Welcome to the Socialist Educational Association (SEA) ‘Education Politics’ Blog
Edition 1 April 1st 2023
Articles
About Our Education Politics Blog
Why OFSTED Should Be Disbanded, James Whiting
The Importance of Parent Voice, Graham Mellors
About our Education Politics Blog
The SEA believes that education is a universal right not a privilege and that all educational institutions should contribute to the development and sharing of knowledge and skills. They should interact with their local communities and contribute to their development. Communities are best served by inclusive democratic structures which enhance the accountability of institutions to students, parents and carers, staff and trade unions. These socialist principles should apply to all sectors of the service from Early Years through to primary and secondary schools, FE colleges, Universities and Youth Services.
But like all our public services, education is in crisis. Teachers are leaving schools in droves and recruitment to replace them is failing. Industrial action has broken out across the sector as institutions struggle to make ends meet and provide a quality service for learners. The gap between the achievement of disadvantaged children and others continues to grow. This is unsurprising when the design of the system itself is a major factor in reinforcing the class divide.
Our Manifesto for Education submitted to Labour’s National Policy Forum is here
It's against this background that the Socialist Educational Association is launching its new substack blog. We will be using it to increase awareness of the depths of the crisis and to explore how a Labour government could and should address it.
It’s a free blog which we’ll be sending to all our members but we hope that anyone with an interest in moving education on from the failures of the Tory years will subscribe and join the debate. Articles posted on the blog express the views of the authors and are not necessarily SEA policy. You are free to send potential blog posts to info@socialisteducationalassociatoin.org
A common response to calls for radical change is that the education service has had enough of initiatives and that radical reform now will increase teacher workload just at a time we should be looking to reduce it. In reality though, what teachers are tired of are top-down initiatives over which they have no say. This is a major factor in the teacher shortage crisis. They have lost professional respect and the responsibilities which go with that.
The Brown Commission on the UK’s Future wrote that:
‘In no comparable democracy do so few people at the centre make decisions so far away from so many. Other countries of similar size to the UK spread political and economic power across different levels of government. With multiple centres of power, initiative and influence across the whole country, communities can see administrations more responsive to their needs’
Nowhere is this more true than in education. Our education system is becoming more centralised than the old French and Soviet systems. As Nick Gibb himself pointed out in a recent interview, the Tory approach to education has been widely misunderstood. The initial sales pitch about autonomy and innovation has long gone to be replaced by a handful of ideologues imposing a depressingly narrow new orthodoxy on the system. The building blocks are:
A narrow so-called “knowledge rich” approach to curriculum and assessment.
The spread of a draconian approach to discipline in schools.
Central control of teacher education.
A single approved model of pedagogy delivered through centrally (Oak) produced materials.
The imposition of this orthodoxy by an inspectorate now wholly signed on to the Tory project.
This has been accompanied by a squeeze on funding that dates back to 2010. The consequences run right through the system. In early years funding for the so-called free hours fails to meet real costs and risks driving providers out of the system. Cuts to post 16 education mean that for most sixth formers and college students, education is effectively part time. The higher education funding system is rigged against less advantaged students but at the same time has led to a 30% reduction in university income for UK students.
The outcomes are a system that:
employers say fails to prepare young people for their futures because it ignores key skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and problem solving
has seen the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged widen has contributed to an unprecedented mental health crisis amongst young people
imposes a massive burden of debt on young graduates while also destabilising many universities’ finances
has led to a disastrous collapse in teacher morale, recruitment and retention
What Labour should be doing is not thinking of more central initiatives but instead liberating teachers from the yoke of centrally imposed bureaucracy and the dead hand of multi academy trusts imposing their corporate ways of doing things. The most successful jurisdictions highly respect their teachers and give them and university education departments the responsibility for curriculum development and pedagogy.
Having liberated teachers, Labour should also liberate communities, parents, teachers and students and give them all back a voice in the running of schools and curriculum initiatives. The party has committed itself to devolving power away from Westminster and it needs to apply this principle to education.
Again, this is the case in other successful jurisdictions. In the UK, in Scotland and Wales, local communities retain a voice in their schools. Under the current academised system where large MATS run schools across the country and are often entirely disconnected from local communities, local democratic oversight cannot take place effectively, if at all.
The biggest barriers to opportunity are poverty and deprivation. They cannot be removed by even the strongest education service, acting on its own. But even so, current education provision is a barrier for many. It labels children as failures excluding some altogether, imposes an increasingly irrelevant curriculum and there are no second chances. The SEA welcomes Labour policies announced so far on Early Years expansion and increased teacher recruitment funded by receipts from extra taxes on private education.
A radically reformed education service, designed as part of a socialist programme to redistribute wealth, rejuvenate public services and tackle discrimination, is required to break down the barriers increasing numbers of children face.
Why it’s time to disband OFSTED and end the punitive inspection regime.
James Whiting (SEA General Secretary) explains
The recent sad death of Ruth Perry has pushed OFSTED into the spotlight. Is OFSTED really necessary to keep children safe, inform parents and drive improvement? I would argue not and that its biased stand means abolition is the only course.
1. Safeguarding and Compliance
OFSTED prides itself on ensuring schools carry out their public duties under Prevent, the Equalities Act and Safeguarding. Checking Safeguarding becomes an afterthought in a full inspection. It involves maybe an hour of a whole two-day process. This was why OFSTED failed to spot rampant sexist behaviour in schools, mainly from boys on girls, revealed on the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ website. By their own criteria, because failure to safeguard children leads automatically to an ‘inadequate’ judgement, all of the schools named on the website should have been judged as such in their inspections. This led to a panic overreaction by OFSTED. Safeguarding concerns around children’s behaviour can lead to an inadequate judgement like the one at Caversham.
OFSTED is not the right body to handle safeguarding. Instead, it should be left to specialists employed by local authorities backed up a fail-safe national body who can follow up concerns and complaints if necessary. A safeguarding audit (Labour, ‘audit’ is much preferable to ‘inspection’) by my local authority covers all the ground including interviewing children, checking recruitment records and other paperwork. It takes a day and can be done annually.
1. Supporting the education ‘market’
To try and maximise public support OFSTED says its role is essential to help parents choose schools. What market there is in education is open to dispute. 30% of pupils do not get their first choice anyway and two thirds of parents say they don’t look at OFSTED reports.
Summing up the complexities of a school in one word is highly problematic. The grades are awarded according to descriptors which are OFSTED’s collective view as to what makes a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ school. Most of the ‘quality of education’ criteria now refer to curriculum planning and knowledge transfer, not necessarily what parents might think are characteristics of a good school.
OFSTED change their ‘framework’ every few years. In the most recent framework, for example, all references to the quality of teaching have gone. A good school under one framework will not necessarily achieve the same grade in the next. How parents are supposed to make sense of this is not considered.
Research shows that OFSTED ratings account for a 1% variance in pupil attainment and are also weak predictors of pupil well-being, (von Stumm et al 2020). They are not then very useful to parents when choosing schools.
Parents do have a right to know about the schools their children go to and reports setting out what schools do well and what they could improve on would be much fairer.
2. School Improvement
A force for improvement is the claim OFSTED makes about itself. There is no hard evidence available that the inspection regime is improving schools and there is much to the contrary, particularly that schools in disadvantaged areas are far more likely to receive low grades.
OFSTED never provides advice. This goes against their ethos. ‘We are here to evaluate only’ is the mantra repeated in training sessions. So a school is left with actions it needs to take to improve but are never told how to put these actions into practice or even where to go to receive such advice.
Also the actions are based on the framework in place at the time. A previous report under the old framework might tell schools to ‘provide challenge for the most able’. Inspectors arriving to inspect under the new framework will disregard all the work the school might have done to put this into practice because the concept of ‘challenge’ and references to the ‘most able’ no longer appear in the new framework.
An independent peer review process could support schools in improving aspects of their work by pointing them to other schools doing that aspect well, such as occurred under London Challenge.
3. Implementing a traditional conservative ideology
Education in Britain since the advent of comprehensivisation has been a battle ground between ‘progressive’ and ‘traditional’ ideologies. Until the Gove revolution schools and teachers were left to choose and most went for a pick and mix approach. OFSTED up until 2020 was careful not to pick sides and avoided making judgements which might indicate ‘a preferred style’ of teaching. No more. Instead of coming into schools to evaluate, they set out a framework which defined how schools should be planning their curriculum. Schools had to do a considerable amount of work in order to meet the requirements. This forced schools into implementing a pedagogy focused almost solely on knowledge delivery and retention. Quizzes and tests now form part of most lessons.
OFSTED denies there are valid alternative perspectives and has constructed a regime of truth where anything outside it, is simply ignored. OFSTED even appear to have adopted a position against understanding!
“A curricular approach that overly emphasises the teaching of the why of a procedure, concept or rule and which expects pupils’ follow up practice to be predominated by demonstrating proof of ‘understanding’ will not guarantee that pupils learn useful facts, methods and strategies…….Moments of understanding, no matter how powerful, are likely to be fleeting.”
From OFSTED Maths Research Review
OFSTED have carried out reviews in virtually every subject laying down what should be taught (on occasion contradicting the National Curriculum) and how. They have been accused of misinterpreting and misrepresenting research to back up their underlying notion that learning is about ‘knowing more and remembering more’ and little else. The so-called research reviews have generated controversy from subject associations and academics.
OFSTED cannot be reformed. HMIs are now OFSTED employees and are unable to operate outside its remit. They are the ones responsible for the framework now being imposed on schools. Education is a human activity in which philosophy, politics, sociology, and psychology have interacted in its development over time. These are social sciences where nothing is concrete and in which differing viewpoints play a vital part. OFSTED may well see which way the wind is blowing if there is a change of government and turn its back on the ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum. New tablets of stone will be brought down to inspector training sessions and the HMI will laugh at what they used to believe. This is exactly why OFSTED have to go. There is never only one truth in education. There are several and we need an accountability process which recognises that.
Parents have a vital role to play in school improvement for all pupils
Graham Mellors (SEA NEC) argues.
Parent voice- why bother?
A common refrain from those in power is that parents, when asked, say they don’t care about school structures. According to them, we’re only bothered about what happens in school. Maybe structure is only for the geeks, but the thing is, it’s the wrong question. Ask a parent if they think they should have a say in what happens in their child’s school, you will get a resounding yes. Go further and point out Academies, and especially Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), remove all meaningful means of parent influence and many are left shocked and angry.
Parents often find out find this out post-academisation, when it’s too late. Usually it’s when something goes wrong, which is a lot more likely if your child has some kind of additional need, recognised or not. More likely still if you’re at the wrong end of the Cost of Living crisis and don’t have the time, resources or energy to engage with the education system. We find out we have no say and nowhere to go - there is no local accountability.
Parents share these experiences up and down the country. We’ve had enough. It’s time to demand an alternative. The SEA has launched the Give Us Back Our Schools campaign and a new manifesto which calls for an end to academisation to be replaced by a system of school collaboration and local democratic oversight with meaningful parent and carer voice.
What could parent voice look like in this new system?
First of all, we need to acknowledge the long-standing and persistent inequalities within the education system, which reflect those in our society more generally. Improving parent voice will not change this on its own, but we do need to make sure we don’t make things worse by creating better ways for the already privileged to have even more influence. For this reason, I argue that parent voice must have the goals of reducing inequalities and improving inclusion at its core.
Also children and young people must have more of a voice in their own education. These proposals focus on parents, but they must sit alongside an effective system for pupil voice. This is particularly the case for children and young people least likely to be heard. Those, for example, in or on the edge of the care system and those from low-income families.
Effective parent voice should be built at 3 levels - family, school and locality.
Family
We desperately need to re-set the relationship between schools and families so that learning is seen as a 3-way collaboration between teachers, parents and pupils, with each bringing something of value.
Schools should spend proportionately more time and energy working with those pupils and families that struggle most to engage in learning. The relationship should be positive, proactive and designed to prevent dis-engagement. We need to move away from engagement based on a brief discussion once a year at parents evening or to review an EHCP, interspersed with parents being called in when there is a ‘problem’. Instead, there should be proactive engagement through the year to help pupils remain engaged in learning and prevent things going wrong.
School
At the school level, parents should be part of a local governance structure that has real power over what happens in school. Every effort should be made to ensure that the parent representatives reflect the make-up of the wider school community, especially those that are seldom heard.
The role of the parents should be focussed on inclusion with access to good quality data. They should have a scrutiny function with the right to ‘call in’ any issue for consideration. They should be able to call for and have oversight of Equality Impact Assessments where any new or existing
school policy can be reviewed for any unintended consequences for pupils with protected characteristics. Their input should lead to change.
Locality
Each local area should have an elected parent/carer body as part of the local authority’s scrutiny function, but with powers separately described. Members should be drawn from those involved at the school level. The focus should remain firmly on reducing inequalities and promoting inclusion with access to relevant data at the locality level. They should have powers to commission investigations that look at outcomes and inclusion issues across groups of schools. They should have access to independent advice and expertise from the Higher Education sector.
Each locality should have a funded, independent SEND advocacy service explicitly focussed on low income families.
The locality structures will enable engagement of parents across a wider geography, especially in those areas with regional elected mayors.
First step
For this to have any chance of working, we need to first get rid of the current fragmented, academised, top-down education system. MATs should be dismantled and taken out of private hands, but individual academies could be retained within this reformed system. There are different options - in their excellent book “About Our Schools”, Tim Brighouse and Mick Waters* propose a gradual shift to all schools, including academies, moving into local partnerships. The above proposals for parent voice would sit well with this.
*Brighouse and Waters, 2022, About Our Schools: Improving on Previous Best
Brilliant insights, thanks.
Great intro James - really sums up the current issues