Online Parental Engagement

This is a specific DCSF target for schools. Secondary schools are required to report the following information online: attendance, behaviour, progress, attainment and special needs. This needs to be in place by September 2010 (2012 for primaries). It is easy when responding to a national dictat like this to focus on meeting the requirement, without thinking more broadly about what it is intended to achieve. The goal of this process is to create an effective and helpful conversation with parents about their child's learning. The conversation shouldn't be one-sided and it should help both sides tailor what they do to support the development of the child as a learner.

With the schools I work with it seemed that we needed to take a couple of steps backwards and look at the whole communication strategy the school employs. In fact it turned out that the schools had never considered communication with parents in this wider sense before. I've just been supporting this by creating a survey that they have used to ask their parents about how and what they want communicated.

The answers the parents gave were in the end not very clear cut. One said "The preferred method of communication would differ in different circumstances. For general purposes I would prefer letter format, but for emergencies, such as illness I would prefer a telephone call." Letter was still (marginally) the preferred method of communication. But I think the point made by this parent probably means another survey of views with a little more sophisticated questioning needs to happen.

The preference for letters might also mean that parents were thinking about messages and not communication in general.

Once a better picture has emerged I think the schools should then be thinking about how the web based communication fits into that bigger landscape. I'll post further developments with this as they arise.

NAO Report on BSF

You sit around waiting for analysis of BSF for months on end, and then all of a sudden three reports come along in quick succession.

This one is from the National Audit Office and can be downloaded from here. The NAO is concerned with value for money and effective use of money. This is not a report about the learning and teaching in BSF schools. Nevertheless it is worth a look if you have an interest in BSF, at least read the executive summary (only 10 sides).

The opening sections explain the byzantine funding arrangements. They are baffling.

The report contains a number of very instructive graphics, diagrams explaining the funding arrangements, number of new schools built against the targets and so on, and I've tried to copy some into here but without success. If you want the pleasure of these you'll have to look at the original report.

The substance of the report is about value for money and here the NAO are equivocal. They explain that 'projects have been slow to provide data, and PfS has not yet collected enough on their whole life costs to enable us to come to a firm judgement on the projects’ overall value for money. There is also limited data on schools procured through other routes to provide ready benchmarks of all aspects of their costs.' (p24) The report does find that Academies were significantly more expensive to build than BSF schools, BSF £1,850 per square metre average costs compared to £2,240 per square metre for Academies before the programme was integrated into BSF.
'There is no statistical difference between the average price of BSF schools and PFI schools built before BSF was launched. The prices of schools procured through other routes are not collected centrally.' (p24)

The report also finds some benefits from the use of the LEP as well as some shortcomings. The report echoes the findings of PWC when it says 'BSF requires significant time commitment from school leaders, who told us that it creates considerable pressure on their ability to carry out their other duties. Some Local Authorities provide their schools with additional resources to plan and procure BSF, including to cover teaching while leaders (Governors, Heads, Deputies, and other senior staff) commit time to BSF.' But 'School leaders in our focus groups told us they often felt left to manage alone.' (p27) This is unacceptable. I also wondered about the observation, 'The best design of each individual school developed by bidders during the procurement process does not always win, because: the Local Authority scores bids on a variety of factors of which design counts for only 18 per cent...' I understand that LAs can't make a choice solely on design quality, companies selected must have the capacity and the experience necessary to be successful. Yet 18% seems very low.

It is very interesting that the views of LAs and private sector partners differ significantly when asked about if the LEP is a good approach to renewing school estate and equipping it to be capable of improving educational outcomes. It is hard to say exactly as the figures are not given but around 65% of the private sector partners thought that the LEP was either 'effective' or 'highly effective and worthwhile'. Only about 28% of LAs were of the same opinion. Quite why these opinions differed so widely I couldn't explain. The report does not even note this variation. I would be very keen to hear from anyone involved who thought they could explain this.

There is positive judgement about PfS in the report. But the NAO does note that PfS performance targets are all about timeliness and not quality and an implication that this isn't helpful to the main task at hand.

The report includes detailed case studies from Manchester, Bristol, Kent, Lewisham, Solihull, Lancashire and Ealing. There is a great deal of informative material in these and I'd cover this if I had the time. Again I recommend the report to you, but don't go there looking for answers to questions of educational quality.

Building Schools for the Future and Futurelab

Futurelab have just released a document called 'Transforming Schools for the Future?'. Download it from here. Four contributors have written short essays designed to stimulate thinking around the BSF process. Tim Rudd (Senior Researcher at Futurelab) argues that BSF will be more effective at changing learning for the better if young people are given a genuine voice in designing these new schools. His argument is very compelling. Tim recognises that personalisation if it has any meaning must imply student choices and empowerment. So, he argues, BSF should embrace learner empowerment. I find this an attractive proposition. I am a great believer in the idea that the means make the ends. The argument would be stronger if it was not based solely on logic. Unfortunately he doesn't refer the reader to any examples of this working in practice.
Nick Page is next and makes some similarly straightforward proposals to improve BSF. He wants greater preparatory work with schools. He wants more testing and experimenting before schools begin. I particularly appreciate his reference to City Learnining Centres (p 11) as good places to do the experimenting. He says 'Every project should have a link university who can help provide the research methodologies and support'. I'm sure most observers would say these are very sensible ideas. His focus on the human process of thinking through the whole thing makes a lot of sense. It made me think about the PWC report I wrote about a few weeks ago - visible here. Lack of funding to schools to help them prepare is highlighted in the report.
Rosemary Luckin, (Professor of Learner Centered Design, London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education) has, in my opinion, some of the most interesting reflections.
'Teachers have a vitally important role in the realisation of the transformative power of technology, but this role is continually evolving and teachers need support to operate effectively in a ‘perpetual beta’ world.' (p 14) This made me stop and think for a minute. What makes google docs so powerful is their ability to add functionality, or alter the interface on the fly. They can watch the effects and decide whether or not to keep the change or try something else. Teachers should be able to use technology to support a similar process with learners.
She says on page 15 that BSF needs to 'explore how the school can be designed in a manner that enables it to continue to evolve'. A fabulous point I think. Learning is at the centre of this dynamic, and without the ability to change, what point would there be in educationalists and learners finding out what is effective and suboptimal in their buildings?
Bob Harrison of Toshiba Information Systems is the last contributor. I was struck by this question.
'How do we create a climate for the education workforce to innovate and be creative within a system which is “internally consistent and self sustaining”?' (p 20) This is at the heart of much of the weaknesses in BSF at present. I remember PM Tony Blair asserting that standards not structures matter and being sceptical. Very often the former are shaped by the latter. Our present school system creates institutions that are extremely risk averse and defensive. If BSF can be a tool for decoupling some of the engines that create this climate in schools then I'll be delighted.

PWC Report on BSF

This has appeared having a publication date of December 2008. The full report can be downloaded from here. This is the teachernet website run by the DCSF. It has the following upbeat summary of the report.
'The report shows that BSF is making good progress, that there is increasing belief in all stakeholders that it will deliver strong benefits for teaching and learning, and particularly from schools as they actually go through the programme. There is strong evidence of satisfaction with their new buildings from the staff and pupils of the first four new BSF schools opened.'

Strange then that the actual report should say:
'.. staff ... were generally less knowledgeable than other stakeholders of the aims and objectives of BSF for their school, or the potential for the programme to have longer-term educational impacts.' and, 'Schools should review their communication strategies in order to ensure that the processes used to inform teaching staff are effective'.

I suppose if staff had known almost nothing at the last review then it would be fair to say they have an increasing belief in the strong benefits. Or perhaps the DCSF doesn't include staff as a stakeholder group?

I found these headline findings very interesting.

• 'BSF managers and directors in four of the 11 LAs interviewed stated that they did not provide funding to schools to enable them to implement BSF.' Although the remaining 7 did provide funds. I would have thought all schools would need financial support to undertake all the very necessary preparatory work for BSF. The report says 'Most [heads] said there was a shortfall, sometimes a large one, between LA funding received and the actual costs they had incurred' and so it goes on to recommend better funding. I've seen a very great deal of capital investment in schools be less effective because of a failure to invest in human resources. ICT put in to schools where staff receive insufficient training and support is just one example. So this is a particular disappointment.
• The effectiveness of the LEP (Local Educational Partnership) as a tool for delivery of BSF is examined. I find it very concerning that this was reported, 'Given that ICT provision and maintenance is one of a number of key responsibilities of the LEP, it is surprising that only one-fifth of headteachers (20%) agreed or strongly agreed that the use of a LEP for ICT provision and maintenance and other related services would be a good thing, and that negative responses were higher than for other questions ... (at 21%).' BSF has been a trojan horse for the imposition of managed ICT services in schools. This is an experiment. The evidence for the effectiveness of managed services in schools is limited at best. (See for example the Becta research I posted about here.)
• The views on the LEP itself were also worrying. 'Just under one fifth of headteachers overall (19%) thought that educational interests would be adequately represented in the LEP, with a higher number of positive responses from Wave 1-3 schools than from Wave 4-6 schools (32% and 13% respectively).' So even in the wave 1-3 schools two-thirds of the heads interviewed were not able to be confident that educational interests would be paramount to the LEP. If I was running Partnership for Schools (PfS - the quango steering BSF) I'd be very worried by these numbers!
• Further 'A small number of interviewees expressed concern that the contracting company might be too dominant within the LEP (reflecting the fact that the LEP model is 80% private, 10% BSFI and 10% LA controlled).'

So overall not the terrific success the teachernet website claims.

Specialist Schools

News reports of research don't always represent it as faithfully as they might. Just a moment ago I was looking at the BBC rss feed on education and came across the following headline 'Specialist schools' value queried'. I clicked through to the full article that explained;
'The success of England's specialist schools is an illusion, with the extra money they receive and intake being the crucial factors, according to a report. A University of Buckingham report said the system had led to schools with names that "did not mean very much". It said 2007 research suggested pupils at schools specialising in music were more likely to get A grades in physics A-level than those at science schools. ' 'The authors of the latest study say specialist schools appear to do better because poorer performing schools were not granted specialist status. Professor Alan Smithers said: "All the SSAT's (Specialist Schools and Academies Trust) comparisons amount to is that if you take effective schools and give them extra money, they do better than less effective schools without extra money."
The study showed, he said, that the extra money pumped into specialist schools, as well as their intake of pupils, had the biggest impact on results.'
Goodness I thought this is pretty damning so I went to the University Of Buckingham's website and downloaded the report. That the title of the report is 'SPECIALIST SCIENCE SCHOOLS' is quite surprising. The authors are chiefly interested in the decline in numbers of young people choosing A Level Physics.
'Since 1990, physics entries, based on the annual returns of what is now the Joint Council for Qualifications, went down from 45,300 to 28,100 (38.0 per cent decrease), while total entries went up from 684,100 to 827,700 (21.0 per cent increase).' 'In this report we investigate what has prompted schools to choose particular specialisms and what contribution they are making in their nominated subjects. In particular, it has as its core questions: (1) are science schools increasing participation in physics at GCSE and A-level; and (2) are they improving performance in physics at GCSE and A-level?'
Given these objectives it is hard to understand how the headlines from the BBC came out of the research. The report itself isn't a very impressive piece of work. For example the attention grabbing comparison of Music and Science Specialist Schools looks unconvincing when there are only 12 Music Specialist Schools being compared with 159 Science.

The Sutherland Inquiry into National Curriculum Testing in 2008

The full report can be accessed here.

The responsibilities for failure are made crystal clear.

Page 1
“The primary responsibility must therefore rest with the American organisation, ETS Global BV (ETS), which won the public contract to deliver the tests and failed its customers.”

“The events of this summer also represent a failure on the part of one of the Government’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), to deliver its remit. ... In practice, the first time QCA notified Ministers that ETS would not deliver test results on time was 30 June 2008. The whole episode was punctuated by similar instances of poor communications, whether to schools, to the marking community, or between the organisations involved.”

Nowhere is it suggested in the report that the number of links in the chain of command makes the effective completion of the marking of tests more difficult. I find it revealing where Jim Knight comments on what happened in July 2008
“That is when the whole business of the relationship between us and QCA, NAA and then the contractor started to come sharply into focus, because clearly we were asking for things from QCA that we then were not getting. You then had to decide whether or not to forgive the QCA because it was actually the contractor’s fault, or whether it was a problem with the QCA. In the end, I had to take the view that our relationship was with QCA, it wasn’t with the contractor. It was up to QCA to come up with the answers and solutions to the problems. How they did it was up to them, they just had to deliver. And frankly, they weren’t.” (Page 80)
In other words DCSF – QCA – ETS chain meant that the government was dealing with the developing crisis at one remove from the operational end.

The inquiry report doesn’t consider the whole contracting approach to tests as a possible source of difficulty. Private sector commissioning of public sector activity is so habituated within government strategy that the question doesn’t even seem to have been asked. Rather Sutherland focuses on the detailed arrangements between all these parties assuming that the solution to the problem lies within them.

Page 35 “The Secretary of State the Rt Hon Ed Balls MP has described:
‘…in terms of the delivery of tests, I don’t think there was ever any doubt that there should be an agency function. It is not sensible for ministers to get involved in the details of the procurement process, but actually the kind of expertise that you need in order to manage a complex contract, isn’t the same as the kind of expertise you need to make good policy…’”

So the advisability of external commissioning of testing is not questioned, only the separation of strategic and operational functions.

Page 36
“DCSF Permanent Secretary David Bell has described the department and QCA’s respective roles:
‘…what we do is delegate by remit letter essentially a large number of our delivery responsibilities. And to some extent that reflects the theology of the last twenty years or so as central government departments have increasingly passed over responsibility to other government agencies…’”
What an interesting choice of words, ‘theology’.

Page 37
“QCA Chief Executive Dr Ken Boston has stated that:
‘Government is at arm’s length only from the detail of the test questions and from the marking and level-setting… Throughout the process of procuring the contract and delivering the tests according to DCSF specification, ministers and officials had access to exactly the same data and information as the NAA and the QCA; they were active participants in the process; and they provided a separate source of advice to ministers. They were properly part of the process, and in no way at ‘arm’s length’.’”
If this is the case it makes Ed Balls comments from page 35 seem misguided.

Questioning the use of private sector providers for public sector functions as vital as national testing, seems unlikely, given David Bell’s view of the current ‘theology’. If private sector involvement had been within the scope of the Sutherland Inquiry and present difficulties had been contrasted with performance when these functions were delivered by the public sector, the conclusions might have been very different.

Interim Report on the Primary Curriculum

This has just been released and can be downloaded from here.

The press attention has been around the recommendation that primary schools change their organisation from a subject to a more thematic approach. This reflects much of what has been going on in the secondary curriculum of late and is very relevant to the House Committee on Children, Schools And Families examinations that were reported in my last post.

Sir Jim Rose acknowledges the tensions between the two approaches to organising learning and states; "six areas of learning are proposed to give schools optimum flexibility for planning cross- curricular studies, and ample opportunities to teach essential content discretely and directly". In other words lets give schools the ability to do some thematic work but at the same time design the curriculum so that they are influenced to teach the really important building blocks of content. A recommendation is..

"Given the excellent examples of both witnessed by the Review, neither discrete subject teaching nor cross-curricular studies must disappear from primary schools. Schools should protect time when learning is best served by teaching subject content discretely and systematically, and give children ample opportunities to use and apply their developing subject knowledge, skills and understanding in cross-curricular studies."

I am pleased that he highlights the need to develop young peoples' ability to speak and listen.
"Discussion of reading, writing and numeracy in primary education often fails to recognise the central importance of developing children’s spoken communication."

ICT is also given a strong role in helping improve the learning that goes on in primaries. He states "One highly promising route to meeting the demand for in-depth teaching and learning is undoubtedly emerging through ICT." It is clear that he believes that ICT capabilities need to be explicitly addressed and also that ICT itself is an enabler of enhanced learning across all subjects (and themes).

I await the final report with keen anticipation