Tag Archives: IETT

Forty Years On – Callaghan and education

Prime Minister James Callaghan made a speech to an audience at Ruskin College in Oxford on the 18th October, 1976. A speech that, some would argue, launched the Great Debate about education.

James Callaghan - Prime Minister image
See his biography on Wikipedia…

Certainly some of the issues and challenges, that James Callaghan raised that day at Ruskin College, remain as pertinent and telling as ever today. Callaghan emphatically stressed, in his speech, the value of the Trade Union movement, not a view often embraced by a Prime Minister today for sure, but also lucidly saw children as delivering an endowment for a future society.

Speaking on that day in 1976, a detailed reading of the full text saw Callaghan giving long credit to Trade Union education energy, highlighting the role that unions and social activists play in energising human capital, often sailing against the pre-dominant elitist and exclusive educational cultural wind.

Callaghan saw the wide and emphatically important debate abroad in the country in his time about the economy, political or otherwise, but ventured to say ‘…not as important in the long run as preparing future generations for life. RH Tawney, from whom I derived a great deal of my thinking years ago, wrote that the endowment of our children is the most precious of the natural resources of this community. So I do not hesitate to discuss how these endowments should be nurtured‘.

Source: ‘A rational debate based on the facts’ James Callaghan, Ruskin College Oxford,
18th October 1976 (Full text) – http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/speeches/1976ruskin.html

Fiona Millar, writing in The Guardian in December 2016, has revisited the 1976 Callaghan postulation and has teased out many facets of the Callaghan analysis that often leaves the contemporary liberal, educated, education-aware reader in despair, when education is viewed down the long telescope of history.

‘Do we have a curriculum that promotes basic standards while allowing a child’s personality to “flower in its fullest possible way” as Callaghan put it?’

‘Would he (Callaghan) have envisaged systems of oversight so fragmented and convoluted that some headteachers can become proprietors of small business empires from which they directly profit?’

‘Would Callaghan have wanted good heads and teachers suffocated by hyper-accountability, wrestling with what is best for their schools against what is best or their pupils, while the less scrupulous boost performance by weeding out the most challenging pupils?’

Millar has chosen a good time to revisit this educational clarion call from a Labour Prime Minister who, on a detailed reading of this speech, represents the gold standard of education analysis and is deserving of perhaps a kinder view from history than he was previously afforded.

Source: Forty years after the Ruskin speech, education needs another moment
Fiona Millar, The Guardian 13th December 2016 – https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/13/ruskin-speech-education-jim-callaghan-reforms?CMP=share_btn_tw

The great debate continues, we would argue…we commend the Callaghan speech to you and we await our ‘Millarenian moment‘ too!

Turning the tide – making a difference

Revisiting Ken Robinson

Following the ‘Brexit’ referendum and the recent series of affrays across the political landscape, with a resultant refreshed exposition on the economy, the topography of industry is now littered with claims for an upsurge in economic flexibility, innovation, challenge and growth.

We revisit Sir Ken Robinson talking about ‘How to Change Education?’ as a consequence.

What better time in the current climate to look again at the education reform focus of the Robinson arguments about schools as Enlightenment driven, rigid, formulaic and command and control industrial systems.

The RSA Animate, featured above was a wonderful synthesis of those arguments and offers a direct challenge to some more traditional ‘informed thinking’ about the educational process for our children.

You can see the full, original RSA talk (24 mins) by Ken Robinson in July 2013 here…

With the socio-political present focus on ‘the other’, isolation and insularity – the call to arms for fresh thinking about creativity embedded in the Robinsonian education reform argument, to secure the future of all our children, becomes now doubly telling, we think.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Academies? Whither…

Storm clouds Image
The clouds gather…

We list below links to a variety of sources that foster a critique of the current relationship between Ofsted and the Academy Trusts.

The links and narrative samples are not ours, they are courtesy of the Reclaiming Education movement. They are telling and offer a comprehensive landscape view of a system in the throes of developmental crisis.

The first reference begins with a letter from Chris Dunne to the Financial Times. ‘We may regret not having defended our education system…’

We commend the suite in entirety to our readers. Please share this article with colleagues.

  • Chris Dunne’s letter, “We will come to regret not having defended our education system”,  in the Financial Times can be seen here
  • Henry Stewart’s piece looking at the progress of academies against maintained schools can be read here.
  • Ofsted condemns Academy Trusts:  The Government has announced that it plans to force all schools to become academies.  The major problem is going to be who will run these schools, given that Ofsted has some major criticisms of at least 8 of the large academy trusts.
  • Ofsted Inspections of Academy TrustsOfsted has carried out focused inspections of academies within 9 multi academy trusts.  Significantly, only one, the last and smallest one, is positive.  The full reports can be found on the Government website here.   A map of where the academies are can be found here.
  •  CfBT:  11 primary/8 Secondary“CfBT took on too many academies too quickly. The trust did not have a clear rationale for the selection of schools, a strategy for creating geographical clusters or a plan to meet academies’ different needs. As a result, standards are too low. The trust relied heavily on external consultants but did not ensure their accountability in securing rapid and secure improvement. Headteachers were unable to provide each other with the much needed mutual support or share available expertise. Current CST leaders openly acknowledge these errors.”  Full report
  • Academies Enterprise Trust:  32 primary/30 secondary/5 special”After operating for nearly eight years, the Trust is failing too many pupils. Almost 40% of the pupils attend AET primary academies that do not provide a good standard of education. It is even worse in secondary, where 47% of pupils attend academies that are less than good……
    “Children from poor backgrounds do particularly badly in this Trust. The attainment and progress of disadvantaged pupils, in both the primary and secondary academies, still lags behind that of other pupils, and gaps in performance are not narrowing quickly enough……
    “The outcomes of the focused inspections failed to demonstrate that the Trust is consistently improving its academies.  Full report
  • Collaborative Academies Trust: 9 schools“Collaborative Academies Trust was set up in 2012 by EdisonLearning ……
    ………Too many academies have not improved since joining the trust. Of the five academies that have had a full inspection since joining the trust, only one has improved its inspection grade compared with its predecessor school. Two have remained the same and two have declined. This means that, at the time of the focused inspection, there were not yet any good or outstanding academies in the trust. “  Full report
  • E-Act (formerly Edutrust): 23 academies (was more)“…Nevertheless, the quality of provision for too many pupils in E-ACT academies is not good enough.
    ……Standards in the secondary academies are too low. Previous interventions by the Trust to raise attainment and accelerate progress have not had enough impact and any improvements have been slow.
    ….Pupils from poor backgrounds do not do well enough. These pupils make less progress than other pupils nationally. This is an area of serious concern. “  Full report
  • Kemnal Academies Trust: 15 secondary/26 primary“Less than half of your academies were good or better and there are no longer any outstanding academies in your chain. ………

    .. an overwhelming proportion of pupils attending one of the academies inspected are not receiving a good education. “  Full report

  • Oasis Community Learning Trust: 50? Schools – DfE list and Oasis website appear to disagree.The academy trust has grown rapidly, taking on 30 new academies in the last three years …
    Across the trust, some groups of pupils do not achieve well. Disadvantaged pupils, particularly boys, make significantly less progress than their peers nationally………. there is no evidence of an overall strategy or plan that focuses on these particular issues.  Full report
  • School Partnership Trust:  41 schools“The impact of the Trust’s work in bringing about improvement where it is most needed has been too slow. Where standards have been intractably low for some time, the Trust is not driving significant, sustained improvement. …

    ……The standard of education provided by the Trust is not good enough in around 40% of its academies inspected so far. “ Full report

  • The Education Fellowship: 12 schools“There is no clear record of improvement in the trust’s academies and standards across the trust are unacceptably variable. In around three quarters of the academies, standards are poor.
    Standards declined in five of the eight primary academies in 2014. In the majority of the trust’s 12 academies, the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their better off peers, both within the academies and compared with pupils nationally, remains unacceptably wide.”  Full Report
  • Wakefield City Academies Trust – the only positive one!“Two years into its development, WCAT is making a positive difference to the quality of provision and outcomes for pupils within its academies. “ Full report

You can locate Reclaiming Education here…

Recliaming Education Logotype image
Discover more on-line here…

 

 

 


Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

The Future of Education:
an event report…

The Great Room at The RSA was full. Like a Calima, drawn towards the depression that is education in England, conversation and debate swept across the room.

We had assembled to hear Profesor Danny Dorling and Professor Diane Reay give their assessments of English education today, and to provide us with both data and questions of challenge in our collective pilgrimage for reform.

The short films below give you a flavour of our event and the messages delivered by our speakers…

youtubeButton  Professor Danny Dorling, Oct. 5th 2015

youtubeButton  Professor Diane Reay, Oct. 5th 2015

Professor Dorling challenged his audience to imagine an education system without so much testing. His exposition included illustrations of how we value memory above problem solving and experimentation. He was delighted to see in the audience, after general questioning, that so many of us had achieved ‘A’ grades. A triumph of conformity, alas, in the Dorling assessment. The whole treatise bringing into doubt the formula that a more expensive education is a more privileged education.

Professor Reay used her allotted time to deliver a statistical analysis of the inequalities in education in our country. Highlighting the fact that in the private sector, for example, spend per pupil is 2.5 times higher than in the state sector. She also highlighted the deficiencies in access to the broad and balanced curriculum which children and young people need, along with a strong section in her presentation, on happiness and wellbeing. Often disregarded, she argued, in any assessment of educational utlilty or achievement.

Whether for learners or teaching staff, levels of distress and dissatisfaction have never been higher, Professor Reay argued. Much was also made of the increasingly low level of professional autonomy afforded teachers in England now.

This was a well attended IETT event, with very high quality engagement and telling analysis from our speakers. This prompted some very lively discussion across the room, as well as new networking and professional acquaintance for many visitors to our conference. Ed.

interneticon2 (copy)  You can see more IETT events on our Conference and Events page here.

interneticon2 (copy)  You can also find more films on this topic on our The Debate – filmed page here.

interneticon2 (copy)Event films by Dan Keeble – Video Editor / Producer / DP     http://dankeeble.com/

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Flotsam series:
The Sustainable Personality

Robert Lindberg is a Swedish writer and speaker, who is currently working in England, developing his theories of personal development, better  and more meaningful human contact and perceptions of the sustainable society.

Robert, in a recent talk, declared ‘…it is time to be smart – to be humane is to be smart‘. This chimed strongly with discussions we have been recently engaged in about the quality of discourse regarding society, the individual and, of course, the role that education plays in the formation of these key  edifices of civic and personal interaction.

Robert’s web pages offer some simple, elegant and very nicely built examples  of his thinking. They are beautifully illustrated, concise and offer the viewer a great way to start a conversation about the key themes of his thesis.

We particularly liked his short opus on Collaboration – Healthy Productivity

The Linbergian argument, in this case, is supported by the research and writings of Alfie Kohn, whose early book No Contest – the Case Against Competition still well illustrates how becoming locked into competitive, anti-equality modes of thought can stifle the creativity, the potential and life chances of children and young people.

Robert generously publishes his film work under a Creative Commons license, and we think they can be perfect as a teaching/discussion tool. Kick starting a session to provoke reflection, analysis and clear thinking on a variety of thematic issues.

All are to do with our humanity.

We commend the work of Robert Lindberg to our journal readers. We think there’s a fresh, innovative and open mind at work. See Robert’s web site for more details and how to engage with the author here.

(Flotsam is our occasional series of new ideas emerging from outside the English education system…Ed).

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Flotsam series: XQ Super School – school models for the new century…

superschoolLogoCreating a fifty million dollar fund, engaging all communities of interest in high school education in the U.S. and delivering a new paradigm in governance, delivery, outcome and expectation.

No small task?

XQ, the Super School Project is an open challenge to do just that. Led by the XQ Institute, and Laurene Powell Jobs, the group are intent on the widest possible engagement.

‘From our inception, we realised this will be a many-to-many effort—involving many talented experts at the core of the Institute collaborating with many talented participants in the movement itself…from deep understanding about the science of learning to design thinking skills, from fueling the movement to building compelling digital tools that spark imagination’.

What the XQ Super School project can do is offer some simple and effective road maps and sound structural examples for delivery of projects like IETT.

We are just beginning our journey of levelling inequality in education in the UK, but the steps needed to make challenge and change effective can, arguably, be drawn from models in other educational locations and cultures.

Thus, with XQ, there  are four key steps to their development agenda/competition…

Team Up‘Assemble your team and head off into the unknown’. With an open mind and focus on the proposed project outcomes, then a wide variety of voices can be heard and included in the work.

Discover‘Start by understanding young people’. A wonderful, people first, philosophy. Deploying knowledge, research and experience that so often gets buried in the political agenda or mainstream educational currency.

Design  ‘…take what you’ve learned and use it to come up with audacious, unconventional, unconstrained ideas…’. Made us feel positively dizzy in the IETT office today!

Develop‘Map out a formidable plan for turning your…idea into reality’. From human capital, to governance, to implementation capacity – a good plan is sound thinking for any project or agenda.

interneticon2 (copy)You can discover more about XQ The Super School Project here.

(Flotsam is the IETT occasional series on educational change ideas promulgated in other places).

You can subscribe to these IETT articles by email at the top of every page on our site. You can send us a reflection here on our Contact Us page too.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Equality – drivers and context

Inequality in Education (IETT) has a focus on education, as you would expect. Inequality and its consequences stretch across a range of life experiences and outcomes for individuals, including education of course.

Get a copy from Amazon here...
Get a copy from Amazon here…

Looking through our archive recently, we came across the slides used by Tim Stacey of the Equality Trust in a recent talk he gave, which nicely encapsulates and offers insights into the evidence base for the pursuit of equality in society.

Drawing on data from his own TrustThe Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, as well as Miles Corak and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation amongst others. His case highlights well the admixture of issues that emerge for a society which has a core social, economic and educational inequality at its heart.

You can review Tim’s excellent presentation below.

timStaceyEqualityTrust-education-and-inequality-talk-1

 

 

interneticon2 (copy)You can download your own copy of the full pdf here.

IETT is proud to support the work of The Equality Trust.

You can Contact Us here.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference