The Pupil Premium: time for a Plan C?
Schools have multiple purposes, some universally agreed upon, many contested. Judging from Nick Clegg’s re-announcement about the Pupil Premium on Monday, schools have one new purpose: to demonstrate the impact of the Liberal Democrats on Coalition policy.
As Conor Ryan’s blog explains in detail, the Pupil Premium is essentially a small addition to a school funding system which already has significant weighting for disadvantage and other factors. Its existence may actually stall progress towards more radical changes to school funding – ones which would differentiate more for social class, but less for age. Given what we know about the importance of the early years, it is difficult to justify why secondary pupils have so much more money spent on them than primary children. Such changes would create genuine losers, mainly sharp-elbowed secondary schools in more affluent constituencies.
But let’s welcome the Pupil Premium’s existence, and its totemic as well as cash value, and ask ourselves two further questions. What should schools do with this additional funding? And how should they account for this spend?
Schools which are successfully closing the achievement gap – and the Education Endowment Foundation has found a significant number of them – are likely to be taking a whole-school and whole-budget approach. Yes, within their strategies will be a number of smaller initiatives, but at their foundations lie high quality teaching for all, and forensically targeted teaching interventions for a few, all underpinned by excellent pastoral and extra-curricular support. Any school that sees the pupil premium as the answer to their achievement gap woes (and there won’t be many of them) probably won’t succeed.
There is thus no clear rationale for the DfE requirement for schools to account separately for their Pupil Premium spend. And unless schools use this funding to develop a highly controlled, bounded intervention, it is unlikely that we will ever know the specific impact of this injection of funding. Correlation will be difficult, causation almost impossible.
There are three orthodoxies around the use of this funding which need challenging:
First, unlike yesterday’s announcement about personalised SEN budgets, there is an overwhelming consensus that it should be schools themselves, rather than individual pupils or parents, who should determine how the Pupil Premium should be spent. This might well be justified, but could a few schools create a model where where pupils, parents and school co-commissioned additional support, learning from the disaster of Individual Learning Accounts and the quiet success of Pupil Learning Credits.
Second, schools are not being encouraged to think more expansively about how the Premium could lever additional match funding from other sources. If funding was pooled with other schools or other funding streams that are dealing with a similar client group it could be spent collaboratively to achieve far more, and develop more robust evaluation methodologies, adopting EEF methodology. Again, some schools may be taking this approach, but competitive and accounting pressures mean that collaborative use of this funding is unlikely to be the norm.
Third, Clegg has placed the Pupil Premium at the centre of his strategy to increase social mobility. Anna Vignoles’ blog demonstrates the tenuous link between such spending initiatives and social mobility, and the RSA’s Louise Thomas has usefully questioned many assumptions in this debate. The truth is that, despite the distracting headline figures around Oxbridge entrance, it is too early to know the full impact of the previous government’s policies on social mobility. If social mobility has stalled in the last twenty years, it will be largely as a result of what happened in the twenty years before that. The pupil premium may help deliver outcomes which provide stronger foundations for social mobility to increase, but it would be a mistake to promise any more from this short term initiative.
Later this week the RSA publishes its Plan C for economic recovery: ‘coping with long term slow growth’. My own plan C for the pupil premium (which would need no re-announcement) consists of three Cs: co-commissioning, collaboration, and coping with premature evaluations from a government in a hurry to prove its impact.
In pursuit of happiness
‘Happiness’ is a concept that I seem to be increasingly encountering. It is the subject of a piece of work that my colleagues in Arts and Society are involved with in collaboration with the Happy Museum Project, an initiative that is encouraging UK museums to support transition to well-being and sustainability in our society.
The Happy Museum Project was born from psychological research suggesting that happiness and well-being are not related to material wealth. On the contrary, an emphasis on material wealth has led to a focus on the short term, causing the majority to feel pressure to “keep up” and leading to more unhappiness. Key to a sustainable notion of well-being, according to the Happy Museum Project, is what they call ‘support learning for resilience’, which encourages learning that is curiosity driven, engaging, informal and fun and can build resilience, creativity and resourcefulness.
Of course this is not a wholly new concept. We’re becoming increasingly familiar with research that shows that over a certain comfort threshold, increased wealth doesn’t correlate with general satisfaction, take Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index, for example, which was developed in the 1970s. Now the UK government has started to focus on the notion of happiness, with the announcement of the National Wellbeing Project in 2010, which will see them attempt to measure how happy Britons are and use the results to shape government policy.
One area where happiness does not seem to have been a central consideration however is in education. Take the new Ofsted framework, which requires inspectors to place emphasis on behaviour, safety and teaching but makes no mention of emotional wellbeing, sociability and support. The aim here may have been to concentrate on the essentials and perhaps the more quantifiable elements, but this only reinforces the lack of regard with which these qualities are held.
Plans for performance related pay for teachers could be taken as another example of overlooking the importance of happiness. Not only is this measure likely to increase pressure on teachers, making them less happy, but their performance is likely to be measured solely on academic results, as it must be, and not well-being. This is not to say that the two will always be unrelated. For example it seems obvious that if a child is taught in a way that is exciting, fun, collaborative and supportive then they will not only be happier but will be more engaged and therefore attain better results. But this policy risks increasing pressure on students to achieve academically, leading to more teaching to the test and so risking children’s well-being.
Additionally some proponents of performance related pay for teachers base their arguments on economics; a good teacher = a good education (good grades) = a good job = more money. Not only in the current climate is this not necessarily the case, as there are not enough good jobs for high achieving students, but if money doesn’t make us happy then we shouldn’t be thinking only about education in these terms.
So I come back to the Happy Museum Project’s central tenet – our culture must focus on the long-term and sustainable benefits of its actions. Whilst achieving good academic results may lead to happiness in the short term, it can no longer guarantee a child’s future well-being in the face of unemployment, recessions and climate change, although perhaps it can help. My point is not to belittle academic achievement, but to emphasise that like so many things, we just cannot be sure. What we can be sure of is that having confidence, emotional stability and resilience, will help this generation of students to survive this uncertainty and to cope better, if not always be happy.
Doing, and sticking to, your knitting
Today I’ve been stuck in the middle tier.
This morning, at the first in a series of RSA seminars on hot or emerging education issues, we held a terrific seminar to inform Robert Hill’s forthcoming pamphlet on the role of a middle tier in education. As Chair, I was initially intimidated but ultimately inspired by the hundreds of years of experience in the room. This is a theme where elegant solutions seem easy to create, but policy memory is urgently required, as well as a strong articulation of the precise problem to be solved. Amongst the healthy disagreement, a degree of consensus emerged around the need for some ‘knitting in the middle’, a brokerage role to identify school improvement needs as early as possible, and match this need with appropriate providers. Great Local Authorities already do this, but at the other end of the scale many seem less able than ever to perform this function.
We then hosted the official launch of the RSA/PCPL Academies Commission. Christine Gilbert’s speech gave the clearest of rationales for our Commission’s approach. She also confirmed her reluctance to recommend any need for an additional middle tier, an argument she had made in Friday’s TES. She may be right, and additional layers of bureaucracy are generally worth avoiding. However, at this stage she should rule nothing out. If we want to maximise the benefits and reduce the negative outcomes of academisation, this might require significant devolution of bureaucratic responsibilities currently being carried out by DfE. For instance, planning supply of new school places (yes, that means Free Schools too); allocating capital funding, and writing and holding the funding agreements with academies or their chains. If so, these powers will have to go somewhere, and if the local authority isn’t the appropriate locus, then regional or sub-regional structures may need to be harnessed or even created.
Many of the excellent questions from the audience asked the commission to broaden its remit. In some cases, this is justified; for instance, Commissioners accepted that they needed to explore issues around inclusion and exclusion, as well as admissions. However, Commissioners were also right to create clear boundaries around their work (it’s a speed commission, after all). It needs to focus on academisation rather than drift into broader policy issues; and even within the academisation theme, its focus is on how, rather than whether. The call for evidence opens today and closes on 30th June. Any call for evidence always elicits responses which risk mission creep. To succeed within the eight month timeframe, the Commission will need to carry on ‘sticking to its knitting.’
One audience contributor asked the Commission to learn from the FE sector, which in essence went through a universal and largely successful academisation process over twenty years ago. Perhaps, in the existence of two hundred or so FE colleges, we already have an appropriate sub-regional structure for education that is perfectly located, sized, and connected with employers and HE to play a key middle tier role on behalf of the schools on their patch. With some additional capacity and resource, could the FE sector be a middle tier in waiting?
Great Teachers: shedding some doubt on the issue
I am not sure if it would count as flipped learning but, unable to be at Monday’s RSA/ Teach First event, I did the gig in reverse.
First, I looked at the outcomes from our post-event coffee-house discussion organised by RSA Fellows. Drawing on the RSA’s caffeinated origins in 18th century London (but facilitated using a very 21st Century technology of participation method), it was a chance for Fellows and Teach First Ambassadors to discuss one of the key questions raised by the event: how can we best judge what makes a successful school?
I then read the twitter feed, which, like many event hashtags contained too much regurgitation and too little critical analysis. Finally I listened to the recording from the event. I was encouraged by Sir Michael Wilshaw’s ‘plea for pragmatism’, that a great school needs a diversity of approaches from good teachers, where all are free to use ‘initiative, imagination and common sense.’ Teach First Ambassador Ndidi Okezi was especially inspiring and thought provoking, challenging all of us to commit to changing young lives.
Moving swiftly from regurgitation to analysis, here are a few reflections:
- It’s not just about those with Qualified Teacher Status. What is the best configuration of adults that can make the biggest difference to young people’s learning and development? Does the orthodox ‘80% of budget on teacher salaries’ school finance model constrain broader thinking about schools as 21st Century enlightenment organisations and the mix of skills, knowledge and attributes that a school community needs to educate young people? Tuesday’s education select committee report proposed that ‘greater effort is needed to identify which additional personal qualities make candidates well-suited to teaching’, praising Teach First’s core competencies (which are usefully congruent with RSA Opening Minds’ competence framework for pupils).
- Good teachers should be able to adopt, adapt and innovate practices. The Cambridge Primary Review talked powerfully about what makes teaching a ‘profession’ – that teachers should be able to justify their pedagogical approaches with clear reference to evidence. Although the government was right to make the Teachers’ Standards shorter and clearer, what’s missing is any concept of ‘evidence-based practice-making’ encouraging teachers to understand and use evidence, and to innovate robustly to add to the evidence base. My colleague Louise Thomas’ pamphlet on teachers and curriculum development pointed to some cultural barriers to innovation that those agencies which influence teacher development (in particular OFSTED) should take seriously.
- All four speakers seemed very certain of their opinions. Without using the dreaded ‘further research is needed’ phrase, it’s worth bringing in some doubt – that there might well be issues around teacher quality and pedagogy that we just don’t know enough about yet. For instance, the teaching of ICT and computer science, or more generally how we teach the most disengaged, vulnerable young people effectively. How should emerging research about the adolescent brain inform our thinking about what makes a good teacher of teenagers? To use Geoff Mulgan’s typology, as the amount of ‘stable’ knowledge declines in proportion to ‘in flux’ and ‘inherently novel’ knowledge, what does this mean for learning and teaching?
- If fewer people want to be teachers, does this matter? The number of applications to teacher training has fallen by nearly 15% this year, despite the economic downturn. A smaller pool of applicants tends to reduce quality, but it may be that a tougher performance management regime is weeding out the ambivalent and uncommitted before they even apply. Then again, when I signed up for my PGCE during the 1990s recession, I was both ambivalent and uncommitted (and heartbroken, but that’s not a story for this or any other blog). And I think I did just about more good than harm during my five years in the classroom. Do any ex-pupils out there want to confirm or deny?
Nothing to lose but your chains?
Contradicting my previous call for reflectivity, last week I wrote a rapid-reaction article for the Local Government Chronicle about the future educational role of Local Authorities. I’ll expect a bit of heat since I suggested that councils needed to embrace academisation, and also that:
“In the near future, some academies may realise that total independence comes with pitfalls, or that relationships with their academy provider have become excessively autocratic or bureaucratic – that they have nothing to lose but their chains.”
The constellation of RSA activities I am getting my head round here, from the Academies Commission to work on the middle tier to the creation of our own family of academies model, all connect with broader issues around freedom, automony and control. I’ve also been inspired by Adam Lent’s recent RSA Journal article on freedom, and how an individualistic, consumerist model of freedom has come to dominate and overwhelm older, more collective concepts.
Beyond the blustering rhetoric from all sides in education debates around trusting teachers and freeing up schools, is there space for a more sophisticated, nuanced and evidence-based conversation about freedom in our education system?
The general New Public Management mantra was that central government should define the what, giving localities, and professionals the freedom, within a tight accountability regime, to do the how in any way they saw fit. This should be challenged on two fronts. First, individual institutions and communities should have significant influence over defining the ‘what’. This has to lie at the heart of localism. But second, where there is overwhelming evidence that one particular approach delivers the best outcomes, the Centre should reserve the right, and may even have the duty, to mandate this approach. It’s not about favouring prescription or autonomy – it’s about developing a clear rationale for when each approach is employed.
What might this mean in practice? On the what, the government is quite rightly slimming down the national curriculum, partly to give space for a local whole curriculum to flourish. This commitment needs to be reinforced by an ‘intelligent accountability’ that values the whole curriculum, rather than only the nationally-prescribed elements.
On the how, given the universal consensus about the importance of literacy, if the synthetic phonics approach is as effective as advocates claim (and the jury between my ears is still out), then the government is quite right to enforce this method in any way it can. In areas of practice where the evidence is mixed, schools should be encouraged to adapt and innovate, partly to play a role in improving the evidence base.
Last week, I participated in an OECD conference on local governance, part of a project on Governing Complex Education Systems. The UK* was seen by participants as an outlier in the way that we had hollowed out the local, giving both more freedom to schools and more power to the centre than any other OECD country. Whether we are outliers, trailblazers or just a nation of educational guinea pigs, the experiments taking place in our schools right now may, if properly reflected upon, shed new light on the theory and practice of freedom, both in education and across public services, and what kinds of freedoms lead to the best possible outcomes for all.
* Despite my attempts to explain the wonders of devolution, the OECD participants did not distinguish between England and the devolved nations.
Do miracles only happen in Finland?
Like most people working in the area of Education, I find myself constantly reminded of the shining beacon of success that is the Finnish education model. So I was eager to attend a recent conference by the Finnish Institute and the Embassy of Finland which claimed to explain “the Finish Miracle”.
An even mix of Finnish and English educationalists presented their views on the key features of the Finnish system compared to the English, exploring the measures that have led to success and why. It was an extremely enlightening day that I won’t attempt to summarise in full. The key observation that I took is that when searching for the differences between the Finnish system and our own, we need to look beyond specific measures to an underlying cultural ethos towards education.
Whilst it has been widely noted that the Finns have seen positive results from measures such as children starting school at age seven and no national inspection of schools or league tables, the event’s first speaker, Professor Auli Toom from the University of Helsinki, attributed Finland’s success to their educational approach. She highlighted the fact that Finnish culture regards education as a source of hope for a better society and life. This requires the same educational opportunities for every child, hence a completely comprehensive system. At the forefront of this are excellent quality teachers, who are trained to at least Masters Level, with only ten per cent of those that apply being accepted onto the teacher training program. Although teachers are not paid especially highly, prestige and status attracts the best candidates into the profession, who are then given the freedom and trust they deserve.
Next Professor Andrew Pollard, from the Institute of Education, stood up to give a markedly different story from the English perspective. Whilst he acknowledged that there are good and even excellent aspects of our education system, he queried why it is that we settle for one that is, overall, mediocre. Like Professor Toom, his answer referred to an entrenched cultural approach to teaching and learning, one that he regarded as characterised by a history of reform followed by compromise. He cited instances, including the English Civil War, the 1870 Education Act and the 1944 Education Act, as key milestones in our history where we fought for equality. However, our gains were quickly followed by some form of retreat. According to Professor Pollard, this lack of commitment to equality has resulted in an inconsistent education system, where some schools improve at the expense of others that flounder. It remains to be seen whether the National Curriculum Review will be another instance to add to his list, as it allows more freedom for teachers and schools to define the curriculum on the one hand, but places greater emphasis on core knowledge on the other.
Although Professor Pollard’s view is slightly pessimistic I do think we can learn a lot from Finland in terms of equality in education. What lies at the heart of their ethos is an understanding that schooling provides an opportunity for all children to gain not just knowledge but ways of thinking and the broader skills to contribute to an effective and inclusive society. Perhaps we are stuck in the past, with our traditional concepts of achievement that only allow a minority to succeed. But instead of looking back we need to join the Finns in looking forward and ensure that we prepare every child for life in an ever changing world and trust the people who know best, teachers, to get them there.
‘Satisfactory’ schools: Unsatisfactory?
The RSA’s report on ‘Satisfactory’ schools, published today, maps the location, improvement trends, and demographics of ‘Satisfactory’ schools. It shows that disadvantaged pupils are over-represented in these schools, and that inconsistent quality of teaching practice is the strongest characteristic of ‘Satisfactory’ schools. Especially key are the findings that: 1) many ‘satisfactory’ schools do not improve; 2) children who are already disadvantaged are disproportionately concentrated in these schools; and 3) that the problem, while inevitably contextual, may be addressed by concerted efforts to improve teaching.
‘Satisfactory’ schools have come in for some recent attention. First there was David Cameron’s reference to a ‘hidden crisis’ of ‘coasting schools’ which are “content to muddle through”. Ofsted’s annual report for 2010/11 revealed the number of these schools, including those ‘stuck’ at ‘Satisfactory’. We have worked with Ofsted to examine data and inspection reports for these schools. The RSA study concludes that the Ofsted term ‘Satisfactory’ should be scrapped, and replaced by ‘Performing Inconsistently’. As educators and inspectors have frequently observed, the term ‘Satisfactory’ is not understood as such, and the quality of practice underpinning the grade is usually mixed. The ascription ‘Satisfactory’ suits no one: it is pejorative enough to deter (some) families from choosing a school and to dampen staff morale, but at present there is little to help schools and their stakeholder constituents to identify what specifically needs to improve, and little support to achieve improvement. The term ‘Performing Inconsistently’ is a more accurate reflection of the school’s situation, and clearly flags that while some aspects of the school’s provision may be good or better, improvement is needed in others.
What has struck us in undertaking the study is the scale of the issue – around a third of schools are graded ‘Satisfactory’. While the government has concentrated policy on school structures (Free Schools and Academies), a significant proportion of schools – including some of the new models – continue to provide lower quality educational provision, and there is currently little in the way of a framework for supporting them to improve. We think such support is urgently required. Especially so given the finding that working class young people are over-represented in these schools, and that ‘satisfactory’ schools with disadvantaged populations are less likely than others to improve. Such findings highlight (in)equality of opportunity and lack of social justice, and may contribute to explanations for England’s very low rates of social mobility.
Our recommendations, including the changed title ‘Performing Inconsistently’, offer a more granular approach to improvement and accountability that allows identification and targeting of areas that need improving, and the highlighting of strengths that can be drawn upon to support weaker areas in a school. These schools need practical support to improve. Given our finding that the strongest characteristic of ‘satisfactory’ schools was inconsistency in quality of teaching, we focus on incentivising excellent teachers to teach at these schools, and on sharing and stimulating good practice.
Such work is vital to ensure that all pupils, whatever their background, attend a school that is ‘good’ or better. Critics will complain that such notions are relative, but the fact remains that some schooling systems are more consistent in quality than others – and the former tend to generate and value excellent teachers.
Getting people together isn’t the challenge – it’s getting things done…
In my experience, whenever a new local Fellows’ network launches, there is always a mixture of curiosity, enthusiasm and trepidation. Curiosity about who other local Fellows are; enthusiasm for getting involved in the good work the RSA is renowned for; and a trepidation that is only natural when meeting a room full of strangers. Thankfully, the trepidation soon dissipates as the ideas for how to make a difference locally begin to flow and the Fellows leave full of optimism for what the network can achieve.
But that’s the easy bit…
How do you then ensure that initial enthusiasm turns into constructive action? How do you decide which of the ideas to pursue before people stop coming along because nothing’s happening?
How do we promote innovation whilst assuring high standards in education?
This is an age old question in education and one which we are tackling with Opening Minds. As you probably know Opening Minds is now being used by over 200 secondary schools in England. As an approach it promotes innovative and integrated ways of thinking about education and the curriculum. Teachers design and develop a curriculum for their own schools based on a competence framework.
This competency led teaching approach offers students a more holistic and coherent way of learning which allows them to make connections and apply knowledge across different subject areas as well as develop the skills they need as 21st century citizens.
Teachers associate Opening Minds with a range of positive benefits including an improvement in academic and independent learning, general and subject specific skills, confidence, behaviour, enjoyment, attendance and relationships.
The past year has been one of rapid change for Opening Minds – much of it triggered by the independent review of Opening Minds activity. The report identified a wide range of good, imaginative and innovative practice in schools that was valued by both teachers and students. However, like any new and creative initiative there had been a wide variation of approaches between schools. A key recommendation to the RSA was that to further strengthen practice in schools a method of quality assurance could be introduced in order to assure quality and strengthen the support available to schools.
In light of this on Friday the RSA announced that seven schools have been designated as RSA Opening Minds Training Schools. All of the schools have been assessed as being ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted and, following a rigorous application and visitation process have been designated as leading practitioners of Opening Minds.
The schools are:
Capital City Academy, Brent
Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, Liverpool
Kingsbridge Community College, Devon
Oasis Academy, Enfield
The RSA Academy, Tipton
St John’s College, Marlborough
Whitley Abbey Business and Enterprise College, Coventry
The accreditation system will be light-touch and developmental in nature and will be supported by continuing professional development for practitioners. Accreditation will be led by Opening Minds schools for Opening Minds schools. It will also enable teacher-to-teacher and school-to-school support to be properly resourced and organised. This will provide a catalyst for further development, creativity and innovation as every time Opening Minds schools come together it results in the generation of new ideas.
By introducing accreditation we are not looking to provide one single vision or template of the Opening Minds curriculum. We recognise the need to take account of a school’s context and we want to maintain the creativity and innovation that has been at the heart of the initiative. Accreditation is a means of supporting this journey, providing assurance that rigour and quality are at the heart of what Opening Minds offers to young people.
The Value of Things
As I was paying £1.20 for a sad, solitary chocolate biscuit this morning, I began wondering about how we choose to value things in society, and how all too often this valuation takes a monetary form.
There is an interesting programme going on at the NEF at the moment called ‘Valuing what Matters’. Their argument is simple: when governments set targets for themselves, they tend to measure what is easy to measure, like savings. The stuff that gets measured tends to become the stuff that matters when evaluating performance and so this cycle repeats itself.
Well, what happens when we are measuring the wrong thing? This is the argument the NEF is considering, and it applies to education too.
As students begin school again this September one thing remains constant: results matter. They are the measure universities and employers use to determine who gets in and who doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that they are only thing that matters.
As every CBI report I have ever read informs me, the UK’s top employers are worried: they need a demanding set of attributes and qualities from their graduate workers which academic qualifications cannot quantify. Since they are not being measured for, apparently whether or not an applicant has them can be up to chance.
From GCSEs to IGCSEs, the International Baccalaureate, the ‘English Baccalaureate’, BTECs, NVQs, the Cambridge Pre-U, to the new A* A Level grade and talk of scrapping AS Levels (having just introduced them) altogether, our crowded qualifications landscape is endemic of an inability to agree on what counts in education. Demos may have asked why educational assessment was ‘failing’ in 2003, but it appears the question remains just as pertinent now in 2010.
Business (and, more importantly, society) needs people who can be leaders and communicators; critical, independent thinkers, who are able to adapt and be resilient in the face of change and who are capable of applying knowledge rather than just acquiring it. These are the people who are most likely to do well at work and these are also the people who, studies tell us, are most likely to thrive in life too.
But how then do we create a school system that values and supports the development of the other qualities and capabilities people are going to need beyond school, such as an ability to stick to goals, show resilience and regulate behaviour? Or should this not be the preserve of school at all, and what then for those children who parents are unable or ill-equipped to pass these demanding qualities on to their children? Should the acquisition of such values be left to chance?
Opening Minds has been developed by the RSA partly in response to this question, and the RSA Academy’s 2010 exam results attest for how a skills based curriculum can begin to produce both well-rounded and academically sound candidates.
At Whole Education, we are beginning to ask these questions too. We don’t have all the answers are yet, but we are looking.
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