Five Quick Ways to Improve Education in England

My motivation for writing this post is my frustration and anger at how misguided and wrong education policies are in England. So these are all my ideas, taken from 13 years working and training in the education sector since 1999.
During my time as a teacher, a middle leader and senior leader I worked in a single sex selective grammar school, a comprehensive school that had a larger than normal SEN department in line with their 'caring' ethos and a High School located in a selective area (which was approximately one mile from the grammar school I taught at) with a high intake from one of the most socially and economically deprived wards in the borough and which was essentially an old 'secondary modern'. One of those schools went into special measures while I was there. Have a guess which one.
Here goes.

1. Remove league tables and other crude comparisons between schools.

Every school is unique in it's own way and cannot reasonably be compared to others. Geographical location, type of student intake and school specialisms are just three complex factors that make comparisons futile. League tables do nothing for students. What they do is encourage leadership teams to 'play games' with different qualifications to make their school look better than their competitors. And I don't like this idea of competition for students. Education shouldn't be a competition - all schools should work collaboratively with neighbours and share in their success as well as their own.

2. Changes to Inspections

Inspections in schools are important but there needs to be a culture change in how they are carried out and the judgements made. I agree in theory to the no notice inspection, after all, secret shoppers do not give two days notice. Inspectors should be able to walk into a school without notice and see what really happens on a day to day basis instead of the pantomime that normally ensues of which I have personally witnessed:

• teachers practising a lesson before the inspection and doing it again during the inspection
• leadership teams ensuring the most challenging students are out on a 'trip'
• leadership teams suggesting students stay at home that day or externally excluding students.     

With regards to lesson observations, inspectors must stay for the whole lesson as it is ridiculous to think that a judgement can be made by observing part of a lesson. Professor Dylan Wiliam has recently highlighted this argument with his piece in the TES in the last week and illustrated it with a great analogy:

“If I showed you a 30-second clip of a game between Manchester United and Manchester City and I said ‘who won the game?’, you would say it’s ridiculous to try to predict the outcome of a 90-minute game on the basis of a 30-second clip,” Professor Wiliam said. “And that is what we are trying to do with Ofsted, isn’t it? Instead of saying a teacher is going to teach a kid for 200 hours, they are looking at 30 minutes.”

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6172449#.TyvGsbzP0Og.twitter)

The context of the school also needs to be factored into inspections and observations.

I feel that discipline is very important in schools and have been enjoying reading Tom Bennett's (The Behaviour Guru) blog very much recently. In it he makes the point very clear that boundaries are needed and sanctions like detentions are needed to teach students that poor decisions they make have consequences. But I also feel that personalities are immensely important in the classroom and above all, student-teacher relationships. I am starting to feel that the question of whether students are 'engaged' or 'compliant' is becoming the crux of the matter. Engaged is what I had (mostly) when I was teaching in a classroom where I was more team captain than enemy. In the last year however I have taught in an all boys grammar school and an 'Academy' in a very deprived area of London and although the students were quiet, I felt like the enemy. I could sense the 'us & them' and it was not conducive to learning. I like my classroom to be full of laughter, teacher and class laughing together.

So I would like to see much more realism and humility in the observations that will also bear in mind the context of the school.

Another part of the inspection I would change is the 'instant' judgement and the fact that schools can be placed into special measures after a 'flying visit'. The minimum amount of visits I would accept before placing into special measures would be two... but with the whole lesson observation too. 

Finally, the inspections must take into account all the good work that takes place in a school and not just focus on data. I have referred to a personal Ofsted story in a previous post where the DCSF were in my school making a film about our innovative and nationally recognised employer engagement work on the same day as Ofsted were in for an inspection. Despite me raising it, there was no reference to this in the whole report.         

3. Understand that not all students are academic

It's clear that Gove is basing his whole ideology of education on the simple assumption that 'all children in the UK are like him'. What I mean is, able, bright & academic like we are told he was at school. The system he remembers worked for him because he found reading and learning facts easy and also did well in exams. But this is where the ideology falls apart. Not all students are like this...or me for that matter but I recognise that while the system worked for me (because I was also bright and good at examinations), it consistently fails many others. 
I concur with Sir Ken Robinson that there are many types of intelligences yet in schools children are only tested in academic intelligence. Many students would be better off being able to take a number of more creative subjects alongside the core subjects. I also have different ideas of what these should be - English, Maths, Science, ICT and PSHCE. I think there is also an argument that food technology or 'home economics' should be raised into a core subject. Before you scoff, eating and knowing what to eat is one of the most important parts of any human's life. I have known some students to not know what a pear or kiwi fruit tastes like. Healthy eating should be delivered as this subject or through the PSHCE programme. 
I find Gove's attitude to the 'arts' thoroughly depressing. I became a musician at school and it plays a really important role in my life today. His recent comment that drama should be an 'extra curricular' activity is nothing short of scandalous.            

4. Abolish the EBacc or do not measure schools on it.

See above. The EBacc reduces opportunities for young people to study subjects they wish or may be more suited to.  


5. Take Employability Skills seriously 

I laugh at the fact that Gove and others believe that current education or the 'new' education they are trying to force upon us actually prepares young people for their working life! I would dearly love to know how. I recently wrote a response on the Voice The Union blogpost about vocational learning.  

"My experience of dealing with businesses is that consistently employers say “they look good on paper but they can’t solve problems”. Employers are also shocked at the time keeping of young people and how many lack basic social skills. I remember an article in the Times in 2010 which stated that at a recruitment day for a blue chip company, only 3 out of 50 candidates looked at the employers in the eye, shook their hand and said hello.
I am sure all of us can reflect upon our own experiences and how useful our education has been in our lives. I know that (the content of) my degree was in no way useful for my first job, selling airtime at ITV. In fact it was only useful because generally speaking they only employed graduates. The skills I did need for that job were GCSE level maths and problem solving skills (airtime is a bit like a big jigsaw) and vitally, good communication/telephone skills. Thankfully I had developed my own communication skills and was intelligent enough to understand jigsaws. School helped with the maths"

There needs to be change in how we teach employability for young people. The enterprise programme introduced by the previous government was good but it needed to be ingrained in all schools. Other simple things that schools should be doing is referring to the 'outside' world in lessons and identifying jobs that would use skills that teachers are demonstrating. Finally, we need a team of skilled & innovative 'fixers' working between schools and employers to bring education to life for students and demonstrate how their lessons are relevant to them. The Institute of Education Business Excellence (www.iebe.org.uk) is an excellent organisation attempting to do just that.