IPPR’s school prescription: more management
nick cowen, 7 May 2008
IPPR’s latest report, ‘Those Who Can’, accurately highlights many of the new pressures that are now impacting on teachers, including a greater demand for skilled school leavers in the economy, changes in family structure and even artificial pressures generated by political agendas. The funny thing is their solution for dealing with these pressures is not the common sense approach: to set teachers free from these bureaucratic and political demands so that they can deal with the genuine needs of children. Quite the opposite!
Their plan is to add yet another tier of management to the schools system by introducing superintendents to oversee head teachers – yet more expensive staff who will not deal directly with children anymore. They also suggest increasing the amount of in-school training (currently labelled Continuing Professional Development) and to centralise control of it to the large quango, the Teacher Development Agency. Yet among real teachers, professional development, as orchestrated by government, is coming to be regarded as a complete joke, as this blog commentary about training days illustrates.
They also suggest dramatically increasing the length and course requirements for initial teacher training. In doing so, they have not noted the growing body of evidence that teacher training (especially the sort that is mandated by government) is not very good at generating actual teacher quality, and indeed can even make teaching quality worse. IPPR seem almost to acknowledge this by claiming ‘Currently, we pass too many candidates who perform poorly in initial training and train too many who will never make good teachers’, yet they do not realize that this is an almost inherent consequence of giving central Government agencies responsibility for deciding who would make a good teacher rather than independent providers.
Besides that, one might imagine that if teacher quality is so important, it might be worth considering the impact of the ballooning numbers of unqualified teaching assistants under this Government in more detail, before making another prescription for teachers who are spending increasing amounts of time dealing with bureaucracy rather than pupils anyway. Indeed, it is astounding that having had more than 10 years of a bureaucratic free reign on the school system, there are still people prepared suggest that the solution to all its problems is to centralise a bit more and throw in more managers! The phrase ‘The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy’ seems more applicable than ever.
I fear that there is a major stumbling block when it comes to the idea of “setting teachers free” to deal with the “genuine needs” of their pupils – many teachers strongly object to meeting their pupils’ needs.
I was what is referred to as a “gifted child” – IQ in the top 1% of the population. However, although my Senior School was aware of this, from some tests I took at the end of my time in Junior School, they never bothered to tell me, allowing me to believe that my failure to fit in was due to my failure to reach the school’s standards, instead of the other way around.
When I discovered the truth some years later, passing my Mensa entrance exams, and attempted to take the matter further with my LEA, I was told that, as a gifted child, I wasn’t legally recognised as having any special needs. I have since discovered that my experiences were/are all too common, many teachers regarding the concept of giftedness as “elitist” and “divisive”.
The educational writer, Dr John Rae, in his book, “Letters to Parents”, writes that, durin his time in the state system, he had seen so many gifted children end up, in a “Kafkaeques twist” labelled as suffering from “learning difficulties”, that it reminded him of the way in which Soviet dissidents ended up in mental hospitals.
In October 1999, the Sunday Telegraph published an article based on an interview with the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham. In the course of his duties, Sir David had had to visit all of the Young Offender Institutions in this country, being struck by the large number of “particularly bright” teenagers he found in them – victims of an educational system which was not required to meet their needs, leaving them bored and frustrated, all too apt to turn to anti-social behaviour.
A year or so later, the government set up NAGTY – the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth – designed to provide an appropriate education for the brightest students.
At the beginning of 2007, there was a report suggesting that the government was worried about NAGTY’s future, due to the large number of teachers refusing to co-operate with it, on ideological grounds.
It would appear that either my parents gave me an “unfair” inheritance in terms of an innate intelligence level, or they gave me an “unfair” advantage in terms of providing me with a “literate” environment (I could read before starting school), or both, many “educationalists”(!) regarding this with the same hostility as they might my receiving a large financial inheritance.
A survey of comprehensive schools some months back indicated that 25% of pupils complained that their lessons failed to “stretch” them.
As one parent put it, if your child does badly at school, due to their being of substantially below average intelligence, and you do what you can to help them, you will be praised. However, if your child does badly at school, due to their being of substantially above average intelligence, and you try to do what you can to help them, you will be criticised.
One of the founders of Mensa, Victor Serebriakoff, compared the British educational system to the “Bed of Procrustes”, in the Greek myth, with all those using it being forced to fit, no matter how painful or damaging the process.
I really don’t feel that allowing such people greater freedom to express their dislikes and prejudices will do very much for the children under their control.
You may have seen a film called “Hamilton Bergeron”, based on a story by Kurt Vonnegut, based in a future America, where, in the interests of “stability” and “fairness”, the state can take steps, up to and including brain surgery, in order to suppress “excessive” intelligence amongst its citizens.
I believe that Mr Vonnegut intended this as a satire, although some people seem to regard it as more of a guide.
To misquote: “Equality, what crimes are committed in your name!”