Jonathan Savage

The ongoing development of educational policy by Gove et al has caused me to wonder about who the winners and losers might be. The key winner, it seems to me, is the Headteacher of your local school. They will be left in a position of unchallengeable power in relationship to their school. Let me illustrate this by considering some of the key things that we know already about the education policy of this coalition:

1. QCDA gone – no challenge regarding choice and composition of the curriculum (beyond a basic nod to a slimmed down National Curriculum);
2. BECTA gone – no challenge to poor ICT procurement or usage by schools;
3. OFSTED – their role is waning. There will be no challenge to many school’s approaches to management, teaching and learning (and probably no visits to schools that are ‘oustanding’ anyway, despite the part that OFSTED might have played in raising their attainment and achievement perhaps?);
4. GTCE gone – no challenge regarding teachers’ pay, terms, conditions (and, as we all know, the power of the teaching unions are also waning); if your school becomes an academy, then democratically elected bodies have no voice and provide no challenge, instead you get Trustees (unelected and who knows what level of challenge they’ll provide);
5. The role of HE institutions in initial teacher education – going, and likely to be significantly reduced given Gove’s comments this morning. Headteachers will have a much more active role in teacher education, with larger numbers of trainees and less ‘interference’ from outside agencies. So, no challenge to what might be poor and incestuous teaching practices.

All in all, these reforms seem to suggest one thing: Headteachers know best and will not be challenged. This is not a healthy situation in my view. What do you think? Please tell me that I’m wrong.

Following on from the previous post, here’s the quote from Michael Gove’s speech about the slimming down of the National Curriculum:

I want to ensure our national curriculum is a properly international curriculum – that it reflects the best collective wisdom we have about how children learn, what they should know and how quickly they can grow in knowledge. I want to use the evidence from those jurisdictions with the best-structured and most successful curricula – from Massachusetts to the Pacific Rim – to inform our curriculum development here. I want to remove everything unnecessary from a curriculum that has been bent out of shape by the weight of material dumped there for political purposes. I want to prune the curriculum of over-prescriptive notions of how to teach and how to timetable. Instead I want to arrive at a simple core, informed by the best international practice, which can act as a benchmark against which schools can measure themselves and parents ask meaningful and informed questions about progress.

There was also a lot of stuff about academies and accountability, etc, which I’m just too depressed to write about again.

Here the most detail that we have  so far about the ConDem coalition’s views on how to education our new teachers. This extract, from Michael Gove’s speech to the  National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services’ Annual Leadership Conference in Birmingham today, signals some major changes in policy direction. (My emphases are in bold):

We also want to take urgent action to attract more great teachers into the classroom. We want to further enhance the prestige and esteem of the teaching profession and further improve teacher training and continuous professional development.

Look at the highest performing nations in any measure of educational achievement and they are always, but always, those with the most highly qualified teachers. Whether its Singapore, South Korea or Finland, as Sir Michael Barber has pointed out in his ground-breaking study for McKinsey nothing matters more in education that attracting the best people into teaching and making sure that every minute in the classroom is spent with children benefiting from the best possible instruction.

The generation of teachers currently in our schools is the best ever, but given the pace of international improvement we must always be striving to do better. That is why we will expand organisations such as Teach First, Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders which have done so much to attract more highly talented people into education. That is why we will write off the student loan payments of science and maths graduates who go into teaching. That is why we will reform teacher recruitment to ensure there is a relentless focus on tempting the best into this, most rewarding, of careers. And that is why we will reform teacher training to shift trainee teachers out of college and into the classroom. We will end the arbitrary bureaucratic rule which limits how many teachers can be trained in schools, shift resources so that more heads can train teachers in their own schools, and make it easier for people to shift in mid-career into teaching.

Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman. Watching others, and being rigorously observed yourself as you develop, is the best route to acquiring mastery in the classroom. Which is why I also intend to abolish those rules which limit the ability of school leaders to observe teachers at work. Nothing should get in the way of making sure we have the best possible cadre of professionals ready to inspire the next generation.

As more and more detail is added to this coalition’s polices, the more and more scared I get about the future of our educational system.

The whole Dick Clamberon style of government here is having a major impact on what has been a significant and systematic improvement to the infrastructure of school buildings across the country, i.e. the BSF programme. There is no clarity about what will/will not happen and, it seems, we will have to wait for a spending review in the autumn before any decisions are taken about individual projects that have already been signed (back as far as last July apparently).

This article from an industry source caught me eye. As it explains, the whole mess is like a game of Deal or No Deal:

The whole £55bn schools renewal programme should be a carefully thought-through plan to give our children a better chance in life, instead it has turned into a game of Deal or No Deal. If you are working on the six schemes given the go-ahead in March by the then education secretary Ed Balls, the box you open is likely to contain a blue. If you are lucky enough to be in line for work as a preferred bidder the chances, if this week’s Fenland example is anything to learn from, are you will open a red box. But actually no-one can bank on it until their number is up. For contractors up and down the country incurring millions of pound in costs keeping experienced bid teams together this is simply not good enough. It is not fair on the project teams nor the management who are worrying whether their staff’s talents could be put to better use elsewhere. It is unrealistic to expect a lot of detail at this early stage, but education secretary Michael Gove must issue a statement about the Government’s intentions for BSF. Expecting the industry to sit around for months wondering whether they have chosen the £250,000 or 1p box is no way to handle things.

It’s unacceptable but not, unfortunately, surprising.

Yes, drum roll please … the big Tory idea for music education is … a school talent competition! The only decent thing about this idea, in my opinion, is that Cameron at least had the decency to choose a school in Cheshire to launch it! You can read more about it here. Needless to say, it featured a high profile name from the world of popular music – Gary Barlow – and the first prize is to have a song, or something, produced by him.

Before you get too excited by all this, it might be worth Cameron’s recent ‘track record’ (no pun intended) in suggesting and then immediately dropping big policy ideas (e.g. the ‘Big Society – Campbell is pretty scathing about this) probably means that this will all come to nothing. Those of us with an interest in music education should, perhaps, all remember that we have seen several years of unprecedented investment in music education. Although this wont’ continue whatever happens on the 6th May, music education is in a much better place that it was ten years ago and this is down to a lot of hard work by those on the ground, and significant investment from a Labour Government. Contrast that with what we might get from the Tories – another, slightly worse, version of the X Factor.

Estelle Morris has written an excellent piece in today’s Guardian which I would highly recommend to all readers with an interest in the UK education system and, more generally, in curriculum development within educational policy.

She highlights a number of weaknesses in the Conservative party ‘policy’ (or should that be lack of policy, as we really are having to guess what precisely they are wanting to do) in respect to their policy on curriculum development and implementation. Her belief is that the QCDA may be the shortest lived quango of all time should the Tories come to power. But, worryingly given her political status and position in the educational world, she seems none the wiser than the rest of us about who might take responsibility for shaping future iterations of  curriculum frameworks.

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I’ve noted today that the National Association for Gifted and Talented Youth is to be scrapped. You can read more about it here, together with a range of views from various people about whether or not this is a welcome move.

My view is that supporting gifted and talented pupils is, firstly, an essential part of an individual teacher’s role. Their pedagogy needs to be broad enough to ensure that all children are challenged at all stages of their education. This is not a simple task when you are faced with large classes containing mixed abilities, but it is possible (and my book will show you how!).

But organisations like the NAGTY had a part to play in providing a service to schools in helping them support their gifted and talented pupils. However, in the current financial climate it is no surprise that cuts like this are being made. Within the field of music education, I am going to bet a significant sum that the current (one might say extravagant) funding that certain initiatives have received is going to be slashed, if not cut completely, over the next 12 months or so, whichever party comes to power in the May election.

As you may be aware following Secretary of State Ed Balls’ letter to schools in July, The Department for Children, Schools and Families are announcing the academic year 09/10 as a national year of celebrating music and the developmental benefits it can provide. The year is called Tune In, and several exciting launch events are happening across England between 10th-15th September to capture the imagination of a broad spectrum of children and young people.

The first part of the launch, taking place 12.30pm-1.00pm on Thursday, 10th September, is a live music lesson tailored for a Year 7 to Year 9 audience, featuring a host of well-known expert faces from the music industry. Get involved with your KS3 pupils by gathering to watch the lesson via your interactive whiteboards. First Class: The Ultimate Music Lesson will feature a mix of live and pre-recorded appearances by N-Dubz, guitarist Slash, The English National Ballet, The Hoosiers, Katherine Jenkins, Jamie Cullum, DJ Yoda, Vanessa Mae, Girls Can’t Catch, VV Brown, Amanda Holden, Killa Kela and the casts of West End shows Wicked and Billy Elliot. These figures will share advice to inspire and educate pupils about the power of music, whether a young person chooses to perform, produce, create or write music, or help behind the scenes.

The 30-minute live broadcast will be streamed live from a London school at which Secretary of State Ed Balls will be present. Lesson content will be available for download afterwards at www.dcsf.gov.uk/tunein. The broadcast is scheduled over the lunch break to minimise disruption of lessons, but it would be excellent if pupils have had chance to eat and take a short break before First Class: The Ultimate Music Lesson begins.

If you are able to take part, please contact Elizabeth.Bentley@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk or Hannah.Pawlby@freud.com for more information, including how to access the lesson via the interactive whiteboard.