Leading article: A better way to educate primary school children
This seminal report makes the case against government interference
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Independent Minds
The most extensive study of the state of the primary education system since the 1960s has delivered its final report. And it does not pull any punches. The Cambridge Primary Review paints a picture of a sector suffocated by diktats from Whitehall and crushed by the populist meddling of ministers.
The Government's entire "apparatus of targets, testing, performance tables, national strategies and inspection" is accused of distorting primary schooling. Ministers are criticised for formulating educational policies on the basis of "questionable evidence".
Nor is the Review afraid to take on those other grand panjandrums of the education realm, the regulators. Oftsed's assertion that we now have the best generation of teachers ever is taken apart. The fallacy that a regime of constant testing is a means of driving up educational standards is firmly nailed.
The report is also scathing about the general tendency in our political culture to regard maths and English as the only elements of the primary education system worth worrying about. It makes a compelling plea for a broad primary curriculum to stimulate children's imagination and stoke a genuine passion for learning.
The report is, however, less sure-footed when it moves from diagnosing ills to advocating solutions. The review lapses into silliness when it urges schools to build up pupils' sense of "empowerment". And it loses credibility when it starts fussing over minor issues such as the design of school buildings.
Two recommendations, however, stand out: raising the formal start of primary schooling to age six and scrapping standard national tests at age 11. The first, though it will probably alarm parents, is actually sensible. Commencing children's formal education at six would move us in to line with the rest of Europe, where a later learning age does children no harm, and even has some measurable benefits.
But ending all national testing at primary school level would be an excessive response to the present stifling examination regime. The report is right to argue that numeracy and literacy – the focus of the present national tests – should not be treated as "proxies for the whole of primary education". But they are central skills nonetheless and it is not unreasonable to expect children to emerge from primary education with a firm grounding in them, assessed by a standard examination process. The report's authors are also guilty of ignoring the wider benefits of a formal assessment at the end of a child's years in primary education, in particular the fact that the results allow parents to evaluate a school's performance.
However, the central thrust of the review – its call for an end to the "state theory of learning" – is certainly to be welcomed. The role of government in primary education is to demand decent standards and a stimulating curriculum and then to step back and let teachers and heads deliver them. As the review concludes, "teaching should be taken out of the political arena and given back to teachers".
When Labour came to power in 1997, ministers were justified in concentrating time, energy and investment on our primary school system. They were also right to take steps to make these schools more accountable to parents. But they went too far. Interest became interference. Help became hindrance. As the Primary Review argues, what schools urgently need now is to be given space to breathe.
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Comments
LEA 'advisers' - who controlled promotion - showed anyone interested in basic skills the door.
This was at the heart of the bureaucratic curriculum sponsored by Kenneth Baker - who thought all teachers were from the NUT Marxist wing - who commenced the regime frequently blamed on New Labour.
New Labour found a ready made instrument for their ingrained 'Soviet tractor factory' style of management, with the results that are plain for all to see.
Testing to construct league tables has turned education into another competition-based industry
Diagnostic testing, however, is essential, both for the information of teachers and parents.
However, in a month's time all this will be forgotten: neither New Labour, nor Michael Gove will want to listen to any of this.
Westminster-Whitehall cannot let go.
Why does UK Government have to learn, relearn, and learn again only from making the same mistake time and again?
The system of education inflicted on UK schoolchildren by Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, failed in Victorian times and was rejected by 1885 as "unfit for purpose!" However, what wasn't good enough for Victorians was reckoned quite good enough for the UK in the 21st century! Unbelievable! And yet we had advisers to the government, a whole series of Heads of Ofsted, academics and people in centres of influence who should have known better (if only from having had a cursory look at the history of education and/or child psychology, and/or child development) all being paid massive salaries, and in some cases being set up with organisations costing billions of pounds, to tell us something many of us knew to be wrong, counter-productive, and just plain bad education!
Schools have now changed. We have many fewer people at the top end of these who teach, they just simply fill in government forms, and try somehow to achieve worthless government targets by hook or by crook.
It's high time the Government got out of dictating the educational minutiae. It's time we had teachers being trained for 3 or 4 years about the job before being unleashed on our children, instead of the one year, six months, (or the six weeks proposed to get failed bankers into the job!!!!).
The country needs to save billions? Easy - get rid of the failed Ofsted. Get rid of SATs. Get rid of League Tables. Get rid of 50% of the civil servants in the Education Department. Get rid of any non-teaching Headteacher, or senior member of staff in schools. Get rid of local authority inspectors. Get rid of the National Curriculum.
Then put knowledge of children's learning at the centre of education through PROPERLY trained teachers.
That's the education system and much of the financial system improved at a stroke!
Also cutting things you don't understand does not benefit anyone.
Of course, teaching practice would always be part of that course (and considerably longer than is done now). But before you are let loose on a classroom full of pupils, you need to know what the theory is behind what you are practising. You need to know how children learn, what their brains are capable of at any particular stage, how their physical and emotional development relates to the tasks that you are giving them, in how many ways children learn to read, how best to get the greatest amount of learning from them, what teaching methods work. To put them straight in front of a class is pointless. Would you do that for a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, a bricklayer, a plumber? NO!!! You'd give them the tools for the job, and even after that a considerable time learning with someone who is an expert.
"Also cutting things you don't understand does not benefit anyone." I understand all of those. I was a Headteacher from the age of 30 to retirement. I understand perfectly how they all work (but mostly don't). The longest serving Head of Ofsted, Chris Woodhead, recently stated on Radio 4 that the National Curriculum was a mistake. I have been saying that since 1990. Do tell me, who understood the National Curriculum - me or Chris Woodhead? And if the National Curriculum is now accepted as wrong (as most people now do) what was the point in Ofsted inspecting schools largely to enforce the National Curriculum? If SATs at 7, 11, and 14 were wrong (and they have been abandoned in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and abandoned at 7 and 14 in England) then why do we spend vast fortunes on them - much simply wasted when the private companies and Quangos fail to get them marked? And if they have such little value, then why in God's name are we publishing League tables costing hundreds of thousands of pounds based on those flawed results (remember: some schools STILL haven't recived their scores from last June!!
It's not a case of me cutting things I don't understand - I fully understand them. The problem is you don't understand how pointless they are. But you're not on your own in fighting a rearguard action to defend what was indefensible in Victorian times. The current government, and possibly the future Tory government are currently marching their men to the top of this hill too.
Although I agree that formal schooling before 6 is probably a waste of time, this is a bit of a sweeping statement about twenty-odd very different countries and it's certainly not true for the Netherlands, where things have been moving in the opposite direction - school now starts at the age of 4 and becomes compulsary at 5.
@thorntongate: "Diagnostic testing, however, is essential, both for the information of teachers and parents."
Agreed. In terms of testing, this is the baby - the rest is bathwater.
However prior to this age testing should be normal in-school exams and teacher assessment.
I agree. To turn things round is going to be hugely difficult. For the youngest age groups, there has been a national curriculum for about 20 years. Any teacher coming into the profession at that time will have been teaching the ever-changing NC ... and will now be getting on for their mid-forties and will not have known anything else! A couple of months ago, I read (on the BBC forum I think) the wife of a teacher who only knew the NC explaining that he can get "all his lessons off the internet"!!!! Talk about teaching by numbers!!
I fear for the future. I fear for teachers. I have more fear for the education of our children. But I have most fear for the UK.
What has a child achieved when they have been trained like a circus dog to jump through hoops? If hoop jumping can maintain the nation, then we'll be world beaters. If we need a population that can think, then we're up the creek without a paddle.