STUDIO SCHOOLS-A MODEL FOR THE DISENGAGED?

STUDIO SCHOOLS

Aiming to provide an alternative education model with focus on business and enterprise

Comment

The first wave of ‘Studio Schools’ was formally announced by Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls in November this year.

 Studio Schools, aim to offer an innovative new curriculum involving practical learning and paid work, and will   open at six sites across the country from September 2010-in Blackpool, Kirklees, Luton, Newham, Oldham and South Tyneside .In 2007 Government had announced that it would invest £26.5m on piloting new forms of teaching children that have been excluded from school, including piloting the concept of Studio Schools, which specialize in work-based learning and vocational training.

The schools have been designed by the Charity Edge, which promotes practical learning and the Young Foundation, acting through the Studio Schools Trust. This initiative has developed in partnership with the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Studio Schools will be small, with around 300 students. They will teach the national curriculum through interdisciplinary, enterprise-themed projects, but the aim is that they will have a very different style and ethos to most existing schools, with a much stronger emphasis on practical work and enterprise. Every student will have a personal coach; there will be mixed age teams; and the schools will have many of the features of a workplace (like booking holidays). Studio Schools do not aim to replace other secondary schools – but to complement them by providing an alternative approach suitable for young people looking for a more entrepreneurial option or who are alienated by traditional pedagogy.  They are the first of their kind in the world and will cater for 14-19 year olds from a range of abilities. They have been designed to better suit the needs of young people who might not otherwise reach their full potential in traditional school environments.

One example of a studio school is the Luton Studio School that will cater for around 300 young people aged 14-19 of mixed abilities. It began as a field trial in 1997 with Barnfield College and Barnfield Academy West, in Luton. The idea had always been s to scale it up in due course.

 The Luton studio school will be sponsored Barnfield College, which also runs two Academies in Luton that Ofsted graded as making “outstanding progress” this year. The Studio School will benefit from the extensive relationships that Barnfield College has built up with local and regional employers. Under a new scheme, students will be given ‘Barnfield Apprenticeship’ places in areas such as Information Technology, Business Administration and Marketing. They will also be offered work placements within the College’s public operations such cafes and restaurants, creativity suite and retail areas.

The development of Studio Schools have been informed by extensive research and best practice from Britain and around the world. With a focus on business and enterprise, they will look and feel more like a business than a school. Students will participate in a range of enterprise activities, learning the majority of the curriculum through practical multi-disciplinary learning and participating in paid work. To give them a first-hand insight into the working world, all Studio Schools students will also spend a significant portion of their weekly time participating in what is termed ‘ meaningful work experience’. These work placements will be aspirational and linked to employment opportunities in the local area. This aims to allow students to develop an in-depth knowledge of how businesses operate and give them direct experience of their local labour market. Crucially, students will receive remuneration for their work, with students over 16 earning a proper wage. This unique element of the Studio Schools curriculum is designed to play an important role in raising aspirations and equipping students with the skills and experience they need to enter the local job market or set up their own businesses. On leaving their Studio School students will have gained at least Level 2 qualifications. They will have a variety of progression routes available to them including the potential to go to university.

The Studio model provides an alternative route for pupils with a more practical bent who might have been alienated by mainstream schooling .It opens up progression routes to apprenticeships, paid work, further and higher education. The schools have been designed to better suit the needs of young people who might not otherwise reach their full potential in a traditional school environment.

The Studio Schools Trust aims to drive forward innovation in the British education system, working closely with a range of local partners and leading national educational bodies to establish the country’s first Studio Schools. For more information about the Studio Schools trust, please visit www.studioschoolstrust.org or contact Emma Nixon at emma.nixon@studioschoolstrust.org.

http://studioschoolstrust.org/welcome

EARLY YEARS FUNDING-PROBLEMS LEAD TO DELAYS

EARLY YEARS SINGLE FUNDING FORMULA

 Problems at the sharp end delay implementation

Comment

 The Foundation stage is somewhat unsettled at the moment. The Government announced in June 2007 that local authorities would be required to design and implement a single local funding formula for funding the Free Entitlement to early years provision for 3 and 4 year olds across all sectors. The aim was to improve fairness and transparency in the way that funding is allocated to providers who deliver the Free Entitlement, and thereby support its extension to 15 hours, to be delivered more flexibly from September 2010. Budgetary implications for the Single Funding Formula are scheduled to take place from April 2010.

Under the scheme, each authority will draw up a single formula to make it clear how early-years funding is distributed between different types of provider. The formula would also build in incentives to improve quality. Currently, funding is distributed under different systems for different types of provider. But more and more nursery schools and settings had been reporting that the single funding formula proposed by their local authority was going to adversely affect those children who have been identified as being vulnerable and at risk, with special education needs and the parents who benefit from the support that this existing high quality provision provides.

 Under the new formula nurseries attached to Primary schools will receive funding based on the number of children attending rather than the number of registered places, so schools will either need to attract more children, or will need to raise additional revenue by charging for extended services in order to operate a sustainable nursery class,

 The Government has had to react   to substantial problems reported on the ground in a number of authorities who have been trying to plan for the implementation of the single funding formula. The data and information the Government has collected suggests that less than a third of local authorities will be in a secure position to implement their EYSFF from April 2010 target date. Some authorities have experienced serious difficulties in obtaining accurate data from their providers, while others have simply found the task extremely challenging. The Government announced this week that has decided to postpone the formal implementation date for the EYSFF by one year until April 2011. This represents something of a victory for Early Education which has lobbied No 10 for a delay in EYSFF implementation.

HOME EDUCATION BATTLEFRONT-SMALL VICTORY FOR HOME EDUCATORS

HOME EDUCATION AND THE BADMAN REVIEW

Select Committee report leans towards home educators

Comment

What struck the DCSF  Select Committee when looking at the issue of Home Educated children was the dearth of much needed information about the extent of Home Education.

 Whatever happened to evidence based policy is their implicit question. Their report was a bit of a rap over the knuckles for both the Government and local authorities.

 The Committee recommended research to establish baseline data for home educated children, especially regarding the outcomes of home education. This work should plug the gap in the existing research evidence, which has not reflected fully the profile of home educating families. The Committee suggests that local authorities need improved means of identifying and differentiating between the children in their area who are in school, who are being home educated, and who are otherwise not in school. They also took the view that parental responsibility in relation to the provision of home education should be strengthened and that that home educating families should provide some form of statement of their intended approach to their child’s education.

The Committee supports the proposals to introduce annual registration for home educating but with an important caveat- they were keen to take into account the concerns expressed by home educators about compulsory registration , so the Committee said , “ we suggest that registration should be voluntary. Any registration system should be accompanied by better information sharing between local authorities.The success of a voluntary registration system and improved information sharing should be reviewed after two years. If it has not met expectations, we believe that a system of compulsory registration would need to be introduced.”

Home Educators have been fighting a vigorous rear guard action against what they see as heavy handed state interference ,with little consultation and over- prescriptive remedies for non-existent problems. They are also irritated by the fact that some politicians fail to differentiate between those parents who have made a deliberate choice to opt out of state education , but have made proper alternative provision for their children and those (few in number) who just don’t make their children go to school and  so in effect deny them any education. Members of the latter group are self-evidently not Home Educators.

In persuading the Committee against immediate compulsory registration they have won at least a clear  partial victory but the war is not over yet . And Select Committee proposals are, of course, not binding on the Government. A petition campaign has been waged in the Commons to stop Government proposals in their tracks. Badman and Government officials  complain, in the meantime, of harassment by the Home Educators lobby.

THE PUPIL PREMIUM-IS IT WORKABLE?

SCHOOL FUNDING AND THE PUPIL PREMIUM

Can a Pupil Premium work?

 Comment

 Both the Tories and Liberal Democrats (and Alan Milburn) are keen in principle on the idea of a pupil premium, with funding following the pupil to incentivise good schools to take the most disadvantaged pupils.

It could simultaneously achieve two objectives: focus more resources on schools with poorer pupils; and partly counteract any incentive schools may have to “cream-skim” more affluent or easy to teach pupils.

 Education is an essential component of social mobility, so the better educated you are the more likely you are to be upwardly mobile. And you are more likely to be better educated in a good school than a failing school. So far, so obvious. Two reports out this year have confirmed the links between good education and social mobility . And Social mobility is very much on the political agenda. Indeed, one of the key pillars of Tory attacks on education policy is that the lot of the most disadvantaged pupils, those on free school meals, has not measurably improved over the last twelve years. Today the chances of a child who is eligible for free school meals – roughly the poorest 15% by family income – getting good school qualifications by the age of 16 are less than one-third of those for better-off classmates. The latest statistics show that 26.9 per cent of students eligible for FSM achieved five A* to C GCSE grades including maths and English compared to 54.4 per cent of those not eligible. The gap of 27.5 percentage points has decreased slightly from 27.8 last year and 28.1 in 2006 but statisticians will tell you that this change is ‘not statistically significant’. .It is also the case that the better state schools have less disadvantaged pupils. Pupils on FSM are less likely to secure good jobs and entry to the professions.

So, how to get the most disadvantaged children into the better performing schools is seen as key to improving social mobility and a major challenge for policy makers .

The current system of school funding is not really demand led and if it does help the most disadvantaged it does so in a rather indirect and tortuous way. Nor does it help much to improve equity.

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies/CFBT Education Trust (2008) Level playing field? The implications of school funding found that the school funding system is overly complex and lacks transparency .Crucially it found the system didn’t assist the Governments choice or equity agendas. Local authorities only allocate around 40–50% of the extra funding they receive for pupils who are eligible for free school meals towards the schools these pupils attend. In other words, local authorities seem to spread the funding targeted at low-income pupils more widely (i.e. ‘flatten’ it). If local authorities did not flatten extra income in this way, the additional money following a low-income pupil would be roughly 50% higher in secondary schools and more than doubled in primary schools. Under the current system, the amount of funding that schools receive does not respond quickly to changes in their numbers of pupils from deprived backgrounds or with additional educational needs. Bearing in mind that Governments are supposed to use this funding to help equality of opportunity, this is an embarrassing charge.

 Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told SecEd that a “national funding entitlement” should be introduced, to ensure that disadvantaged children in more affluent areas get the same support as those in less well-off parts of the country. He said: “Disadvantaged young people attending school in disadvantaged areas do better than disadvantaged children elsewhere. All political parties are rightly looking at the distribution of funding for disadvantage.” “Their aim should be to use information on disadvantage at pupil level, not local authority level, and target additional funding wherever disadvantaged children are at school or college,” he added.

The think tank Policy Exchange found in its School Funding and Social Justice Report (2008) that Ministers talk of funding in terms of “per pupil” amounts but in reality funding for community schools, and voluntary- controlled schools, remains in the control of their LA and so they rarely receive the per capita sum announced by the Treasury. Councils make local decisions based upon their own staffing and overhead costs and other developmental priorities, frequently leading to delays for the schools and uncertainty in their annual budget settlement. Self evidently a system that does not have funding that relates to the pupil will not be responsive to demand. Policy Exchange proposed in its report a new Funding Formula. Under this new formula, all schools would receive per-pupil funding direct from the government and local authority activities would be funded separately. The per-pupil amount would consist of three elements: a base element (different for secondary and primary schools), an area cost adjustment dependent on the cost of hiring staff in different areas, and, if applicable, a “pupil premium” – additional funding for pupils coming from deprived communities. The introduction of a “pupil premium” would help by attaching extra money to students from deprived backgrounds. This would mean that schools that take a large numbers of such students would be better off, giving them extra cash to educate harder to teach children. Additionally, schools in wealthier areas would have an incentive to broaden their admissions to attract premium pupils. Providers of “free schools” would also have an incentive to open in more disadvantaged areas.

 But how much would a Premium amount to?

Policy Exchange suggested a pupil premium worth between £500 and £3,000 per student for the most deprived communities. It would cost £4.6 billion to implement. This money could come, it suggested, from the existing education budget by rolling central grants (like the School Standards Grant) into one revenue payment and scrapping wasteful programmes like the Education Maintenance Allowance and the National Challenge. The premium Policy Exchange recommended should be allocated using “geodemographic” analysis of postcodes as this takes into account cultural as well as financial deprivation.

 The Institute for Fiscal Studies point out that American researchers at the University of California (Equalizing Opportunity for Racial and Socio Economic Groups in the US through Educational Finance Reform 2005) used estimates of the effect of spending on the attainment of black children to say that nine times as much needed to be spent on black children to get their attainment up to the national average. Closing ethnic gaps and gaps in attainment by socio-economic status might not be directly comparable, but if the cost for getting the attainment of poor children up to the national average were just five times the current spending per pupil, the pupil premium would need to be set at err… over £25,000. But the Liberal Democrats and Policy Exchange (the latter regarded as close to Tory thinking -Michael Gove was a co-founder after all) propose a premium in the range of £3,000.

So the devil seems to be in the detail.

In principle the idea of a Pupil Premium is sound.

 But try putting a figure on it and it becomes very difficult. You have to get the sums right. The Premium must act as a genuine incentive to schools otherwise it is wasted money. Get it wrong and you could be needlessly diverting resources from other key areas. The big question of course is with public finances being what they are-can we actually afford it? If not there is certainly much scope for reforming our schools funding system to better target our most disadvantaged pupils and to improve equity. http://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/level_playing.pdf

VISAS AND EDUCATION-MARKET UNDER THREAT

 

THREAT TO LANGUAGE SCHOOLS AND THE EDUCATION MARKET

Victims of a change in visa rules

 Comment

Major changes have been taking place in the immigration system in 2009/10, with the introduction of Tier 4 (Students), part of the new Points-Based System for immigration.

 The new system is for managing applications by people who wish to come to the United Kingdom to work, train or study.

 Universities and other education providers now register and are vetted to act as “sponsors” for student visa applicants. It is possibly the most significant change to the immigration system for around 40 years.

 The system will replace over 80 existing routes to work and study in the United Kingdom with five tiers. The five tiers are as follows:

 • tier 1 – highly skilled workers, for example scientists and entrepreneurs;

 • tier 2 – skilled workers with a job offer, for example teachers and nurses;

• tier 3 – low skilled workers filling specific temporary labour shortages, for example construction workers for a particular project;

 • tier 4 – students;

 • tier 5 – youth mobility and temporary workers for example musicians coming to play in a concert.

 Students must obtain 40 points before they can apply for Tier 4 and be given a Visa.

 The original  plan included the key dates and milestones  by which Tier 4 was to be introduced. The aim is that Tier 4 should be fully implemented by February next year. The Prime Minister, in the interim,  announced a review of student visas in November – conducted jointly by the Home Office and the Department for Business which is due to report this month. 

 However, some UK institutions and providers are getting very worried  about how this new system is being applied and its consequences. They  believe that many foreign students will be deterred from applying for UK universities, colleges and other providers (ie language courses) .

The proposals, for instance, include a measure to raise the minimum level of student visas to degree level only, so disallowing entry to university via a foundation route, and to Baccalaureate and A-level courses for many students. Raising the visa entry threshold to degree level only will it is estimated close the door to around 25,000 overseas students who enter UK universities annually via A-level or foundation courses in Britain. The effects would therefore be felt across universities, A-level colleges and independent schools. There is another proposal that visas should require a new high level of English language qualification. But foundation courses exist precisely to enable overseas students to reach that standard.

 The British Council estimates that overseas students’ fees directly and indirectly benefit this country by £8.5 billion. There are 600,000 foreign students who are in the UK to learn English, and over 400,000 are in the 435 centres of English UK. That is estimated to generate £1.5 billion of foreign earnings for the UK economy. There is great potential for growth too. Many of these businesses are family businesses. Language schools are very important because, according to the recent survey, 52 per cent. of their students either go on to study for professional qualifications or go to UK universities. That provides a major income for our universities. In our universities in 2007-08, 229,640 students were from outside the EU, generating a fee income of £1.87 billion-about 8 per cent. of the income for UK universities.

But the changes in Government immigration policy and a tightening up of Visa requirements means that as many as 50,000 students could end up not being able to come to the UK, resulting in a loss of hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of foreign exchange and in those people not feeding through to the university sector. The introduction of the points-based system has had some positive effects with the sponsor-licensing system resulting in the closure of about 2,000 organizations that were clearly not providing a decent and proper education and which were exploiting students, who had often paid up front for non-courses.

On the other hand as at 2 December 2009, the UK Border Agency had approved 1,925 organizations to sponsor migrant students under this tier 4  points-based  system. But critics claim that current proposals need to be urgently rethought because of the potential long term damage it could do to the UK Education market.

 The Review announced just last month is reporting this month and critics suggest that it is far too rushed and the Government needs to consult properly with all  stakeholders as to the effects that these new measures are having on an important sector of the UK economy.

EARLY YEARS EDUCATION FUNDING-PROBLEMS ARISE

EARLY YEARS SINGLE FUNDING FORMULA

Problems at the sharp end delay implementation

 Comment

The Foundation Stage is somewhat unsettled at the moment.

The Government announced in June 2007 that local authorities would be required to design and implement a single local funding formula for funding the Free Entitlement to early years provision for 3 and 4 year olds across all sectors.

 The aim was to improve fairness and transparency in the way that funding is allocated to providers who deliver the Free Entitlement, and thereby support its extension to 15 hours, to be delivered more flexibly from September 2010. Budgetary implications for the Single Funding Formula are scheduled to take place from April 2010. Under the scheme, each authority will draw up a single formula to make it clear how early-years funding is distributed between different types of provider. The formula would also build in incentives to improve quality. Currently, funding is distributed under different systems for different types of provider. But more and more nursery schools and settings had been reporting that the single funding formula proposed by their local authority was going to adversely affect those children who have been identified as being vulnerable and at risk, with special education needs and the parents who benefit from the support that this existing high quality provision provides. Under the new formula nurseries attached to Primary schools will receive funding based on the number of children attending rather than the number of registered places, so schools will either need to attract more children, or will need to raise additional revenue by charging for extended services in order to operate a sustainable nursery class

 The Government has had to react to substantial problems reported on the ground, in a number of authorities who have been trying to plan for the implementation of the single funding formula. The data and information the Government has collected suggests that less than a third of local authorities will be in a secure position to implement their EYSFF from April 2010 target date. Indeed,some authorities have experienced serious difficulties in obtaining accurate data from their providers, while others have simply found the task extremely challenging.

 The Government announced last  week that  it has decided to postpone the formal implementation date for the EYSFF by one year until April 2011.

 This represents something of a victory for Early Education, which has lobbied No 10 for a delay in EYSFF implementation.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LITERACY

THE ENDURING IMPORTANCE OF LITERACY

 What will the end of the Strategies mean for Literacy?

 Comment

The Government has announced that the (National) Strategies including the Literacy strategy will be ending next year and the Tories have no plans to continue them, though still stressing the importance of a grounding in sound literacy and numeracy skills.

 They believe that the Strategies have had their day and are no longer delivering the results they should, given the resources deployed. However, Nick Gibb, the shadow schools spokesman, is an eloquent supporter of synthetic phonic teaching in our schools ,which rather suggests a continuing focus on literacy in schools, should the Tories win office .

 Sound Literacy skills are, of course, vital for individuals’ life opportunities and our economy. But every year in England, 7% of children leaving primary school at age 11 (around 35,000) do so with reading skills at or below those of the average seven year old. For boys it is 9.2%– nearly one in ten.

The majority of these children are poor. Every Child a Chance pointed out that these numbers have remained pretty static since the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy.

 That doesn’t mean that the Strategy has failed, indeed it has significantly raised standards for the majority of children. But it does imply that its impact has not been sufficient to narrow the gap for the most disadvantaged. ,(Machin, S. and S. McNally (2008) The Three Rs: The Scope for Literacy and Numeracy Policies to Raise Achievement’, Centre for the Economics of Education mimeo )

 Significantly, adults most likely to live in poverty, are those who failed to learn to read at school. Parson and Bynner’s follow-up study of boys who were poor readers at the age of ten showed that at the age of thirty they were two to two and a half times more likely to be unemployed than good readers with similar levels of early social disadvantage.

For women, early poor reading, rather than early social exclusion risk factors, was the main barrier to being in full-time employment at 30. (Parsons,S and Bynner, J (2002) Basic Skills and social exclusion: findings from a study of adults born in 1970, London Basic Skills Agency) The National Literacy Trust is among those who argue convincingly that literacy is a fundamental life skill, without which participation in society becomes increasingly difficult.

 Research shows, unsurprisingly, that literacy levels and attainment are generally much higher among children from more affluent social backgrounds than those from lower social class groups. Whilst both skills-based literacy and reading for pleasure are vital, the NLT believes that the relationship between the two makes the most compelling case for the importance of literacy as a life skill. They cite a 2002, OECD research finding that reading for pleasure was a more important indicator of future success than any socio-economic factor. The National Literacy Trust has proposed four recommendations to improve literacy: First, prioritize approaches that promote family literacy and parental support for literacy . Secondly, give priority to early years language support. The importance of speech and language needs to be fully recognized as the foundation of all reading. Third, develop and apply a consistent holistic approach to literacy. This needs to be in place throughout a child’s education .Indeed, to create a reading culture, for instance it is important that literacy is visible throughout the entire school and curriculum. Finally, the NLT says we must create a culture where reading and literacy are associated and linked with success. The Leitch review of skills, released in 2006, highlighted that many adults in Britain who would benefit the most from education and higher literacy skills do not consider them important. Creating a literacy culture, the NLT believes, is reliant on a multi agency approach, including government, local authorities, employers, education providers and last, but by no means least, parents. But it is crucial too to register that early interventions have the best chance of success.

 The Reading Recovery scheme is one such scheme that focuses on early interventions and aims at children who, after one year of schooling, have shown they are having difficulty with reading . Children taking part in Reading Recovery receive daily 30-minute individual lessons for up to 20 weeks from a specially trained teacher, alongside work to engage the children’s parents or carers in supporting their children’s learning. It is expensive though working out at apprthe decision to introduce Reading Recovery nationally is not evidence basedoximately £2,500 per child. And although the scheme has many supporters a Parliamentary Select Committee has just concluded that  the decision to introduce Reading Recovery nationally was  not evidence based.

 Evidence suggests though that for best effect   this is the optimum period for intervention: any later, and the effect of not being able to read on the child’s self – confidence and attitudes to learning make remediation increasingly difficult as the Literacy Strategy has found out. Indeed, once children fall behind in cognitive development, they are likely to fall further behind at subsequent educational stages .Poor cognitive development also increases the risk of future offending. Literacy rates among prisoners are very poor.

 What is clear is that the demise of the Strategies, which have played their part in raising standards, must not mean that we take our eye off the need to give children a sound grounding in literacy (and numeracy) early in their schooling, so that they enjoy an easy transition to secondary education.

A GOOD EDUCATION IS KEY TO SOCIAL MOBILITY

SOCIAL MOBILITY AND EDUCATION

 Tories see it as the Governments Achilles heel

 Comment

 This much we know- there is a direct relationship between doing well in education and doing well in the labour market. So, it follows, that improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children has to be central to any policy strategy to increase their upward social mobility.

 In short, education and schooling in a knowledge based economy is becoming an increasingly significant driver of social mobility. Indeed, success in school up to the age of 16 has long been regarded as a key factor in explaining rates of social mobility. Attainment at age 16 is key to children’s future life chances.

 But social mobility for the disadvantaged has not improved over the last few years.

It is this perceived failure to measurably improve educational outcomes over the last twelve years for the most disadvantaged that lies at the heart of Tory attacks on the Government over its education policies .They see this as the Governments Achilles heel.

 The Report from the Independent Commission on Social Mobility (Jan 2009) found that Social class remains a key determinant of educational outcomes. The report set out recommendations for improving the opportunities of disadvantaged children and young people across six key areas: child poverty, early years, education, employment, health and communities. Children from more advantaged backgrounds do better, and there is evidence to suggest that policies over recent decades have – however unintentionally – disproportionately benefited the middle classes. Social class, it found, accounts for a large proportion of the gap in educational attainment between higher and lower achievers – a gap evident from early childhood and tending to widen as children get older. In 2007, only 35% of the poorest pupils obtained 5 or more A* to C GCSEs, compared with 63% of their better-off peers. For those eligible for free school meals that figure falls alarmingly to 22%.Today the chances of a child who is eligible for free school meals – roughly the poorest 15% by family income – getting good school qualifications by the age of 16 are less than one-third of those for better-off classmates It is also the case that the better state schools have less disadvantaged pupils. The Sutton Trust conducted research in 2005 that found that the proportion of young people eligible for free school meals at the highest-ranked 200 comprehensive schools was less than 6%, compared with 12% in their local communities and 14% nationally. While more children from poorer families are staying on at school after 16, between 1981 and the late 1990’s the proportion of poorer children getting degrees rose by just 3%, compared to a rise of 26% amongst the children from the wealthiest backgrounds. The Commission made a number of recommendations to address the problem. For example, it could see benefits in providing greater incentives to teachers to take up posts and to remain in the most challenging schools and, rather obviously, saw the need to target additional resources at the most disadvantaged schools. It also recommended boosting vocational education for teenagers.

 A second report this year on Social Mobility was from Alan Milburn ‘Unleashing Aspiration: The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions’. Alan Milburn believes that academic evidence seems to suggest that education is responsible for about half of all inter-generational and social mobility.

 The report agreed with the Sutton Trust that while there has been some improvement in educational attainment, much more could be done to target resources on policies and programmes that enable children from all backgrounds to fulfil their academic potential. The problem it found is not a shortage of parental aspiration. It is a shortage of good schools.

The report suggested a range of measures to address this.

 Firstly, City academies could be extended in both the primary and secondary sectors, extending out from the most deprived areas to become, over time, universal across the whole country. Secondly, the supply of school places should be opened up to greater competition, particularly in areas of school under-performance. Thirdly, in areas of disadvantage schools could receive additional funding, or each pupil from a disadvantaged background could attract a premium payment to recognise their particular needs. (Both the Tories and Liberal Democrats like this idea of a pupil premium) Fourthly, individual parents in areas where schools are consistently under-performing could be given a new ‘right of redress’ to choose a better school for their child.

 Milburn is personally concerned that the shortage of good schools is a major hindrance to social mobility. Choice is one of the levers for change he believes. He is keen to look at both the Charter and Swedish free schools model to help reform the supply side. He also wants to give disadvantaged pupils a voucher or education credit to get access to the best schools .

 Millburn’s report though is about much more than just attainment or having more good schools, desirable though both clearly are. The advantages that many children of professionals enjoy include less tangible factors such as contacts, access to internships and social confidence.

The big challenge for state schools is to develop these skills.

Some Academies are already trying to do this. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/227102/fair-access.pdf

EDUCATION PERFORMANCE-INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

WHO IS RIGHT?

 We are falling down the international league tables in maths claims Reform. No we are not, counters the Government. So, who is right?

 Comment

A Report last week from the Reform think tank which appealed for more focus on core academic subjects in schools, pointed out that UK performance at 16, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), found that the UK fell from 8th to 24th place in maths from 2000 to 2006.

 Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, in a letter to the Times (3 December) refuted this claim, saying the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study (TIMMS) shows that at Year 9 since 1995 we have risen to 7th out of 49 countries in maths and 5th out of 49 in science.

So who is right? Well, they are referring to two different studies.

Reform was referring to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a project of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA is a collaborative activity among the 30 member countries of the OECD, plus some partner countries and economies, bringing together scientific expertise from the participating countries and steered jointly by their governments. Whereas the study being referred to by Coaker, which covers 14 year olds, not the 16 year old cohort covered by PISA, is the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study 2007 run by the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, in association with IEA. So ,they are not comparing like with like.

Coaker, however, did not take the trouble to mention that in the most recent TIMMS survey (2007) a large number of comparator countries did not actually take part. So it would be stretching credibility to suggest, on this basis, that we are actually 7th strongest in maths internationally. If you look at the earlier 2003 survey, in which more nations participated, we were 14th. (which is not as bad as it might at first seem, given that we were ahead of New Zealand , Italy and Norway though behind Russia , Lithuania and Hungary ).To complicate matters the countries we should be comparing ourselves against -Germany and France -didn’t take part in TIMMS ,though they did PISA.-where they came ahead of the UK but not by a particularly significant margin. The message seems to be that the Government is very selective about the statistics it uses and over eggs the positives, while brushing aside the negatives. It was ever thus. Which is why we are tiresomely obliged to look behind government announcements to get the full picture (call it the Campbell legacy). But then again, we aren’t doing as badly as we could be, internationally, and are doing better, it seems, than the United States, at least according to the PISA study. The US continues its soul searching over how to address its relatively poor standards within the context of its Federal system.

Talking of comparisons, we can be proud of the fact that we probably have the best independent schools in the world. The OECD reported in 2002 that British independent schools achieved the best results of any schools in the world. In tests set by OECD for 250,000 15-year-olds in 32 countries, those in UK independent schools outstripped similar groups in all other countries.

There is no reason to believe that much has changed since this 2002 study.

POOR WHITE AND AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN CHILDREN UNDERPERFORMING AT SCHOOL

POOR WHITE AND AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN CHILDREN UNDERPERFORMING AT SCHOOL

 High social and economic costs attached to educational failure according to new CPS report

 Comment

 White boys from low income families perform worst at school, followed by African-Caribbean boys. Last year only 16% of white boys entitled to free school meals – the standard measure of deprivation – reached the expected standard of five A to C grades including Maths and English, well below the national average for all students of 48% .

A report from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills found that only 6% of white boys entitled to free school meals and 16% of all Caribbean boys go on to further education .More than one in five 14 year old boys has a reading age of nine or less. 63% of white working class boys and 54% of black working class boys are unable to read and write properly at 14. The opportunities available to these children says, Ofsteds Christine Gilbert, ‘fall well short of those available to others’. In short, they remain on the outside, looking in. The trouble is that problem may be getting worse, due the current recession. The recession is triggering a surge in the number of young people aged between 16 and 24 who are Neets (Not in Education, Employment or Training). They are now at a 16 year high. In England 16% of 16-24 year olds – that is 935,000 – are Neets. So why, despite the billions spent by the government on this problem, do their lives continue to be wasted?

A new report ‘Wasted’ by Harriet Serjeant from the Centre for Policy Studies seeks some answers.

 The report states ‘Young men with nothing else to do, no other way of proving themselves or making a living, take to crime. In 2004, the estimated total cost of youth crime in Great Britain was in excess of £1 billion. Gangs of youths are one of the biggest fears of the public. They are right to be fearful the author claims.

 The author feels that there are three key factors play -whether black or white, from Brixton to Liverpool, the same three factors are having a catastrophic effect on our young men.

First, Young boys need adult males to emulate and validate them. But these important role models are all too often missing from their lives.

The second major factor is education. Between 2000 and 2007 education spending has risen by 75% but GCSE results rose by only 9%. During the same period almost 4 million pupils left school without gaining the basic qualifications of five good GCSEs including English and maths. Nearly a million pupils left with less than five GCSEs of any grade including English and maths. Last year more than a third of 14 year old boys had a reading age of 11 or below. More than one in five boys has a reading age of nine. Almost 250,000 – 40% started GCSE studies without the mastery of reading, writing and maths needed to cope with the course.

The third factor is the change in the job market. The loss of manufacturing and the growth of immigration has hit white and black working class boys particularly hard. This is compounded by the effect of benefits. In the two decades since 1982 manufacturing employment has declined by 34% and service employment grown by 20%. These newly created jobs in the service sector require personal and social skills alien to the majority of teenagers .The arrival of large numbers of skilled, capable immigrants willing to work for low pay has hit them hard and left them side lined. Indeed, ,far from being ‘work shy’ the author found that most young boys she met were eager to work but prevented from doing so by the prospect of losing their benefits. The welfare system hands out more in benefits, in particular housing benefit, than they can possibly earn. So it makes no financial sense for them to take a job paying the minimum wage.

 Cause then for abject despair? Not necessarily.

Harriet Sergeant details case studies which show (interalia) the success of Charter Schools in the US, where children from poor backgrounds are flourishing in response to strong discipline and traditional teaching methods. She points to the success of synthetic phonics in teaching reading, particularly for those who find reading most difficult – while claiming that government efforts to impose synthetic phonics have been subverted along the way. She also suggests that some voluntary organizations are able to provide the structure and discipline which are so often absent from schools.

The report says ‘Children can be taught to read. Children will respond to discipline. Children will rise to a challenge. And there are some excellent state schools which, despite the odds, flourish. But for this to take root in all our schools, we must eradicate the educational orthodoxies that are in large part responsible for the failings of too many of our schools’. Sergeant concludes: “It is time to must challenge this deep-seated culture in our schools. Proposals for giving parents more freedom to set up schools, for imposing synthetic phonics, for enhancing the professionalism of teachers are all wise and greatly needed. But if change is to be lasting, something more dramatic is in order: namely, recognition of the source of the crisis and an end to the educational ideology that has damaged schools and betrayed millions of children.”

The report’s messages will appeal to Tory policymakers. Their main criticism of the Government’s education policies is that they have barely helped those on free school meals and have failed to increase social mobility. They have long admired Charter schools in the States and their work in disadvantaged communities which have helped inform their free schools initiative. Nick Gibb the shadow schools spokesman has also long advocated the teaching of synthetic phonics, claiming that the Literacy strategy does not have enough of it, and Tories are wedded to the idea of better discipline in the classroom, making it easier for Heads to rid schools of troublemakers. They also want to make the teaching profession more professional, incentivising the best teachers to stay in teaching while also recruiting the very best graduates into the profession.