The Primary Review

A better way to educate primary school children

Delay formal lessons 'to age six'

Generation of pupils being put off school

Our children tested to destruction

Primary review: 'start formal lessons at six'

Standards rise 'has been exaggerated'

'Victorian' primary curriculum ruining children's education

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Authors oppose 'toddler targets'

Government bid to reshape childhood

Open EYE Campaign

Head teachers warn on Tory 'corner shop' schools plan

'Initiative overload'

Dr Dunford ... attacked government meddling in schools saying that, between September 2009 and last month, every week there had been an average of 2.5 pieces of a type of government legislation known as a statutory instrument affecting schools in England and Wales.

"The highest was eight in a single week. Only one week was there no statutory instrument. Michael Gove has promised to reduce this if the Conservatives win the election.

"If they do I shall hold them to it. We don't want Labour bureaucracy replaced by Tory red tape."

BBC NEWS 07 Mar 2010    State Theory of Learning    Targets & Bonuses

'Record numbers of heads' sacked

Ofsted criticises ... 'initiative overload'

Ed Balls targets school clubs in £500m cuts

Schools urged to save £750m costs

Balls clashes with social work leaders

New teacher training course attracts 13 participants

Vetting and Barring Scheme

Four out of ten trainees quit teaching early

Balls sacks governors

Mr Balls loses his bearings

Balls 'sexed up' evidence against me

Ed Balls is to blame, man accused over Sats fiasco will tell MPs

Ed Balls refuses to apologise over SATs fiasco

Social mobility in England 'lags behind other countries'

The study – commissioned by the Sutton Trust – suggested that pupils born into families with a history of underachievement were still much more likely to be resigned to low-paid jobs when they grew up.

Sir Peter Lampl, the charity’s chairman, said failure to improve social mobility risked pushing the UK to the “bottom of the class in education’s world order”.

"Education mobility points the way to the level of future social mobility in this country,” he said.

“While there are some signs of progress, we are still not serving the needs of the current crop of school pupils as well as we should and parental background remains a much more significant determiner of children's life chances in the UK than elsewhere.” ...

“A major obstacle to education, and consequently social mobility, is therefore the high levels of social segregation in English secondary schools.”

Researchers at Essex University analysed the test scores of thousands of children born in 1989/90 ... and compared them with results of equivalent exams by children born at a similar time in other nations.

The findings show that in England, 56 per cent of children of degree educated parents were in the top quarter of test results at the age of 14, compared with just nine per cent of youngsters whose parents left school without any O-levels – a gap of 47 percentage points.

This was twice the equivalent gap seen in Australia – 23 percentage points – and bigger than the 37 point gap in Germany and 43 point gap in the US ...

Telegraph  26 Apr 2010    Education for the Good Society    Inequality:Does it Matter?

Parents' class is the key in England's exams system

Top comprehensives 'more exclusive than grammar schools'

'Communitarian Citizenship'

Neoliberalism and education

Boycott threatens Sats test chaos

Head teachers say they will not administer tests which they say are "misused to compile meaningless league tables, which only serve to humiliate and demean children".

But they say the boycott is "categorically not strike action" - and that schools will remain open when tests are due to be taken, from May 10 to 13.

Christine Blower, leader of the National Union of Teachers, which is also taking part in the boycott, says instead of taking tests children would have a "brilliant week, a creative week".

The announcement of the action against Sats tests follows a ballot in which 61.3% of NAHT members supported the boycott, on a turnout of just under 50%.

Among NUT members, 74.9% backed the boycott on a turnout of 34% ...

NAHT member, Bob Fletcher, head of North Ealing primary school in London, voted in favour of the boycott and asked his pupils what they thought about the tests.

"They believed the whole process was a complete waste of time and the tests should be scrapped," he said.

BBC NEWS  21 Apr 2010

Teachers may face legal action

Government consults lawyers

Sats exams promote 'teaching to the test'

Headteachers threw down the gauntlet

Education for the Good Society

'Too few' practical experiments in science lessons

Science teachers are doing fewer practical experiments because of the demands of the curriculum, tests and badly behaved pupils, a poll suggests.

Online research among 1,300 teachers by the government-funded Science Learning Centres found 96% said they faced obstacles to doing practical lessons.

Two thirds blamed pressure from the curriculum while four in 10 blamed the demands of testing and marking.

Pupils' behaviour was cited by 29%, and one in four blamed a lack of equipment ...

BBC NEWS  26 Mar 2010    Rebalancing Britain's Economy

OECD: UK has worse social mobility record than other developed countries

The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries ...

Highlighting the UK's lack of social mobility, the Paris-based thinktank said the chances of a young person from a less well-off family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents was "relatively low" ...

It added that there was a hefty wage premium associated with growing up in a better-educated household and a corresponding penalty for being raised in a less-educated family ...

In the UK, the OECD found that 50% of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers have over low-earning fathers is passed on to their sons.

By contrast, in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries, less than 20% of the wage advantage was passed on ...

mugclass
10 Mar 2010, 1:58PM

In my town, if you live in one of the less well off area, your children will go to one of three schools, all of which have just received damning reports from Ofsted. For a bright child from a low income family there is no hope. You will be educated in a school with high truancy, high level of behavioural problems, high levels of disruptive behaviour, a high teacher turnover and frequent teaching by supply staff.

My husband and I were fortunate to benefit from the grammar school system, and although our families were both low income we went on to excellent universities and good careers.

Labour have managed to achieve great equality - the equality of ensuring that if you are from a poorer background, no-one will do well. They have achieved equality of failure.

Guardian  10 Mar 2010    Economic Democracy    Education for the Good Society    Inequality

OECD

A Family Affair

Frustrated pupils 'bored by their factory schools'

UK low in social mobility league, says charity

Ofsted judgments of inadequacy soar in latest data

A tougher regime introduced by the schools inspectorate, Ofsted, in September has slashed the number of "outstanding" schools by more than a half to almost one in 10.

Those deemed to be inadequate have increased to 7.5% of all schools inspected, compared with 4% six months ago. Schools placed in this category are put in emergency "special measures" and risk being closed and reopened as academies under new leadership.

The figures emerged from an analysis of more than 2,000 inspection verdicts between September and mid-February by the Times Educational Supplement. At least 150 schools inspected in this period were deemed "inadequate".

Headteachers warned that under the new regime Ofsted had become "preoccupied" with exam results and whether schools had met guidelines introduced to safeguard children from sex offenders. They claimed it now paid little attention to whether pupils were making long-term progress and demanded an "urgent and radical review" of the inspectorate. ...

Shenfield high school in Brentwood, Essex, has just been downgraded to "satisfactory" after a previous inspection in 2007 judged the school to be "good with outstanding features".

John Fairhurst, the headteacher, said inspectors used one year group's results to come to their verdict. "They used just one year's results rather than trends of results over three years," he said. "In two days, they can't develop a feel for the ethos or style of a school; they need longer." ...

Guardian  05 Mar 2010    Ofsted

TES analysis vindicates heads’ worst fears

Leading comprehensives 'block out poorer pupils'

The Sutton Trust research was carried out by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson of the University of Buckingham, who analysed the backgrounds of about 600,000 children entering English secondary schools. They used the Income Deprivation Affecting Children index, which measures the proportion of children in an area that come from low-income households.

The research identified the 100 most selective schools and found they took an average of 8.6% of children from poor backgrounds, despite the average proportion of poorer children in the areas being 20.1%. That means the schools would need to more than double the number of poor students to be reflective of their locality.

"This is a really big discrepancy, and it is clear that there are selection processes at work," said Smithers. "We are supposed to have a comprehensive system that offers equal chances to all young people, but what this shows is that schools don't always reflect the areas they are drawing children from." ...

Observer  28 Feb 2010

Sutton Trust

Underclass of pre-school children emerging

More than one in 10 children begin primary school unable to learn and unwilling to build relationships with their peers, a "disengaged generation waiting in the wings", said the thinktank Demos today in a report.

Researchers said that data from the Millennium Cohort Study showed 66,000 children scored "borderline" or "abnormal" in tests designed to reveal behavioural and emotional problems that are intimately linked to under-achievement at school, risk of truanting, and exclusion.

Poverty stands out among a number of factors, Demos said. Having a parent with a low level of education, a mother who is young or parents with a low income all raise the chance of "poorer behavioural and cognitive development".

The difference between children from the poorest and the richest families is stark, with a fifth of those identified as "starting school without the behavioural skills" coming from the poorest section of society, and only 4% coming from the richest.

Stress also plays a part: expectant mothers who experience high anxiety after 32 weeks are twice as likely to have a child with behavioural difficulties by the age of four, than mothers who did not suffer from tension ...

Guardian  25 Feb 2010

Demos

Oliver James

More than 100,000 children to miss out on first-choice secondary school

On the basis of these figures the DCSF is complacent about the current competition for school places.

Monday is national offer day, when parents find out which school their 10- or 11-year-old will attend from September.

This year, with applications for 540,000 children, competition for places is likely to be even tougher than usual.

Some parents hit by redundancy and the recession will have decided against sending their child to a private school and applied for a state secondary.

The dwindling number of secondary schools will compound the problem – at least 85 comprehensives have closed in the last two years.

About a fifth of all applicants – or 108,000 children – are likely to miss out on their first-choice school, said Ian Craig, head of the school admissions watchdog ...

Last year, across the country, one in six children – 92,000 – were refused a place at their top choice ...

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "The vast majority of parents will get a place at a school of their choice – most at their first-choice school. We know that the majority of parents are satisfied with the admissions system, happy with the choice of local schools and the education their children get." ...

Guardian  26 Feb 2010

The Illusion of Choice

Ofsted criticises Three Rs 'initiative overload'

National strategies in England to improve literacy, numeracy and schools boosted learning, but suffered because of "initiative overload", Ofsted says ...

Schools suffered because of the "frequent introduction of initiatives, materials and guidance" which led to "overload" and diminished the effectiveness of each individual initiative, Ofsted said.

"Taken together, national agencies, including national strategies, provided a very considerable number of diverse, changing and sometimes overlapping programmes.

"Systems for communicating with schools and local authorities did not help them to have a good understanding of the coherence of different initiatives," it added.

As one head teacher put it: "We often have to move to a new initiative before we know the impact of those we have just worked on." ...

BBC NEWS  24 Feb 2010    Ofsted    Policy, Delivery, Accountability

Language skills 'lag a year behind in poorest children'

The Sutton Trust study looked at the results of a series of vocabulary tests carried out by 12,500 British children at the age of five.

It found those from the poorest homes were nearly a year behind in their results.

It also looked at the factors common to poorer children that might influence their development.

It found that just under half of those from the poorest fifth of families were born to younger mothers under 25 ...

The Sutton Trust study looked at the results of a series of vocabulary tests carried out by 12,500 British children at the age of five.

It found those from the poorest homes were nearly a year behind in their results ...

... just under half of children from the poorest homes were read to every day at the age of three, compared to 78% of children from the richest fifth of home.

The authors noted that the UK had invested 4.3% of GDP on early years education in 2006.

But they called for a more effective early years strategy that would prevent greater numbers of children from disadvantaged backgrounds "falling behind their more fortunate peers before school has even begun".

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl said the findings were both shocking and encouraging - revealing the stark educational disadvantage experienced by children from poorer homes before they reached school.

But it also showed the potential for good parenting to overcome some of the negative impacts that poverty could have on children's early development ...

BBC NEWS  15 Feb 2010    Inequality    'NEETS'

Sutton Trust

Poor white boys 'not catching up'

Efforts to help poor white boys catch up with their peers in the early years of school appear to have stalled.

Official data on assessments at age five show three-quarters of the poorest white boys in England are still not achieving a good level of development ...

The tests cover areas such as communication, language and literacy, problem solving and numeracy as well as personal, social and emotional development ...

Looking at the breakdown of results by area, 39.3% of pupils in the most deprived 10% of areas achieved a good level of development compared with 66.5% in the least deprived 10% of areas.

The difference in achievement between the most and least deprived fell by two percentage points to 27.2 in 2009.

However, this still leaves the most advantaged nearly one and half times more likely to have a good level of development than those from the most disadvantaged areas.

The figures do show some improvements in poor white boys' performance on the previous year when 22.3% achieved the required level in the tests.

But they have not continued the improvement against the national average that occurred in 2007-8 ...

BBC NEWS  28 Jan 2010

'NEETS'

Poor white boys do worst in tests

One in eight pupils 'wrong level'

Ofsted 'becoming unwieldy' - MPs

MPs have attacked England's education watchdog, saying it has grown enormously and risks becoming unwieldy.

The Commons schools select committee said Ofsted now oversaw early years settings, colleges, children's services and social care, as well as schools.

The MPs also said inspectors should be better trained and not rely so heavily on exam results when assessing schools.

And they called for a rethink on the introduction of school report cards, saying a single score was not accurate.

The committee's report on school accountability drew attention to the expanding remit of Ofsted and said this might not be sustainable in the longer term.

"Both Ofsted and the government should be alert to any sign that the growth of Ofsted's responsibilities is causing it to become an unwieldy and unco-ordinated body," the report said.

The report also suggested all inspections should be led by one of the 200 Ofsted-employed inspectors as they tended to be better respected than the 1,000 inspectors supplied by outside agencies ...

BBC NEWS  07 Jan 2010

Boys aged three 'must work more'

Boys aged three and four must be made to write more to stop them falling behind girls before they even reach school, the Government will order nurseries and childminders.

New boy-friendly guidance is to be sent to all nurseries and childminders advising them to get the youngest boys to take more interest in writing, scribbling and drawing – basically just putting pencil to paper.

After a year of school, more than one in six boys cannot write his own name or simple words such as "mum", "dad" or "cat" – double the number of girls ...

Some 52 per cent of five-year-olds were competent in all areas – a three-percentage-point rise from last year. However, boys were significantly less likely than girls to start the first full year of school properly prepared. The gender gap widened in three key areas: writing, problem-solving and elements of personal development.

The Government said that at least 23,000 more children had reached a good level of development this summer compared with 2008 ...

Independent  29 Dec 2009

Childminders put off by red tape

The biggest sponsor of the Government’s flagship academies programme was forced to pull out of plans to open two more after inspectors said one of its schools was making “inadequate” progress.

Sheffield Park academy, run by the United Learning Trust - a Christian charity, failed an inspection earlier this year.

A follow-up inspection completed earlier this month indicated it was making “inadequate” progress towards improving standards.

Ministers had already told ULT, which currently runs 17 academies, that they could not give the green light to any more until it had put its house in order.

Now it has pulled out of two – one in Oxford and another in Weston Favell, Northamptonshire, due to open next year – while it draws up an action plan to improve Sheffield Park.

In a statement today, Schools Secretary Ed Balls said: “This is unacceptable and I have expressed my very serious concern to ULT.”

The charity has undertaken to complete its action plan within three weeks.

The inspectors found that GCSE pass rates had improved last summer to 25 per cent getting five A* to C grades including maths and English.

However, widespread weaknesses - including too much dull teaching - was hampering the pupils’ progress. In the worst lessons, behaviour deteriorated further limiting progress and there was not enough support for the most vulnerable children.

A few students openly smoked whilst some felt it acceptable to use abusive language. Levels of overall attendance had not improved.

Ind  22 Dec 2009

Unison Awards United Learning Trust Employment Badge of Shame

Some academies are using Freedom of Information laws to hide evidence of "dumbing down", it is claimed.

GCSE results in England's state-funded independent schools are said to be improving at twice the national rate but Academies will not publish details.

But a report claims some academies push pupils into taking exams that are less academically rigorous than GCSEs to boost their league table position ...

Questions have been raised about the value of some vocational qualifications. They also take up less teaching time than GCSEs ...

The researchers from the think-tank Civitas suspected that some academies which showed a fast improvement rate in their published headline GCSE scores were using these examinations to boost their results.

But because academies are exempt from Freedom of Information rules they are not obliged to release the breakdown of their results ...

BBC NEWS  14 Dec 2009

Is academy school success just a sham?

Academy sponsor told to up game

Academy up-front payment dropped

Balls pushes ahead with academies

Academy Schools

More than 1,400 primary schools in England could be targeted in a campaign to improve literacy and numeracy.

They are the schools that fall below a government "floor target" for attainment in the English and maths national curriculum tests, or "Sats".

Ministers want at least 55% of pupils in every school reaching the expected standard for their age, Level 4.

Local authorities will be told to drive the improvement - with about a dozen areas coming in for special pressure ... the emphasis will be on support rather than sanctions.

Mr Balls wants an action plan from all local authorities by February next year ...

... at least 1,472 schools fell below the floor target of 55% attainment - 113 more than the previous year ...

Schools Minister Diana Johnson said ...

"We want as many children as possible to leave school with the secure grasp of the basics and after years of the necessary top down approach, it's now down to local authorities to get all schools making progress all of the time - no ifs or buts," she said.

Ministers and government standards advisers are particularly displeased with schools that have set themselves what they regard as realistic attainment targets - but which are below their previous results ...

BBC NEWS  04 December 2009

Tables for around 15,000 schools show that:

English results dropped for the first time since Sats were introduced in the mid-90s as 80 per cent of pupils reached Level 4 - the standard for their age - compared with 81 per cent a year earlier

Scores in science (88 per cent) and mathematics (79 per cent) remained the same as 2008

The number of pupils achieving the expected standard in both English and maths combined dropped from 73 to 72 per cent

The Government is considerably short of targets which demand 78 per cent of 11-year-olds should reach the expected level by 2011

Some 232,182 pupils were taught in schools where fewer than half of pupils left after hitting national targets in the three-Rs ...

Telegraph  01 December 2009

Young people in the UK are among the least educated in the developed world, tumbling down the tables since the mid-1990s, according to analysis released today.

Among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only Turkey and Mexico have a smaller proportion of 15- to 19-year-olds in education, the University and Colleges Union (UCU) said.

In 1995, the UK was ranked 19th among the 30 countries, with 72% of the group still at school, college or university. But by 2007, it had slumped to 26th place, overtaken by countries such as Portugal, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece. Figures for Japan and Canada were not available in the most recent set of data, which was for 2007.

A similar story is seen in the proportions of those aged 20-29 in education, where the UK fell from 15th in the table to 25th, with 17%.

The UCU said Brazil, Chile, Estonia, Slovenia, Israel and Russia were performing better than the UK, with higher, and still-increasing, proportions of young people in education ...

Guardian  01 December 2009

Britain overtaken by Slovakia in education league

Secondary schools run by faith groups are better than non-religious schools at building community relations, research in England suggests.

A study funded by the Church of England found faith schools were rated higher than others by Ofsted inspectors on what is called "community cohesion" ...

The research, carried out by Professor David Jesson of York University, involved the analysis of Ofsted reports on 400 secondary schools and 700 primary schools.

He examined how schools were rated by inspectors on their new legal duty to "promote community cohesion", which came was introduced in September 2007.

Prof Jesson says at primary level, faith schools were rated the same as non-religious schools.

But among the secondary schools surveyed, faith schools were rated higher.

Of the 74 secondary faith schools surveyed, 24 (32%) were rated "outstanding" at community relations.

Of the 337 non-faith secondaries analysed - 55 (16%) were given the same grade ...

Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said: "The problem with cohesion lies primarily with minority faith schools.

"The very existence of minority faith schools is a major impediment to cohesion, especially where members tend also to be from ethnic and cultural minorities.

"Such schools tend to be mono-religious, mono-ethnic and mono-cultural, quite often of children from communities that are already separate from mainstream society."

The society objects in principle to public funds being used for proselytising (preaching) ...

BBC NEWS  27 November 2009

Every school pupil in England is to be taught that domestic violence against women and girls is unacceptable, as part of a new government strategy.

Under the plans, from 2011 children will be taught from the age of five how to prevent violent relationships ...

BBC NEWS 25 November 2009

The Cambridge Review, which covered all aspects of primary schools and their pupils' lives, took three years and was funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation charity. It set out a devastating critique of the government's centralisation of the education system, and called on the government to scrap Sats and delay formal learning for pupils until they are six, to ease the pressure.

One fundamental criticism it makes is that ministers refuse to take independent, expert advise in formulating the schools policy. Balls has dismissed interim reports from the Cambridge review that criticised the Sats system of testing pupils.

After the inquiry was launched, Balls ordered a separate review of the primary curriculum from the government adviser Sir Jim Rose, which was prevented from addressing the most controversial issue of school tests. That review triggered Balls' decision to bring forward the school starting age from five to four, a move designed to counteract the penalties faced by summer-born children who get a shorter education.

Guardian 16 October 2009

Balls said the removal of the £2m entry fee for new sponsors to run academies would prompt further expansion of the scheme. He rejected claims that the plans amounted to a watering down of the Blairite vision of privately sponsored schools and insisted the government was still committed to a big expansion of academies.

Speaking on a visit with Brown to open a new city academy in Hackney, east London, sponsored by the City of London and auditors KPMG, Balls told the Guardian the decision marked a shift in the scheme:

"In the early period of academies, the £2m commitment from sponsors was an important part of showing they were serious. Two years ago we removed that entry fee for universities, further education colleges and schools – and we've now had 55 universities and 28 further education come forward to sponsor academies. I don't think money should be the first qualification to run a school.

"We will continue to encourage people to set up endowment funds when they sponsor a school. That will be one way of showing a commitment.

"There was a view of academies that we were basically setting up grant-maintained schools. That is a total misreading of what we're doing. It was never just about the freedoms schools get, but the injection of a different educational DNA and new leadership."

... The most extensive independent evaluation of academies, published last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers, concluded that results had gone up in academies, but so had the intake of middle-class pupils. It found "considerable diversity" in improvements between schools, concluding that it was not an "academy effect" that drove up standards, but different reasons at different schools ...

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The requirement of interested companies simply having to prove they have the 'necessary skills and leadership' to run an academy does not stand up to scrutiny. One of the latest academies to open is being sponsored by Aston Villa Football Club. I defy anyone to suggest that a football club can know more about the running of schools than a local education authority."

Guardian  07 September 2009

Academies: A model education?

Academy schools to be increased

Amey: Academy sponsor seeks to withdraw

Is academy way forward for Leeds school?

New academy schools fuel education row

These are the teachings of wild intervention and vanity

What are academy schools?

Will academies take the easy option?

... surprisingly, children spend very little of their time in school thinking. There is almost an unspoken deal: we'll spoonfeed you the required nuggets of information to pass your exams if you behave and do your homework on time. Our education system is not designed to get children to think. Why?

Because even now, after some streamlining of subjects, teachers have huge amounts of content to plough through. Because teachers often do not have the techniques or confidence to engage in open-ended, probing questioning. Because in some schools there are crowd-control issues that get in the way.

There is perhaps one further reason. We don't prize thinking in this country. We are suspicious of the intellectual; it's almost as if we believe too much thinking is not a good thing ...

englishhermit
16 Aug 09, 12:50am

Careful now. Who is going to man the call centres and work in the banks if they have been taught to think?

There are too many jobs about where thinking is not only not required but would preclude selection for the job in the first place.

What is required is the ability to follow instructions on the screen without deviation from the script.

Beep. Beep. Ching. Beep. Beep. Ching. It's the machine people from Planet Screen.

Observer  16 August 2009

What's Counted & What Counts?

Ofsted inspectors investigating an increase in exclusions from primary schools have discovered "worrying" levels of sexual behaviour among very young children.

An inquiry into schools that have repeatedly suspended pupils as young as four has unearthed high incidences of children touching other children inappropriately and using sexually graphic language as well as swearing, attacking staff and throwing furniture.

The growing rates of exclusions could be reduced if pupils receive the right support but some schools do not have the "capacity" to deal with the psychological problems some children face, the report suggests. Ofsted is "urgently" appealing to the government to produce advice for schools on identifying sexual behaviour and when to refer a child to social services in case that child is at risk of abuse.

The inquiry, published today, followed figures released in parliament at the end of last year which revealed that more than 4,000 children under the age of five were excluded from school or nursery in 2007, the majority for violence against other children or a member of staff.

Last night the Department for Children, Schools and Families confirmed that in 2007, the last year figures are available for, 41,300 children were excluded temporarily from primary schools - a rise of 10% since 2004.

Guardian 24 June 2009

Nursery pupils excluded for being sexually explicit in class

Schools 'need not expel under-7s'

I am weary of reading the obvious cures for the ailments of education. The latest advice comes from the Government's behaviour Tsar, Sir Alan Steer. "Give kids a right royal rollicking" is the latest gem. So now our headteachers are expected to bawl sergeant-major fashion at every kid who misbehaves in school.

Throat lozenges will be provided.

I recently spent two terms teaching in a secondary school in education minister Ed Balls's constituency. I took over from a newly qualified teacher who would start her school day by crying into her Nescafe and quaking with fear. As far as I could see there was more scorn than support given to her from the senior management.

The GSCE classes consisted of 30 pupils. Four of these had trouble staying in the class longer than 10 minutes before destroying any hope of learning. "Who the fuck are you?" was my greeting from an obese 14-year-old, feet on desk and baseball cap back to front. Forty minutes later, after a fracas and admonishment, I commenced teaching.

Another six pupils would spend the lesson spitting pellets through straws and a dozen more would simply go through the motions and offer nothing positive. The poor kids who desperately wanted to learn had no chance, and I salute the ones who manage to get a decent grade against such odds.

The GSCE class was one of the better ones. Most of the classes I was given consisted of kids who despised everything about a system that was not designed for them. It was an ill-fitting suit that made them look, feel and act like clowns, and this they resented. I couldn't blame them. At the age of 14 they wanted and needed to feel like young adults, but the curriculum only sufficed to create dissenters. Our education system needs to tailor a suit for these children, one that fits and can be worn with pride.

Brian McCusker
York

The Independent 11 May 2009

'Give kids a right royal rollicking'

The Rose Report into the reform of primary education concerns itself with none of the issues raised on this page.

Rather, it appears to reprise most of the educational controversies of the last fifty years, many of which were alive when I was at teacher training college in the early sixties.

In those days it was received 'wisdom' that primary schools were about creativity, and the ownership and control of schools was non-controversial: the LEA provided the money - such as it was - and a very weak inspectorate left teachers to get on with it.

Now, as The Independent's leader rightly indicates, the Tory-Gove agenda is about taking schools away from what Margaret Thatcher called 'socialist' LEAs, and preparing them for the day when the IMF tells the UK to privatise them.

A bureaucratic-centrist curriculum will almost certainly not be privatised - another indicator of the corporate state - and what is learned will continue to be a political football along the lines of a sterile debate between 'modernist' versus 'traditional' modes of learning.

AC Grayling raised a crucial point about the curriculum in his New Scientist article "The importance of knowing how" which distinguished between knowing facts, and evaluating them.

Critical thinking is, arguably, the last thing politicians like Balls and Gove would wish to see developed since their nostrums might then be subject to the closer inspection which they deserve.

However, it is impossible to divorce education from the society in which it is embedded, and neoliberal society (oxymoron!) expects - without spelling it out - that children be equipped to enter a global economy in which employment carries endemic risk and uncertainty, and previous social support systems are ebbing away.

The dilemma is the extent to which this is made explicit, and also the extent to which the process of education enables pupils to challenge the theoretical basis of such an economy.

Such a curriculum would also - justifiably - raise the profile of both the ethical and ecological considerations which the current global economy ignores.

The Independent 01 May 2009

Computers key in primary review

Jim Rose: education becomes a sideshow

Jim'll fix it

Neoliberalism and education: the autonomous chooser

The importance of knowing how

150,000 children unable to read and write at 11

More than 150,000 children are unable to read, write and add up properly by the time they are 11, yesterday's primary school league tables revealed.

The figures showed for the first time the percentage of youngsters failing to reach the required standard in both maths and English.

In all, just over one in four of the 600,000 age cohort (26 per cent) fell short of what was expected of them.

In 797 schools, fewer than half the pupils reached the level expected of an 11-year-old in the two core subjects ...

Opposition MPs seized the overall results as evidence of poor standards in schools. David Laws, the Liberal Democrats' schools spokesman, said: "It is shocking that there are still hundreds of schools which are not equipping the majority of their pupils with the basic skills they need."

However, the results are the best achieved since the tests were introduced in 1992 – 81 per cent achieved the required level in English, 79 per cent in maths and 88 per cent in science. There were weaknesses in writing, with only 68 per cent of pupils achieving the level expected of them, compared to 87 per cent in reading ...

The Independent 02 April 2009

GCSE basic skills pledge scrapped

Employers warn over falling literacy

Reading and its Cultural Politics

Fahrenheit 451

Soulless schools cursed by league tables and dominated by "formulaic" exams are squeezing the lifeblood out of education, leading headteacher and political commentator Anthony Seldon will warn tomorrow.

The 21st-century obsession with teaching "facts" harks back to Thomas Gradgrind's utilitarian values in Dickens's Hard Times, he will say in a hard-hitting lecture to the College of Teachers. The result is a system that stifles imagination, individuality and flair.

In an extraordinary indictment of the national examination system, Dr Seldon, master of Wellington College and biographer of former prime minister Tony Blair, will claim that we are forgetting the very purpose of education. "Many parents, many teachers, will recognise it. Schools need to be liberating places, but it is very hard to do it with the utter throttling, choking straitjacket of the national examination system curriculum," he told the Observer

In Britain, he advocates a severe cut-back of external testing and examinations, which he claims have increased because of a lack of trust of schools, heads and teachers.

One option would be banishing national external exams until the age of 18, as they do in the United States. He also argues that GCSEs and A-levels, should be "swept away" in favour of exams, such as the International Baccalaureate, with its primary years, middle years, and diploma-level programmes ...

Observer 08 March 2009

Laureate attacks poetry teaching

Sats put primary pupils off science

The importance of knowing how

This education system fails children by teaching them to parrot, not think

What is education for?

What's counted and what counts

The number of young people in England not earning or learning is increasing, figures suggest.

People aged 16 to 24 not in work, education or training went up by 94,000 to 850,000 between 2003 and 2007 ...

The government blamed population growth and said the figures included disabled youths, carers and those on gap years ...

A study by the National Foundation for Educational Research just published by the sister Department for Children, Schools and Families, focusing on those aged 16 and 17, found "Neets" fell into different groups.

More than two fifths were generally positive about learning and very likely to participate in education or training in the short-term.

A similar proportion faced a lot of personal and structural barriers, and were likely to remain Neet in the medium-term.

A fifth were classified as "undecided Neet" - they did not face significant personal barriers to participating in education or training but were dissatisfied with the available opportunities.

BBC NEWS 30 January 2009

More needs to be done to raise the aspirations of young people, especially boys, from isolated white working class communities, a government report says. ...

The report confirmed what official statistics already indicate: that children from deprived backgrounds tend to do worse at school.

It said that poor white boys have the lowest aspirations of all ethnic groups ...

Last week, an analysis of the 2008 GCSE results showed that only one in six white boys who are entitled to free school meals obtained the government's benchmark of five good GCSEs ...

The areas with the lowest educational aspirations, termed "low horizons" by the researchers, were characterised as deprived, close-knit cohesive communities with high levels of social housing and a history of economic decline.

The areas also tended to be inward-looking. with low population mobility, and few wider connections with people outside the immediate area ...

The areas pinpointed by researchers were mainly those formerly dominated by heavy industry, often in the north of England ...

BBC NEWS 16 December 2008

Poor white boys still lag behind

Aim school help 'at poor whites'

White boys 'need local lessons'

More than a third of schools are not giving pupils a good education, inspectors warned today.

One in ten 11-year-olds are still leaving primary school without reaching the level expected of their age group in English and maths, Ofsted's annual report found.

And more than half of England's teenagers are still leaving school without five good GCSEs, including English and maths.

In her third annual report, Chief Inspector of Schools Christine Gilbert said England must do better if it is to compare favourably with the rest of the world.

She said she was concerned that there was still too much variation in achievement between different areas of the country.

Poor quality services existed across the education and care sectors, for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Poorer children, such as those who qualify for free schools meals, were still less likely to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, than their peers.

In 2007, only 21 per cent of children on free school meals achieved this benchmark, compared with 49 per cent of other pupils.

Ms Gilbert said there was a strong link across every sector between deprivation and poor quality services. ...

The Independent 19 November 2008

10 per cent of pupils fail to master maths

More than 120,000 11-year-olds are still unable to read, write and add up properly, test results to be published today will show.

The results will reveal that at least one in five children – about 120,000 – fail to make the grade in English with more – about 140,000 – unable to reach the required standard in maths.

However, the true figure of those struggling to master the basics is likely to be even higher. A survey out today shows that a majority of teachers believes SATs tests give an exaggerated picture of their pupils' abilities.

As a result of being coached for the tests, thousands of children achieve better results than their ability merits – and then fall behind when they start secondary school. The country's secondary school heads say that almost every school will retest their first-year pupils at the start of the autumn term, because they have lost confidence in the ability of national curriculum tests to identify a child's potential. ...

Independent 05 August 2008    Labour is failing low-income pupils

Government to roll out reading programme

Underfunded primary schools fail to teach basic literacy

Hundreds of authors urge PM to tackle child illiteracy

England slides down world literacy league

Reading and maths standards falling in Britain, says OECD

Four in 10 primary schoolers failing three Rs

£500m literacy drive is a flop

England falls in reading league

UK children 'reading too early'

Ten years of bold education boasts now look sadly hollow

Not another failed-schools initiative. When Ed Balls, king of policy fidgets, fell out of his Treasury nest and landed in schools, it was only a matter of time. He may have disliked Thatcherism's academies, foundation trusts and specialist schools, but they were government schools and they were his. They offered him an empire, control and a chance to abuse the detested local councils.

Yesterday Balls bought the entire academies package. He now wants 400 of them. Many will replace the 628 secondary schools in England that he claims to know are failing (out of 3,100). He intends to close 270 and merge or replace them with academies or, his latest initiative, 70 "national challenge trusts", some grouped under something called an Extra Mile initiative.

A failing school, to Balls, is not a private and painful challenge to a few hundred teachers and pupils somewhere in England. It is a unit that has fallen below his arbitrary target of 30% of pupils securing five A*-C grade GCSEs. He has given councils just 50 days to produce "plans" to get them back on target, or inspectors or commissioners will intervene to do the job for them.

He also intends "further measures" to root out incompetent teachers and a "school-by-school assessment of primary education". What of the last dozen such initiatives?

On one matter Balls is right. Twenty years of secondary reorganisation and an unprecedented injection of cash have failed to deliver. State education in Britain has grown worse over the past decade than in comparable countries. Last December's Pisa study for the OECD was devastating, admitted by Balls as showing that in "direction of change, we have gone backwards".

In 2000, Britain was third or fourth in subjects such as reading and science, and is down at 14th or 15th today. From sporting performance to criminality, pregnancy and drug-taking, young people are near the foot of every European league table. Despite astronomical spending on teachers, Britain comes 15th in secondary class size.

It clearly never occurs to ministers that more bureaucratisation and institutional humiliation merely disrupts a school, as it does a hospital. A school is not a football team, always to be threatened with relegation. The league table culture demoralises staff and pupils and poisons the well of local support.

Like his predecessors in his job, Balls is desperate to make a mark before moving on. This means winning headlines, if not from school outputs at least from policy inputs ...

Academies, of which 83 are now open, have proved five times more costly to build than equivalent council schools and receive an extraordinary £160,000 a year per pupil more. The National Audit Office said last autumn the taxpayer had spent a staggering £5m to teach each academy pupil that performed above the national cohort average ...

... what many suspected is true - changes in finance, structure and governance do not yield any special educational advantage. There was never any need for this disruptive "binary" structure of secondary education. It was a product of the vanity of ministers. The money would have been better spent on making each local school system better resourced and led ...

The Guardian 11 June 2008

Expand academy model into primary sector, says thinktank

Academies 'expel pupils over league tables'

Will academies take the easy option?

Academy Schools

A few weeks ago Chris Haworth, the deputy head of Our Lady's RC Sports College in north Manchester, fetched a bin and threw his lesson plans into it. Then he threw the national curriculum after them.

It was just a bit of drama, of course, and he had to retrieve them all after the staff training day was over. Otherwise Ofsted, who visited last month and found the school improving fast, would have had very stern things to say.

Haworth was trying to illustrate his view that our knowledge-driven, exam-focused education system does not cater adequately for the needs of the fast-developing adolescent brains of the pupils he teaches.

"Our national agenda is really knowledge-driven," he says. "I want to put that to one side, to make young people confident learners so they can come at problems and offer solutions to them." ...

Guardian 06 May 2008

An 'entire generation' of school children has been let down by the Labour government, a new study has claimed. The report, by the Bow Group, reveals that almost a million teenagers failed to achieve even the lowest grade, a G, in five GCSEs since the party came to power.

While ministers have boasted about the rise in the number of pupils achieving five C grades at GCSE, they have failed to highlight the growing numbers at the bottom of the pile.

Over the past decade the number of teenagers walking away from school without five basic G grades, including in English and maths, has risen - despite billions of pounds of investment in education. Almost 90,000 pupils fell into the category last year, the highest figure since 1998.

The report - which covers English schools between 1997 to 2007 - also found there were 3.9 million pupils, close to 60 per cent of the total, who had not gained five C grades at GCSE, including in the core subjects of English and maths. Although a G is the lowest pass possible at GCSE, achieving five C grades is considered a 'minimum benchmark' by employers. ...

The Observer 20 April 2008

A bloated system that needs reform

Too many exams, too much pure incompetence

Children are being left behind in the rush for good grades

The government should increase primary school budgets to match those in secondary schools to pay for specialist teachers to tackle illiteracy, experts say. The multibillion pound investment in education since 1997 has been undermined by a failure to teach pupils the basics by the time they are 11, according to the biggest review of primary education in 40 years.

The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today publishes a series of papers which report that higher test results have been at the expense of the quality of primary education, with a 20% funding gap between primary and secondary schools. Teacher-pupil relationships have been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for "high stakes" national tests, it claims. ... A second report, by academics at Cambridge and Manchester Metropolitan Universities, said: "The evidence on the impact of the various initiatives on standards of pupil attainment is at best equivocal and at worst negative. While test scores have risen since the mid-1990s, this has been achieved at the expense of children's entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum and by the diversion of considerable teaching time to test preparation."

It surveyed data on national testing and concluded that the "high stakes" testing has led to a "narrowing of the curriculum". It added: "There is also evidence that the quality of the teacher-pupil interaction has been negatively influenced." ...

The Guardian 29 February 2008

The quality of education in primary schools has worsened under Labour despite increases in funding, says the biggest inquiry of its kind for 40 years.

Reports published today say many pupils spend too long preparing for "batteries of tests" in English and maths at the expense of a broader education. The reports say educational standards may actually have fallen as a result.

In one study, it is claimed that Government control of state schools has risen over the past 20 years but "especially after 1997". It also concluded that Britain spends less on education than most western nations - despite funds soaring under Labour.

The report, by Dominic Wyse, from Cambridge University, and Elaine McCreery and Harry Torrance at Manchester Metropolitan University, said coaching for tests has "restricted curriculum coverage" and as "test scores have risen, educational standards... may actually have declined". ...

Telegraph.co.uk 29 February 2008

Far too many children have been leaving primary schools unable to handle words and numbers properly, and the Blair government was determined to do something about it. It believed it had found the way. Set clear targets for schools, devise strategies for teaching literacy and numeracy, and hold everyone to account.

It may have sounded a very good idea in No 10. But the Government might have been warned by the collapse of the Soviet economy, which depended on numerical targets, strategies and sanctions. What has happened to primary education in England is not unlike what happened to Soviet industry. ...

Ministers have essentially reduced education to a series of numerical targets. The emphasis on achieving Level 4 numeracy and literacy scores has led to a narrowing of the primary school experience and insufficient attention to raising all children to the best levels they can achieve. ...

The Independent 29 February 2008

Parents are encouraged to choose schools for their children based on league tables of test scores. But this puts children under extreme pressure which could damage their motivation and self esteem as well as encouraging schools to "teach to the test" at the expense of pupils' wider learning, the study found.

The findings are part of a two-year inquiry – led by Cambridge University – into English primary schools. Other parts of the UK and countries such as France, Norway and Japan used testing but it was, "less intrusive, less comprehensive, and considerably less frequent", Cambridge's Primary Review concluded.

England was unique in using testing to control what is taught in schools, to monitor teaching standards and to encourageparents to choose schools based on the results of the tests, according to Kathy Hall, from the National University of Ireland in Cork, and Kamil Ozerk, from the University of Oslo, who conducted the research.

"Assessment in England, compared to our other reviewed countries, is pervasive, highly consequential, and taken by officialdom and the public more generally to portray objectively the actual quality of primary education in schools," their report concluded. ...

The Independent 08 February 2008

England young 'among most tested'

An oppressive system that is failing our children

Cookery lessons are to be compulsory in England's secondary schools for children aged 11 to 14.

Pupils will learn to cook for an hour a week for one term. Poorer pupils' ingredients will be subsidised.

Cookery is a ministerial "expectation" but, as an optional part of the design and technology curriculum, is not currently taught in all schools.

The move is part of the strategy to tackle obesity, as experts believe 1m children will be obese in a decade.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families says that about 85% of secondary schools do offer cookery in some form. ...

Schools Secretary Ed Balls wants to see 800 cookery teachers trained. ...

He is promising to give schools £2.5m a year to help children from poor homes to pay for ingredients. ...

BBC NEWS 22 January 2008

Primary schools in England will receive about £340 extra each next year to support compulsory languages teaching.

From 2010 all those over seven must learn a foreign language.

That change, plus a recommendation that £50m be spent on language learning, was accepted by ministers in the spring after an independent review.

The focus on primary schools is aimed at reversing the sharp decline in the numbers continuing to study languages to GCSE level, which is now optional.

Ministers are directing £35m next year towards training existing primary teachers, providing specialists and buying books and other resources.

But the Department for Children, Schools and Families has made it clear this is only £5m more than schools are getting this year - for more than 14,700 schools, an average of £340 each.

The remainder of the money will be spent supporting links between schools and universities and on a website ...

BBC NEWS 20 December 2007

£53m to revive languages in schools

Ministers have presided over the death of fun and play in the primary school curriculum, according to the results of an inquiry published today.

The inquiry, commissioned by the National Association of Head Teachers, recommends scrapping end-of-term national curriculum tests and primary school league tables.

It argues that they have damaged children's education by putting them off learning through too much repetitive teaching for tests ...

The inquiry collected evidence from a range of organisations, academics and writers – including the literacy expert Sue Palmer, the author of Toxic Childhood, which argues that today's children have been robbed of their childhood by the testing, targets and tables regime in schools.

In the inquiry report, she argues: "Fun and play are what motivate young children to learn and to want to go on learning."

She added: "The more teachers concentrate on teaching to the tests, the less time they have to spend on the range of activities young children need to develop them as balanced individuals.

"Sport and PE provide small bodies with the chance to ... develop physical co-ordination and control and learn valuable lessons about working as a team. Art, music and movement help children express themselves in a variety of ways and develop emotional resilience."

The inquiry stresses that the NAHT is not against assessing pupils but argues the current national curriculum tests coupled with the primary school league tables are "deeply damaging to the quality of education and therefore to the standards of achievement in our schools" ...

The Independent 13 December 2007

Schools are told to make artistic experience 'a key part of childhood'

Every child in Britain will have the chance to experience the arts directly as part of their school routine, with five hours of cultural learning and activity every week, the government will pledge this week.

Ministers hope the radical move, to be launched in their Children's Plan, will elevate the status of arts education and help to underline its importance in children's development. 'This offer will give everyone a chance to make sure that creativity is a key part of their childhood,' the Culture Secretary, James Purnell, told The Observer.

The target aims to allow all children to watch and take part in professionally organised music, dance, theatre and visual arts. It is intended to reflect the growing importance of creative industries to the UK economy and will be backed by a gradual increase in funding.

Purnell said: 'We will be announcing in the Children's Plan that we want to move towards five hours of culture to match what is available in sport, giving young people the chance to develop both as critical spectators and practitioners.' ...

The Observer 09 December 2007

Mr Rosen told the BBC News website: "The effect of Sats and indeed the whole literacy strategy, have to my mind, been disastrous for poetry.

"Poetry is either sidelined or subjected to pointless questioning on the supposed 'facts' of a poem and children spend their time counting metaphors and proving what that this or that makes a poem effective.

"Effective for who? The children aren't asked. I welcome the fact that this report goes some of the way to exposing what's going on."

The laureate - who wrote the best-selling children's book "We're going on a bear hunt" - is not alone in criticising government policy.

The National Association for the Teaching of English (Nate) says teachers are under too much pressure to get children through exams.

Nate director Ian McNeilly said: "For a teacher under pressure to deliver results there may be precious little time or inclination to study areas which are not for assessment.

"It's depressing that some schools might not be encouraging things like the study of poetry, reading for pleasure and engaging with texts just for fun.

"All education and learning stems from pleasure and the assessment system is choking the fun out of the creative aspects of the teaching of English."

In secondary school, poetry education did not provide a "coherent" preparation for studying English at A-level, the report claimed. ...

BBC NEWS 07 December 2007

The managerial techniques of targets and constant testing favoured under Mr Blair have not delivered the improvement we need either.

The most sensible way forward is an emphasis on best teaching practice and more flexible structures. ...

But the underlying and inescapable message from these reports is that complacency about the state of our education system would be completely inappropriate.

The Independent 05 December 2007

... a large number of experts in the field have signalled alarm at England's Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage document which is due to become law next autumn. They are definitely right to do so.

The mindset of this missive is captured by its sub-title, namely: Setting the Standards for Learning, Development and Care for Children from Birth to 5. As those words imply, this is an ambitious and essentially authoritarian volume. It seeks to impose by statutory diktat standards for teaching not just in state nursery schools but in private institutions and also by registered childminders.

What is being asked is stunningly prescriptive, with 72 separate early-learning “goals” that range from the worthy if banal (“continue to be interested, excited and motivated to learn”)

to the implausibly optimistic (“understand what is right, wrong and why”)

to the trendy (“begin to know about their own cultures and beliefs and those of other people”)

to the insanely detailed (“use their phonetic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words”

and “use developing mathematical ideas and methods to solve practical problems”).

All of this is to be subject to an inspection regime now located within Ofsted.

There are three compelling reasons to regard this exercise with profound suspicion.

The first is that there is still a lively debate, not only among the professionals but involving humble parents as well, about the balance between “work” and “play” in the education of very young children.

Some would like their offspring to master reading and the recognition of numbers at 3 or 4 but there are many others who would prefer their creative spirits stretched in more informal ways before the business of schooling begins in earnest.

The evidence in favour of one or other device is open to legitimate discussion. Different styles might well suit different children, and that can be as true for siblings as strangers.

It would be wrong, even if this rubric were only imposed in the state sector, to reduce diversity and parental choice.

What is worse, secondly, is for the Department for Children, Families and Schools to insist that its “vision” must be followed in schools where parents have dug into their own pockets to send their children, presumably on the basis that they favour the teaching techniques deployed there.

It will also, finally, make the process of inspections a bureaucratic nightmare.

Until recently, the purpose was to ensure that the welfare of young children was respected by those entrusted with their care. That important ideal will be diluted as Ofsted attempts to evaluate whether a lengthy list of goals has been met and what remedial measures should be threatened if the “standards” are not met.

Ofsted is a fine body that continues to play a pivotal role in driving up standards in primary and secondary education. But it does not need to be an Oftot as well.

Parents will detect a shiftier side to this act of state intervention. There is a “we know best” tone to this document that makes for uneasy reading at ages well above that of pre-school children.

Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, has to look again (or, perhaps, the first time) at this area.

For here, at least, Stalin has not given way to Mr Bean.

The Times 30 November 2007

Experts blast 'distorted' early learning plans

Stealth curriculum is ‘threat to all toddlers’

The gap in performance between pupils from rich and poor backgrounds is stark and poses an unacceptable risk to the life chances of disadvantaged children, the chief schools inspector, Christine Gilbert, warned yesterday. ...

Figures in the report showed that children from disadvantaged homes were five times more likely to fail to get five top-grade A* to C passes in their GCSE exams than those from more affluent backgrounds. ...

The report revealed that as many as 200,000 teenagers aged 16 and 17 had been left in limbo – without a job or a full-time education or training place.

It also showed that only 12 per cent of children in care obtained five top-grade GCSE passes – compared with a national average of 59 per cent. Of those eligible for free school meals, only one in three obtained five top-grade passes.

Twice as many 11-year-olds from poor homes also failed to master English and maths in national curriculum tests (61 per cent and 58 per cent) compared with the national average (83 per cent and 79 per cent). ...

The Independent 18 October 2007

State-school children will never get to elite universities in the numbers that they should as long as state schools are forced to teach in the way that they do.

What the top universities are looking for, besides academic performance, is intellectual creativity, a capacity for lateral thought and argument, and a deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for the subject. Some private schools have the time, resources, and the carefully selected intake, which enable them to provide that; many others are expert in training their pupils in the skills they need to fake it. They make it a priority because this is what their market, and their customers, demand.

In contrast, the state system is answerable to government, and its priority has become the delivery of the test results and statistics which prove that education is a success. In state schools, what most children learn is that as long as they memorise what they are told for tests, and repeat the key words on the mark schemes in exams, then a questioning approach and wider reading are neither necessary nor welcome. The breadth, depth and articulacy which the best universities seek is not being taught. ...

The Guardian 25 September 2007

School books being dumbed down for exams

Schools 'must do more to promote creativity'

According to the Department for Education and Skills (DfeS), EYFS ‘is underpinned by the key principles of treating every child as unique, creating loving and secure relationships and environments in which children can learn and develop at their own pace, and with enjoyment’.

Will the government ever learn? It seems that such is New Labour’s reliance on targets as the only measure of success that even children’s early lives and learning will now be measured by lists, tick-boxes and rigid expectations and outcomes. Yet such an intricate monitoring of children’s behaviour and abilities is an anathema to creating a ‘challenging and enjoyable’ learning environment. A ‘national curriculum for toddlers’, as the framework document has been labelled, will surely take all the fun out of pre-school care.

On top of outlining 69 learning goals – as if young children can be put on some kind of officially approved conveyor belt towards success – the framework document also outlines several hundred developmental milestones that children should be assessed against.

According to the document, children under the age of one should show an ability to communicate through ‘crying, gurgling, babbling and squealing’, and should be able to ‘play with their own fingers and toes’ and ‘focus on objects around them’. Toddlers up to two years of age should be interested in ‘putting objects in and out of containers’ and should ‘begin to move to music, [and] listen to or join in with rhymes or songs’.

There will be Ofsted inspections to measure childcarers’ performance against EYFS national standards. So we’re told, for instance, that infants get a lot of enjoyment from ‘finding their nose, eyes or tummy’ and therefore carers should monitor whether babies are showing an interest in such games. But what if some babies don’t? What conclusion should a carer draw if a child is not really interested in tummy-finding activities? No childcare professional or researcher could really answer that question with any degree of certainty.

There is no convincing case for implementing such a detailed monitoring of young children’s behaviour and their carers’ responses to that behaviour. Beverley Hughes, the UK minister of state for children, says: ‘This government is committed to giving every child the best start in life…. We know that good early-years provision leads to better outcomes in a young person’s future education and life chances.’

Well, no, we don’t know that, actually. No serious researcher would draw such a conclusion from the studies into early-years education carried out to date. Studies investigating the short-term effect of early-years programmes on cognitive and emotional development suggest the evidence that it provides future benefits is murky at best. And there is no clear evidence at all that early-years education has longer-term benefits in terms of educational achievement and positive life or career chances in the future.

The fact is that children are unpredictable and cannot be moulded to order from birth. According to Stanley Greenspan, clinical professor of psychiatry and paediatrics at the George Washington University Medical School in the US, measurements of behaviour in young children are a poor predictor of later outcomes in terms of education, career or ‘life chances’.

Indeed, Jean Piaget, the late Swiss polymath and one of the most influential and prolific developmental psychologists, has been rightly criticised by researchers in the field (including many of his followers) for trying to apply overly rigid age ranges to his proposed stages of emotional, cognitive and moral development. A century of research has given us great insights into what children should be capable of at different stages of development – but it has also taught us that children vary greatly in the pace and nature of their development. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions from certain children’s developmental delay, and to make any grand assessment about their cognitive, emotional or linguistic futures.

The targets approach to everything from health and education to childcare captures the government’s suspicion towards carers and parents, who allegedly cannot be left to their own devices. Unable to articulate what a good education should consist of in terms of content and resources, the government instead sets a series of abstract hurdles for young people to leap over by a certain strict period in their lives. This transforms carers and teachers into managers who must prod children in the right direction rather than cater for their sometimes differing levels of interest and inquisitiveness. At the same time, the tyranny of targets shows that the government does not trust teachers or parents to raise their children in a good and proper fashion. Thus everything, even gurgling and pencil-gripping, must be measured by a centrally-set standard in order to ensure that no child is being left behind by the apparently unthinking and uncaring adults out there.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tick-box mentality that has been introduced into the education system by today’s overly prescriptive national curriculum has driven some very good teachers out of the profession. Those who love working with children and who have a passion for passing on knowledge and facts are being put off by the overly bureaucratic measures introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments.

Who is going to be attracted to working with pre-school children if this same bureaucratic approach is brought into early-years care, too? We should not be stressing out over whether young children are learning to hold a pencil in the right way or whether they can recognise numbers between 1 and 9. Young children should be given the space to play and to use their imaginations. They will have plenty of time to catch up if they haven’t learnt to write by the time they start school – all they need is a good teacher, not a framework document that treats them like robots.

Dr Helene Guldberg has a PhD in developmental psychology and is an associate lecturer in child development at the Open University.

spiked-online.com 19 March 2007

A real education service would not require the minister to dabble in curriculum, er, 'development' via an almost weekly torrent of initiatives.

Former Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, was emblematic of this particular fever.

He 'ordered' schools to teach the classics - such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - to 11 and 12 year olds:

Policy director of the National Association for the Teaching of English, Ian McNeilly, who is also an English teacher, said:

"For students who are not yet ready, teaching texts of such linguistic complexity is completely counter-productive."

He accused Mr Johnson of trying to secure a few more votes from Middle England "by not allowing standards to slip".

"But you don't have to do that by shoe-horning a classic author into the classroom," he added.

"The guy's a bird brain. If he wants to make an informed decision he can give me a ring. His decision is completely uninformed."

BBC NEWS 16 February 2007

Apart from election campaigns, when rising support for far-right political parties in areas such as Dagenham causes alarm, the traditional working class is largely overlooked.

When politicians say that some communities are failing to integrate with mainstream society, they mean Muslims from the Indian subcontinent.

When campaigners complain that schools are failing some children, they often cite black boys.

Yet the nation's most troubled group, in both absolute and relative terms, is poor, white and British-born. ...

By tracking tens of thousands of poor children, academics at Bristol University have pinpointed the problem. When poor whites are tested at the age of seven, they fare only slightly worse than poor blacks, and better than poor Pakistani and Bangladeshi children, many of whom are struggling with English.

By 14, whites have overhauled blacks and continue to lead the other two groups.

But at 16, when futures are decided in the national exams, the white children do worst of all.

Poor Indian and Chinese pupils, who have been ahead all along, increase their lead dramatically.

No more jobs for the boys

Clearly something happens to white children between the ages of 14 and 16 that does not happen to others. That something is that they write off the value of education in doing well in life. ...

One reason poor British whites have escaped scrutiny is that they are less associated with serious criminality than other ethnic groups, particularly Afro-Caribbeans.

British blacks are disproportionately young and tend to live in big cities, which are heavily policed. They may be more likely to commit the sort of extravagantly violent crimes that attract stiff sentences.

It is this reason, rather than any racial bias in the criminal-justice system, that explains why they are over-represented in prison compared with whites.

But whites actually commit more crime. ...

The Economist October 28 2006 | Page 33ff

UK faces 'looming skill shortage'

Leitch Review of Skills

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Minister's wife takes over Ofsted

The Department for Education and Skills has denied "cronyism".

Government News Network

The appointment of Christine Gilbert CBE as the new Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools (HMCI) in England was today confirmed following a meeting of the Privy Council yesterday evening.

Times 09 June 2006

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, cast doubt on whether Ms Gilbert could remain independent. “It’s important to have a chief inspector who is not tied to any political party, who can act independently and in the best interests of schools and pupils,” she said.

“The job of chief inspector is not one of de facto cheerleader for whatever is government policy of the day. I think she will need to prove that her ties to the current Government won’t influence her ability to carry out the role properly.”

Christine Gilbert

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Kelly raises her profiling targets for five-year-olds

New targets to assess five-year-old children in England were announced yesterday by Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary.

She said that 30,000 more children must "reach a good level of development" every year. She emphasised that the targets would not mean nursery school children sitting exams or being assessed formally in any way. ...

Miss Kelly made her announcement in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Left-of-centre think tank, in London.

It followed controversy over the Government's plans to introduce what was condemned as a new "national curriculum for babies", covering the education and child care that children receive from birth to the age of five.

Parents' groups denounced the proposal, contained in the Childcare Bill passing through Parliament, as "madness".

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said: "We are now in danger of taking away children's childhood when they leave the maternity ward."

Miss Kelly said that improving education for small children was vital to their success later in their school careers.

"By 2008 we want to have seen improvements across the country in children's readiness for school at age five," she said.

"I am acutely aware that parents do not want their toddlers sitting exams or undergoing any form of assessment. Nor do I. This will not happen. Instead, teachers and child care professionals simply observe children, looking, for example, for enthusiasm for learning and good communication skills.

"We want to see an increase from 48 per cent of children reaching a good level of development at age five to 53 per cent by 2008.

"It may not sound much, put like that, but it means an extra 30,000 more children ready to learn at age five every year."

Miss Kelly said the Government also wanted to see "faster gains in our most deprived communities".

She said the aim was for the gap between children living in such areas and in other communities to narrow by a quarter by 2008.

Nick Gibb, the shadow schools minister, criticised the added bureaucracy which he said the targets would mean.

"Early years profiling is a box-ticking exercise which involves teachers filling in 117 sections of a huge form for each child in the class," he said. "It is an enormously time-consuming exercise of no real benefit for children."

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) will be a requirement in September 2008 and will be delivered through "a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities, with children learning through planned, purposeful play".

It will cover six areas of learning and development: personal, social and emotional; communication, language and literacy; problem solving, reasoning and numeracy; knowledge and understanding of the world; physical development and creative development.

The Department for Education and Skills said that EYFS was "about providing children with the experiences and activities they need to grow, learn and develop".

Paul Ennals, the chief executive of the National Children's Bureau, said: "This is not about introducing a national curriculum for babies. It is about measuring progress against the five key outcomes for children."

Telegraph.co.uk 27 April 2006

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Neoliberalism and education: the autonomous chooser

This paper presents a Foucauldian analysis for the argument entitled Neoliberalism and Education: the Autonomous Choosers - it is about the constitution of the self.

The argument is that through self-constitution, the subject is implicated in its own governance.

The argument locates self-constitution as a discursive formation within a neoliberal discourse that is problematic as a mode of governance: Michel Foucault’s notion of Governmentality as a neoliberal disciplinary mode of self-constitution.

In a neoliberal culture (as in any other), the individual is usually unknowingly implicated in creating a subjectivity that fits within the prevailing political rationality. And, as Marshall has argued through his notion of neoliberalism, (unlike liberalism) has no internal spaces within which to contest values.

But it is a contention of this paper that individuals actually have agency and some will seek spaces within which to critique values.

To the extent that governmentality denies agency it has a problem. The dialectical nature of liberal critique implies that change is continuous and progressive.

Therefore, as critique advances, neoliberal subjectivity would be an unstable entity given the additional problem that the subject is continuously involved in (re)form.

It is also a contention of this paper that continuous reform to the economy, society, education, and hence the self, exudes a false notion of progress.

Under conditions of (re)form, the self itself becomes unstable as part of this (re)forming world.

The instability stems from the requirement of the self to (re)form, (re)form [and (re)form ad infinitum], to meet the challenges of neoliberal enterprise culture. Under this force, whatever form the self arrives at is merely an interactive moment in a process of (re)form ...

Conclusion

Although many people will agree with certain aspects of both points of view, the philosophical gulf that separates the two sides – capital/liberal, neoliberal/enterprise - is immense.

Both sides, however, recognize that control of the monolithic government schools system is one of the most important strategic objectives of the war.

Liberals and the liberal left have had no real response to these changes, either intellectually or in practice, except to provide critique and/or to repeat the principles and policies of the past.

If Foucault is correct, what is needed in response to neo-liberalism is an increased caution, and an increased imagination and inventiveness, for there is a complex problem space brought into play by such neo-liberal reforms.

The form of the human being is being changed by education, language, politics and practices. A neo-social-democratic response is needed as an approach to these crises of the welfare state and the increasing demands for autonomy.

This is but another critique and it may just be to reiterate the dark side of the “progress” of the human sciences to which Foucault drew our attention.

But there may well be spaces and antinomies for a resistance to a demeaning form of education and its associated demeaning notion of human being.

'Radical Pedagogy' 2002

Governmentality

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Grabbing a headline with the National Curriculum

"The guy's a bird brain"

A real education service would not require the minister to dabble in curriculum, er, 'development' via an almost weekly torrent of initiatives.

Former Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, was emblematic of this particular fever.

He 'ordered' schools to teach the classics - such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - to 11 and 12 year olds:

Policy director of the National Association for the Teaching of English, Ian McNeilly, who is also an English teacher, said:

"For students who are not yet ready, teaching texts of such linguistic complexity is completely counter-productive."

He accused Mr Johnson of trying to secure a few more votes from Middle England "by not allowing standards to slip".

"But you don't have to do that by shoe-horning a classic author into the classroom," he added.

"The guy's a bird brain. If he wants to make an informed decision he can give me a ring. His decision is completely uninformed."

BBC NEWS 16 February 2007

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