Children are natural learners (Ken Robinson), but are adults? Do educational leaders make the same mistakes over and over again?
My Experience of Academies
There have been countless initiatives over the last 10 years to raise attainment, but the impact of these has been patchy to say the least. One of these initiatives means all schools in England should have committed to “The Academisation Programme” by 2022 (effectively ending the link between local authorities and schools that began in 1902.)
Once Academies were seen as struggling schools in deprived areas, originating under the Labour Government, but now they are common place. I have first-hand experience working in these no-longer “new”Academies as well as working in very traditional Secondary Schools and high performing Grammar Schools, too.
I once worked at an Academy that had 5 new Principals in 4 years - the shortest tenure was only 3 months! Gone are the days when a Headteacher was a stalwart steadfast figure that saw the school through good and bad times. It seems becoming a ‘Principal’ should now come with a “health warning” that this could seriously damage your career.
How Academy Leaders can get it “so wrong”
With change in Leadership there is the inevitable ‘new’ ideas and policies… a ‘new’ Teaching and Learning Strategy or a ‘new’ Behaviour Policy (that they have inevitably seen work at their previous school!) Often these changes come with a new fancy “buzzword” and an attitude that exudes arrogance and ignores the fact that the previous school had a completely different culture, staff body and set of resources to the new one.
This reminds me of a brilliant quote by Jim Rohn: “Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot.” Not to cast any aspersions over the intelligence or intentions of any of these motivated individuals, but they all had huge ambitions for themselves and their own careers. They hid behind the principle of ‘putting the pupils first’, but were never around long enough to be accountable for their decisions… or “new” initiatives.
There are many downsides to having such a high turnover of Principals (or in old money “Headteachers“). It is destabilising for the community that it serves, children feel abandoned and let down especially in areas where pupils are already in serious danger of underachieving.
The answer in this particular Academy was to bring in more draconian methods to raise attainment, such as termly quality assurance checks, termly mock-steds, weekly learning walks, meetings, meetings, meetings that stretched into eternity, a never ending cycle of judgemental lesson observations, numbing training sessions, oppressive joint lesson planning sessions that were scrutinised and you had to submit your lesson plans, bumptious bombastic network advisors, supercilious eternal consultancies, and more meetings.
It felt like you were stuck in a never-ending Sisyphus task, constantly ‘weighing the metaphoric pig’. Despite my experience, I am not suggesting that all Academies are “bad”, however, a lot of teachers will be familiar with the toxic low trust environment that I am describing. When you are work in an environment that witnesses so much change everyone is left feeling exhausted or change saturated, when the reality should be to raise the quality of education and therefore improve the life chances for all pupils.
It’s all about the research
My PHD research has led me to think about initiatives that will have a positive change on student progress… not just change for change’s sake. There is a wealth of data to explore.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
The OECD is an international economic organisation of 34 countries, founded in 30 September 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. When you begin to research the attainment gap across countries it is surprising how often the OECD and Education are linked.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a very useful starting place if you want to analyse how 15-year-old pupils in different countries compare in Reading, Mathematics and Science. Based on Reading alone the United Kingdom are 14th on the list below, above Germany, France and Japan to name a few but below the United States, Poland and Hong Kong.
PISA is a triennial survey of 15-year-old students’ core subjects around the world. The aim is to assess the extent in which pupils have acquired ‘key knowledge’ and ‘skills’, which already has me thinking that this is far too narrow a measure on pupils’ capabilities. Moreover, they give us a global benchmark that can be used as a starting point for further thinking.
The table below provides an interesting snapshot for 2018 results across the globe:
The Problem: boys versus girls
My areas of main interest are the progress gaps between the genders and so this study is particularly helpful for spotting alarming patterns between boys and girls. For example, in 2018, 79 countries participated in the PISA study and according to their research: ‘girls significantly outperformed boys in reading– by 30 score points on average across OECD countries’.
The good news is that in the United Kingdom the gender gap in reading was only 20 score points, but not dissimilar to 2009 were it was 25 score points. According to PISA research boys outperformed girls in mathematics by 12 score points, however if you compare how many girls achieved English and Maths in 2019 it is 46.6% compared to 40% for boys.
In 2013/14 the attainment gap for 5+ GCSE including English and Maths was 10%, and now it is 6.6%, which looks pleasing however the gap between the top and the bottom is far too wide in my opinion. According to Academic Year 2020/21 Key stage 4 performance girls from the Chinese ethnic group had the highest average score out of all groups (69.7) – boys from the White Gypsy and Roma ethnic group had the lowest score (21.2).
The report also states that ‘in every ethnic group, girls had a higher average score than boys.’ The gap in attainment is ‘the Elephant in the room’, if you look closely at all of the OECD every country has the same issue to contend with: boys’ underachievement compared to girls is a global issue. And if this isn’t enough of a difference then in 2015 UCAS calculated that UK women are 35% more likely to go to university than men.
Are schools fixing the "gender gap" problem?
It is self-evident that some Schools are doing a far better job than others in producing sustainable improvements in this area (because quick fixes in education can only get you so far). As winter follows autumn, spring follows winter, I have heard this said in many ways but said best by Jim Rohn: ‘Whatever you sow, you reap. Another way to put it: In order to reap, you must sow. Everyone has to get good at one of two things: planting in the spring or begging in the fall. To deserve the harvest, you must plant the seed, take care of it in the summer and then carefully harvest it.’
The Jim Rohn quote is based on a biblical Parable of the Sower. I am fully aware some people dismiss religion as superstitious, but this is a meta-parable one than transcends the New Testament. I challenge anyone who is quick to dismiss something humans have understood for a very long time, there is more to this than just a simple farming analogy - it is packed with truths.
Like farming, education is a natural system. No matter how much you try you cannot rearrange the seasons. After winter you cannot have summer; it just does not work like that. ‘As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up’. (Matthew 13:4). Just like these messages, the message of education as important is briefly heard and quickly lost on many, especially young men.
We need to address the root causes of underachievement, create the right environments for all pupils to grow, for them to understand why learning is key to their life on many levels. To establish a deep-rooted love of learning that enables all pupils to cultivate knowledge and not have a shallow foundation, coupled with low expectations of what schools can do for them, where schools have become exam factories and an ‘Education’ now means ‘how to pass a test’ rather than teaching students to thrive in the outside world.
There needs to be a paradigm shift in Education that is aligned with principles that support the development of all pupils regardless of race, gender and class. Undoubtedly, ‘children are natural learners’ (Robinson), but the educational data suggests that adults are not. Something has to change… and soon.
To learn more about James Kenny's PHD journey check out his regular guest blog HERE
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