Primary First - the journal for professional teachers

PrimaryFirst The journal for primary schools

Issue 11 £5.00

“The heart of good teaching is to see the world through the child’s eyes.”

National Association for Primary Education

Recent NAPE research into learning out of school has established that educational visits remain a key and valued feature of the primary curriculum. Somewhat against the odds, schools continue to foster learning outside school – sometimes stand-alone but often in connection with projects across the curriculum. Our research also highlights the need for resources to assist teachers working in the environment and this is welcome confirmation of the association’s decision to support the publication of I-Spy books to schools. The books are highly valued by teachers and children alike.

We are delighted to announce a new publishing programme in co-ordination with Michelin and Blue Sky, owners and publishers of the I-Spy books. The entire range will be available at competitive prices with free post and packing for qualifying orders. Teachers Guides, written by practitioners, will accompany the availability of the books and full details will be posted on the NAPE website, www.nape.org.uk. The special terms offered to schools will be available only through that route.

Editorial It cannot be denied that everyone helping young children to grow and to learn is under heavy pressure. Indeed there is a view, more held by politicians than parents, that pressure is essential to children’s progress. The pressure is often manifested as a shortage of time and the sad refrain heard in many schools is that “there is not enough time in the day to get everything in”.

But what does hurrying to cover the programmes of study do to learning? There is a very real danger that relevance to the child, that essential connection between teacher and pupil, is lost and the human dynamic replaced by subject content prescribed not for the individual but for all children broadly of the same age. Hurried learning is not sound learning and that is why it is so quickly forgotten.

Many years ago a young girl taught me a lesson I have carried with me ever since. A young teacher at the time, I was in a hurry and pushed hard against the constraints of time. Tragically the ten year old became ill and in the summer she died of leukaemia. These were the old fashioned days of the 11+ and we had worked hard with her, helping her to understand and make skills her own so that she could be successful in the examination and in the future.

Then, suddenly there was no future. Her life was complete and I realised that she had spent much of it with us in school. For the first time I had to consider whether that time with us had been good enough, fulfilling enough, to be a large part of her life.

I wish it hadn’t taken a child’s death to teach me that what was true for her is true for all children. They are spending an irreplaceable time of their lives, their childhood, with us in primary schools. They will never have today again and as we leave our schools at the end of a long day we should ask ourselves not only what they have learned in preparation for the future but was today rich enough, satisfying enough and, yes, pleasing enough to be a never repeated part of life.

This view of primary education should not be found shocking even though it runs counter to the test driven culture which is pressed upon us. Learning which has relevance for children today is the very best way of preparing for tomorrow.

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, But our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life.

Many things can wait. Children cannot.

Right now their bones are being formed, their blood is being made, and their senses are being developed.

To them we cannot answer, “Tomorrow.”

Their name is today.

Gabriela Mistral Nobel Laureate

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About us Editorial John Coe Editorial Board Pip Marples, Stuart Swann, Robert Young Primary First magazine is published three times per year by the National Association for Primary Education.

Primary First, 57 Britannia Way, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9UY Tel. 01543 257257, Fax. 01543 258258, Email. nape@onetel.com ŠPrimary First 2014 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.

Contents 03

Editorial

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Assessment at Admission Getting to know the new children by Clare Bristow

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Term Time Holidays Pip Marples has an unconventional view

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Three Reviews Learning outside the classroom by John Coe

Small Schools Resolve Disadvantage Success in meeting our greatest problem

by Mervyn Benford

28 Breakfast Clubs

Recent Research: Eating well helps learning

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Delivery vs Learning

John Coe considers the new national curriculum

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The best that has been thought and said Robin Alexander sets out his priorities

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Learning to talk in primary school Research that matters to us by Fiona Maine

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School Inspection: Past and Future Colin Richards, former Staff HMI, takes a hard look

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Why Yoga Works An argument for Yoga in our schools

by Michael Chissick

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Living History or Book Based Learning Children bringing history into their lives

by Lynn Hannay

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Assessment at Admission

by Clare Bristow

At Turnfurlong Infant School there are a number of principles which underpin not only our ‘baseline’ assessments on entry to Reception, but our approach to assessment as a whole.

At Turnfurlong we recognise that there has long been a debate about the place of ‘baseline’ assessments in Reception. Questions which Reception practitioners have grappled with, such as; • This is a new environment, are they really showing me what they are capable of?

• When do we say that the child is settled and we are able to take a ‘baseline?’

• How soon can we say that the interactions within our environment are making a difference?

• How do we use the information passed to us from preschools and parents effectively?

• How do we ensure accurate assessment of the EAL children?’

These are all questions which we as a Reception team, have discussed at length and whilst there is no perfect answer, over the years we have developed assessment procedures which we feel give us an accurate point from which to build an engaging curriculum for all of the children.

Turnfurlong School is a large, three form entry school in Aylesbury.

Each year we welcome ninety new children from across the town to our Reception setting. As a school without a nursery, these children come from a variety of preschool and cultural settings, with varying lengths of preschool experiences. Around 20% of the children entering the school are assessed as speaking English as an additional language. Approximately 20% of children, EAL and English speakers, are at the early stages of language development.

Within this context we are aware of the importance of accurate assessment at the beginning of the year. In order to build a very detailed picture/profile we use information from a range of assessment tools, observations and documentation from other professionals. Our primary priority is assessing the children’s social skills, speech and language and motor skills. This is because in our experience, quick intervention to support those children who struggle in these areas can make a marked difference in their future learning.

As a school, we are passionate that children thrive in a happy environment where they feel confident to take risks with their own learning. Central to this is the relationship the children have with the adults and other children in the setting. For this reason, we dedicate the first week of term to playing alongside the children, exploring their interests and observing their interactions with others. During this time we will make notes or ‘informal observations,’ assess accurately the children’s social skills.

The majority of our EAL children come from the local Pakistani community. We have long been concerned about the accuracy of the assessment of our EAL children in areas outside communication and language. To support this we have been developing existing talent in the school and now have two learning support assistants working in Reception who are themselves native speakers. They talk alongside the children during their play and assess them by playing games in the same way as the adults would do with the other children and feed back to teachers. For those children for whom we do not have a native speaker in the school, we use other information from pre-schools and parents to build a picture of understanding in their home language.

Following this, we assess not only a child’s ‘base knowledge’ (phonic sounds, number, aspects of the world), but as the amount of ‘teaching’ of these ‘base skills’ will have been different for each child, we also seek to assess their dispositions to learning and how motivated they are in their own play.

For us, separating these things is crucially important. There are children who, wonderfully, have had a great deal of home and pre school support and thus appear to have a ‘high base knowledge’; others less so. As practitioners we need to assess the children’s understanding and ability to apply the knowledge they have to new situations independent from adult support or whether they are reliant on an adult coaxing them to complete tasks. Experience has taught us that some of these children, who appear to have high levels of ‘base knowledge’ but struggle to apply it independently or lack motivation to play independently, can potentially ‘stall’ in their learning as they are less likely to drive their own learning forward. Supporting and teaching a child to be

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motivated and persevere takes time, so early intervention is very important. Likewise, we may assess children who for whatever reason have low levels of ‘base knowledge’ but who on starting school are eager to learn through play, have a thirst for knowledge and are willing to ‘have a go.’ These are two extreme examples, but considering all three areas; ‘base knowledge,’ ‘dispositions to learning,’ and ‘motivation in play,’ we find give us a more rounded picture of the child’s stage of development. This in turn allows us to tailor our curriculum to best meet the needs and extend the learning of all of the children in the cohort.

In terms of the child’s ‘base knowledge’ we are careful not only to ask them to recall information, but to put it into a context where the children are asked to apply what they know. For example, we often have children who can count to 10 or to 20 or above.

Whilst impressive, we commonly find that for the children this means saying the numbers from memory in sequence with little association between the numeral and the number. This deeper understanding is the part we wish to assess. We look for number recognition, correct sequencing, accurate counting and linking quantities with numerals’. Much of this is through games during play with an adult.

Alongside these games we use the ‘draw a man’ assessment.

This is designed to give us information which is not based around the ‘base knowledge’ of a child and gives us a snapshot into the ‘developmental point’ of the child alongside their fine motor skills.

We are always aware that these assessments are being undertaken in an unfamiliar environment with new adults and peers. For some children this can be overwhelming and the picture which appears can be skewed. So, in the summer term before the children begin in reception we visit the preschool settings from which the children are to come. This gives us an opportunity to observe and talk to the children in a familiar environment and talk to the staff who are working with them.

The input of parents is vital. Unlike some settings we do not undertake home visits. Whilst we recognise the value of such visits, we have decided not to undertake them as ‘standard practice’ for

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two main reasons. The first is the establishment of a professional relationship between the staff and the parents in terms of the separation of the school and home environments. Our concern being that, however much we reassured the parents, they would perceive these visits as ‘the new teachers judging them and the children,’ the reverse of the open relationship that we want to encourage. The second reason is that young children are often very different at home in comparison to how they are in an ‘educational’ setting. This again comes back to the accurate assessment of the children’s ability to undertake activities independently and importantly their interactions with peers outside their family. For these reasons we focus our energy on visiting the children in their existing pre school settings, where they are with familiar adults and their peers. Since the introduction of funded places, we find that the vast majority of our child attend pre schools. This is not to say that we would never undertake home visits, but we would only do so if there were particular circumstances, for example medical needs. Instead we encourage the parents to become involved in the school environment and contribute to the observations and notes made in the learning journals.

These assessments take approximately three weeks. At this time the Reception teachers will meet, discuss their findings, moderate the judgements and decide whether the ‘baseline’ can be drawn.

The information collected will then be placed onto the school’s Development Matters tracking tool. This was developed by the teachers at the school and places the assessment statements within Development Matters on one piece of A3 paper, in sequence within a table. The purpose of this is to allow the teachers, who highlight each statement when it is achieved, to have a visual tool which gives an immediate overview of a child’s progress and next steps. The tracking tool is then placed on the inside front cover of each child’s learning journal, providing us with a visual overview of the child’s progress across the year.

Following the initial period of assessment and year group moderation expectations for the progress of each child are set against the Early Learning Goals. These expectations are then shared with the headteacher and SLT and used to monitor the progress of the children throughout the year. This allows us to ensure that all groups of children within the class are making at least expected progress.

Using the assessment information and observations, intervention groups for specific children, eg. fine motor, number, vocabulary are established and any child who it is felt needs additional support developing social skills will join the nurture group.

Finally, the ‘baseline’ assessment information, alongside discussions about the children’s interests are used to develop the curriculum for the forthcoming term.

Then the adventure begins……!

Claire Bristow is an Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) who works at the Turnfurlong Infant School in Aylesbury.

Term Time Holidays

by Pip Marples

Over the past academic year 64,000 families have been fined for taking their children away from school for a holiday.

A quarter of primary schools have levied fines (1) and this is a rise of 70% compared with the previous year.

Nicky Morgan, the recently appointed Education Secretary, was quoted in the press as follows,�For every day or half-day that a child misses (school), it does affect their education.

From the prime minister downwards, we have made it clear that being in schools during term time is the best place for children to be. I am really clear that it (fining for holiday absence) will continue.� (21 July 2014) It would appear that politicians are convinced of two things about educating children. One, that schools are the only

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08 places where children learn; and two, the more time children spend in school the better they will be educated. They seem not to take in to account the importance of parents as educators; or that more of something does not necessarily mean better. In other words it is the quality of the experience that matters not its duration.

they cannot afford the school holiday prices this is cause for genuine distress and tension. It is the poor and shift workers who suffer and yet it is they who often have the greatest need of respite and time with their children. Research by travelsupermarket.com found that travel companies put up their prices between 25% and 40%, depending on the location, during peak holiday times. No wonder this causes financial difficulty and distress to less affluent parents.

The objective of the current legislation is to direct head teachers to prohibit any leave of absence during term time, other than in “exceptional circumstances”. It is aimed at the so called The following actions need to be taken. There should be a under achieving pupils who mainly come from disadvantaged nationwide review of holiday dates, with summer holidays and disorganised homes where truancy is a serious problem. shortened and mid-term holidays lengthened to two weeks.

Research (2) has shown that repeated absence from school can This would give all parents more options for holidays in the affect the educational chances of children in the long term but autumn, winter and spring. The government there seems to be no evidence to suggest should legislate for consistent pricing of holidays that children missing ten days schooling due It is the poor and for families with children by travel companies to term time holidays are having their life throughout the year taking in to account the shift workers who time chances affected. There are however a above arrangement gives six options during significant number of absences of children suffer and yet it which they can go on holiday for a minimum from middle class backgrounds whose two weeks. is they who often families, for example, want to avoid the higher Politicians should recognise that short terms are fares during their winter skiing holidays, and have the greatest better for children’s energy levels and learning; therefore go in term time. There are those need of respite... that families are hugely influential and mostly children who have relatives in other countries beneficial in their children’s education; and whose parents want to maintain close family ties. There are also those parents who have no alternative but to that it is to everyone’s benefit that good communication take holidays during term time due to the restrictive conditions and relations are maintained with local communities. They also need to acknowledge that absence due to truancy and of their work place. absence due to term time holidays require very different Interestingly, despite the zero tolerance legislation enacted approaches. in 2013 there is a varied response amongst head teachers Finally, central and local government should be supportive of and senior staff in schools. Some carry through the command heads and their senior staff members and accept there are of government in complete obedience, and therefore report so many instances where school education cannot match attendance records to governors, parents and OFSTED of the experience provided by parents for their children outside over 97%. Others use their discretion, especially when it the school gates. Professionals in schools will be aware of comes to one day absences for bereavements and special each child’s circumstances and what is appropriate. There will family occasions, and some continue as they did before the always be exceptional cases and mistakes made but, as too legislation and use their professional judgement. They risk lower attendance rates and possibly, therefore, censure. Much often, government has taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut. depends on how far a school feels under pressure to inflate their SATs results. The research noted above found that Year 6 teachers were especially aware of the need for their pupils not to miss something important.

References The fact is that the legislation is draconian and leads to families who are struggling to make ends meet being fined and losing money they can ill afford. If heads say no to parents it causes resentment; and affluent parents will take their children anyway, risk having to pay the fine, and causing resentment in the school. Both scenarios have the potential to produce tension and conflict where good schools see learning as a positive experience shared by the community. Families need their holidays, with a break from routines and opportunities to spend quality time together. If

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1. Survey by Key Education (2014) 2. Absence from school: a study of its causes and effects in seven LEAs (2003) Research Report No.424 published by the SCRE Center, University of Glasgow.

Philip (Pip) Marples is the retired head of a large primary school in Oxfordshire. Now in semi-retirement he continues to teach music to young children. He is Joint General Secretary of the National Association for Primary Education.

Reviews by John Coe

Children Learning Outside the Classroom Edited by Sue Waite

Publisher, Sage Publications Inc. ISBN 978-085702-047-5

This is a very important book. Sue Waite has brought together an expert group of writers who together have produced what amounts to an encyclopedia of the knowledge and skill which can be gained by children when they are freed from their classroom. With only one apparent exception the writers are academics engaged in the training of primary teachers and it is to be expected that the book’s main focus is upon the university department of education and its required reading lists. It justifies its inclusion and could also find a helpful place on the bookshelves of schools which have taken on the initial training of teachers. Child development is given full consideration as are theories of learning.

This is so much more than a handbook offering tips for teachers.

The ‘Points for Practice’ included in each of the chapters pose questions of great relevance both to student teachers and experienced practitioners.

The Wild City Book

Gardening LAB for Kids

By Jo Schofield & Fiona Danks

By Renata Fossen Brown

Publisher, Francis Lincoln Ltd ISBN 978-0-7112-3448-8

Publisher, Quarry Books ISBN 978-1-59253-904-8

This beautifully produced little book really is full of valuable tips for teachers.

Although written for families and their young children, every teacher working in a school serving an urban community will gain from the suggestions, 67 in all, of pleasurable activities, full of potential for learning which are outlined and illustrated in the book. The use of the word ‘Wild’ in the title is perhaps just a little deceiving and relates more to the Going Wild series of titles previously published by the authors than to the book or the city. The activities are, in the main, located in green spaces such as parks easily accessible to settings and schools. Dare one say in these instrumental times within which we teach, the activities should often be characterised as play but, nonetheless, imaginative teachers will find many opportunities to encourage learning and even to deliver personal and individual instruction as their pupils enjoy themselves.

Once again a book written for families and not specifically aimed at schools.

Nevertheless, there is much here for teachers and the author, who is Associate Director of Education in Cleveland Ohio, has children and their lives and learning very much in her mind. The 52 experiments she describes are rich in potential for learning by children of all ages in primary school who are encouraged to get outside and enjoy nature. Gardening not part of the national curriculum? No, but remember that from this September the national curriculum is simply the core of the school curriculum and the latter is what WE make it. Schools which have created gardens are quick to affirm the value they add to the children’s wellbeing and achievements.

It is refreshing to commend a book that doesn’t offer learning objectives for every activity. Listing objectives, perhaps copying down government targets, achieves all too little but by using this book as a resource, EYFS and KS1 teachers can identify the targets which matter, those relevant to individual children, and help them towards their realisation.

The book makes the bold claim that outdoor learning has recently been enjoying something of a revival. It is a little surprising that the commitment by government to a test driven primary curriculum over close to two decades has not been more successful in ending our tradition of taking children out to where the experience is powerful and the learning is strong and never forgotten. The current surge in enlightened practice is doubtless due in large part to the growing influence of the Forest School experience. An increasing number of teachers are being shown how to balance health and safety issues with management of risk and challenge.

Such balancing is essential to the freedom of children to explore and to respond to the natural environment.

All you need at the beginning is a plot of earth to be transformed by the children into a garden. The book guides you in creating opportunities for learning about botany, ecology, the seasons, food , insects and much more. Clear links to the core curriculum of English, mathematics and science can easily be created so there is a productive synergy between garden and classroom. If you are seeking to create a wide-ranging and challenging curriculum this is the book for your staff room library.

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Delivery vs Learning

By John Coe The political rhetoric which has accompanied the adoption of the new national curriculum in September 2014 has been powerful. Phrases such as “ a relentless focus on ensuring all pupils grasp key curriculum content” and “the programmes of study are more explicitly ambitious than ever before” have been used by ministers. Crucially, an intention to tackle the most serious weakness in education has been affirmed as “an ambition for all our children to excel, regardless of their background”.

Now we move from rhetoric, which comes easily to politicians, into action by the schools and this is always more difficult. Even more difficult because the curriculum was, in the main, approved in defiance of the advice offered by teachers and academics. There was widespread opposition to the overprescription of subject content concerning the core skills of English, mathematics and science leaving little opportunity for us to meet widely differing children’s needs. Indeed such is the unbalanced shape of what we are required to deliver that ‘The National Elementary Curriculum’ might well be a more appropriate name for what confronts us. The emphasis upon rote learning in the programmes of study was fiercely opposed by primary specialists whose expertise in child development, confirmed by their experience in the classroom, shows that such learning is often ephemeral, retained for the test and forgotten soon after.

So we are faced by the challenge to somehow reconcile the nature of our young pupils with demands which have the force of law but which we know are rooted in the misguided political requirement that primary pupils should be made ‘secondary ready’. Teachers, and this includes our secondary colleagues, should never complain that children are simply not ready for our teaching. Our professional duty is to understand our pupils and their lives as they present themselves to us. Then to meet each individual need – a difficult sometimes impossible task in the light of the barriers which at times are interposed by society, but nonetheless a task to which every primary teacher is dedicated.

We are committed to meeting individual needs because we know that children’s learning in their primary years (learning, not delivery of subject content which is only a beginning) is absolutely vital to their success in education and, more than that, success in living, such is the power of our work in shaping men and women.

The issue which every primary school has to tackle is how to reconcile the new curriculum’s prescription of what must be taught at particular organisational stages with the reality that chronological age is a very poor measure of children’s growth in knowledge and skill. A class of nine year olds are in year four organisationally but a few minutes with the class will soon make it clear that there are some children with sufficient understanding of the number system to multiply three numbers together mentally while sitting near them are children at a much earlier stage of development who are struggling with the same task. It is a nonsense, but sadly one upon which the national curriculum is based, that all children within a class can be taught as if ,simultaneously, they

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all have the same readiness to learn and capacity to understand. If children are to learn, the learning which is embedded in a person, more needs to happen than chalk and talk which insists that abstractions are committed to memory but without the child’s understanding.

Practising last year’s SATs is not education it is coaching.

Underpinning the new curriculum are three aims. The first is ‘to ensure the curriculum embodies rigour and high standards and creates coherence in what is taught in schools’. The mere act of saying it must be so through the publication of programmes of study does nothing at all. Only teachers have the power to create high standards and that means we must do everything we can to translate the programmes into learning experiences which matter to children and have meaning for them. We must use the flexibility offered by the foundation subjects to bring separately defined subjects together and as often as possible to draw the core skills of English, mathematics and science out of children’s direct, fully sensory, experience.

Secondly, ‘to ensure that all children are taught the essential knowledge in the key subject disciplines’. Well, the essential knowledge has been defined politically and we have to teach it. But teaching is not learning and we must make absolutely sure that everyone, particularly the parents to whom we are accountable, understand that the outcomes of teaching will vary. Many children, advantaged through the circumstances of their birth may well progress quickly whereas others not so advantaged may take longer to understand the ideas which underpin essential knowledge and to grasp the skills rooted in those ideas. What is a

mystery at the age of nine may, with good teaching, be understood four years later. The graph of learning is not a smooth straight line always reaching upwards.

The third aim holds the greatest promise for all teachers. There is an acknowledgement that the national curriculum is the core of the school curriculum and that beyond the core teachers should have greater freedom to use their professionalism and expertise.

We must accept the challenge but there are major difficulties to overcome. The curriculum’s tight hold on basic skills is maintained through national testing at the ages of five, six, seven and eleven years and what is tested narrows and distorts what is taught in too many schools. All our professional expertise and determination will be required to ensure that the school curriculum matches the nature of our pupils and that teaching and learning is much more than preparing children for the tests. The heavily prescribed national curriculum core leaves all too little room for the exercise of our skills . Delivery or learning? It’s up to us.

References Alexander R. J. (2009) Towards a New Primary Curriculum: a report from the Cambridge Primary Review. Part 2: The Future. Cambridge, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

Department for Education (2013) Reform of the National Curriculum in England.

Department for Education (2013) The National Curriculum in England. John Catt Educational Ltd. The National Association for Primary Education and the Association for the Study of Primary Education (2013) Joint Statement: re the reform of the National Curriculum.

The National Association for Primary Education (2013) Response to the DfE Consultation regarding the reform of the National Curriculum.

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Learning to Talk in Primary School By Fiona Maine This is an edited version of an article entitled ‘I wonder if they are going up or down: children’s co-constructive talk across the primary years’ published in Education 3 to 13, Volume 42, Issue 3. The article contains full references to the body of research which underpins the study reported below.

Introduction The importance of children’s talk in the primary classroom has been highlighted through much recent research, particularly through the work of Neil Mercer (2000) who has investigated the types of talk that are most useful for learning, focusing on ‘exploratory talk’. Children talking with each other to coconstruct knowledge and understanding, sets language at the heart of learning and this is recognised in the new national curriculum.

The study reported in this article offers a unique perspective on the language development of children. It does so through a comparison of talk over a period of time, considering moments of talk captured at the beginning and end of primary education.

Whilst not claiming to be an in-depth longitudinal study these snapshots provide some interesting food for thought when considering how children construct knowledge together.

Two pairs of children were videoed discussing pictures to make meaning or sense of them. The distinctive feature of the study is that the children were first videoed when they were six years old and then again five years later as eleven year olds. The task was exactly the same, the only difference being the passage of five years, and ultimately, a whole primary education. The aim was to find out what this close analysis of talk might illuminate, to see if there was a marked difference in the language exchanges that they engaged in as children at the start and at the end of their primary education. In other words: What did they say?

What words did they use?

How did they talk together?

As a final insight the eleven year olds viewed the video of their six year old selves engaged in the task and talked about the differences and similarities in discussion that they themselves perceived.

The research process The research took place in a small rural town in the south of England in an average sized primary school. To capture the data, the pairs of children were videoed discussing two pictures.

‘The Lady of Shallot’ by Waterhouse (1888) and ‘Rene Golconde’

by Magritte (1953). ‘The Lady of Shallot’ depicts a woman

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The Lady of Shallot by Waterhouse

Rene Golconde by Magritte

sitting in a boat on water with her regalia around her. A tapestry hangs over the side of the boat trailing in the water. The boat is set among reeds on a river with trees behind. ‘Rene Golconde’ depicts a landscape of buildings with uniform windows with blue sky above. There are multiple figures suspended in the air all wearing bowler hats and coats. The children were not told the titles of the pictures. The six year olds in Y1 had selected their own pairings and the teacher of the class helped identify children who represented the general ability of the class but who were confident talkers. The discussions were captured in their entirety with each one regarded as an individual vignette.

The recording was finished when the children indicated that they had said all that they wanted.

Five years later the children had no recollection of undertaking the discussion task or being videoed. They were given exactly the same prompts each time: that they should talk about the picture and ask questions to work out what it was ‘all about’.

One of the pairs, Harry and Ben, discussed both pictures as they had originally been recorded as a pilot study in Y1, whilst Anna and Hannah just discussed Waterhouse.

Research methodology The research was conducted as a case study and as such the data set was small, yet allowed an in-depth qualitative analysis. First the video data was transcribed and the reliability of the data collection ensured through a continual iteration between the video and transcript data. The transcripts were then systematically coded. This coding was tested by engaging a small group of colleagues, all of whom were familiar with listening to and observing young children, to code the same transcripts whilst watching the same videos. Any anomalies were then discussed and the coding slightly refined.

Findings There are six vignettes: Harry and Ben discussing the Magritte and Waterhouse pictures and Anna and Hannah discussing Waterhouse. Initially, focus was given to the interactional function of words and phrases and the pattern of language in the discussions. Secondly, the way the children talked together, and the process of their discussion was analysed; and finally, the themes of their talk were considered in relation to the cultural context of the discussion. Overarching all analysis was the key question of comparison across time: what was the same or similar in their discussions and what was different.

The language of the discussion The first stage of the analysis involved coding the interactional functions of each speech turn and recording their frequency.

The number of turns that each discussion lasted was surprisingly similar. Given that the children could talk for as long as they wanted and the video was only turned off when they had clearly finished, it is interesting that the children kept to a similar length of speech turns for each picture.

In terms of the interactional functions of their speech, the most frequently occurring code shows that the children were happy in both Y1 and Y6 to offer up hypotheses in order to make meaning. Harry and Ben were clearly less inclined to ask questions of the text in Y6 but the opposite is true of Anna and Hannah.

The language that the children used highlights some of the differences between their Y1 and Yr6 discussions. In the extract below, the children are both critical and creative in their co-construction.

Extract 1: Harry and Ben in Y1 discussing Magritte H But…I wonder if they are going up or down. That’s a question isn’t it?

B [Hmm] H Because they’re going down on …..they look like..

B [Cos cos they’re on the floor] H …..I know, but they might have been taking off ……..and how are they getting up there?

B [yeah…or…] … or they might have jumped out of a helicopter (unclear) H I know… how can an aeroplane or a helicopter hold so many people in it?

B Well… (there could be one, one, one, one (gestures)…. it could be like ….

H [there could be ten of them] B … and then they’d set out of another ten … and … another ten and another ten and another ten ..

H [And] then they might all fly back up again and they might go and land somewhere else mighten they?

B Yeah… and do something…

The instances of questioning are all by Harry and the suggestions and explanations (in italics) are split between the boys as they create explanations for each other’s ideas. Other research indicates that the raising of questions is a sign of ‘possibility thinking’ (Craft 2000). Here creative thinking is also demonstrated by tentative hypothesis, not necessarily asked as a question.

Extract two: Harry and Ben in Y6 discussing Magritte H I think it looks quite weird B Yeah it does H Quite a lot of men floating in the air… and they could be going up or down B I think it’s … it looks like its raining….men H Yeah (laughs) … quite a lot of men … They are all sort of dressed in the same thing aren’t they?

B mmm … I think it’s quite old H Yeah the houses are quite old … and they’re all wearing like suits and things with like, im hat thingies on B & H Ummm (both look at camera awkwardly) B Yeah, I think they might be in a city…

H [yeah] B Some sort of town H Those sort of houses look all old fashioned, like bricks … sort of …looks like they’ve all like of … I wonder if they are going up or down … maybe some of them, maybe the bolder ones are going up and the lighter ones are going down, and the rain’s quite light, and the bolder ones are like going up This extract shows that whilst the children still make suggestions (italics) and give explanations, they ask far fewer questions of the text. Their language has also changed. ‘I think’ has been coded as a suggestion, as it shows the children putting forward an idea. However it is less tentative than their earlier discussion in which ‘maybe’ ‘could’ and ‘might’ figure more dominantly. ’I think’ suggests a firmer commitment to an idea and offers less scope for the respondent. Arguably it could be coded as a ‘statement’ as it offers little for response, yet there are a further set of comments in the Y6 vignette which, rather than suggesting ‘I think’, are stated as facts, for example , ‘I can see a pair of legs there’ (Harry). By tempering the statement with ‘I think’ or ‘I reckon’, which they use more in their discussion of Waterhouse, there is an acknowledgement of the possibility of an alternative viewpoint and an awareness of the co-construction as dialogue.

Extract three: Harry and Ben discussing Waterhouse H And I reckon she may have driven into these …. Looking pretty …. Rope handled ….

B It’s quite weird because she doesn’t have any like …. paddles so

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14 H She’s not showing any facial features B No, she looks quite sad ….

H Yeah (doubtful) B Upset H For me it’s like they bury people on this island and she’s come back from visiting one of her relatives who died maybe Here Harry adds to his canon of suggestive phrases with ‘For me it’s like ….’ which carries the same tone of hypothesis as ‘I think’ and ‘I reckon’, and he reiterates a stance of being open to alternatives by adding a ‘maybe’ at the end of his response.

However, these phrases all remain less open than the divergent questioning of ‘I wonder’ ….’

The pattern of Anna and Hannah’s language highlights ‘I wonder’ as an interesting phrase for consideration, but for a different reason. In Y1, the pattern of their speech is dominated

by Anna posing ‘I wonder’ to which Hannah tries to contribute some solution, and does so with language which, like Harry and Ben’s is permeated with possibility, ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’: Extract four: Anna and Hannah in Y1 discussing Waterhouse A Um I wonder why her hair’s so long. Maybe she’s never ever cut it.

H Maybe it could just like grows (holds hair) A I wonder why she’s got that black thing on her H It’s probably like a little belt to keep her skirt up so it doesn’t fall down (gestures) A Yeah I wonder why she needs to clean her dress, cos ….

H Maybe she like fell over in the mud cos she probably tripped over a stone or a [ ] and she … flat into the mud (gestures) In Yr6 the pattern of the girls’ talk is similar, only here Hannah takes less responsibility for answering Anna’s questions, and instead mirrors the language. Thus the language serves a social function in addition to a co-constructive one.

Extract five: Anna and Hannah in Y6 discussing Waterhouse A Yeah ….. I wonder if she’s got anyone with her or ….

H I wonder like where she gets her food from. She might eat the fish but how would you cook them. If there is fish in there A I wonder why the cloth is in the water not in the boat, because….

H Yeah, it’s like hanging in the water. Like I wonder if there’s fish in the water and if they are like dangerous or ….

A I wonder why she’s holding a chain as well In the Y1 extract each new question leads onto a new idea, but these are not sustained or deepened by further responses, Anna just moves on to a new topic. In Y6, each questioning statement is mirrored by another, also meaning that the chains of dialogue are less fluid. At a surface level, Anna’s repeated use of ‘I wonder’ could be seen as a disposition to enquire, but the fact that she uses the phrase repeatedly suggests a pattern of language she is using to keep the discussion going. That a

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whole primary education has happened between these two moments of talk and yet she maintains the same pattern of language when tackling an identical task is an indicator of how deep-rooted habits of speech might be.

The process of the discussion In order to analyse the process of discussion, the transcripts were marked up to show chains of thinking. That is, the number of turns taken which relate to each other. At the point where a new line of thinking or new suggestion was made this was marked as a new chain. Sometimes this happened within one speech turn.

When comparing the chains of thinking in Harry and Ben’s discussions, it can be seen that they have longer (and fewer) chains in their Y1 discussions, where they follow the ideas of each other. In their other Y1 discussion (Extract 6 below) after an initially lengthy chain of ten turns, they seem to waver, flitting between ideas until they find a topic that has them both interested.

Extract six: Harry and Ben discussing Waterhouse H And what’s all this thing well that B Well they might be like goldfish, like H They might be other kinds of fish. They might be haddock B mmm H Or it might be…mmm any other of fish? Might be skate and or it might be a cat … [cat fish] B [catfish] You mean cat fish?

H Yeah. Or it might be a cat that’s dived in to try to catch the fish, yeah and [then it kinda like] B That’s the fish … and this kind of silvery black bit is the cat H Yeah and it’s trying to catch it and this lady’s gone out to catch the cat and then so she can catch the fish B right – umm H And then the fish gets eaten by the lady B Yeah Harry plays on words around ‘catfish’ and invents a story to make the scene plausible, that the woman sitting on a boat is, on fact, waiting for her cat to catch fish. Whilst Ben mostly just agrees with Harry’s idea, he is encouraging a continuation of the idea even if not adding to it.

Their Y6 discussions show far more disjointed dialogue, where suggestions are made but not expanded. The children do not pick up on each other’s ideas and expand on them. Rather they continue to generate individual notions or return to their own ideas. The connections between the ideas show that their exploration or development is limited. In the extract below from the Y6 Waterhouse discussion, the flow of ideas is rapid but not explored in more than one speech turn.

Extract seven: Harry and Ben in Y6 discussing Waterhouse H Yeah … I don’t know why she’s got candles there … I mean it’s quite light

B I think it might be in a different country somewhere … because H It could be Spain because they have those long paddle boats (mimes the action) don’t they? Where someone stands and goes … (action) row row row B (looks at H and laughs) yeah H I reckon, um, I reckon she’s like inspecting land, maybe her own land B It maybe be like, going out to feed something that lives in the water … cos it looks like she’s holding a chain or something there…

H…Oh yeah! It looks like the chain is coming through here (points) B attached to something H Hmmm … why she’d have a lantern here though I don’t know!

For Anna and Hannah, the same is true in both of their discussions, they find a topic to explore early on in Y1 but then fall into the pattern shown in Extract Four of question and answer. The chains of thinking are limited and ideas not fully realised as they move on to new ideas at nearly every turn.

The increase in agreement comments across all of the discussions over time can be seen as an indicator of the children’s social awareness and their understanding that in order to move forward, they must do so together. But this is more than merely ‘cumulative talk’. Harry and Ben use agreement to affirm what the other has said even if they then move onto a new point, both in Y1 and Y6.

H … I know, but they might have been taking off…….and how are they getting up there?

B [yeah …or…]…. or they might have jumped out of a helicopter (unclear) H I know … how can a helicopter hold so many people in it?

B Well … there could be one, one, one, one (gestures) … it .could be like …

In this extract from Y1, Harry is actually challenging the idea that a helicopter could be responsible for the men in the air, but he agrees with Ben first, thus maintaining a social cohesion before asking for further clarification. That they agree with each other more in Y6 might suggest that the importance of maintaining this cohesion is more of a priority, but it has a detrimental effect on the discussion, which becomes disjointed and less clear.

H It looks like some of the faces shows its quite normal. I mean they are not like waving their arms about and sort of looking quite surprised. They are looking … umm ‘everyday.. I’ everyday thing B Yeah H (unclear) … and a couple of them are standing on the roof.

These two here B Yeah H I reckon the fader ones are going one way and the bolder

ones are going the other way B Mmm (agreement) H I can see a pair of legs there B Mmm yeah In this extract, Ben is adding little to the discussion, but even so, Harry is moving between ideas without expanding them. These were the final comments in the Y6 Magritte discussion as the boys ran out of ideas.

The last point to notice about the way that the children manage the discussion is their comments which show their monitoring of the task. This only happens with any significance in the Y1 vignettes and only for Harry and Ben. Harry takes charge of the Waterhouse discussion by opening with ‘Right what do you think it is first?’, a comment straight to Ben. He also declares the discussion over with the statement ‘Yeah that would kind of … wouldn’t it? That would fit. When discussing Magritte he is even more assertive, declaring ‘I think that’s about it we can think of’ as a final comment, drawing a definite line under the discussion. In all the other vignettes the ideas just seem to wane and even Harry’s earlier self-assurance is less apparent – perhaps indicating a more socially aware stance.

The themes of the discussion The themes of discussion are perhaps the clearest level of communication to explore as they are quite apparent. In the Y1 Magritte vignette Harry suddenly declares .I wonder if they are going up or down! His pleasure at coming up with such a novel question is reinforced by his recognition of this. ‘That’s a question isn’t it?’ he exclaims, looking directly at the camera. In Y6, one of the first things that Harry says is ‘They could be going up or down’ but with no recollection of seeing the painting before. That Harry should raise the same question twice, but five years apart, does suggest that there is something about his socio-cultural context that has not changed and has led him to the same line of thinking.

In the Magritte vignette from Y1, the themes of the boys’ discussion are: Whether the picture is a film; if the buildings are hotels; if the men are going up or down and how they got there (with an elaborate story concocted about helicopters). In Y6 the themes are: whether the men are going up or down; that the men look ‘normal’ and that some figures are bold and some more faded. The Y1 ideas move the thinking beyond the frame of the picture, creating their own plausible reasons for what they see. In fact, the idea of helicopters dropping men from the sky is both plausible (more so than floating men) and one that reflects a cultural experience of computer-gaming cartoon images. So whilst the children generate elaborate stories, these do offer logical explanations. That they do so together shows the value of them thinking together. In Y6 the chains of thinking are tied more to what can be seen in the image itself, the boys do not move beyond the content of the picture itself for explanation, rather they search for logic in what is in front of them.

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16 In the discussions about Waterhouse, all the children are more interested in the practicalities – where has the lady come from, does she live on the boat, how does she keep clean? These themes are consistent in both Y1 and Y6. However the ideas are more elaborate in Y1. In Y6 their solutions are more in line with the narrative structures they will have encountered in books and films. They pick up on the ‘traditional tale’ style of the picture and spend time discussing ‘rags to riches’ type themes, as well as more anachronistic practicalities of everyday living, ‘she might have money with her and go for a walk to the shops to buy a sandwich, or a drink … or soup’, laughs Hannah (Y6).

When they were viewing the video of themselves the children were asked what they thought of their ideas in Y1.

All four of them were amused by watching themselves and impressed by their ideas. ’It was a good idea considering how old we were’, said Harry in response to the Waterhouse discussion. For Ben, the difference was having more knowledge, ‘We now know what things are and what they are called, back then we were just coming up with names’ and he described his Y1 ideas as ‘wacky’.

Anna and Hannah discuss similar themes: A It was a bit more imaginary – [the story that] she fell in some mud or something and had to go and wash (researcher) Why? A Maybe because we didn’t know. It’s probably not possible…

H I think it’s because we know more about real life now, not like fairies and stuff when we were younger There is an assumption underpinning these comments that now as Y6 they are more ‘grown up’ and therefore more knowledgeable about, as Hannah states, ‘real life’, and that goes hand in hand with being less imaginative, or wacky.

Conclusions Analysing the talk on these three different levels allows for the nuance of the children’s discussion to be considered, and this is afforded by the small data set. Hence the subtle language differences are noticed and can be explored in terms of their function as well as any patterns of speech which emerge (for example, Anna’s consistent use of ‘I wonder’ over the five years). If specific linguistic markers of modes of talk had been assigned then these subtleties might have been missed. By exploring the process of discussion itself, it becomes clear that the discussions in Y6 were more disjointed, and that whilst they may be filled with the language of exploratory talk, the full potential of the dialogue was not realised.

There are of course limitations in such a small study. The very nature of a socio-cultural approach has to acknowledge that had the children been recorded on a different day, the

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talk captured may have been different. However, the data do show some interesting patterns of discussion both in terms of content and process, and offer some consideration for how creative thinking and talking together might be encouraged over the span of primary education. Is there anything new in saying that the ideas children have in Y1 seem more ‘wacky’ (Ben) than in Y6? Perhaps not, but by repeating the same task across time, there is evidence of how their thinking has changed. ‘We know more’, they say. Knowing more then, seems to limit their capacity to invent and find elaborate and indeed eloquent solutions, in this particular situation at least. This is mirrored by their language which is identified as being less divergent: ‘I wonder’ has changed to ‘I think’ and they seem more likely to agree with each other than to extend ideas into a more exploratory direction. There are implications for the classroom which can be drawn from this. Setting up discussion opportunities where meanings are ambiguous, modelling divergent and creative language (I wonder, maybe) as well as the more commonly used language of critical thinking (I think … because) all lead to a reinforcement of the power of creative discussions.

Alexander (2008) stresses that language should be taught as an end in itself and not merely to support other curriculum areas. Analysing the language that children use and the way they are able to develop and maintain dialogue will show how they are able to sustain a line of thinking, not just respond to an initiation. By concentrating on modelling and supporting precise co-constructive language, with an emphasis on developing longer chains of thinking, a clearer development between the language of Y1 and Y6 children should become apparent. This means the role of the teacher is necessarily dialogic (Alexander 2008), a role that models not just exploratory language, but a willingness to tussle with ideas and happily co-construct new meanings alongside children. Then, divergent ideas can be celebrated and encouraged: ‘I’ve got a delighted look on my face!’ exclaims Harry watching his six year old self solving the mystery of the picture.

References Alexander, Robin 2008. Towards dialogic teaching: Rethinking classroom talk, 4th edition. Cambridge: Dalogos Craft, Anna 2000. Creativity across the Curriculum: framing and developing practice. London: Routledge Mercer, Neil 2000. Words and Minds: how we use language to think together. London:Routledge Fiona Maine is a lecturer in literacy education at the University of Cambridge. She researches the language that children use to think critically and creatively together, and is interested in the potential of visual texts as a resource for teaching reading. Her book which explores the talk of Harry, Ben, Anna and Hannah in more detail, ‘Dialogic Readers: children talking and thinking together about visual texts’ will be published by Routledge next year.

SCHOOL INSPECTION: Past and future Past

by Colin Richards The vast majority of teachers and parents agree with the principle that primary schools should be subject to accountability by some form of inspection process. But that has been the limit of agreement up to now. How did the present situation arise ? What might a re-formed Ofsted look like?

How would it relate to other players in our increasingly fragmented system?

This article offers a personal perspective on these issues as they affect English primary education.

When Ofsted was created in 1992 it faced a political imperative: all primary (as well as secondary) schools in England had to be inspected in a four-year period, yet the number of HMIs (Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools) then in post, following reorganisation, was less than 200. The result was a flurry of activity involving the hurried, inadequate training of large numbers of wouldbe inspectors employed by a myriad of agencies and the compilation of inspection handbooks which tried to codify inspection practice in a form which relied less on professional judgment and more on compliance with explicit, so-called “objective” criteria. Too many of the first tranche of Ofsted inspectors lacked adequate experience and expertise in primary education, especially early years.

The whole process was intended to be monitored by an inadequate number of HMIs, only a minority of whom had been primary specialists in pre-Ofsted days. Under the new dispensation HMI could never quality assure the whole process closely enough. That political imperative was met – but at a cost to those primary schools inspected by ill-qualified inspectors, to the reputation of Ofsted as an organisation and to the status of inspection as an art requiring a high degree of educational judgment. That system could have been replaced in the late 1990s given political will but has been allowed to continue, though the very large number of agencies involved in the contracting out of inspections has gradually reduced – to three by September 2009 and to zero by September 2015.

Since 1992 Ofsted has engaged in a series of national inspection cycles involving a series of constantly changing frameworks and guidance documents intended to assure consistency of quality across the privatised inspection teams. In the absence of detailed evidence from Ofsted itself but backed up by a wealth of anecdotal evidence from primary schools, that consistency of judgment has not been achieved. Ofsted has been widely criticised for overseeing an inspection “lottery” with privatised teams varying unacceptably in judgement and insight, especially but not only in early years inspection.. Although both Ofsted and its critics acknowledge that uniformity of judgement over a myriad of school contexts is unattainable, except in an ideal world, there is a common perception among primary schools of a lack of reasonable

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18 consistency with resulting injustices to the policies and practices of individual schools when inspection reports are published. This is not to deny the expertise of many, though not all, Ofsted inspectors and the real, if only partially successful efforts of inspection agencies to quality assure the performance of their teams.

Current proposals Twenty years or so after the inception of Ofsted in 1992 changes to the inspection process are being mooted by the Chief Inspector now that a large majority of primary schools are considered “good” or “outstanding”. At first glance his proposals look like adjustments rather than representing fundamental change but is that the case ?

“Good” and “outstanding” schools are to be inspected less frequently and less intensively through an MOT type approach involving a short visit every two or three years from a single government inspector (HMI) who will discuss schools’ progress with leaders and governors – hopefully based on expert observation in classrooms . In-depth, intensive inspection is to be targeted on those schools requiring varying degrees of improvement. The proposed system is being “marketed” as providing Ofsted with more flexibility to respond to schools’ differing needs for intervention and support. It is claimed to be no less rigorous but to be more differentiated and to make more optimum use of scarce and expensive inspector expertise.

But are these proposals symptomatic of more than minor change?

Many of us long-standing critics of Ofsted hope so. We are cautiously welcoming what appears to be a major shift developing within Ofsted itself and its relationship with schools and teachers. After many years of ignoring criticism from teachers, academics and others Ofsted is proposing major changes. It appears to be moving from what has too often been a negative approach focussing on what is wrong and requires improvement to a more supportive developmental one focussing far more on celebrating success in most schools and how to work with those schools to make them even better. That’s a profound mind-shift – which some inspectors will find difficult to make and which some primary (and secondary) school leaders will find hard to acknowledge after years of suspicion, anxiety and even hostility to Ofsted.

In addition to the changes just mentioned there is a commitment to ending the system of contracting out most inspections to outside agencies. The current inspection procedures are to be re-examined with a view to making them more relevant to the changed educational landscape, including (at last) more emphasis on the quality of the curriculum offered to primary school children.

More HMIs are to be appointed and better quality-assurance of inspection and training of inspectors are being promised. HMI have been reorganised on a regional basis and are being given a role in promoting school improvement rather than just reporting on it through the medium of school reports.

There are very real benefits to the proposed changes. Perhaps most importantly they should enable many more schools to focus on the further improvement of teaching quality and educational standards

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rather than devoting disproportionate amounts of time and anxiety preparing for inspection. Those schools requiring intervention and advice based on expert classroom observation are more likely to receive it.

Central to the proposed re-orientation should be the development of a more flexible, more encompassing inspection frameworks and procedures that can be validly and reliably applied to all types of primary school - free, academy, community and, ideally, independent. New style inspections should seek to evaluate how successful a primary school is in fulfilling its own aims rather than focussing entirely on assessing how that school is meeting the government’s agenda. They need to be far less reliant on test data, to realise its limitations (as well as its usefulness), to give more recognition to the quality of school life and to place much more reliance on expert professional judgment by inspectors with experience of inspecting primary schools in a wide range of educational contexts.

In particular Ofsted needs to take the opportunity to reconsider not only the way it evaluates the quality of teaching but also the inadequacy and deleterious effect of its fourfold categorisation of schools (“outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” and “inadequate”) . To reduce the complexity of a single school to a single descriptor is gross injustice and to allow that descriptor such public currency adds to that injustice. Every school is a complex amalgam of strengths and weaknesses and it is these that need to be communicated to those who need to know through sensitively written inspection reports closely tailored to the particular circumstances of the school.

Re-formed Ofsted? A personal view Now that change is in the air perhaps it is time to revisit the place of Ofsted within the whole English education system. It might take the following form.

First a change in name – from Ofsted (a tainted brand?) to the English Schools’ Inspection Service (a neutral term without baggage?).

Second a change in Ofsted’s legal status. The English Schools’ Inspection Service (ESIS) would be legally independent of the Secretary of State for Education and of the Department for Education; the Secretary of State would not have the legal power to appoint the chief inspector or the chair of the ESIS board. The ESIS would report to parliament on a regular basis but would also submit its reports to the DfE and any English Education Council’s (or College of Teaching?) which might be set up as a national body to advise on curriculum, assessment and teaching.

whatever replaces them as the “middle tier”; and (e) disseminating interesting practice and promoting professional networking through conferences, national and regional inservice courses, written and email publications and face-to-face contacts .

Third a change in Ofsted’s remit. Apart from its role in directly inspecting the minority of schools “requiring improvement” and in supporting the remainder in line with the current proposals the ESIS’s prime remit would be to report publicly on the effects of the government’s and the English Education Councils policies on both the quality of education and the standards achieved in all statefunded institutions including academies and free schools and in all independent schools. Other aspects of its remit would include (a) developing a national framework for full inspections , the most radical aspect of which would be a two-stage inspection process where inspecting and reporting on quality was uncoupled from evaluating data-led performance; (b) monitoring the use of that framework with a view to its periodic revision on a set time-scale; (c) monitoring the work of school improvement agencies (d) inspecting and reporting on the quality and standards in LAs or

Work in progress

Fourth a change to the way Ofsted itself is evaluated. The ESIS would be formally linked with other national inspectorates and would be subject to periodic review by the latter and by commissioned researchers who would report to parliament.

There is widespread recognition within and without Ofsted that school inspection in England needs radical reform to establish a widely respected system which prioritises professional judgment rather than compliance among both schools and inspection teams.

The Chief Inspector’s proposals represent early stages in a cultural shift which primary schools should welcome and endorse. Who knows, perhaps, a fundamentally reformed Ofsted or even a ESIS may be underway?

Colin Richards is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cumbria. For many years he was Staff HMI for the school curriculum.

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Living History? ..

by Lynn Hannay

is the acquisition of facts which is demonstrated by the ability to recite dates. Of course this plays a part, but there is so much more to history education than that; mainly the acquisition of the historical skills of enquiry, questioning and the use of evidence both first and second-hand. The notion that history for young children should be chronological in the strictest sense is nonsense, more important are sequencing and a sense of chronology. Children, as they grow, need to be able to put the historical era they are studying in context in order to make connections and comparisons. The first draft of the new national curriculum for history, after much opposition and lobbying from teachers was revised and is now on more enlightened lines, however any overemphasis on chronology is misguided.

It is important to ensure that children develop an interest in learning about the history of the country in which they live and that of the wider world, develop their sense of enquiry so that they broaden their minds and gain a sense of the past, and how the lives we live now are still rooted in it. In order to achieve these aims teachers need to be able to engage children with history they can “ touch” and identify with, to bring it to life and let children have access to real artefacts and situations.

This is why undertaking work on Victorians, WW2 and Tudors is successful with primary children as there are many places to visit and good available artefacts to stimulate discussion and the imagination. Elements of the political, religious and social situations are within the grasp of their understanding.

“We all have roots in the past. Our families extend back into it; houses, streets and towns were shaped by it; and it made possible all aspects of our daily lives. Yet those who inhabited it often elude our understanding. Living history brings them closer to us by recreating the practical details of their lives- what they wore, ate and lived in; how they fought, farmed or worked in new industrial towns.” (1) Children taking part in living history is something I have been passionate about for most of my teaching career; and I see it as a vital part of our curriculum at the school where I was Joint Head Teacher, The Lyceum. I am sure some onlookers see it as a bit of fun and a lark at dressing up, but for me it is a fundamental part of how our children can best learn about our history. The former Education Secretary would have had us believe that learning about history

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The need for teachers of young children is to find ways to engage them with the past, paying attention to how they learn and their stage of development. That means finding real ways to stimulate their minds and excite them, not reducing history to lists and facts to be committed to memory. If we gain their interest and excitement as primary pupils they will go on to want to learn more about history at the secondary stage and retain that interest into later life.This is apparent from the number of our pupils who have gone on to study history at GCSE and A level, and indeed at university; and who, when I meet them, want to talk about and relive their living history experiences.

Living history is an extension of my commitment to experiential and child centered learning and I believe it helps to cement learning in

..Or Book Based Learning? the children’s minds as well as helping them to see the connections between history and other areas of the curriculum such as dance and music. I am reminded of the old Chinese proverb attributed to Confucius, “Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember. Involve me, I’ll understand”. Benjamin Franklin is said to have reworked this proverb in this way - “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. There are other versions, but the message is always crystal clear. If we want children to understand, learn and retain information and facts and skills, there needs to be activity and involvement. So, take children either metaphorically or physically somewhere historical, and let them live the history, and they will remember, learn and understand.

I have been very fortunate to have spent my entire teaching career in London which has so many historical sites close to hand where as a teacher it is possible to engage children and support them to make the necessary connections that cement their learning. Many of our greatest monuments and sites both in London and across Great Britain now provide some living history experiences, for example, guides that dress authentically and stay in role whilst showing the children around. A stage on from this type of living history is a place like Kentwell Hall, (2) which opens annually on a number of days to provide full and extensive re-enactments of specific historical events.

Specific historical events are difficult for schools to re-enact for children. So my focus has always been on giving the children a feel for the domestic life of a given era, how real people (especially children) lived. I have done this in the knowledge that we cannot be absolutely sure of the experience of those who lived in Tudor or Victorian Britain - what we can offer is our interpretation of those experiences based on our reading of the interpretation of historians and who knows how far from the truth that takes us.

Jay Anderson founder of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (3), which offers support and advice on historical skills to a wide variety of people, says that critics who claim living history is misleading are missing the point because whilst history itself cannot change, our interpretation of the past is constantly changing and those involved in living history can respond to those changes. The mission statement of ALFHAM is to share practical knowledge and skills amongst those who make history relevant to contemporary lives. Their website says, “Living history

means different things to different people”.

Jay Anderson identified three groups of living historians in his work, “Time-machines: The world of living history”. (4) 1. Those who interpret how people lived.

2. Those who use living history as a research tool to test theories and explore material culture.

3. Those labeled ‘history buffs’ who create personas for themselves based on a person or a blend of persons.

At the Lyceum school, where I coupled leadership of the school with year 6 teaching for 17 years we developed a mixture of all three.

There are many purists groups of re-enacters who would disapprove of what we did, and the fact that our Tudor dresses had zips, but I believe we gave children a real feeling for an era whilst being pragmatic about the compromises we made for the sake of practicality and health and safety. What is important is that we stayed in character/role as much as possible, and were clear with the children when and why we went in and out of character. Being aware of the level of their involvement and their knowledge helped the us to guide and monitor our own behaviour. We tried to beware of being flippant or making amusing comments from an adult standpoint so not to detract from the experience for the child who does not have the basis of experience and knowledge with which to interpret the adult humour. Whatever experience we offered the children, they were fully costumed and fully involved. These experiences ranged from an Egyptian market recreated in the school hall to a four night residential stay, living as Tudors in a Tudor barn, eating Tudor style menus from wooden platters and doing a walking tour of Lavenham in full costume!

The National Trust comes at living history from a different angle i.e. through what it calls participatory performing arts. In 1977 it set up the Young National Trust Theatre (5) in order to use country houses and their surroundings in new and exciting ways. Up until this point you could only visit our national monuments and look. The National Trust began in Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire by involving children in the historical story of the 17th Century hall. They used a part scripted reconstruction of life in the hall in its heyday, around which they involved children in improvisation. This was such a success, that the National Trust set up similar projects in other locations. The

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22 programmes offered have changed over the years and include some site specific and some generic stories, but generally now focus on the political and social issues of the era in question. Whatever the story, their principles remain the same: 1. The dramatic work should give children opportunity to deepen their understanding of history and cultural heritage.

2. There should be a blend of the performing arts e.g. dance, drama, music.

3. The experience should give the child access to a heritage, which is theirs to enjoy.

The role of the National Trust in developing living history experiences is explored in a series of essays in their book, “No longer dead to me”. (6) Of particular interest are Tony Jackson’s contribution, “When the audience become the actors”, where he explores the impact of dramatising the history lesson; and Steven Hales’ essay, “The primary school experience” which he ends with this: “My class debated the issue of which was more important, books or living history, and resolved that both play an important part in the teaching and learning of history. One of the children said that living history gives you ‘A real picture in your head’, while another said that books gave you information against which you can check out your own ideas.

One of the children mentioned that information from books can be biased, and that a living history production enables you to ‘make your own judgments’”.

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Melissa Thibault has published an article called “Bring history to life with a living history day!” (7) She talks about the importance of building skills, assessing the importance of individuals in living history, constructing a historical narrative and formulating historical questions, as being of importance when challenging children to think historically. She maintains that those skills should be nurtured from the moment the children are exposed to history and that by focusing on an individual in history provides a manageable chunk for small children to work with e.g. Florence Nightingale. She goes on to say “The key is to move from reporting facts, an activity that can be done without demonstrating any understanding, to historical inquiry, an activity that engages the student and brings the subject to life”. She maintains that living history is the way forward. In order to present a living history day, she writes, “Students must synthesize the information they learned to create an exhibit representative of their subject; this can’t happen unless they are actually engaged in the event”. This is what the Lyceum children did when they created their Egyptian day. They did the research, which enabled them to present their day with authority.

It is important in the context of school life : - That the children are fully involved and encouraged so they “go along” with the experience.

- That parents are engaged to support us and their children.

- That teachers are very clear what they want children to learn during the experience, just as they would be with any lesson in the classroom. It should not be merely reinforcing what has been learned previously.

- That follow-up work should be sufficiently focused and carefully planned.

- That written records of the event should be carefully thought through, i.e. a diary is not always the best form of recording.

- That preparation work should lead up to the visit or experience, but that teachers should be aware that the experience itself should stand on its own in the case of a living history residential/ day trip and not be made invalid because of too much prior teaching.

- That when planning a history topic teachers think well in advance about which aspects of knowledge and skills can be best taught through living history i.e. it should not be merely an add on.

- That the experience should not be trivialized or compromised by inaccurate information or presentations e.g. be clear what the music is for the era, so don’t present Oliver as being Victorian!

- In terms of what can be offered to children as living history experiences, there are a number of variations: 1. Invite in a historical character to talk to the children and be interviewed. There are companies like the Fresh Water Theatre Company(8) who do this very well or a member of staff can take on a role. These types of interactive workshops are flourishing.

2. Use members of staff and/or the children themselves to take part in “hot-seating”. A good example of this was on the last WWII residential experience in which I was involved. The children were able to interview Winston Churchill, a member of the WAAF, and an Italian internee ( all willing staff members).

3. Use a freeze-frame technique in costume to recreate a specific event.

This requires a great deal of research prior to creating the tableau.

4. Visit historical sites where they provide characters in costume who meet and greet the children and guide them round.

5. Visits historical sites where they provide re-enactments of specific historical events.

6. A re-enactment day in school e.g. the creation of an Egyptian market where other children visit and interview the presenting children in character.

7. A residential experience immersing the children in the lifestyle of a specific era e.g. a Victorian country weekend.

“Facts, dates, lists of Kings and Queens- all tell some of the story of our past. But there is nothing like re-enacting the reality to bring it all vividly to life”- this is taken from “Living in the Past” an English Heritage publication. A word from a re-enacter: “You live and breathe the past at a re-enactment: it’s all around you, in everything you see, hear and smell. Somehow it seems much more real than the present day” But the final words go to some Lyceum pupils who filled in an evaluative questionnaire after living as Tudors for a week.

What I learned about myself “ I learned I am quite good at working in teams and cooperating with other people. I can plan things ahead and remember things well. I enjoy willow weaving with twigs” “ I didn’t know I was good at calming people and finding routes.” “ I can cooperate well” “I was surprised that I could be responsible and look after my own possessions and my Tudor clothes” “ I can work in a group and communicate and I am good at helping people” “I leant that I need to be quick and efficient and not do things the long way round. I learnt to try things before I decide it they are hard or easy, I learnt to rely on myself and to trust myself.i also learnt not to judge and look down on other eras” “I learnt I could cope without my parents and be independent” “I am good at managing teams and led mine to victory” What I learned about Tudor life. “ they didn’t have forks so they ate with a spoon and a fork and it was hard to pick things up. It was hard to write with a quill and pen” “ the food was similar to ours, the clothes had lots of layers but were surprisingly comfortable” “Tudors had a harder life than modern people” “They had to do a lot of things we don’t do today” “I learnt to use black lettering, and I learnt that busy Catholics paid people in guilds to pray for them”

“I learnt about beating the bounds and it was fun to do it” “I learnt to make connections between Tudor life and modern life” How the experience differs from learning in class/ from books / from the Internet “ it was interesting to experience what we had been learning in real life. It helps you imagine how it was in those times. “ “ I could have got it from a book and read it but I experienced it and understood it and now I have my own opinion. It helped me remember better.”

“In a book you use sight but on a trip you use all your senses “ “ a book is someone else’s opinion but going on a trip you learn for yourself and make your own mind up “ “Lots of the things we learnt about everyday life you can’t learn from a book” “It is much more exciting. When you read about Tudors you cannot emotionally connect” “We learnt to do things instead of learning about them e.g wearing the clothes, eating the food, doing black lettering” “In that week I learnt so many things, most of them up reachable if we had stayed in class and read .”

“It’s just more interesting” “When you experience something you understand it better” “The experience changes the way you look at things and think about them” “It was weird being away from technology although I welcomed it” “ It was interesting and I felt in character all week.”

Through living history our children reach back from today to touch their roots in the past. Their experiences are full of meaning to them and that is why they learn

References 1. Horsler. V (2003) Living in the Past, Weidenfeld and Nicolson for English Heritage 2. Kentwell Hall, Long Melford, Sudbury, Suffolk CO10 9BA 3. Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM), www.alhfam.org 4. Anderson J. (1984) Time-machines: the World of Living History, American Association for State and Local History.

5. Young National Trust Theatre, www.nationaltrust.org.uk 6. Woodhead S. and Tinniswood A. (Eds) (1996) No Longer Dead to Me, National Trust.

7. Thibault M. Bring history to life with a living history day, www.learnnc.org 8. Fresh Water Theatre Company, www.freshwatertheatre.co.uk

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Small Schools Resolve Disadvantage

By Mervyn Benford Information Officer National Association for Small Schools

The sadly large number of failing, disaffected children first identified in “All our Futures” in the mid-70s are still very much with us. In 2007 The Sutton Trust, dedicated to improving prospects for the disadvantaged, reported that “deprived children were still bottom 30 years on.” The same Trust was reported in the TES in 2010 as finding that at six years old poor but bright children were overtaken by the less able but richer. They noted that at that age their vocabulary and sentence structure falls behind their peers. In effect by six “innate cleverness is trumped by wealth.” This happens much more rarely in small schools. The Scottish Government in 2006 produced a comprehensive survey of primary school performance which showed the smaller the school the better: children in its smallest schools had a 25% higher chance of entering higher education and children in those same schools from impoverished and disadvantaged families actually made progress --- rare evidence indeed. Incidentally the 18+ findings matched those of Johnstone HMIe in 1975 who found that at Scottish ‘Highers’ the most successful pupils were girls from remote highland and island schools closely followed by boys from those schools. This was reported in the Aberdeen University study by Forsyth and Nisbet for the DoE. The 1975 evidence remained true 31 years later.

Ofsted reported in 1999 that small schools out-performed the rest in attainment but qualified this by claiming free school meals take-up was lower in rural schools. Even so, small schools remained as capable as the best of the rest. My association, the Association for Small Schools, disputed the significance of the Ofsted claim arguing that though a handful of dormitory shire counties adjacent to major metropolitan areas would be socio-economically more advantaged, the bulk of rural UK was rather impoverished and not at all so privileged yet the results across the board were as good. The superior teaching quality in small schools has little to do with socioeconomic differences in catchment areas. The argument by Ofsted and others that small rural schools are advantaged ignores decades of evidence that the quality of teaching is one of the most significant

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contributions to pupil attainment.

Scotland uses free meals data and also its distinctive free clothing allowance records in order to identify disadvantage. It is clear that large numbers of small rural schools in Scotland are half way up mountains, or in remote valleys and of course on a lot of islands.

Their disadvantaged children are disadvantaged.

When Sandy Longmuir, professional statistician and rural farmer, who promoted small school strengths to the Scottish Parliament looked to England for evidence he produced the information shown in the chart below. It can be seen that levels of deprivation in remote rural areas now approach those found in inner city areas but academic outcomes are vastly superior. Similar evidence is found in Scotland.

It may not surprise us then, that in 2009 Scottish inspectors went to inspect an 8-pupil school in the Outer Hebrides but decided after one day to cancel the inspection- the work was so good they preferred to document it as best practice. When schools in the Scilly Isles became an early example of federation the secondary school heading the group, some 250-300 pupils, was in special measures, the largest primary of some 70 to 80 pupils was causing concern but the two island schools with 4 and 5 pupils respectively were receiving their second successive glowing Ofsted reports.

The first graph is based on the individual results of over 2 million children. For the first three key stages the various subject attainments are averaged and key stage 4 is the percentage of pupils gaining 5 GCSEs at C or above including English and Maths. The hamlet and isolated dwelling category is the results for around 20000 pupils per key stage and is where the vast majority of small rural schools are located. (There are around 20000 pupils per key stage in England in rural schools of fewer that 100 pupils).

The second graph is the Index of Multiple Deprivationby area type. These figures are produced by Government and take into account average income, unemployment, lack of accessible services, crime etc. in Super Output Areas (SOA’s) which are cells of around 1500 people. I have totalised the scores for every cell in each category and divided by the number of cells. It is often said that the educational benefit in small rural schools is down to socio-economic advantage.

Urban/Rural Attainment in England

95 85 % Attainment

Well, you would expect me to say that, wouldn’t you? I have argued the virtues of small schools for over 20 years, having been Head of one for 15 and inspected over 25 for Ofsted in the days when inspectors were required to do the job properly. When 75% of three observation days had to be spent observing lessons across ten subjects, taught by just two or three teachers, then each teacher gets seen rather a lot! Ofsted in 1999 reported that in small schools the quality of teaching was better than elsewhere, with proportionately more good teachers and we realise that those conclusions resulted from sustained levels of observation! In 2007 Ofsted reported that schools with fewer than 50 children had more of its new ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ grades than larger schools, with those between 51 and 100 on roll the next most effective cadre.

urban average attainment

75 65

town fringe average attainment

55

village average attainment

45

hamlet and isolated dwelling average attainment

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family, had been in every house, had shared village events socially, and had seen several children from the same families through the school.

IMD score

Multiple Deprivation by Area Type

25.00 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 0.00

Sparse Village, Hamlet & Isolated Dwelling

Dense Village

Dense Town Fringe

Dense Urban

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Small numbers of pupils may seem easier to teach, like children taught at home in families, but central the case consistently made against small schools (defined by many local authorities as schools with as many as 60 or 70 pupils) is that they are educationally unviable with a catalogue of alleged (never proven) deficiencies.

Critics cannot have it both ways. The family model lends cogency to my view that we have to return education to its roots in families and communities. Smaller schools afford such possibilities far more naturally and effectively. The hard evidence shows that schools of under 100 pupils are as good as any others and that in key respects, such as quality of teaching already cited above, and relations with parents they are often better. A detached observer may rationally ask why larger schools without all those alleged deficiencies do not outperform them.

Research has long shown that two resources, mainly though not exclusively, influence ultimate educational outcomes; home background and quality of teaching. Repeatedly, inspection evidence commends the close and positive relationships between small schools and parents. In a recent report on school performance made

by Estyn to the Welsh Assembly (2006) this was put forward as the second most significant factor in explaining why small schools in Wales did as well as any others. The driving factor in small school success is the capacity for partnership between home and school.

Human factors topped the league table of what makes education effective produced by New Zealand’s Professor Hattie was based on an analysis of large numbers of national and international studies of what worked in teaching and learning, covering nine million children in total. System, organisation and buildings were at the bottom of the league.

Such close partnerships become more difficult the more the numbers grow. Many schools, including large schools, can create effective teaching. Even so test and inspection analyses do not suggest that many of these reach such heights as those, for example, identified as typifying best practice by the National Education Trust. I would not mind my grandchildren attending any such schools but it is much more difficult for larger schools to have the same relationships with parents as I had as head of a small village school. I knew every

When there is frequent personal contact between parents and teachers, sharing ambitions, values, attitudes and effort, children feel safe and secure. The close relationship is worthwhile and the outcome is higher achievement. This is what the evidence shows, and not only in the UK. An academic study by Dijon University of the closure of 22 of 50 schools in a rural Department showed that after ten years the costs of transport alone had almost overtaken the cost of keeping all 50 open and that as 50 schools they got better results.

Once again we should not assume that such parts of rural France are especially advantaged.

Many will argue that smaller classes contribute to the success of small schools. However there is little firm evidence that size of class influences performance. Inspectors have praised science lessons involving 60 or 70 pupils at Fairfield Community School in Herefordshire. Such lessons, involving teacher demonstrations lent themselves to the introduction of a topic but it should be noted that the follow-up lessons were in smaller groups and there was individual tuition for pupils with special needs. I worked for many years in Sweden and was impressed by occasional examples where subject teachers put their timetables together to study common curriculum material, each pursuing specific subject targets but with more time available for interaction or depth of study.

Because of their small size, and necessarily mixed age and ability groups, it is easier for small school staff to work flexibly as needed.

Recently I watched the head of a small Leicestershire school take reception and year1 classes together (51 children) for an end of day story. She had them eating out of her hand. The NFER long ago reported it would be necessary to reduce class sizes to 15 to see any possible benefit and then only if the teachers adjusted their methods.

Subsequent studies have tended to confirm those findings. The only evidence of possible benefit from smaller classes was in a recent American study of very young children.

Mixed age/ability teaching and small peer groups are among the alleged deficiencies of small schools but in fact, in good professional hands, they are a significant strengths. It is how children learn at home and it is how people work in the adult world. It is the essence of the oldest and most effective teaching model in history, masters and apprentices. Sensitively managed the model is unsurpassable, wholesome and effective. Taken together with ready access to the curriculum outside the classroom, which small village schools use so effectively, the children have a better chance to identify with what they are taught; why the tools of language, technology and mathematics are useful, how the history and geography in books flows from their own hills and streams and work places, how landscape and the elements have influenced creative arts, how people in a community relate to each other and how they use practical and intellectual skills for real purposes --- in other words building readiness for life and living which is the true goal of education.

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UK inspectors almost unanimously praise the relations between small schools and parents and frequently they report very effective provision for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special educational needs. In other words children have two advantages, good support for families and good teaching. In these circumstances disadvantaged children should succeed and they do.

The quality of teaching has much to do with effective leadership and Ofsted has recognised the significance in small schools of the teaching head who provides a living model of successful practice, aware of standards being attained and involved directly in curriculum and other planning. The teaching head is another of those classical deficiencies claimed by those who want to close small schools --including some professionals!

Professors Hattie and Galton have illuminated effective teaching and learning. We can reach parents with simple truths, no-one tells them that their sons and daughters from day one have brains imprinted for language and serious analytical powers that quickly inform us of their needs and resulting. “So talk to them!” And as the powerful links between music and mathematics have long been documented and correspondingly ignored- “Sing to them!” The close informality characteristic of the small school enables the communication of such truths. It starts early in life; all parents can do the simple things that research shows helps to shape educational effectiveness in the longterm. The time when a pencil one day can be a plane and the next a boat is the time for education.

We should never build another large school.

Our partners, Human-Scale Education, have published a book by James Wetz, “The Urban Village School,” arguing for secondary schools to be no larger than 300 pupils. If 1500 places are needed then have five such units. My association argues that there is no more urgent or important place for such small-scale concepts as when children in our big towns and cities are just starting out on their education journey. We need schools of at most 75 to 100 close to the streets where the children live, their parents able to drop in and out and be known and the riches of the urban environment easily accessed.

More sophisticated economic analysis than local authorities care or dare to use, the kind any responsible business would undertake, show that in the long-term, initially higher costs repay the Exchequer by reducing the costs of failure and shaping more enduring successleading to better jobs and higher tax revenues. We can give all children particularly those living in the inner cities where the bulk of educational disadvantage lies, the glowing reports such as those from Gilsland sitting under Hadrian’s Wall in remote Cumbria, or from Brockdish,a small Norfolk school, at the time managing successfully with a 3-day a week head teacher. Extracts from Ofsted reports given below sustain my argument that we need more small schools- in town and country alike!

Extracts from OFSTED Reports GILSLAND C of E Primary School - 23 pupils June 2011 Overall Achievement Grade 1: Capacity for sustained improvement Grade 1: Pupil Outcome Grades 9 x 1 : 2 x 2 The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals is below average. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities is high.

This is an outstanding school. Pupils’ achievement is outstanding as a result of outstanding provision and the vibrant and warm environment created for their learning. Staff nurture successfully an ethos of self-esteem and respect for others, which is central to the school’s harmonious learning community. At the heart of the school’s work are outstanding levels of care and support and a very creative, stimulating curriculum, which is supported by outstanding partnerships and engagement with parents and carers. The school’s work in safeguarding pupils is excellent. Consequently, pupils feel very safe, know how to adopt healthy lifestyles, behave impeccably and have outstanding attitudes to school. Pupils have developed a deep understanding of how they can contribute to cohesion within their school, the local community and the wider world. They are exceptionally well prepared for the next stages of their education.

We can start by never building another large school.

Evidence collected by the National Association for Small Schools over many years shows that in the long-term small schools deliver profit to taxpayers yet those wanting to close them continue to argue that they cost too much. DfE figures show no more than 6% of all primary teachers work in schools of 100 pupils or fewer. The smallest schools which are the principal targets for closure, employ an even smaller percentage of the workforce. There is little impact on the education budget as a whole. Flawed economics closes small schools and blinds providers to the opportunities the model presents for children in both rural and urban communities.

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Under the exceptional leadership of the Headteacher all staff have developed a shared philosophy and desire to provide each pupil with the best possible chance to succeed. As a result of rigorous and accurate self-evaluation, improvement strategies have been highly effective in bringing about rapid improvement in every aspect of the school’s work. This demonstrates the school’s outstanding capacity for sustained improvement.

Brockdish VC Primary School - 19 pupils March 2010 Two mixed age Classes Above average free school meals Below average SEN Above average levels of pupil and family mobility School has Active Mark award, Foundation level of International Schools Award and Silver Eco-schools Award. It was also judged outstanding in the Church report on the school. In all but one of the measured performance categories the school rated 1 (= outstanding). Teaching, curriculum, leadership and management were outstanding.

Brockdish Primary School is an exciting place to learn. It provides an outstanding quality of education. Classrooms and the school grounds are full of interesting and challenging activities that capitalise on pupils’ enthusiasm for learning. Pupils are full of praise for the education they receive. One commented, “Our teachers are kind and helpful; they make me feel confident and happy.” Parents and carers are similarly impressed, “This is the best school I have known. The staff are excellent.” and “The care and attention my children receive are outstanding.”

Lessons are imaginative, vibrant and fill of pace. For such a small

school the range of additional activities is fantastic. Participation levels are high, including the youngest. The response to any pupil showing the slightest sign of falling behind is prompt and effective. Under the very effective leadership of the Headteacher the school has flourished and attainment has risen year on year. Parents and carers are hugely supportive of the school.

Liaison with parents and carers is exemplary. The promotion of community cohesion at local, national and international level is also outstanding “Fantastic” is not a word much evident in OFSTED vocabulary.

The striking factor is that Peter was a part-time Headteacher, three days a week. The school had been a failing federated pair and governors accepted Peter offered them for three days more than they had had from the shared Head of the federation. The strength of any small school is that everyone is close enough to believe in it.

Mervyn Benford is the former head teacher of Lewknor school in Oxfordshire. He moved from headship to advise schools in Warwickshire. He has always been a staunch advocate for small schools and is currently Information Officer for NASS, the National Association for Primary Schools.

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Breakfast Clubs ~

the present position A substantial number of teachers are sure that a good breakfast enjoyed by children has a major impact on school attendance and attainment. Yet too many children, particularly from disadvantaged communities, come to school in the morning having had nothing to eat and some without having even a drink. This report of how the provision of breakfast clubs is spreading is taken from a research survey undertaken by the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) on behalf of Kelloggs.

Approximately a quarter of schools offer a genuinely free breakfast and a proportion offer free food to those in receipt of free school meals. For Breakfast Clubs that charge the price per child ranges from a nominal 10p to being an inclusive part of a pre-school club and included in a child care cost of up to £15.

Key Findings

The vast majority (81%) of teachers affirm that hungry children are unable to concentrate. 75% report lethargy and 47% say that such children find it difficult to learn. Breakfast clubs tackle the problem. A School Food Trust inquiry in 2008 found improvement in Key Stage 2 results one year following the introduction of clubs in a disadvantaged area.

15% of schools responding to the 2014 survey noticed an improvement in test results linked to the Breakfast Club. 45% of schools said that their club had improved attendance and improvement in concentration was reported by 49% of schools.

85% of schools currently have a Breakfast Club. Scotland (72%) and Northern Ireland (80%) are the regions with the lowest provision of clubs, whilst Wales (96%) and London and the North West (both 89%) have the highest. Overall this is a 45% rise since 2008.

In many schools (54%) the Breakfast Club is operating below capacity. Yet 62% of school staff witness hungry children arriving at school on a weekly basis. Schools which had tried operating a Breakfast Club in the past but no longer do so attributed this to lack of numbers.

Of the 15% of schools that don’t currently have a Breakfast Club the majority (67%) would be interested in starting one if support was provided. A variety of reasons for not starting were offered and these were focused on lack of funding or perceived cost and difficulties with staffing. In those schools where large numbers of pupils arrived by bus, the arrival times were considered restrictive in providing breakfast before school.

The biggest challenge facing existing clubs is funding, yet few schools, only 2%, use the pupil premium as a funding option. This is despite the evidence that clubs improve pupil attainment. 45% of schools reported that funding was the single greatest need for the future of their club. A quarter of clubs are supported by the school budget. Over half (55%) are expected to be self-supporting and receive no funding outside that received from families whose children attend.

The situation is radically better in Wales where 71% of clubs are government funded and 23% local government funded.

The research was conducted using an on-line survey sent to 30,191 education establishments. More than 4000 surveys were completed and returned which represented over 13% of UK schools. Responses were proportionate to the distribution of population across the four UK nations. 74% of responses came from primary schools. Field work was completed in the spring of 2014.

Breakfast Clubs offer children a friendly and relaxed environment where they can enjoy their first meal of the day. Usually they operate from schools or community settings and cost on average £4000 per year to run. Nearly half (48%) of clubs start at 8 am, with another third starting even earlier. This enables many parents to drop off their children and get to work on time.

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The findings show that Breakfast Clubs are now a successful and beneficial presence across the country. This is largely due to the schools, the parents and partner organisations which have implemented their commitment to the health and educational standards of children.

The best that has been thought and said? by Robin Alexander In 2013 the Cambridge Primary Review (CPR) was superseded by the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT). This is the text of Robin Alexander’s keynote lecture at the Trust’s London launch on 23 September 2013, an event at which NAPE’s John Coe asked the Trust’s Any Primary Questions panel, chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby: ‘Is the main aim of primary schools, as the government claims, to make young children secondary ready?’

Making a difference The Cambridge Primary Review was conceived in 2004 and launched in October 2006. Three years later it published its final report and companion research volume , having meanwhile assembled and analysed a large body of evidence, heard from thousands of witnesses, sifted 4000 published sources and published 31 interim reports and 40 briefing papers.

That could have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. There followed a year of dissemination events before the Review changed from national enquiry into a national network with twelve regional centres and a 5000-strong mailing list. Meanwhile, the Review’s main findings were distilled into 11 policy priorities for the political parties contesting the 2010 general election.

However, as our final report emphasised but as some commentators failed to understand, the Review was not just about national policy. Much of it dealt with aspects of primary education that were more local and immediate. So the Review’s true measure was not whether, in Robin Day’s somewhat unkind words, some ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ minister welcomed or rejected its findings, but the extent to which, independently of policy, those findings began to influence the work of teachers and children. That’s why our dissemination and networking activities over the past three years have been so important.

the dialogue which, quietly but persistently during the past three years, the Review has maintained with ministers and DfE officials.

Of course having acknowledged that there’s a problem, ministers may choose the wrong solution or they may not go as far as we would like. But that’s the point: those who judge the Cambridge Review by the number of its recommendations that have been adopted exactly as they stand, or who presume that policy is the sole determinant of what schools do in areas to which policy applies, don’t understand how either policy or classroom practice work or the complex array of factors to which each is subject. And policies have little meaning until they are enacted by schools, and to enact is to domesticate, reinvent or even subvert as well as comply.

Domestication – adapting generalised policy to unique school circumstances - is perhaps the most common response, and a major part of our task during the past three years has been to help teachers recognise just how much power they have.

Nor does the Review’s influence stop at this island’s shores. We have had website hits and email enquiries from over 150 of the world’s countries and sustained interaction involving visits and exchanges with a significant proportion of these, including meetings with education ministers. In some countries there is growing antipathy to what Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement . GERM reduces the performance of entire education systems to a single, questionable measure – how a small sample of 15-year olds do, at a particular moment in time and in a relatively narrow spectrum of their learning, in the PISA tests. To the resulting international league tables governments respond with economic panic and naive attributions of cause and effect, followed by a diet of school privatisation, high stakes tests, league tables, a narrow curriculum and transmission teaching, not to mention the attendant verbal machismo of tough new initiatives, task forces, step changes, delivery, great schools, driving up standards, control factors and the fatuous ‘going forward’. GERM is currently at its most virulent in the United States but has infected many other countries too. We are pleased that in some of them the Cambridge Primary Review is viewed as its antidote – going forward.

Policies have little meaning until they are enacted by schools...

By this alternative measure we have ample evidence that the Review has made and continues to make a difference. Up and down the country there are primary schools whose ethos and practice are explicitly steered by the Review’s educational aims, its attention to children’s voice, its advocacy of a community curriculum, its evidence that standards and curriculum breadth are interdependent rather than mutually exclusive, its stance on pedagogy, its insistence on the importance of well-structured classroom talk, and by many of its other messages.

Yet we can identify positive policy responses too. For example, the government’s belated change of heart over the place of spoken language in the national curriculum, which a recent Freedom of Information request has shown to be substantially influenced by us ; or its decision to investigate the long-standing challenge of securing subject expertise within the generalist culture of primary schools ; or its acceptance that the previous government’s professional standards for teachers were ill-conceived . These and other developments are attributable either directly to the Review, or to the climate of opinion that the Review’s evidence has endorsed, or again to

From Review to Trust All this our sponsors have understood, and I want to pay tribute to both of them. Esmée Fairbairn Foundation generously funded the Review through its implementation, dissemination and network phases. Now Pearson are supporting the Review’s latest incarnation, the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.

The Trust will build on the Review’s work and advance its mission to secure the best possible education for children in primary schools. It will do this through four programmes: policy engagement, research, school leadership, and professional development. Thus it will continue to work with policy makers and their advisers to exert whatever policy leverage

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30 is possible. It will extend the Review’s evidence, undertaking strategically focused further research where funding allows. It will construct an alliance of outstanding primary schools keen to work together to address the Trust’s priorities; and it will support teachers and their development through its expanding national network, its regional centres and its partnership with Pearson.

Through these four programmes the Trust will address eight priorities.

These reach back through the eleven pre-election priorities I mentioned earlier to those of our final report’s recommendations that received strongest endorsement during our dissemination programme.

Eight priorities for lasting primary education reform Priority 1, top of the list, is to find and disseminate ways to help schools to tackle educational disadvantage and reduce the overlapping gaps in social equity and educational attainment. The stark indicator of the scale of the problem is child poverty, currently affecting between 17 and 26 per cent of Britain’s children, depending on whether relative or absolute poverty is the measure used, though both statistics are appalling. ‘Closing the gap’ is a cause to which most politicians subscribe - including, through the Pupil Premium, the current government - yet after a long succession of initiatives going back to the educational priority areas of the 1960s the challenges remain severe. For, as we know but don’t always admit, policies seeking to close equity and attainment gaps within the school will make reduced headway if economic and social policies outside the school pull in the opposite direction. Yet this perception can all too easily become a self-fulfilling counsel of despair, for as many schools have spectacularly shown, there’s a great deal that expert and inspirational teachers and school leaders working against the odds can do and have done. We must learn from them, and through the Trust’s Schools Alliance and wider network we expect to do so. As we said in our final report, ‘Good teaching makes a difference. Excellent teaching transforms lives.’

worst effects of climate change, our children, and their children, may not.

The challenge, as this priority signals, is as much about human relations as consumption, and demands a much more universalist approach to citizenship than the narrow and sanitised focus on government processes in the 2014 national curriculum for England. The fact that this curriculum makes citizenship optional in primary schools underlines the gravity of our task.

Priority 5 reverses the typically English view of educational aims – to which the current government is not immune - as a high-sounding statement you attach to the curriculum after you’ve determined its content and whose function is therefore cosmetic. Nor is it good enough to make primary education’s seven years of concentrated human development, and its rich possibilities for learning, entirely subservient to what follows, as argued by those who say that the main aim of primary education is to make young children ‘secondary ready’. Instead we should start, as the Cambridge Review started, with a well-argued vision that addresses the condition and needs of children and society in today’s complex world and then construct a curriculum in line with this. Children leaving primary school should of course be ready for what follows, but education is no less about the quality and intensity of learning here and now. Anyway, what follows Year 6 is life, not just Year 7.

Priority 2 is to abandon the tokenism that too often attaches to the idea of children’s voice, and advance children’s voices and rights in school and classroom in accordance with the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Children, says the Convention, have a right to be involved in decisions about their own learning, so children’s voice is as much about pedagogy as school councils.

Priority 6 is to create a true entitlement curriculum. While primary schools must and do insist on the foundational importance of literacy and numeracy, they should also lay those other foundations – in science, the arts, the humanities, in physical, emotional and moral development and in lived experience - that in their way are no less important for young children’s future learning, choices and lives; foundations, we might suggest, that will make children more truly ‘secondary ready’ than if they do the 3Rs and little else. So the Review has consistently argued against the neoVictorian opposition of the ‘basics’ and the rest, which the new national curriculum perpetuates in its sharper than ever distinction between the ‘core’ and foundation subjects. Such stratification is both educationally inappropriate and pedagogically counterproductive. This two-tier curriculum undervalues not just the true cultural and economic worth of the non-core subjects but also the evidence from research and inspection showing that learning in one area enhances learning in others.

Priority 3 takes us back to those ‘community soundings’ in different parts of the country with which the Cambridge Primary Review started.

These reminded us of Britain’s immense demographic, economic, cultural and linguistic diversity and the consequent variety of its educational circumstances and needs. The soundings also showed how the best of our schools both live the idea of community in their everyday activities and relate to the community beyond their gates. Priority 3 encourages such community engagement and responsiveness, including in the curriculum.

Ministers frequently invoke, unattributed, Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture as ‘the best that has been thought and said’ . They might note that Arnold, who was a school inspector as well as poet and essayist, did not mean by this that the arts and humanities should be left to chance.

Without deflecting attention one jot from the imperative of literacy, the Cambridge Review argues for a primary curriculum whose core includes essential knowledge, skills and experience drawn from all subjects, not just three of them.

Priority 4 reaches out beyond the local community to the fragile world in which our children are growing up and to those imperatives of sustainability, interdependence, reciprocity and citizenship which are at the heart of CPR’s proposed aims for primary education (Priority 5, below).

The argument that advancing sustainability and global citizenship must be viewed as an educational no less than a political and economic task is also accepted by UNESCO, which has proposed embedding them in the UN’s policy for global education after 2015. If we manage to escape the

Priority 7, to develop a pedagogy of repertoire, evidence and principle, rather than mere compliance with habit or official fiat, is perhaps the centrepiece; for it’s through teaching that educational aims and a paper curriculum come alive; and it’s only by understanding the art of the science of teaching, and the ample evidence - from research, inspection and shared experience - that is available to inform and improve it, that teachers will be able fully to exploit the power of teaching to help children achieve the highest possible standards in their learning.

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Priority 8 pursues the always controversial matters of assessment and standards. In both, we want a wider practical repertoire and a more sophisticated vocabulary. We want approaches that don’t treat assessment and testing as synonymous, that enhance learning as well as test it, that support the curriculum rather than distort it, and that pursue high standards in all areas of learning, not just the core subjects. It is no longer acceptable for test performance in a narrow spectrum of learning to be treated as proxy for the child’s entire educational attainment. Tests of course have their place, but both assessment and accountability are or should be about more than test results. All this is pretty basic stuff, but the battle to move from a primitive to a mature account of assessment is far from won.

These eight priorities form a coherent whole. Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment are at the heart of what schools are about. Aims signal what they are for. All are framed by fundamental human imperatives relating to childhood, community, society and global sustainability and interdependence. The priorities will be pursued through all four of the Trust’s programmes, for we know that in the world’s best education systems policy, research, school leadership, teaching and professional development go hand in hand.

Professional development brings me to the Trust’s relationship with Pearson.

Pearson accept that Cambridge Primary Review’s integrity must never be compromised by its association with the commercial activities of the world’s biggest educational publisher. So we have created two operations: the Trust’s autonomous work on the programmes and priorities I’ve mentioned, based now at the University of York; and, separately managed, a Trust/ Pearson partnership which develops co-branded professional services and materials for schools, building on the Review’s evidence and principles.

Work on these joint services is well under way, and first in line are the 2014 conferences on the primary curriculum in which Pearson and the Trust are collaborating with the subject associations.

Policy, discourse and evidence Finally, let me return to the policy context. I’ve noted that the Trust, like the Review before it, attaches great importance to policy engagement.

I’ve argued that what is required is sustained policy dialogue rather than grandstanding, and I’ve exemplified areas where we can discern the Cambridge Review’s impact on government thinking. But I don’t need to remind you that the previous government refused even to discuss much of the evidence that the Review published between 2007 and 2010, or that ministers wilfully misrepresented some of the Review’s findings in order to dismiss them out of hand. So predictably negative was the Labour government’s response to our reports that it became almost as big a media story as the reports themselves. We were not alone: our experience was symptomatic of tendencies that are widespread, persistent and well documented. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard on the news that some important piece of research has been published only to hear the newsreader add, ‘The government has dismissed the findings.’

Political parties may change but political processes by and large do not. So notwithstanding what our post-election policy dialogue has achieved, there remain two critical challenges to an evidence-led enterprise like ours: how governments handle evidence and the way they choose publicly to talk about it.

For the Trust, as for the Cambridge Review, evidence is paramount. We seek

and welcome it, albeit with due discrimination, as a stepping stone to improved educational understanding and practice. But governments are more wary, because evidence may challenge thinking that has no more than ideology to sustain it; it may compromise policy or electoral advantage; it may simply be too expensive to act on – though in the Cambridge Primary Review we tried to come up with recommendations that were as far as possible cost-neutral. So, regardless of whether the evidence is unassailable, qualified or downright shaky, it may be welcomed, cherry-picked, trimmed, traduced or simply ignored. The test is not evidential validity but political expediency.

Thus, in the recent national curriculum review, we find comparative international data used with eye-watering selectivity and scant regard to cultural context. We are told that the national curriculum - I quote from the Secretary of State himself – ‘must ensure that our children master the essential core knowledge which other nations pass on to their pupils’. So that’s it then: we don’t learn from other nations, or strive to understand the condition and needs of our own; we merely import what other nations – or rather those of them that today outperform us in PISA but tomorrow may not – define as ‘essential core knowledge’, believing that what works for them will work for us.

I stress that the problem may not be the evidence as such but what people do with it. Simply copying other countries’ prescribed paper curricula is both culturally crass and pedagogically naive, for it ignores my earlier point about the gulf that can exist between policy as prescribed and enacted, and the self-evident truth that it’s the quality of teachers and teaching that has the much more immediate and durable impact on children’s learning and attainment. And while PISA has become a sophisticated and valuable indicator of countries’ relative performance on a range of measures, it’s symptomatic of the politicisation of such evidence that PISA test scores are hyped while PISA evidence on equity, which has considerable explanatory power and bears directly on the Cambridge Primary Review Trust’s first priority, tends to be ignored, in UK policy circles at least.

Then there’s the surrounding discourse, for in order to make the evidence fit the politics, those who convey that evidence must be made to fit too.

So the bearer of evidence that is dodgy but ideologically compliant is hailed as the one true expert while the bearer of evidence that is secure but politically less palatable is pilloried. Thus, those who in March 2013 proposed an alternative national curriculum vision were denounced as ‘enemies of promise’ and ‘Marxists hell-bent on destroying our schools’; and those who later that year raised perfectly legitimate questions about the kind of early years experience that will help children to thrive educationally were accused of ‘bleating bogus pop-psychology’, dumbing down and lowering expectations. This is the old ‘discourse of derision’, back with a vengeance. I say ‘old’ because of course it’s matched by what we heard in response to the Cambridge Review from Labour, though Labour’s insults were less colourful.

Diminishing education, demeaning the educated mind It’s surely reasonable to suggest that this kind of stuff is incompatible with ministers’ lofty advocacy of ‘the best that has been thought and said’, or indeed with the promise of the enlightenment for which institutions like the British Academy stand. It’s surely proper to ask whether heaping abuse on members of the electorate holding different views is what government in

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32 a democracy is about, especially - and bafflingly - during a period of public consultation when different views are what government has expressly invited. But in more urgent and practical vein, I say simply that the discourse of derision is the enemy of progress. In despair at the arrogance, ignorance and intransigence of power, educators either knuckle under or take to the barricades. Either way, education is the poorer.

So yes, policy isn’t the whole story and teachers have more power than many of them realise. And yes, the Cambridge Primary Review Trust remains firmly committed to policy engagement, values its dialogue with ministers and officials, and is pleased when this yields positive results.

And yes, policy is shaped by more than evidence alone. But deep and lasting improvements in this country’s education system will be secured only when, in their discourse and their handling of evidence, policymakers exemplify the educated mind rather than demean it, practise the best that has been thought and said rather than preach it.

References Alexander, R.J. (ed) (2010) Children, their World, their Education: final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review, Abingdon: Routledge.

Alexander, R.J. with Doddington, C., Gray, J., Hargreaves, L. and Kershner, R. (2010) The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys, Abingdon: Routledge.

Cambridge Primary Review (2010) Policy Priorities for Primary Education, Cambridge Primary Review Briefing, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

Department for Education response to Freedom of Information request dated 26 July 2013, Case Reference 2013/0047506. The response cites as key evidence Alexander R.J. (2012) Improving Oracy and Classroom Talk in English Schools: achievements and challenges, paper given at the DfE seminar on Oracy, the National Curriculum and Educational Standards, 20 February, http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/downloads_/ news/2012/02/2012_02_20DfE_oracy_Alexander.pdf In response to recommendation 127 in the Cambridge Primary Review final report (Alexander 2010 op cit) DfE initiated an in-house investigation of the evidence on curriculum capacity in primary schools. Its report endorsed the Review’s conclusions.

Alexander (2010) op cit, pp 408-419. DfE commissioned a review of teachers’ professional standards that produced two reports in 2011.

The Cambridge Primary Review’s further evidence on this matter is at http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/themes/teachers_expertise_training_ development_deployment.php Sahlberg, P. (2011) Finnish Lessons: what can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press.

Department for Work and Pensions figures for 2011-12, quoted by Barnados, the Child Poverty Action Group and the BBC: http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/education-22887005 (accessed 31.10.13) Alexander (2010) op cit, 279.

United Nations (1990) Convention on the Rights of the Child, Geneva: UN General Assembly Resolution 44/25, http://www.unicef.org.uk/UNICEFsWork/Our-mission/UN-Convention/ (accessed 31.10.13); Alexander (2010) op cit, chapter 10, pp 143-156.

Alexander, R.J. and Hargreaves, L. (2007) Community Soundings: the Cambridge Primary Review regional witness sessions, Cambridge Primary Review Interim report, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Faculty of Education.

DfE (2013) ‘Raising ambitions and standards for primary schools’, DfE press release, 17 July.

Alexander (2010) op cit, chapter 12, pp 174-202. The 12 CPR aims

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are: Relating to the individual: (i) well-being; (ii) engagement; (iii) empowerment; (iv) autonomy; Relating to the wider world: (v) encouraging respect and reciprocity; (vi) promoting interdependence and sustainability; (vii) empowering local, national and global citizenship; (viii) celebrating culture and community; Learning, knowing and doing: (ix) exploring, knowing, understanding and making sense; (x) fostering skill; (xi) exciting the imagination; (xii) enacting dialogue.

DfE (2013) The National Curriculum in England: framework document, London: Department for Education. See Alexander (2010) op cit, chapters 13 and 14, pp 203-278.

From the Preface to his Culture and Anarchy.

Alexander (2010) op cit, chapter 15, pp 279-310.

Alexander (2010) op cit, chapters 16 and 17, pp 311-342; see also the Cambridge Primary Review’s 2013 evidence to the DfE consultation on primary school assessment and accountability: http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/downloads_/news/2013/10/DfE_CPRT_ primary_assessment_and_accountability_response.pdf www.primaryreview.org.uk http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Primary/GlobalPages/ pearson-primary-professional-development/curriculum-2014-conferences/ The-Cambridge-Primary-Review-Trust-and-Pearson.aspx Letter from Secretary of State Michael Gove to the Chair of the National Curriculum Review Expert Panel, 11 June 2012. http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/l/secretary%20of%20 state%20letter%20to%20tim%20oates%20regarding%20the%20 national%20curriculum%20review%2011%20june%202012.pdf (accessed 31.10.13).

For fuller critiques of governments’ uses of international evidence see (i) Alexander, R.J. (2010) ‘ “World class schools” - noble aspiration or globalised hokum?’ Compare, 40(6), 801-817; (ii) ‘Alexander, R.J. (2012) International Evidence, National Policy and Educational Practice: questions of judgement, vision and trust, keynote at Third Van Leer International Conference on Education, Jerusalem, 24 May, http://www.robinalexander. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Van-Leer-2012-Alexander.pdf OECD (2010) PISA 2009 Results. Overcoming social background: equity in learning opportunities and outcomes (Volume II), Paris: OECD. ‘I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-bent on destroying our schools: Education Secretary berates “the new enemies of promise” for opposing his plans’, Daily Mail, 22 March 2013. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2298146/I-refuse-surrenderMarxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-beratesnew-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html (accessed 31.10.13).

‘Start schooling later than age five, say experts’ Daily Telegraph, 11 September 2013, http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/l/ secretary%20of%20state%20letter%20to%20tim%20oates%20 regarding%20the%20national%20curriculum%20review%2011%20 june%202012.pdf (accessed 31.10.13).

As we illustrated in the Cambridge Primary Review final report itself: Alexander (2010) op cit, pp 21-25. Elsewhere I discuss four ‘discourses of power’ - dichotomy, derision, myth and meaninglessness: Alexander, R.J. (2010) ‘Accountable talk in an unaccountable context’, Literacy, 44(3), 103-111.

The event at which this keynote was presented took place at the British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Robin Alexander is Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, Honorary Professor of Education at the University of York and Chair of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust. For further information about the Trust’s work, see www.cprtrust.org.uk .

This article was first published as Alexander, R.J. (2014) ‘The Best That Has Been Thought and Said?’, Forum 56(1), 157-166. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ forum.2014.56.1.157

Why Yoga Works So Well in Mainstream Primary School

by Michael Chissick I have been teaching yoga in mainstream primary as part of the school day for nearly two decades. Undoubtedly this is the best place to teach yoga if you want to have the greatest impact on children’s physical and emotional development. This article will explain why yoga works so well in mainstream primary as part of the PE and PSHE curriculum.

Teaching Staff are Essential While my yoga lessons are exciting and fun, they are, nonetheless, an educational part of the school day. The familiar presence of the class teacher and members of staff help children quickly relax into the activities, well aware of the behaviour expected of them.

Meanwhile the children feel at home in their groups working alongside their peers.

Teachers, teaching assistants and carers are an essential part of my yoga lessons. I normally teach all year groups, whole class, which means all children, including those with special needs, are included.

I think It highly unlikely that ‘Tania’ or her LSA would be found in an after school yoga club.

Yoga as part of established weekly routine I find that the children are generally more receptive to instructions when yoga is an established part of their weekly routine, rather than seeing the lesson as an extra-curricular activity and an opportunity for disruptive behaviour. Children tend to attach a greater degree of importance to yoga when it is part of a weekly timetable especially when they see teaching staff joining in.

During ‘Yoga Day’ I teach 7-8 classes each of thirty minutes, which is ample, and fits well with the timetable. One of the best things is that I can develop my knowledge of individual needs and through the yoga find practical ways to help those children. For example, encouraging shyer children to demonstrate postures to the class.

Special Needs Children Needs vary and include children with Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, ADHD and Emotional and Behavioural Problems. As well as children who have servere physical problems.

Working closely with staff familiar with each individual child’s strengths and limitations allows me to be guided, plan and adapt postures and activities so that everyone is included. All can enjoy and benefit from the shared experience, inclusiveness is the very heart of children’s yoga.

For example ‘Tania’ attends a primary school where I have been teaching for many years. She is now a Year 2 pupil. She is from Eastern Europe and suffers from Cerebral Palsy. This makes standing and moving around difficult without her walking frame. Her school life has been further challenged because English is not her first language. I have been teaching ‘Tania’ and her class for more than two years as part of an established weekly routine. ‘Tania’ has been assisted in the yoga lesson by her LSA. Over the years I have modified postures and sequences to ensure that she is included while also making sure that the rest of the class is stretched (no pun) too.

‘Tania’ now loves to lead the class in a Standing Sequence of postures. This entails giving verbal instructions as well as leading by example. Every word is now crystal clear; and with every movement she pushes herself to the limit. It is obvious she enjoys practising and leading the sequence.

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Social Skills and Groupwork

It’s a question of priorities --- can you find time for yoga?

There are lots of opportunities for group work in my yoga lessons, enabling the children to work on social skills and other elements which you would find, for example, in the SEAL programme.

Obviously this is easier to accomplish within a specific year group, where children are generally at the same level of emotional maturity, rather than an ‘after school’ club with a wider range of ages. This also means that I can tackle current issues like friendship, sharing or listening within a meaningful context.

Michael Chissick has been teaching yoga to children in primary mainstream and special needs schools as part of the integrated school day since 1999. He is a specialist in teaching yoga to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and trains educators to deliver yoga in schools.

Over the years I have found that the children I teach find it easy to relax during the school day. I know from many years of feedback how much they appreciate and enjoy it. Above all, every week, I witness the effect it has on them as they return to class calmly going about their business.

There is no doubt in my mind that my relaxations are successful because the children know my expectation of their behaviour and they abide by the rules of relaxation. This approach is much easier to achieve as part of the school day.

Quality of Teaching It is easier to monitor the quality of teaching when it is taught in primary school. Generally, you would expect to see a higher quality of teaching when yoga is delivered as part of the weekly timetable.

The best children’s yoga teachers are already confident and accomplished at teaching children, probably adding an educational background to their skill and experience of yoga. You would certainly expect to see pace, structure and progression.

Having nowhere to hide it would become evident very quickly if a yoga teacher lacked classroom management skills and other necessary qualities.

Conclusion It still thrills me in my daily teaching, just how much children enjoy and benefit from yoga as part of their weekly routine. Children who are normally excluded from a variety of activities, because of physical or behavioural impediments are included and receive huge physical and emotional gains.

Significantly, I see at first hand not only the real educational benefits that can be brought about by a properly structured and planned integration of yoga with the curriculum, but also improvements in pupils’ social and emotional aspects of learning.

When I compare this vast range of benefits to those that, for example, after-school yoga clubs can offer, it clearly and emphatically shows me the direction school yoga should take.

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Boris Pasternak

Relaxation is one of the core elements in the practice of Yoga.

Certainly having worked hard the children deserve and enjoy a good relaxation at the end of their lesson. It is vital for many children who may have a stressful home life, or find difficulty dealing with the educational demands made upon them, or feel the stress of maintaining relationships at school.

Michael has written two children’s picture books about using yoga to solve problems. Frog’s Breathtaking Speech and Ladybird’s Remarkable Relaxation, available from www.singingdragon.com

Men and women are born to live not to prepare for life.

Children’s Relaxation

You can find him at www.yogaatschool.org.uk

Every primary school could use extra funds and at times we just cannot provide for all the activities which make up a rich and challenging curriculum. However colleagues can gain those extra funds by signing up to NAPE’s new partnership with EasyFundraising – the leading good cause shopping site. This provides worthwhile donations based on the value of all on-line purchases from retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Tesco, Viking and many others. 2700 are signed up to the scheme.

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JOIN NAPE PRIMARY FIRST is the journal of the National Association for Primary Education. Members of NAPE receive the journal once a term posted direct to home and school addresses.

The association was established thirty years ago. This was the outcome of a growing awareness among parents and National Association for Primary Education teachers that the vital importance of nursery and primary schools is not sufficiently recognised and resourced. There have been advances over the years but much still remains to be done. The association continues in the belief that the achievement of high standards in education is utterly dependent upon the quality and strength of children’s learning in their early years.

NAPE can take a share of the credit for recent progress, most notably the changes to KS1 assessment, the career structure for teaching assistants, smaller KS1 classes and the entitlement of all children to nursery education.

Our campaigning goes on: • There should be equal per capita expenditure in primary and secondary schools.

• A maximum of 25 should be the next step towards even greater improvement in primary class sizes.

• All class teachers should be supported by a full-time assistant.

• The National Curriculum should be slimmed down even further so that schools are free to shape the curriculum.

• Bureaucratic demands on schools should be greatly reduced.

• KS2 SATs should be abolished and replaced by teacher assessments.

A membership application form is available from www.nape.org.uk - If you are not already a member please join us. Primary education needs you.