Reasons to be angry
Colin Lofthouse, Head Teacher at Rickleton Primary School
It is not often as a jobbing Head Teacher that you get to talk to those who are actually devising and enacting education policy at the heart of government. But what is great about SCHOOLS NorthEast is that if you go along to their events, the calibre of their speakers means that you can get this chance.
And so it was at the White British Working Class conference at the Riverside stadium Chester Le Street. The morning began with Professor Stephen Gorard of Durham University, who gave an eye opening warning about the use of poor quality educational research that is used to sell interventions and justify education policy.
After lunch, the tone changed and we heard from Kate Chisholm, Headteacher of Skerne Park Primary Academy, a fantastic school in an area of huge deprivation in Darlington. It was uplifting to hear an impassioned description of the challenges she and her staff face in helping raise the aspirations of the pupils and community the school serves. The work they do to help the pupils realise their potential and be a successful against the pernicious effects of deprivation was great to hear. What came across strongly was the moral purpose, which underpins everything the school does.
From their breakfast club, to their ‘stage not age’ curriculum, to their pastoral support, that sees staff scooping up children and eating with them in their offices and classrooms, just to help them feel looked after and a little bit special during the day. Here is a school that has crystal clear moral purpose. They have a principled and committed leader who has a plan based on evidence of what works for its pupils and it is enacted by a similarly principled staff, driven to act with commitment towards the same, shared goal. I suspect it is like this in most good schools across the country.
What followed was somewhat different.
Dr Tim Leunig is the Department of Education’s Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Analyst and as such is at the heart of government. Responsible for marshalling the many and varied forms of evidence that flood into the Department that helps to create sensible, evidence based, well thought through policy decisions.
Stop Laughing!
He was quite the turn. He cogently presented evidence on the statistics behind the underperformance nationally and regionally of disadvantaged groups. He utilised his well-honed skills of presentation that his day job (Associate Professor of Economic history at the LSE) have given him. He made lots of jokes and had the place rolling with self-deprecating bluff and bluster humour. It was all very entertaining.
It was what happened after he had finished his presentation and courageously (or stupidly) invited questions from the floor, which really irked me. So much so that I’ve had to write this blog to vent my spleen. Like an earworm, his throw away comment in response to my question is going round, round in my head, and reveals what is rotten at the heart of education policy development in government.
With a flourish Dr Leunig finished his exposition on evidence informed policy and declared that we could now ask him anything we wanted to ‘Go on ask me anything you like, it’s not often you get a DfE official captive and saying that is it. Ha! Go on ask away!’
You should always ask questions at these opportunities. Sometimes you get surprising answers.
At a Politics in Education conference in London at the height of the fallout from the Gove era, when Sam Freedman (now Executive Director of TeachFirst and then Gove’s right hand policy advisor) also asked for questions from the floor, I asked him about the reality of education policy development.
Expecting a guarded answer I was surprised at his openness (he had resigned at this point and Gove had moved on). I paraphrase: Ministers have all of the power. Special advisors collect evidence at the request of the minister. Ideas flow into the department from all sorts of sources such as when a minister visits a school, has a talk to a mate down a pub, someone makes special representation or a researcher finds a ‘hot’ idea and comes up with someone who probably knows something about it.
In the Gove era when the ‘Blob’ was under attack, woe betide any idea, which had a university academic behind it. He agreed it was very much a ‘whatever was hot at that moment’ with very little thought through long term strategy or principle at work.
In my lingo that translates to ‘wheeze of the week’ policy design.
So back to the good Dr Leunig. Microphone in hand I asked this question. “We have been warned this morning to validate research claims before we take action based on it, in our schools – I absolutely agree with that. However, that criticism was also levelled at [the Department] for selling us the wheeze of the week based on research that may well not have had that good judgement applied to it. Can you comment?”
Without missing a beat he launched straight back at me like the practiced civic servant he is ‘well give me an example. What specifically are you talking about?’
Momentarily flummoxed by his rapid repost, all of the things I could have picked – Primary Assessment changes, Reception Baseline Assessment, funding formula, disappearance of levels, appearance of SPAG to ‘help’ creative writing, disappearance of SPAG at KS1, progress 8, 4 or is it 5? Teacher training allocations, vocational qualifications out…then in again, the forced academies proposal… flew out of my mind. Then a colleague came to the rescue and shouted ‘grammar schools!’.
And he was off, defending with consummate skill the indefensible. It was like watching a Sir Humphrey Appleton (Yes Minister) master class. He twisted and turned the evidence, defended tenuous research as fact, even the lack of evidence became good evidence and then he uttered this sentence.
‘Of course I’m a civil servant I will justify and defend the grammar school proposal as this is the will of the Minister if that changed I would just as happily argue for them to be scrapped.’
I’m not naïve, I know this is how politics and the civil service has always worked (since 1855 to be exact when Gladstone set out to prevent patronage between civil servants and ministers), but that does not make it right. At least it should not prevent us from questioning if this approach is really allowing proper reasoned debate to occur about the future development of our education system. I don’t mind arguing with someone with completely opposing views if they are passionate about it and believe what they say. It doesn’t stop them being wrong. But I respect it.
However coming from a profession where the teaching of integrity and principles is at the heart of what we do, it is alien and shocking to me when I am brought face to face with political game players and their morally vacuous attitudes. It truly seems to me that Government has lost its morality. Children’s futures have become nothing more than a casualty of the political game and I’m, angry about it.
What we need in government now more than ever is more of what they have in Skerne Park. A principled and committed leader who has a plan based on evidence of what works which is enacted by a similarly principled staff equally driven to act with commitment towards the same, shared goal.
Sadly I think we will be waiting a long time.