The Mad World of Progress
Definition: movement to an improved or more developed state
Our lives in schools are dominated by the need for children to progress against a narrow set of criteria all linked to academic achievement. This is to be demonstrated as the measurable demonstration of improvement as shown by assessment in reading, writing and maths. I could digress here about how assessment without levels is likely to impact on our understanding of consistent measurability but I’ll not go there.
Over the years increasingly we have been forced to direct our professional lives along the concept that only academic success will prove that we are doing the best for the pupils. Teachers’ careers stand or fall by the achievement of the children in their class and Head Teachers become failures because of academic outcome and what Ofsted says. Like football managers, they disappear into some never never land of “the missing”, presumably to lick their wounds and rebuild a shattered self esteem.
Oh how this focus on results makes me despair, clearly I am a total failure, apparently lacking aspiration for my pupils and only too easily pleased by the progress I see in so many other ways. But I am not willing to accept that. I think I have bucket loads of aspiration and I am ecstatic when I see real progress such as that in the children leaving last summer, some of whom were never, not in a million years going to reach age related expectations and for whom even the two levels plus expectation is a mountain bigger than Everest.
So what makes me thrilled: well it was a particularly challenged group socially, emotionally and academically last year but when they left the heartfelt thanks of the parents told us all we need to know about children’s progress. There was the boy who spent all of Year 3 struggling to deal with just being in the building, his Autism causing his anxiety to reach dizzy heights, but when he came with us to Derwent Hill in Year 6 I knew that my staff had made the difference in his life as he had gone through stepping stones of full days’ full weeks, staying for lunch, going on trips, building friendships. Or what about the child from one of those families your non teaching friends barely accept exist: You know, not enough beds for people in the family, not enough food on the table, Dad stealing and selling the Christmas presents on Christmas Eve for booze money , sexual abuse, ten social workers in five years and massive behaviour problems as a result – who is the constant in his life? Well we are and he did fantastically well to not be excluded, to reach his academic targets, to transfer to secondary school and to be coping with life. He is my vision of success.
I could go on and so could you because we all care so much and can picture the children that are our successes but does that float the Ofsted boat. Sadly not because they are going to sit at a desk and risk assess our capacity to be a successful school by looking at progress data alone.
I have colleagues in outstanding schools who inherited that grade, never believed it and want to be judged against their own progress, but a civil servant says the school is a success; really how do they know? Everywhere I have worked success has been the often immeasurable knowledge that we have changed a life for the better and given hope for abetter future.
So how much does a level 5 (old language, I know) matter to your life chances in Year 6? Actually not one bit because a huge proportion of pupils will accelerate their learning in the direction they need when they know what they want.
How much does the progress of your class or school affect your life chances: massively if you want a successful career in education. No wonder there is temptation to bend rules and stretch results.
What did you do today to make you feel proud? I thought about the children who made the most fantastic progress and not one of them was in my thought purely because of academic success.
Hilary Cooper is Head Teacher at Barnes Junior School