sadia uddin on Wed, 29th Jul 2009 3:13 pm

    10. I definitely agree that we have a ‘bar’ within the education system and to some degree it is quite unfair to pupils who feel that they are below the ‘bar’ as they may begin to develop a negative self fulfilling prophecy of failure and along with it develop a ‘What’s the point’ attitude due to the lack of encouragement they receive. For example, teachers within schools develop new schemes such as ‘The Gifted and Talented’ list which primarily benefits those that have supposedly reached the ‘bar’ thus reinforcing academics and achievement but only for those who have attained ’successfully.’

    Hoever, we do need some sort of measure of academics and standards. We will never be able to completely eradicate the notion of the ‘bar’ because I think that the elitists quite enjoy this divide and any change would be threatening to their ideology of ’success.’

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