Changing practice: The National LiteracyStrategy and the politics of literacy policyGemma Moss

Abstract

Drawing on a recent ESRC-funded research project,1

this paper will explore some of the contradictorystructural features of the National Literacy Strategy(NLS), which have helped shape its evolution overtime, and reflect on some of the tension points whichhave arisen at different levels of implementation as theStrategy unfolds. In the process, the paper will consi-der NLS not somuch as a neutral means of transferring‘what works’ from one site to another, but rather asitself constituting a new social context inwhich literacyteaching and learning take place. It will pay particularattention to the new pace of teaching that NLS hasushered in and the way in which this is driven by thekind of planning regime that NLS introduced.

Key words: literacy policy implementation, literacypractices, social context, planning

Introduction

In one sense, the NLS stands at the end of a longprocess of curriculum reform in the UK stretching backto the mid-1980s and the introduction of the NationalCurriculum to English schools (Moss, 2002). But at thesame time NLS is also qualitatively different from thereforms that preceded it, both in its immediate impacton teachers’ work, and through the pace of change ithas ushered in. To be properly understood, NLS needsto be seen as part of a target-setting and performance-monitoring regime that is integral to New Labour’smanagement of the public sector more generally. Thusthe pedagogy introduced through the National LiteracyStrategy: Framework for teaching (DfEE, 1998) camehand-in-hand with a variety of policy levers designedto ensure that it would be fully implemented, and thatits effects could be both tracked and reviewed. Thepolicy levers include mechanisms that apply pressure,and mechanisms that offer support (Earl et al., 2003a).Together these were intended to deliver on a target of80% of pupils reaching Level 4 at the end of KS2. Thegains made in pupil performance in Standard Assess-ment Tests at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2 remain theprimary means of assessing the efficacy of NLS. Thisemphasis on measurable outcomes has made thecomparative success of the Strategy within individualschools and individual LEAs as well as within thecountry more generally highly visible to parents, toteachers and to other stakeholders.

The NLS therefore differs from earlier rounds ofcurriculum reform by making an explicit and directlink between the introduction of a particular pedagogicprogramme and expected gains in pupil performance.The political justification for this linkage is the need forgreater social equity. Thus, in his introduction to theFramework document, which sets out the content ofthe National Literacy Strategy, the then Secretary ofState for Education, David Blunkett stated:

‘‘All our children deserve to leave school equipped to entera fulfilling adult life. But if children do not master thebasic skills of literacy and numeracy while they are atprimary school, they will be seriously disadvantagedlater. That is why we have set a target of 80% of 11 yearolds achieving the standards of literacy expected for theirage by 2002 . . . It is teachers themselves who will ensurethat our target is met, by making a real difference tochildren in the classroom.’’(DfEE, 1998)

There is an urgency to the task set out, a finite point laiddown at which its success or failure can be judged andan expectation that the goal will be met by teachers.Close monitoring of the impact of NLS on pupilperformance over time becomes a crucial part ofensuring that it achieves its desired ends. If progressfalters in a particular area of the curriculum or for aparticular group of pupils, then this becomes an issuethat can be specifically addressed. The monitoringregime therefore provides the Strategy with thecapacity to respond and adapt according to theinformation received.

Policy adaptation as a way of life

In a review of government and state-sponsorededucation reform in four countries and five state juris-dictions, Lorna Earl and colleagues from OISE arguethat sustaining educational reform over the long termis an inherently complex enterprise. They comment:

‘‘There are no perfect solutions for large-scale educationalreform.With no firm right answers . . . policy-makers andimplementation leaders face a series of decisions anddilemmas, and in many cases must deal with thesedilemmas repeatedly as contexts shift.’’(Earl et al.,2003b, p. 6).

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The skills of the policy-makers depend on how theydeal with the difficulties that arise.

In tracking the processes of education reform indifferent settings, policy research has consistentlydrawn attention to the ways in which policy inevitablyalters and adapts over time. Such adaptations can anddo take place at multiple levels of the policy chain, atthe centre as much as at the periphery. Datnow et al.(2002) refer to this multilevel process as the ‘co-construction of reform’. In their view the sustainabilityof the reform process over the longer term dependsupon such adaptations taking place reciprocally tomutual advantage. But policy adaptation also bringswith it risks of loss of policy coherence and direction. Apolicy may lose its way as it unfolds in new settings orbecomes subject to new conditions. In some cases thiswill lead to ‘reform expiration’ (Datnow et al., 2002).The reform stalls, dies or is superseded by somethingelse. Whilst some contend that adaptation itself is toblame in these circumstances and that reform pro-grammes wither because they are not sufficientlyrigorously adhered to, Earl et al. (2003b) argue thatsuccessful examples of large-scale educational reformneed to ‘‘evolve to incorporate improvements, respondto new data, and yet remain consistent with theunderlying principles’’. They also recognise that thisbalance is not easily achieved.

In what follows I will use this emphasis on educationreform as ‘work in progress’, involving complexinteractions between players at different levels ofimplementation, as a means of exploring how theNLS has evolved in classrooms over time, and where itmight go next.

The research study

This article draws upon two studies of the socialorganisation of literacy in the classroom conducted atdifferent times, but using a similar range of researchtechniques. These included classroom observation ofthe full range of literacy events taking place over theday, text audits in relevant settings and teacher andpupil interviews. The data were used to analyse thesocial construction of literacy in its contexts of use(Moss, 1999). The first study took place in 1996–98,immediately prior to the introduction of the NLS, andinvolved four schools in different parts of the country.2

The second took place in 2002–3when the Strategywasin its fourth year.3 It studied two schools in depth, intwo different LEAs. One of the schools had taken partin the earlier research project and so allowed for adirect comparison in practice to bemade. In addition tothe classroom-based aspect of the research design, thesecond study tracked the ongoing relationship be-tween schools and both the LEA and national-levelsupport structures that steered implementation. Re-search instruments included observation and inter-view. In this paper, the data will be used to reflect on

how NLS has re-shaped the social context for teachingand learning in the classroom through the emphasis onexplicit planning for the time-bound structure of theHour. This will be used to raise questions about therelationship between policy adaptation at the centreand in classrooms.

The NLS as a centrally driven programme ofpolicy review and revision

Processes of policy review and revision are inthemselves not new. They can be seen at work in theNational Curriculum, which was first introduced in1989, and then subsequently revised in both 1995 and2000. But the organisational structures of the NLS havedramatically foreshortened the timescale within whichsuch changes take place. Thus although the coreprinciples of the NLS have in many ways remainedconstant, the Strategy has almost from the outsetincorporated a steady stream of further materials andinitiatives, stemming from the centre. These supple-mentary materials have been largely shaped by theStrategy’s own internal mechanisms for monitoringthe progress made towards achieving its stated goals.The monitoring regime promotes rapid adaptation atthe centre by providing the means to reflect onprogress so far. In the early stages, a good deal of thismonitoring focused on whether and how teachers hadtaken on board the pedagogic structures associatedwith the Literacy Hour. More recently, and particularlysince results have plateaued short of the initial target(75% of children reach Level 4 rather than theanticipated 80%), attention at the centre has switchedto strengthening key aspects of the work that mightmost directly deliver on the desired outcomes. This hasinvolved identifying particular aspects of the literacycurriculum (writing, phonics, guided reading) and/orparticular cohorts (boys, those falling behind in Year 1,those with low test-scores at the start of KS2) whichseemed to require further support. In effect, this meansthe monitoring regime identifies what is not yet thereand then provides more input – more materials, moreresources or more advice – to redress those gaps. Anyadaptations made are designed to be incorporated intothe basic structure of the Literacy Hour, which remainsthe prime vehicle for curriculum delivery, and areconsistent with the principled organisation of thecurriculum into word, sentence and text-level objec-tives. These have remained constant.

The Strategy thus works on two levels. On the onehand it set out to standardise delivery of the literacycurriculum: in respect of content, by laying downwhatthat content should be on a term-by-term, year-by-yearbasis; and in respect of classroom practice by introdu-cing a well-defined sequence and structure to theLiteracy Hour itself. Yet it can also allow for adaptationat the centre in the light of performance monitoring.The range of policy levers in place make what teachersdo at the local level far more responsive to what

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happens at the centre. Taken together, this creates newconditions in which teaching and learning take placewithin classrooms. Whilst a good deal of professionalcommentary has dwelt on the appropriateness of thepedagogicmodel relayed through these structures, thispaper will consider the impact of this combination offeatures, which both standardise and allow foradaptation, on the social organisation of teaching andlearning in the classroom.

Remembering where the time wentbefore NLS

How has classroom practice changed since the adventof the Literacy Hour? Four years after its introduction,the immediate impression from the classrooms visitedwas that the Strategy had indeed accomplished fargreater standardisation of curriculum delivery thanmight at first have been predicted (see Fisher, 2002).Standardisation was most notable in relation to the useof the Hour as the distinct unit of curriculum delivery,the segmentation of the Hour into distinct segments ofactivity which then variously accommodate text,sentence or word-level work, and the use of theFramework document as the guide to curriculumcontent. These were the most immediately strikingfeatures of policy uptake. They created a very differentrhythm to the social organisation of the literacyteaching and the social organisation of the day.

The earlier ESRC research project showed that prior tothe introduction of NLS, the activities that made up theliteracy curriculum used to thread their way variouslythrough the ebb and flow of classroom life, oftenoccupying very different kinds of curriculum spaces.Writing conceived of as text-level work, for instance,might be strongly linked to the class topic, and couldwell be taught quite separately from writing skills:handwriting, spelling or sentence-level work. Exactlyhow the different elements of the literacy curriculumwere delivered would be largely at the teacher’s or theschool’s discretion. Observation conducted at the timeshowed that moving to another teacher’s class oranother school might well involve coming to gripswith a different way of doing English. There would beno sure way of predicting which activities might haveparticular prominence within the timetable – ERIC,Writing Workshop or reading aloud to the teacher –and which might be more closely integrated into otherclassroom business – quiet reading time run alongsidethe taking of the register, for instance.

In any classroom, some of the activities that made upthe literacy curriculum would involve greater teachercontrol over their pace and sequence than others. Forinstance, when listening to children read teacherswould exercise particularly strong control over howlong this activity would last, the form of any questionsto be asked and the adequacy of the answers given. Butother activities would fall much more under the

pupils’ direction. Thus quiet reading time oftenprovided children with access to a range of resourcesthey could choose between and use at their owndiscretion, with relatively light teacher monitoring ofany outcomes. If classroom activity as a wholeoscillated between moments that fell more or lessunder the direct control of teachers and under thecontrol of pupils, then ‘Finishing Work’ slots played akey role inmanaging this process. Teacherswould startthe class together on a particular task, and as childrenfinished they would be able to move on to self-directedactivity – often reading – until such time as the teacherbrought the class back together again to start some-thing new. Classrooms were set up for this kind oftransition, and resources would be available for pupilsto use during this time, thus most classrooms had a‘soft corner’, an areawhere children could sit or reclinewith books away from their desks and ‘softened’ by thepresence of fabric drapes, carpet and a beanbag orcomfy chair (Moss, 1999).

Re-organising the curriculum rounddelivery of the Literacy Hour

The introduction of the Hour as a distinct unit of timehas changed this pattern. Classroom observationconsistently showed that the variety of activities thathistorically make up the literacy curriculum have nowbeen concentrated into the same well-defined curricu-lum space, and have therefore become subject to muchmore similar pedagogic routines. As the Hour movesfrom whole class to small group back to whole classsettings, and through word, sentence and text-levelobjectives, the pace and sequencing fall much moredirectly under the teacher’s control. The consistency inorganisation of theHour across the days of theweek, aswell as across classes, establishes a particularly strongset of expectations about how the work will beorganised in any particular segment, and what pupilsneed to do to participate ‘well’ within a given slot.Pupils now carry these expectations from one class toanother. Activities are designed to begin and endwithin the given time frame. The ability of pupils torecall and make use of a repertoire of routines andresources that recur across the Hours in each weekensures a new kind of continuity between thecomparatively short bursts of time committed toparticular activities. This repertoire is called on at theteacher’s direction.

In the classrooms the research project visited, thisdifferent pace and sequence of activity was reflected inthe changing organisation of the physical space of theclassroom. There was a consistency to these changes.Where once classroom displays used to prominentlysignal a cross-curricular theme for the term, nowmuchof the wall area is taken up by resources that act asadjuncts to the daily work on literacy and numeracy.Resources that support literacy and numeracy wereprominently clustered near the front of the classroom

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to act as prompts or reminders of the work in hand.Classroom layouts had also become more uniform byvirtue of being designed to draw more attention to thecentral space of the blackboard or whiteboard and thesequence of texts it might contain. This could beachieved through the way desks were arranged, or bythe creation of a clear space immediately in front of theboardwhere children could be gathered duringwhole-class time. Such spatial arrangements allow the teacherto choreograph the attention of the whole group moreeasily during the Hour. The ‘soft corners’ associatedwith pupil-directed activity had largely disappeared.In Bernstein’s terms, this overt punctuation of time andspace exemplifies the switch from an invisible tovisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 1996).

As far as the NLS is concerned, these kinds of changesto the social organisation of the classroom are in linewith its overall rationale. The Hour was designed tomaximise the time teachers spent directly teaching andensure that all pupils received a roughly similarexposure to curriculum content encompassing word,sentence and text-level work. In the classroomsobserved, such standardisation around the deliveryof the Hour had ensured that children in differentschools with different catchments and very differentcurricular histories were exposed to a broadly similarliteracy diet as far as these three elements wereconcerned. The topics, the resources and the teachingpace were all broadly similar.

The use of well-defined recursive routines within theHour are intended to make it easier for pupils to knowwhat is expected of them, when, and to be able torespond accordingly. In each of the classrooms wherethe research took place, stronger teacher control overthe pace and sequence of activity did seem to ensurethat there was more even participation in the range oftasks set. Thus in the whole-class sessions children’sattention was more strongly marshalled towards thesame end – through choral recitation, shared writingor breaks into pair talk before coming back as a wholeclass again. Where once quiet reading time might haveled to relatively long stretches where children’sinvolvement in the task was really up to them (Moss,1999), the Hour ensured that children were eitherunder the explicit direction of the teacher duringwholeclass or guided time, or would be steadily workingthrough a task tailored to fill independent time. Workchildren undertook individually would be planned tobegin and end at the same time, as the need to movetogether onto the next phase of classroom activitywould bring the preceding phase sharply to a close.The tasks themselves were more uniform, bothbetween schools and for the children within anyparticular class. The differentiation of tasks observedhappened in relation to curriculum objectives thatwere shared by the class as a whole. If adopting a moreexplicit pedagogy was intended to create a moreinclusive curriculum, then by these criteria, the datasuggested this had been achieved. Whatever their

standing as individual literacy learners, the wholegroup would be expected to cover the same groundwithin roughly the same timeframe. The planningsheets, introduced as part of NLS, act as one of the keymeans of both steering and monitoring this pattern ofcurriculum delivery.

The dilemmas posed by the new pace

The lessons observed showed a striking degree ofconvergence on a similar model of classroom organisa-tion stemming directly from the explicit structuregiven to the Hour, and the strength of its internal andexternal boundaries. Yet this very success in imple-mentation creates its own dilemmas. The emphasisplaced on the fast pace of teacher-controlled activitiesleaves unresolved quite how this way of workingcreates competencies that can transfer from short tolonger timeframes, and involve greater pupil autono-my over tasks. This is particularly acute at KS2. Thesharp punctuation of the Hour as it moves from onephase to another creates boundaries and a sense of afinite period during which the work begun must befinished. At the same time, the increasing level ofspecialisation required for text-level work makes itharder to identify continuities in the routines necessaryto execute a particular task well that can meaningfullyrepeat from one slot to another. It becomes harder tofind an appropriate space within which such text-levelspecialisation can be fully developed. There is a dangerthat tasks shrink to fit the time slots available, whilstthe time slots available are determined by the need tocover the curriculum:

Teacher: I did the word level work . . . on the whiteboard.Interviewer: That’s right. Yes.Teacher: Yes, I did that first deliberately. Did that, got itout of the way. And then went on . . . because there was nolink at all.

Such dilemmas in part stem from the structuralcharacteristics of NLS itself. Its very clarity of purposein relation to the curriculum content that must bedelivered, and the shape and dispensation of the timeperiod in which that delivery will take place is double-edged. The level of specification was designed togenerate high expectations about what could becovered in the course of the year and what pupilsshould attain. Yet the interaction between the breadthof curriculum content specified in the Frameworkdocument and the tight confines of the primary unit ofdelivery – the single Hour divided into three – givesgreat urgency to the control over pace and sequencewhich teachers must exercise to enable pupils to ‘getthrough’. The practical demands made on teachers asthey orchestrate the different aspects of the Hour andtheir sequence over the week can all too easily turn intoa struggle simply to account for curriculum coverage.The lesson plan becomes a way of demonstrating thatthe teacher has covered the relevant topics within the

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relevant time period. The question of what childrenwill have learnt as a result ends up taking second place.

In fact, deciding what children have learnt cannot bedetermined in the same way as measuring the timecommitted to a particular activity. Time spent teachingx does not amount to learning it. To make thatjudgement, teachers have to pay attention to some-thing else – the quality of the work returned and whatit says about where the teaching needs to go next. Yetplanning driven by the Framework document allowslittle space for this kind of reflection and adaptation.Follow the Framework document too closely whenworking out medium and short-term plans, and thereis little room tomake cumulative use of the evidence ofwhat children have accomplished in the time.

These dilemmas become more acute when the localaccountability culture stresses compliance with thecentral direction of the Strategy and meeting itsapparent demands over and above problem-solvingthe specific set of conditions that arise in local settingsas implementation occurs. Under these circumstances,the policy levers designed to standardise curriculumdelivery and monitor performance can get in the wayof thinking through how things need to adapt in thelight of the specific requirements of this school, thisteacher and these children.

Planning from the Framework document

Making the fixed boundaries to the internal structureof the Hour the starting point for planning does createdifficulties for teachers. This has already been recog-nised by the NLS. Official advice is no longer to planfor the carousel of activities structured into the originalplanning sheets which were introduced with theFramework document (DfEE, 1998). This changestemmed from the recognition that strict adherenceto the original model could lead to over-planning.Teachers were struggling to devise too many shorttasks in an attempt to fill out the plan. These tasksbecame difficult to orchestrate via meaningful linksinto a larger whole, leading to curriculum fragmenta-tion. Subsequent advice has also encouraged changingthe order of activities within the Hour (DfES, 2003a),for instance, starting with a short, self-contained burstof word-level activity before going on to other things.Developing Early Writing (DfEE, 2001) emphasised amore holistic basis for planning by starting from a clearview of what the text-level teaching was designed toaccomplish over the course of a week, and then identi-fying a sequence of daily supporting activities whichcould sustain and feed into that longer task, whilstExcellence and Enjoyment contains specific advicereminding teachers that planning should be guidedby their own purposes rather than follow a specific pre-scription. These kinds of revisions at the centre imply aprocess of reflection on the best ways of proceeding inresponse to implementation at the local level.

In one sense these moves point to an increasingrecognition of the need for flexibility in implementa-tion and greater autonomy in decision-making at thelevel of the school. But they also point to someunresolved questions. In a reform programme com-mitted to highly visible curriculum delivery, what isthe pace required to consolidate and extend text-levelskills at KS2? What kind of space do writers need towork in at this level? What opportunities do readersrequire to turn reading into a self-directed activity?What kinds of support over what time period bestfacilitate hand-over of the requisite skills from teachersto pupils? What should the mix of pupil or teacher-controlled activities be? These issues cannot be fullysolved by prescription from outside. They requirethinking about in the immediate context of the school,in the light of its own history and the range of relevantexperience both teachers and children bring to theparticular task they are trying to tackle. Yet from theperspective of many teachers on the ground to posethese kinds of questions would mean working againstthe grain of the planning sheets, and the accountabilityculture they represent.

The current planning regime pulls teachers’ attention inrather different directions. The plan holds teachers toaccount for what they have done. It provides the visibleevidence that they have done their job. Backward-mapping from the range of objectives to be covered eachterm does indeed generate roughly two weeks ofteaching time per substantive text-level objective.

Teacher: Usually I do a two-week block on a genre. Storieswith familiar settings, two weeks on that, I did. Then I dida couple of weeks on chronological reports.

These then have to be managed alongside a furtherrange of word and sentence-level objectives. To acco-mmodate such potentially competing demands onpupil time, the tripartite structure to the Hour high-lights the need to switch focus from one kind of task toanother. ‘Successful’ teacher planning then depends onfinding the most coherent way of moving pupilattention from one activity to another. This can include‘clumping’ together those word, sentence and text-level objectives that are most closely associated, so thateach discrete activity develops a kind of thematic unity.

Teacher: . . . um, because I like to work from word intosentence into text. OK? Because it sort of seems to makesense to me.

Or dispatching any objectives which fit less well toparts of the Hour where they can be covered mostrapidly, or alternatively consigning them to a part ofthe Hour most designed to run on automatic pilot.

Teacher: If it links, it links. If not I’ll just teach itdiscretely.

The logic seems overwhelming.

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Planning with children in mind

But in classrooms this logic to the flow of activity restswith what the teacher sees, and their overview of theway in which the sequence of discrete tasks fitstogether. From the child’s perspective, things maylook quite different. Watch children during the Hourover the course of a week and it is clear that theyorientate very sharply to the choreography of theroutines associated with particular segments of theHour. They know how to join in with the rhythm ofsocial interaction within each segment, when to chanttogether, when to stop, when to talk with a partner andwhen to pull back to the whole class setting. From thispoint of view all the classes observed were responsiveto teacher direction. Given a whiteboard to write onand displaywithin a given time, they knowwhat to do:

Interviewer: So what do you use the whiteboards in yourlessons for then?Richard: For literacy, sometimes she tells us to get themout and if there is something with the answers you canwrite them down and hold them up.

It is far less clear whether and how they sort out theways in which the conceptual content covered in suchmoments relates to their own work. This is a differentquestion from knowing what the lesson objective is inthe abstract. Thus, in answer to two successivequestions about what he has been doing in literacyRichard is able to list a variety of word and sentence-level objectives that had provided a focus for teaching:

Interviewer: Can you tell me briefly what you were doingthis morning?Richard: We were doing prefixes. Prefixes like helping usto understand words and things.Interviewer: . . . And what other kinds of things do you doin literacy?Richard: Um, we are doing, in the beginning of our firstterm . . . we were doing like verbs, nouns, things . . . Andthis term we are doing like connectives and things.

Knowing the topic is one thing. It is far harder to judgewhether the competencies children acquire from wordor sentence-level exercises really transfer over into thewriting they control for themselves; or whether thespaces in which they write really offer them the bestopportunity to allow this to happen. In fact, Richardoften used the comparatively short time given tosustained writing in class largely to avoid settling tothe task. If he slowed down finding a pen, writing thetitle, looking for a ruler and entering the date, he couldjust about get away with writing only a first sentencebefore it would be time to move to the plenary phase ofthe lesson. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the stop-start structure to the Hour, and the need to switch frompaying attention to this to paying attention to that, mayprovide less than ideal conditions in which to write atlength and with commitment.

This could be seen as no more than an argument forreinstating extended writing time. But the real inten-tion is to examine head-on the dilemmas teachers facein planning for a segmented Hour, when the upper-most priority is to fulfil their obligations to ensurecurriculum coverage of three different kinds of item-ised objectives. I would argue that teachers continue toplan for curriculum coverage as one of their mainobjectives, despite the run of current official adviceurging flexibility and adaptation, because the Hour issimultaneously a pedagogic sequence and a unit ofaccounting, a means of managing teachers’ work andensuring that they have done what they should.

Planning for the future

The NLS is indeed a high-stakes, high-accountabilityinitiative. Much rides on its ability to deliver on itsstated goals. Now that the first flush of implementationis over it enters new political terrain. If the outcomesmeasured in pupil performance continue to hold at thecurrent level rather than rise then the questions aboutits futurewill get sharper. Thosewho have opposed thepedagogymay complain more loudly. Those who havesupported it may redouble efforts to point to its suc-cesses. The stakes get higher on both sides. The visibilityof the performance measures make this hard to avoid.

Yet there are good reasons for continuing to examineclosely how the Strategy is evolving with as muchdisinterest as can be mustered, not least because whilstthe current political emphasis onmeasurable outcomespersists it would serve teachers ill to seek to replacethis particular pedagogic strategy with yet another4

when any such programmes are equally unproven atthis scale of implementation over the longer term. Onthe contrary the challenge is to recognise both thestrengths and the weaknesses of what is currently inplace as a prerequisite for continuing positive growthand evolution.

In this light there is a need to consider more deeplyhow things now stand at the level of the classroom.What are the current conditions the NLS has createdfor thinking about pedagogy? What new spaces arerequired to take things forward at this delicate stage?One of the strengths of NLS is the way in which it hasundoubtedly built a dynamic learning community atthe centre, well able to reflect on the range ofinformation it receives about where the Strategy hasgot to so far and plan new moves. One of theweaknesses is the difficulty of coordinating the speedof development at the centre with the speed at which itis possible to adapt at local level. At the local level itcan be difficult to know quite what forms of flexibilityare being sanctioned for whom. In these circumstancesit is easier to stick with those elements of the Hourwhich are best understood and which are most clearlyvalidated through the monitoring systems in place.With rare exceptions, many of the teachers whose

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lessons I observed were most concerned to evaluatewhat they had done in conversation afterwards interms of whether or not they had covered its prescrip-tions carefully enough. Prominent amongst these waswhether they had kept to time.

Can the boundaries to the Hour stay in place andmeaningful adaptation and change occur at local level?It is perfectly possible to retain the underlyingprinciples of the NLS and approach planning from avery different direction, making the relationshipbetween parts and whole within the Hour and overthe week more holistic, if the terms under whichteachers are called to account for what they do change.Oneway of doing this would be to change the planningsheets so that the unit of time teachers account for isspecified at the level of the week, not the individualHour. Choreographing the move between word,sentence and text-level work over a week rather thanwithin the Hour sanctions much greater flexibility inthe use of time. It encourages children and teachers tospend longer on tasks that require more time. Thisgives better scope for sustained reading and writing,which in turn would allow for more purposefulintegration of word and sentence-level skills intotext-level work. For instance, in its description ofhow text-level competencies change, the Frameworkdocument puts considerable stress on the introductionand use of more complex sentence structures. Cur-rently explicit teaching about complex sentence struc-tures can be tackled by taking a sentence-levelobjective such as use of connectives (Year 5, Term 3S7) and feeding in an appropriate freestanding activityin which children find or generate sentences thatcontain a given list of connectives. But connectives arereally about stitching together a longer piece ofwriting. Suchwork requires time spent on thewriting’sconstruction in order to understand what the relation-ship between parts to whole might be. Stretch out theunit of time for which teachers plan and it becomesmuch easier to achieve the conditions in which use ofconnectives has a warranted place. The need toprovide explicit support for extended text-level activ-ity through word and sentence-level work wouldremain, whilst the task itself could claim an adequateproportion of time.

One net result of such a move might well be that curri-culum coverage per se would slow down. To accom-modate this, schools would need to choose betweenobjectives from the Framework document, in any oneterm and in any one year. Teachers should beencouraged to take responsibility for selecting anappropriate weighting of text, word and sentence-levelobjectives in the light of the evidence on the ground intheir local setting, and then plan accordingly for anappropriate pace of delivery stemming from the logicof the tasks to be tackled. This would require givingprimary emphasis to supporting the professionaljudgements that teachers make about children’s workand how it can be developed based on local knowledge.

Conclusion

The National Literacy Strategy is committed to con-tinuing to adapt. The difficulty at the moment isknowing quite how to move things on withoutcompromising its underlying principles. Yet a lotdepends on how those principles are defined and bywhom. Things change. At the end of six years, teachersare much more familiar with the range of tasks speltout in the Framework document. They are nowequipped with a variety of tools for explicit teachingof word, sentence and text-level objectives. They havea different understanding of teaching pace. They mayalso know more about where difficulties with thecurrent pace of teaching lie in the context of their ownschool and have a clearer idea of what the prioritiesshould be in that setting. Under these circumstances,they are less likely to be responsive to centrallyimposed solutions. This suggests the possibility ofentering into a new relationship between playerswithin the NLS, in which schools take greater controlover the process of policy adaptation at this stage,drawing on resources made available at the centrewhere they wish, and the space is found for pupils totake greater control over the pace of their learningwithin classrooms so that they too learn how to be incharge of what they do.

Notes

1. Building a New Literacy Practice Through the Adoption of the NationalLiteracy Strategy. Based at the Institute of Education, LondonUniversity, this project was funded by ESRC, 2002–3. The finalreport of this project can be found on www.regard.ac.uk

2. The Fact and Fiction Project, funded by the ESRC between 1996–8,collected data on literacy across the curriculum immediately priorto the introduction of NLS. The project team consisted of GemmaMoss and Dena Attar. An account of this research can be found inMoss and Attar, 1999; and Moss (forthcoming).

3. Building a New Literacy Practice Through the Adoption of the NationalLiteracy Strategy.

4. This has happened in New York City where Success For All hasbeen replaced as the central strand in education reform with aprogramme run by Lucy Calkin based on extending pupils’ self-directed reading.

References

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DATNOW, A., HUBBARD, L. and MEHAN, H. (2002) ExtendingEducational Reform: From one school to many. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

EARL, L., WATSON, N., LEVIN, B., LEITHWOOD, K., FULLAN, M.and TORRANCE, N. with JANTZI, D., MASCALL, B. andVOLANTE, L. (2003a)Watching and Learning 3. Nottingham: DfES.

EARL, L., WATSON, N. and KATZ, S. (2003b) Large-scale EducationReform: Life cycles and implications for sustainability. Reading: CfBT.

DfEE (Department for Education and Employment) (1998) TheNational Literacy Strategy: Framework for teaching. London: Depart-ment for Education and Employment.

DfEE (Department for Education and Employment) (2001) Develop-ing Early Writing. London: Department for Education andEmployment.

DfES (Department for Education and Skills) (2003a) Year 4 and Year 5Planning Exemplification. London: Department for Educationand Skills.

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DfES (Department for Education and Skills) (2003b) Excellenceand Enjoyment. Nottingham: Department for Education andSkills.

FISHER, R. (2002) Inside the Literacy Hour. London: Routledge.MOSS, G. (1999) Texts in context: mapping out the gender differen-

tiation of the reading curriculum. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 7.3,pp. 507–522.

MOSS, G. (2002) Literacy and pedagogy in flux: constructing theobject of study from a Bernsteinian perspective. British Journal ofSociology of Education, 23.4, pp. 549–558.

MOSS, G. (forthcoming) Gender and Literacy: Theory and research.London: Routledge/Falmer.

MOSS, G. and ATTAR, D. (1999) ‘Boys and Literacy: Gendering thereading curriculum’ in Prosser, J. (ed.) School Culture. London: PaulChapman.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:Gemma Moss, Institute of Education, Universityof London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OALe-mail: g.moss@ioe.ac.uk

NEW UKLA PUBLICATION FOR 2004

Tell Me Anotherƒ. Speaking, Listening and learning through Storytelling

Jacqueline Harrett

Storytelling techniques not only enhance the speaking and listening skills of children,

they help change children from superficial, deceptive or even inattentive listeners into

more participatory and reflective listeners and learners who may also become more

creative thinkers.

Price: £6.00 (members) £7.00 (non-members)

ISBN 1 897638 28 0

Literacy November 2004 133

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