6 big challenges for education reformers

There are obviously a huge range of critical success factors that shape the unfolding reform of our education and skills system. I've identified 6 key questions that I think (and hope) reformers on all sides of the political spectrum will focus on moving ahead.

In my view we need to move beyond sterile debates about structures versus standards, knowledge versus skills and focus on practical measures to improve the quality of teaching, the status of teaching and the relevance of our curriculum and qualifications to the challenges and opportunities of c.21.

Anyway my thoughts on 6 big challenges in a nutshell:

1. How can schools give teachers the right to personalised CPD in a tight spending climate? How do we give the Teaching School Partnerships rocket boosters while preserving the root-level autonomy necessary to making them genuinely innovative?

2. How can we make Teaching a profession with a higher bar of entry that highly capable and ambitious people stay in without being able to throw bucket loads of cash at the problems?

3. How do you instil a no-excuses culture of continous improvement and stretch and challenge across the whole education system without being de-railed by a media, political or sectoral backlash against elitism?

4. How do we re-mould Ofsted to be an inspection regime that teachers and leaders in schools and FE genuinely respect and want to engage with? How do we reform Ofsted to move from remote inspectorate to 'agent of improvement' without making it another national improvement agency?

5. How can state schools incorporate the 'DNA' of the best SME employers in terms of recruitment and retention and professionalise the 'talent development' role of middle and senior leaders in education?

6. How do we ensure much needed reforms to restructure and enhance the rigour of GCSEs and A Level works are implemented coherently and don't harm aspiration and participation beyond the age of 16?

UK Eduscape Briefing Paper on the Labour Party's Education Policy Review groups

The UK Eduscape briefing paper on the Labour Party's dual running education policy reviews  is now available here.

As you will know Andy Burnham finally announced the membership and remit of the review panels the Labour Party has set up to overhaul its education and children's policy on Saturday.

Although the inclusion of high profile figures such as Professor Tanya Byron, Sir Tim Brighouse and Rod Bristow of Pearson generated a raft of initial media coverage, it struck me that there isn't a comprehensive guide to the full membership of the policy review panel anywhere that I can find on the internet.

I have at least finally tracked down a freely available transcript of Andy Burnham's speech which is available from the Labour Teachers website.


Using this and based on conversations with contacts, I have over the course of Sunday and Monday pieced together a briefing paper which looks at the remit, headline messages and composition of the review panels.  I've included some extracts from Andy Burnham's speech in the paper, which can be accessed here.

Professor John Stannard CBE and Richard Gerver are two the panellists who weren't really highlighted in media reports but in my view their presence represents a real coups for Mr. Burnham. You can read more about them in my guide, but both have very strong degree of insight into what works in raising core standards and sustaining improved performance over time.

The manager's primer - 101 top tips for leading

For those of you who don't want to shell out £20-30 for a snazzy book by yet another leadership or management guru, there's a very useful and free to access list of simple but powerful observations and tips about how to manage yourself and others more effectively on InsideCRM.com. 

The advice is categorised into different sections such as body language, meeting deadlines, communicating with clients and resolving problems without creating future ones. 

It's really a quick read as the lessons apply to both private and public sector management context can be read in full here.

Tony Thornley argues that schools should carry on SEFing to stay ahead of the game

This month's Leader Magazine, published by ASCL, has a typically good feature article by Tony Thornley a former head teacher, inspector and the author of the Guide to self-evaluation.

In it he explores the future context for extended reflection and structured self-evaluation by schools in light of the Government's decision in the Schools White Paper to spell out that Self Evaluation Forms are no longer a compulsory element of the Ofsted inspection process.

Technically the completion of an Ofsted issued Self Evaluation Form by a school prior to inspection was never a statutory requirement for schools but, as Thornley points out, it would take a very brave school leader which would ignore Ofsted's preferred working model in advance of an inspection, no matter how cumbersome it may have been.

His advice to leaders is that even as the SEF disappears as a core element of the inspection system, its in their own best interests to continue to maintain robust self evaluation frameworks as a tool to shape and align improvement strategies within the school:

"I would argue that you should maintain a slimmed down SEF. It makes you track the most important aspects of your work, it’ll be simpler than the old one, it shows governors and inspectors that you evaluate and know what you are talking about and, finally, it’s a very good prop if you’re inspected."

There's a good article from September 2010 in Sec Ed Magazine on the withdrawl of SEF that's also worth checking out.

Lastly while on the subject of Ofsted, there's a good presentation by ASCL's inspection specialist Jan Webber available online here, which looks at the way the revised Ofsted school inspection framework being introduced from September 2011 may operate in practice.

Recommended education themed films: Confucius (2010)

The other night myself and my wife Ching (who's Malaysian Chinese coincidentally) were arguing over what DVD to watch.

Eventually we settled on a mutual favourite which came out in 2010 and has already been proclaimed by many as a modern classic retelling of an ancient story of the transformative effect that education can have in improving the quality of government and the vibrancy of civil society.

I am of course referring to Confucius - a Chinese cinema industry epic from 2010. It is a powerful dramatisation of the extraordinary life of a bueraucrat of modest birth who in turn came to be celebrated as a philosopher, human rights champion, legislator, minister, war strategist and peace campaigner!

You can read review of the film at Amazon but just briefly it stars Chow Yun Fat in the title role and covers his ascent from being a local Mayor to Minister of Law and then military commander in the first half of the film.

It's the second half of the epic that really grips you however - although he delivers stunning military and diplomatic coups for his state, Confucius is toppled by jealous politicans (although some historians argue he was disenchanted with power and engineered an excuse for an exit) and chooses to put himself into long term exile.

AQA's Centre for Education Research and Policy launched in Parliament

On Wednesday this week, I was a guest at the annual parliamentary reception of the exam board AQA which was very enjoyable and well attended by Parliamentarians and educationists from a variety of different backgrounds.

The key theme of this year's reception was the formal public launch of the AQA Centre for Education Research and Policy. AQA have today alerted me to a helpful transcript of the speech given by Dr. Michelle Meadows in which she gives a flavour of the current research and an indication of the future direction of travel for the Centre which she heads up.

The Centre's dedicated website is currently being developed, and in the meantime those who are interested can read this brochure to find out more about it.

One of the interesting things she pointed out in her speech is that a recent research evaluation AQA undertook of the "Stretch and Challenge initative" for A Levels showed the stark extent to which teachers and students are switched on, more now than ever, to the tactical gains that can be made from thoroughly reading past exam papers and mark schemes:

"Students described learning mark schemes and essay plans by rote, and intensively practising past papers. As one teacher put it students are learning, whether we like it or not, that education’s about taking exams. It’s easy to feel a sense of almost moral outrage when you hear of students learning mark schemes, but from another perspective, it is highly strategic, tactical use of resource! Haven’t we all taken short cuts at some point? We have to make sure our mark schemes are worth learning".

Dr. Meadows argues that all awarding organisations should be doing more to raise their game in terms of research led qualification design so that exams and assessments support high-quality teaching and learning rather than limit it:

"Some argue that teachers feel so under pressure to meet targets that pedagogy has become almost sterile, that teaching has become overly didactic, insufficiently crafted to individual learner’s needs. This raises the question of how well teachers are now able to articulate their needs. Awarding bodies must invest in research that investigates how qualifications can support pedagogy".

She goes on to cite an example of how AQA's research has impacted on practice:

"Early research into the old O levels and CSEs showed that the least able were being drilled in concepts they didn’t understand. So when the GCSE was created it was available at two levels – foundation tier and higher tier. This was to allow teachers to develop their learners’ understanding appropriately. But subsequent research found that pupils were now labelled and restricted in achievement. We are using technology to develop a solution. Rather than pupils taking a foundation or higher tier exam that makes presumptions about how they will perform, why not have pupils take short tests, or ‘testlets’ on-screen? These are automatically marked and as the pupil advances through the exam they are given easier or harder testlets. Not only is this fairer in opening up potential achievement, it allows teachers to be more flexible in their pedagogy. We have a programme of research leading to the development of such an exam in GCSE French. Teachers are incredibly positive about the initiative; we had nearly 11 thousand pupils entered for our most recent exercise".

Andrew Hall, AQA's Chief Executive, who joined last year having previously been the Chief Executive of QCDA, also spoke at the reception and did not shy away from arguing that a fundemental debate about the scope, rigour and format of GCSES, A Levels and other post-16 qualifications is needed. He laid out the case both for and against the AS Level and for limiting the opportunities students should have to resit modular exams that comprise their A Levels. AQA itself has already to reintroduce linear examination model versions a number of its 64 current A Level subject combinations.

Mr. Hall has shown courage in speaking out about the need for awarding organisations in both academic and vocational contexts to play a more active role in supporting policymakers and the frontline to raise standards and this interview in the TES from late 2010 is well worth reading.

There were also thoughtful remarks on the importance of research to shape policy and the need for a measured debate about any further reform of A and AS Levels on the day from Graham Stuart MP and Damian Hinds MP who chair and sit on the Education Select Committee respectively.

Mr. Stuart who mentioned that one his own children was currently waiting for a set of modular results as part of her A Levels, underscored the important point that policymakers must not treat the reform of qualifications as an abstract, technical debate and must take care to ensure that any reform of the current trend of extensive modularisation of A Levels doesn't end up damaging the opportunities of young people.

Turning back to AQA's new in-house evidence-led policy centre, I am given to understand, from speaking to senior staff at AQA, that the actual research function and team have been in place for quite a few years, but the organisation has never had a distincticve public channel for disseminating its research to shape education policy and debate.

In an interview earlier this week with E-Politix, Andrew Hall admitted that boards like AQA need to do more to boost the understanding of policymakers and politicans of the not only the operational role it plays but the trandformative impact that well desgined, high-quality assessments and qualifications have on the future educational success of children, young people and adults:

"Unfortunately, no. It is an area where we have found a very large bushel and hidden our light under it for a length of time. This is something that we are eager to change. Behind the scenes, AQA has given a lot of advice to the regulatory authorities and to educationalists, but we have never been vocal enough with parliamentarians, or indeed the general public, in promoting the evidence that we have".

The objective of the new Centre is to shape best practice and public debate about the future of standards, qualifications and pedagogy, and I look forward to seeing how their programme shapes up in the months come.