I attended the Teach First Awards this Thursday and interviewed some of the award winners afterwards. The ceremony was your average award winning affair: lots of praise for sponsors and quite a bit of back-slapping. I like the Teach First programme because it has at its heart the idea of promoting good teaching — which is surely what it’s all about — but it’s worth remembering that even if Teach First becomes the largest graduate employer in the country by employing over a 1,000 graduates, it will still amount to less 1% of the teaching workforce. Teach First’s impact, while important, is always going to be small. Its value is perhaps more symbolic than anything else. This said, I do believe we have a lot to learn from its best teachers. I shot some video footage on my Flip camera and put together this short film about the key elements of good teaching, based on what the award winners told me. The winners interviewed on the film are:

Primary Excellence Award – winner: Kate Barron, from Manorfield Primary School, Tower Hamlets, London

Janette Butler from P&G who presented the award said: “Kate spent a great deal of time in the beginning of the year setting relevant and ambitious visions and goals for her students. She enthused them about writing – even starting a ‘Young journalists’ Club where they created their own newsletter for the school.  This participant worked tirelessly to help her students progress. In just one example, she focussed on a boy who over the years had fallen far behind. With her help, this student began to make progress – for the first time in four years.  As his confidence grows, this young man’s results are continuing to improve against all expectations…including his own.”

STEM Excellence Award – winner: Joshua Eisenthal, Physics teacher, Capital City Academy, Brent, London

Peter Silcock from Credit Suisse who presented the award said: “Joshua consistently identifies underachievers and analyses reasons why they aren’t progressing, using others to help him apply new interventions to raise his pupil’s attainment. He has put a lot of time into his year 13 physics class this year, most of whom have applied to study physics at university. One of his pupils under direct coaching and mentoring applied to Oxford and has been given a conditional offer. If he achieves the required ‘A’ level results he will be the first pupil at the school to gain a place at Oxbridge.”

The Excellence Award – winner: Fiona Docherty, Business Studies teacher, Walworth Academy Southwark

Glenn Earle from Goldman Sachs who presented the award said: “The nominations for Fiona all describe dedication, commitment, drive, modesty and sheer hard work in all areas of school life, which set her apart.  As a business teacher she treats all her students as young business people, shaking their hands as they enter the classroom.  She sets exceptionally high standards and is relentless at ensuring her pupils progress. As a result they have achieved well above their target grades.  In fact five of her students achieved A stars in their GCSE mocks – considerably higher than predicted. Her colleagues say she has raised the aspirations of her pupils by organising trips to multi-national companies as well as organising after school activities….an inspiration not only to her students but to other teachers at the school as well.

Related posts:

1. Have government policies failed to teach our nation to read?
2. How to analyse a poem: a Gilbert vodcast on “The Sick Rose”
3. Kelly gives Labour its best day this term

This first vodcast is an explanation of “How To Analyse A Poem”. It’s primarily aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 pupils, particularly those taking GCSE, but I’ve found during my twenty years of teaching that some of the very basic points I make are relevant to Sixth Form students and undergraduates as well. This year I’ve enjoyed teaching undergraduates at Goldsmiths an Engaging Poetry course, who have been fantastic, but increasingly we’ve returned to some very basic questions: what is analysis? What is poetry? It’s only by asking this simple but essential questions that you find the heart of poetry is unlocked, made accessible and thrilling even. Please feel free to criticize my pedagogical skills constructively if you are so minded.

Related posts:

1. Closing students’ minds
2. The Road Home by Rose Tremain
3. Rose-tinted government recruitment campaign on BBC Breakfast

In the following talk, Katie Bell at Stardoll, talked about her 54million users, trying to defend the educational value of Stardoll. Annette France at Chipping Campden School talked eloquently about the rigid assessment systems which hinder digital learning. Adrian Hon, at Six to Start, one of the world’s leading cross media games companies, talked about how parents shouldn’t be so paranoid about letting their children play games and go on social networking sites.

Fourteen schools were involved in the day, providing their tweets on what was going on at the conference. Wyberton School looked interesting in the projects it was doing with literacy and ICT.

On a rather nightmarish Speed Dating exercise after the lecture, David Wortley, of the Serious Games Institute, directed me to Tim Rylands and his successful game Myst which appears to teach literacy skills and entertain.  I also met a member of Nesta who directed me to a new virtual reality way of learning called Robots and Avatars.

Related posts:

1. Can computer games help children to learn to read?
2. Year 13: Going beyond Chomsky and Skinner in Language Acquisition — Notes and question adapted from Myszor
3. Is it harder than ever to be a teacher?

I spoke at SCETT, the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers, about this matter, talking about these matters, confessing to the difficulties in my own classrooms, dealing with pupils with short attention spans, and tackling them by posting audio files on the internet for them to listen to in their own time. The audio files can be rewound, paused, and listened to again, unlike  a lecture in the classroom. They’ve worked well for a number of my pupils. I suggested that there are two main models for teaching — the Enlightenment model and the Romantic/post-Romantic model — which have become fatally confused in our modern age, leading to the emergence of the post-modern teacher who doesn’t know where he is — teachers like me!

Related posts:

1. What the hell is going on with computers in schools?
2. Have government policies failed to teach our nation to read?
3. H G response to mock Child Language Acquisition exam question with teacher comments

The news that a mother rewards her 13-year-old daughter with cigarettes when she behaves has confirmed what I’ve been thinking for a while – rewards are, at best, ineffectual and, at worst, positively damaging.

A jobless single mother, Tracy Holt, 43, of Gosport, Hampshire, is so despairing of her daughter, Sam, that she now gives her some of her own fags on the rare occasions when Sam is pleasant. Ms Holt insists that the reward “works”.

Philosophically, she’s not alone: last week, Ofsted produced a detailed report on promoting good behaviour in schools and advocated rewards such as trips to the cinema to stop disruptive pupils from being unruly.

Having taught some pretty rowdy children like Sam during my 16 years as a comprehensive teacher, I’ve tried every bribe in the school book – commendations, certificates, stickers, stars, books, popular movies, trendy music, games, colouring in, melting ice-creams, teddy bears, toys, computer games, shortened lessons, trips to leisure parks, to the sweet shop, and to the lavatory. While these are generally healthier than dishing out tobacco, they are nonetheless fraught with dangers.

The central problem is this: teachers are rarely consistent. For some – the generous, soft-hearted teachers – simply being quiet merits prizes; for others, usually the mean or the forgetful, even a PhD thesis doesn’t deserve a bean. As a young teacher, I was trigger-happy about giving out rewards. Just making an interesting comment deserved a sticker, while something difficult, such as reading a book, deserved a slew of chocolate buttons. This led to an older, sterner teacher castigating me for “reward inflation”. He wisely said: “Give them a lollipop and next they’ll want your wallet.”

I ignored his warning until a fateful lesson on the last day of term when my pupils surged in a giggling mass towards the large box of chocolates on my desk – and my bribes to avert the riot that had already happened vanished before the lesson began.

This experience, together with my reading of Kant’s moral philosophy, made me realise that rewards are ridiculous: learning and good behaviour should be ends in themselves and not a means to an end.

Bribing children to behave merely teaches them that it’s necessary to misbehave to gain a fillip for their aberrant good behaviour. It’s time the British stopped corrupting their children. Perhaps the sad example of Ms Holt and her daughter will make us all rethink rewards: as with the Holt family fags, it’s time to give them up.

Related posts:

1. Give children rewards and they’ll soon fleece you
2. The terrible names parents give their children
3. Can computer games help children to learn to read?

Welcome and thank you for coming. My talk is entitled ‘Silent Voices, Still Lives’ and focuses upon the importance of teaching communication skills properly in schools. It is divided into two parts: firstly, I will look at the issue of excluded children where problems of communication are most severe, and then will look more widely at how well we teach our children to communicate.

Mohammed

Mohammed was only 13 years old and wasn’t especially tall or powerful, yet I was terrified of him. “I’ll f**king kill you. Do you get what I mean, geezer? I’ll f**king deck you!” he screamed at me as I asked him to leave my classroom. He had hit a boy over the head and spent much of the lesson swearing. By this time, I was trembling with rage and fear, and was relieved when he finally left the room.

Soon afterwards Mohammed was excluded from the school and I gave up teaching. It was 1997 and the chaos he had caused had sapped my confidence. Because the school was not a stereotypical inner-city comprehensive, but located in a prosperous London suburb, I felt doubly deflated; I felt that I had become horribly soft. In fact, the school did have discipline problems, with a significant rump of children from troubled backgrounds, but few teachers there were trained to cope with the more challenging ones such as Mohammed. Rowdy classes became riotous, lessons became war zones.

Several years later, with my spirits refreshed and missing the buzz and excitement of the classroom, I returned to full-time teaching, quickly becoming a head of department at a school in Havering, outer London. In this new position of responsibility I had to teach several children who had been excluded from other schools or had been passed on to me by more junior teachers. By this time, I had become a more tolerant pedagogue, less obsessed with results, more adept at handling disruption. I was calmer and more consistent in my approach. Some of my pupils were potentially just as aggressive as Mohammed had been, but I was able to cope with them; I’d learned to “give and take”, to negotiate, to form good relationships with difficult children.

John

One child, John, had been permanently excluded from another school but had settled well at my new school and ultimately succeeded in attaining eight good GCSEs. I recently spoke to John about his life now and was delighted that everything was going well for him. He had trained to be an electrician and was set, he said, on earning better wages than me. “What I liked about it in your school,” he told me, “was that my mates and some of the teachers taught me how to deal with my anger. Sometimes I used to get so mad, I would just punch anyone who was around me, but then I learned to walk away from rucks. I could say to myself, ‘It don’t matter.’ And I could answer back without turning everything into a slanging match. I kinda of learnt to talk properly. And I think that helped me concentrate more. The school stuck with me even though I was out of order sometimes. They didn’t kick me out. That counts for a lot.”

Talking to John, I began to think about Mohammed, who had been jailed soon after being permanently excluded from school. I recalled how there were times when he had been keen on learning, had even shown interest in Shakespeare and reading. He had wanted to succeed, but I, and many other teachers at the school, had been preoccupied only by what was wrong with him, meting out punishments and threats that had caused a vicious downward spiral. During my investigations in trying to find out what had happened to him, I learned from another former pupil at the school that Mohammed was still “up to no good”; he had become a drug dealer and had cut some heroin with washing powder and nearly killed a user.

Asking questions, reviewing the situation

Had I contributed to Mohammed’s troubles? Had my old school failed him? If extra resources had been available to give him proper care and attention, would we have spared society huge amounts of money and distress in the long term?

Mohammed fitted the typical profile of an excluded child. He was male, of mixed race, had special educational needs and was in foster care. He was permanently excluded in 1997, exactly at the point when the new Labour administration swept to power promising to address the problems presented by children like him. Tony Blair’s mantra, “Education, education, education”, was as much about sorting out the Mohammeds of this world, about being “tough on the causes of crime”, as it was about improving results.

In spite of the government’s best efforts to massage the figures, exclusion rates have remained more or less steady for a decade; on average, roughly 9,000 children or more are permanently excluded from school every year and nearly 400,000 children given “fixed-term” exclusions, according to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Eighty per cent of them are boys. Government figures show that Roma children are three and a half times more likely to be excluded than other children, and those from black or mixed ethnic backgrounds are twice as likely to be excluded as whites. Children in care are eight times as likely to be excluded, and those with special educational needs are three times more likely to be ordered to leave their school.

The statistics: poverty and exclusions

After 11 years of a Labour government, school exclusions continue to affect the underprivileged.
In 2007, as many as 140,000 pupils who were excluded for short periods from school were eligible for free meals, accounting for a third of such exclusions, even though these children make up only 12 per cent of the school population. But if schools were better equipped and staff better trained to deal with the persistent disruption exhibited by children from dysfunctional and deprived households, would exclusion rates be drastically reduced?

Meanwhile, society as a whole is paying an increasing cost. Significant research by the charity New Philanthropy Capital, which offers advice on giving, reveals that the average excluded child costs society more than £63,851 a year. This figure includes the future lost earnings of the child resulting from poor qualifications, and also costs to society in terms of crime, health and social services. In total, this amounts to £650m a year.

Lord Ramsbotham and City University

This is probably a gross underestimate, since many excluded children are not accounted for in the figures.

The human cost of failing to deal with the problem is incalculable: carrying a knife is the most common offence among children excluded from school, and 50 per cent of men in prison were excluded. “Research shows that at the root of school exclusions, and much crime, is the inability of young people to communicate properly,” says Lord Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons. “If we addressed these problems in the classroom, many of our problems with antisocial behaviour would disappear.

“At the moment, what happens is that these young people, having been alienated from their families at an early age, are then excluded from school and turn to crime: drug-taking and dealing, knife crime and, in extreme but increasing cases, murder. Research shows that while poor parenting and low socio-economic status are major factors, school exclusion plays a significant environmental role in helping shape the criminals of tomorrow. The government needs to appoint a minister for inclusion to begin to address these issues.”

Ramsbotham is right, but what is shocking is that not a huge amount of research has been carried out into the link between communication problems and school exclusions, although much has been done on children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Hart and Risley research in the US

• 42 families examined
• 1,500-2,500 words per month in professional homes, full of positive feedback, ‘that’s right, that’s good.’
• 1,000-1,500 in middle class homes
• 500-800 in homes for children on welfare

In her illuminating book, Why Children Can’t Read And What We Can do About It Diane McGuinness highlights the US study which Betty Hart and Todd Risley carried out several years ago. They studied 42 families from three social groups and recorded how mothers spoke to their young children during the first two and a half years of life, recording everything which was said to each child for one hour per month. McGuinness writes: “The average number of words addressed to the children ranged from 1,500-2,500 words per hour in homes classified as ‘professional’, 1,000-1,500 in middle class homes, and 500-800 to children on welfare. By the age of three it was estimated that children in professional families had heard nearly 35 million words, middle-class children 20 million words, and welfare mothers 10 million words. These differences were found even though welfare mothers spent more time with their children. Mothers in the professional group used a more complex sentence structure, a richer vocabulary, and highly affirmative feedback style: ‘That’s right’ ‘That’s good’ along with a more positive tone of voice. Welfare mothers often used a negative tone, and lots of explicit disapproval ‘stop that’ ‘don’t spill it’ and ‘don’t do it that way’. However, welfare mothers did not differ in other ways, affection, concern for their children, the cleanliness of home, appropriate reactions to children in need. Nor was race a factor.”

What can teachers to do improve communication skills of children?

Ofsted solutions

Recent research conducted by City University however is bucking the trend, there James Law and Sonia Sivyer have shown that if children at the risk of exclusion are taught good communication skills, the risk of exclusion almost disappears.

Ofsted, in its report, Reducing Exclusions of Black Pupils from Secondary Schools: Examples of Good Practice, identified three interrelated features that significantly reduce exclusions: “Respect for the individual in school and a systematic, caring and consistent approach to behaviour and personal development, the courage and willingness to discuss difficult issues, a focus on helping pupils to take more control of their lives by providing them with strategies to communicate well and look after each other.”

Clearly, parenting plays a pivotal role in shaping how children communicate. So where does that leave teachers like me? As an English teacher for the past sixteen years and Head of English at a large London comprehensive for the past six years, it does make me feel quite depressed, feeling that there is little that I can do to significantly improve children’s communication skills. Yet, we know that parental influence is not the whole story.

The current situation in schools:

• too much emphasis on exams
• too little emphasis upon communication skills in all subjects – the failure of the literacy strategy, too complicated, too many objectives
• in english, 20% of GCSE marks are for speaking and listening
• no marks to be gained in other subjects for it
• yet it is the most important issue to be addressed in school
• a radical re-think is needed of the curriculum, tomlinson tried and failed
• much of the time in school, children are being told to be quiet

As recent research from Ofsted has shown, school can improve every pupils’ ability to speak publicly, confidently and openly if it gives pupils the right opportunities. At the moment, our obsession with exams has denied children vital opportunities to speak; resources and money has been targetted at spoon-feeding pupils with information which they can regurgitate in the exam. Very little money or thought has gone into providing significant chances for children to speak publicly. Most assessment is done by exam or written coursework. Even in English only 20% of pupils’ final marks for GCSE are given for ‘Speaking and Listening’.

The opportunities for public speaking: my school and what it does

Moreover, chances for proper public speaking are minimal because so few resources are put into them. Some of the top private schools pay teachers to run public speaking societies, but I have yet to come across a state school where teachers are given financial incentives to encourage public speaking. This is because it has not become a ‘government initiative’ and not seen as a priority.

But all the evidence suggests that it should do – as we have seen inarticulate children are most likely to be excluded from school and become criminals.

When my school has run public speaking competitions that it has had a very significant effect upon improving pupils’ confidence and overall standards of work. My current school runs its own public speaking competition for eleven and twelve year olds; it is a much heralded event, with first rounds, semi-finals and final. In the past two years, the Jack Petchey Foundation has paid for professionals to train fourteen-year-olds to speak in their Speakers’ Bank competition, which has its finals in east London. All of my pupils who have participated have grown immeasurably in stature and maturity as well as become more articulate.

It does though feel like simply scratching of the surface: these are one-offs that enable the star pupils to fly. Your average and mediocre pupil is often left behind in the first round. What we need is for schools to start structuring their curriculum so that there are regular chances for public speakers. Some of my best lessons have been when I have done this; making pupils give presentations to the class, encouraging group work where serious issues are discussed, holding class debates. Again though, this has been difficult to do systematically because of the demands of the curriculum.

New technology – has it made the situation worse?

The government’s investment in computers in schools should have given pupils more chances to communicate in new and innovative ways; to video conference peers from other schools, to talk to experts, to upload videos and podcasts of presentations. Certain subjects like the Media course I am teaching at the moment enable this, but too many of the other academic subject give little or no credit for such things. Sadly, computers haven’t been used for aiding communication skills in schools because worries about cyber-bullying and other inappropriate comments being passed through the ether. Networking sites like Facebook, MSN are banned in my school like many others, as are other great sites like YouTube. For all the money spent on new technology, it doesn’t seem to have helped make pupils more articulate. In fact, the reverse has been the case. Most computer lessons consist of pupils sitting typing and chatting about anything but the work.

The future:

• the scrapping of SATS
• the re-writing of the new National curriculum – has it gone far enough? The full implications are only just being worked out
• the introduction of the new school card – exciting development. Communication skills need to be talked about in every subject
• strengthening the rights for children

I hope though that the scrapping of the Sats and the introduction of School Report Cards which give a wider picture of pupils’ skills than exam results will mean that schools will look long and hard again at the issue of communication. All teachers need to assess their pupils’ communication skills in a range of settings: their ability to articulate their feelings, to negotiate in a variety of setting, their confidence when speaking publicly, their facility for telling stories, recounting anecdotes, explaining things clearly. At the moment, this is a tiny fraction of the English curriculum, but clearly these skills are relevant to all subjects. Perhaps, the new School Report Card system will allow all teachers to assess and set clear targets for improving pupils’ communication skills.

Children’s rights

Save the Children: advocacy for children at risk of exclusion
The Children’s Rights Alliance for England

One small but significant step to making exclusions a more constructive experience would be to grant children the right to appeal against their own exclusions, being assigned a trained “advocate” to represent them. A scheme like this has already been piloted in ten boroughs between 2005 and 2008 by Save the Children with its three-year EAR to Listen project, which gave excluded children an independent advocate to speak for them at exclusion panels and liaise between home and school generally.

That the project had an 80 per cent success rate in supporting children and young people to remain, re-enter and re- engage with education, but there is little political impetus behind spreading its good practice throughout the country. “The government has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives children the right to be heard and taken seriously in all matters affecting them, but we are nowhere near granting this to our excluded pupils,” says Tom Burke, a spokesperson for the Children’s Rights Alliance for England. Since September 2007, schools have been obliged by law to promote pupil well-being. “We would hope that new guidance on the duty, which the government will require schools to implement next year, will add further weight to exclusion panels to considering a child’s rights when making exclusion decisions.”

Conclusion

Pupils should not feel that school is where they go to be told to shut up and get on with the work. Schools need to be the heartlands of encouraging debate, of public discussion of difficult issues, venues for verbal exploration of the human soul, forums for exhorting impassioned argument, not ugly places of suppressed anger, sullen compliance, and damaging invective. That ladies and gentleman is why we need to improve the communication skills of our young people. I rest my case. Thank you.

Notes

• 30% of permanent exclusions are for persistent disruptive behaviour (2007 figures)
• 27% are for physical assaults on staff
• 17% are for assaults on pupils
• 11% are for verbal abuse against an adult
• 5% are for verbal abuse against a pupil
• 3% for bullying, racist abuse and damage
• 2% are for sexual misconduct
• 8,680: number of permanent exclusions from primary, secondary and special schools in 2006/2007
• 363,270: fixed-term exclusions from state secondary schools
• 45,730: fixed-term exclusions from primary schools
• 20: number of times more likely that excluded children will end up in prison, compared to the general population

Source: Department for Children, Schools and Families

Promoting the communication skills of primary school children excluded from school or at risk of exclusion: An intervention study
James Law
Department of Language and Communication Science, City University, London
Sonia Sivyer
East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust (and City University, London)

Previous research has focused on the close association between speech and language difficulties and emotional and behavioural difficulties. However, little attempt has so far been made to examine this relationship in children with emotional or behavioural difficulties who are at risk of exclusion or who have been excluded from school. In particular there are no data on the impact of speech and language interventions on this group of children. This study tests the hypothesis that children with emotional or behavioural difficulties currently excluded from school or at risk of exclusion, receiving intervention for their language and communications skills, would make significant progress both in terms of language, self esteem and behaviour in relation to a comparison group. Children made significant progress as a result of treatment compared to no-treatment, in the areas of language and social communication skills, and self esteem. The data suggest that, in the short term at least, the type of intervention carried out had beneficial effects for the children concerned. Implications for practice for speech and language therapists and teachers working with this client group are also discussed.

Related posts:

1. Silent Voices, Still Lives — A Radio Lecture
2. Too many tests?
3. Schools are for learning, not imprisonment

The decision by the Children’s Secretary, Ed Balls, to kill off the Sats exams for 14-year-olds is arguably the most momentous decision taken by a politician since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. Dramatic as it may sound, I believe the scrapping of these wretched exams will have far greater long-term repercussions than the bailing out of the banks.

As a middle-aged teacher who has taught for nearly two decades in state schools, I have had my life transformed. For 16 years, I have been penned up in sweaty classrooms drilling bored teenagers through the pointless complexities of the English Sats papers. I have watched some pupils bow their heads and scribble dutifully over them, while others turn them into paper aeroplanes. I have gone home every day worrying about how I might improve my results in this year’s test. In my most depressed moments, my life itself has felt like one long, sad Sats test.

When the Education Act of 1988 introduced the concept of Standard Attainment Tests – Sats, also known as Key Stage tests – I, as a young teacher, cheered. In common with most of my colleagues, I support the notion of testing our children in a regular and organised way. In theory, Sats appeared eminently sensible: Key Stage 1 and 2 tests would assess seven- and 11-year-olds mainly in reading, writing and arithmetic, while Key Stage 3 tests would have equal components of testing in English, maths and science. Children would be assigned levels from 1-7, which were standardised across the whole age range, and therefore parents, pupils and teachers could see clearly whether students were progressing at the expected rate; if a pupil did not move up at least one or two levels between each stage then alarm bells would ring.

In practice, however, these tests have proved to be nightmarish failures. The Sats have not only led to a marked decline in standards, they have broken children’s zeal for learning. They have alienated pupils, teachers and parents alike without making schools properly accountable. The root of the problem is this: the Sats have made children better at passing abstruse exams but in so doing have bludgeoned out all enthusiasm for learning, leaving them lacking in initiative, floundering when confronted with unexpected challenges, unable to construct sustained arguments and powerless to think imaginatively. At a stage in their education when pupils could be reading great literature in English, exploring the wonder of numbers in maths, understanding the forces of the universe in science, they have instead been plodding through tedious practice papers and learning the wording of the relevant mark schemes. They have not been educated; they have been trained simply to jump through the hoops of the exams.

How differently I felt in 1991. During that first dawn of Sats I was pleased, because previously there hadn’t been any clear targets to work towards and no way of knowing what pupils had achieved before they came to you.

But as the Key Stage tests were phased in, it became increasingly obvious that they were failing to assess the essentials and, more disturbingly, were putting children off school. The KS1 and 2 tests were supposed to give accurate information about pupils’ proficiency in the three Rs. However, as an English teacher who was expected to use the KS1 and 2 English scores to inform his teaching, I soon noticed that the levels the pupils were arriving with from their primary schools were inaccurate. More worryingly, the method of “teaching to the test” seemed to have sapped the confidence and passion of children as young as 11. I can vividly remember, five years ago, my new Year 7 pupils groaning when they saw that they would be reading a novel with me at the beginning of the year. “Do we have to read books?” a blond-haired boy named Liam asked me during the first week of term. I had never encountered such resistance to learning before. But then I reflected that he was one of the first pupils who had known nothing but Sats teaching since he was six years old. The effect was shocking: 11-year-old children, who had in previous years been full of eagerness, were now jaded and moaning about the work, fighting and giggling in class, writing only short answers and struggling to read anything that wasn’t on a test paper. It was only when I set them a mock test that they shut up and got on with some work: it was the only form of education they understood.

Having been drilled to answer questions on little bites of text, too many children were unable to read longer books independently. Moreover, they seemed utterly disillusioned by the prospect of studying English. Liam sneered at everything put before him until he brought in his own crime novel from home. In desperation, I allowed him to read it even though it wasn’t on the syllabus. Although he was articulate, he was not cut out for taking these exams and achieved a shockingly low level in his KS3 test; in fact, he had regressed academically since primary school. The effect of the tests on him had been hugely damaging, demoralising him to such an extent that he felt there was no point ever trying at school. If they had been better structured, the story would have been very different; he could have written reviews of his beloved crime novels.

I felt I had failed: I had managed to foster a love of reading but this had been at the cost of his failing exams. Ultimately, Liam perceived that his new-found love of reading was disconnected from everything he did in school. Maths teachers report more or less the same problem: overtested and demotivated children are not ready for secondary maths in the way they were before the tests were introduced.

The Key Stage 1 and 2 tests are to be retained. Yet most teachers know that this is where the rot starts: primary schools are obliged to brainwash their charges with test papers in order to keep their school’s position high on the league tables.

This is not to say that schoolteachers have an easy life, handing out test papers and asking the pupils to get on with the work in silence. Teaching to the Sats can be extremely difficult. Recently, the tests at all levels have become even more fiddly – and boring.

Overtested and demotivated children are not ready for secondary maths in the way they were before Sats were introduced

The English Key Stage 3 test, for which I have prepared pupils, follows a very set format: a reading paper, a writing paper and a Shakespeare paper. In maths and science, there is a similarly rigid rubric. At a glance, the English Key Stage 3 test looks quite easy to teach. With Shakespeare, for instance, it benefits the teacher not to read the whole play, because only two scenes are tested; it is far more effective to show pupils the film and then drill them into understanding the two scenes set for the exam.

“I’ve spent years copying this off the board and it makes me feel like a robot. Copy this, copy that. Do this, do that”

But the truth is that, while the examined texts are facile and unrewarding, the actual teaching is a complicated affair. This is because guidelines require that teachers teach every lesson to “learning objectives”. At the beginning of each lesson the teacher writes at least one learning objective on the board, requiring pupils to copy it down in their books and focus on that particular concept throughout the lesson. The response of one of my recent pupils, Leroy, sums up the attitude of many children. “I’ve spent years copying this off the board and it makes me feel like a robot,” he told me. “Copy this, copy that. Do this, do that. When are we ever going to do something we want to do?”

Leroy was a clever boy, but he messed around a lot during my Year 9 classes. In consequence, he achieved only an average Level 5 Sat, setting him up to achieve similarly undistinguished GCSEs. He should have gone on to do A-levels but didn’t because he disliked school so much. The exam system was entirely to blame for his dropping out.

Another pupil, Nicole, who was aged 13, once looked up at me at the end of the lesson and said that her hand was hurting from so much writing. “This is all I do in every lesson, just fill in worksheets, but I never quite know what’s important about any of this. Will I need any of this when I go to work?” she asked with sad resignation.

Nicole was a dutiful student and attained top marks in her Sats, but told me that she forgot everything she had learned a few weeks after the tests. It was an exaggeration, but it illustrated another problem with the tests: pupils didn’t see that any of the skills they learned could be transferred to any other sphere. The Sats foster the belief among our students that school is abstracted from the world beyond the classroom, existing in its own tortuous bubble.

Why then, if I hate them so much, do I feel apprehensive about the demise of the Key Stage 3 tests? In truth, these tests are all I’ve known since I started teaching in the 1990s; they have provided a structure, a crutch, an easy if very mundane regime to impose on my pupils. Like many teachers, I perceive that we need a way of assessing schools’ performances so that failing institutions are identified. But this should be done separately from assessing pupils’ individual performances.

Needless to say, the scrapping of the Sats for 14-year-olds does not mean the scrapping of league tables or the measures that make teachers accountable for their pupils’ results. While much is uncertain, it may be that teachers are scrutinised even more closely. The Department for Children, Schools and Families is piloting “stage not age” tests, which are rather like music exams – tests that are taken when the pupil is ready to take them. It seems certain that these exams will assess pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the new National Curriculum, which, worryingly, looks even worse than its predecessor in its use of ambiguous jargon. Will the government never learn? What pupils and teachers need are clear, concise guidelines that give them freedom to teach as well as definite goals to work towards.

The government’s refusal to countenance chang ing the format of the remaining Sats suggests that the system will continue to fail our children. All the Sats should be abolished now and replaced with simple, sensible tests. If something isn’t done, and soon, we will produce another generation of dispirited and ill-educated children. We’re putting the next generation at a disadvantage, not unlike trying to make them use computers with dial-up connections when their foreign counterparts are using high-end, mobile broadband powered hardware.

Francis Gilbert’s “Parent Power: the Complete Guide to Getting the Best Education for Your Child” is published by Piatkus (£9.99)

A short history of British examinations

The Higher School Certificate was introduced in 1918 for school leavers, and was usually taken at the age of 18.

The eleven-plus was created as part of the Butler Education Act 1944; it tests verbal and non-verbal reasoning, mathematics and writing in order to see which 11-year-olds should go to grammar school.

O-levels (Ordinary levels) were introduced in the 1950s as subject-based qualifications under a General Certificate of Education, testing 16-year-olds on academic knowledge. The Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was the school-leaving qualification awarded between 1965 and 1987 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to the majority of pupils who did not take GCE O-levels. O-levels and CSEs were replaced in 1986 by GCSEs (the General Certificate of Secondary Education).

A-levels were introduced in 1951, replacing the Higher School Certificate, testing students in academic subjects at the end of the sixth form. In 2000, A-levels were reformed and AS-levels were created, testing students at the end of their first year in the sixth form. A2-levels tested pupils at the end of the sixth form. All A-levels became “modular”: each A-level consisted of six modules, tested either by coursework or by examination, enabling pupils to retake modules if necessary. A-levels were reformed again this year, the number of modules being cut from six to four.

Key Stage tests and school league tables based on their results were introduced in the 1990s. KS1 tests for seven-year-olds are in reading, writing and maths, and also offer teacher assessments in science. KS2 tests (11-year-olds) cover English, maths and science, as did the old tests for 14-year-olds. In October, the government announced the end of testing for 14-year-olds, to be replaced by teacher assessments.

Related posts:

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2. Why boycotting SATS for 11-year-olds is not a good idea
3. PISA versus SATs — which assess reading the best?

So just what is the key to success at GCSE? As a teacher in various state schools for the past two decades, I still chew over the issue virtually every day! Just recently, I was talking late into the night at a Year 11 Parents’ evening. The parents of these sixteen-year-olds were desperate to know how their children could improve their English scores — the subject I teach at mixed comprehensive in the outskirts of London. In particular, one parent, Mrs Smith, was pulling her hair out because her sixteen-year-old son, Josh, is clearly a clever boy but is absolutely bombing in his exams, scoring the lowest grades. In his Key Stage 3 English test, he only managed a Level 3 and in his mock English GCSE he got an ‘F’ grade. I replied that I thought he had a ‘special educational need’ (SEN); I felt he had ‘dysgraphia’ — the inability to express himself while writing by hand. She was initially very reluctant to have him assessed for this, worrying that being labelled as SEN would make things worse for him, but when I explained how such an assessment could help him, she agreed to have him tested. A specialist from the Local Authority assessed him as having mild dyspraxia (hand-eye issues) and ‘dsygraphia’. The assessment meant Josh was given a clear plan of action for improvement and received a laptop to use in his lessons and exams. Since then, his grades in class have leapt from F and G grades to D and C grades; the transformation is remarkable. He is now on course to achieve C grades in most of his GCSEs.

What was incredible is that Josh’s ‘learning difficulties’ were not picked up much sooner. Really by the time he was eight, it should have been clear to his teachers that he had some difficulties with his handwriting which were severely hampering his progress. Instead he had been labelled as ‘slow’ and ‘unintelligent’, and, as a result, frustrated by his lack of progress, he had become a big behavioural problem; ripping up his books, getting into fights and backchatting his teachers. No one had thought to give him a thorough assessment for SEN. I have come across children who have had had far milder learning difficulties who have been diagnosed SEN; but, by and large, these have been the children of pushy parents anxious to get the maximum resources for their child. These were parents who were ‘keyed in’ to the system, who knew that to have your child labelled as ‘SEN’ is actually not harmful but extremely useful because it means targeted help.

However, parents like Josh’s mum — from more deprived backgrounds — don’t know how to support their children fully. She hadn’t been pushy at his primary school and had not demanded that they gave Josh a clear plan of action for improvement. Instead, he had drifted from year to year feeling more and more demoralised.

Josh’s case is very important because it illustrates two vital factors in the success of a child at school; the importance of early assessment and parental input. Josh is one of the lucky ones; he is naturally bright and so with a laptop he is able to pass most exams. However, many children who come from deprived backgrounds enter primary school far more inarticulate than Josh; at five years old they can barely speak more than a few sentences. Studies have shown that children whose parents are living on benefits are not exposed to the language that the children of affluent parents are. A fascinating study in the US a few years ago showed that on average, when in the company of their parent, a ‘middle class’ child listens and responds to a thousand more words per hour than a child living with a single parent on welfare; by the age of three it was estimated that a middle class child would have been exposed to 35 million words, while a child on welfare had only listened to 10 million.

Linguistic impoverishment plays a huge factor in the child’s attainment at school. Many schools are simply not equipped to cope with children who cannot communicate coherently; the Key Stage tests at seven do not adequately diagnose what is wrong with them and the curriculum is not designed to give these children the intensive language training they need. However, studies in the US and the UK show when children are given intensive ‘communication’ catch-up programmes very early on in their school career — in reception and Year 1 — the impact has been huge. They have gone on to achieve well as teenagers.

Josh’s problem was not severe because he was articulate; so when he was given the tools to express himself in writing, he was able to shine. However, I have taught many pupils who have had multiple special needs: dyslexia (difficulties with reading and spelling), dyspraxia (perceptual difficulties with hand-eye co-ordination) and various communication disorders. Many of them had not been diagnosed as SEN or, if they were, the programme of action they were on did not help them. What most of them needed was intensive communication training in their primary schools. Since that had not happened, the children had entered the secondary school where I taught unable to cope with the curriculum; unable to discuss things in a sustained fashion or understand what was going on. With little or no support at home and teachers’ hands tied by a restrictive National Curriculum which doesn’t allow enough time to give extra ‘communication’ lessons, they all failed to gain the five A*-C grades at GCSE that the government expects all pupils to achieve.

Ultimately, this mess isn’t teachers’ or parents’ fault; it is actually this incompetent government’s. Study after study has shown there needs to be a radical overhaul of our assessment regime and our curriculum. The system for assessing pupils, which the Labour party has presided over, is laughably out of date; the Key Stage tests do not identify the ‘learning difficulties’ that many pupils have. Instead, the testing regime obliges teachers to ram a boring curriculum down pupils’ throats — which they hate.

Is it any wonder that fewer than half the pupils in the South West of England attain 5 good GCSEs? Instead of threatening to close schools with poor results and lock up parents of truanting pupils, the government needs to help teachers identify under-achievers at much earlier age and give teachers the freedom and time to help them properly.

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3. Don’t panic about your child’s schooling!

A few years back, I taught at a school that terrified me. Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head, shouting out, “Gilly, Gilly, how are ya doing, mate?”

When I complained to my head of year, he said I needed to get a sense of humour; he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Chaos reigned in and out of class.

In one lesson, all the pupils pushed the furniture out of the classroom and lit cigarettes; in another, I was pelted with drawing pins. On one occasion I sat down on a chair which had been booby-trapped with ripped up cans, cutting my backside.

I didn’t complain. It was pointless: I knew absolutely nothing would be done. My only option was to apply for other jobs, which I did – constantly. Unfortunately, I was considered a failure by potential employers for being at the school, and very few wanted me. The same applied to the majority of the staff, who were mostly desperate to leave but were trapped by the school’s reputation.

A vicious circle had taken hold: poor, weak leadership had led to the school gaining very poor results, which had led to the demoralisation of the staff who couldn’t leave, which led to even worse teaching. They were dark days. My long search for another job did eventually pay off, and I escaped to the leafier and more sedate suburbs of London.

I returned to the school a couple of months ago and was astonished. Shortly after I left, the old head had been sacked and a new one put in place – a very different operator. My head was a cultured, intellectual woman who had agonised, Hamlet-like, over the complexities of all the decisions she had to make. Her replacement is a simple, straight-forward, no-nonsense man who is obsessed with imposing good discipline and getting the children to work hard. He walks around the school with a loudspeaker and fusses endlessly over the state of the pupils’ uniform.

He and his management team check in on lessons all the time, yanking out miscreants if they step out of line. Even though the school has more or less the same intake – more or less all of the children come from deprived homes – their behaviour couldn’t be more different.

Instead of rioting, they line up quietly for lunch; instead of desperate teachers yelling for order, there is a studious hush in lessons; instead of books being flung around the head of a depressed librarian, there is silent working among the bookshelves. Results have sky-rocketed. From having the worst results in the country, the school now has some of the best.

The school exemplifies what Ofsted wants all schools to be. In a report published this week, the schools inspectorate showcases 12 schools in challenging circumstances that have been rated as “outstanding” in at least two inspections and examines the elements that have created this success. Buried in the jargon is a very basic point: the best schools have great teachers who inspire their pupils; these adults assess their charges constantly and are always giving them feedback about how they could improve. Children flourish under this sort of treatment.

However, even the best teachers flounder when there is no law and order; which is where headteachers come in. A shocking majority – 66 per cent – of frontline teachers feels there is a discipline crisis in our schools and one of the reasons they cite is a weak headteacher.

Great headteachers are old-fashioned creatures. Like Dixon of Dock Green, they patrol their patch religiously, learning the names of every pupil, making sure that the naughty kids are punished and the good ones are praised. One such man is picked out in the Ofsted report. Paul Grant is a headteacher in Dagenham, who suspended 300 pupils for poor behaviour during his first week at the school. Sorting out the appalling discipline was crucial, he said, to raising academic studies. As a result, the school has been turned into a success. Unfortunately, given the Government’s ceaseless interventions in the education system, headteachers such as Paul Grant are a dying breed.

One place where they survive is in the Academies. Although these schools have fantastically modern, purpose-built premises, the best ones are traditional in philosophy. In Hackney’s Mossbourne Academy, previously a notorious failing school, the heads have brought order by being tough: insisting upon politeness, impeccable uniform, and setting up boarding school structures such as having “houses” and plenty of competitions. How typical, then, that the autonomy these heads enjoy is now under attack. This week, the Independent Academies Association says they are being made dependent on the “whims of quangos”. They warn of “growing dismay” that Academies are increasingly coming under local authority control.

Increasingly, the hands-on headteachers are being replaced by glorified bureaucrats: sycophantic managerialists who are obsessed with implementing every Government initiative and ingratiating themselves with the educational establishment.

They spend too much time at conferences and rarely poke their heads out of their offices when they are at school. Instead, they issue diktats and set up complex reporting and monitoring structures in school that tie up the teachers in paperwork. The name of the game is making sure that they are never blamed for anything and that they gain a great job after they leave their school – they rarely stay in charge of a school more than five years before moving on to the next sinecure.

They are obsessed with data, putting facts and figures above people. They manipulate the curriculum to get good results: this might include encouraging pupils to take soft options, including syllabi stuffed with easy coursework assignments and implementing vocational courses that are impossible to fail. They deem teachers as no more than “facilitators” of learning, libraries as “resource centres”, and failure as “delayed success”. Pedagogy festers under a welter of paperwork and indiscipline thrives.

What an appalling mess this Government has made of our schools: overloading them with initiatives that do nothing but tie up teachers’ time, spending billions on interfering quangos and foisting politically correct propaganda on the system without implementing serious reform. The result is that four in ten 16-year-olds leave school without a decent maths or English GCSE; and that the profession is attracting fewer of the high-calibre, dedicated people it needs.

This week’s Ofsted report is actually a couched riposte to the damage Ed Balls and his cronies have done. What we need, it is saying, are some tough headteachers who will impose some discipline upon our desperately unhappy and rowdy children. Unfortunately, this is happening in far too few schools and, as a result, our teachers and pupils are lost in the chaos. This Government should be ashamed of itself.

Related posts:

1. How a good headteacher can save a school
2. School choice – an overrated concept
3. What secondary school should I choose for my son? The comprehensive, the Academy or the Federated School?

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