Birmingham pupil participation event, November 2009

published:25 Nov 2009

Extracts from a speech by GTC Chief Executive Keith Bartley given at a Pupil Participation event in Birmingham, on 17 November 2009.

Keith Bartley spoke to delegates from across the country, exploring research on effectively engaging pupils as partners in their learning.

This national event examined current thinking beyond pupil voice and pupil consultation and extended to address the challenges of effective teacher-learner partnerships through scrutiny of research, policy and practice.

Text of speech

It’s almost exactly a year ago since I spoke at a similar event, in London. Since then, some of the landscape in relation to pupil participation has stayed the same, and some has changed.

What has stayed the same? Last year, we found that a number of key principles resonated with teachers. They fell into two main groups.

One group of principles concerned teaching and learning. For example, pupil participation and influence must be embedded in the culture of the school; and the relationship between teachers and pupils is seen as a partnership for learning – a two-way, not a one-way, street. I wouldn’t want to gloss over, or underplay, the sensitivities here, particularly as to whether – and if so, how, pupils might feed back on the teaching they have received; but equally, I would not want to understate the gains that can come from such a two-way relationship.

Another set of principles considered the bilateral concept of the need for ‘respect’. What do we mean by respect? Certainly, respect for the professional judgment of the teacher. But also though, respect for all learners in schools: everyone in school is a learner; everyone needs to participate – including the ‘silent majority’ – not all children have the communications and language skills to do this. And the issue of engaging with parents can fit in here too.

So those were last year’s starting points. They talked about the ‘what’ of pupil participation. They don’t give answers, indeed in many ways they raise more questions than answers.

Since then, we have commissioned Dr David Frost of Cambridge University and his team to look into the ‘how’. He will be explaining his research to you later this morning, so I won’t go into it in detail now, but I would like to examine what we wanted from the research, and which may I say I am convinced that David and his team have rigorously and effectively undertaken.

(David’s research, by the way, is not ivory tower, remote-from-the-real-world research, if such a thing exists. It’s based on talking to teachers like you, in schools like yours, and therein lies its power.)

We asked David to look at how schools enable pupils to influence two things – the learning process and the conditions of their learning – and hence to maximise pupils’ participation in learning. We were keen to see if there was a point of consensus around what pupil participation is and how it benefits pupils.

Assessment

From a teacher’s-eye view, any analysis is bound to take on board how assessment works, how behaviour for learning is achieved, and the role of the curriculum. I won’t run through all three, and of course they are intertwined, but let’s look at how models of assessment can affect the practicalities of participation.

There have been some welcome changes to the assessment regime recently, most notably the ending of national testing at Key Stage 3 and for science at Key Stage 2. 

Summative assessment has its place, but not, as we have always asserted, in isolation or as the only measure by which a pupil’s progress is measured. It is absolutely vital that formative ongoing teacher assessment is understood by the public, and respected as the powerful tool it is.

So what if the balance were to continue to swing towards formative assessment, that is assessment which is designed to develop learning, rather than simply to record the level that a pupil (or school) has reached in learning?

There are some instant corollaries. Summative assessment is, often, a public activity; formative, more usually private, indeed one could also call it micro-assessment, for at its most rewarding it is a one-teacher-and-one-child dialogue.

Note that I say dialogue. It’s not always teacher-instigated. Often, it’s the pupil who asks for feedback. The effective teacher will know how to turn a pupil request for a mark or a comment into a learning opportunity that cements a concept for that individual pupil in a way that particular pupil will be most able to adopt.

Take, for example, Woodberry Downs Primary Schools Federation in Hackney, which I visited last month. Having walked around the school and seen classes in progress, I was particularly struck by the teachers’ attentiveness to their pupils and their creative methods of teaching. 

In every class we saw lively, energetic, inclusive, class teaching interspersed with carefully structured partner discussions throughout lessons, which enabled teachers to listen to children’s accounts to their peers of what they had learned and thus to judge whether and how to adapt their teaching accordingly. For I believe the best practitioners are those that listen best and learn from what they are hearing from their pupils.

One could, almost, spin off a whole new parallel universe of assessment from such observations: a universe in which assessment for learning becomes a driving force in teacher accountability, not only to their pupils, but also to parents, communities and beyond. In saying this, I just want to open a window into another of the GTC’s strands of work, into accountability and how it works in education.

Pupils might not consciously operate at the level of 'assessment, behaviour, curriculum' and other such pedagogic concepts. That’s not to say that they don’t think about participation. David’s team found that children and young people want to contribute and they want to make a difference for the better, not only to their own lives and of those around them, but also to the situations in which they find themselves.

There is a jumble of bad publicity about children, and who is to deny that too many children are dealt a hand in life that puts additional pressure on the role of the teacher. But this ‘wanting to make a difference’ certainly chimes in with the positive messages I receive from talking to children and young people whenever I visit schools like the federation I described, of all types and all challenges, in regions across the country.

In the Duston School, Northampton, just last week, Year 13 students shared with me their strong support for the journey that their school had been on from an Ofsted category towards being an outstanding school.  And for them, the professional respect that the teachers showed for their views as learners was enhanced by a willingness to engage with them as ‘fellow travellers’ on an improvement journey.

Pupil participation strengthens teaching and learning

The GTC, therefore, has no qualms in saying that pupil participation, appropriately defined – and that definition will come, at least in part, from today’s teacher participation – is a public good, because it strengthens teaching and learning.

Consequently we have firmly embedded it within our Teaching in 2012 statement, our vision for the teaching profession in the future (but firmly founded, we believe, in the best of the present). We look forward to a time when 'childhood is valued and respected' and children’s rights to 'take an active part in their own learning' are recognised and upheld. To do so, 'the teaching profession will work with learners and their parents and carers to identify and meet each young person’s distinctive needs.' Effective teachers already do this, of course.

And the principle is there for all to see in teaching’s newly-revised Code. I deliberately do not say the GTC’s new Code. When we set about the revision, we talked – or more accurately the Office of Public Management talked on our behalf – to teachers, parents, children and young people, employers and more about the values that make teaching such a respected and influential profession. Among the principles therefore enshrined in the code are that registered teachers:

'listen to children and young people, consider their views and preferences, and involve them in decisions that affect them, including those relating to their own learning.'

Now there is a bit of a paradox here. If it’s a core value of effective teachers that they enable pupil participation, where’s the problem? Why, indeed, the need for David Frost’s research, and this very conference?

Political context

In the real world in which you teach, there are competing realities that surround teaching. I’ve already referred to the current political context (and none of us know how different that might or might not be a year from now). I will briefly return to it. The Government sets out its vision for schools in the white paper Your child, your schools, your future: building a 21st century schools system.

Just in case you’ve not yet read it – and I do not advocate it for detailed study during your PPA time – let me tell you it says good things about how children and young people need schools that offer excellent tailored support for their learning and development. It puts too an increased emphasis on pupil and parent involvement in their child’s learning – but in the context of formal ‘guarantees’.

I’m not at all sure that ‘guarantee’ strikes the right balance. I feel more comfortable with the notion of developing of a constructive and respectful relationship between parents, pupils and teachers. And while we’re at it, we’d like it to include a focus on pupil engagement in their own learning, as opposed to the White Paper concept of pupils as passive recipients of ‘entitlements’.

At root of the problem with at least some of the central aspects of the White Paper is that it seeks to require change rather than enable change. Top down, rather than inspired by the profession. The flip side of that and the real reason therefore that we are meeting today, is that true professionals, like teachers, take responsibility for their profession’s development, not have others do it for them. And in taking responsibility – in today’s case, to enable effective and mutually respectful pupil participation – the professional body for teaching, the GTC, can and should, lead debate.

Effective pupil participation

So, to the task in hand. For pupil participation to be effective, the core driver will be changing the roles of teachers and learners … changing the relationship of the learner to learning, and of learning to teaching. For the near future, it is in the school and classroom where the greatest difference can be made.

Pupil participation is an integral aspect of personalised learning: to make it work, teachers need to have competence in a wide range of teaching strategies, and understand the theoretical basis behind them, enabling them to use them flexibly, appropriately and creatively to meet the needs of children and young people. Its potential lies in creative classroom practice, with teachers adapting according to the context and the needs of pupils. A necessary pre-condition, of course, is that the professional judgment of the teacher is trusted.

These are big prizes. They rest on one foundation: it’s that ‘p’ word I used once in passing earlier, pedagogy.

Recently we’ve worked on pedagogy with the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, and soon we’ll be bringing out a new resource built from this work. But bringing together theory, practice and values into something called a discourse of pedagogy does not have much of a tradition in England, unlike some European countries.

Colleagues, I really think we have been missing a trick in recent years.  I know, and you know, that teaching is a complex and creative activity; that good teaching cannot be based merely on a series of 'top tips for teachers' – it is rooted in a rigorous understanding of learning and requires skill and perseverance. 

Parents regularly say 'I don’t know how you do it …' 

But the problem is … We haven’t always been very good at saying how we do it. We need to become much more articulate about the art and science of teaching in a shared, accessible language. If we are serious about being a national and international professional community – and I hope we are – then we must open the secret garden of teaching to a much wider audience. 

And what better place to start in opening that door than with the children and young people of today…