Political Economy

Goave’s White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” is based on England’s falling position in the PISA league tables. Note that the problem is not falling performance, that has remained basically the same, but other countries have improved.  PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an OECD programme to measure performance of 15 year old’s. PISA is not a value-free test of knowledge in the English sense. It  is designed to support and embed the OECD culture and values. (The hidden curriculum of PISA – the promotion of neo-liberal policy by educational assessment by Michael Uljens 12.7 2007). So the English performance may just be bloody-mindedness! Certainly in tests like TIMMS, which take as a starting point the national curricula of countries, and which do use value-free tests, England has been performing well.

One of the features of the PISA league tables is the outstanding performance of Finland who are at the top of the table. This surprised even the Finns who in 2000 when PISA held its first round of tests were dissatisfied with their educational system outcomes and were contemplating major changes. Since then Finland has done well despite the fact that research has shown a 25% drop in cognitive (thinking) ability of its students over that time. So PISA clearly does not measure thinking ability.

Apart from basing his White paper on Finland Goave is also enamored with Free Schools along the lines of those in Sweden and the USA.

But Per Thulberg, director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, said  “This competition between schools that was one of the reasons for introducing the new schools has not led to better results. The lesson is that it’s not easy to find a way to continue school improvement. The students in the new schools have, in general, better standards, but it has to do with their parents and backgrounds. They come from well-educated families.” - Reported in guardian.co.uk, 9th February 2010.

So Goave’s White Paper is looking more and more like a big girl’s blouse. What is he to do?

The answer is to do what Westminster politicians have turned into a fine art – Fiddle the Figures!. In another blog The English Bac I showed that Goave’s new measure had little educational value and was designed simply to show in four years time that his policies had worked – even though they had not.

However this left him with a big problem. Currently schools are measured on their CVA (contextual value added). This measures the improvement over earlier achievement levels adjusted for things like deprivation, students in care, first language and so on. This is instead of just measuring schools on their raw GCSE results where schools in leafy suburbs will always do better than, for example,  inner city schools with high immigration levels.

Why is it necessary to get rid of CVA? Ministers will give all sorts of reasons, all of them rubbish. The real reason is the one Per Thulberg gave. Free schools attract middle-class parents whose children will do well, even with poor teaching. Those left behind in the old school will not do as well no matter how good the teaching. The CVA measure would show the free school is not adding much in educational terms and that the old school is adding a lot, so proving what an expensive scam the Free Schools are.

The key point here is that the new measures are guaranteed to show that Goave’s policy is a success – even if it is not.

Is this sort of scummy behaviour from a government minister acceptable? No!

Is this sort of scummy behaviour from a government minister fit for purpose? No!

Is this sort of scummy behaviour from a government minister decent and honest? No!

So who will end up crying. In a just world it should be Goave. That might just happen. Research, based on 500,000 pupils, published in the journal ‘Significance’ (of the Royal Statistical Society) concluded that 40% of the difference in students’ education results were down to the family. The rather limited family intervention programmes tend to be successful at raising standards. So who is handling the government research into this? Why, according to a story in the news last year it is Mr Cameron! Very wise Dave, make sure your name is on the successes.

In the real world however it is going to be the poor and disadvantaged who will end up in tears. The Nasty Party are back!

The Financial Times reported today that 35% of City professionals were dissatisfied by the size of their bonus!

Apparently some 79% of them got a bonus this year, paid out of a bonus pool of £7 billion which was much the same as the previous year.

Things look good in all directions in the City with job opportunities up by 6,426, the highest since August 2008 whilst the average salary of those who found new jobs in March was £54,445. Overall 89% had salaries that were higher or the same as last year.

This dissatisfaction with bonuses is despite the fact that earnings in the City rose by 5.4% in the three months to February. This is more than twice the level of everyone else whose pay rose, on average, by 2.2%.

Some 79% of City professionals earned a bonus this year; 38% got more, 43% about the same and 19% got less. The fact that some 35% of them appear to be unhappy with their lot begs the question about why we should be happy with them. There are many words that rhyme with “banker”, some are rude but many would say that they describe the City professional perfectly.

This month the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead said it would loose 450 jobs, many of them clinical in order to save £40 million. At this rate the £7 billion of bonuses is equivalent to over 78,000 jobs in the NHS.

Recently a senior City regulator said that he could discern little that was socially worthwhile in what the City did. Was he correct? What do you think?

Michael Gove has decided that that there will be a new qualification. The English Bac, awarded to students with good passes in English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography.

Why this choice of subjects? Where is the Latin or Ancient Greek I hear you asking? After all there has been a lot of support for these subjects as the true core of a real education!

What will the history be about? Will it bang the drum for England and its achievements? Or perhaps ancient history, the study of ancient Greece and Rome, is a safer bet?

And why are there only five subjects in it? Why cannot RE  be included, or psychology or sociology or technology or art or music?

I tried to get my head around the Scottish system to see what they did but its jargon, innumerable levels and differences in terminolgy totally defeated me. Proof I supose of the superiority of the Scottish system.

There is the Middle Years programme (ages 11 – 16) of the International Baccalaureate which is an easily understood programme that aims to develop students academically, socially and emotionally and practically. Surely that could improve English education? Most probably it would, but it would also cost money to implement. Why did Gove not choose the Middle Years IB?

So have you spotted the real reason for Gove’s English Bac yet? It certainly has no academic or pedagogical foundation. It will not distinguish good teaching or good schools from bad. It is quite simply a measure that guarantees to show, at no cost, two things:

1. That private schools are better than state schools!
2. That Gove’s programmes of education have given rise to a huge improvement in standards in English state schools by the time of the next election!

Of course in reality it will show neither of these two things.  So how does it work?

Some years ago the Labour government made modern languages no longer compulsory. As a result in many state schools students have voted with their feet and the proportion of students taking a modern foreign language has dropped significantly. State schools will therefore automatically have poor English Bac results. Of course those students choosing their GCSE options to start this September for examination in May/June 2013 will find that languages are again, for large number of more able students, back on the subject list. So in 2013 results will be better.

Will Mr Gove be starting his measurements in 2013? Not at all. He has already started by publishing English Bac results for 2010! This is a full three years before the new system can possibly start to give results. As one would expect these 2013 figures will show two things:

1. That private schools still have much better results at the English Bac and are still “somehow better”
2. That state school results in 2013 will be much better than in 2010, the last year Labour had an influence on schools, so showing that conservative policies are much more successful than those of Labour!

Will either of these two assertions be true? No!

Private schools will, by and large, be selecting their students from amongst the brightest 16% in the nation. That is to say from those with a CAT score of 110 or better. The local comprehensive will have the whole range of student ability from a CAT score of between 70 and 130. If they are lucky the brightest students, those with a score of 110 or more, will make up 10% of their intake (the rest of the bright students will be in private schools) compared to the 100% for the private school. The private school result should therefore be 10 times better, shouldn’t it? The fact that they are never any where near that good attests to the good quality of much of state education.

Denbigh High School in Luton is led by one of the regions most outstanding head teachers, Dame Yasmin Bevan DBE Hon DEd BSc (Econ) BA MA. Are Denbigh’s English Bac results for 2010 better than poor? Probably not. Will they be better in 2013? Certainly they will. Will that have anything to do with Gove’s policies? Of course not! It will happen simply because more Denbigh students will be taking a modern foreign language.

Will the coalition government claim the improvement is because of Gove’s policies? Almost certainly!

What will it actually prove? You decide!

My Last question to you is this. Do we not deserve better government than this shoddy mixture of trickery and deceit?

I am English. I am probably more English than most people. I can trace my ancestry back to before the Act of Settlement in 1707. Lucky me. However on paper I am American and can not vote or have a passport. As my son pointed out to me America is not part of the Commonwealth. Revolution put paid to that.

So Englishness is not necessarily a ‘place of birth thing’. It is a deep feeling inside of where you belong. Small things make it apparent if you are looking carefully. I have always preferred tea to coffee and felt so relieved to arrive in England where tea is fantastic; unlike American attempts at tea. I still travel to the States with my small tea pot and a selection of my favourite blends. England is in my heart and no bureaucrat can take that away.

In my job I receive students who are applying to attend school in this country. I am amazed that many have UK Passports but have never lived in this country and many times don’t speak any English. What is that about?

I feel that we have become so frightened of standing up for ourselves and our identity that we defer to anyone who wants to come here. We demand nothing from them and we give them everything. If you live in some third world mire a shining place like England with its generous benefits and free schooling and health care must seem like heaven.

Recently I looked again at the process for Naturalisation and became even more confused. Nowhere does it take into account the fact that I have paid taxes for 30+ years. Nor the fact that my children are all English, or that I teach in a shortage subject in a deprived area of the UK. I don’t get any ‘points’ for these factors. Points that might reduce the fee I will pay to become a citizen. And to be fair apart from using a different queue at the Airport I am not sure what I would get.

And yet, I read in the paper that a British resident is suing the British Government for mistreatment by them (although at arms length) because while he was allegedly engaged in terrorist activities against the British State they might have informed the Americans about him to enable more effective questioning to take place. And he is likely to win!!

So is he English or British? He’s certainly using this fact to gain sympathy and of course compensation. No to him it is just a word and convenient refuge to gain maximum profit. True Englishness is in the heart and seeks no gain.

James Boxall reported in the 1st October 2010 Kindle edition of the Financial times that the CBI has said that the new rules restricting foreign workers from outside the EU must be reviewed. Why?

Put simply it is because the CBI’s members do not want to invest in English workers. In other words these CBI members are lazy and lacking either in vision or a desire to improve matters in England.

To do so would mean more support for English higher education, post-graduate and graduate students.

It would mean more support for local colleges and a greater investment in apprenticeships and in-house training for the English people.

It would mean funding more initiatives with our more challenged English schools.

And most importantly it would mean an open and collaborative approach to their strategic manpower planning exercises, with all their English stakeholders.

And finally these imported workers will expect the full use of the English welfare state, without them or their family having paid a penny for it.

So, yes, I do agree that the rules need to be changed to protect English workers from the lazy and greedy employers. My prescription is as follows:

1. Before making an application  to employ a foreign worker the organisation must show that it has tried really hard to develop home-grown English talent by carrying out all of the above activities for a minimum of five years. Surprisingly there will be some companies that already pass this test.
2. They must give an undertaking that they intend to continue at least this level of educational activity for the next 10 years.
3. They must show that the job requirement has a level of education (at least post-graduate from a university certified to have the same standards as an English Russell Group university), or significant experience (success at an international standard of achievement for at least five years in the same field as the job) is unobtainable from within England
4. They must deposit a sum of money with the government that will be sufficient to cover all the education and welfare costs of the worker, and their family, for his or her period of residence in the UK.
5. The worker must be paid a salary in the top 10% of national salary range for the job and must get exactly the same bonuses and benefits at other employees in a similar position.
6. Permits will be issued for a maximum of four years, renewable only once, and at the end of that period the worker and their family must leave and return to the country of origin of the foreign worker. There will be no possibility of acquiring British citizenship or of staying beyond that time.

Some might argue that this is not necessary because businesses and their employees pay taxes to the government to carry out all these duties. These are of course the same businesses that complain about the high level of taxation and about “big” government. On the other hand a 3% tax on their revenue might just possibly give enough tax revenue to solve the problem of lack of skill in the local workforce without these companies and their managers having to get out of their seats at all!

This demand from the CBI is just a big whinge, the epitome of the “moaning Pom”. It smells of greed and laziness and the people of England deserve a lot better than this shoddy mob.

With an approach like the one above the people of England would at least have the knowledge that the businessmen of England not only had their interests at heart but were working hard to improve them.

Now wouldn’t that be a change?

Well it would have to be since I am a teacher. I have taught for 20 years. I feel worried for the system I have been part of for all these years.I have seen what various administrations have tried to impose on education. I have seen the imposition of the National Curriculum. On the whole a good thing as it determined what should be taught. Good schools did it already. The only regret here is that it stopped with core subjects. Testing was needed to get the standards going in the right direction. But we should have prepared teachers and schools for picking it up and used resources available to develop this assessment. A missed opportunity in my view.

Many talk of initiative overload and to be fair they have a point. It is not so much the initiatives; it is that they are not joined up. On their own they seem like a good thing but they seem to exist in a single issue kind of world. Each one vying for time and favour independently. No wonder staff get confused.

Targets on the whole are a good thing. However what no one knew was that politicians and other mandarins did not understand that targets are what you aim for, they are aspirational. There is no recognition that if the targets are good and challenging enough then sometimes they will not be achieved. As a school you always need to meet your targets. Failure is bad. So a game is played. If the outcomes meet whatever the current criteria is then all is well. Forget the children.

Circumstances in school have changed over the past 20 years. I teach in a large comprehensive in a ‘inner city’ type environment. The nature of the students have changed. Families have changed in their composition. Children’s status in the family has changed. Parenting skills are lacking in many cases. Children are often lacking in emotional skills. We are however at least beginning to recognise that we need to support families if we are to support children better. We work with outside agencies to support the child. The Every Child Matters agenda is probably the best thing that has come out of the system in a long while. If all our efforts are child centred we will at last be able to educate children to be able to take part in the world of work.

However we are in transition between these two world views and this makes for difficulties. It takes time to change the traditional views of teachers, parents and the media. Authority in school is earned. (Just the same as it is in society) The safety in challenging unfairness is taken for granted. Everyone knows their rights. Teachers can no longer say ‘because I say so’ and hope to remain unchallenged. The family changes mean that children do not see their parents or other adults as remote beings. We need to re-think our ways of dealing with students who fall foul of the system in school. We need to understand that creating folk heroes (for bad behaviour) does not serve any one well. We are not in the punishment business but in the education business. Creating tomorrow’s future has always been what we are or should be about.

I am still excited about education and I can see what the future vision is about. I am worried that the current financial problems will put all this on hold for a long time. We will revert to a two tier system: those who can afford private/independent education will succeed; those who have to take a state route will face the luck of the draw with their school. All children deserve the best education we can give them. It is all our futures! I am desperately hoping that we will be able to support all that is good and not falter now.