Child-informed’ lessons from the West Riding? By Colin Richards

‘Child-informed’ lessons from the

West Riding? by Colin Richards

1974 was an inauspicious time for those supporting ‘child-centred’ education. It was the year in which the head of William Tyndale Junior School took up his post and it was the year in which the West Riding of Yorkshire disappeared as a county and as a local education authority. William Tyndale Junior School soon became a cause-celebre both for those sympathetic to its radical ethos and to those fundamentally opposed to it. It became notorious as an example of laissezfaire education. Its critics claimed there was neither order nor teaching in the school and by 1975 the school had fallen apart. Its significance was two-fold. Firstly It raised three fundamental questions for public, political and professional debate: what should be taught; how should it be taught and who should see to it that it was taught. Secondly, William Tyndale provided opponents of child-centred education with a convenient, off-quoted caricature of a laissez-faire, knowledge-poor, discovery-oriented, undisciplined, so-called ‘education’. Half-century this caricature still reverberates on twitter, in some ministerial pronouncements and, I suspect, in the sub-text of Ofsted thinking. ‘Child-informed education’: aspects of the West Riding heritage That caricature needs to be questioned since it fails to do justice to the complexities and nuances of an important, misrepresented tradition in English primary education best described perhaps as ‘childinformed’ education. Which brings me to discussion and illustration of the educational heritage of the West Riding - officially “lost” with the 1974 reorganisation but certainly alive and well a decade later as I witnessed first-hand and at the very least still a ‘trace-element’ in contemporary professional debates. In retrospect it is tempting to view the West Riding with white-rose-coloured glasses but it did have some notable (dare I say ‘outstanding’?) features. For about a quarter of a century it was led by Alec Clegg, a chief education officer whose chief concern was indeed the education of the mind and the spirit of the young people in his charge. In 1972 two years before his retirement at a summer school for West Riding teachers he summarised some of his core ‘child-informed ’ beliefs. These included : • there is good in every child, however damaged, repellent or ill-favoured he (sic) might be; • success on which a teacher can build must somehow be found for each child; • all children matter; • happy relationships between head, teachers and pupils are all-important; • the life of the child can be enriched by the development of his (sic) creative powers; and importantly • teachers just as much as pupils need support and thrive on recognition.

Alec Clegg was a formidable and far-sighted supporter of comprehensive education, oversaw its implementation within the county and pioneered the establishment of middle schools as part of that reorganisation. To support those teachers whose ‘teaching genius” he constantly celebrated, he recruited like-minded officers, appointed forward-thinking subject- and phase- advisers from around the country and enlisted advisory teachers from within the authority. He developed a well-funded and extensive programme of in-service education focused on the LEA’s residential centre at Woolley Hall but also including a network of teachers’ centres. Working with social services he pioneered educational efforts to combat disadvantage. He established fruitful working relationships with museums, music organisations, cooperative institutions, colleges of education, local HMIs and universities including Oxbridge through the provision of “Clegg scholarship” for pupils from disadvantaged communities. Many of those officers who worked for him were very influential when appointed to senior appointments in other LEAs such as John Dorrell and John Coe who helped pioneer similar developments in Oxfordshire. Though not evident in every single school, the LEA developed a recognisable West-Riding tradition of child-informed primary education which in its philosophy, disciplined thinking and rigorous, demanding practice was a far cry from the William Tyndale caricature of laissez-faire progressive education. It was based on a enriched concept of the “basics” to include the arts and all forms of communication . A distinctive, wellarticulated pedagogy was developed based on the belief that primary-aged children learn most effectively when they are actively involved in tasks which • are based on extensive and intensive firsthand experience involving, for example, manipulative skills, close observation, data collection, analysis and interpretation; • require recording, reporting or imaginative responses using oral and written language,

art, movement , music and other forms of communication; • demand personal and collective thought to allow the development and application of knowledge, understanding and skills in contexts or in solving problems meaningful to the children concerned; • involve the use of a range of interesting materials and a variety of approaches especially in the visual arts; • take place in surroundings, internal and external to the school, which add interest and stimulus and provide opportunities for work to be displayed, celebrated and used in the promotion of further learning; • give children enough time to complete their art works, assignments and investigations so as produce work of the best possible quality; • teaching children in a variety of mixedattainment groups formed expressly for the purpose in hand – whole class, small group, paired or individual work – along with limited use of attainment-based groups for aspects of English and mathematics. The result was a distinctive educational culture releasing the amazing potential of so many children especially in the area of language beautifully conveyed in Alec Clegg’s published collection The Excitement of Writing and in wonderfully vivid and evocative artwork displayed both in schools and in public spaces throughout the county. Some of this work was of an aesthetic quality rarely, if ever seen, in primary schools forty years on. The sector is poorer for its absence. The heritage in action Extracts from a published HMI report of a small school staffed by teachers nurtured in the West Riding illustrated that tradition in action. Note the absence of ‘Ofsted-speak’ in what follows! First there was a sense of confident unity conveyed through a consistent child-informed ethos – very different from the pressurised,

defensive atmosphere generated in too many primary schools by the current accountability regime ”Three closely inter-related facets contribute to a sense of harmony: the high quality of children’s social and personal education; the approaches to learning fostered in both classes, and the use of themes as bases for much of the work.” Second there was a focus on personal and social development which permeated the whole school – very different from the provision of formal lessons in personal and social development . “The work is organised so that the children have many opportunities to work responsibly either as individuals or in small groups, both within the classroom and in other parts of the school. Children readily cooperate with one another in activities provided by the teacher and sometimes in tasks arising from individuals’ initiatives.” Third, rather than the current emphasis on written texts and other forms of vicarious experience, the school emphasised the use of first-hand experience as a stimulus to expressive learning of various kinds including a wide range of general and more specific skills : “Great emphasis is placed in firsthand experience and observation, either within the classroom itself or in the immediate environment of the school. Such experience is skilfully exploited to encourage children to represent their thoughts and feelings in a variety of modes: oral, written, mathematical, scientific and artistic.” Fourth there was the encouragement of enquirybased activity following on from shared experience rather than teacher-prescribed follow-up work after “knowledge-rich” class teaching: “Common experiences- collecting and analysing data, visiting places of interest in the locality, discussion of museum objects- are used as initial starting points but as the work unfolds, sub-groups are formed in which the children work together, exchanging ideas to mutual advantage. Enquiries are pursued to different depths and, to some extent in different directions depending on the interests and capabilities of the children.” Fifth the school gave a prominent place to the visual and plastic arts, not as an add-on or an afternoon activity or a post-SATS treat but as an integral dimension to its work so that children were given time and space to work in depth and at length: “Children produce two-and three-dimensional work of good quality. They handle tools and materials confidently and construct models with great interest and concentration. Problem-solving is a marked feature of the work.” All this but with time also devoted to the “basics”, though not as narrowly defined as the current highly prescriptive national curriculum: “Good attention is paid to the development of reading and writing skills, with talking and listening playing equally important roles... Mathematics arises from, and is applied to, thematic work but is also given separate treatment through the use of commercially produced materials.” Testing was used but not nearly to the same extent or with the same urgency as in current practice: “A reading test is administered periodically to all pupils and a standardised mathematics test to children in the oldest age-group. These tests and others devised by the teachers are used to pinpoint areas where children are having difficulties and for which future work has to be planned.” The published report concluded: “Through effective leadership, a common philosophy and approach inform the work of children in each age group. Due regard is paid to academic standards….The sense of shared endeavour and zest for learning nurtured by the school make it a learning community of unusual quality.” The one-word descriptor, “outstanding”, did not appear anywhere in the report; it did not have to. That conclusion sums up some of the characteristics of a principled, rigorous approach to ‘child-informed education’ which was a far cry from the anarchy of William Tyndale in the 1970s or from the caricature presented in to many simplistic progressive v. traditional debates on twitter in 2019. Through the effective, sympathetic leadership of Alec Clegg and his fellow officers there was a common philosophy and approach which gave many West Riding schools a distinctive unmissable ‘feel’. Some of us had the privilege of seeing it in action. We remember it still. Conceivably, just conceivably, does it still has some lessons to teach us in a very different context nearly fifty years on?

Colin Richards began his inspectorate career in northern England. The school featured was the first one he inspected as lead inspector. The article is written in fond memory of his mentor, the school’s head teacher Margery Roberts MBE.