Greens must make their alternative voice on education heard

I confess that what attracted me first to the Green Party was not the environment, although that has always been an important issue to me,  but its policy on education. It was refreshing to see a political party recognising the importance of play, being aware of child development and the dangers of one size fits all teaching methods, targets and curriculum. More recently all the three major parties have embraced the marketisation of education and the narrowing of its focus to competing with 'our major economic competitors'.

Childhood is being industrialised and education outcomes  reduced to a product measured by test results. Yesterday's suggestion of the ranking of all primary pupils in 10% bands and testing at five years old rightly caused consternation amongst educationalists, parents, governors and parents.

The Green Party is the only party to offer an alternative but must speak out loudly so that voters know we offer something fundamentally different. At present our voice on education is not being heard.

The ranking proposal was a dreadful blow to primary teachers who at the tail end of the summer term, are writing reports, holding parents' evenings,out in the heat with 30 children on school trips and organising end of term productions. Now as they rally to keep going until the end of term Michael Gove delivers notice that stress will be even greater in the future and that the labelling of children as successes or failures will start even younger.

Huge damage will be done to young people as a result and we can expect problems of low self-esteem, poor motivation and disaffection as a result.

I fully support the Letter to the Press initiated by the Charter for Primary Education  LINK which has been signed by some of our best children's writers including Malory Blackman, Michael Rosen and Alan Gibbons as well as educationalists, teachers and parents.

It is essential that Green Party leader Natalie Bennett signs this letter and I  hope my readers will sign it too:

We are writing to express our concern over the announcement on Weds of an increase in primary school floor targets, an increase in the amount of testing for primary school pupils and the intention to place all pupils in a league table ranked on ability. Rather than a philosophy of every child matters, this is a world where only the person at the top counts. Any child struggling to pass tests due to a special educational need is automatically labelled a failure.

Last month we held a conference to launch the Primary Charter. This was a conference which brought together teachers, parents, governors and teacher educators. We have produced a ‘manifesto’ for primary schools, outlining how we think pupils learn best. This includes trusting the professional judgement of teachers, allowing children to learn at their own pace and through play, while taking account of their own experiences. It involves giving pupils an opportunity to develop a love of learning and nurturing their ability to interact with others. We have already seen the damage done to children in this country through over-testing.

Research has shown that our children are unhappy and more worried about tests than in any other developed country. Crucially this does not lead to improved educational outcomes. There is no evidence to show that testing and ranking children improves their learning,but plenty that demonstrates the effect being labelled a failure has on their self-esteem and confidence. We prefer to look to the model of education we see in Finland where no inspections, no punitive lesson observations and minimal testing leads to consistently high standards, huge levels of teacher satisfaction, minimal social selection and an education sector that is lauded throughout the world.

Instead we see an announcement today that the attainment thresholds schools must reach is to be increased from 60% to 85%. The government want to test children earlier and force a more formal education, learning by rote and parroting facts driven right down into the early years. We suspect this is part of a move to hand publically owned education over to the private sector though an increase in the number of schools forced to become academies. The signatories of the charter reject this model of education and appeal to parents, teachers and support staff to engage in a dialogue with schools to reject Gove’s vision. The primary charter can be found on primarycharter.wordpress.com

National Children's Day celebrated amidst the stress of SATs

 

It is perhaps appropriate that the first National Children's Day UK is being celebrated this week as 7 and 11 year olds are in the midst of their SATs, with the 11 year olds now having just sat the controversial SPAG test.

Many of those teachers and teaching assistants supervising the tests, despite their best efforts to keep things in perspective, are finding that children are stressed by them. I spoke to one Year 6 child last week who told me about waking up from a nightmare where she had been given a W (Working towards) grade rather than her expected Level 5.

National Children's Day is an initiative of the Save Childhood Movement and supported by a diverse group of organisations including  the National Trust, Play England, Play Scotland, Forestry Commission, Community Playthings, Project Wild Things and Leave Our Kids Alone.

Their website states:

  Celebrating the Rights and Freedoms of Children

    "There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they can grow up in peace." 
                                                                              -Kofi Annan

We are launching National Children's Day UK on the 15th of May and everyone is invited to get involved. This is our first year - and it will be only two weeks after the launch of the movement - so help us spread the word! You can access our banner and posters here. We then hope to make it a much bigger affair next year.

Many other countries celebrate the rights of children on the 20th of November  - the United Nations nominated day. However, we think that it is really important that British children should be able to get outside on Children's Day, into their neighbourhoods and nature, so we have chosen to hold it at the beginning of the summer.

Childhood is precious. It creates the values, mindsets and dispositions that determine our interaction with the world around us for the rest of our lives. Children, therefore, have one very special right - and that is the ability to be able to develop, naturally and happily, to their full potential. National Children's Day UK is dedicated to helping ensure that this can happen.

The picture on play is mixed in Brent. There are fewer Easter and Summer playschemes and the private ones that exist are often too expensive for low income families. Afterschool clubs find it hard to survive and schools are increasingly providing their own with teacher volunteers.  At the same time the number of holiday, weekend and lunchtime SAT preparation classes have increased and a significant and growing number of children attend after school sessions with private tutors. In such circumstances attempts to put the SATs tests into perspective and reduce stress are doomed to failure.

Under the influence of academies and free schools, Michael Gove is pushing for longer school days and shorter school holidays.

However, on the other hand, some schools are broadening their curriculum and encouraging more outdoor activities such as cycling. The new Chalkhill Park and the planned BMX track nearby are signs that play is valued by some in the council. Brent's Gordon Brown (no relation) Outdoor Education Centre in Hampshire continues to provide residential activites for primary pupils and the Stonebridge Adventure Playground has survived funding crises.

It is not the best of summer days today but I hope Brent kids will be out and about after school today having fun engaged in play activities

Challenge: I will not let an exam result decide my fate

The examination season starts soon with the Key Stage 2 SATs for Year 6 in primary schools. Here's a challenge worth considering.

Government moves goal posts to force more primary academies

David Laws today increases the primary floor target in KS2 SATS English and Maths for 2014 from 60% to 65% of Year 6 pupils achieving Level 4.  Failure to meet these targets will result in the schools being forced to become sponsored academies.

Moving the goal posts in this way will be another step in the Coalition's aim of increasing the number of schools converting to academy status to meet their aim of making academies 'the norm'.

476 primary schools are below the current floor target of 60% but this increases to  866 with the 65% target.

The Coalition argue that this number will reduce as schools 'up their game' but this will of course lead to more stress for children, teachers and headteachers and a narrow test-centred curriculum  for pupils in their last year of primary school.

Some commentators also expect that the policy may lead to some schools 'voluntarily' converting  to academy status, choosing their own sponsor, rather than face the risk of having one imposed on them at a later date. There is an added incentive for headteachers because they are usually removed by the sponsor when a school is forced to become an academy.

Clearly Gove is taking no notice of the current resistance to forced academies and is tightening the screw  on schools. He is hoping that under the guise of raising standards and making children 'secondary school ready' he will be able to escalate the privatisation of the school system.

In turn we must up our resistance  with a united campaign of teachers, governors and parents to the forced academy strategy.

Ash dieback worsened by 'science dieback'

Natural fascination: children discover a slow worm in Fryent Country Park

There was an interesting juxtaposition of articles in yesterday's papers. The lack of plant pathologists was cited in evidence to the Parliamentary Environment Committee as a reason for the slow reaction to the ash tree die back crisis. This was attributed to 'severe' job losses in plant science as well as the lack of university courses in the subject. Barry Gardiner MP uncovered the lack of controls on the import of firewood and wood pellets produced from infected ash trees which could carry the disease into the country if they were mixed with leaves and twigs from the trees. Meanwhile the National Trust criticised the government's interim measures for prioritising the continuation of trade over dealing with the threat. Simon Pryor from the National Trust said, 'Through this action plan we're effectively surrendering the British landscape to this disease.'

Cuts, education policy and the prioritisation of trade combine to make a difficult situation worse and underline the Coalition's incompetence.

The other news story was about the decline in scientific knowledge of 14 year olds in international comparisons, Such comparisons are notoriously unreliable but there has been less emphasis on science in primary schools as a consequence of the ending of written tests in the subject at the end of Key Stage 2. With schools being judged on test results in English and Mathematics and low results bringing negative Ofsted judgements and threats of forced academy status,  schools are concentrating on the 3Rs.

Children's fascination with the natural environment (see them clustered around snails, slugs and worms in the school garden or bent over paving stone cracks on 'flying ant day') should be an interest to build on in the classroom, but too often it is ignored, to concentrate on the timetabled literacy and maths lessons.

This is a pity as so much mathematics and literacy can come out of science based on motivating and exciting  first hand experience rather than lessons down-loaded from the internet. A lifelong interest in nature can come from such early encounters.

Michael Gove will no doubt blame teachers for this, although it is a consequence of both Labour and the Coalition's narrow view of education and their repressive testing regime. It does not even make sense in their own terms as the need to compete internationally, that they both cite,  requires creativity and adaptability rather than the regurgitation of facts and model essays that the new examination system is emphasising.

Time for school students to organise?

PRECOCIOUS

In blue lagoons I once did play,

Tossing the surf,

Catching the spray.

Living my life as each day came,

Never looking for fortune or fame.

Clever and youthful,

Strong and brave,

Carelessly riding the tidal wave -

but I was only 4.

From BLOT magazine 1976

 

 There is a connection between my last blog on SATs and the previous one on young people and the cuts.

The connection is that the generation now experiencing the cuts, whether through their school buildings not being rebuilt, losing their Education Maintenance Allowances, having Kilburn College sold off from under their feet,  seeing tuition fees increased or facing unemployment, is the generation that has experienced the full force of the target culture in schools. They have been the most tested generation of pupils ever.

Yes, there has been investment in schools but often of the wrong kind: thousands spent on the SATs regime and national curriculum materials and all serving the purpose of meeting targets..  Throughout, the mantra repeated by the government, teachers and often parents has been, "Keep your heads down, do what the teacher says, work hard and you will end up with good qualifications, a good job and enough money to have a decent quality of life".

Back in the 70s and 80s I remember when that mantra was blown apart in the face of unemployment and we are approaching that point now. Youth will be arguing "What was the point?"  I remember very well back at that time, when a child in my primary class in Fulham remarked, after I had foolishly repeated the mantra,  "My brother worked hard and got qualified and can't get a job so why should I bother?"

This is particularly true now because the Blair government, and the Tories before them, have reduced education to individuals getting the employment skills to keep the UK ahead of competitor nations. Having narrowed the purpose of education and reduced schools to qualification factories they will face resentment and rebellion, disaffection and desperation.

In the 70s school students organised in the National Union of School Students and other organisations. One of their major campaigns was against the use of corporal punishment in schools. The NUSS publicised their activities through a magazine called BLOT and for some time they got a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation. At the height of their influence they had the support of 30 or so MPs.

Now such magazines are 'last century' compared with social networking sites and their power to mobilise large numbers at short notice. I wonder how many would answer a call such as this (taken from a 1976 edition of BLOT):

You've got no rights, none at all - you've got no voice. No-one will hear you complain. You haven't got a chance to change a thing - you're too young to hear, speak or think. 

That's what a lot of people think of us. 

Well we know different - we know we think and we've got a lot to say but nowhere to say it. No-one to listen. I, me, myself will never be heard. I've got to be louder so I can shout and if we all shout together then we'll be heard.

WHAT ABOUT THE WIDER CURRICULUM BOB?

Cllr Bob Wharton, Brent's lead member for Children, Families and Schools, laments the neglect of the wider curriculum and the damaging impact of the SATs system which 'only relate to numeracy and English' in his interview with Alex Wellman in the Willesden and Brent Times this week. I hope this means he supports the boycott of the SATs proposed by the NAHT and NUT. The ending of SATs will be a real liberation for pupils and teachers and enable them to concentrate on the real business of learning.

However Cllr Wharton's stance is contradicted by his support for the Wembley ARK Academy which boasts in its brochure that the infant school will have four literacy lessons and three numeracy classes a day - little room for much else I would have thought.

SUPPORT FOR PRIMARY SATS BOYCOTT

I fully support the move by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers to boycott next year's SAT tests in primary schools.

The independent Cambridge Primary Review has already said that SAT tests and league tables are incompatible with their curriculum reforms (see February 20th posting) and the less far-reaching changes advocated by the government initiated Rose Review make little sense within the constraints of a narrow exam-orientated curriculum.

The two unions are putting identical resolutions to their Easter conferences that state they will conduct this year's tests for 11 year olds, which take place in the week beginning May 11th, only on condition that they are the last.

My experience as a teacher and head teacher on the negative impact of the tests on children's enthusiasm and enjoyment of learning was endorsed by the NAHT's general secretary Mike Brookes, when he said, "There is high stress for children children; some will already be spending up to 10 hours a week rehearsing these tests. It's a complete waste of time. It is unconscionable that we should simply standby and allow the educational experience of children to be blighted."

I couldn't agree more. The Green Party remains the only main-stream political party to support the abolition of SATS and League Tables in order to return creativity and a love of learning to primary schools.

LET CHILDREN ENJOY LEARNING AGAIN

The Cambridge Review of the Primary Curriculum is a chance to expel Big Brother from our classrooms.

The Review’s recommendation that schools should be freed of SATs and league tables is in line with Green Party policy on education. We want children to become eager, empowered learners who are given the chance to explore their own individual needs and interests. As a primary school headteacher I strived to promote learning but had to constantly battle the dead hand of government targets and league tables. This 'Big Brother' presence in the classroom narrowed the curriculum and turned teachers into stressed target chasers and children into passive recipients of lessons geared to maximising SAT results and the school's league table position.

Research for the report has been extremely thorough and I was pleased to meet up with its authors, alongside other local headteacher, some time ago. Its recommendations have been backed by teaching unions and major educational organisations. The government must take notice and return the encouragement of a love of learning to its vital place in primary education.