When George Orwell was writing Animal Farm his mind was firmly fixed on the failings of the Communist ideology. Its maxim that ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’ rang true for the Soviet Union, but it is one that resonates in so many other fields, including in Michael Gove’s new world of free schools, studio schools and sponsored academies.
Local authorities are desperately trying to raise capacity to meet a huge shortfall of school places while at the same time the Department for Education is reportedly footing a bill of £45m for the establishment of a new Harris Westminster sixth form free school.
Some schools are indeed more equal than others.
Millions of parents rely on our state school system and every governor and teacher should strive to deliver the very best outcomes for all of our children.
But, of course, even with exactly the same resources, not every school can deliver the same results. A school in a leafy affluent suburb is always likely to deliver better outcomes than one in a deprived estate. Every political party recognises this and as such funding, including the pupil premium, has always been broadly allocated with a clear recognition of deprivation being an influencing factor on outcomes.
The difficulty is that until now schools have not truly been measured on the real progress a child makes but on arbitrary floor targets which are a walk in the park for many schools but realistically an impossibility for others.
A few days ago I was talking with a headteacher who told me that her school, located in a deprived area, regularly had four-years-olds entering the foundation provision unable to toilet themselves. Many children used English as an additional language and a significant proportion of those who did not certainly could not put a basic sentence together. A great many children could not meet the norms that we may expect in our middle-class bubble. Norms around behaviour, whether that be using cutlery at meal times or not shouting out (or even walking out) during lessons. And that is all before we get onto special educational needs.
While many four-year-olds in desirable locations start their primary education already able to write their names and maybe even know a few basic times tables there are an extraordinary number for whom a large part of Key Stage 1 is spent teaching the basics of acceptable behaviour.
Teachers in tough schools are very lucky. They can see the huge difference that their efforts result in and they are rightly proud of the difference that they make. But we must be clear even with additional funding the playing field is never level.
That is why we should warmly welcome the proposal of Gove to carry out formal assessments for children starting primary school.
For too long schools have been measured on an outcome at the age of 11+ which treats all children on exactly the same footing. What really matters is how schools deliver progress from where a child starts. Having a standardised baseline is the only realistic way of measuring that achievement.
Of course, no one should expect a four-year-old to sit in rows in an exam hall. No one wants to get to a stage where the stereotypical ‘pushy parent’ feels the need to employ private tutors for their offspring. But what we do want is a welcoming assessment which is carried out by the warm, friendly and, of course, professional Key Stage 1 staff that we already have which can then be used as a direct comparator to evidence just how much of a beneficial effect our schools really do have.
It is rare these days that the Department for Education gets something so clearly right.
Senior leaders and teachers up and down the country are wary about working in tough neighbourhoods not because of perceptions of behaviour but because of the risk of career-suicide brought about by not delivering floor targets which realistically can never be met.
We should all want our best teachers to be willing to work anywhere. By measuring the effect that they have on our children we may just be able to achieve that. Measuring the outcomes our schools produce is now part of broadly accepted education practice and wider society.
To paraphrase Orwell there is an opportunity to make all of our schools that little bit more equal.
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Leon Spence is a county councillor and Labour lead for children and young people at Leicestershire county council. He tweets @CllrLeonSpence
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This education reform absolutely should not be welcomed! It constitutes the death knell (if we hadn’t heard it before) of one of the finest achievements of the last Labour government: Every Child Matters.
As soon as you start assessing children you start judging them and labelling them,
which can damage their chances of achieving their potential. Furthermore, schools are the wrong place to be achieving what we call “readiness for school” (check the language: achieving not assessing). By definition any damage has already been done. Gove’s erosion of SureStart and Children’s Centres, through the removal of the early intervention reng-fence (developed to drive ‘readiness for school’, and the help children’s services to achieve Every Child Matters outcomes) has done enormous damage.
Evidence shows that the most influential period of a child’s development is during the early years (including pre birth). By ‘formally assessing’ children at F2 we have both missed the boat AND piled more pressure on to an already demoralised profession; by increasing the demands put upon teachers, and taking them away from the vocation of teaching.
What should be happening (and started happening towards the end of the last Labour government) is that the EYFS ethos (an integrated play based curriculum that supports the individual needs of a child) should be ‘trickling up’ rather than the culture of ‘beating teachers and children over the head’ with the costly and questionable continual measurement of attainment, attendance, behaviour data etc., trickling down. Don’t take my word for it, look at a headteacher’s face when you say the words ‘RAISEonline’ (the software that captures pupil and school performance data).
All children’s services should work in partnership with parents to ensure ‘readiness for school’, and manage subsequent transitions through the phases of education – as we proposed during the last Labour government through extended and integrated services.
It concerns me that Labour voices aren’t making these points, but instead are legitimising the toxicity of Gove.
Quite remarkable and so very wrong. The author unfortunately demonstrates he knows little about teaching and teachers – worryingly for the job he does.
The previous Labour government was starting to trust the profession. It was starting to earn some respect yet such articles as this will put us back years and do nothing for the children we teach. When will some sense prevail and these people realise that testing is not and never will be the answer to improvement. The logic of this argument is to test yet more and at even younger ages… this is plain daft. Gove has not got it rightand Labour must not pursue this deeply flawed policy.