Peter Tait Education

When did Exams Become so Toxic?

Exam season was never meant to be easy, but reading
social media and talking to teachers and students, it feels like the pressures
have recently got a whole lot worse. The new GCSEs have increased the pressure on
teachers and students alike as has summative assessment for A Levels. In
primary schools, likewise, SATS have been criticised for placing undue pressure
on younger children, especially in the requirement to learn grammatical terms (do
they really need to know about relative pronouns relative clauses cohesion,
ambiguity, the active and passive voice, ellipsis etc when an unacceptable
number are still struggling to read and write?)

While the various threshold tests and assessments provide for
those students who have both the ability
and specific instruction on how to pass exams, they offer little to those
children who struggle to get their information / thoughts onto the page, those
whose abilities are not measured in exams or who are simply not ready for this
step. For them, SATS, GCSEs and A Levels
must feel like mountains and hardly relevant to their worlds.

Making education
relevant to all is crucial to the success of our education system: after all, the
outcomes of schools are recorded in knife crime, in mental health statistics as
much as in grades. Schools are not just for able, motivated and well-supported
children, but also for the deprived, the angry and the abandoned, those
children struggling for acceptance because of poverty, race, language or
learning and behavioural difficulties.

Yet when we look
at what is happening to our youth, most graphically in mental health figures,
it is not the just the raised bar that is causing so much angst, but the ways
in which tests are presented. For a long time now, our language when talking education
and examinations has been little short of scare-mongering One response has been
to survey schools to find the best ways of allaying stress (knitting being a
popular suggestion) which seems to rather miss the point.

What is not
considered often enough from the vantage of middle-age is how the parameters
have changed, how tuition fees and a shortage of jobs, extra competition for
university places and the fear of debt have ratcheted up the pressure – and
once can understand why they have affected students and contributed to such
tragedies as youth suicide. In talking
of a snowflake generation, (and I believe they are more focused and
hard-working than most of the generations who have gone before), too many
adults conveniently forget that the pressures are quite unlike those of thirty
years ago

Inevitably, while
we can tell children that doing their best is all you can ask for, that these
tests will mean little in the run of things, each is given disproportionate
importance because of the pressure placed on schools and teachers, inevitably drip-fed
to students. League tables have been used by governments to measure
progress and to hold schools accountable, but what they have done to students
is often ignored, as the best interests of children are subsumed by those of
the State. The increase in cheating, higher incidence of depression and mental
illness in young children are indirect consequences of league tables and their
toxic influence continues to have a profound effect on the mental health of
students and teachers.

It is not hard
work that students fear, but the great beyond, the shame and despair of failing
and seeing doors closing, the pigeon-holing, often before childhood is over.
That sort of rhetoric has no place in today’s world

New Pathways must reflect new Opportunities and
challenges

There is a
compelling argument that exams are not about so much about education, but about
selection and economic convenience. After all, exams only test part of student’s abilities and cannot be fully cognizant
of attitudes, intuition, intelligence,
work ethic and purpose, traits that determine success. University is not for everyone, and the expectations
of parents and schools regarding university as their end goal needs to be
challenged.

The government’s
response has been to promote technical education to sit alongside A Levels as
happens in many European countries. Sadly,
it is just another instance of government arriving too late to the party.
While that would have been welcomed some
years ago, what is needed are not academic and vocational strands, but
university and non-university strands, both ‘academic’, both signalling
different pathways, both with similar status and both having their own strands,
based on specific career options . BTecs
have been gaining favour, even at academic schools, but times are changing and
these need to be promoted and enhanced for what they are: pathways for
different aptitudes, interests, careers, every bit as academic and demanding, and not the default position. The idea of
technical qualifications being essentially mechanical is long past as is the
idea of education being fixed in time. Instead of more students being steered
into university courses because that is what their school’s DNA provides, often
ending up with huge debts, useless degrees and mental health issues, we need a
new mind-set that recognises the new world of work and an acknowledgement that
we do not yet have the tools to properly measure children and assuming exams on
their own are enough, is woefully inadequate.

The New Education

‘What does education do?
It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.’
Henry David Thoreau

At a time when the function and
role of schools is under the cosh like never before, it is somewhat sobering to
reflect upon those that avoided school, in part or in whole, those self-taught,
creative and unfettered thinkers who lacked the benefit of a formal education,
and still came good. A list of such autodidacts may include Benjamin Franklin,
Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein,
Charles Darwin, Stanley Kubrick, Thomas Edison and Margaret Mead – all highly
talented and successful in their respective fields who had the opportunity to work
creatively and imaginatively without the shackles of a formal education. And of
course, to this list we can add a vast array of women who were both denied a
formal education and a credible platform, and who still triumphed, women such
as the Bronte sisters, Mary Wollstonecraft and Flora Tristan. And they knew how
lucky they were, speaking up against the limitations of formal education, with
Bertrand Russell arguing that “men
are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education” and author and autodidact Helen
Beatrix Potter being even more explicit in her criticism noting, ‘Thank goodness I was never sent to school;
it would have rubbed off some of my originality.’

It
is possible to see similar disdain for traditional education today amongst some
parents although usually for quite different reasons. As schools move further
to the left, and become narrower in their breadth of curriculum and assessment
in an effort to standardize educational outcomes, we see more and more parents
who have the means to do so, voting with their feet, to draw on the best
resources in themselves, in their communities and off the web, to go it alone.

There
are many reasons for choosing to do so. These include concerns about behavior
(bullying, disruptive classmates); how technology is being used (or not being
used); and the shrinking of the curriculum through the EBacc, in particular, reducing
time for the creative subjects. Families also have more personal reasons,
founded in religion or culture, (or exclusions), or from a growing number of
parents who just want to protect their children from the world and all its
horrors, however naïve this may sound. More recently, parental concern has
reacted to the changes in the function of education from the pursuit of academic and
social outcomes to societal ends, pushing a liberal social agenda which many
parents do not want foisted on their children. Nor may they agree with government
moves to ‘educate the whole child’ even in matters that deeply concern them
such as teaching children about relationships, especially sex and gender, at a
young age. While not all reasons are logical or even excusable, they are
symptomatic of a growing disillusionment with the current school system and a
belief that there are other, better ways of educating children.

The effects of this loss of confidence
can be seen in the growth of home
schooling. While not the same as being ‘self-taught’, there is no doubt that
the freedom home schooling affords, allows children to follow passions and
interests. It can cater for the increasing numbers of families taking gap years
and wanting education for their children in-transit. While we might question the premises, the
reality is that the trend is accelerating and that in the last school year, some
30,000 were home schooled in England and Wales, double the number of six years
before.

Undoubtedly,
it has also got easier to opt out of formal schooling with the advent of the
internet. Technology is a driving force with so many courses and resources available
on-line that parents can access almost all they need anywhere in the world. By
opting out, they find the extra time to devote to the development of special
talents in music, drama, sport, or specialist interests from coding to chess.
With whole university courses available on-line and blended education becoming
a reality in many countries, the means are there for children to gain a first
class academic education without ever attending school. What is not so clear is how the social and
cultural education, which is compromised from not being part of a community of
peers, is managed and compensated for. Nor is it easy for government to monitor the children
who are flying under the radar, largely unmonitored and unchecked, and in
danger of becoming isolated from their peers and communities or worse,
radicalised.

Allied with the growth in
home-schooling is the increase in tutoring. The
proportion of pupils who have had a private tutor at some stage in their
education went up from 18% in 2005 to 25% in 2016 (42% in London). While there
are many firms offering bespoke tutoring services, to the dismay of many head
teachers, a survey of more than 1,600 state school teachers found that 43% of them
have earned money as private tutors outside school, which considering the
pressures currently on teachers, is a substantial ‘extra’ workload, probably
indicative of their relatively low pay and the satisfaction derived from one to
one tutoring.

Tutors were
once seen as anathema by many schools and you do not have to dig deep to find
criticism of the industry with schools suggesting that agencies ‘trade on
insecurity’ or worse, that after-school tutoring is a ‘form of child abuse,’ as
Gail Larkin, President of the National Association of
Head Teachers said in 2014 – an interesting comment when schools still demand
entrance tests for children as young as three and who eject students who might damage
their performances in league tables. The truth is the world is changing and
tutoring for exams is only one part of an industry that is moving into the
mainstream of education, where tutors support parents who want a different form
of education by working in a more holistic way, assisting learning, by helping
developing good study habits, pointing the child in the right direction and
engendering the confidence that comes from 1:1 support.

Home schooling is not an ideal alternative to state education
in any country, despite its suitability for the few. What we need is a system that caters for a
wider range of abilities using a wider range of providers. New Zealand has begun
to allow students to construct their own curriculum, which often involves
accessing some subjects from home. As blended education proliferates in
different forms and guises and the role of the teacher changes from classroom
teacher to mentor and facilitator, it is likely we are seeing the future, in
which the responsibility of education is shared, when education without walls
becomes a reality. We are entering a time when, to paraphrase Yeats, things are
falling apart because the centre cannot hold and that is not altogether a bad
thing. We should not be frightened of the prospect, but instead prepare for it
and embrace it.

Growing
up slowly is good for mental health

Natasha Devon, one-time Children’s Mental
Health Tsar, began Mental Health Awareness Week in fine fettle, beginning the
week by introducing a petition to get a mental health first aider into every
workplace and ending it by launching her new book ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental’. Feisty
and straight talking, Natasha has often been a thorn in the government’s side
by drawing their attention to what is the greatest crisis facing our young,
that of mental health.

We only have to look at the statistics to see how
serious this crisis is: the 700 young people who kill themselves every year;
the fact that the number with eating disorders
and self-harming has doubled in the last three years; the drop of the average age for
depression from forty five years in the 1960s to fourteen years today; and this
week, the news that the number of children under eleven being referred for
specialist support has increased by a third over the past four years. Over the poast decade, when funding for mental
health was decreasing, the proportion of GP consultations relating to
mental health grew to one third and yet many children suffering with depression
and mental illness are still not being offered the help they desperately need.

The Government’s response has been cautious. Their
recent announcement of a further £300 million to be added to their mental
health budget over the next five years is scant relief to a system that is
already straining to cope with the increase in referrals in our schools. What
is more, only part of this sum is to be set aside to help schools, specifically
by providing mental health leads and support teams, which in the view of its
loudest critics, will do little to stop the growing epidemic.

What is being overlooked in the race to get more trained
staff into schools and to provide better training and systems of referral are any
clear responses to the questions ‘why this is happening?’ What has led to this crisis that is
afflicting so many of the young? And,
pertinently, what are we doing to addressing the causes of this epidemic?

There are a number of areas where parents and
schools can make a significant difference. By way of an answer, Matthew Walker
in his best-selling book ‘Why We Sleep’ argues that a significant cause of
mental illnesses in our young is the result of a lack of sleep, noting in
passing that they are sleeping two hours less than their counterparts of a
century ago . By ignoring the fact the all children need at least eight hours
of sleep a night and that the circadian rhythm of teenagers means they need to
sleep later, he argues we are placing them at considerable risk of depression,
anxiety and schizophrenia. Compounding
this, is the desire to start schools earlier and the belief that the most
effective learning takes place in the morning. More regular sleep, including
insistence on bedtimes for the young and structured routines for teenagers (including
a down time for blue screens) would help; as would schools acknowledging what neuroscience
tells us, that sleep deprivation is a major causal factor in the onset of
mental illness.

Another cause that is in our gift
to fix is the number and language of examinations. As SATS begins this week (no
coincidence, surely) we read on numerous websites of advice being given to
primary children on how to handle the
stress of exams, ‘being prepared not scared’ or the ominously named “survival
guides” for GCSE.

If students weren’t worried
beforehand, they certainly couldn’t avoid a degree of concern on hearing a
former head telling them that seven hours of revision a day was required over the
Easter holidays if they wanted to do well. That primary children are experiencing
stress and anxiety because of the 11+ tests is unforgiveable, (and the presence
of the guide ‘Five ways to
safeguard children’s wellbeing during Sats week’ should make us all feel
queasy), not simply because the omnipresence of the testing
process, which is bad enough, but because we have hyped up the importance of
tests, dragged them into the public arena through league tables and then used
them to measure schools and teachers according to the performance of the pupils.
This generation are not afraid of hard work, but with exam stress listed as one
of the leading causes of youth suicide, we need to respond to the impact of too
much testing and the aggressive language that promotes the primacy of
examinations which is contributing to the increase in mental illness

A third cause is our conversations with children
and the encouragement to tell them
everything about everything, thinking they have the emotional and intellectual
maturity to cope. I don’t know how I would have coped at age eleven with all
the information young children have to deal with today, often about grim topics
or adult themes. Of course, with the internet the walls are partly down
although good parenting can delay and / or modify the impact of social media,
but perhaps we just need to make more effort to protect childhood and childish
things and not abrogate some of the responsibilities of parenting to the
internet. Yes, there are other factors
that have a very significant effect on the mental health of the young,
including the well-documented impact of technology on mental health and
systemic drug use, but many of the causes are to do with lifestyle: lack of
routine, lack of sleep, an absence of family nurturing and too much emphasis on
exams and the language of testing.

Our schools do need more funding, urgently so, and
the provision of trained staff, but as the crisis deepens and children’s mental
health continues to deteriorate, perhaps, just perhaps, a closer look at the
causes, (and not just the those noted here), may pay dividends – and even save lives.

Turning the Tables

The
announcement by the Schools Minister, Nick Gibbs, that some 290 schools are
about to trial new on-screen tables tests for 7 and 8 year olds is just another
example of the State getting involved in areas where it doesn’t belong. The accompanying comment that the tests will “help
teachers identify those pupils who require extra support” is patronizing at
best and once again shows that the government does not trust teachers to do
their job, even in this most fundamental way.

His comments have
already received a predictable response from teaching unions and from the
Minister’s acolytes. Mark Lehain, a strong advocate for regular national
testing, has already given his support, labeling anyone who might deign to
disagree as ‘the usual suspects’ who previously
‘have decried the introduction of what
they see as another infringement on childhood innocence and teachers’ freedom’.

Apart from the sneer,
the issue is not one of freedoms or raising standards or the value of teaching
times tables; it is about the role of the state in education as is clear when
he goes on to note that the test ‘should
also be stress-free for kids: it won’t be used to judge them or their school,
and will provide information that will be really powerful for all those who are
involved in education.’

Really? Try telling
that to teachers who for too long now have been held to account by such data
accumulation, even when the process is patently flawed. How long before it is
used to pass judgment? Who is taking bets?

The question is not
about learning tables. Most, (I hope all) teachers believe children should
learn their tables, as the benefits are undisputed. It should be an implicit
part of mathematics. Tables charts,
table trains were always the norm in primary schools, most using stars on a chart to signify progress with
children supporting each other through the journey. Schools were given the
responsibility to ensure children learned their tables and took their progress charts
with them, year on year, so that in time, depending on their level of readiness,
almost all children acquired the requisite knowledge.

The joy of learning
tables and having teachers who introduced the ideas of number or even, as in my
case, simple things, like the sum of any
numbers multiplied by 9 always equal nine (9×3 -= 27, 2+9 etc). Some of us were
lucky in got to test the methods the Jewish
Mathematician Jakow Trachtenberg devised while he
was in a German concentration camp. Of all the rote learning that goes on in
school, nothing is more useful in life, or more regularly used, as tables, and
the ability to be able to make quick and accurate computations is something almost
every child is capable of.

However, I believe
every school does so already. Moreover the teachers would argue that they
already know who needs support and don’t need another measure that can in the
future, be used against them. By gathering data the nature of the test is
changed, for the teachers and schools, and becomes yet another pressure point.

The issue is with the
belief that national benchmarking is the way forward or is merely a giant
political straitjacket that ties teachers down to yet another measure. As Mark
Lehain wrote in an earlier article defending the 11+,

‘ . . . If we took SATs away there would be no formal
testing between Year Two and Year Eleven – so how could we reliably ensure that
children are actually on track and which schools are effective?

How indeed. Possibly by the same methods we used before
the introduction of centralized testing. After all, teachers have always been
expected to teach tables and were accountable in their own schools for doing so.
We should trust the professionalism of
our teachers and stop interfering. The dependence of national data gathering is
what really undermines the morale of teachers and the belief that ‘having a national check means every single
child will be assessed in the same way’ is a good thing when in reality, it
is anything but! In many countries, governments
are now devolving more power to teachers, learning to trust their judgment and
realizing the accumulation of screeds of national data may be useful for
turning children into algorithms, but actually just distract from learning. To
do that, of course, we need to raise the standard of teaching and invest more
in recruiting the most committed and able people into the profession. Sadly,
that, as the Minister knows, costs rather more money.

Morals
and Ethics in our Schools

“Freedom
consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we
ought.” Pope Paul II

As
the Government continues its crusade to enforce the teaching of British values and character in our schools, there is a
much more urgent issue that needs to be addressed. Daily, we read of actions
and behaviours that show an absence of self-regulation and a lack of integrity,
morality or any sense of social responsibility.

As
the old social groupings of nuclear families, extended families, church and
local communities are replaced by imagined communities and the State, we have a
generation that includes many who are rudderless, isolated and lonely, drifting
without any moral anchor or structure to their lives.

Laudable
as it may be to promote the values of democracy, the rule of law, individual
liberty and mutual respect, faced with an endemic focus on self and the
self-made, both in our society and in our schools, there is an urgent need to
dig deeper, to ensure that children first grow up with a proper understanding
of right and wrong through a study of morals and ethics.

While
we celebrate the freedom embodied in the Magna Carta, the consequence of rapid social change over
several decades has resulted in a society where many children and adults are
struggling to cope. Inevitably, it is not about freedom, but about the exercise
of free will and the absence of a moral construct.

If
we are looking for examples, we need go no further than the recent press about tax
evasion and tax avoidance – one illegal, one not, although both raise moral
issues, especially when laws are manipulated by large companies and the very
rich for their own ends.

Yet
while the wealthy may have recourse to financial advisers and use tax havens
because they can afford to, they are not alone in making choices without moral
recourse, for we can all be guilty of it to some lesser degree, even if just by
supporting those multinationals engaged in large- scale tax avoidance. In such
instances, there is rarely any consideration of community or
other people’s welfare, or any expectation to make decisions on any other basis
other than ‘what’s in it for me?’

If
we expect our children to grow up with a respect for the rule of law, (which
needs to be seen as fair and equitable for all), then we need to teach them
about making moral choices and having a value system as a basis for their
decision-making.

Part
of this requires a change in the mindset that is prevalent in society, one that
says ‘if it is legal and if you can get away with it, then it is acceptable.’

In
order to make this change requires us to make time in our curriculum, through
assemblies and other school activities in order to teach our children to
consider issues and behaviour by a moral yardstick rather than more usual
measures of success. For without proper ethical considerations, we are in
danger of society becoming increasingly fragmented and unstable as
self-interest overshadows the public good.

The
other, powerful change in our society that adds to the ethical imperative is
the unprecedented and largely unregulated advances in science and technology
that are happening across the globe.

Many
of the projects may appear inconceivable – as did mapping the human genome a
decade ago – and as implausible as the Gilgamesh Project seems today. The pace
of change and innovation is bewildering. Instead of going hand in hand with
ethical considerations, scientists working in the fields of nanotechnology,
intelligent design, cyborg engineering or engineering of inorganic life are
largely operating outside of any moral construct.

The
dangers of unregulated technology, of not grounding decision- making on futures
in ethics are potentially catastrophic. In order for adults to begin to make
the appropriate political and ethical decisions on using new technologies, we
need first to start training our children to ask salient and responsible
questions, based on a resolute moral and ethical framework. We need to train
them to think differently.

In the
first instance, it is up to those leaders in society, the wealthy, the leaders
of industry and public figures to lead the way. And yet, our experience is that
their example is often a poor one, highlighted recently by yet another chapter
in the cash for access scandal.

It
was Teddy Roosevelt who said: “A man who has
never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university
education, he may steal the whole railroad.” What he didn’t
add was “and get away with it”. Sadly, that
is the popular perception of many of our financial traders and politicians. If
we look at the banking crisis and expenses scandals, those guilty came
predominantly from the well-educated, from leading schools and universities.

When
we talk of someone in such terms of ‘well-educated’, we are defining the term
in a very narrow and inadequate way, usually measured by their performance in
tests. Clearly, there is something missing in their education, call it
humility, empathy, honesty or some similar values. Too often they leave school
compromised, half-cooked, despite their academic achievements. Somehow, their
otherwise excellent education has let them – and society, down.

We
live in an age of everyone for themselves to lesser or greater degree and we’re
not going to change that while the public conscience is unregulated, at least
not without a significant moral shift.

The
current focus on mindfulness on happiness, on well-being and on character is
all very well, but there is a more fundamental challenge for our schools.
British values aside, we don’t seem to be challenging our children enough with
the really fundamental questions about how they should live their lives.

We
cannot put everyone in a single moral universe but we can teach them about
cause and consequence, about the value of charity and community and about
having values that are not able to be measured in material terms alone.

Before
talking of developing grit and resilience, we should be
offering the children in our schools an education in morals and values for that
would underpin their lives like nothing else.

Working Together

At
the inaugural Pressburst Conference which set out to look at ways to improve
the communications and marketing in independent schools, much was made of the
threats to the sector and how to respond to them. The list focused on a number of external
issues including rising staff and energy costs, political ambivalence, public
antipathy or even hostility towards independent schools and the increasing
social divide, but there was mention also of how we can help ourselves. To the
larger political and financial issues, we rely on the associations to respond
on our behalf or should do (there are a number of heads of leading schools who
are regularly asked for comments by the media whose responses sometimes place
the interests of their own schools over those of the sector). There is a danger that their messages will be
misconstrued to represent the flavour of the sector as a whole and if too brash,
boastful or patronising, can do considerable damage to our public image. To
ensure we are all pulling together, there are a number of steps schools can
follow.

First,
manage your social media and know where your comments and images are going to
end up – which is often not where they are intended: Photographs of students studying glaciers in
Iceland or volcanology in Hawaii, Michelin star plates of food or playing polo may
be popular with parents, but not helpful in the wider milieu.

In
the drive to award more bursaries – itself, a most commendable and necessary
initiative –ask what you can do for a child you are admitting to your school,
not what they can do for you. Asset stripping from local schools can engender
ill-feeling. Why not take an average student and offer him or her the
opportunity to improve themselves without expecting something in return.

Work
together. Heads who attack other school types (and a recent attack on
single-sex girls schools by an HMC Head comes to mind) do nothing for the sector.
This can be seen in the unseemly scramble
for publicity after league table results reflects badly on schools and are
meaningless especially when schools obfuscate and select their own
interpretations and misleading when so many schools are often highly selective.
A more dignified response would be to
make no response at all – or better, pull out of the tables.

Take
time to work with schools in your local area, especially those you draw from. Prep
schools, in particular, need to be treated respectfully and not taken for
granted. Invading their historic patch by dropping down to Year 7 entry or going
Co-ed at Years 7&8 or making unreasonable demands in terms of scholarship
exams does not help and could well lead to more preparatory schools feeling alienated and directing
parental traffic elsewhere including towards local grammar and new academies.

Don’t
fill your websites with lists of the places your students travel to (I counted
24 different countries plus ‘North and South America’ listed on one website) or
on facilities. Focus on student achievements, not things that cost money or
simply flaunt the resources and buildings. Eschew the arms race and be more
responsible with fees which in terms of social image and parental appreciation eager
a bit less profligacy is a win-win.

Use
social twitter to promote your school’s values and ethos, not just its
successes. Some heads can make a significant impression by doing so (and at the
risk of embarrassing them, Mark Mortimer at Warminster and Shaun Fenton at Reigate Grammar do this very well indeed)
and by using social media to emphasis what their schools stand for, and what
they do rather than what they have.

Highlight
the achievements who have done well in the charitable sector or in service
fields rather than in sport, media or business.

Work
with your local community even if it means trimming back your traditional
fixture lists to be more involved with local schools and look for ways to
ensure your students are part of. and not living apart from, other local
schools and students.

And
last, remember that your best marketing tools are your parents, teachers and
students. Ask, how well to they serve and represent your values and ethos
whether on the side-lines of matches (parents), in the way they present
themselves when in the public eye (students) or in their loyalty and advocacy
in the community (staff). That’s where
the greatest effort should be directed.

All
little things, but they might just make a difference in helping dissipate some
of the ill-feeling that prevails at present towards the sector.