Real solutions or cheap fixes?

The debate over the appointment of Professor Les Ebdon to become the new Head of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) extends far beyond the pros and cons of Professor Ebdon’s own candidacy.  It goes right to the heart of the coalition and a fundamental difference between competing political views.

Some in the coalition express understandable regret that a student in an independent school is 55 times more likely to gain a place at Oxbridge than a student in receipt of free school meals.  For such politicians this injustice needs instant rectification, and the fastest and cheapest means of achieving this is to skew university admissions to favour of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Opposing politicians argue that such a solution replaces a socio-economic injustice with an academic one.  Is it fair that students with poorer grades should be awarded university places in preference to those with better academic profiles?  Putting academic injustice to one side, is it in the nation’s, students’ or universities’ interests for undergraduate courses to admit applicants who lack the skills and abilities needed to make a success of degree level of study?

Skill gaps can be filled, but educational deficiencies that have developed over 15 years of primary and secondary schooling are not easily rectified in three or four years at university, especially in institutions not resourced to provide the small group ‘catch up’ teaching required.  In all the talk of lowering university admissions standards for disadvantaged groups there is little recognition of the consequent need to increase university funding to provide additional teaching and support to help under qualified youngsters successfully adapt to the rigours of higher education.  The only other option is to dumb down degrees, but reducing university standards is no way to educate a nation or remain competitive in the international knowledge economy.

I can quite understand why Professor Ebdon wants to improve university access now before another generation misses out on higher education.  However, the harsh reality is that lowering entry requirements is likely to cause more problems than it solves.  Undergraduates may struggle on courses they cannot cope with, drop-out rates could rise, students may acquire debts but no degree, and university staff could rebel against the heavy hand of central government interference.  Disadvantaged children deserve genuine educational solutions that work not sham quick fixes.  This means a first class schooling from nursery onwards.  It is expensive, it is time consuming, but it works.  The Perse has nearly 400 years of such history, and through its means tested bursary programme, it gives disadvantaged children an outstanding education and a real leg up in life that will last.

Ebdon confirmed as university access chief – BBC News
I’ll get places for the poor, says new university access watchdog – The Independent
Russell Group attacks university admissions targets – The Telegraph
Cable questioned over appointment of Les Ebdon as university access tsar – The Guardian
Comment: Simon Carr – Ebdon won his elite place though he failed the exam – The Independent
Blog: University access should be based on merit – but how do you measure it? – The Guardian

Intellectual curiosity

Debates about the curriculum often focus on what subjects are taught in schools and in what proportion.  February has already seen the demise of vocational qualifications in fish husbandry, equine care, and nail technology and the introduction of courses in ‘failure’ to sit alongside ‘happiness’ and ‘well being’.  Such debates about what ‘subjects’ should and shouldn’t be included in the curriculum are often based in personal prejudice with adults trying to compensate retrospectively for deficiencies in their own schooling.  There is also an element of horizon gazing with politicians and educationalists trying to identify the subjects most useful for the economy and life (usually in that order).

Whilst the component parts of the school curriculum are important, there is a danger that in arguing about the respective merits of different subjects we are failing to see the wood for the trees. Curriculum detail should not be confused with curriculum culture.  Individual subjects are important, but what is more important is a spirit of intellectual curiosity that underpins the curriculum.  Children must be encouraged to question, to ask why, and then follow the many and varied academic trails that lead to one answer, many answers, or none.  Such intellectual journeys inevitably roam across many subject boundaries, and highlight the artificiality of subject divisions.

Good teachers promote intellectual curiosity and a passion for learning that will be lifelong.  Going to school should be the educational equivalent of a visit to the toy store, with children’s eyes lighting up at the prospect of exciting ideas to play with.  So this half term you might like to ask your children some of the following:

Who is winning the battle between mankind and bacteria?

Are mass extinctions a good thing?

Do bankers deserve their bonuses?

Are fair trade bananas really fair?

What books are bad for you?

What problems do fish face underwater?

Is there a difference between innocence and naivety?

and what leaves you drier if it is raining, running or walking?

These are some of the questions that I explore in my Wednesday assemblies.  Hopefully some of the them resonate with children, and make it back to dinner time conversation at home.

The League Table Lottery and ‘Trip Advisor’ for schools

Last week the Department of Education released league tables of ‘school performance’ and this week it is re-writing the criteria for them by removing thousands of vocational qualifications.  Welcome to the chaotic and confused world of educational league tables.

In 2011, The Perse which regularly finishes in the top 25 schools nationally as measured by The Times and The Daily Telegraph was placed last in Cambridgeshire by Her Majesty’s government.  The international GCSEs sat by many of our pupils and highly valued by universities and employers were not recognised by the Department of Education.  We thus scored zero in many subject areas and achieved the rare feat of negative learning; our pupils apparently knew less at the end of Year 11 than they did on entry to Year 7.  In 2012, some but not all of our international GCSEs have been recognised by civil servants and as a consequence we have shot up the league table and entered positive learning territory.

There must be a better way of measuring genuine school performance than these erratic swings caused by bureaucratic reclassification.

The present league table arrangements incentivise schools to find the easiest routes to maximise qualification scores with limited regard for the quality of the resulting educational journey.  Students can be dragooned in to sitting AS and A2 General Studies to raise the average point score per student, even though these qualifications are not valued by many selecting universities.  Meanwhile Heads despair that the whole process is driven not by what pupils, parents or teachers value but by what civil servants consider important.  Thus in the newly created English Baccalaureate, Geography, History and Ancient History are deemed acceptable by the state whilst Religious Studies, Music and Classical Civilisation are not.  Knowing ministerial whim, it could have been different if Religious Studies had been rebranded as Theology.

I am not anti league tables.  Good league tables aid transparency, encourage healthy competition, and drive up educational standards.  For schools preparing pupils for university entrance, then a league table of university admissions is a good yardstick.  In awarding places, universities draw on a range of data including public exam results, relevant work experience, extra-curricular interests, interpersonal and communication skills, and for some institutions performance in interviews and additional tests.  University admission is thus a composite measure of student and school performance, with the added benefit that judgements are made by independent universities.

Alongside quantitative league tables there is a place for qualitative comments.  Trip Advisor performs a useful albeit not perfect function for the leisure market, and a similar product would bring another dimension to school evaluation.  Yes ‘customer’ comments can always be distorted by individuals with axes to grind, but average ratings from large numbers of parents over long periods of time are useful measures.  This is exactly why good schools, like The Perse, carry out parental and pupil surveys to evaluate performance.  Promoting a Trip Advisor for schools will not win me many friends in education, but it would almost certainly be a more accurate measure of school performance than the snakes and ladders league tables produced by the ministry.  Ofsted are clearly thinking along similar lines and have just launched ‘Parent View’.

In defence of ‘A’ levels

I was a difficult teenager. I specialised in challenging authority and especially the 1980’s school curriculum. I refused to be conscripted into the school’s combined cadet force and claimed to be a ‘conscientious objector’. The school quite rightly didn’t buy this argument, and accurately surmised that my opposition to the CCF was more to do with autonomy than pacifism. After a protracted stand off I was eventually allowed to keep the school bees. The hives were subsequently relocated to a site underneath the Head’s study window.

Every school faces a difficult decision about how much curriculum choice it gives its pupils and when. Too much choice too early and pupils may make poor decisions they will regret later. Early specialisation may result in a lack of breadth, and children who are only partially educated. Lots of choice will also lead to a proliferation of smaller class sizes and higher costs for either the state or parents to bear.

The Perse has achieved a good balance between compulsion and choice. In the I/GCSE years pupils (and their parents) do have some choices and the option to carry out a research project of their own design (the HPQ). However, they are also required to study a core of seven subjects (English Language, English Literature, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and one Modern Foreign Language) to I/GCSE and thus guarantee a breadth of knowledge and skills. This breadth is enhanced by depth, as in all subject areas Perse staff take I/GCSE pupils above and beyond the confines of the exam specifications.

Such compulsion is not popular with every fourteen or fifteen year old student but it does ensure a comprehensive education.

In the Sixth Form my natural liberal tendencies take over. I like the much maligned ‘A’ level because it offers academic rigour with choice. The new A* grade is a gold standard, and beyond this students have the challenge of securing as many UMS marks as possible. Across four module papers, only a tiny number of truly excellent pupils will secure 400/400. Top universities know this and use such UMS scores to differentiate between exceptional applicants. In some subjects we are extending choice by giving students the option of either following modular ‘A’ levels or the linear Pre U. (In many ways the Pre U is a reincarnation of the demanding ‘A’ level specifications of the past with all the exams sat at the end of the two year course. The top Pre U grade Distinction 1, sits above an ‘A’ level A*).

What really attracts me to ‘A’ level however is choice. Whilst the International Baccalaureate stipulates that sixth form students must continue with Maths, English, a language, a science, a humanities subject and the arts, the ‘A’ level and Pre U curriculum is free of such requirements. Yes students must consider university entrance and career issues in their choice of subjects, but after that they can just pick the subjects they are good at and enjoy. It is a simple and proven recipe for success. The committed scientist can thus focus on the sciences and maths, whilst those with more general interests can design a curriculum to meet their particular needs – I studied English Literature, History, Geography and Chemistry.

At The Perse students can study up to five ‘A’ level or Pre U subjects, conduct independent research through the Extended Project Qualification, and participate in a wide range of extra-curricular activities and community service placements. I believe that we offer all of the roundness that comes with the International Baccalaureate, with none of the compulsion. Informed choice works.

Oxbridge justice?

Oxbridge admissions tutors are much maligned. 

On one hand they are frequently criticised by left wing politicians for being too conservative in their admissions decisions.  Such commentators see Oxford and Cambridge as guardians of an elitist status quo with an over representation of privileged students from independent school backgrounds.  At the same time, some Heads of leading state and independent schools complain that Oxbridge admissions tutors practise disproportionate positive discrimination, with less well qualified students from underperforming schools being awarded places in preference to better qualified applicants from more successful institutions.

Oxbridge admissions are a high stakes matter, and for many applicants an ‘Oxbridge’ rejection will be the first significant ‘failure’ in their lives.  Understandably, this can be a difficult pill to swallow and inevitably there will be concerns that justice had not been done.  The result is the annual run of anti Oxbridge stories in the press.  Such articles are often less fair than the admissions systems they criticise.

Oxford and Cambridge dedicate more resources to undergraduate admissions than any other UK universities.  Admissions tutors consider multiple sources of evidence from prior exam results and submitted work, to additional entry tests and interviews.  Unlike in many universities where admission decisions are made by administrative staff using prescribed formulas, at Oxford and Cambridge academics control the process.  The result is a more thorough, nuanced and sympathetic approach to admissions.

The Oxbridge admissions process is a good way of doing an impossible job.  The system correctly identifies the truly exceptional students, as well as those who would struggle.  The challenge lies with the large number of mid-range candidates who are good enough to get in, but for whom there are not enough places.  There is often very little to choose between such students, and inevitably in these situations difficult and marginal decisions have to be made.  Where two students are really tying for the last place, then it is sensible for admissions tutors to contextualise an application and consider the relative advantages or disadvantages of a candidate’s background.  Such reasonable and modest handicapping ensures a fair process.

Oxbridge admissions tutors are meritocrats, and they run a system designed to select the best candidates.  It is in their interests to do so.  The system is not without its faults but it is the best available.  The danger is not Oxbridge discrimination, one way or other, but political involvement.  Politicians with an interest in social engineering and an eye to the electorate are unlikely to make a tried and tested academic meritocracy any fairer.

For an interesting insight into the Cambridge admissions process read Jeevan Vasagar’s article in the Guardian.

Sir Humphrey is alive and well…

…in the Department for Education.

Back in 2010 when Michael Gove took over the then Department for Children, Schools and Families and promptly restored it to its original title, he boldly promised to reduce the inspection burden that fell on schools. It was widely reported that schools judged “outstanding” would be subject to a less frequent and less onerous inspection regime. For a few weeks naive Head’s dreamed of an “inspection light” world free of school evaluation forms, Equality Act assessments, and checks on the size of ‘no smoking’ signs. Of course this early euphoria was premature, and reflected the heartfelt instincts of a new Secretary of State before the Whitehall bureaucracy swung into action and tamed ministerial free thinking. I can almost hear Sir Humphrey counselling Mr Gove: “That is a very courageous decision Minister; a brave line to take; but what if something went wrong in a school that hadn’t been inspected? Inspectors keep children safe and well educated. No Minister wants to put children at risk”.

With such ‘words’ enough cold water was poured on the bonfire of the bureaucracies to extinguish the flames and the inspectorates survived. Or rather they didn’t just survive they thrived. Bright civil servants are very skilled at coming up with reasons for their own existence, and the new independent school inspection regime, known as ISI 4, appears even more detailed than the three that went before it. (Inspection regimes have shelf lives of less than five years and are in a state of almost permanent review and renewal which keeps Sir Humphrey gainfully employed. Re-training seminars can also a profitable side line for inspectorates).

One of my first jobs for 2012 will be to wade through the reams of ISI 4 guidance to ensure The Perse is fully compliant with all statutory requirements and best practice advice. We take such matters very seriously, as evidenced in our 2010 ISI 3 inspection when from 3-18 all aspects of The Perse were judged outstanding. However, whilst we approach the bureaucracy of inspection with commendable dedication, I know that Michael Gove’s initial instincts were the right ones. A light touch inspection focussed on educational performance would drive up standards, whereas the current system increases costs as schools resort to employing compliance officers and teams of educational lawyers to meet copious regulations and make sense of conflicting advice.

It is teachers not inspectors that keep children safe and well educated. A well led and managed staff of talented educational vocationalists, committed to the highest standards of schooling, is the best recipe for academic, pastoral and extracurricular success. Good teachers and good schools are inherently self-critical and thus effective self inspectors. Their work is overseen by the scrutiny and governance of dedicated and talented boards of governors, and most schools have more non executive ‘directors’ reviewing all aspects of performance than is the case for FTSE 100 companies. In the independent sector, such detailed self inspection is augmented by daily scrutiny from fee paying parents and discerning pupils and annual review by national newspapers producing league tables of academic performance.

If this were not enough self evaluation and scrutiny many independent schools have developed critical friendships with each other, so that pastoral and subject leaders in one school can share best practice and engage in improvement dialogue with colleagues in comparable institutions.

Michael Gove’s initial instincts were right – inspectors do little for outstanding schools but in preparing reams of documentation outstanding schools do much for the inspectorate.

Related articles

• No-notice inspections for schools (bbc.co.uk)

The Iron Lady

Perse Heads have a tradition of keeping politically incorrect items in their studies.  For years the Head’s Axminster carpet was protected by a tiger skin rug and prospective parents and pupils were welcomed to the Perse by a snarling piece of taxidermy.  Another Head with a commendable passion for recycling used spent Veuve Clicquot Champagne boxes for filing.  The resulting wall of orange upset Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee when she visited the Perse; she overlooked the recycling message and preferred to see the empty boxes as evidence of elitism in the independent sector.

My politically incorrect item is a signed photograph of Margaret Thatcher.  The photograph was a present from my first Perse Politics Group who quickly spotted my interest in the Iron Lady.

I am much looking forward to Meryl Streep’s performance as Margaret Thatcher in the movie ‘The Iron Lady’ although I have mixed feelings about producing such a film during Lady Thatcher’s life.  (The depiction of Lady Thatcher as a demented and confused old lady will be very distressing for her friends and family, but assuming she is aware of the movie water off a duck’s back to an impervious politician who did not shy away from controversy).

My interest in Mrs Thatcher lies in her outsider status and her ability to break the mould.  She was not the first politician from a modest background to become Prime Minster, but she was the first woman to reach to the top of the UK political ladder at a time of significant sexism.  Introduced into the Cabinet as a ‘token female’, Mrs Thatcher had to fight hard to be taken seriously by Ted Heath and the Tory grandees.  There is a marvellous, fictitious moment in a trailer for ‘The Iron Lady’ when the lights go out during a Heath Cabinet Meeting as part of the electricity shortages caused by striking coal miners.  Whilst male Cabinet Ministers stumble around in the gloom, at the far end of the Cabinet Table a bright light shines out in the darkness.  The splendidly practical Mrs Thatcher has produced a torch from her famous hand bag and the resulting light brings order to the chaos.  It is all wonderfully symbolic and very entertaining.

Mrs Thatcher’s premiership had many failings.  However, in breaking the mould in British politics she showed that talent and determination can prevail, that hard work does pay dividends, and that sexist glass ceilings are there to be broken.