"COASTING" SCHOOLS

26 October 2015

RESPONSE TO THE GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION ON “INTERVENING IN FAILING, UNDERPERFORMING AND COASTING SCHOOLS”

I am unhappy with the proposed definition of ‘coasting’ and offer an alternative.

“COASTING’ DEFINED BY THE GOVERNMENT’S DOCUMENT

Paragraph 22 of the government document says:

• From 2016, primary schools will be measured on both the progress pupils have made when compared to pupils with the same starting point and the proportion of pupils whose results in reading, writing and mathematics show they are ready to succeed at secondary school.

• When fewer than 85% of pupils in a primary school reach the standard we expect and pupils are failing to make enough progress then we would be concerned that the school was not fulfilling the potential of their pupils. If a primary school continues to perform below these standards for three years, then the school will be coasting. These schools will need to demonstrate that they have sufficient capacity to improve or face further action.

• If a school is below the 85% performance standard but above the progress standard, or vice versa, in any of the three years they will not be regarded as coasting.

ISSUES OF CONCERN

(1)      By attending solely to achievements in ‘reading, writing and mathematics’ there is the implication that these are all that matters in the education of primary school children and the danger that other aspects of all-round education may tend to be neglected.  I address this in detail below.

(2)      Why 85%?  It could be argued that there should be concern unless 100% of pupils are ‘fulfilling their potential’ – except that there is no meaningful way of knowing whether anyone has ‘fulfilled their potential’ since it is an undefinable concept. 

(3)      What is ‘the standard we expect’?  Who are ‘we’?  Who decides whether or not ‘pupils are failing to make enough progress’?  These are matters that teachers within a school may feel able to decide from their on-going knowledge of their pupils, and parents will have a view on.  But anyone outside a school can neither fairly nor usefully determine what standard should be achieved for every or any child within a school.  Home and local environments vary widely and to try to ignore this is to put an unfair burden on some schools and their teachers.

(4)      I fear that this definition of ‘coasting’ smacks of the manageralism which may be appropriate for monitoring the inputs and outputs of a factory, but is totally wrong for assessing the complex and varied development of young people in schools.

  

FIRST, DEFINE “EDUCATION”

Many politicians and business executives may support the manageralism approach to education, but, as a professor of education, I take a much broader view, which I believe is shared by most teachers and parents. 

It may sound pedantic, but I consider that anyone who aims to influence the work of schools should first make clear what they understand by “education”. This is my present position:

• The great purpose of Education is to enable individual citizens to be capable of thinking for themselves, to be moral beings well equipped with the many and varied attributes that they learn in their years of schooling, and able to continue to develop and learn purposefully throughout their lives in a contented pursuit of worthwhile life, liberty and happiness.

Obviously learning to read, write and do simple sums is an important part of this, but schools have, as the above makes clear, many other purposes for their pupils.

These are the “many and varied attributes” that I hope young people experience in their time at primary and secondary school:

• Learning how to relate to others peacefully and with mutual respect;
• Learning the skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening, thinking, debating, and mathematical skills;
• Developing natural talents for creative art: writing, drawing, painting, dancing, making music;
• Learning healthy use of one’s body through diet, exercise and sport;
• Learning to respect the natural world;
• Beginning to learn of the cultural wealth that one can spend one’s life exploring in work and in leisure:  science, history, geography, literature, philosophy, art, music, languages and much else;
• Becoming a moral citizen with ethical standards and a commitment to community;
• Finding how to collaborate and when to compete, when to be tolerant, when to be assertive and when to stand up for one’s rights; 
• Learning how to go on learning for the rest of one’s life – and to expect to find the pleasure of it;
• Learning to know and value oneself, and
• Through all of this preparing oneself for the world of work, home and play 

In all this, schools should be joyful places as they go about the business of preparing young people for the good life in terms of work, home and play. To me, these ideas define schooling and the work of teachers. No doubt others would add to them or express them differently, but, by and large, I would expect a consensus that these matter to most parents and represent the views of most primary school teachers. 

  

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF “COASTING”

So, if primary schooling is to be politically recognized as broader than the 3 Rs of ‘paragraph 22’, how can ‘coasting’ be determined?  Certainly it cannot be measured quantitatively, but can it be recognized qualitatively? 

Let ‘coasting’ be defined, in terms of the above eleven attributes of schooling, as teaching that concentrates on a few of these attributes, and tends to neglect others. (It would mean, of course, that a school that spent too much time on the 3 Rs to the detriment of other learning, would be ‘coasting’!)  How could this be recognized?

The answer lies locally, not nationally, with school parents and school governors.  If parents know that these attributes (however expressed) are the intentions of their children’s school they can get a sense from their children of whether they are featuring from time to time in their education. If children regularly complain that school is ‘boring’, alarm bells should ring in parents’ minds and they should try to find out why.  Is it their child at fault or is it the work and ambience of the child’s classroom?  Is there too much focus on some areas of learning and neglect of others? In other words, is their child getting a well-rounded and balanced education?  If not, and other parents find likewise, then that class might be described as ‘coasting’.  It should be noted that it is the class, not the school that carries this approbation – unless every class in the primary school is the same!  Parents should raise their concern with the headteacher and, if little changes, the governing body.   

This approach makes accountability local, not national. Yes, it may be patchy, more effective in some places than others.  But it enshrines three vital notions.  The essential educational requirement that there should be many facets to an all-round education; the democratic expectation of parents having oversight of the effective education of their children at school; and the duty of school governors to ensure that their school is a good school.

This is a slightly modified version of my submission on 26 October 2015