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The hard truths about our school system that ministers won't admit
Dr Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul's School08.04.09
It is a week of sound and fury on schools. On Monday the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, hinted to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers that he would scrap Sats tests at age 11, in an effort to head off a boycott by teachers. The National Union of Teachers is threatening to vote this weekend for a boycott - and for the abolition of faith schools. Meanwhile Mr Balls is publishing a White Paper next month which is expected to propose "report cards" for schools' results. All this isn't so much fiddling while Rome burns as arguing about whether Nero should buy a new violin.
The real issues facing English education are not being addressed this week. A truly frightening number of our young people leave primary school without adequate reading or writing skills. An appalling number fail to gain a minimum of five GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and Maths. These points will not be brought to public prominence this week, because they bring no credit to either teachers or government.
More than a decade ago now, Tony Blair proclaimed that the Government would focus on "standards not structures". That mantra was quickly forgotten in practice: ministers remain obsessed with structures. Which is a great shame, for standards - both of teaching and pupils' attainment - still matter a lot more than wrangles over faith schools or city academies.
Take our examination system. It is nearing meltdown. We are in danger of becoming a laughing stock among industrialised nations for the fact that we now have no fewer than four completely different examinations competing for the favours of our 16-plus pupils - A-level, the International Baccalaureate, the new government Diplomas and the Pre-U examination. The result is a massive dilution of scarce resources, while we should be concentrating on suitable reforms to the gold standard A-level.
GCSE is also in a mess. When independent school heads condemned the new science GCSEs, they were howled down by union leaders and government ministers - only a fortnight later to find those same ministers positively fawning over the finding by the independent regulator that these examinations were indeed deeply flawed.
What the conferences and ministers should be debating is the establishment of a single, coherent and simple national examination pattern, based largely on the eminent common sense of the Tomlinson Report, commissioned by government, hailed on its release in 2004 and then ignored.
Likewise the signs are that two other crucial issues - the curriculum and inspection - will also be short-changed by both teachers and ministers this week. A national curriculum and an inspection regime for schools were both brought in - with a hint of the jackboot - to an education system which was not used to being treated like that.
Yet it is folly to expect a country not to stipulate what its pupils should learn, or that those who provide that service should not be independently assessed. And we are in danger of seeing the pendulum on these issues swing back so far that it breaks the clock case.
The new inspection fashion is for short, minimum-notice snap visits by Ofsted. It sounds good until you realise that this means that schools are inspected in advance on their paperwork, not on actual observation of lessons. It is a box-tickers' charter, another triumph for the process-over-outcome brigade. Top prize under the new system goes to those who have the best people at filling out forms, not those who teach the most inspirational lessons.
As for the curriculum, last week the House of Commons Education Select Committee recommended cutting the national curriculum back to the core subjects. Recent years have seen two really worrying trends in the curriculum. The first is a total confusion at the heart of central planning between the teaching of knowledge and skills.
To deny they are different is to say that two stars in their own right, Wayne Rooney and Stephen Hawking, should have followed the same curriculum. We need a curriculum that allows both to flourish and prosper, and not the dreadful, one-size-fits-all monster that merely kills both. We also need to stop government loading the national curriculum, teachers and schools with a burden of social engineering they are ill-equipped to deal with.
Sex education in schools, for example, is of course vital for a country that has one of the highest teenage pregnancy records of any comparable state. And it is too easy to blame families for the bad behaviour that schools have to deal with. But this is a cultural problem, not one that schools can deal with in isolation. On such issues of social responsibility, it makes no sense to leave schools to clear up the mess.
Not that you will get any say in all of this. This week's teaching union conferences bring together, as always, the providers (government) and the suppliers (teachers).
Am I the only person to wonder when on earth the consumers get their say? Where will the parents be? What about the employers and the universities? How about giving a say to those who stand to gain or lose the most from our educational system? Yet whatever the huffing and puffing from unions, government ministers are getting a relatively easy ride this week.
The recession has meant that teachers have gone from being poor relations to the envied minority, with their job security and guaranteed pay increases. For a year or two, the weight of one of the biggest scandals to affect English education - schools' inability to recruit graduate teachers - will be lifted as the recession temporarily increases the flow of refugee, redundant and new graduates into teaching.
Not that the problem has gone away yet: one large London comprehensive recently approached my school for help because it did not have a single qualified science teacher on its books for this September.
An easing of the pressures on recruitment should instead allow government to focus on getting right the systems of exams, inspection and the curriculum - the heart of standards.
Ministers are substituting "initiatives" for any real debate over the principles that should govern what we teach our young people.
Initiatives are very tempting for politicians, the equivalent of a quick-response team in a medical emergency. Yet by their very existence they suggest the patient is ill - while the treatment they give is usually that of a paramedic, not a long-term cure.
Reader views (7)
Fundamental reform of our education system has become urgent. In 2000, there were 33,105 schools: 47% comprehensive; 22% faith; 9% voluntary controlled; 13% voluntary aided; 3% foundation and 6% independent.
Core subjects were: English; History; Geography; Music & ICT. Foundation subjects were: Mathematics; Science; Art and Design; Design and Technology and Physical Education.
Public sector cost was £22.6 billion for 27,312 schools, or £827,000 per school. There were 8,151 million pupils and 320,000 teachers, 27,312 heads and 27,312 deputy heads. Total wages bill was about £11.4, or 50% of total school costs.
Probably one third of pupils were below average, one third average and one third above average. The funding for wages, buildings, other school costs, faith schools is so complex that it is difficult to figure out which group gets what. This needs to become far more transparent.
Parents, teachers, local authorities and policy makers would all agree that if education is completely free and real costs are not known, education would not be appreciated. Once costs are known, parents could be asked to contribute 10% of costs. They could chose to send their children to below average, average, or above average school, knowing full well the potentil of their children. There are exceptions of course.
To help boost exports and reduce imports, together totalling 40% of UK GDP each year, foreign languages should be taught. Similar costs must be developed by district.
- Nagink, London, Uk, London, UK
Why are left-wing politicans so prone to practicing and then defending deception come hell or high water?
They are still trying like mad to con us into believing that our ruined hopelessly socially-engineered eductation system is world class and is delivering first-class students.
If they had a smattering of integrity, they would admit their failure and errors and work to put things back the way they were in the 50s and 60s.
- Eric Legge, Ongar England
There are so many holes below the water-line in the Good Ship State Education that it may now be time for all to man the lifeboats.
Blame can be scattered in all directions: at teachers who believe that the primary function of schooling is to provide a soft-left ideological nursery; at ministers who have promised, like Janus, to face in two directions at once to placate disparate interest groups; at educationalists who have created a philosophical quagmire into which the traditional aims of education are slowly disappearing ; at bureaucrats who have been terrorised into accepting a process-driven byzantine complex of accountability.
Once the wreckage of this is salvaged and analysed to discover the cause of the disaster, good teachers, concerned parents and, hopefully, enlightened policy-makers may be able to produce something meaningful. But I fear the worst.
- Karol J Gajewski, Accrington UK
It's all just a joke. Just recently a Physics teacher made his eight year old son sit a Physics GCSE - a subject the child had never studied - and he got 55%, a pass!
When you hear someone's got three 'A's at A Level nowadays you just think, 'who hasn't?'
For loads of kids, once they've proved themselves numerate and literate, they should be able to leave school, at any age if they want to.
The government has to be got out of education. That's the first step.
- John, Helston UK
Sex Education will stop teenage pregnancy rubbish. Stop giving council flats to children and this would stop over night
It will never happen but bring back the Grammar schools and “O” levels which allowed many people to get a decent education who could not afford a private school.
- James, Brighton UK
'education education education' but this is in reality 'equality of access to mediocrity'
- David C, purbeck -uk
It’s true that a one fits all approach is not adequate - but the three R`s have to be taught to all before more exotic subjects are included.
How can we expect to understand or be understood if basic language becomes a barrier?
Reading and then writing a report can demonstrate a Childs comprehension, as well as spelling accuracy.
Basic maths (Sums) are required to gain knowledge of other traits or inadequacies the child may have - without knowing, how can they be assessed for streaming later on.
And once these strengths and weaknesses are evaluated, once the three R`s are mastered to an acceptable level, only then can the system focus and stream so the Hawking`s of this world can excel at physics, and the Rooney’s at sport.
But the basics are important to all.
Remember this promise back in 1997?
Education, Edjukashun,EdooK8shn!
- Darius Midwinter, London UK
