A Principled view

The human genome is a remarkable set of instructions that assists in enabling us humans to live in many climates, on many foodstuffs and to survive the predations of disease organisms large and small.  We know a vast amount about the human genome now, thanks to the amazing work of scientists across the globe, and Nobel prizes abound in the science of genetics.

We also know a very great deal about gene expression, and that work precedes our work on
the genome by a century. The Monk Gregor Mendel introduced the science of genetics through his work on pea plants in the 1850/60s, and over the subsequent 100 years we have learned a vast amount about how genes code for our many and various inherited characteristics. What Mendel and others never found out was t
hat we have way more instructions in our genome than we have cause to use. The genes are switched on (expressed) and off (silenced) by a whole host of environmental factors, and this has become increasingly importance in recent years this century as nutrition experts link the vital importance of diet to human health. An obvious example to give is that of alcohol tolerance; the gene that enables us to tolerate and digest alcohol is switched on and off dependent upon the presence of alcohol in our diet. Peanut and other worrying allergies do not seem to develop if very young children are exposed regularly to such foods during weaning.  When dieticians are asked “What’s the best food to eat?”, the best answer in reply is “Eat the rainbow!” – in other words, browse on the whole set of food stuffs and you can’t go wrong.

The ability of humans to process information, be that visual , auditory, tactile, through movement or taste is developed in the same ways. Wine or tea tasting are sets of skills developed around specific food stuffs. Great photographers and artists are fundamentally at home with the tools of their trade. Our latest sporting hero, Danny Willett, winner of the Masters 2016 and wearer of the Green jacket learned his golfing trade the hard way through endless practice, an appetite for hard work and a resolute competitive edge. And we know that as adults age and cease to use all of their mental faculties, their ability to process new information rapidly declines. Reintroduce physical and mental activities to a willing student and those signs of old age rapidly disappear.

Inevitably in education, the same is true. A balanced educational diet is essential to ensure children develop the best they can be.  And the diet really does need to be of the rainbow quality throughout the early, primary and secondary years, because we simply don’t know where our future lies in this uncertain world (which has been uncertain for decades by the way).  Here’s a 1940’s video from the states, extolling the virtues of the new progressive, hands-on education arising to provide America with the enquiring minds it needed for the new technological world arriving at the time.

Since this film was made, some 70 years have passed, and governments in the developed world have tinkered again and again with their educational provision, trying to industrialise it sufficiently well to ensure it gets the key workers in every discipline it needs to provide their country with an economic advantage over their competitors. The most successful countries, such as Singapore and Finland have worked out that ‘streaming’ and ‘testing’ are not going the bring the outcomes they are looking for. Breadth, diversity and depth, with the learners in control as much of the time as the teacher can make available are the ways forward.

As important as the content is, it’s the approach that matters more. Children are their best teachers and aids for their friends, from the age of 4 or 5. Here’s one of the more famous examples of the power of peer advice, Austin’s butterfly, from 2012 which exemplifies all that is best in how peer support works.  A school of 500 may have 50 teachers on the staff list, and all will feel stretched beyond bearing if they have to teach everything.  The reality is that such a school has 50+500 teachers, and the power that can be brought to bear when 550 support learning in a supportive way is evidenced by the great schools of our land.

So, this coming Summer term in Claires Court, we’ll continue to teach the rainbow of course;  we’ll look out for new colours we have yet to appreciate and we’ll aim to deploy everyone of us, from age 3 to 86 years of age to teach – and hopefully we’ll keep our learning genes switched on, and find a few more that have not yet been deployed!

At the end of my Sixth Form days, L.P.Hartley’s book, ‘The Go-between’, was made into a stunning film with its stars being the adorable Julie Christie and Alan Bates, adults in secret love linked by Leo Colston, their child messenger (the go-between) played by Dominic Guard.  I have seen the film quite a few times, but it’s the book’s opening lines that stay with me:

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

The story is set in pre-first world war England, when the upper class seldom sullied their hands, and is told by the now aged adult go-between as he recalls the events of his childhood.  The book really ought to be on everyone’s top 100 books for their desert island; we are all affected and repressed in some way by our childhood experiences and in the solitude of an Island life, we would be able to reflect upon the ‘what might have beens!’

As I write, Brussels is in lock down, and terrorist mayhem has been wrought upon innocent civilians at airport and train station.  If for no other reason than security, the borders of Europe are being closed, and plans to return hundreds of thousands of refugees back to the middle east are in an advanced stage of preparation. Our own political masters are at each others throats; this week’s multi shambles of a budget bringing the chancellor into disrepute, and has a secretary of state for work and pensions departing into the back-benches of parliament to fight his other cause ‘Brexit’.  We are now 100 days to the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, in which those who have a vote can shape our future very differently if they so wish.

In the same budget, George Osborne announced that all state schools were to become academies* by 2020, breaking completely the control that local authorities have had over our schools since the Education act of 1944 when secondary education became free in state schools. Whilst the majority of secondary schools are already academies, most primary schools are not, and the country simply does not have the expertise to fragment this junior provision whilst protecting the rights of those most vulnerable who cannot protect themselves. The chancellor said that the government’s goal was “to complete this schools revolution and help every secondary school become an academy” with power being in the hands of heads and teachers, “not bureaucrats”.

Given that we are in the middle of the largest simultaneous shake-up of public examinations, to be completed by 2018, this means that the entire English primary and secondary system is being turned on its head, fragmented and ‘rebranded’.  This is being done to ‘improve’ our education system.  The first results that will permit us to measure whether this change has worked won’t come out until 2025, and full evidence not until the 2020-25 cohorts are all the way through, meaning 2030.  Since the current government has a mandate until 7 May 2020, if they last this parliament that is, then I can honestly predict the educational landscape for the next 15 years is set to become the Wild West, in which anything can happen and probably will. I am not the only one that thinks this will be sad.

Back in November, all Roy Perry, the Conservative leader of Hampshire county council and chairman of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, could say was ‘If government were to say there is no role for local government in education that would be a sad day. I hope this does not become a political issue. Within Conservative-controlled councils we see ourselves as having a very positive and important role in education’.  This week  Fasna,  the body which represents self-governing schools and academies, questioned whether there was capacity to “execute that policy effectively”. I am sure they are right to challenge their masters, because the data shows that only 1 in 3 of academy schools are as good as they need to be, roughly in line with the LA average.

Though I suspect Christ’s resurrection story and the promise of redemption is the way to go for most of us, it’s time for my uplifting Easter message. I have become mindful of the acceleration of time in recent years, when everything is done for a purpose, a next step on our travels, which are often more ambitious and extensive than yesteryear. We are not workshy privileged adults from the past, playing games in a world where the harsh realities of life are far away. But we can at least recognise the need to find time to take a rest, to play around, enjoy our families and friends and have some fun, so please do.  You might even get a film out. The BBC remade the Go-between last year – I can’t source the movie but Youtube has a great trailer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzVQhJ9Eyy4 , and as the film also has Jim Broadbent (the old Leo), it’s worth the watch just for the opening sequence in which he speaks ““The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

Do enjoy the Easter break, I will!

*P.S. Since writing this blog, ‘mumsnet’ has gone bonkers about the prospect of academisation;  in conservative party terms, this is spelled ‘a-cayman-isation’ – it appears that  Mr Cameron’s close friends are ‘trousering’ the real estate and off-shoring the nation’s educational assets into a tax haven.

When the Varkey Gems Foundation first announced the ‘Global Teacher Prize‘ in 2014, I for one was a little underwhelmed by the prospect. Given the nature of the world in crisis I thought, why focus on ‘teachers’ rather than perhaps peace makers or refugee workers. But the concept has grown on me, because it has undoubtedly surfaced huge differences in what makes a great teacher across the world, and has caused my profession to look more carefully at the devil in the detail.

There have been 2 winners so far, Nancie Atwell (English teacher, Maine, USA) in 2015 and Hanan Al Hroub (Primary specialist in supporting children traumatised by violence, West Bank, Palestine).  Their stories, and those of the other finalists can be read here, and the work more generally of the Global Education & Skills Forum here.

Sunny Varkey and his family have a huge business in schools, based in the middle East, known as GEMS Education, with some satellites around the world, including 5 schools and a nursery here in the UK. The philanthropic foundation chose to set up the annual Global Education & Skills Forum, and have funded it really well, UNESCO and the UAE support it and their lead speakers over the last 4 years have been out of the very top drawer. Pope Francis announced this year’s winner by video link, and Hanan Al Hroub’s supporters were able to watch live on the big screen in Ramallah.

There are some really key features that the finalists have in common; passion for learning, focus on the children and their outcomes, willingness to innovate and challenge, and really willing to share their work widely. And if you don’t believe me, read on – headlines include ‘space elevators’, ‘distance learning across the globe’, ‘refugee schools’, ‘maker culture for literature and films’, ‘free maths teaching videos for all’ , ‘social justice programmes for sex trafficked children’ and so forth.  Clearly none of the finalists set out to win this prize, and many of their personal life stories are quite extraordinary. For example, Robin Chaurasiya helped organise a successful campaign to change US armed forces policy after being forced to leave her position as an Air Force officer because of her sexuality. She changed profession, moved to Mumbai in India, and works within an NGO called ‘Kranti’ (Revolution) empowering marginalised girls in Mumbai’s red light district to become agents of social change.

Winning the prize does not mean the teachers can leave what they re doing – far from it, it secures their employment in their setting for the next 5 years!  Interesting to note that last year’s winner, the most amazing English teacher in the backwoods of Maine,  Nancie Atwell donated her prize to her school and their work to disseminate her innovative teaching methods.  And what’s fantastic is that the methods used by both winners are spreading across the world more rapidly because of the fame this prize has brought. Atwell’s pupils read an average of 40 books a year and probably write as many, such education providing a real antidote to the anti-academic nature of rural life in Maine.

More generally, the Varkey Foundation’s work is doing amazing things in creating thousands of new teachers in countries where they are in really short supply. Cutting to the chase, when teaching can make such a difference to children’s lives, sometimes 4 years training is a tad too long; they have developed an impressive 5 day intensive training programme for school leaders in Uganda.  Through working together, potential school leaders are empowered to break the ‘learn these facts rote learning’ mould and enable teachers and pupils to take responsibility for their learning and personalise it to fit needs and circumstance.

So the cynic in me has gone, to be replaced by a real sense of wonder that along side Messi, Adele, Brad Pitt and Jamie Oliver to name but 4 random celebrities renowned for their craft, we now have have some superstars of our own at whose work we can marvel and admire. Here at Claires Court we have some superstars of our own of course, but I suspect not yet any who have had the stretch and reach of the GTP finalists to date.  The thing is though, prizes are not what brought any of us into Education, but what such competitions have done, as indeed the Oscars before for so much longer, is find some unsung heroes and place them centre stage, for their work, for their craft and for the passionate endeavour which they bring to their work every day. And that’s a lesson for all in schools, be they adults or children – worth perhaps the spending of a million dollars!

Published today is a defining report published by ISC on the value added that independent schools offer by the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at the University of Durham. As a school, we have been using CEM centre benchmarking tools since the early 1990s, and right from the start at Reception age, we are able to ‘benchmark’ our children’s abilities using CEM centre tools.

Using PIPS though Key Stages 1 and 2 , our teachers are provided with an annual assessment in maths, literacy and developed ability and a prediction of progress.

In addition during the early years, we also use CEM centre’s suite of diagnostic tools known as InCAS, which provides detailed, age related  information and recommendations as the children progress through each year of education to age 11.

From age 11, we switch to CEM centres secondary suite of tools, starting with MidYIS for ages 12, 13 and 14, make use of YELLIS for Year 10 and 11, and on entry into the Sixth Form, we make use of the grandaddy tool of them all, ALIS, which assist in giving predictions for A level performance, using either developed ability scores (IQ to the lay person) or based on prior GCSE achievement.

So what does 25 years of experience using CEM centre tools bring to our provision at Claires Court. First and foremost, on average over the 25 years, we seem to improve children’s GCSE grades on average by just over half a grade, once the prior academic ability, deprivation, student’s gender, single sex and compositional variable are taken into account. In short, we match the Independent Sector’s average.  This difference equates to a gain of about two years’ normal progress and suggests that attending an independent school is associated with the equivalent of two additional years of schooling by the age of 16. Interpreting the difference on the scale of international PISA outcomes equates it to raising the UK’s latest PISA 2 results to be above the highest European performers, such as Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and on a par with (or close to) countries such as Japan and Korea.

The thing is, we don’t just use the tools to give us selves a pat on the back. We use them to ‘diagnose’ each child’s skills, and in conjunction with other tools such as the Suffolk Reading test, then set about designing a child’s programme of study so that those weaknesses observed are given close support. The curricular programmes always include making use of different approaches to learning, such that everyone is always learning and making progress. I write this blog at the end of February, and next week we have 3 days of specialist intervention work with Year 8 (boys this time), building with them confidence in using summarising and flagging tools.

The really important thing we know about developing a child’s set of skills and talents is to focus on what needs improving, and not to attach blame around the process.  The  most important word for children to learn is ‘YET’. I can’t manage long division YET – which leaves the child open to the concept that they will get there soon.

CEM centre’s report is a really important one to read, but what it does not report is that we already know the national picture for the cognitive mindset of 11 and 12 year olds is looking bleak. I wrote about this almost 2 years ago in April 2014:

“New research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and conducted by Michael Shayer, Professor of applied psychology at King’s College, University of London, concludes that 11- and 12-year-old children in year 7 are “now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago”, in terms of cognitive and conceptual development”.  

As many of those who work with me at Claires Court know, I am deeply concerned that the current DfE trajectory is making a bad situation worse for its schools. Changing all the public exams in the country all at once, making all those public examinations harder at a rate of change that teachers cannot keep up with is already threatening strike action from headteachers for Key stage 1 and 2 in state primary schools. Just last month, the expected standard for Year 6 children in English were published. Instead of setting the bench mark at a (old) level 4, the suggestion is that it will be set at (old) mid level 5. This is the academic standard of a good Year 8 child. Today’s TES carries the bleakest of warnings from Russell Hobby, the leader of the largest of the 2 headteacher associations, the NAHT.

‘Education faces a crisis of measurement due to dramatic exam and assessment reform, and as a result we will make bad decisions, invest in the wrong initiatives, punish the wrong schools and make inaccurate statements about the performance of regions.’

Anyway, let’s get back to the good news for those whose education is set within the Independent Sector. International research, validated by one of the world’s most experienced educational institute has confirmed this week that children at whatever age in those independent schools that have chosen to use CEM centre tools to baseline,

Eleanor Wood

monitor and evaluate the educational provision are doing as well as the best performing countries  in the world. And in addition, we are demonstrating in so many other ways that our children go on to excel in later life. Here’s the Sutton Trust research on the success our sector enjoys in the Arts. Current former Claires Court people to watch: Matt Polley, lead singer of The Wild Lies, actor Ali Bastian, video editor Rupert Houseman, Film director Toby Hefferman and author Eleanor Wood.  This is not a story about privilege and silver spoon upbringing, but of diligent investment by parents (of finance) and teachers (of skills and pedagogy) and of the individuals concerned just keeping going when every sane person would have given up.

And not being judged and told that they were not good enough…but learning the lesson that they are not good enough YET!

The full quote by Professor Dame Carol Black is: “If you’re leading an organisation, your job is to guide it, care for it, protect it as best you can and try to make sure good things happen to it.”  She is Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and is a special adviser to the Department of Health and Public Health England. She is also Chair of the Board of the Nuffield Trust, the health policy think tank. She is only the second woman to be President of the Royal College of Physicians. I listened to her on Desert Island discs last week and was riveted by what she had to say about health in the workplace. http://goo.gl/1bmXzn 

I love her recall of her early life in Barwell, Leicestershire: “Perhaps my earliest achievement was to defy limited family expectations – I was meant  to stay living in my hometown and work in a shoe factory or a shop, but I had a stubborn belief that more was possible.” And Dame Carol has done so much more that ‘stay at home’. Even now in her ’70s, she runs 3 miles every day and travels the world. I hope the children in our school seek such challenges as well.

She makes it clear that if we wish to have a healthy workplace, the employer and their line managers need to care, be positive about their colleagues and provide good coverage for both medical and mental health issues that might arise. This chimes very well with the planning work our medical staff and I are on currently. We have full first aid cover and nursing advice on all 3 sites throughout the week, and in our well qualified nurses we have an extraordinary resource of which perhaps we could make even better use.

For example, whilst we have HPV2 vaccinations arranged for our girls in Year 8 for 19 April, as yet our boys are not provided with the same opportunity to acquire immunity to this killer disease. I quote from the NHS website: “All girls aged 12 to 13 are offered HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination as part of the NHS childhood vaccination programme. The vaccine protects against cervical cancer.” As we hope all of our pupils are going to be ambitious with their careers, and at least travel some part way around the world, inoculating boys against HPV2 looks a smart idea. As much as half the UK population will be infected during their lifetime, so ensuring the 50% that are male are vaccinated will not just reduce overall infection rates, but also ensure that our males in their futures won’t catch and infect others in communities elsewhere in the world who are less well served than our children.  And it not just other that are likely to be protected – plenty of other human cancers look as though they are stimulated by HPV viruses and we are learning all the time about these other forms of cancer.

It’s not just physical health either that schools are concerned by, as many regular readers will know. Dr Susan Wimshurst is our visiting clinical psychologist, charged with providing both advice and support across all sites. Dr Wimshurst visits twice a term, and in addition we have full triage facilities with her practice at Everlief, so we can seek urgent support really quite rapidly. For our country, this is a real live issue; here’s journalist Dominic Hughes on the matter for the BBC – “Mental health care is so poor and underfunded that “lives are being ruined”, a review in England says. The report, by a taskforce set up by NHS England, said too many people were getting no help or inadequate care.” Watch more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35576774

Anyway, back to Dame Carol. “I was very bad at taking risks with my working life – for the first 50 years, I was not very good at that!”

So to us that listen, young or old, that’s a mental note for us all – think a little bigger about what we could do next. Oh, and if we lead a business – try to make good things happen!

Just dropped onto my desk is some useful guidance from  the Boarding Schools Association, with regards to the Zika virus, new arrival on the scene as a major health concern across the world. Almost all the major health developments we have seen over the last 200 years have resulted initially from major infrastructure projects that bring drainage, sewage treatment, potable water, appropriate food supplies for all and such like. Alongside the infrastructure build has come vaccinations, for smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough and a litany of others that help protect us just enough to give us both immunity and a healthy immune system.

The effects of Zika are almost Orwellian in their darkness, having little effect on the adult but disastrous effects on the unborn child. Now the link between Zika virus and microcephaly is not proven as yet, but the circumstantial evidence is worryingly close. The placenta is the most amazing organ, protecting the unborn child from a very great deal of ‘junk’ in the mother’s bloodstream, but it does seem as though the smallest particulate life-form known to man can makes it way through and cause irreparable damage.

It’s worth noting that the arrival of penicillin and the other antibiotics has given us breathing space of about seventy years before the bacteria have found a way of growing resistance to them – suddenly we are back to basics, requiring fantastic sterile techniques to ensure we can secure operating theatres and sick bays from such superbugs. It’s interesting to note that some cancers have found a way of by-passing the chemicals designed to obliterate them in like manner, but due to the amazing work of the Royal Marsden and major research centres in the states, we are learning how to stimulate the body’s own immune system to fight active cancer cells. This pioneer work is perhaps 20 years old now, accelerating over the last 3, and is bit by bit making a huge difference to some of the most invasive cancers we know, such as Melanoma.

To summarise part 1 of this blog; thank goodness we have public health and research and medicine and all that medical jazz, without which many of us would not have made it through to now. However the dangers are real and ever present, and we need to be vigilant and show no complacency. Probably the most amazing thing of all is that not only can humans consciously do something to make the world healthier, but their body immune systems can as well, unconsciously. It’s how we are built.

Todd Rose is the Director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His book, The End of Average has just been published (£20, Allen Lane) and it’s a ripping 196 page-turning read. Daniel Pink, a man who most in the world take really seriously about what motivates us to succeed writes this on the back cover of the book “Todd Rose has taken the latest findings from a new era of science, the science of the individual, to show that our one-dimensional understanding of achievement has seriously underestimated human potential. This book is readable, enlightening, and way above average…”

U.S. National archives/The Associated Press File photo

Don’t get me wrong, I love the book. Everything in it we already try to deploy within Claires Court. The science behind the book is this: Try as hard as you like, there is nothing that fits average. If you measure the dimensions of 15,000 women across 9 measures, and create an ‘normal’ woman, you’ll not find one whose normal. If you measure 140 dimensions of 4000 USAF air force fighter pilots and create an average, the number that match the average is a big fat zero.
You can read the fascinating detail of these late 1940s studies here in the Toronto star.

I have always feared that the concept of equal opportunity is deeply flawed, as this really well-known cartoon shows. If only everyone was a monkey, climbing trees would be a breeze. And for humans, equal opportunity works until gender, nationality, colour, money, privilege kicks in. Despite us liberals’ best efforts, social mobility is worse now than ever before. And the main reason why of course is that we expect everybody to fit a set of rules that have become harder and harder to fit. So instead of seeking equality of opportunity, we need to concentrate on equality of fit; as there is no such thing as average, we’ll never create children to match a one-size fits-all template.

There is a lot written about building resilience in children so that they can experience the slings and arrows of education and social pressures without suffering. Honestly, we have this right now within the greatest nursery school and family settings. Ideal is 5 mornings of social educative play, coupled with 5 afternoons of more personal contact in smaller groups, ideally with a loving parent.  We can substitute the latter by ensuring the afternoon context of nursery is not the same as the morning, but the development of close relationships between child and adult homemaker are essential. It is extraordinary in so many schools just how quickly the child’s socialisation has to become a fit for very tight boundaries of compliance. In the wrong kind of classroom, things can go very slowly indeed. As a wordpress friend, Edna Sackson writes in her blog today, “How much time do you spend shushing twenty-four children while one child speaks?”  There’s no need to run a class where the vast majority of learners are inactive and learning how to do nothing.

Giant footprints at CC

Children need expressive arts as part of their diet, they need sport and physical education, they need to paint and draw and create and above all do things that enable them to explore, take risks, do things differently and through those experiences and failures find out the things they can do really well.  And amazingly as all we adults know, since every adult is unique, if they have unique skills and talents to match, then they’ll

Spell making at CC

always thrive in our society.  But what happens if their school life does not give them this diverse diet?  Does it really matter, so long as they get the grades to make the next step in their education?  Surely a bit of tough love, straight and narrow education never hurt anyone in their formative years?

So here’s the scientific evidence from the USAF study on pilot ‘fit’. As planes rolled off the production line, the cockpit was fitted out to the dimensions of ‘average pilot size’, and the pilots were made to fit the plane. And of course, since no-one actually was the average size, the ‘fit’ was not great. As the demands got tougher, the job got harder in the dawn of jet-powered aviation.  The planes were faster and more complicated to fly, the problems with handling them were so frequent and involved so many different aircraft that the air force had an alarming, life-or-death mystery on its hands. At its worst, on one day 17 pilots were killed. Once their researcher, Lt. Gilbert S. Daniels was put on the case, his findings were clear: Daniels published his findings in a 1952 Air Force Technical Note entitled The “Average Man”? In it, he contended that if the military wanted to improve the performance of its soldiers, including its pilots, it needed to change the design of any environments in which those soldiers were expected to perform. The recommended change was radical: the environments needed to fit the individual rather than the average.

Not only did the USAF listen and change, so did every other engineering industry as well. Imagine what it would  be like to drive your car with the seat and steering wheel settings at the opposite end of your fit. Imagine being too low in the seat and having to drive at high speed through chicanes? You’d stop at once, rather than risk life and limb.

Well one industry in the Western World has chosen not to follow the scientific evidence base, and that is Education. There are institutional outriders such as Claires Court, where the sheer longevity and commitment of teaching staff to do ‘the right things the right way’ means we work to fit the school to the child, and we know how to do that now to the ‘nth degree. But in the mainstream, sadly, the industrialisation of education and the short-termism of ministerial tenure has changed the focus toward narrow assessment and teaching to the test. Another american researcher, this one from the sixties, John Holt discovered for children that which Daniels discovered a decade earlier for pilots. There is no such thing as average, so teaching children so they can achieve an average mark is doomed to failure. Together with his colleague, Bill Hull, Holt moved the emphasis on his teaching to concepts and active learning, and spotted that the ‘better’ students were solely those who were able to forget what they had learned after the test rather than before. Wikipedia covers John Holt’s work really well, as of course did all the teacher training colleges back in the day … until they were shut down in the ’90s in favour of short-and-sharp post-graduate work-place learning where success has been monetised by performing to the test and rising your school up the performance tables.

The health of our children is the most precious of things to our parents, as it was in the fifties.  Whilst in the USAF there were of course plenty of pilots who did survive flying their machines, so many men ‘crashing and burning’ was too high a cost to bear. Likewise now in 2016, whilst the epidemic of adolescent mental health problems continues to escalate across the country, we can still see plenty of signs that students are doing well at school, passing their exams and getting the best jobs. Of course like the pilots, some can cope, but the cost to our society is unacceptable. Current experts in childhood mental health, such as Professors Tanya Byron and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore bang on about this time and again. Children need a massive balance between play, education and nurture, and the ‘fit’ needs to be ‘personal’. This choice to wrap education around the child is a mindset, which dedicated professional teaching staff know. Tailoring to the child works best. And even government knows this: “Every child matters!”

And guess what, not only will children grow in every sense of the word consciously, engaged with their school and education and mastering the most complex of skills, with lots of effort and quite a lot of failing too along the way. And that broad diet of work shaped around their needs means that their unconscious health is looked after as well. They develop the resilience to their mental health as much as they do with their immune system. Amazingly, it’s how we are built.

Alternatively, you can believe in what our Ministers for Education feel about educational ‘fit’.

The “purpose of education” is to enable people to read academic texts and appreciate the theatre.

Schools minister Nick Gibb

Across the Educational nation as I write, secondary teachers and administrators alike are wrestling with the almost impossible task of migrating GCSE courses measured in letter grades A-G to new programmes of study measured using a 1 to 9 scale.

To the lay person, it looks quite straightforward. But the letter-based qualifications are based on syllabi which are withdrawn at close of 2017, and the new number-measured syllabi are expected to be harder, contain much more to be learned and recalled by rote, and are certainly very different in assessment approach from their predecessors.  The read-across is not really quite straightforward.  Some subjects currently have a blend of tests during the 2 years (controlled assessments) coupled with an end of course exam.  Others have substantial coursework instead, plus the terminal exam.  Either way, during the 2 years of study, pupils and teachers share feedback from the exam board on how well they are doing. Additional efforts can occur to improve controlled assessment outcomes. This is the current normal way things are done and basically have been so for almost 30 years. With effect from 2017 in English and Maths, and from 2018 in most other subjects, all assessment will occur at the end of the 2 years.  This is how things were back prior to the Summer 1987, the last years of the old O Levels and CSEs.

As an additional test for us all, currently a grade C is regarded as a good pass. For the new grades, a good pass is a level 5, though a C mark range falls down to a level 4.  No one will know what a 5 will look like until it happens – because we are guaranteed there will be the same number of level 4s and above as there grade Cs and above. We can estimate about 10% of the pupil population currently gaining a Grade C won’t get a level 5, so inevitably Results in the nation will get worse.  

“Education Secretary Nicky Morgan says raising the bar on GCSE exams will help pupils achieve in life.” BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33139954 

And each individual school is having to translate the challenge for its teachers, parents and pupils. Quite understandably, confidence in the Education examination process is not perhaps as solid as it once was.  For most younger English parents, their experience of secondary school included valuable opportunities for coursework marks to be included together with the results from terminal examinations in their final GCSE grades at 16+. Since 1988, our examinations have been built around the premise that children’s learning should be assessed through the measurement of what they know, understand and can do not just in tests but in a variety of ways.  Now we have that new exam, harder and more of them at the end of the 2 years.

The trouble is, none of us know what any of the levels look like. For those seeking a pass, they can’t see what a level 4 or level 5 looks like, given that the ‘mark’ is going to come from an assessment measure yet to be designed and tested.

As it happens, the DfE is quite worried about this, so schools are to be required to subject some of their year 11 pupils to take reference exams in English and Maths in March prior to their Easter break. As Claires Court will be participating in the GCSE process, some of our Year 11s will be randomly picked by DfE to take part in this exercise. The pupils will get no feedback from this reference test, and won’t know what it looks like, but at least the DfE will capture some benchmark data on how some children in their GCSE year are performing more generally in English and Maths.  I can foresee parents writing sick notes as I scribe just now.

Have I mentioned that all the A levels are changing as well?  Since 2002, we have had a well organised system of modular assessments between age 16 and 18, that mimic the way Universities assess and how actually best learning happens.  For the country, it’s been a stunning success, though we did have to reduce the number of resits and lose January modules. In the new programme, the subject is to be studied for 2 years, with the only assessment happening at the end.  It is true that you can take exams after one year of study, but the way of questioning and assessment is different and any marks gained won’t count. We are keeping the letter grades though. There’s a comfort.

What is really worrying about the whole reinvention of the entire secondary examination system in England all at the same time, is that no-one in their right mind would choose to do such a thing. It’s completely insane. Teacher work load has gone through the roof, and the drop out rate from the profession is at an all time high, just when the population of school-age children is exponentially growing and we need 10% more teachers than ever before. For the next few years, almost all our understanding of what makes for sensible external assessment for employers and universities has been set adrift, with only the lightest of life-lines to a previous shore.

Here at Claires Court, we have chosen to switch a number of our subjects to the iGCSE, which is already understood and benchmarked appropriately. Whilst iGCSE grades will migrate to numbers in 2018, we can predict what incremental levels of improvement are needed to gain that tougher level 5. Sadly for the 93% of schools in the state sector, they have been forbidden to use this iGCSE approach, and inevitably 10% of children who currently pass are going to fail.  Remember Mrs Morgan’s words:

“Raising the bar on GCSE exams will help pupils achieve in life.”

Remember Mr Wilding’s words

“Insane.”

I regard the annual DfE publication of results as a remarkable example of misinformation about school performance and travesty of what schools set out to achieve for their pupils.  It gives rise to a genuine feeling amongst educationalists that the DfE is now promoting a new discipline, that of Agnatology, which is defined as the deliberate spread of ignorance to obfuscate and misinform.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools (Ofsted) makes this clear this week in his speech on vocational education in response to the Centre Forum think tank proposals to raise education standards.  He argued that it is a “moral imperative as well as an economic one that we do something now to change direction”.  At present, Sir Michael states that  the education system in England does not offer enough opportunities for those who do not succeed at GCSEs. “The statistics show that those who fail to achieve the required grades in maths and English at 16 make little or no progress in further education colleges two years later. Preparation for employment remains poor and careers guidance in both schools and colleges is uniformly weak.” (BBC website)

For schools that cover a broad ability intake such as Claires Court, we work with our pupils and parents to ensure they achieve the very best short and long term outcomes. The focus for many will be the Ebacc mix of English, Maths, the Sciences, a humanity and an MFL.  Political chicanery has caused such uncertainty in English and Maths that we have moved to include international GCSEs in our mix of qualifications, yet these outcomes are not included in national league tables .  Moreover, our purpose is to develop the broad and diverse skill base of our pupils, be they in Arts, Drama, Sports or Technologies, not just a narrow academic range that suits a government narrative, and which may be better assessed via BTEC than A level. And all of this is really well supported by high quality careers advice and personal profiling from age 11.

If we only focus on Ebacc subjects, then we deny our pupils access to those disciplines that they must begin to specialise in at age 14 or below, those regarded as vocational and more practical skills-based, if they are going to develop the ‘crafts’ well enough to succeed.  Our Sixth Form range including Arts, Business, the technologies (Design, Food, Information, Materials and Music/Media/Photography) and a strong take up in Physical Education and Sports. We cannot achieve excellence enabling pupils to enter higher education or the world of work aged 18 unless we shape the curriculum to include the acquisition of required specialist skills  during the GCSE years – post 16 is too late.

Sir Michael’s speech also made clear: “There must not be another “false dawn” in improving vocational options and “the country cannot continue to fail half its future”. He warned that vocational training should not be a “dumping ground for the disaffected and cater just for the lower-ability youngsters”.

And there’s the rub. Industries such as Acting, Broadcasting, Music and Sport are being asked to explain why in recent years so many independently educated children have risen to the top. As the career of Andrew Murray shows, it’s early specialisation and lots of very hard work that makes the difference. Claires Court provides the academic education for all, and as appropriate skewed to support their very real abilities and talents. As our former pupil Amber Hill demonstrates so ably, leaving our school aged 16 to pursue her exceptional talent in skeet shooting wasn’t a career choice made then – it was supported lower down in the school such that she could develop all of her talents, not just those of an Ebacc kind. Our former pupils of her generation are now studying at Oxford , Cambridge, the Russell group and broader university mix, pursuing their academic dreams; others are at work, in training or in apprenticeships just as engaged.  Amber will be in Rio at the Olympics this coming Summer, that’s a great headline of course. Not so newsworthy, but as important, so many others are also well on track to realise their dreams, academic and vocational.  Our mantra is not that ‘everyone must win prizes’, but that everyone can aspire and learn to work hard enough to succeed by their own lights.

I also agree with Sir Michael that in previous decades, education more generally was less accountable and failed many.  But let’s not damn all by the same brush, because vocational, college-based education has provided so well for the recovery of talent, particularly in design and music, outspokenly supported as such by Tracey Emin and  Jarvis Cocker.  Remarkable about this period of time in education (the 2010s), is that we can have pupils in education and training simultaneously, and amazing courses under the BTEC umbrella remit and as a result include vocational and academic development in tandem.  By contrast, the relentless focus of DfE on Ebacc, and a matching failure to provide suitable investment in the 14-18 years for the development of high quality vocational options in the state sector is serving the country very badly indeed. DfE have tried too hard; honestly, the changes to the exam system (losing controlled assessments) already wrought had done enough.

As I write, this failure to invest in national vocational education is ‘closing the mines of the very fuels we want*’. For example Ofqual (another agency of government) has required new BTEC programmes to contain a much more rigorous written component as terminal assessment.  What value such terminal exam over written coursework and published project? Moreover, Sir Michael’s call to government to improve technical education must not be ‘spun’ to cover the over 16+ years range only, because actually all the ground work has to be done in the earlier secondary years.  Writing about tennis and shooting is not what Murray and Hill want to do for their country at this stage in their careers – that’s what happens post competition, perhaps in their forties and beyond! And that’s precisely what we see in the careers of Cocker and Emin now, artists for sure, but publishers and commentators to be admired for and attended to.  As a school leader, I have listened to their stories and take heed of the lessons therein; Education generally and the schools that provide same need a better measure of performance that of the DfE ‘filtered’ results tables, from which almost all that is vocational and international has been simply airbrushed away.

*Jarvis Cocker

This blog post summarises my assembly presentation to Senior Boys, itself supported by a Bb-8 and my wife’s light sabre. The Prezi used here –
https://prezi.com/qttpeghrcc-_/
In 1969, when David Bowie released his original versions of ‘Space Oddity’, the first Apollo landings of man on the moon took place.

courtesy hq.nasa.gov

Aged 15, I was inspired by both the science and the music happenings in ways that mark me to this day. Many of the teachers I work with are too young to have been alive when we had the scientific capacity to place men on another planet, let alone the children in my school, whose experience of space excitement is limited to the European Space Station and a virtual reality. The science of interplanetary travel was beyond our comprehension until it actually happened.

What Bowie did was break my understanding of both artistic and human conventions in like manner. Educated in a boarding catholic community of Benedictine Monks for 4 years aged 13 to 18, I had no real understanding of adult choice and regard for others. Bowie’s development of his Glam rock style, the use of clothing, hair colour, make-up and sexual androgeny intoxicated me initially, and then on entry to University, assisted with my self-identification as Liberal democrat and understanding of adult choice with regard to sexuality. Winning election  to the student council at Leicester University, working as a student journalist, charity activist and editor of the Rag Mag ‘Lucifer’ brought me directly into contact with the Gay, Lesbian and Bi community, into direct opposition with the National Front and their racist views, in support of the large Asian community in the city I had chosen to study. Such awakening brought my first real understanding that without immigrant labour, Leicester’s position as Europe’s richest manufacturing city could not have been achieved and maintained.

And this personal growth happened alongside Bowie’s transition in Ziggy Stardust, his blossoming as a world cult, and of course, his deliberate and brave choice to kill Ziggy at his Zenith. That death mask 
of glam rock face slashed by Union Jack creates a striking image of hope, no semblance of fear in our minds; whatever a brit wishes to be, s/he can be.

All through this time, technology marched on. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) heralded the arrival of serious space effects on the big screen and the 1970s became further enriched with computer based special effects and in 1977, shortly after the start of my professional teaching career, Luke Skywalker, Hans Solo and Princess Leia captured the imagination in more than technicolour. My personal journey with computing started when ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ with the ZX80 and 81, hardly machines to capture the imagination of the 21st century child, but at the time provided the first ‘domestic’ way for someone like myself into ‘virtual’ science that inhabits the discipline of computing.

Let’s snap forward to December and January 2015/16. Banksy captures an almost perfect image of Man’s possibilities and inhumanity, when he paints Steve Jobs as Computer Pioneer and Syrian Refugee on a concrete by-pass wall in ‘the Jungle’ in Calais. His bravery as artist to create social commentary, to inspire locally and shame internationally, is unique. For refugees close to the mural, the painting reminds them that from refugee status can come the greatest riches in a single lifetime. For the world, it makes clear that the richest companies are often created by outsiders who have surmounted our prejudice but have repaid the risk multifold times.

Banksy’s celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, conjoining Ziggy’s slash with EII’s face is a striking celebration and affirmation of the legend the monarch has become to us all in his/our lifetime. And what better to match that image against, than the broadcast given at the break of the year by our very own starman, Tim Peake. The British astronaut’s reply to the Queen’s Christmas message is short and sweet, and missed by most of us – please watch that minute of pure patriotism here:

When art forms simply cannot be conceived until they are seen and heard, those that have created such remarkable artifacts deserve all the praise and rewards due them. That’s as true of Job’s remarkable iPhone in terms of form and function as Bowie and Banks music and stencils.

The synthesis of all that is magic, remarkable and of the known world yet set apart from our planet is the European Space Station on which Astronaut Peake hurtles around our world as I write. Overlooking our planet, he can see the beauty and oneness of the home of human kind, and both its power and its vulnerability.

What better to finish this blog off with than the work of Peake’s fellow astronaut, Commander Chris Hadfield, his personal rewrite of David Bowie’s Space Oddity set in the context of his experience on board that same ESA in 2013. The images of our world flashing by, in daylight and night, remind us powerfully of the incredible results that partnership and collaboration  between old enemies USA and USSR can bring. And why not all the other deadly foes in the long term being able to live in such an inspiring way too?

Video here.

That’s where the bravery of Bowie can take us, and where the fearlessness of Banksy challenges us. If not us, who? If not now, when?

Let’s face it, dear reader; if there is an ultimately endearing character from the various space and star wars epics, it’s not Chewbacca, or Hans Solo or even R2D2, is it? Thanks for agreeing with me, because Buzz Lightyear wins hands-down. You don’t know who I am talking about? Right, read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Lightyear, and donate the voluntary £5 as your gift for Christmas. If Jimmy Wales hadn’t have created wikipedia, our lives would be so much the poorer.

Image courtesy of The Walt Disney company

In case you need to revise your knowledge of the greatest space superhero ever (hem, hem), here’s Buzz at his absolute best on another digital cornucopia of delights – YouTube.

The last few posts from the Academic Principal have, it must be said been somewhat serious, perhaps even sombre, understandably. But as I set to put the finishing touches on 2015, I thought I’d share with you some thoughts on which to ponder over Christmas and the New Year.  With Toy Story 4 not due out until 2018, I’ll have to leave Buzz, Woody, Mr Potato Head and gang alone now, and turn your attention to some real live space stars currently in the news.

Image courtesy of the BBC

UK Astronaut, Tim Peake has just landed on the International Space Station, which will be his home for the next 6 months in space. He’s not the first British Astronaut, indeed we have 6 Brits that precede him, but Tim is our first official UK astronaut – Tada! But all live space Telly is fantastic, isn’t it? And through the exploits of living, breathing extra-planetary travellers, we get to believe a little bit more certainly that man is capable of anything. Indeed, as Helen Sharman so obviously demonstrated in 1991, women are even more capable and get things done without as much fuss.

Fast becoming a national treasure, Professor Brian Cox is also all over the telly and radio, partly because of the ISS rocket launch and partly because the media can’t leave him alone. You can catch this hyperactive, extra-special scientist best on Twitter – @ProfBrianCox. What with his live stage show at the Apollo, BBC star gazing live, his broadcasts on the Infinite Monkey Cage, appearances wherever his BBC contract forces him to turn up and then some, it’s a wonder he has time to be a scientist. But he has, and perhaps more than any other scientist of the current generation, he’s made a science career cool, sexy and a happening place to be. 

Many of our secondary staff and pupils will remember the amazing Head of School Partnerships at Discovery Education, Susanne H Thompson who presented our prizes at Speech Day back in September. Discovery were kind enough to create a partner story about our work around creating digital leaders, video here, and since then our work together has moved on considerably.

Head of Boys ICT, Andre Boulton returned from the DENSI camp in Washington, full of new ideas and experiences to share, and represented us at the DENapalooza on HMS Belfast last month, where he was presented with his founding member plaque for the UK Discovery Education Community.

With so many members of staff  now deeply competent in the use of digital technologies, it’s time perhaps for Claires Court to be recognised as fully within the education space as it is by the technology companies that partner our work. I do keep applying on the school’s behalf, but our story seems to be so compelling, it’s easier to ignore it than celebrate it. Here’s HP’s take on our work, yours truly showing off again (ahem).  What with Samsung and Google also showcasing our work, it is a tad frustrating that a school with a remarkable pedigree for cloud-based learning continues to be ignored. Hey, ho – we could of course have chosen to implement iPads rather than Chromebooks – and that’s probably why we are left (as other schools who have also made that choice) on the margins. It’s soooooo much easier to buy Apple, but actually the outcomes are worryingly less secure – here’s last week’s news on tablet things from the Daily Telegraph.

Once all us sceptics on Ofsted judgements got our hands on this news story, we were quickly able to render it as ‘junk’. Sure, BYOD can be disruptive, and in some classrooms, children feel it their child-given-right to ‘snap-chat’ when they wish. But children would be just as disruptive if we allowed them to eat their lunch in lessons, or make other completely inappropriate choices. But good schools don’t, and moreover when it comes to using technology, can illustrate time and again how it can aid learning in ways previously we could not consider. Here’s Attack of the Bacteria from Mrs Walton’s Biologists, one of many short films that emanate from our science department.

Adding all this ‘frontier stuff up leads me to mention I presented to an Discovery Education audience today via google hangout at their annual company conference in Naples, Florida on our use of digital services in the cloud and more generally on the benefits partnerships bring within the education space. The conference call had been planned for some time, and a good hour was spent listening and communicating with fellow educators on what were the key things that helped companies do that Jim Collins thing of going from ‘Good to Great’.  My take on this is that there is no one ingredient that makes this happen, but perhaps more as Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his seminal book, The Tipping Point, it’s an accumulation of lots of little actions that assist in ensuring successful launch and on-going progress happens.

Image courtesy of the BBC

Which neatly takes me back to my starting point. I am sure those fortunate enough to watch the launch of the Soyuz Rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan would have held their breath just a bit as the engines ignited and gently (but explosively) lifted the rocket up towards the ISS. I imagine not just the audience, but the astronauts/cosmonauts too were a little anxious, not just on take-off, but on docking too, when the automatic system failed, and they had to ‘drive’ it in manually. It’s not just planning for the expected that’s normal, even if that’s to the nth degree but planning for what lies in the infinite beyond that’s also got to be par for the course. And that’s why Toy Story and its sequels are just such fun, because honestly the Toys (and us) have no idea of the monstrous things and outrageous events that are going to turn up to wreck their lives. Happily for all, they have Buzz Lightyear on hand to save the day!

P.S. I have deliberately not referred to the latest Star Wars film out tomorrow. Given the somewhat fickle nature of my affection for the Star Wars genre (good, bad and badder), if the film is as good as the trails make it out to be, my attentions may switch to a certain Daisy Ridley (Rey), graduate of another ISA school, Tring Park,  who makes the main running in Episode 7.  But for the moment, call me Buzz.