The Twilight Zone

This is the academic twilight zone. The still point of the turning year. Neither up nor down, neither from nor towards (and do not call it fixity). Exams have been sat and sent off, coursework has been marked and moderated. There is nothing to do but wait. Until August 18^th, that is, when all will be revealed – at least for A Level students. Like contestants on Noel Edmonds’ TV monstrosity “Deal or No Deal”, they will open the box of their results envelopes to find… Well, for some, the prize of the grades they need in order to get that place at a top university. For others, not the exact grades they hoped for perhaps, but enough for a place somewhere. For still others, disappointment, the grind of Clearing, the despair of dreams dissipated and ambitions re-adjusted.

But that’s for the future. Right now, there is only the wait. For both students and for that other constituency in this, teachers. The students just want to pass and get what they need to progress. For teachers, there is an altogether richer set of feelings at work.

An A Level student once accused me of not caring whether she passed or failed. She was wrong, but the truth is that if, as a teacher, you become too emotionally invested in your students’ outcomes, you risk a nervous breakdown every summer. On the other hand, your students are people you have worked with, watched develop and got to know as individuals; you want them to succeed for themselves. It is a genuine pleasure to see a student achieve what they set out to achieve and to start looking forward to the next step.

On a slightly darker note, you also, as a teacher, are aware that you are judged on the results gained by your students. This enters your thinking so profoundly that it is hard not to refer to “my results” whenever you talk about how your students have done. Seasoned teachers, of course, know that that formula is only to be used when results have been good; in years when results leave something to be desired, they become, “the group’s/class’s results” or “the results obtained by the students taught by myself and [insert name of any teachers with whom you may have shared the class here]”.

At this point in the trek through the twilight zone, it is doubtful that too many teachers will be worrying about their classes’ results. But worry they will. Only the most idealistic will delude themselves that their students will all have over-performed as a result of their teaching. The most fervent prayer will be, “Please God, don’t let them do worse for me than for any of their other teachers” because, as much as teachers want their students to do well, they also always want to avoid that bane of any professional’s life, Awkward Questions.

A Tale of Two Departments

Two hypothetical academic departments, both the same subject, but in radically different types of schools: Department 1 is in a state grammar school. As it happens, the school in general enjoys an enviable local reputation and its places are much coveted and not easy to secure. Our department, however, is in a poor state. GCSE results are disastrous with only 11% of pupils obtaining an A* or A grade – this in a school that is academically selective. A Level is better, but still well below the expected standard. There is no head of department and neither has there been for the last year. The rest of the department consists of two supply teachers, one NQT, a student teacher pursuing an on-the-job PGCE and a Second in Department who is the only full time, experienced professional. Department 2, by contrast, is in a famous public school. Results are outstanding, there being a 100% pass rate at both GCSE and A2, few students at either level falling much below the top grades. Of the department’s six members, four obtained their first degrees from Oxbridge. The fifth only managed to get into Oxford for his Masters, but, since his first degree is from Harvard, nobody’s complaining. The sixth member? Neither Oxbridge nor Ivy League, but his PhD makes up for it.

The astute reader will have realized that the degree of fictionalization here is slight. The two departments are given to illustrate the huge gulf that exists in teaching and learning between the state and independent sectors. Remember that the example state school is not a failing comprehensive, but an academic institution that grants entry only to those who can demonstrate specific levels of ability.

That independent schools are “more successful”, by various measures, than their state-funded counterparts is readily apparent. The “stark divide” between the two sectors in their ability to get students into top universities has again recently been in the news with the revelation that five schools (four of them independent) account for more Oxbridge offers between them than the bottom 2,500 state schools combined. Although we are often told that independent schools account for only 7% of the pupil population, their representation in all of our elite universities and medical schools is vastly disproportionate to this humble figure. How did it come to this?

Two factors are key. The first is family background. Research has consistently indicated that the chief determinant of a pupil’s attainment is the extent to which education is valued and promoted at home. Bleak conclusions can follow from this: were there no independent schools, it could be argued, the socio-economic composition of an elite university’s student body would not differ much from how it is today. Also, we should not forget Department 1 above. While its parents do not make the same financial sacrifices as those in the independent sector, they are often forced into major commitments of time and inconvenience in order to keep their children in the school. They value and support education. Yet, the overall level of attainment in the department is significantly lower than that for the example independent school.

To digress briefly, this last point suggests that it seems wrong-headed of successive governments to attack independent education, since that is to deal with the manifestation and not the cause of under-achievement. Of course, independent schools are easy targets; political capital can be made by railing against apparent privilege while the next-to-impossible task of changing the anti-education and under-achievement culture of some young people within their family environments can be quietly left off the agenda. Independent schools, for their part, know that their position is relatively safe. After all, if a government had been serious about getting rid of them, it could have done so at any time. The fact is that the government cannot afford to abolish independent education. To do so would be to take several hundred thousand pupils into the state system with no extra resources to call upon - those children’s parents already make their contribution to state schooling through their taxes. Indeed, the spend per pupil in the state sector is higher as a result of some pupils being voluntarily removed from it and this could be viewed as an additional hidden subsidy by those parents who pay for private provision.

All of that notwithstanding, the second factor in independent schools’ levels of achievement – one brought out clearly by Departments 1 and 2 – is the high academic calibre of staff that they are able to attract and retain. A moment’s research on the internet reveals that teachers at independent schools are seven times more likely to be Oxbridge graduates than those in the state sector and twice as likely to hold first class degrees. Even within the state sector, most Oxbridge graduates head to grammars and not comprehensives.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4185215/State-schools-fail-to-get-graduates-from-Oxbridge.html)

This would appear to be a major distinction between Department 1 and Department 2. Another is the - to put it bluntly - chaotic nature of Department 1 as a team; for whatever reasons, it is dysfunctional and this must exacerbate other weaknesses that it exhibits. It is not suggested that the members of Department 1 are bad teachers, or lacking in impressive academic credentials, but, given the constraints within which they are forced to work, they might as well be.

Department 2 is the way it is, perhaps, because there is often an academic culture at institutional level in independent schools: they will boast about those members of their staff with degrees from top universities or those with higher degrees. In state school staff rooms you will sometimes hear academic achievements among colleagues being talked down. Such places can also be afflicted by the “you don’t need to be an academic to be a teacher” fallacy. According to this, there is a specific set of skills that are required for teaching which are not necessarily linked to intelligence, such things as communication skills, enthusiasm and empathy. While these are undoubtedly important, they are not sufficient in themselves. Think about this; would you agree to be operated on by someone with a poor grasp of surgical techniques? Would you even let someone without a driver’s licence be your driving instructor? Why, then, do we find it acceptable for someone who has not been capable of reaching a high grade at A Level to tell youngsters how to do it? As the two departments highlighted above indicate, the route to improvement is to encourage the brightest and the best to become teachers in state schools - and to provide an environment in which they can flourish and develop. As things stand, that is quite a challenge…

It's right to be right (but not your right to be Right)

The standards for teachers recently promulgated by Michael Gove have excited much debate and a rather predictable negative reaction from teaching unions. The tenor of the comments has been that the standards are vague and, as one union spokesman put it, “another stick with which to beat teachers”. Perhaps. Like many new initiatives in education, though, it remains to be seen what, if any, impact the new rules will have. There has also been some criticism that the standards are an aimless mish-mash of benchmarks for the delivery of education and codes of conduct for teachers personally. There is a suspicion of splitting hairs about this, particularly as some of the standards, such as those that focus on subject knowledge, are nothing new, having been enshrined in school inspection documentation for years. In any case, this whole contention misses what, for me, is the most significant section of the document, namely the dictum that teachers must promote, or, at least, not undermine ”fundamental British values”.

The first point to mention is that one such “value”, “individual liberty” seems to be flatly contradicted by other rules which restrict teachers’ own individual liberty, insisting on specific behaviours in their private lives, including a ban on joining far right political parties. Of course, it may be argued that there is an element of tokenism here, since it is unlikely that all that many teachers are members of far right groups to begin with. Nevertheless, while the views of the BNP may be repugnant to most, it is not actually an illegal organisation and, thus, to proscribe it for an entire profession seems to go against another of the given “fundamental British values”, “democracy”. It might even be questioned if there is such a thing as a “British” value: the recent electoral success of the Scottish Nationalists suggests that at least two of the countries that comprise the Union see things in radically different ways.

In fact, the one over-riding value that Gove is most keen on is that much-advocated, but rarely well-defined, virtue – tolerance. It certainly underlies other standards that require teachers to be open to other ideologies and faiths. Again, questions are begged: is this “tolerance” a British value? And what is it, anyway? Kate Fox argues that tolerance is essentially an English characteristic. She is not, however, wholly uncritical in her discussion, suggesting that English tolerance is, in reality, no more than a species of “benign indifference”. She is surely correct – although, as I shall go on to, more exploration of her ideas is necessary – but, in striving for a clearer definition, she highlights the difficulty of pinning the concept down. The Scots and the Welsh would also no doubt present themselves as tolerant, and, indeed, hospitable. Having lived for a year in the Highlands, I can vouch for the Scots in this regard, but it should not be forgotten that there is a decidedly intolerant anti-English strain to Scottish politics evidenced by the current degree of influence enjoyed by Alex Salmond and his ilk. Whatever constitutes Scottish tolerance, then, is different in kind from that to be found south of the border; English nationalism, after all, has consistently failed to gain any real traction and there seems to be little appetite for it either at party or grassroots level.

Where Gove has erred most egregiously is in his failure to locate his cherished tolerance in a specific aspect of the national psyche. Kate Fox makes the same mistake in that she describes a practical manifestation of tolerance and not its source. Arguably, British tolerance (let’s call it that) is an aspect of an extreme form of individualism that characterises social relationships within these islands. Even compared to other Western nations, the British are incorrigibly individualistic; the Americans and the French, for instance, have written constitutions and, while these theoretically guarantee various freedoms, they are still pre-ordained political settlements which place limits on the scope of interaction and debate. In Britain, by contrast, we have a “constitution” that comprises a series of guidelines, rules-of-thumb, assumptions and precedents that have been generated over time as a result of the actions of certain individuals in specific circumstances. So resistant are the British to being categorised by their social context that they do not even bother with a national anthem, since the one they have praises not the nation, but a single man or woman, the monarch. The most popular Anglo-centric alternative, “Jerusalem”, is a revolutionary song calling for the overthrow of the prevailing social order. The British eccentric – that loveable buffoon who eschews conformity to any social norm - has long been a stock figure of comedy around the world. Even the famous reserve that many would identify as a distinctively British characteristic can be seen as an unwillingness to engage with society in general and is, therefore, just another trait of the individualist.  

The new standards misjudge British values in demanding that tolerance be given to other faiths, races and ideologies. British tolerance has always been of the individual and, in its most perfect form, is blind to the social groups to which that individual belongs. Unwittingly, Gove has bought into the project of those very "social engineers" he has hitherto had cause to vilify by foregrounding group membership as any given person's defining feature. He would do better to encourage teachers to preach that genuine, and fundamental, British value – one that has informed teaching for generations and which is centred in individualism – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.   

The Hard and the Soft

What is the difference between a “hard” A level subject and a “soft” one? Many of the top universities claim to know. The former are the traditional academic subjects, Maths, English, Science and the like, while the latter, essentially, includes any subject devised within the last twenty years or so, especially if it is linked to a specific career option. The clue is usually in the name: “soft” subjects tend to have the word “studies” in their titles, as in, for example, “Theatre Studies”, “Business Studies” and – the media’s ultimate, rather ironic, bête noir – “Media Studies”. On what side of this divide a subject falls is important because many of those classified as “soft” have been barred as entrance qualifications to courses at a number of top universities, including all of those belonging to the so-called Russell Group.

The question, of course, is why? What makes “soft” A Levels less acceptable than “hard” ones? To make a distinction between “hard” subjects as academic and “soft” ones as vocational is overly simplistic: how is analyzing a literary text more academic than performing a similar analysis on an extract from an action film? Both involve looking for how specific conventions and codes convey meanings. Both, in other words, are academic exercises involving similar skills.

The truth is that “hard” and “soft” are, in the minds of those who coined the terms, no more than euphemisms for “difficult” and “easy”, the prevailing orthodoxy being that traditional academic subjects are more challenging than their more – and this has often been said – trendy modern counterparts. Again, though, a question is begged: by what rationale is, say, the production of a devised piece of theatre that has to be created from scratch by a team and worked up to public performance standard easier than learning Physics theories that have been generated by someone else and then applied in an examination? Proponents of Theatre Studies might point out that, while a wide range of people can learn Physics theories (even if most of them will lack the ability to build theories of their own), creative subjects, almost by definition, can only be accessed at the highest level by those in possession of rare talents. They might go on to argue that the aptitudes required to produce a devised piece of drama – creativity, organizational flair, technical know-how, teamworking and, perhaps, leadership skills – are highly relevant to life, whereas the majority of those Physics students who learn about the properties of light or how gravity works are unlikely ever to enter the type of scientific research environment in which such knowledge might actually be useful. What we are touching on here is the dichotomy between liberal and vocational education and this merits its own discussion – upon which I will embark in a future post.

For the time being, it is worth noting that the key distinction between “hard” and “soft” subjects is in their degree of abstraction from the everyday common sense world. The “hard” subjects are largely theoretical in bias, whereas “soft” subjects are mainly practical and skills-based. Even this typology is flawed, however, since it fails to account for Languages; these are classed as “hard” subjects but they endow their learners with very definite and specific skills. Nevertheless, “hard” subjects are not generally the vehicle for anything that could with justice be described as “training”. Does this mean that - to turn current thinking on its head – the “hard” subjects are actually inferior in that they are, to put it bluntly, useless, whereas “soft” subjects at least give their students something they can do? Graduate employment rates from the higher education versions of these courses would suggest that few people think so. In any case, such a conclusion would come from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of academic and vocational study. In (very) broad terms, academic subjects build individual minds, whereas vocational subjects respond to a perceived social need. Whether that makes one type more difficult than the other is open to debate – one which will be pursued in future posts. We might tentatively agree, though, that universities are correct in seeing their primary mission as the first of these possibilities. 

Down Wiv Skool

In all the current to-and-froing about state schools versus private schools and whether Govian “Free” Schools will actually work or not, one big question has remained pointedly unasked: why do we need schools at all?

If the answer is that they are simply a method of social control, you may read no further: we should all just accept that schools exist for the primary purpose of keeping young people occupied while their parents are out at work and, provided that they more or less accomplish this limited goal, their job is done. Of course, no politician in his or her right mind would make this case. Instead, we are told that the key function of schools is to endow their students with the knowledge, skills and values that they will need to be effective and competitive in a globalized, many-cultured and rapidly-changing world. Perhaps, though, we should see this as the mission statement not of schools, but of education, which leads us neatly back round to the question with which this argument began.

Certainly, with modern technology being what it is, there is little actual need for pupils to congregate in the gloomy cathedrals to Misery that are most state schools. The vast majority of lessons could easily be carried out via the medium of Skype. Think about this: teachers could do everything that they do well by interacting with pupils who only appear to them as faces on a computer screen. Since those pupils would not be physically in the same place at the same time, most of the discipline problems that bedevil modern teaching would melt away, while “absebteeism” could be tracked in a straightforward manner. Moreover, pupils would no longer be saddled with whoever happens to have been employed by whichever school they end up at and so could exercise genuine consumer choice in educational services; good teachers would attract large numbers of pupils while those deemed inadequate would drop out of the profession. Teachers would be further incentivised if they were paid per pupil – there being no further requirement to build and maintain expensive school premises would mean that fees could be generous, making teaching an attractive career choice for the brightest and best.

There are, naturally, plenty of potential objections to the above. Most obviously, it will be pointed out that actually timetabling a programme that was unique to every individual pupil would be a potentially insoluble logistical nightmare (although, in America, attempts are being made to solve it using smart phones and iPods as tracking devices). Some curriculum subjects also have a practical element to them that can only be carried out in a classroom situation – science, sport and drama are just some examples of these. Then there is the socialisation argument; according to this, the school environment is vital for young people because it gives them the self-confidence and social skills to interact positively and productively with others. Mmmm: not only does this fly in the face of the manifestly obvious fact that the classroom is hardly the best place in which to “socialise”, but it has to be asked (and this would probably merit research), how many pupils really feel sufficiently comfortable and relaxed at school to make developing their social skills viable? The bullies are perfectly well “socialised”; for everyone else, the average school day is arguably spent in a condition of nervous anxiety. 

Ultimately, the ideas presented here are a provocative response to a highly complex problem. That said, it really is high time that we started to think the unthinkable as far as education is concerned. We need to be clear about the purpose of education, how best we can achieve that purpose and, within that, precisely what, if any, role should be given to schools.