Primary First 17

PrimaryFirst The journal for primary schools Issue 17 £5.00

“We must assess what we value and not simply value what we assess”

National Association for Primary Education in association with

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Editorial

The Government’s Green Paper, Schools which work for everyone, supports secondary education provided by the remaining grammar schools but is absolutely clear in rejecting “any reintroduction of the binary or tripartite system of the past or a simple expansion of existing selective institutions”. This is reassuring news for primary schools which are strongly opposed to the 11+ examination and its limiting and distorting impact upon the quality of primary education.

To return to the days of 11+ selection which results in four out of every five young children being denied entry to grammar schools, however much families chose such education for their children, would indeed be a backward step. We are working towards the achievement of an educated community and it is a sad fact that children less advantaged by the circumstances of their birth are much more likely to be denied equal educational opportunity. Too often success goes to families who can afford private tutoring or a place in a private school which crams children for the selection examination.

The National Association is delighted to make I-Spy books available to all schools.

The books are invaluable in enhancing and illuminating learning out of school.

Yet while we hold the line in opposing the 11+ it is important that we consider the selection out of opportunity in the streamed classes which are characteristic of many primary and secondary schools. The national insistence upon high stakes testing has led to an increase in the number of schools streaming their pupils, even at key stage 1, so facilitating preparation for the tests. This may well improve results but the long term impact upon children could be dire. One of the most important aims of primary teachers is to maintain and enhance the children’s natural desire to learn as they go on to face the challenges of adolescence. The message conveyed to pupils in the lower streams, however camouflaged by

the initials of the teacher, is that they have difficulty in learning, or even worse in the vernacular of the city, that they are the thick ones.

There is no evidence that children working in streamed classes improves overall standards of attainment. Small gains by the top stream are offset by losses on the part of the others and there is a detrimental effect on the attitudes of less able children and their self-esteem. This can all too easily create a vicious circle of low expectations from which it is difficult to escape.

There are some questions we should ask.

Do boys predominate in the lower stream? Two thirds of poor readers are boys and reading standards are often used as a basis for streaming.

Are children born in the summer months clustered in the lower streams? Summer born children are twice as likely to be vulnerable to reading failure as children born in the autumn.

How flexible is the composition of the streams? Research indicates that over time children tend to conform to the middle of the stream, they regress to the mean, and so movement from one stream to another becomes increasingly rare.

No, we must resist selection both for schools and within schools and look to Finland where there is no selection and all children are taught in mixed ability classes until the age of 16 --- and take note that the Finns are among world leaders in the international league tables!

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A New Chapter With this issue we open a new chapter in the story of Primary First. For many years we have enjoyed a close working arrangement with the Association for the Study of Primary Education and its journal, Education 3 to 13. We take this a step further today. From now on this journal will be jointly sponsored by the two associations whose fields of work on behalf of primary education are entirely compatible. Needless to say there will be no changes to the educational direction of Primary First and we will continue to publish a journal which treats you as you are, thinking professionals committed to the most vital sector of education of all.

About us

Editorial Editorial Board National Association for Primary Education

For further information and details of how and where to purchase please visit:

www.ispymichelin.com/nape-24-w.asp

John Coe Peter Cansell, Malini Mistry, Stuart Swann, Robert Young

Primary First journal is published three times per year by the National Association for Primary Education in association with the Association for the Study of Primary Education.

Primary First, 57 Britannia Way, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9UY Tel. 01543 257257, Email. nape@onetel.com ©Primary First 2016 No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher.

Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the editorial content the publisher cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher.

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In Her Voice

by Doug Springate and John Cook

In 2017 it will be fifty years since the Plowden Report on Primary Education was published in 1967.

This article celebrates the Plowden Report by imagining what Lady Plowden might conclude if she visited primary schools today. The authors who had both started their primary teaching careers in the 1960s made a number of visits using the original Report’s key questions to investigate what schools have become. In this way they context Plowden’s key recommendations with the main changes in primary schooling that have occurred in the last fifty years. The voice is Lady Plowden’s.

CONTENTS 03.

Editorial Welcome to ASPE About Us

05.

Doug Springate and John Cook step into Lady Plowden’s shoes.

10.

Children think differently says Pam Jarvis.

20.

Freetime activity – an international comparison by Anne Purdon

22.

Andrew Holden looks at children’s play and the effects on the community.

24.

Jodie Chell and Jackie Scruton question the reality of school phobia.

27.

Science and maths for young children by Mervyn Benford.

35.

Geoffrey Marshall questions the values of his past --- and the future?

12-13. Reviews by John Coe and Anne Nelson

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14.

Carey Fluker Hunt’s Book Page.

16.

The ASPE pages introduced by Malini Mistry

18.

Krishan Sood and Malini Mistry consider diversity and equity in the Early Years.

I remember in the 1960s that primary schools had felt the forgotten part of education. They are now much in focus and are highly regulated. HMI in 1967 judged around half of primary schools to be “good”. Today with tougher criteria the percentage of primary schools deemed good or outstanding is higher. So what has happened? To find out I arranged five visits in different LEAs and in schools of varying governance and structure, including Academy trusts, itself so different from the 1960s. I also did some initial research from some of the vast array of reports and reviews produced in the last fifty years.

My initial surprise on all my visits was at all the security, plus the full car parks and the number of children being driven to school. Yet it was a pleasure to see the generally good upkeep of the school and grounds, the colour and the child friendly landscaping. Each school had the familiar room organisation with classrooms, a hall and various offices, and the familiar punctuation marks of 45 to 60 minute lessons, assemblies, playtimes, lunches, and after school activities. I was not feeling out of place but very curious.

In each school i began in the nursery and reception classes. All showed a similar philosophy for learning with a range of indoor and outdoor creative activities with caring and consistent adults, engaging and encouraging the children in both individual and small group focussed activities. Everything was underpinned by rigorous planning and assessment strategies. Stunning displays informed me that “We are storytellers.”; “We have been learning to self-select to create our pictures” and children eager to show me the cup-cakes they have been making and the “I-TAB” they are using! The child is at the centre of the learning and everything clearly matches their

learning needs. Early Years education has come so far and OfSTED (2015) recognises this, “Early Years education has never been stronger. More than 80% of provision is good or outstanding”. It is especially important for the children living in deprived areas where two of my visits were. In 1967 there was a limited and varied nursey provision nationally but far fewer working mothers. We urged the Government of the time to expand nursery education “as soon as possible”. It has been a success story over the years, fully exemplified in what I had seen.

I am less sure of the direction things are moving in Key Stage One. We argued in the original report (Plowden 1967) that formal education should not begin until what is now Year 1 and that the period of Infant education should continue for the next three years. This has not happened. The end of Key Stage national testing is clearly driving the curriculum, learning and teaching; and the ‘base line’ assessment at end of reception also impacts on the children eroding play based activities for more formal learning. Teachers were concerned about the imposition of new Government testing and assessment systems, some of which had been cancelled and others lacking a national norm. Nobody could give me the rationale for these or for the level expected.

I enjoyed visiting all the classrooms as they were clean, colourful and well set out and none had more than 32 pupils. The straight rows of the 1960s Junior schools are replaced with groups of flat topped formica desks and an area of cushions and soft chairs for relaxed reading, allowing for flexibility in teaching and learning. Some even had independent learning rooms within the classroom. The teacher’s desk was often in a corner and to the front is a large screen for computer

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06 projected information. Once the children were settled and the lessons introduced the children easily organised themselves and were aware of what to do and how to do it without direction leaving the teacher to move round supporting and advising. Every class visited had adult support for the teacher, something we had strongly advocated in 1967. Today there are nearly as many teaching assistants employed as there are teachers and with the teaching force at nearly 200,000 this itself is a 30% increase since 1967 for roughly the same number of children. Yet I am aware that the impact of teaching assistants on learning is controversial. [Sutton Trust 2014] The children’s exercise books were a joy to behold with clear written objectives on each page and spaces for the child and others, including the teacher to write an assessment comment. Classrooms generally had one wall as the ‘working wall’, a constant reminder to the pupils of their learning journey, its direction and purpose.

They were also clear as to how they best learnt and how they could improve, often making their own decisions about their learning and possibly consulting other children if they had problems. Classrooms were quiet but not silent and finished work was carefully displayed.

Work was therefore purposeful and supported by the comprehensive amount of resources available and the information that could be easily gained by researching via the internet. The standard of work achieved in the core subjects far surpasses that which I saw in the 1960s, though less so in the arts. Resourcing is something a 1960s teacher could only dream of and the children’s control and understanding of their own learning is impressive. The level of work I witnessed in year six would have been found in the early years of a secondary school of 1967. All schools visited were aware of ways to ease secondary transfer and had better interaction with their local secondary schools than in 1967. I still would ask the question whether it would be better to transfer at 12 rather than 11, in line with nearly all other developed countries and thereby reducing the downward pressure of end of secondary school examinations.

Year groups I saw were unstreamed and only in year six was there setting. Any child needing sustained individual attention could receive this from an adult in an ‘intervention room’. I was very impressed with the care and attention given to children who had special needs and the attempts to place such children in the least restrictive environment. The whole terminology has changed with a far greater acceptance of differences and of the need to accept and integrate rather than

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isolate and remediate. In this way individual needs could be best met and there has been vast improvement in dealing with such children since the 1960s.

I could see that much attention though is given to the demands of the national assessments [SATs] and in one school visited, the Eleven Plus, it’s survival surprising me. The SATs create pressure and no learning should be driven by anxiety. Heads are in fear of the grade the school might get from their ‘Ofsted ’Inspection, pressure passed onto the teachers who then pressurise their pupils. As the Cambridge Primary Review [2010] commented, testing does not drive up standards, good teaching does. I can recall the school visits we documented in 1967 [Plowden paras 277-289], and realised that what I had seen here lacked some of the excitement and energy I had witnessed then and there was far less mixed activities going on in the same classroom at the same time. The curriculum is so carefully planned that the spontaneous has little place.

In dialogue with me the teachers and head teachers all identified testing and assessment as their main challenge and even some parents have been protesting about them. From my perspective I welcome the postponement of new baseline assessments for five year olds and feel that new styles of tests at seven and eleven appear at best confusing (just what is a National expectation and who sets it) or shambolic (test answers appearing online). As for the introduction of grammar tests at age eleven we saw little place in the primary school years ago for the formal study of grammar since active and imaginative experience should precede attempts to analyse grammatically how language behaves. (Plowden Report para 612) “The time for grammatical analysis will come but it should follow a firmly laid foundation of experience of the spoken and written language.”

I can see that the National Curriculum has though provided an entitlement for each child. Originally overly prescriptive it is becoming something for each school to interpret and deliver in their own way. Yet it remains dominated by English and Maths so that mornings are given over to these two areas just as they were in the 1960s. Planning across the curriculum via a topic is not as evident. I welcome the addition of Design Technology and Computing and the increased attention given to Science and Foreign Languages. However, these subjects are now being called the “poor relations” of the primary curriculum (OfSTED 2016) given the time demands of English and Maths. There is little time for

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08 playground angels and I think the playground layout and the arts and humanities and teachers are having to apparatus is great”. realise the potential of integrating the subjects in topics, something only familiar to older teachers. In 1967 we The way the playground worked was very much the recommended on [Plowden p 460] that ‘“Finding out” children’s, even down to dealing with all the usual has proved to be better for children than “being told”’, playtime issues. The expectation is that everyone echoing the Hadow Report of 1931. In the Primary should treat each other with respect. Children are no survey of 1978 there was little evidence of that. Today longer in fear of corporal punishment and their voice is finding out is certainly encouraged but what to find out considerable, all schools having class pupil councils and is still teacher prescribed as schools have very detailed school pupil councils. curriculum planning. Curriculum should reflect the Similarly there have been advances in the ways in lives of the children and their environment and it was which parents are drawn into and can help support their encouraging for me to see the attention to the ethnicity children’s schooling. We suggested a basic minimum of of children and their home languages to support the activities for parents (Plowden Report para 112) and individual child but also to enrich the school overall. Yet these have been far surpassed. Parents are encouraged with society changing so quickly children need to have to help in the classroom, attend monthly parent forum the skills for tomorrow’s world not yesterday’s. There meetings and can join the “Friends has never been a time when skills of the School”. There are parent like creativity and adaptability will be “At the heart of the classes to help understand literacy more needed. educational process lies and mathematics development and Playgrounds have also changed. the child. No advances in the school websites give more home The clothing was better for children learning help, guidance on e-safety, policy, no acquisition of as gone were the ties and shorts new equipment have their a chance to complete feedback for boys and dresses for girls to be questionnaires and full information of desired effect unless they replaced by sweatshirts and trousers. everything that is happening as the year The children were more ethnically are in harmony with the progresses including the latest WhatsApp mixed and comfortable with each nature of the child, unless messaging to connect everyone in each other. Gender differences were class! This is all impressive. Parents are they are fundamentally less obvious as for example games represented on school governance and acceptable to him”. played often contained boys and girls those I met take their job seriously. So together even in football. There were what justification does the current Education Secretary lovely murals and challenging playground markings, have for wanting to replace parent governors on the there were pieces of large apparatus, benches and school management system? tables, and boxes of small apparatus for children to use.

Equally impressive to me is how each school sees itself In one playground a boy came and sat down beside me as part of its local community, something expected by confidently and said, “Can I help you” Ofsted. The plea we made for Educational Priority Areas “No”, i replied, “but you could tell me your name has certainly been addressed with specific additional and why you are wearing a coloured band. Are you a funding for poorer areas and available for specific prefect?” children. The growth in Children’s Centres has helped, “Oh no, I’m a playground angel, and my name is Rashid”, but it has not brought such areas out of poverty and life he said. chances still depend too much on where a child lives “I’m Bridget and I have to say your job sounds interesting and schooled. I certainly welcome the tighter links with but I’m not sure what that means” the other local services that impinge on children’s lives so that there is a more holistic approach to dealing with “Well I have to watch out for disputes and then try to the life problems that children have, medical, economic, help sort them out. I’m a mediator. I also have to look social, linguistic, and behavioural. out for children who are on their own and support them in making friends or just sitting with them. That’s why I Teachers have ‘PPA’ time which I welcome making it possible came to you as you are on your own”. to talk to them out of class. I was impressed that all were graduates either in Education or via a PGCE. “Thank you but I’m fine and I really like the idea of

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Most were one year trained with a considerable amount of that time spent in schools on various fast track systems. The training was dominated by English and Maths teaching, leaving Education Studies reduced to core subject planning and assessment, and classroom management. How to teach any of the other subjects was minimalistic and little time was spent on child development, the psychology of learning or the contextual issues that impact on children, their families and neighbourhoods. In 1967 there was depth and breadth in the non- graduate three year training courses of that time. There is a sense now of the teacher emerging as a technician following government approved curriculum and teaching methods, rather than being seen as a professional using their own professional judgement in their teaching. Nowhere is this better seen than in the teaching of reading with government direction as to the teaching methods and resourcing.

I asked the headteachers the same questions we asked in the 1960s. So what do they see as the main recent improvements in primary education? The answers always included the National Curriculum with its entitlement for children and avoidance of repetition of content; the devolution of budgets to schools giving them more control over their finances; better opportunities for staff training; good resourcing and finally the growing awareness in recent years of children as individuals.

The general mantra I heard was that governments were obsessed with driving up standards and that the more the children are exposed to formal learning and the earlier this begins the better results will be achieved.

Yet children never learn in a linear fashion or neatly chronologically. Across Europe children start school later and the highest achieving systems [e.g. Finland] have the shortest school day, no homework and minimal formal testing.

It also crossed my mind that in 1966 we recommended that every ten years there should be a review of primary education. An advisory body, the School’s Council, was then in place. This has not happened or if it did (the Cambridge Review) was not appreciated or acted upon.

Yet with the questions raised during my visit about testing and assessment, the nature of the curriculum, the structures and systems of education and teacher training it seems that a regular review is needed. On a recent training course the Assistant Headteacher of one school had learned of a Central Advisory Council constituted from a range of professionals, politicians, trade unionists, parents and other interested parties. It was set up to

regularly meet and review the educational system and advise Government. It is in Singapore.

After my visits I could see how some things have never changed. The formal ages and stages of the English education system; the divide between the “basics” (always English and Maths) and the rest; and the taking of a high stakes test at age 11. My abiding image of the children I met accord with the lovely description painted

by HMCI in his recent report of one primary school, “At the start of the day the children come into school smiling with a spring in their step because they enjoy it so much. They are polite, well mannered, resourceful and exceedingly confident young people … all pupils have excellent attitudes towards learning.” One Head teacher similarly saw all of this as being an essential “basic” for every child in her school along with other twenty first century “basics” such as personal and e-safety, fitness, and an initiation into the joys of the arts, sciences and music. These surely deserve equal importance and time in the primary curriculum today!

As we wrote in 1967 in our opening paragraph, “At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the nature of the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him”. [Plowden 1967] That has not changed and never will.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Children and their Primary Schools. A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education [England] Vol 1. 1967. HMSO. Plowden B. ‘Plowden Twenty Years On’. Education in England 1987 HAD. Primary Education in England. A survey by HM Inspectors of Schools 1978 HMSO. Report of The Consultative Committee on The Primary School.

1931 HMSO. Cambridge Primary Review. 2010. University of Cambridge and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

What makes Great Teaching? The Sutton Trust. 2014.

Doug Springate Retired Primary Teacher Educator formally University of Greenwich.

John Cook Retired Primary Teacher Educator formally UCL Institute of Education.

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Engineering ELEPHANTS

by Pam Jarvis

In the eyes of some people, both other children and adults, three year old Jay can be quite a strange little boy. He is highly focused and very serious, asking questions that seem almost philosophical in nature.

One of these was ‘why elephants?’ After Jay’s dad had ascertained that Jay was perfectly aware that elephants were those huge grey animals with big ears that he had seen at the animal kingdom, and that they usually live in hot countries, he began to realise that Jay was simply asking why elephants were. So he did his best to explain evolution as simply as possible, and Jay seemed satisfied with that.

If we could look into the contents of Jay’s mind, we would see that they look rather more like those streams of data that were used as a special effect in The Matrix than neat sets of words and pictures, but this is not an exact analogy, because Jay’s mental data stream exists across three dimensions; even at three, he has a formidable understanding of three dimensional construction. From his perspective, the whole world is full of fascinating mechanisms. He really wasn’t being naughty when he tried to take his sister’s crawling doll apart. And he was honestly surprised when she burst into tears and screamed ‘my baby’! What he had seen was a fascinating mechanism that he wanted to deconstruct and understand.

When Jay is older, his family will continually trip over odd-looking LEGO constructions that he leaves all around the house. It doesn’t bother him if they get broken, because for him, they have served their purpose. His parents will eventually understand that much of what Jay does in construction activities is try out different ways of putting things together to see if they ‘work’ or not. Once he has come to a conclusion on this, as far as he is concerned, the experiment is over. Sometimes he will enjoy putting together a

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pre-designed kit (The Millennium Falcon is always awesome, of course) but not always.

Today, Jay carried out one of his construction experiments at nursery. The teaching assistant wanted to know what he had made, but he couldn’t explain it to her. When he went to put the model in the bin, she took it out and placed it at the front of the classroom ‘because your mummy will want to see it’. Then his mother carried it proudly home, asking him ‘is it a tall building? Is it a rocket on a launch pad?’ In the end, Jay had explained in an exasperated tone: ‘it’s a paper towel roll stuck to a tissue box and I painted it’. The model will be left on the kitchen work surface for a few days until Jay bins it again. When both Jay and his mother are older and know each other better, she will guess that his experiment entailed sticking two objects together and then painting them the same colour to see if they would then look like one unitary object. She will ask Jay if that was what he was doing, but by then, he won’t remember the incident.

The problem for Jay is that the government of his nation want to create a set of tests for four year olds that will allocate him to a particular level on the basis of his ability to sit with an adult and demonstrate to them that he can count objects and sound out letters and words presented to him on an iPad. But Jay is not the least bit interested in this; he knows he knows how to count, and in a year or so, he will become highly motivated to learn to read so he won’t need his dad to read the instructions on the LEGO kits that he consumes at an incredible pace. In a few years time, he will begin his custom of making the model on the box once and then breaking it apart and filing the pieces into boxes on the basis of shape and size to use for further original creations.

Jay has the potential to be a world class engineer, if he is given enough freedom to play at constructing

and deconstructing his creations, and provided with considered answers to his questions. But if, instead, he is continually drilled to count inanimate objects and sound out words that don’t interest him, he will begin to experience school as boring and irrelevant; and once that opinion is firmly entrenched in his mind, it will be very difficult to over-ride. Finland understands children like Jay, but unfortunately England and other similar nations (frequently Anglophone) do not. England in particular is obsessed with selecting children who are designated as ‘clever’ on the basis of such narrow-based testing and putting them into designated groups or institutions focused on transmit-and-test coaching towards even more highly structured pencil and paper exams.

Dr. Pam Jarvis became a graduate psychologist in 1995.

She is a programme or module leader for several modules within the Institute of Childhood and Education of Leeds Trinity University.

At the same time, England has many unfilled vacancies for engineers and technicians; in fact entrepreneur James Dyson comments that the small number of engineers produced by England is ‘not a sustainable situation’ if we want our economy to thrive.

But somehow, the politicians just never seem to connect this to the ways in which children like Jay are increasingly badly served in English state education. Why they continually fail to make this link is a mystery, because nearly a century ago, the children’s writer A. A. Milne clearly demonstrated his generation’s understanding of children like Jay in his much loved poem ‘The Engineer’. Could it then be, that like Christopher Robin’s brake, the English Department for Education is on balance ‘a good sort of [thing] but it hasn’t worked yet’?

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Review by John Coe

Review by Anne Nelson

Finnish Lessons

Upstart; The case for raising the school starting

By Pasi Sahlberg published by Teachers College Press

This is a book which will give every hard pressed teacher hope. We need to hope for a more enlightened world of education and must surely be forgiven if we despair as the political demands upon our work grow ever greater.

Surely there must be a tipping point at which the system rediscovers that children not targets and test results should be at the heart of teaching and all that we are doing at the present time is to risk damaging young lives and learning. But it goes on getting worse. It is quite incredible that there is now every intention of turning the clock back to selection for secondary education.

Pasi Sahlberg tells the story of education in Finland and how in the late sixties peruskoulu was born. This merged grammar schools, civic schools and primary schools into a comprehensive nine year school with completely open entry and the outcome today is that Finland is among world leaders in education. There is a focus on each individual child and not on meeting the system’s requirements. A national test for 11 year olds is used purely to inform good teaching and the results are kept private. The children stay

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together, there is no selection and no streaming and needless to say, no league tables. School inspection was abolished in the early 1990s. The emphasis is on cooperation rather than on competition in an artificial marketplace. Teachers are trusted to assess children’s learning and to provide additional help whenever it might be required. Curriculum and programmes of teaching are largely decided by teachers in their schools.

Research has shown us very clearly that the quality of the teacher is the most important single factor in achieving the potential of every child. This has been recognised in Finland and it is perhaps this, together with the assumption that every child can succeed, which is the secret of their success. All teachers must have a master’s degree gained after five year’s study at university and intending teachers do not pay for their tuition. Teaching is a high status profession which ranks with medicine and the law.

The key message of the book is that the emphasis upon competition and examinations spearheaded

by England and the United States and taken up enthusiastically by many other countries cannot match the success of the Finnish child centred approach. The competitive arena which is so assiduously fostered by us gives rise to as many losers as winners and the winners so often find that their mugged up learning too often fades away with the dawning of a new day.

Please read this book. It will give you renewed hope that one day we will succeed in persuading our government towards more enlightened ways which carry within them trust in teachers. Just as in Finland --- if we are trusted to put the children first there is no limit to what can be achieved.

age and providing what the under-sevens really need.

by Sue Palmer Published by Floris books In her latest book Sue Palmer continues her fight for quality experiences for our youngest children. She sets our current situation in a historical context and draws on research to describe how young children learn. The author challenges the rush to schoolify the early years, arguing that the period from birth to seven is not a preparation for school, but a stage in its own right.

One chapter focuses on the practice in Finland which is always high on international comparative indices. It has a record of consistently low levels of poverty and crime and consistently high levels of equality, education, health and well-being. In Finland children spend four years in kindergarten and start school at seven. The curriculum is a play-based with planning and record keeping kept to a minimum. Well-qualified staff see their role as supporting children’s learning and sharing this in a true partnership with parents Teachers are trusted. There is no testing until eighteen and school inspections were abandoned in the early 1990s.

In the appendices the author provides a wealth of information for campaigners who are developing their understanding of philosophy and pedagogy relating to early childhood. She describes the situation in those countries which practise early entry to school. She highlights the Early Childhood Forum’s charter written to influence the manifestos of political parties in the UK. NAPE is an active member of ECF and fully supports the charter which is based on the rights of our youngest children.

The final chapter sends out a call to “change minds to change the future.” Sue Palmer counters the argument that the barrier is an economic one, as funding is for the main part already available. The challenge is one of changing the ethos from a curriculum-centred model to a child-centred one and by delaying the entry to formal schooling until seven years of age. The expertise to support this approach exists in the writings of the great pioneers such as Isaacs, Macmillan and Froebel.

The practice is there in our schools. It is particularly evident in our outstanding nursery schools and in those brave practitioners who seek to carry good early years practice into Key stage 1.

There are many early years experts who have spent a lot of time attempting to change the minds of politicians about the age of entry to school. They are now being joined by an increasing number of parents, wanting to support their children’s health and wellbeing alongside educational achievements.

The particular challenge is to find a politician who stays in a role in government or in a shadow government, long enough to understand the issues, to formulate policy and to evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.

Short, quick fixes are not good enough for our children. The recent turmoil in English politics has been particularly challenging, but it will strengthen our determination to secure a better future for our youngest children. In recognizing the challenges of the twentyfirst century, Sue Palmer warns that “today’s adults have the grave responsibility of raising a generation that can face those challenges bravely... they’ll need to be adaptable, resilient, accomplished problem solvers, with the patience to pursue long term ends rather than immediate rewards. They’ll need to be confident learners, skilled communicators, able to co-operate and collaborate but also to think for themselves.”

The evidence is clear.

We need the childcentred approach and not the curriculumcentred model.

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The Book Page Navigating the ‘beautiful jungle’ by Carey Fluker Hunt “It’s a fantastic time to be writing children’s and YA fiction,” said Frances Hardinge, accepting the overall Costa Book of the Year for her novel The Lie Tree.

“For those who think children’s and YA fiction is not their thing: please do come and explore. There’s a beautiful jungle out there.”

And what a surprising and wonderful jungle it is.

Sales of juvenile books overtook adult fiction for the first time in 2014, and children’s books have become the inspiration for everything from stage plays to bedroom slippers. Indeed, so successful are we in this country at creating books that more than 10,000 children’s titles are published every year, many of which appear in co-editions worldwide. So why don’t we hear more about this important export business in our media?

Newspapers print articles, of course, but they tend to focus on a handful of high-profile names at the expense of the bigger picture. We need broader, deeper and more thoughtful coverage. Jungles, by their nature, are difficult to navigate, and readers need a helping hand to find their way. Traditionally we’ve been guided by children’s librarians, reviewers and critics, but newspapers have started cutting their review provision in favour of the occasional round-up of “suggested titles”, and specialist children’s library services have been all but destroyed. Committed bibliophiles may still be managing to hack a path, but readers who lack experience or confidence won’t fare so well.

Author SF Said is so concerned about the situation that he’s launched the #CoverKidsBooks campaign.

In an open letter to The Bookseller, Said stated that only 3% of newspaper review coverage dealt with children’s books, and called for the national press to commit to covering at least one children’s book a

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week. By August, more than 500 authors, illustrators and other supporters had signed it, including Malorie Blackman and Philip Pullman, along with academics, librarians and teachers.

One children’s book a week doesn’t sound impossible. But do newspapers really matter in this digital age? Said has been criticized for focusing on print media at the expense of blogs and websites.

People these days ‘google everything’, goes the argument, so why not children’s books, too?

Well, readers do use the internet, of course, but finding quality content about children’s books online can be challenging. Who’s writing what for whom, and whose editorial eye has whittled it down to something worth reading, let alone trusting? We know that newspaper copy has jumped through serious hoops – whereas online content can veer from the inspirational to the downright depressing with the click of a mouse. Confident readers who are ‘in the know’ may find this engaging and enlivening. Those who aren’t are likely to mire themselves in content that is tedious or unhelpful, and never know the difference. My last trawl through the recommendations on Mumsnet featured, in top spot, a comprehension workbook for 11+ exam pupils - which may be useful if that’s what you require, but won’t open minds and hearts to the glories that are languishing on the ‘recently published and/or chronically overlooked’ shelves in your local bookshop.

As Charlotte Eyre said in The Bookseller, “If.. a journalist like Nicolette Jones in the Sunday Times or Natasha Harding in the Sun writes about a great new release, they are putting children’s books in front of hundreds - and even thousands - of adults who, and I think this is a very crucial point, weren’t looking for children’s book reviews in the first place.”

And it’s this embedding and ‘normalizing’ of discussion about the industry that’s so important.

Children’s books matter, and shouldn’t be consigned to specialist outposts. They need to be placed at the heart of our culture, where everyone can talk about them. “When newspapers ignore children’s books, they send out a message that those books don’t

matter, that childhood reading doesn’t matter, that literacy doesn’t matter,” says Said. “I think that’s an incredibly damaging and short-sighted message.”

But the issue isn’t simply about asking for more print review coverage. It’s whether asking for print coverage is enough. We can, if we make it a priority, live in a country that understands and celebrates the artform it produces so successfully; a country that puts the widest possible selection of children’s books at the heart of every classroom and into the hands of every child. We need more of everything, not just print reviews, but we have to start somewhere. So let’s get behind #CoverKidsBooks and extend the debate.

Carey Fluker Hunt is Creative Development Manager at Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s books based in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Carey writes in a personal capacity.

SF Said himself acknowledges the role of good online advice. “But it’s found most often by those who already know about it,” he says. “For the general public, the traditional mass media remain vital.”

The circulation of newspapers and other print media may be declining but they still reach plenty of people.

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Culture and Community Culture is the way in which people within a community live. Understanding the culture of an educational setting is paramount if we are to meet the needs of our pupils effectively. The community of each setting varies according to a range of factors such as pupil population, setting vision and ethos, demographics, and government policy. Linking the impact on theory and practice, the following articles explore a range of issues associated with the culture of pupils such as the early years, the importance of community cohesion, and whether school phobia for pupils really exists or not.

Malini Mistry, Editor of ASPE articles

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Challenges of developing pedagogy through diversity and equity within the new Early Years Foundation (EYFS) curriculum

by Malini Mistry and Krishan Sood

in educational settings offers a refreshing viewpoint,

child-centred and holistic notion of curriculum provision.

stating that, supporting diversity amongst practitioners

The impact of this research on primary education

may result in a `redistribution of power’ which may

was that in multicultural school settings the main

appear uncomfortable to a dominant group (p.79). In

advantage appears to be the diversity of population.

Early Years settings, learning by doing and exploring

In such schools, many of the respondents told us

the environment, has gained universal status (Curtis,

about the celebrations and activities they undertook

1998), but play is not the only means by which children

further enriched the curriculum which is a key aspect

discover the world; the whole of their spontaneous

of broadening children’s knowledge and experiences.

activity creates their psychic equilibrium especially in

The Early Years practitioners described the importance

the Early Years.

of understanding other languages and cultures so that

Two types of English primary schools were chosen as

they could reach out to their learners and meet their

the sample group, those which were multi-cultural/

individual needs even better.

multi-ethnic and those schools which were mainly

This research is useful in primary settings, especially

mono-cultural/mono-ethnic.. We interviewed sixteen

those who work in Early Years to showcase some of

Early Years leaders in the sample schools as they were

the confusion faced in understanding how the terms

the key curriculum leaders in the area being researched. We also interviewed four head teachers (two each from the multicultural and mono-cultural schools) of the sixteen schools who have had experience in the Early Years age phase.

The findings showed that school leaders from both the mono-cultural and multicultural settings iterated that they found

...but play is not the only means by which children discover the world;

the challenges of the implementation of

The aims of this research were: • What is diversity and equity in Early Years?

• How do practitioners develop their pedagogy through diversity and equity in Early Years?

• What are the challenges faced by practitioners in developing pedagogy through diversity and equity in the Early Years?

diversity and equity can translate into practice.

Meeting individual young person’s needs was cited by all of the case study respondents and supported the concepts of the right to equal resources and fair treatment to all.

The degree of equitable provision, however, could not be identified through this small scale study

the EYFS very difficult whether it was managing with

suggesting the need for further targeted research on

This research was innovative because it looked at what the words diversity and equity meant within the context of Early Years, especially in identifying how these words translated into practice through the areas of the Early Years Foundation Curriculum (2014).

diverse staff or not. The Early Years staff understood

policy, strategy and operational issues.

Supporting theory looked at how practitioners in multi

different stages of promoting their practice through the

and mono-cultural primary schools built individual and

values of diversity and equity. Every member of the

organisational capability and how they led with values,

respondent we interviewed valued the importance in

like equity, fairness, respect and tolerance (Bell and

underpinning their practice or leadership actions and

Stevenson, 2006) in the Early Years age phase. Lumby

decisions through the issues of diversity and social

Malini Mistry, University of Bedfordshire.

& Coleman’s (2007) critique of diversity and equality

justice. The emphasis however was on personalised,

Krishan Sood, Nottingham Trent University.

diversity as addressing and tackling issues of stereotypes, discrimination and ensuring their practices exhibited a level playing field for quality education that was personalised. Schools in our sample were at

The full article can be found at: http://www.beds.ac.uk/jpd/volume-3-issue-3/ challenges-of-developing-pedagogy-through-diversityand-equity-within-the-new-early-years-foundationeyfs-curriculum

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A comparison of free time activity choices of third culture kids in Albania and children in the UK

by Anne Purdon

This study considers children’s perspectives about free time activity choices. The research stemmed from the researcher’s one year sabbatical in Albania teaching Third Culture Kids (TCKs).

The term TCK has been used since it is the term commonly used in the literature analysed, despite some reticence in using the word ’kids’.

The aims of the research were as follows: 1. What are the favourite free time activity choices of TCKs growing up in Albania and what are the favourite free time activity choices of children growing up in the UK? 2. Who initiates the free time activities perceived by the children to be their favourite activities?

3. When involved in their favourite activities, do children usually play alone, with siblings, with peers, with parents or with other adults?

The research was innovative because very little research of this nature has been carried out relating to activity choices of TCKs in Albania. In addition although

there has been research relating to activity choices for children in the UK over the age of 8 years, little research has been carried out with children aged 4 to 8 years. This is despite that fact that for young children, choice is critical, a concept highlighted in the Learning and Development Requirements of the EYFS (2014) which states that ‘children learn by leading their own play’ (DfE, 2014, p9).

A socio-culturalist approach was used and data was analysed through qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis. The sample comprised of four boys and three girls from 4 to 8 years from each country.

Data was collected through the use of children’s drawings and a questionnaire.

It was discovered that TCKs chose more outdoor play activities, whereas children from the UK chose more indoor activities implying that favourite play was mainly initiated by children, but often involved adults.

The involvement of adults did not seem to detract from their enjoyment. Many preferred free, self-directed play rather than organised activities. There were more references to playing with siblings than friends.

Young children benefited from having very few activities organised. However many children of all ages have had a reduction in the amount of unsupervised play available. Early years settings and schools, parents

and carers must allow children time and freedom to make their own play choices and opportunities to play in unstructured ways.

This study opened up conversations between parents, carers and their children to highlight types of activity choices and reasons for choosing them. This study also adds to the debate about hearing and responding to children’s voices to support them effectively through activity choices.

Several professional recommendations arise from this study. Firstly it has highlighted the need for further research to: • find ways to overcome barriers reducing children’s choices • encourage children’s voices in relation to activity choices • ensure professionals, parents and carers allow children freedom to make choices and opportunities to play in unstructured ways

• establish levels of involvement in different activity choices Secondly there are a number of recommendations for parents, carers, Early Years professionals and schools. It is critical to guard children’s play time, to listen to their voices, to ensure that organised activities do not take up every moment of young children’s time, to ensure that children have time to make their own choices.

Children need opportunities to initiate, control and structure their free time activities themselves so that they can enjoy fun, uncertainty, challenge, flexibility and non-productivity.

Full article can be found at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03004279.20 16.1218523

Anne Purdon, Norland College Bath.

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Community Cohesion and Children’s Play: A New Conceptual Framework

by Andrew Holden The aim of this research was: To examine the extent to which children’s play can be a vehicle for community cohesion, most notably in areas blighted by cultural, ethnic and religious segregation This research was innovative because it is one of the very few pieces of research to examine the issue of integrative play empirically. The research deployed a multi-methodological approach in which parental attitudinal data were triangulated against observational data of children’s play in a range of social settings.

The notorious street riots in the north of England (that is, in Burnley, Oldham and Bradford) in the summer of 2001 triggered considerable interest among academics and policy makers in the issue of how cohesive communities could be achieved and sustained in segregated towns and cities. While much has been published in the sociological literature on the issues of integration and multiculturalism, it was the Cantle Report Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team (2001) that provided the first official definition of community cohesion and a framework for its achievement. While much has been published on cohesion in segregated areas since the Cantle Report, it is Cantle’s theoretical/conceptual approach that underpins the study. The research findings both

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support and refute the suggestion that children’s play has cohesion potential in areas where communities are divided.

The methods used in the investigation comprised: (i) an examination of secondary literature; most notably, the Census, local council play strategies, books and papers published by Early Years specialists and a welter of website material; (ii) twentyone observations of children’s play in a range of multicultural spaces including public parks and school playgrounds and (iii) a survey of parental attitudes which elicited 303 returns of 516 distributed questionnaires.

The research findings both support and refute the contention that children’s play can make a valuable contribution to community cohesion. The investigation reveals that while integrative play is in short supply, the potential to develop it is considerable. The findings suggest that children who engage with members of other ethnic groups during their play time are more likely to be receptive to the values and attitudes conducive to cohesion than children who do not.

Integrative play is more common in schools than in parks and on the streets, though there are variations in play between the different educational sectors.

While mixed schools can provide opportunities

for integrative play both inside and outside the classroom, schools that are particularly successful in this regard are those that place a strong emphasis on the value of community in their mission statements.

The study revealed more evidence of integrative play in mixed primary schools than in mixed secondary schools. Gender, however, is also a significant marker of integration that can cut across ethnicity in the school playground.

initiatives might be better managed and coordinated by play ambassadors working in close liaison with council workers, project leaders, sports coaches and community development officers.

The initiatives could be promoted through schools, community centres and civic organizations. The strong parental support for integrative play calls for greater involvement of parents in local authority and educational strategic planning. This could be achieved through residents’ committees that allow parents to contribute to the community cohesion agenda.

The parental attitudes survey unearthed strong support for integrative play. However, the overwhelming majority of parents preferred their A number of professional recommendations are children to play in supervised settings and to take suggested. The mixed school is an ideal forum part in activities that could be described as low for integration and probably the risk. There was also a high level of most effective in ameliorating ...children’s play consensus among parents about negative views. It would be socially the kind of play activities that were has cohesion advantageous if the kind of integrated appropriate both for younger and potential in play found in primary schools could be older children. emulated in secondary education and areas where Primary schools in the area in which if positive messages about the benefits the research was carried out (the communities are of mixed schooling were disseminated Blackburn with Darwen borough by the mass media. Agents need divided. in the north west of England) are to work closely together to identify currently exploring new ways of working together activities that are effective in promoting integration to provide integration opportunities for children and cohesion. While football provides one such of all ages. After-school clubs and school twinning opportunity for boys in primary schools, there is projects are among the most common examples. more work to be done in exploring opportunities for The Blackburn with Darwen local education authority girls. The activities that would work best would be has taken significant steps to promote effective those that aim to tackle gender as well as ethnic partnership working and to encourage primary segregation. Exploratory research of this nature may schools to become part of this endeavour. There prove critical in a large number of British towns and is some evidence that agents that work closely cities that remain segregated and where there is a with children and young people in the Blackburn need to promote cohesion before tensions arise. area - schools, sports clubs and youth organizations – are approaching play and leisure initiatives as a collaborative venture.

Full article can be found at: This research could be useful to others in a http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/030 number of ways. Local authorities in diverse 04279.2011.586950 areas might consider taking a more active role in facilitating integrative play initiatives in future Dr Andrew Holden, University Centre at Blackburn years, particularly in neighbourhoods and/or College. districts where there is a history of tension. Such

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Primary school phobia: ‘Is it even a real thing?’

by Jodie Chell and Jackie Scruton This piece of research in a primary school was driven by personal experience and therefore the aims were: 1.

A wish to ascertain levels of staff understanding of school phobia and to raise awareness as a part of continuous professional development for all staff.

2.

To signpost staff to sources of help and support for themselves as professionals and in doing so develop an inclusive ethos within the school setting.

A search of the literature revealed that there was insufficient research and hence a potential gap in understanding, especially in a primary context. The subtitle for this piece is a direct quote from a member of teaching staff and indicates a need for awarenessraising at the very least. The issue of school phobia is often confused with more generic mental health issues and not seen as a separate/ distinct issue for children.

A lack of government documents was a catalyst for this research. Due to little specific policies and publications, this project relied heavily on alternative literature from educational professionals and researchers such as studies by Thambirajah (2008) and Archer et al. (2005).

Historical literature about school phobia is outdated and previous research has been sporadic.

training and CPD opportunities. Specifically, the study found that the school was failing to communicate with staff regarding special needs information. The school where the research took place has disseminated the findings via the safeguarding staff newsletter, drop in support/awareness-raising sessions are planned, as is the development of resources.

In terms of impact the very publication of the results of the research should ‘open eyes’ to the issue in primary schools. It is also envisaged that leaflets and posters will be developed as a second phase of the research to raise awareness and sign-post staff to support; these can be shared with other schools.

Professional recommendations include enhanced staff training, specifically focusing on school phobia; compilation and publication of resources (posters, leaflets etc); cascading information from training staff to the whole school team. To encourage LEAs and the government to recognise school phobia as a current and pressing issue that has previously been neglected.

After primary research and investigating existing sources, qualitative data was gathered by sending questionnaires to staff and collating the answers. Two interviews also took place with the school’s SENCO and Headteacher.

The results indicated a distinct lack of awareness and understanding of school phobia amongst staff, its impact on them and their pupils as well as insufficient

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Jodie Chell is studying at Nottingham Trent University Jackie Scruton, Nottingham Trent University

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The next two articles are taken from Mervyn Benford’s book, What they don’t tell you about Education which was reviewed in our issue 14.

ASPE was founded in the belief that one of the best ways to advance primary education is through professional collaboration and action.

The book contains details of 100 lessons which illustrate quality in education. Here are two of them concerned with science and mathematics.

It is open to all involved in primary education. We are here to encourage a considered and well researched perspective that will enable all children in primary education to get a better deal. ASPE was launched in 1988 to address the demand for establishing a national association to help advance the cause of primary education by promoting its study.

ASPE’s objects are to advance the education of young learners by enhancing the development of primary education through: • promoting and fostering informed and reflective study of primary education, including pre-school as well as the legally designated primary phase mainly, but not exclusively, in the UK; • bringing together and promoting collaboration within and between the various constituencies involved in primary education; • holding events, including major national conferences, to enhance teaching and learning amongst those involved in primary education; • providing informed and independent information and commentary on education policy issues, including commissioning publications written by leading researchers and practitioners;

Membership of ASPE includes: • being part of the only research focused organisation representing primary education; • subscription to Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education published six times a year; • online access to Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education (including full, historical archive) via the ASPE website; • opportunities to promote reflective primary practice and engage in online dialogue; • priority notification for all ASPE events and major conferences; • access to funding to promote evidenced based research into good primary practice.

• encouraging a broad view of the forms and methods which those studying primary education might adopt, the practices and issues on which they might focus, and the institutional contexts in which such study might be pursued;

FOR INFORMATION ON JOINING ASPE, PLEASE CONTACT THE MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY AT:

• publishing materials suitable for promoting the above objectives.

For further information on ASPE, please visit www.aspe-uk.eu.

ASPEinfo@aol.co.uk or write to ASPE, PO Box 308, Cheadle, SK8 9ER.

The Lizard’s Dead!

Years 4 and 6 Science, Maths, Language, Art

So I was greeted one otherwise fine spring morning by two of my second year juniors. Lizards and salamanders caught my eye on my Nuffield Science course and in both my schools today I happened (?) to have some in my classroom. Jack and Alan had been particularly enthusiastic and Jack had developed rare skill in handling these potentially rapid-moving creatures in his hands, out of their cage, without them leaping off all over the place. He was a very average little boy, no great shakes intellectually, but everyone can be an expert some of the time and we have to find them. I made sure his talent was recognised! They are not always the obvious ones but such recognition builds the self-esteem that inspires effort and the resulting learning.

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Their faces told me the sad news was infinitely moving and, genuinely commiserating with them as I, too, was in a way fond of these creatures, I asked what funeral arrangements they were planning.

Obviously I would do my best to help. But funerals were far from their mind. I followed up quickly: “I can arrange a place in the school grounds… no problem… but before I could finish Jack interrupted me: “We want to know why it died!”

That is not exactly the sort of question that had come to my mind as I had planned the first lesson of the day. Nor was it an activity I particularly wished to see pursued, certainly not if it involved me. I was genuinely sceptical as to how they would set about it and what they might find out. So, being a responsible teacher, I tried to deter them.

“It will be rather complicated,” I suggested, and when they just stared back at me in clear dismay, “and messy as well!”

They remained clearly undeterred.

“Well, how are you going to do it, then? You’ll have to cut it open!” My scepticism was turning into rank distaste as I thought of it all.

“We can use the craft knives, and those razor blades we sometimes use when we do lino-cuts!”

These were special razor blades with just one sharp cutting edge and the other safe to handle. Today they’d probably fail Health and Safety assessment! I was imagining them somehow tearing this poor lizard crudely and messily apart so tried again to discourage them.

“You’ll have to cut it open and then somehow pin the skin and sides down.” Instantly came their answer, “We can use those brown pins in your stock cupboard!”

I never knew I had brown pins in my stock cupboard but they knew. Clearly I had never yet used them for the art and craft work they seemed designed for.

But I used to send children to the cupboard for this and that and children are very good observers! It is remarkable just what children do know about what is going on at school and in classrooms. Teachers should understand that all this knowledge is general currency in playgrounds and back home. Teachers may not like

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to be observed or discussed but it is going on all the time.

Still unwilling to surrender, yet moved by their concern, I tried one final superior (or so I thought) gambit.

“You’re only eight. How will you know what has killed it?”

“We’ll ask Jane Harvey!”

Jane was in Class Four, two years older. I was taken aback by so ready an answer.

“Why Jane Harvey?” I was really curious by now.

“She’s going to be a vet!”

With such mature reasoning and insight how could I continue to oppose or try to dissuade? I agreed and asked Jane’s teacher if she could be spared to lead this autopsy. I was very impressed that my eightyear-old class knew about Jane’s ambition. It well affirms the power of the child grape-vine. How could a science ignoramus like me doubt Jane’s capacity to diagnose the fatal condition that had brought about this unfortunate event? All were by now thoroughly engrossed in my dialogue with Jack and Alan and as keen to find the answers.

Jane and her teacher agreed and the three children set up a working area on two desks, covered them with an art oil-cloth, donned plastic aprons and began work. I left them to it as I needed to ensure the other children knew what they should be doing. They cut the lizard so neatly along the full under-belly. They gently peeled the skin apart and fixed it using those brown pins to the wooden clay board on which it lay.

Its innards well exposed, they studied the tissues with strong magnifying glasses. They took several measurements they thought were important. Alan had realised that where measuring them live had proved distinctly difficult, not least weighting them, standard tasks with more conventional classroom pets, they could now complete the records of observation than with the living specimen.

They also drew what they had seen and it was intriguing to see how Jane had very naturally taken the lead, to which they had deferred – yet regularly injecting questions and suggestions. They used her example and several times she saw moments she

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judged right to give them ideas and advice, not least with their drawings.

examined it but been unable to find the cause.

That lunchtime the two boys and a few more grieving children finally accepted my original planned funeral arrangements and the creature was carefully laid to rest – a cross placed appropriately in memory.

As I suspected they were unable to detect anything amiss but now I was able to calm their anxieties. I suggested perhaps it was just too old. That they had failed was less important than that they had tried.

The power and the potential of children’s own Their consciences were clear. In half an hour they had questions give teachers many opportunities to develop done a remarkably painstaking skills processes and related knowledge and well-managed task. Jane was that serve the curriculum. The children The power and the thanked for her help and returned thought for themselves. Biology, art, potential of children’s mathematical measurement, planning to her classroom.

discussion, steps to be taken next, tools, At this stage I saw a teaching own questions give co-operation, responsibility…activities opportunity. With lizards in the teachers many that advance knowledge and deepen classroom, albeit in cages, I had opportunities to understanding all come from this work. warned every child that, should The teacher had neither planned nor one escape, NOT to catch it by the develop skills the work but I knew that tail as lizards tails were designed processes and related envisaged gaze would stray from others working to separate – a safety factor if knowledge that serve on more routine tasks and ears would grabbed by enemies: it would tune into laboratory comment. grow back again in time. Now I the curriculum. invited the boys to show the class They used existing knowledge and what happened if the tail was experience from their own world, pulled. The lizard was very dead now but they just including my stock cupboard! They made rational could not bring themselves to do it. So I did it for decisions and created compelling logical argument. them and they could examine with their lenses, and The gravity of the task brought greater care then they later the whole class, the complex webbing of tissues might have undertaken in other practical classroom enabling the tail to separate. work. Their three individual personalities merged into Lesson over, lesson never forgotten. I still remember it shared interest and purpose. It was a child version of and I don’t doubt so do they. Moreover, by lunchtime mature adult behaviour. This is real world experience a fair portion of the school population also knew that and good classrooms reflect this flexible mix of the lizard had died and Class 2, even with Jane, had mind and moment.

MATHEMATICS Years 1 to 6

It was the first time in my three-teacher village school that we had decided to let the children steer the work we set them. We had no conventional classes but a curriculum and timetable in which the activity determined the organisation. Some of our work was all-age, with children from 5 – 11 in each group. The three teachers each took a third of the children. We planned to find mathematics, science and history in the churchyard. My focus was mathematics.

“It is not only that we have begun to think again of the child as a social being – one who plays and talks with others, learns through interactions with parents and teachers – but because we have come once more to appreciate that through such social life the child acquires a framework for interpreting experience, and learns how to negotiate meaning... Making sense is a social process”.

Jerome Bruner

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I met my group and explained the churchyard task that would last the half-term. I split the 18 into four groups and asked them what mathematics they might find and how they would work. The first group, Helen 5, Tony 7, Pamela 8 and Rebecca 10 planned to count the flints in the building. Lewknor sits at the foot of the Chilterns and flint was the main traditional building material. It was a large church and flints were as currants in a cake.

It seemed a futile task.

We teachers had agreed to have our ideas for possible activities “up our sleeve” should the children not respond. Mine had responded but with what seemed a naïve and pointless exercise. It seemed a moment for me to play one of my cards. I just stopped myself in time. It was new practice for us and I should give them a chance to run with the ball. I sent them out but fully expected to find them rather lost for ideas.

Meanwhile I heard the other groups’ plans and set them off on their tasks.

Sure enough Rebecca and the three were standing by the church gate looking a little puzzled. As the oldest she was in change. Our grouping policy always required the teachers to select the groups. We knew them well.

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Leadership responsibility would be good for Rebecca.

Mathematics was not easy for her though. Pamela was very clever and sharp. Tony was a classical slow learner.

Five year old Helen had started school just a month earlier. I approached them, smiled sympathetically and asked if they had any problems. “No,” said Rebecca at once. Surprised, I asked them to explain what they intended to do.

“Who was the cleverest?” Yes it was Pamela. In the well-organised mixed ability group each contributes at their own level. Their different qualities determine group membership. None is left behind as in classrooms where teachers dictate they had opted for another real-world tool, a square metre, or what we might call a Standard Unit. This was encouraging and I was glad I had not stopped them earlier. What now?

“We shall stand Helen up against the wall and count how many flints she covers and work on from there.”

I was impressed. They were using the real-world mathematical strategy of sampling, without of course realising it. I decided to play along, suggesting that Helen was a rather uneven shape, perhaps difficult to work with.

They planned to count the flints in every square metre – quite a task even over half a term, and they would soon face the problem of the buildings height. They needed some input, leading questions more than direct instruction. I asked if there was any way they could more quickly know how many times the metre square would fit along the bottom of the wall. They realised they could measure it. Tony was sent to fetch our big tape measure. He and Helen held the tape and watched as the other two studied it, duly recording the length. This master-apprentice mode, or preview and review, is also a virtue of mixed ability working. Now they knew how many squares covered the bottom row of that side.

“We could use the metre square,” said…at this point, when I described this in my lectures, I ask my audience, mainly teachers and heads, which of the children put that forward. As always in a humane profession they think it must be something truly remarkable, like the slow learner or the youngest child – and I have to bring common sense to bear.

Before they started counting I asked if they intended to count every one? They said they would count a few (five) for a start, thinking that the number would be almost the same, and then just count the total number of squares in the row along the wall. I could already feel a need coming for some direct teaching.

They could calculate rows only as far as they could reach upwards. They would need my help with the overall height so now I did teach directly explaining an approximation method. Standing the tallest child against the wall and from a distance measuring him with forefinger and thumb they could calculate how many times he represented the total height.

We also had a clinometer in school and later, using my on-going evaluation of their understanding and progress, I decided to teach use of this as a check of their first calculations.

Meanwhile they had a more pressing problem. None of their first five square metres had the same number of flints – though all were very similar. Which number should they use to multiply the metre length of the wall? They saw the problem themselves. They needed what mathematics calls the average. I took them into

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the classroom and gave a short but simple example based on different amounts of pocket money and decided to share it equally – the kind of problem that might come on Page 38. Chapter Three of the textbook under “Averages.” Here it was real and purposeful and they soon saw how it was done. I allowed calculators as this project dealt with potentially very big numbers.

introduced to ways to estimate heights of tall objects, using appropriate equipment. They had learned and practised an important mathematical tool – the concept of average – which would greatly help in secondary school when working with medians and statistics.

They had worked as a team, co-operating, making their own decisions and taking as much responsibility for solving their problems as they could. My role had I asked if five square metres were enough to give a been to assist and enable them, teaching new input reasonable answer. They immediately looked to the as and when needed, not because wall and opted for ten. Having it was always done in week 14. started them on measuring the They had reached an Their mixed ages and different height they decided they could abilities enabled them to work as use it at once without bothering answer to a problem they would at home, in a family, to take more wall lengths into the most natural and effective way play. In effect the concept of area they set themselves still learn anything important, was arising. Later clinometer and served my task of we and, according to research, more calculations proved rather enduring. Much language was used, different but Pamela persuaded finding mathematics, much discussion, some reference to them they might be more purposefully, in books and some writing and graph accurate. work. churchyard study.

There was one more mathematical concept I had seen heading their way. On the north side there had been major repairs. They saw that very few flints had been used – mainly bricks. Several square metres of wall were not typical. The flint count per square metre dropped remarkably. I had to take over and explain the idea of deciding what proportion of the whole building was normal and what was low average.

The averages had to be weighted accordingly.

By this time they had realised they would not obtain an exact, that is precise, final total. However, at every stage they worked together. All were part of the work with the calculator and the younger two watched as the older two between them added the strings of calculations they had recorded. They had reasonable if very approximate estimates of the total area of the main walls in square metres. The total number of flints was in tens of thousands.

Despite using the calculator they had seen when addition and multiplication were right to use. They had worked in standard units of square metres and been

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They had reached an answer to a problem they set themselves and served my task of finding mathematics, purposefully, in churchyard study. Scientific data from other groups led to later work with insects and plants. History found Christian names and when which were most popular as well as average life span (more mathematics!)

Evaluation of this work taught us that at an early age children could plan work and make decisions about it within overall adult frameworks and supported when needed. Galton would later expose that sense of learning partnership. Children exploring the learning that comes their way need time to learn, to investigate, to return to their endeavours and to evaluate outcomes.

All aspects required an on-going flexibility in which at any time evaluation might argue changes.

Mervyn Benford is the former head of a rural school in Oxfordshire. He moved from Lewknor to be adviser to small schools in the county before joining Warwickshire in a similar role. Now he is a writer and education consultant.

Learning From Children

by Geoffrey Marshall

I was born at the time of the famous Hadow Report. It said that children’s education should be one of ‘activity and experience.’ Then that language was so foreign that it was not so much ignored as not even understood. The only activity I had at school was a spirited drill, our sleeves rolled up, the Headmaster at the front as he worked off his frustrations. He had survived the war and we survived him. Otherwise he sat at his dais at the end of the hall glowering, ready to cane any boy expelled from the classrooms: his name was Bechervaise and we called him ‘Basher.’

We sat in ranks of ascending order with the most unruly and the least able under the eye of the teacher. I was at the back, top left, next to the Vicar’s son and a boy whose dad owned the dairy.

While I was evacuated that was hit by a bomb and he was killed.

Apart from a few memories, I was only allowed to bring home an ‘exercise’ book, half of each page ruled and the other blank. This was our ‘nature book’ in which we copied notes about birds and flowers from the blackboard and then stuck matching cards from inside the Typhoo tea packets onto the blank pages. I have since realised that the next lesson was dictated by the upcoming card and that my teacher too drank Typhoo tea!

I began teaching during the vacations at Cambridge, standing before the children and doing what I remembered from a brief ten years before, and which was confirmed by what I saw all around me.

Nothing had changed. I liked it: it was easy and I enjoyed the company of children, so I decided to

become a teacher. I applied to the Ministry and was given a certificate. I had a degree so I was qualified!

For the next ten years I was a successful teacher even to the extent that I was congratulated by an inspector for the children’s paintings of a sunset with trees in the foreground- all identical and all copied from mine!

I tell this to show how very slowly ideas and practises percolated in those days. Over thirty years after Hadow and still I knew nothing of learning by activity and experience. There was a concession to new thinking in the recognition of children’s differing abilities which required text books in sets of increasing difficulty. So we had Wide Range Readers, books 1-5, and ‘hearing’ the children in each group read aloud to me every day became a test of my ingenuity. There was also the problem that the most able in a group were detained by the others so that few ever reached one of the tiny collection of story books. Likewise we had sets of maths books as well as some sums on the blackboard. It was all becoming a worry and a drain on my confidence: there had to be a better way to organise this, so when I saw a brief paragraph advertising a course on Education of Children in the Junior School at the Institute of Education in London I applied and to my surprise was successful.

That was when my education began. I had passed more than ten years without questioning my assumptions. The most devastating questions are the ones you ask yourself because they plumb the depths of your ignorance. I had thought I was a seasoned professional who needed help with a

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straightforward issue of organisation, something which someone somewhere would solve. What I saw were teachers working in classrooms in ways which I found utterly confusing. The children seemed to be working in ones and twos, independently of the teacher, with unbroken concentration, at tasks which had no central theme. And it was all humming along with no more than a murmur of sound. How was this possible? Where were the queues at the teacher’s desk? Who had told them what to do? Indeed, the teacher was not at the desk or at the front, so where was the teacher? I went into so many classrooms in so many schools, all different but all with the same key features and in time I learnt the answer to my worries and so much more.

The teacher had set up rich, first hand, tangible experiences making the classroom attractive and interesting. Each child had spent time looking carefully at the pets, the seedlings, the eggs hatching in the incubator, the wild garden just outside the door, the frogs spawn and the vase of flowers. And now they had decided what they were going to study and had begun, sometimes with a partner but often alone. I saw a child studying a flower head under a microscope, another carefully laying out a page of calligraphy at

a calligraphy table, while a couple were preparing to print calico which they told me was for the corner library.

They needed to ensure that the display areas were attractive and well kept, and that every child would have an interesting task to turn to.

I knew enough to know that however gifted these children were this didn’t happen by chance, and when I found the teacher who had been sitting beside a boy working on some embroidery, she explained that planning for this term’s work had begun in the holidays when all the staff had met to help each other with ideas, references and materials. Each room was different but there was an overall continuity of principle and practice which gave the school its identity and its togetherness.

In this school I saw children quietly confident in the disciplines of learning, choosing what to do and how to do it, sometimes learning skills from each other and seemingly aware of their responsibility for what they were doing. All this was shatteringly new to me. I had always told them what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to stop, whether it was satisfactory and here they were deciding for themselves!

But what were they learning in this confusingly unstructured yet strangely orderly atmosphere? How could children be working alone and yet know what to do and how to do it? How could you mark a piece of embroidery and compare it against a calculation of the distribution of daisies in the wild garden? How could you tell if they were getting on? Above all, when to me it was all so novel, so different, and still with my problems of organising a class to read in groups, I wanted to know how I should organise it all.

It turned out that the way they worked flowed from their principles. These were that the school was a place of learning where both children and teachers come to learn: that teachers learn from and about children by closely following them, and children are helped by teachers to refine their skills of learning as they abstract meanings from concrete experience. They do this by observing and making choices about what they are interested in while the teacher is watching for a growing control and sophistication in developing ideas.

To make this happen needed imagination and meticulous planning. Teachers prepared for the possible choices children might make and which children might make them. There were areas set aside for activities with special requirements like calligraphy, pottery, printing and painting.

They anticipated particular children who they wished to teach or advise.

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But what were they learning? What about the three R’s? I watched David as he kneeled in the wild patch outside the classroom. He picked a daisy and twiddled the stem between his fingers, put it to his nose, and then brought into the classroom, standing it in an egg cup. Studying it close up he began to draw it, his head on his arm, his tongue slowly licking his lips. Then he suddenly stopped, turned to the door and tossed the daisy as far as he could before turning inside again to fetch a drawing board, paper and surveyors tape.

He had changed his mind. What next? I missed the sign but he was joined by a girl and together they went to the grass outside and began to measure it until they suddenly stopped again. A desultory exchange and much fiddling with pencils and the tape followed. Then I heard her say something about ‘Tell me where to hold it’ while she stood with the tape as he walked away with it towards the fence. He called ‘We haven’t got a square corner so we’ll have to make one’. He dropped the tape and came towards her again with a piece of newsprint and proceeded to fold it to make a right angle which he carefully placed with stones on it to hold it down. Then with his new right angle she laid the tape along one edge and marked a point at its end with another stone. This was the beginning of their survey of the wild grass plot.

If there were space and time it would be instructive to think about what these two had shown me, both of what they already understood and what they were learning. But whatever might be said nobody would say that mathematics was not part of it. But what else? Co-operating, talking, planning, drawing to scale, map making, note taking, pen and ink drawings of the wild flowers and grasses and eventually the writing

of the story of how the two did it, all in the form of a book they would make which in itself was a work of art: a work of art because these two were artists and craftsmen and mathematicians and writers and calligraphists because they needed to be all of those.

Above all they were growing in their ability to make choices and take responsibility for what they were doing. That is the biggest prize for the teachers.

And what of the teacher in all this? He, and it was a ‘he’ in that room, was not at his desk or the blackboard.

He was kneeling beside a girl who wanted to make an embroidered fabric cover for a hard backed book, taking her through the skills she needed and finally to her reason for making the book. It became clear that she wanted to make it because her friend had made one but that that was the only reason, whereas her friend needed the book as a place to mount her work. In explaining that making a book has no purpose without its contents the teacher went on to suggest ways in which she could develop her own work so that it would become worthy of the book. His insight, his sensitive intervention, was crucial in preventing a choice made without understanding while cherishing her confidence in her capacity to choose: a fine example of one of the essential skills of a teacher.

I particularly remember a remark the headteacher made when I was leaving. He said that I had made it all too easy for children. I had made all the decisions and they just did what they were told! And he also recommended this from a talk by Christian Schiller, ‘When such ideas are in the air we begin to look at children differently. We begin to regard each and every young boy and girl not as an incomplete adult but as a complete child, an individual person in his or her own right; we begin to regard each and every young boy or girl not as unprepared for life but as growing in liveliness. We begin to realise that during each phase of growth the individual is complete but is becoming different. Our observation of young children begins to reveal not quantity of performance, but the quality of growth’ Over the years I revisited those schools and my friends there. I needed those memories and their examples to remind me of what I was trying to do and of some of the ways I could do it: but at the same time they

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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION

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would be my ways, because I was learning from the children and from my colleagues. We finally found ourselves with a self-renewing school where the adults learned from each other, being especially mindful of newcomers, and the children enjoyed a community of like minded people, young and old, teachers and family, all contributing their understanding of the disciplines and pleasures of growing and learning.

models appearing on the market: despite those, we must always remember that their purpose is first and foremost to require children to learn what adults wish. At the time they are promoted as being the complete and incontrovertible solution to the failings in education- until the next one appears! It is always advertised as a more effective way of surmounting the known difficulties young children have with abstraction whether in language, literacy or mathematics and it always occurs because teachers are not prepared to allow them to grow in their understanding and show to the seeing eye how they are growing day by day.

I tell this because in parts of the country where these ideas were fostered, a school such as I have described was not uncommon and the means to bring them about was well understood. I have wondered why If only teachers began from a curiosity about children, it didn’t happen more generally, especially as they how they think and what they think, how they change were renowned for the quality of the work achieved and grow from day to day, how they differ and so on. by their children, and have concluded that it was It is sad and embarrassing to say so, but teachers are largely because there was determined opposition not used to following children, so they from those who had a notion would need to practise. It would take of the model adult and thought However tried tested time but, if it were important enough they were serving children best and surely it should be, then time by consistently moulding them and admired a newly would be found. Somebody should be towards that. They viewed them devised curriculum may as imperfect adults, as adults be and, in response to the caring for children: that’s what the root of the word ‘education’ means. If we in the making, rather than as lumbering, cumbersome truly studied their interests there would complete children changing and national curriculum be a place at the right time for these growing day by day. Their view intricately constructed programmes for was the traditional one which foisted upon our schools, mathematics, literacy and almost every I had inherited and has been there are some more discipline, and children would enjoy so thoroughly and consistently nimble intelligent them. The teacher nurturing children re-imposed by the dictators of models appearing on the will be helping to bring this about and Whitehall. market... will know when the child is ready.

Their unspoken intention is that schools should be a tool of the establishment in its need for control and in making children adaptable to its purposes however changeable they may be.

Children’s behaviour and beliefs should not threaten contemporary requirements. They should know what it is useful to know. They should wear uniforms, be taught an undeviating curriculum, be tested regularly to be sure of a measurable outcome and finally presented to the world as newly minted, fresh-off-the-shelf adults.

However tried tested and admired a newly devised curriculum may be and, in response to the lumbering, cumbersome national curriculum foisted upon our schools, there are some more nimble intelligent

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What a pity to plough regardless across the fields of learning just to make a curriculum for the winners and losers in the race for the top jobs in the market when children are waiting to draw new learning from that same land made rich by our predecessors.

Geoffrey Marshall was a head teacher in Kent where the schools he led were recognised as embodying high standards through the use of teaching methods matched to the nature and, in particular, the creativity of the children.

Rosemary Evans

Bequest Award

Are you a recently qualified early years / primary teacher (QTS gained since June 2014)?

Are you keen to reflect on your professional development as a classroom practitioner?

Are you keen to get something published in an educational journal and add it to your CV? If so, we hope you will be interested in the Rosemary Evans Bequest Award to be given on an annual basis to the best article received for publication in Primary First from a recently qualified teacher. The award is for £200 and the theme can be selected from one of the following: • The highlights and challenges of taking on your own class • What do you see as the key principles and/or values which inform your approach to learning and teaching?

• How can teacher retention be improved?

• The global teacher for the 21st century.

The article should be between 1500 - 2000 words and you are welcome to select your own focus and title, but drawing on one of the above themes.

The article should both critically explore aspects of your own experience and identity as a recently qualified teacher and be informed, where appropriate, by relevant literature.

The final date for submission for this academic year is 1 May 2017. It is to be submitted electronically in Word or PDF format to Robert Young, NAPE General Secretary at rmyoung1942@yahoo.co.uk.

The Primary First Editorial Board will judge the submissions and it is anticipated that more than one submission will be considered for inclusion in the journal, although not in receipt of the Award itself. Further details about the Award can be requested from Robert Young.

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