Carol Adams keynote address: Education White Paper

National Education White Paper Conference
Keynote address: Education White Paper
Carol Adams
27 January 2006

The White Paper sets out, and I quote, to “deliver for all children, but particularly for those whose family background is most challenging.  Education is one of the keys to social mobility, and so we must make sure that a good education is available to every child in every community.” 

In examining the White Paper, the key question for the GTC, and for all of us, must be to what extent will the proposals achieve this stated aim?  That is also the view taken by the Education and Skills Select Committee in the report published recently.

Evidence continues to show that the correlation between underachievement and social class, ethnicity and deprivation is stronger in England than in many other countries.  It is also one that increases throughout the years of schooling.  The Secretary of State herself recognised in June 2005 that, while the attainment of 11 year olds had improved between 1998 and 2004, and the performance of schools in urban areas of deprivation had also improved, the gap in attainment between children with free school meals and others had not narrowed.  Even within improving schools in deprived areas, it was the better off children, not in receipt of free school meals, who were improving most.

The attainment gap in secondary schools is a continuing and major cause of concern.

One quarter of 16 year olds in England do not achieve a single A-C pass at GCSE and around 5per cent do not achieve a single GSCE.  We continue to have a wider gap between high attaining students who are doing better than ever, and this long “tail” of low attainment, than elsewhere.  The attainment of children from some minority ethnic groups – e.g. black boys - continues to be lower than for others and for some, the gap widens during their school career.  The low attainment of traveller and looked-after children is another worrying indicator. These issues are not new – they have been with us for decades.

The imperative to raise the achievement of those who enter the school system with a relative disadvantage is the biggest challenge in education and one which the White Paper claims to address. This is to be welcomed. But on examination, the proposals do not contain the right balance of measures to make real progress in addressing the attainment gap. Some of the measures proposed are unproven, or are in danger of making it worse; others are highly commendable but insufficient in their extent and likely impact. 

Evidence from Ofsted and others shows clearly that it is not school structures that have the greatest influence on pupil outcomes.

What really makes a difference is institutional and professional leadership, the quality of teaching and learning, the curriculum offer, parent engagement and resources. Even then, it is a major challenge to effect change in the face of the social makeup of the school.  It is to the great credit of heads and teachers that so many schools can and do make a difference against the odds.

The White Paper relies on the ability of Specialist, Academy and Trust schools to deliver quality and raise standards.  But, as yet, there is no unequivocal evidence or data to support this reliance. We still need to know much more about how the distinct ethos and ability to innovate in these schools can be sustained and replicated and the impact they have on the local area and on all pupils in that area, including the disadvantaged.

If the Government insists on establishing Trust schools and putting even more faith in market mechanisms, there is a real risk that failure will be moved around the system rather than tackled.  There is a real risk, too, that the gap between the most and least advantaged pupils will continue to widen. 

The admissions process that Trust and other self-governing schools should adopt has been well-aired and this is an issue on which the Select Committee has made a number of sensible recommendations, for example, barring the use of interviews.

However, it is worth noting the research from Bristol and Cardiff Universities and the Sutton Trust, on the covert selection that already exists through the admissions process.

The Bristol study found that regardless of where they live, many pupils from poor families are going to the lowest attaining schools. The more secondary school choices that were available, the more segregated pupils became by ability and background. Most importantly, while a child’s place of residence inevitably leads to a degree of segregation based on ability, ethnicity and social background, local policy can either exacerbate this or reduce it.

The Cardiff research found that areas which have only LEA community schools are less segregated. LEA’s that have retained some element of banding have half the levels of segregation in their schools than would otherwise be expected. By contrast, those with a high proportion of schools which are their own admission authorities have above average segregation. 

The Sutton Trust’s recent report found that pupils on Free School Meals are underrepresented at the top 200 comprehensives compared to local and national averages – 5.6per cent compared to a local average of 11.5per cent and a national average of 14.3per cent.

Overt selection by ability is being replaced by covert selection based on social background, peer group and parental motivation. The proposals in the White Paper are likely to encourage more such selection which will only be avoided by a very strong and enforceable Code.

It is therefore evident that the criterion for school expansion or change of status should be whether such developments will improve the attainment and well-being of all children in an area rather than the children fortunate enough to be in these schools, often at the expense of others.

Unless that is acknowledged, it may not matter whether poor parents are given more help by the school choice advisers that the White Paper envisages.  Free school transport for low-income families may also prove to be little more than a well-meaning gesture.  

The White Paper asserts that the new freedoms and status awarded to some schools will influence other schools for the good.  This is similarly unproven. Some of the most important school success factors, such as “whole-school ethos”, are reported to be the most difficult to transfer.  By contrast, certain processes such as the use of curriculum models or performance data monitoring strategies can be more easily transferred.

Other research into school improvement indicates that schools respond better to participating in joint projects intended to support learning rather than models where the “strong” school supports the weak.  The White Paper does not give schools real incentives to act in collaboration to achieve better outcomes across a whole local area. Instead, it focuses on a market mechanism to remedy local failure, support for quasi mergers in areas where entrepreneurialism is greatest and on the economies of scale which can be produced through forms of federation.

There is a risk that using market mechanisms will move failure around the system rather than tackling it, accentuating the divide between the most and least advantaged families and pupils.

It should be a requirement that any new form of provision, whether  a Trust, Trust Group, Academy or federation, can demonstrate that the attainment and well-being of all groups of pupils within an area will be improved through its creation or expansion. 

The Government is on strong ground in proposing a number of measures to support pupils at highest risk of under-achievement.  Evidence is available that certain forms of sustained additional provision are effective in tackling the persistent correlations between socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity and attainment. 

However, the White Paper proposals in this area do not go far enough and they are given much less weight than the proposals for restructuring schools  and using market approaches, for which the evidence is far less compelling.

There are a number of measures for which the Government has earmarked funds within the schools grant.  These will provide additional expert support and staff development where there are greatest numbers of underachieving children and young people. Reading Recovery, once abandoned, regains Government support with business involvement.  These types of measures are to be welcomed but their scope and resourcing is limited.
 
The White Paper also presents a more limited interpretation of personalised learning than previously suggested by Government.  It is limited to extending provision to pupils at either end of the attainment spectrum. The Government should hold fast to its earlier and much more far-reaching vision of personalised learning.  This envisaged much greater use of assessment for learning matched with resources and flexibility to tailor the curriculum and teaching and learning offer to each individual student.  This is key to raising attainment.

Similarly, extended schools are represented in the White Paper largely as a means of offering booster tuition to those who fall behind, or additional teaching for the gifted and talented.  The original extended school concept was much more holistic - enriching and supporting children and young people in all aspects of their development.

The White Paper does not put sufficient emphasis on the quality of learning or on personalised learning for all children. These rely on high standards of teaching. The White Paper is short on specifics for improving teaching. We know that teaching the most disadvantaged children, in areas of social and economic deprivation, is extremely challenging.  It requires teachers with outstanding commitment, skills and resourcefulness. Crucial to system-wide achievement for all is special needs expertise across all schools. High quality, well structured professional development, starting in initial teacher education and continuing throughout a teacher’s career is also essential.

And this needs to extend to support staff. The White Paper recognises this need but it does not do enough to demonstrate how the reform of professional standards and performance management will lead to improved access to effective, sustained professional development for all school staff.  Nor is it clear how this will be targeted to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged pupils. 

Falling rolls in primary schools offer an opportunity to create improved staffing ratios to support additional provision, personalised learning, curriculum development and enhanced teaching. 

Action, including incentives to retain and develop those who work with the most challenged and challenging pupils, is urgently needed.  These children have the greatest need for high quality teaching and for continuity and we need to invest in the future leadership of these challenging schools. Succession planning is the real issue here.

The model chosen in the White paper to encourage parental influence on schools and to support parent and pupil choice is not sufficiently inclusive.

Families trapped in a cycle of inter-generational poverty and educational disadvantage, families whose functional literacy and numeracy is lowest, and newly arrived families are least well-positioned to exercise influence on the system. But this is the wrong priority when it comes to the crucial issue of parental involvement.

There is now a significant body of research evidence on parental engagement in education. This demonstrates that a key determinant of children’s life chances is the engagement of parents and carers with their children’s learning.  This can make a huge difference to children’s motivation and achievement. Experience from family learning programmes shows that where quality targeted programmes are in place, they also have the added benefit of significantly increasing these parents’ engagement with the wider issue of whole school development and governance.

For disadvantaged parents, whose own experience of school was not positive, or who speak little English, it is vital to invest in long term support first, so that they can get involved in their own child’s progress and then become involved in the wider life of the school.
 
Engaging disadvantaged parents inclusively in the school system will also assist Government to achieve its adult literacy and numeracy targets.

We also have clear evidence that both teachers and parents would welcome a system in which schools were primarily accountable to the parents and pupils they serve.  The two requirements in the White Paper for more frequent communication with parents, and measures within the New Relationship with Schools policy represent a welcome shift in the focus of accountability.

However, the White Paper fails to deploy two significant levers which would free up the system to deliver personalised learning and local influence on schooling.  These are changes to the assessment regime and a radically reformed approach to the publication of performance tables.

Although the introduction of contextual value-added tables in 2006 is a small step forward in providing more meaningful data, the continuing focus on cross national comparison means that test results remain very high stakes. 

The impact of the league tables on teaching and pupil motivation has been well rehearsed. 

We now need to move forward.  Schools should focus on combining quantitative and qualitative pupil-level data and then use this, in partnership with pupils and parents, to plan the personal learning pathway of the child or young person. However, as the White Paper acknowledges, Ofsted reports that assessment is still one of the weakest aspects of teaching. 

It therefore requires a significant commitment from Government to invest in developing teachers’ and schools’ ability to use a variety of assessment techniques confidently and accurately: and then to communicate the lessons learned to pupils and parents. Better learning will only emerge from more effective assessment of what has already been learned and the engagement of the learner in that process.

The Government’s ambition is that its proposals should be an enduring and ground-breaking vehicle for educational reform.  This will only be achievable if the proposals are rebalanced to focus squarely on the most intractable of education issues, the attainment gap. 

In doing so, the Government should address variations of attainment within and between schools to ensure that educational failure is tackled and not merely moved around the system.

The criterion for change of school status or school expansion should be whether change will improve the attainment and well-being of all groups of pupils in an area.  This should be placed alongside sustained investment in additional provision to tackle the persistent correlation between socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity and attainment.