When a decent school has to play the game
People outside education think that league tables aren’t such a bad thing. They give an indication as to how “successful” a school is, how many pupils it churns out with the right grades, how these kids have attained.
We all know the rest of the story. It doesn’t really explain progression for all the value added stuff. It doesn’t explain anything about the state of the children when they first come through the door and the problems of hopeless social injustice that many an institution has to contend with before you can even get the children to sit long enough to experience decent teaching and learning. It doesn’t explain how children and young people flourish or decline emotionally or socially as an outcome of the schools ineptitude to create a holistic education
But that is another story.
I want to tell a short story about a school who appeared to get things right.
Academically, the baseline was low – a mere 35% of pupils getting 5 A-C grades when the present head teacher took the reins. For a mixed, multi-cultural school with a mixed socio-economic intake, that might sounds like a relatively reasonable percentage - but not really. The school should have been doing better.
Along came a good manager. He addressed the behaviour issues in school with a two pronged attack or rather a multi-pronged attack. Rightly or wrongly, he believes that ensuring the young people respect their uniform is one means of addressing behaviour. He insisted that all pupils had what some might describe as a slightly archaic uniform; blazer, tie, grey trousers, skirts below the knee, black socks only – all very conformist. In addition to this, he had strict codes of discipline around the school. He manned the corridors himself, commandeering with his very obvious presence. He insisted that the young people had to behave a certain way in the classroom and abuse to the teachers would not be tolerated. He looked at the ethos of the school, got rid of some staff that did not like to play his game and generally turned the place around.
Once he had sorted the behaviour and attendance, he then tackled the attainment. He states quite categorically that he did it this way round, and bore the consequences of little movement in the league table for the first year or two of his appointment.
Within four years, the school had gone from a relatively lowly point to having a pass rate of 75%, increasing year on year until new rules came in about achieving Maths and English which put things back a little.
Ofsted found that the school was outstanding, which it was and it wasn’t. The head teacher had played the game to an extent. He’d held onto his basic educational values but he had played the game too. He’d had a keen eye on the league tables, he’d introduced some questionable methods of developing decent behaviour and trust between staff and students but he had managed to get this “outstanding” grade.
What he did next was brave but in the knowledge that he had this Ofsted grade, he felt he could do so. He got all of his staff together a few months after the inspection and told them that what they were doing was not quite good enough. He didn’t want his school to be an examination factory. He believed fundamentally in the arts and the media, in creativity, in values, in exciting and stimulating teaching and learning. Yes, he wanted his students “to be the best we can be” but he meant it in a broader way. He told his staff he wanted to look at values; he wanted to prepare a curriculum that meant something to young people living in the 21st Century in a multi-cultural city. He wanted them to consider the emotional intelligence of the child as much as the knowledge based curriculum.
It was exciting times. The staff were incredibly stimulated by this strike for freedom, and they planned the curriculum accordingly. Days off timetable were introduced to ensure that the “Every Child Matters” agenda was not just given lip service as well as ensuring that the main thrust of this was imbedded in all lessons taking place in school.
The children were stimulated, the work was exciting and things were looking up.
A further Ofsted graded this progression as “good” not the “outstanding” from before but the head teacher was undeterred knowing that what he was doing was for the greater good of the young people. In effect, he was encouraging a lifelong learning rather than just passing exams.
And here is the slight problem because however good a school is, however committed they are to ensuring that they excite and energise children into learning, they are slightly caught out because many things are still beyond their control. Total autonomy for schools is but a pipe dream and the Toby Young’s of this world who think they are going to get it with their Free Schools are in for a nasty shock!
This school tried hard to ensure the curriculum was exciting. This is all fine in KS3 when there is more flexibility. It becomes slightly more problematic in KS4 when exams have to be sat.
The school has worked hard in ensuring that the curriculum is as stimulating as possible but it is still constrained.
For example, the history curriculum for KS4 is relatively contemporary. It still has the ubiquitous WW2 studies but it also looks at the Cold War and the emergence of the USA as the Super Power that it is. Not bad and certainly more interesting than the perpetual discussion about the goings on in Henry VIII’s bedroom. However, they still don’t have the flexibility to teach and discuss a history that the children and young people may choose to do. How about a child who wants to look at the history of photography, or how such pictures can tell a story that no words will ever do, or the child who has an deep interest in Eastern Cultures who would quite like to study the Emperor-led system of governance adopted in Japan, let alone the potential to explore the depths of Eastern philosophy?
No chance of that in the near future either with Mr Gove hovering over schools with a diktat of facts and figures that have no place in the development of a historical mind!
So, despite the fact that they have chosen examination boards wisely, there is still a straitjacket around what they can and cannot teach.
And then there are those league tables.
And this is the real reason I am writing today.
The league tables are madness. They are insane. They have created didactic teachers out of people who never intended to teach in that manner. They are constantly nagging at the back of people’s minds as they put their lesson plans together. I suppose Gove would welcome the “healthy” competition between subject departments to get the highest number of A-stars but whilst some teachers play this pathetic game, where are the children? These are human beings we are talking about.
And if we mistakenly think that this will all stop when the league tables disappear, we are sadly mistaken because a mode of teaching and a dirty rationale has crept into the profession over the decades of nationally imposed curriculum, and it may take a generation or more to get out of this mindset that grades and tables are the most significant part of education.
This is not new. I, as have others, have long discussed these issues so why am I so concerned about it today?
Yesterday, my son, who is in his GCSE year, had to go into school. According to him, he had to complete a piece of work for his GCSE IT that was not taught properly in Year 9 (when the accelerated into the KS4 coursework). In retrospect, and with an incompetent teacher dismissed, the department realised that if they left things as they were, these children were not going to get the results that they deserved. So on a reasonable Saturday in October, they called a cohort of children into school and asked them to repeat this piece of work to the standard and maturity required.
The kids duly and dutifully complied and spent five hours of their weekend in school, as of course, did the teachers, and thank you for their commitment in doing so because here is the rubbish, the real rubbish, and the legacy of league tables and of the previous government’s inertia.
Teachers are so used to having to cram and get the children “to be the best we can be” at achieving A grades, that this has completely monopolised their teaching and their rationality. The law of ratio has escaped these teachers. Not everyone, bizarrely, can get A-stars because it is proportionate to the numbers taking the exam not the similarity of responses (allegedly).
And the real rubbish? These teachers are not actually thinking about the league tables any more. The head teacher has made it clear that he doesn’t care about them. It is the kids that he is concerned about, and sadly, ironically, this is why they were brought into school yesterday – not because of league tables but because these teachers know that the only chance these kids have is if they have as many A grades as possible.
Due to the league table method of teaching, everything has been placed in one area of learning, i.e. that of academic attainment. Even if the league tables didn’t exist, the philosophy of education behind them does, and this is why my child has to forsake his weekend to go and play ball with a school that has tried not to play the game but is restricted in doing so because it knows the rest of the school is still playing.
Those teachers gave up their weekend and will do so from now until exam time because they want to give a leg-up to their students. They want to push them into grades that may be beyond their natural reach, putting all sorts of untold pressures on them because they think this is the best thing for these pupils. This is their way to success.
I know that some of the teaching staff are still interested in league tables, despite what their head teacher says, and I am sure that he pays more than a curious glance at them but essentially, they are working these young people hard now because they know that this world will be easier for them if they are equipped with the biggest grades possible.
And it is not going to get any easier.
Andrew Rawnsley makes that clear today in the Observer, as does Will Hutton. Catherine Bennett comments on it too.
If these children want to go to university then they are going to have to get super-dooper grades to do so. With tuition fees floating into a new region of fiscal nightmares, it will only be those who have high grades and a wad of notes in their pocket who are going to succeed, and with a spending review that Hutton describes as what historians will see as “one of the great acts of economic folly”, the situation is getting graver and graver.
These teachers know this. The ardent pursuit of academia has led us to this. The current government can only implement the harshness of Lord Browne’s ideas because the previous ones left the garden gate open and guided them up that particular path.
When people ask me about the previous government and why I had “concerns” they expect me to come out with the usual diatribe about Iraq. Whilst this is always at the forefront of my mind, what with the hundreds and thousands of unnecessary deaths, it is the lack of affordable higher education that really narks me.
Education, education, and indeed education should all be free and the money should be found elsewhere. Without this fundamental point being acted upon, I am not sure that you can ever have a liberty in society. You certainly cannot have equity and the fraternity is pretty dispersed if some can and some cannot pay.
If my child wants to go into school on a Saturday because he loves learning and enjoys sharing that learning with others, then fantastic. If his teachers are so willing to facilitate that learning to the point that they gain a sense of wellbeing from doing so, then that too is pretty spectacular.
Going in because both student and teacher knows that this is the only way to succeed in life is dismal. Going in knowing that the only way to succeed in life is through an academic route is pitiful (and obviously one that I do not believe is correct).
Toby Young will be okay because he wants to play the stupid league table game, as does his followers who epitomise everything distasteful about that side of town!
He won’t care that there are compromises in learning that are unforgivable.
As Catherine Bennett pointed out last week, Gove loves Dickens and yet still cannot see the irony of the Hard Times character who announces to the world that in his pupils he wants to see,
“A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.”
Mr Gove – see that quote, that’s you, that is and it’s not a compliment!
And where does Mr. Gove think that story writing skills come from? If he loves Dickens so much, shouldn’t he be thinking how another great writer should be allowed to flourish?
It is all utter madness.
So, we are back to a good school that is trying to do the right thing, that is trying to broaden its curriculum and its opportunities for all pupils, that is trying to stand by its values in the widest sense, that understands that examination passes do not make a person, and even knowing all of this, they still have to play the game, not because of league tables any more but because they know that under the current situation, their kids do not stand a chance unless they have been given the utmost support in playing the bloody game, the wrong bloody game at that!
One day we will stop messing with these young peoples’ futures, open our eyes and see what an utter disservice we have practiced upon them.
I’m actually looking forward to the first case of litigation setting out the argument against a series of governments who had no idea how to free the mind and encourage learning.
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And a footnote; bless good old Windows spell-check!
I am sure others have found this but I do find it rather amusing that when checking “Ofsted” it comes up with the alternative “ousted”.
If only!
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