Sats Pamphlet

8/14/2019 Sats Pamphlet

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Another school is possible 3

THE TSUNAMI

Paul Vernell , Head of English at Filton High School,South Gloucestershire, makes a suggestion

Ground down by SATs and targets, shocked andangered by New Labours attacks on teacherpensions and seething at the continuing war inIraq, the Tsunami disaster forced me, more thanany other event in the 16 years I have beenteaching, to consider: what is educations purposein a world where we can spend trillions onsending people to far away planets but we cantsolve issues like early warning systems for tidalwaves and the logistics of aid?

In fact so shocked, I wondered if the youngpeople we teach, the global citizens of tomorrow,could come up with ideas for dealing with thedevastating consequences of events in South eastAsia. Could the education we offer them provide

the tools to begin to explore and identify answersto the situation we currently face? Not a rehashedvocationalism but a truly interesting and relevantlearning experience that is situated in the world.In short can young people sketch another worldin which natural catastrophes are notexacerbated by poverty, third world debt,unemployment and displacement?

So, in a packed Friday briefing, when theHead was reminding us of litter problems, I putforward a modest proposal. Would it not be agood idea to harness the solidarity,

internationalism and curiosity generated by theTsunami disaster? Spending a week, perhapsworking alongside NGOs such as Oxfam, ourstudents should have the chance to analyse andexplore the problems and the possible solutionsto the situation we were witnessing on ourscreens each night. Not a week of regurgitatingtired facts but a week when every curriculum areawould offer each year group from 7-11 a realcontext and purpose for the skills we teach.

Yes, came the answer and I thought I heard acollective sigh of relief. The Head of Maths wants

to look at the speed of waves and theeffectiveness of early warning systems, the Designand Technology teachers want to look at theconstructing new houses, in English we will lookat discursive and argumentative writing aroundthe theme of debt: relief or abolition, and many

more ideas poured forth.Each day of the week will focus on one year

group. After showing a collated video of scenesfrom the area and an assembly provided by theChristian Aid website, a series of questions willthen be shown followed by a starter on problemsolving skills Then off to lessons. And it doesntmatter what lesson they are in, students willexplore the big questions thrown up. The lastperiod of the day will be a whole year groupplenary sharing their solutions to the questions

raised at the beginning of the day.The school council has proposed that the finalday be a non uniform day with studentscontributing their money to the DEC fund.

So were off! And the theme for the week? Isanother world possible?

A very modest proposal

Children care and are yearning to act


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At an NUT meeting in Radnor shortley

after the Tory government introducedSATs, an experienced primary schoolteacher described how she was sittingwith her Year 2 class, wading through

preparation for the forthcoming tests when oneof the children looked out of the window andnoticed that a sheep in the field outside was in theprocess of giving birth.

Her first reaction to this was to think, Wehavent got time for this, the SATs are in a fewweeks, weve got to get on. Almost immediately,however, her better instincts as a teacher took

hold of her and asking herself what education wasafter all about she took the whole class outside towatch the lamb being born.

I am aware that by starting an article aboutdevelopments in Wales with a story about sheep Iam in danger of reinforcing ignorant stereotypesof life on the other side of Offas Dyke. However,what I hope this story illustrates is the dilemmateachers face between trusting their own judge-ment and submitting to the straitjackets imposedon them by a succession of control-mad govern-ments. The fact that one of the latest primary doc-

uments issuing from Whitehall cynically tacks theword enjoyment onto the policyit will surely beonly a matter of time before we are instructed toprovide enjoyment for five per cent of teachingtimeonly makes the teachers confinement morepainful. However, I am pleased to say that the

Welsh Assembly has gone some way towards

releasing teachers from their straitjacketslet ussay that at least we no longer have our arms tiedbehind our backs.

Even before the Welsh Assembly came intobeing, there has been a history in Wales of moreprogressive educational thinking and practice. Forexample, there are very few opted out schools inWales. And since the inception of the assembly ithas so far resisted most of the excesses of White-hall policy. For example, as yet there are no plansfor academies or specialist schools.

Estyn is marginally more enlightened than

OFSTED and has never made the kind of abrasivestatements about teachers which were continuallyemenating fron Woodhead. The Assembly foughta rearguard action against the linking of teacherperformance to pay and has not embraced theidea of teaching assistants taking whole classeswith any enthusiasm. But more importantly forthe purposes of this article, there are no primaryschool league tables and Key Stage 1 SATs wereabolished several years ago.

Assessment

However, the most significant development of allhas been the establishment of the Daughertyreview of assessment in Wales, which has recom-mended the abolition of all SATs and theirreplacement by a system of teacher assessment atthe end of Key Stages 2 and 3, and the introduc-

4 Another school is possible

Lessons fromover the dyke

Mary Compton , President of the NUT,writes how the Welsh Assemblys abolition ofKS1 SATs has improved education

WALES


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tion of some testing in Year 5 for the purposes of improving childrens learning. Of course this is agreat leap forward for Wales and one all the moresignificant since we have tried the English modelof SATs and found them seriously wanting.

Daugherty took evidence from all interested

partiesparents, teachers, pupils, academics andteacher unions. We therefore join Scotland toleave England totally isolated in its adherence toSATs. Many countries are looking at what is goingon in England and, impressed by Englands appar-ently good showing in the PISA study of achieve-ment at 14, are thinking of introducing similarsystems themselves. The Daugherty report will bean invaluable help in combatting these misguidedplans.

Of course not everything in the Welsh valleys isgreen. Funding is appallingly low and many

schools are struggling with deficit budgets.Although the Assembly was not keen on some of the workload reforms, I have no doubt that cash-strapped heads will be using unqualified staff toteach just as their colleagues in England aredoing. We are still inspected and our power and

confidence to innovate and be creative suffers as aresult. We do not yet know what the Year 5 testsare going to be like and we must be vigilant thatthey are not just a new Welsh form of SATs.

And we also suffer from the fact that manyyoung teachers know nothing but SATs and are

nervous at the idea of managing without them. Itis almost like our hands have been tied behindour backs for so long that our muscles are startingto whither away and now that we are almost freeagain we are going to need some intensive andsometimes painful phisiotherapy to get themworking again. But I have no doubt that the teach-ers of Wales will rise to the challenge and that thecountry which has traditionally such respect foreducation and teachers will not have reason to bedisappointed in them.

Offas Dyke was built by an English king to keep

the barbarous Welsh hoards from its land. Wellnow we in Wales have managed to repell the Eng-lish idea of punishing and deadening testing. Per-haps it is time for the barbarians on the Englishside of the border to take some lessons in civilisa-tion from this side of the Dyke.


WALES

Can Walesshow Englandthe wayforward?


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T he answer appears to bethe whole

truth, twice the truth, maybe threetimes the truth. The government con-stantly uses rising SATs scores in claimsthat their policies are working, but

recent research raises serious questions about theSATs can be trusted. The British Educational

Research Journal ( BERJ ) is probably the highestranking educational research journal, and articlesthat appear in it are rigorously checked by otherexperts before being published. Yet in the last twoyears, it has published some damning studieswhich suggest that the SATs just cannot be

trusted.The National Numeracy Strategy has forcedteachers to teach Maths in a particular way, with abig emphasis on whole-class practice of mentalarithmetic. It costs 400,000,000, yet according toresearchers it has brought about only two monthsprogressand may have led to a deterioration inmathemetical skills other than calculation.

Professor Margaret Brown and her colleagus atKings College, University of London, point outthat two thirds of the schools in their sampleshowed progress, but in a third of the schools

results went down. They also showed that resultsgot worse for the low attaining pupils, probablybecause teachers were now focussing on the aver-age child in the class and no longer paying atten-tion to their needs. The gap got bigger betweenthe lowest attaining pupils and the rest. There was

also very little improvement for the most advances

pupils in the class.Some high attainers in this case study also expressedto us their frustration at their progress being heldback by the whole class teaching emphasis, whichtends to be pitched at the needs of the middlegroup. ( BERJ , October 2003, p662)

The research cast doubt on government claimsthat their strategy has worked miracles. A pressrelease in March 2003 claimed:

Recent improvements in pupils achievements in lit-eracy and numeracy have been substantial. 73 percent of 11 year olds achieved at least level 4 in Mathsin 2002a 14 point increase since 1998.

The researchers have spotted that the govern-ment spin doctors chose 1998 as their base line (avery poor year), and if they had chosen 1999, justbefore the strategy was introduced, the improve-ment would have been only 4 per cent. They alsostate that improved SATs scores are largely theresult of careful coaching for the test.

One of the most expert research units forassessment results is the CEM at the University of Durham. In a report of August 2004 ( BERJ ,pp477-494), Professor Peter Tymms asks, Arestandards rising in English primary schools?

He carefully compares the data from SATs with

TESTING THE SATS

Do SATs tell thetruth aboutachievement?

Terry Wrigley , lecturer in schooldevelopment at the University of Edinburghasks the fundamental question


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eleven other sources of data, including govern-ment departments and universities. These alterna-tive data sources involved well-established tests (asopposed to the SATs which keep changing), and a

very large sample (nearly half a million pupils). Heconcludes that, according to the alternative data,the proportion attaining a level 4 in reading at theend of primary school should have risen from 48per cent (1995) to 58 per cent (2000), rather thanthe 75 per cent shown by the SATs. (After 2000,little change has occurred in results).

Simple questions of factWhen the SATs were tried out on pupils in North-ern Ireland, who have a different system of educa-tion and had not been coached for the SATs, the

pupils also said they were getting easier.Mary Hilton (University of Cambridge) alsofound that the tests were being made easier.There was a switch from more subtle questionsinvolving inference or deduction 1 to simple ques-tions of fact. The most dramatic year-on-yearimprovement in SATs scores happened becauseof a shift from a thoughtful personal account of awriters childhood to a much simpler passageabout spiders. ( Reading , 2001, no 1)

Altogether, it seems, the tests are being simpli-fied so that the government can claim their poli-

cies are working. And teachers are getting betterat judging exactly what they need to teach so thatmore children will pass the tests. But what is hap-pening to educational standatds?

Inspectors have pointed to an increase in basicexcercised where children just practice rather

reading that has some meaning. They called theseholding activities which occupied pupils but didnot develop or consolidate their literacy skills andreduce interest and motivation. ( National Literacy

Strategy: the Third Year , HMI 2001, www.ofsted.gov.uk)Some schools had abandoned independent

reading, which did not fit into the official patternof the Literacy Hour. Boys were responding badlyto one lesson in eight (even when the inspectorswere watching!) and the gap between boys andgirls was not closing. The curriculum was narrow-ing, as teachers focused more and more on tests:The development of enquiry skills in history andGeography, and refining of technical skills inpractical subjects is being neglected. The inspec-

tors suggest that teachers connect reading withreal knowledge in History and Science, for exam-plewhich is just what many primary teachersused to do before the government stopped it!

Terry Wrigley is a lecturer in school development atthe University of Edinburgh. He edits the journalImproving Schools, and has written two books, The Power to Learn (2000) and Schools of Hope (2003).He has worked in education for over 30 years, as asecondary school teacher, staff developmentmanager, inspector and university teacher.

Note1 For example, reading between the lines;understanding something the writer had hinted atrather than directly stated; reaching a conclusion fromthe writers evidence which hasnt been fully spelt out.

TESTING THE SATS

Governmentfigures justdont add up


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Sometimes I wonder, if we were to

learn to talk or walk by means of someGovernment-inspired strategy, wouldwe get there at all? If we went throughthe prescribed stages of level one,

rock on your belly, level two, crawl, level three,totter towards the couch, level four, stagger inde-pendently, would we ever manage to boldly goanywhere?

In the course of my career as a childrensauthor and educational consultant I visit some 150schools a year. I find a huge amount of commonground when it comes to the teaching of English.

This broad agreement, needless to say, generallyruns counter to official Government policy.The current regime in schools generally rests

upon three foundations:q the testing regimeq Ofstedq the National Literacy Strategy.

The testing regimeSAT results have been more or less static forsome years. In the early years of a testing regime,teaching to the test can inflate test scores. You

learn to cram the children. This approach hascrushed the life out of English schools, subordi-nating everything to the stultifying mantra: teachto the test. But, after the initial rise in test scores,any illusory progress soon fades like the smile onthe Cheshire cat.

Ofsted

Though less draconian and punitive than in theWoodhead years, Ofsted remains a from aboveapproach. There is still little attempt to workwith schools. Externally imposed league tablesand drives for standards continue to define itsoperation.

The National Literacy StrategyWhile I work with many creative and intelligentpeople in the NLS, the strategy is still marked bythe conditions of its birth, the testing regime andOfsted. Liberated from those shackles it could

potentially develop into something much moreexciting and holistic.A recent survey by the NLS in Surrey confirms

what many already know. Consider these twodamning statistics:

What percentage of level 3 pupils at Year 6 didnot move at all between KS2 2000 and KS3 2003in English? 30 per cent.

What percentage of level 4 pupils at Y6 did notmove at all between KS2, 2000 and KS3, 2003 inEnglish? 19 per cent.

For a third of pupils at level 3 and a fifth of

pupils at level 4 to make no progress betweeneleven and fourteen years old should set alarmbells ringing and cast doubt on the effectivenessof the Governments approach. The evidence of a desire for change is everywhere. Wales is drop-ping the SATs. Scotland didnt have them in the


TEACHING ENGLISH

A platform for the teachingof English

Award winning writer Alan Gibbons iscoordinator of Authors Against the SATs. Herehe gives his vision of an alternative to testing


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TEACHING ENGLISH


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first place. The National Association for theTeaching of English, Authors Against the SATs,the Meetings with the Minister pamphlet andthe Times Educational Supplement have allchallenged the test and tablecampaign.Thereneeds to be a concerted effort to raise standardsthrough creativity and pedagogical freedom.This is, after all, what exists in Finland, thecountry which tops the OECD rankings for edu-cational success. It might look something likethis.

A platform for literacy1) Reading developmentTo develop a literate classroom the library shouldbe central. There should be a chartered librarianin every High School administering a ring-fencedbook budget. The librarian should lead a teaminteracting with small groups of children, linkingtheir reading to personal interest. The librarianshould have responsibility for the feeder primar-ies in the locality. Childrens writing should beprominently displayed throughout the school.The teacher should regularly read aloud to theclass. Children should read silently in class for

pleasure and have time to browse. There shouldbe book weeks and author visits on a regularbasis. The Government should campaign nation-ally for school bookshops.

2) WritingThere should be a balance of directed and freewriting with the accent on the childs individualityand creativity. Writing should be encouragedthroughout the curriculum, eroding the arbitrarysubject divisions. There should be a national mag-azine for young writers, subsidised by Govern-

ment funds but not subject to the editorial controlof its agencies. There should be a pilot of Inte-grated English in which English, drama and thearts would be taught as an integrated whole. Onesurvey showed that 33% of students had Drama astheir favourite subject but only 6% English. Could

this have something to do with a stale diet of Comprehensions?

3) AssessmentSATs and league tables should be abolished. Fewbelieve they serve any valid purpose. Just becausethe SATs boycott didnt materialise doesnt meanthat SATs are in any way valued by teachers or chil-dren. The tests should be replaced by moderatedteacher assessment with a minimum of paper work.The watchword should be: minimise administra-tion, maximise learning. Assessment of writingshould be by a portfolio of childrens work. There isalready such an experiment in Birmingham.

4) Inspection and adviceOfsted should be abolished and replaced with anew model, supporting and advising teachers. Amark of goodwill might be for all inspectors toteach a sample lesson to prove they are able prac-titioners. Advisors should teach alongside teach-ers in the classroom, not lecture to them atINSET meetings.

Teacher trainingThis should be on a pedagogic, not a managerialmodel. The ability to maintain the attention of aclass is more important than the ability to main-tain a laminated folder of objectives and out-comes. Childrens literature should be a central

module, as should the teaching of reading. Theteacher should be seen as an exemplary adult whoreads for pleasure and celebrates the accumula-tion of knowledge. To achieve this, there shouldbe time set aside for the teachers own intellectualdevelopment. You dont get dynamic, inspira-tional teachers in the classroom by driving themto distraction through bureaucratic red tape.

ConclusionThe drive for standards has served only to drivemany good teachers out of the profession and to

drive children crazy with boredom. Working withteachers and students to develop a curriculumwhich they find stimulating could pay dividends.A move in that direction is long overdue.

Alan Gibbons is a writer and independenteducational consultant. After twenty years as a teacherat KS1, 2 and 3, Alan turned to writing full time. Twiceshortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, twice shortlisted forthe Booktrust Teenage Prize, Alan has won the BluePeter Book Award and the Leicester and Angus Prizes.Alan is a popular speaker at schools, libraries, colleges

and conferences. He speaks at 150 schools a year. Hehas toured Spain, France, Cyprus, Northern Ireland andSwitzerland, and is due to visit Hong Kong and Taipei.Alan is the coordinator of Authors Against the SATs. Helives with his wife and four children in Liverpool where heis a columnist for the local paper, the Liverpool Echo.


TEACHING ENGLISH

The Anti-SATsAlliancesfoundingconference


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What are the core ideas of the Rethinking

Schools organisation?We advocate the reform of elementary and sec-ondary public schools in the United States with anemphasis on urban schools and issues of equityand social justice. We stress a grassroots perspec-tive combining theory and practice and linkingclassroom issues to broader policy concerns. Weare an activist publication and encourage teach-ers, parents, and students to become involved inbuilding quality public schools for all children.

What are the key aims of the RS organisation?

Rethinking Schools seeks to build a movement formore equitable, just, and critical education for allstudents. We understand that a key part in win-ning the struggle for educational justice is thelinking of those struggles with broader socialmovements. This linkage, however, should takeplace not only in the general political arena whereteacher unions fight for socially just policies, butin the very curriculum and structure of schoolingitself, where teachers and their organizations pro-mote critical global justice pedagogy and createstructures that promote access and power to the

most disenfranchised sections of our society.Rethinking Schools tries to promote thesekinds of activities through clear analysis of policyissues, thoughtful descriptions of critical teachingpractices in all subject areas, reviews of progres-sive resources, and reporting on organizing for

educational justice. We do this in our monthly

magazine, the books weve published and our website www.rethinkingschools.orgRecently weve initiated a program called

From the World to our Classrooms in collabora-tion with the group Global Exchange. Weveorganized curriculum tours of educators from theUnited States to go and visit social justice activistson the border of Mexico and the US so that teach-ers can meet and learn first hand from workplace,womens, community and environmental activists.On return to their schools teachers advocate soli-darity policies within their union and create cur-

ricula to help teach about these matters.

How is your organisation structured?Rethinking Schools started in 1986 from a studycircle of teacher and community activists. Many of us had been active in the civil rights, anti-war, andwomens movements and we wanted to bring thesame kind of critique and activism to work aroundschools. We started small on my kitchen table witha can of rubber cement and an old Apple IIe com-puter. Weve grown a lot in the last 18 years! Weare a non-profit independent organization that

is not affiliated to any trade union or politicalparty. We operate as a non-hierarchical organiza-tion with no executive director and try to makemajor decisions through consensus.

We are based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin buthave editors on both the east and west coast of the


ANOTHERSCHOOL ISPOSSIBLE

Ealing National Union of Teachers branchsecretary Nick Grant interviews Americanactivist Bob Peterson him about his work

INTERVIEW


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U.S. We have 11 volunteer editors, a small staff of five people and a network of supporters, friendsand volunteers. Individual editors are connectedto other union, professional or political organiza-tions in which we organize.

In the UK City Academies are modelled on theUS Charter school idea. The recent collapse of aCharter school company in Los Angeles and theunderperformance of Charter school kids in

national tests suggests that this flagship of out-sourced education is not working. Would youagree?To any rational observer one would have to say suchexperiments are not working, but that doesnt stopthe folks who are pushing privatization of publicservices and market-based solutions to the educa-tional problems that exist in the United States.

There is a very well-financed network of foun-dations, think tanks, wealthy individuals, and right-wing political organizations that have significantcapacity to continue the political campaigns on

these issues. Their goal isnt the betterment of edu-cation, so they are not deterred by reports of school failure. Their goal is clearly privatization of one of the few remaining public sector institutionsin the United States, along with the destruction, orat least the weakening, of the two major teachers

unions, the National Education Association andthe American Federation of Teachers.

But these folks are smart. Theyve used theproblems of the public school system to theiradvantage. For example, in Milwaukee, the citywith the nations largest publicly-financed privateschool voucher program, the right wing founda-tions have been able to buy off a group of leadersin the African-American and Latino communitiesso that they support vouchers and have turned

against public schools.The fact is the teacher unions and progressiveswho support public education have to realize thatits not enough just to expose the aims of theright-wing but to figure out ways to act on thelegitimate concerns of oppressed nationality com-munities. This is particularly difficult given the sig-nificant cut backs in school budgets. Its the fineline that most public sector unions have to walk;on the one hand to defend the public sector andservices, and yet be critical and pressure those inpower to improve them. If we dont do this strate-

gically, we open ourselves up to losing the battlefor the hearts and minds of significant section of the urban community.

The anti-war editions of your journal must havemade an impact. Were they well received?

INTERVIEW

Above: testingin a US school.Previouspages: Britishschool studentsdemonstratingagainst the war


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Our special editions that we put out, both afterthe September 11 attack and after the launchingof the second Iraqi war, were well received insome quarters, and of course, hated in others. Wedistributed over 100,000 copies of our specialprint edition of War, Terrorism and Our Class-rooms, and another 100,000 pdfs of the issuewere downloaded from our web site. That cer-tainly shows some serious interest in our work. Atthe same time, the right wing, especially the right-wing media, went ballistic on this matter.

For example, a Milwaukee-based radio talkshow personality got hold of our special editionon Iraq and used it to try to get me fired. For 16straight days my school principal, the schoolsuperintendent and I received phone calls andemails demanding that I be fired or worse. Actu-ally a couple people suggested I move to France,but they never offered to pay my way so I rejectedthat idea. Seriously, it got ugly, and in a few casesin other parts of the United States teachers werefired.

For the vast majority, however, the post-9-11and post-Iraq-invasion, flag-waving jingoism hadthe effect of intimidating teachers from teachingabout this and other controversial subjects. Resis-tance to this kind of wide-spread acceptance of the status quo is one of Rethinking Schools keymessages: We believe that teachers have a civicand moral responsibility to have their students

study issues of global injustice, and ask deep ques-tions, probe received wisdom, even at the risk of being labeled unpatriotic.

Is the US anti-war movement generally stillgrowing?

Yes it is very much alive, but it still hasnt regainedthe strength it had in the pre-Iraq invasion days of February 2003. The recent demonstration of ahalf a million people in August in front of theRepublican convention, however, shows signifi-cant sentiment against the war. It was the largest

demonstration in the history of our nation at anypolitical convention. While Kerry supporters wereevident in the demonstration, the vast majoritywere focused on anti-Bush and anti-war messages.In one section of the march, people carried nearly1,000 black cloth-draped coffins, representing thenumber of US personnel whove died in the war.It was very moving. Comments by Kerry that helldo a better job of winning the war than Bush,upset big chunks of the anti-war movement.

I think the Kerry voter registration efforts havedrawn mainly from the labor movement and

other social movements, like the environmentaland womens movement, although some from theanti-war movement. Mobilizing hard core anti-warfolks to work for Kerry has not been as easy.Thats not to say people wont end up voting forhim. Bush is so reactionary on virtually every

domestic and international matter, that peopleknow itd be a disaster if the Bush-led cabal of right wing ideologues, free-marketeers and Christ-ian fundamentalists continued in power foranother four years.

How do you maintain a dissident pedagogyinside otherwise hostile systems?I maintain my pedagogical approaches in a coupleof ways.

First is my politics and commitment to justice.This may sound corny, but what alternative isthere? A lapel pin I like to wear reads If you arenot outraged, you are not paying attention. Well,Im paying attention and Im outraged. If teachersthink that they should be neutral in a world sofilled with injustice, then they are just modellingmoral and civic apathy. Is that what we want toteach our children?

That being said, I dont believe the role of polit-ical teachers is to didactically teach students andtry to convince them of certain political positions.Not in the least. What we need to do is somethingmuch more complicated, much more in the spiritof the great Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. Weneed to help students interrogate their world, touse all forms of text and media to better under-stand it, and to see the importance of being sub-

jects, not objects of history to be acted upon. Thismeans providing alternatives to establishment

media and school texts, encouraging debate,questioning, and role plays where all officialpositions and dominant forms of thinking are fairgame. Ultimately it means engendering the kindof social action we know is necessary to help cre-ate a more just world.

The second way I maintain my sanity isthrough my close friends and comrades inRethinking Schools and other political organiza-tions. History teaches us that social change comesthrough social movements, and I am inspired bythe social movementswhether they be in Chia-

pas or Palestine or in the barrios of East LosAngeles in the United States. More importantly Iknow that only by working together in our politi-cal collectives, our trade unions and broader polit-ical organizations and parties can we moveforward. My hope is that people will see the needto move beyond much of the left-sectarianism thathas plagued progressive forces for so many yearsand understand that a new world is only possiblewith a bold, non-sectarian approach to social jus-tice politics.

Bob Peterson , editor of Rethinking Schools, is afifth grade teacher at La Escuela Fratney, a bilingual(Spanish/English) school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.He is also a writer, activist, and co-editor of the book,Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in anUnjust World available at www.rethinkingschools.org

INTERVIEW



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Personalised learning is one of Labours

new big ideas for education. Firstlaunched by Tony Blair at the 2003Labour Party Conference, it wasdefined by David Miliband that year as

an education system where assessment, curricu-lum, teaching style, and out of hours provision areall designed to discover and nurture the uniquetalents of every single pupil1 In 2004 the DfESpublished a pamphlet by Charles Leadbetter of Demos, Learning about personalisation: how canwe put the learner at the heart of the educationsystem?2 Personalised learning is one of the key

themes of Labours 2004 Five Year Strategy forChildren and Learners.At first sight, this seems to be one government

education policy we can all agree on. But a closerlook shows that what Labour means by person-alised learning is a crude categorisation of pupilsabilities as the basis for social selection into differ-ent job-related pathways.

Categorising or connecting?According to Miliband, :...the most effectiveteaching depends on really knowing the needs,

strengths and weaknesses of individual pupils. Sothe biggest driver for change and gain is use of data on pupil achievement to design learningexperiences that really stretch individual pupils... 3

But pupil data generated by a regime of tests andtargets does not provide the basis for really know-

ing pupils. As the authors of the book Learning

without Limits4

say, Tasks can be successfullymatched at an appropriate level of demand foryoung people of different abilities or levels of attainment without any genuine connection beingachieved between young peoples hearts andminds and the tasks they are asked to undertake.(p182). It is a way of thinking exemplified byMilibands advocacy of the spurious concepts of Gifted and Talented 5 and of individual learningstyles,6 recently exposed as largely without scien-tific basis.7 It leads teachers to conceptualise theirpupils in terms of categories of relatively stable

ability and creates a disposition to accept failure.It results in differentiated provision, justified onthe basis of innate aptitudes, which reinforces,not reduces, patterns of social inequality.

As Learning without Limits says, Teaching thatseeks to foster diversity through co-agency is con-cerned not with match, but with connection,achieving a genuine meeting of minds, purposesand concerns between teachers and young peo-ple (pp182-3). This means teaching in a waythat does make use of specific knowledge aboutindividuals that is significant for learning, but uses

it in a way that does not perpetuate or re-createthe limiting and divisive effects that they associatewith ability labelling, but instead to anticipateand lift limits to participation and learning, in thecontext of common learning activities for every-one in the class (p184).

Personalisedlearning associal selection

Richard Hatcher , from the University ofCentral England, in Birmingham, shows usthe bigger the idea the harder it falls

PERSONALISED LEARNING


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This very different concept of learning, person-alised and collective at the same time, hasresource implications which are ignored inLabours version. Class sizes need to be smaller,and in secondary schools so does the number of students each teacher has to relate to. Personal-ization is one of the principles of the progressivehigh school Coalition of Essential Schools in theUS, and it entails no teacher having to teach morethan 80 students in total because it is impossible

to make that meaningful connection with more.

Personalisation and choiceas social selectionThe key aim of Labours Five Year Strategy forChildren and Learners is to promote personalisa-

tion and choice. Charles Leadbetter in his DfESpamphlet stresses that:

The biggest challenge to the personalizedlearning agenda is its implications for inequality.He warns that differences in provision, andchoice, will benefit the middle class at theexpense of the working class unless there is sub-stantial state action to compensate. He is nave.The Five Year Strategy itself recognises the hugeand widening class gap in education, but proposes

no radical policies capable of reversing it. On thecontrary, the reality is that the fundamental pur-pose of the personalisation and choice agenda issocial selection for the labour market. CharlesClarke in his foreword to the Five Year Strategyadvocates as young people begin to train for

All studentsdeservepersonalisedlearning



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work, a system that recognises individual apti-tudes and provides as many tailored paths toemployment as there are people and jobs. Inother words, a hierarchy of different academicand vocational pathways.

The dualised curriculumThis agenda is not unique to New Labour, it is adeliberate European Union strategy to make edu-cation conform to the needs of employers underthe cloak of the apparently user-friendly languageof personalisation and choice, as the recentThlot report in France illustrates. 8 The aim is theabandonment of any pretence of education pro-viding high quality access for all to a common cul-ture of knowledge, which is regarded both asunnecessary for increasingly dualised labour mar-ket needs and undesirably expensive. Thedualised labour market dictates a dualised cur-riculum comprising a narrow and dumbed-downcommon core of basic competences and abroader subject curriculum which is marginalisedin the primary school and becomes reserved inthe secondary school for the largely middle classhigher achievers.

In England it starts in the primary school. InFebruary 2004, at a conference for Primary Strat-egy leaders, Michael Barber, responsible for thedelivery of government policy, demanded Isenough time devoted to literacy and numeracy in

every class? If its less than 50 per cent then itsnot enough. 9 On top of this additional time wasneeded for extended writing. That leaves about 40per cent for everything else. It is working classchildren who pay the price, while for middle classchildren the impoverished school curriculum issupplemented by the curriculum of the home.

In secondary school the curriculum begins todivide, cementing social segregation between andwithin schools. The common curriculum ends atage 14, from when foreign languages, the arts andhumanities become optional. It is mainly schools

in working-class areas which are abandoning thesesubjects, while they remain an indicator of aca-demic success in middle class schools. For themajority of working class students the diet is abasic coreexemplified by Tomlinsons proposedschool-leaving tests in functional English, mathsand information technologyand vocational train-ing. First came the decision to allow FE colleges totake students from 14 part-time, again mainlyworking class. The latest government plan, to bepublished shortly in a White Paper, is that 14 yearold students can go to FE college fulltime, or take

up a trade such as plumbing under a youngapprenticeship scheme on a split week basisbetween college, school and workall justified inthe name of personalised learning. 10 And Bell, thechief inspector, is due to call for new vocationalschools for 14-16 year olds. 11

Three principles ofeducation for allIn response we should say clearly three things.First, what is good for some is good for all. If aprivileged enriched curriculum is right for thefive or ten per cent so-called gifted and talented,how much more is it deserved by those less advan-taged? If an introduction to the world of work isthought right for some at 14, it is right for all,though as part of a critical education, not as pre-mature job training.

Secondly, a high quality education for all,allowing entry into the culture of knowledge andfull citizenship, requires a broad common corecurriculum until age 16. In that context there isof course room for an element of choice, pro-vided it does not serve to reinforce socialinequalities.

Thirdly, the way to tackle the deep classinequality in our school system is not government-style personalisation, choice and diversity but toadopt the radical measures needed to provideworking class children and young people with theintellectual tools for educational success.Richard Hatcher works at the University of CentralEngland, Birmingham. Any correspondence [email protected]

Notes1 David Miliband, in his speech to the NationalCollege for School Leadership in October 2003,quoted in Personalised Learningan Emperors Outfit? by Martin Johnson, IPPR, March 2004. Seewww.ippr.org.uk2 http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/innovation-unit/personalisation/pllearn/?version=13 Miliband as in 1.4 S Hart, A Dixon, M J Drummond and D McIntyre,(2004) Learning without Limits , Maidenhead: OpenUniversity Press.5 D Miliband (2004) Choice and voice inpersonalised learning, speech to the

DfES/Demos/OECD conference on PersonalisingEducation: the future of public sector reform,London, 18 May. See the critique by RobinAlexander (2004) Excellence, enjoyment andpersonalised learning: a true foundation for choice?Education Review , 18 (1). (Edited version of keynoteaddress given to the NUT National EducationalConference on 3 July 2004.)6 Quoted by Johnson, as in 1.7 F Coffield, D Moseley, E Hall and K Ecclestone(2004) Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice . At www.lsrc.ac.uk.

See the DfES booklet Learning Styles , whichrecommends the vacuous VAK model.8 See the critiques at www.ecoledemocratique.org9 Quoted by Alexander, as in 5.10 Independent 13 December 2004, p18.11 TES 7 January 2005, p1.



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Primary school deputy headteacher Lisa Hayes arguesthis can provide an alternative to SATs

Assessment for Learning is nothing new. Manyteachers have been using techniques that fallwithin the broad spectrum of work that itencompasses for years. What is new, is that withinthe framework provided by the Primary StrategyDocument Excellence and Enjoyment , it can beseen as an alternative to SATs.

AfL is about demystifying learning at the sametime as allowing children to understand howcurricular targets can help them track their ownimprovement. With curricular targets replacingnumeric targets we do away with the currentsimplistic and dangerous reduction of themeasuring of attainment and replace it with theongoing commitment to a child centred inclusive

approach to maximising achievement. This is justas important in gauging the quality of schools butremoves the unhealthy domination of leaguetables and the current one size fits all approachto national testing.

The principles behind AfL are simple.q It involves telling children what they are going

to learn and why so that they can becomeactively involved in their own learning

q It is about teachers adjusting their teachingduring lessons to take into account the needsof pupils

qIt is based on the notion that feedback given tochildren about their work or performance canonly be effective if it allows them to progress asa result of being given that feedback

q It is about recognising the effect thatassessment and feedback can have on a child inempowering them to want to learn more ordemotivating them and switching them off.

q It is about children being able to assessthemselves and understand what they need todo in order to improve.The government is greatly encouraging

primary teachers to adopt these broad principlesand adapt the implementation of them to meetthe needs of their own teaching style and theneeds of their children. The DfES has produced alot of training materials that support teachers andschools wishing to move towards this approach.

Teachers have never been in a better position

to win the argument that supports Assessment for Learning as the core to effective teaching asopposed to Assessment of Learning which is allabout summative assessment, tests, targets andtables.

The current argument which claims thatleague tables make schools accountable can beeasily rubbished when you consider that AfL if well used by skilled teachers can make anenormous difference to childrens achievement.The measure of achievement is againstcurricular targets and not simplistic numeric

thresholds.Lisa Hayes is a Deputy Headteacher of a Primaryschool in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where she is leadingthe implementation of Assessmemt for Learning. Lisa isalso the President of North Hertfordshire NUT and pastPresident of Hertfordshire Division.

Assessment for learning

Is this the best way of maximising achievement?

EXCELLENCE AND ENJOYMENT



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The answer cannot be that they are listening toreasoned arguments, nor that they have basedtheir decisions on logic and research. All the

research is in our favour! Its interesting to readcomments by Stephen Twigg in Septemberabout the findings from the pilot. He said, Weare putting all our faith and trust in teachers.The trials have shown that teacher assessment isrobust and we have confidence in the profession.So why the tests? Surely there is a big contradic-tion here. If teacher assessment is robust, thenwhy the need to impose national SATs tests onseven year olds?

The problem with SATs at Key Stage 1 is that itdepends very much on the attitude of the school

management. One would hope that schools try tocarry out the statutory requirements with littleimpact on the stress levels of the pupils whilstmaintaining a broad and ballanced curriculumthat we should expect for seven year olds. Ensur-ing the enjoyment and exploration part of the

curriculum remains crucial.Even with the new arrangements for KS1 SATs

in 2005, I am afraid that fundamentally, KS1 SATs

are still enmeshed in our school systems and willcontinue to distort the curriculum and learningopportunities for our youngest pupils. Is it anywonder that we are experiencing record numbersof disaffected pupils at such an early age?

Undoubtedly the government has missed agolden opportunity to demonstrate that it has lis-tened for a change. Teachers will still be forced tocarry out the testswhether they be this years ornext years version. Children will still be subject tositting them. The government has failed in itsduty and responsibility for our young pupils by

holding on to SATs against the odds. So the ques-tion still remains. Why is the government intenton keeping SATs at KS1? The answer Im afraid isthat it is perfectly content with playing politicswith our childrens education.Jane Nellist Primary teacher and Coventry NUT


KEY STAGE 1

Pupils donthave to bedisaffected


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T he often-quoted saying is that when you

leave school you always remember theteacher that you liked best. It is oftenwithin these fond memories that wefind the teacher that was most like our-

selves as students or pupils, the one that couldrelate or empathise with us and the teacher thatseemed most in tune with young peoples ideas.Sadly these teachers were few and far between.

Yet we need to ask why that is, given that we wereoften told that the days in school are the happiestof our lives, free from the pressure of adult life.Something then is clearly wrong.

The question of pedagogy, the science or art of teaching is a serious issue that needs to be dis-cussed as part of the struggle for an improvededucation system. Indeed when talking aboutteaching we need to consider the current situa-tion and methods applied and what the possibili-ties are for further improvement. When weconsider the situation in the class it should comeas no surprise that pupils often find it difficult torelate to the role of the teacher. Teachingbecomes simply a matter of transference, thetransference of knowledge from the teacher to

the pupils. The pupils are seen as little more thancontainers of information, and if obedientenough, will be filled with the great wisdom of the teacher. Yet this itself throws up a contradic-tion in the form of the student and teacher rela-tionship. In order for teaching to occur a process

of learning has to take place and vice versa, both

dependent on each other. However in the aboveinstance only a form of dictatorial control hasactually occurred

The role and place of pupils personal experi-ences and opinions of the world are oftennegated for the importance of further informa-tion learning that can be crammed into a onehour session. It should come as no surprise thatpupils often sit in the class bored, frustrated, won-dering and often remarking that this has nothingto do with me. No matter how hard we try asteachers the pupils often just dont care. Part of

this problem is the way in which the learning of knowledge is not seen as an action taken by bothteacher and pupils together, but by the activism of the teacher on behalf of the pupil. The creativityof both teacher and pupils are destroyed andreplaced by obedience, institutionalisation andbehaviourism. And as for democracy in the class,forget it.

To understand this better we need to lookcloser at the education system itself and in partic-ular the national curriculum. The National Cur-riculum introduced under the Tory government

during the years of Margaret Thatcher set out todetermine what subjects and knowledge had to betaught within a limiting framework. As with themethod of teaching already explained subjectsbecome categorised and dichotomised. Geogra-phy is geography; history is history. It is within

THE ART OF TEACHING

A question of pedagogy

Classroom teachers from East London,Paul Phillips and Joel Mcilven ,remember their favourite teachers


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this sense that subjects lose their historical andsocial context. Take the way a pupil might learnthat Rome is the capital of Italy in a geographylesson. This alone does not explain how, why orwhen it became the capital. The curriculum alsohighlights another problem that of the lack of sayor influence that the pupils and teachers, the verypeople who are supposed to benefit from educa-tion, actually have. The very structure of the sys-tem is one of a topdown approach, in whicheducation is thrust upon them.

AlienationThe continual and over aggressive testing andassessing of student, whether through SATs orother examinations is just one aspect in whichboth teacher and pupil become further alienatedby the education process. The system becomes asystem that seeks to evaluate the personalities of its children by assigning them numbered levels.Both pupil and teacher feel this alienation andpressure, as the need for results to prove yourworth takes place and any level of creativity isstrained in order for schools to out do other com-

peting schools.But what would a better way of teaching looklike. For a start we need to replace the abstractionof information and start with real lived experi-ences of the pupils before relating these ideas tothe further knowledge that would be gained. A

pedagogy that would involve all pupils in theprocess of learning and teaching dialectically andnot separated, in order to transform knowledgeand thus begin the process of transforming soci-ety. To move away from the idea that pupils cansomehow be assessed via a numbering system andto be valued as a part in the process of learning.To do this the conflict of the teacherpupil has tobe broken and a greater sense of democracyplaced within the classroom. In this the activity of teaching and learning, and the development of knowledge is in the hands of those taking part in

it. Greater freedom, creativity and value for bothpupils and teachers must exist in this process.The transformation of pedagogy is not the be

all and end all of the education system. But weneed to look to these arguments and to relatethem to the bigger picture of the attacks made onthe education system as a whole. We should alsouse these points in order to explain the systemitself. The struggle for pay, better resources andfinances must be tied with the argument forteaching and learning to improve. Placed on itsown a progressive pedagogy does not make sense.

Equally to say it can only change within a differentsystem would be incorrect as well. This would leadus to await the glorious revolution without evertaking action. An improved pedagogy wontchange the education or social system but it is anargument worth discussing.


THE ART OF TEACHING

Teaching theteachers


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The Anti-SATs Alliance was established at aconference on 28 June 2003, attended by 180teachers, parents, govenors and others opposed tothe SATs. John Illingworth, past president of the NUTwas elected chair of the campaign. The conferenceagreed the following campaign statement:

This conference of parents and teachersexpresses its opposition to the SATs(National Curriculum Tests).

We believe1 They dont help children learn

2 They dont help teachers teach3 Teachers are put under pressure to teach the test4 The tests, not the needs of the children, dominate

the work and life of schools5 They are used for league tables, which are

deceptive, divisive and misleading

q We agree to establish a campaign to abolish SATsand invite those who share our aims to join with us

q We agree to support all practical measurespossible to publicise the case against SATs

q We agree to support teachers and their unions

should they decide to implement a boycott of thetests

q We agree to establish a steering committee fromthis conference which shall be open to parents,

Contact the Anti-SATs AllianceJon BerrySecretary Hertfordshire NUTAnti-SATs Alliance,61 Cambridge Road,St AlbansHerts AL1 5LE

E-mail [email protected] [email protected]

Phone (h) 01727 835 554 (w) 01438 313 011

Reports and campaigning ideas will be posted onthe website www.stopthesats.plus.com and onwww.hertfordshirenut.org

Documents

Sats Pamphlet