SSAT Senior Education Leads representing our networks in all phases shared their thoughts on the White Paper earlier this week. Sylvia King captures these reflections in this blog.
When Nadhim Zahawi became Secretary of State for Education in September one of the most pressing things in his inbox was a long awaited White Paper. Published this week, it would appear to be high on content and low on policy, concerned mainly with measures and activity rather than pedagogy and curriculum.
A number of new measures have been identified, including a requirement for schools to provide 32.5 hours per student on site, reference tests for a sample of Year 9 students, a commitment to all schools having a recent Ofsted inspection by 2025 and new targets for pupils at KS2. The academy agenda is set to be boosted with Local Authorities being given new powers and schools judged as RI twice being moved to a new MAT.
What appears to be missing, or vague, is how schools are to support their pupils and students, how the system will recruit and retain the staff required to maintain and improve the school system and how schools will be supported in achieving the new measures. Little mention is made of the pandemic and the gaps that it exposed in the education system or the long term damage it has created. Extra funding, such as it is, appears to have been allocated centrally to provide ‘one size fits all’ solutions rather than the targeted support that will lead to the Government’s ambition of levelling up. For SSAT the particular areas of concern include the following:
Closing performance gaps
At SSAT we have been considering how the underperformance of disadvantaged and vulnerable learners can be addressed through our Deep Social Justice campaign, which has been running for several years. We welcome additional focus being placed on those young people who leave school without the qualifications and skills to support future success.
However, as our campaign has shown, this is a nuanced and complex issue and it is not one that schools can resolve in isolation. Whilst additional support for schools is welcomed, for meaningful change to occur, the wider societal issues which limit achievement need to be considered. We would welcome a focus on the broader issues which limit achievement – most notably child poverty. A significant step towards closing attainment gaps would be made if work was done to ensure that no child comes to school hungry and if additional resources were available to support families in challenging circumstances.
Similarly, the white paper appears to over-simplify the mental health issues which young people present and the increase in cases since the pandemic. The issues are far more complex than pupils getting “stressed with school work” and again, cannot be addressed by schools in isolation.
Curriculum planning or content generation?
The white paper seems to conflate curriculum design and content generation. There has been much excellent work in schools over recent years, with school leaders taking a principled approach to curriculum design and ensuring that plans focus on the longer-term acquisition of knowledge and skills rather than being shaped around resources or activities. This approach puts pupils at the heart of decision-making, enabling teachers and school leaders to consider what is right for their community. We believe that this personalisation is essential in meeting the needs of young people and that school leaders and teachers are best placed to decide/determine the content and pedagogical approaches that will work in their context.
We agree that reinventing the wheel is unhelpful and recognise that shared resources can be helpful. However, they carry with them a risk of genericism which can limit the quality of curriculum thinking and pedagogical practice.
The system target of 90% of children achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths by the end of KS2
Few would disagree with the ambition behind this – we would all want to ensure all our pupils are fully prepared for the next stage of their education. However, the paper does not seem to understand the level of system change that is needed to achieve the target, particularly for pupils with SEND, those who are disadvantaged and other vulnerable groups. Without acknowledgement, support and proper resource (investment) to tackle the wider issues faced by our primary pupils, including poverty and disadvantage, this target will be unachievable.
Early Years Foundation Stage
The white paper acknowledges that working towards the 90% combined RWM target by end of KS2 ‘starts in the Early Years’, highlighting the pivotal and crucial role the formative years are for children. For many primary aged children, the issue is not that they fall behind, they start behind. To address this, greater investment is needed in pre-school provision to ensure that staff are adequately paid and receive appropriate training. Investment in support for families also provides the kind of early intervention which can address inequalities before they become embedded. Any real understanding of this need or how it can be achieved was lacking in the white paper. Emphasis appears to be focused on schools, rather than considering the EY sector more widely.
Lastly, we would like to see more recognition of the excellent work that is already taking place, in circumstances that continue to be extremely challenging for many schools. We believe that most parents already receive timely and clear feedback on their children’s performance, without the introduction of a ‘parent pledge.’ We also do not recognise the assertion that new teachers are left to “discover by trial and error how to deliver” and feel this does a disservice to the quality of professional development provided by schools, teaching schools and MATs.
Overall, perhaps the white paper is more of a missed opportunity than a gateway to a future with ‘Opportunity for all’.
