Date: 18/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the government’s decision to invest only 10% of the funding needed to implement the recommendations of Sir Kevan Collins, the Education Recovery Commissioner, on how schools can ‘catch up’ over the next few years.  A key question is how lost time for learning can be made up. One suggestion has been to extend the school day, perhaps making it 8am to 6pm for secondary schools. This is popular with many politicians but as recent surveys suggest, it is not so popular with parents with over 50% strongly against. 

It’s easy to see why having a longer school day seems attractive. Despite the best efforts of schools and families, all pupils have experienced over a year of disrupted education. It seems logical to add more time to the school year by extending the school day, so that pupils can catch up on some of the work they’ve missed. 

If we were to extend the school day, firstly there would be massive additional costs involved to employ all of the extra staff required to make this happen. This alone would take up the majority of the £15 billion cost of recovery identified in Sir Kevan’s report, but this isn’t even the main problem. 

The key issue would be that if longer school days mean more teachers, where would they come from? 

Although this year’s recruitment figures are more encouraging, there has been a national shortage of applicants for teacher training for many years, meaning recruiting teachers for secondary subjects such as Chemistry, Physics and Maths has been very difficult. Even those who have graduated with degrees in those subjects take a year or more to train and qualify, but if we really want to improve the supply of teachers in shortage subjects, we need to persuade more pupils to take the right A levels and complete the right degree course, meaning a minimum of four years before this can have a real impact. 

I would also be concerned about the impact of these extended hours in the classroom on the many clubs and organisations which do great extra curricular work with children after school. Even if these are held later in the day, I’m sure that a longer school day would impact on attendance at these clubs, reducing their capacity to support children in sports, arts, music, etc. 

Extending the school day will only work if it is planned strategically and properly funded. It has to be done working with schools and families and not just imposed upon them. Done properly, there could be a great opportunity to involve the types of clubs and organisations I’ve mentioned above in delivering part of the extended school day, giving more of our pupils the opportunity to take part in a range of activities. This is a vital part of the recovery from Covid-19 – giving pupils the chance to take part in activities to learn new skills, improve their fitness and be part of a team, opportunities they were denied during lockdown. Of course there may be extra tuition sessions to help pupils who are struggling academically but I would argue that enrichment activities are at least as important for most pupils to support their mental health and general sense of wellbeing. It would also mean that far fewer teachers are needed to extend the school day, saving billions of pounds.

Some very careful thought needs to be given to the impact on families where pupils have some caring responsibilities. If the secondary day is longer than the primary day, this could cause problems where secondary pupils may help look after a younger brother or sister. It is also easy for those making decisions to forget that there are also a proportion of pupils who are in the role of a young carer for an older family member. All of this needs to be considered when looking at making any extension compulsory. Conversely there will be other families where extending the school day could help significantly in providing wrap-around childcare. 

If planned carefully, properly funded and ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ schools and families through proper consultation, extending the school day could potentially be a positive development. However, if it means a rigid model imposed directly from Westminster then I worry that it just won’t work for pupils, schools and families.

Date: 11/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

Last week, Sir Kevan Collins, the highly respected Education Recovery Commissioner, resigned following the failure of the government to implement most of his recommendations on how schools can ‘catch up’ over the next few years. Sir Kevan’s very public resignation raises many questions and the key question is how much do the government value our children?

Sir Kevan’s report recommended spending around £15 billion to support catch up, while the government has actually committed £1.5 billion. Both figures are huge sums, but to put an individual perspective on this, £1.5 billion works out at £50 per pupil, meaning that what Sir Kevan asked for was £500 per pupil.

The school system in the USA gets a lot of criticism for a lack of investment, but President Biden has committed an extra £1,500 per pupil for Covid-19 catch-up, while the Dutch government has allocated £2,000 per pupil. All of this makes our Government’s investment seem poor by comparison, especially where it has managed to spend £37 billion over the last two years on the Test and Trace system, which a recent House of Commons Public Accounts Committee Report described as having an “absurd cost and failures”.

As I’ve said previously, I don’t take a party political view and I have some sympathy for those in Government making difficult decisions. However, I will speak out against injustice and when it comes to investment in education, it does seem that those controlling the funding, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has reported that the educational impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in Britain could lead to our pupils losing 30-40% of future lifetime earnings. Nationally this adds up to lost earnings of £350 billion and this would mean over £100 billion less tax revenue to spend on public services and pay off national debt. Others have predicted that the total impact of pupils failing to catch up could be the loss of over £1 trillion to the UK economy in future decades. As usual, the greatest impacts will be on children and areas with the highest level of disadvantage.

When faced with figures like these, it makes far more sense to me to see the £15 billion as an investment in our children’s futures rather than see it as a cost. The actions the government takes to support pupils catching up on their education will be judged by future generations as how much the government values our children, particularly those who are disadvantaged.

Date: 27/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

There have been a number of times in recent years where it looked as if all schools were going to be pushed to become academies. Without a parliamentary majority, previous governments haven’t had the ability or support to make this happen, however, it looks as though this might be about to change…

It has become clear in recent speeches, interviews and publications that the Department for Education has a strong aspiration that all schools will join a strong MAT over the next few years. So what is a Multi Academy Trust and what are some of the advantages of joining?

Academies are state-funded independent schools and unlike most other types of schools, they are controlled by a Trust Board rather than the local authority. A Multi Academy Trust (like NCEAT) is a where a group of academies work in partnership with each other under a single Trust Board.

There are many advantages to working as a group of schools within a MAT, such as sharing costs for support services, staff working across schools, sharing facilities, joint curriculum planning and training. The core purpose is to advance education across the group of schools within the MAT by allowing school leaders to focus on the quality of education.

The Government has made it very clear that they see MATs as the best structure for schools going forward and they also want Trusts to grow so that they can get the greatest advantages from their size both in education and finance.

So what does this mean for NCEAT?

As a MAT, we’ve already seen growth having welcomed Warkworth C of E Primary School into the Trust last September. This has been a positive experience for both Warkworth and the Trust and has demonstrated how by working with schools who share our ethos and want all of their pupils, staff and communities to “let their lights shine”, we can continue to grow while maintaining our values and improving the education of all of our children, which is exactly what those of us working in education should be aspiring to do.

Date: 06/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

The link between literacy and success in qualifications is pretty clear. One of the sharpest examples of this is the reading age which is required to access GCSE exam papers. The exam papers are designed with a reading age of 15 years and 6 months, to match the age of the youngest pupils in Year 11 taking the exams that year. For any pupil whose reading age is less than their actual age, there is an instant problem as they may not fully understand questions and instructions in the exam paper. Inevitably, this significantly reduces their chances of getting good GCSE grades, which impacts on their options for further education and career aspirations.

This week, we’ve started work on developing a Trust Literacy Strategy for all of our schools. This is aimed to bring together lots of existing good work in areas such as reading and writing, as well as create new opportunities for our pupils to develop their skills in other areas. We are defining literacy as developing reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar and oracy (the ability to speak clearly, confidently and express yourself well). We believe that developing each of these areas across all age groups will massively improve our pupils’ life chances.

We aren’t starting from scratch here, and there is a lot of great support already in place across our schools. What we are looking to do is make it clearer for pupils and parents/carers what we will be doing at each stage from Early Years to GCSE in order to support our pupils. It’s also about making it clearer exactly what families can also do to support their child(ren) with this. One of the positives to come out of the pandemic is the much greater level of interaction and communication between schools and parents and we aim to build upon this.

Developing literacy isn’t just about improving educational opportunities; the positive impacts run much deeper than that. Children who enjoy reading are three times more likely to have good mental wellbeing than those who don’t enjoy reading. Having good oracy skills improves self-confidence and self-esteem, while reducing anxiety and helping to manage disagreements with others more effectively (helping parents and school staff alike!).

I hope that you think that our plans for a more strategic approach to further improve literacy will be a positive development for our schools and I would love to hear your views on this. If you would like to provide feedback on this proposed strategy, please email marketing@ncea.org.uk.

Date: 22/04/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

I can’t imagine many people would argue that having good subject knowledge isn’t important, or that achieving the best possible qualifications in English and Maths aren’t essential for success after school. However, I would argue that the current system of examinations and the expectations for school performance tables and inspections is very narrow in its focus, leading to vocational qualifications often being seen as the poor relations to the ‘academic’ ones.

There is too much emphasis on a small range of subjects favoured by the government and too much resting on ‘all or nothing’ final exams, which require pupils to recall a huge amount of subject knowledge. It feels like we are stuck with a model from 19th Century schools in the 21st Century. What is missing are more opportunities for practical learning and assessment throughout a course, not just at the end. Many universities get this and use this as the assessment model for degrees. I think that the current systems forced upon schools means we are missing an opportunity. We need change and that can only come if enough of us agree and make our voices heard.

Firstly we need to return to a system where much more of the assessment for the final grade happens throughout a course. An exam can still take place at the end of the course but shorter tests, project work and practical assessments over a two year period would take away a lot of the stress for pupils, who are often faced with two exams per day for a number of weeks at the end of Year 11. Changing from this would also give pupils the chance to build up a portfolio of evidence about their success in a subject.

Secondly, we need a system that gives much more flexibility with the curriculum and creates a parity of esteem for vocational subjects. This would mean that pupils would have much more choice in their options and schools wouldn’t be punished in the performance tables for allowing more pupils to take vocational courses, whether these are GCSEs or an alternative such as BTECs. Having a common or at least more easily comparable grading system would also help here.

Finally, there needs to be reform to English and Maths qualifications, with a greater focus on an initial functional qualification in each, which can then be built upon with further qualifications. This would allow pupils to master and demonstrate their competence in communications and numeracy before moving on.

I once had a group of pupils who were going to be forced to take GCSE Geography because of the school’s curriculum model. They were a challenging group, so I spent some time talking to the pupils and their parents about what they really wanted to learn about; it turned out that most had an interest in careers in leisure. We agreed to offer these pupils the option of a vocational GCSE in Leisure and Tourism instead. I then worked with a range of employers such as EasyJet, Marriott Hotels, local leisure centres and English Heritage to provide a course full of practical experiences.

The class worked incredibly hard for the two years of the course. As two thirds of the assessment was through portfolios, they each built up files of evidence of their practical skills and knowledge. Work experience and practical sessions were a key part of this. They organised their own events to show skills such as managing a budget, event planning, marketing and customer service. Many of my colleagues couldn’t believe that a group of pupils, most of whom had previously been in a lot of trouble at school, could take on so much responsibility. The answer was to give them an option which they enjoyed, focused on their practical skills and helped them towards their career aspirations.

All of that group passed their GCSE with at least C grades, for many of them, this was the best grade achieved in any subject. Almost all of them went on to work, apprenticeships or further study related to leisure and tourism, including working in five-star hotel and for airlines. The success of these pupils convinced me that we can get the best out of all of our pupils if we can offer them an appropriate curriculum and assessment system which recognises a wider range of skills and applied knowledge rather than largely testing the recall of knowledge.

Getting this to replace our current system will only happen if enough people are willing to come together and support the case for change. This brings us back to the original question; what do we want for our children from our education system? If football supporters can bring down the proposed European Super League in 48 hours then why can’t we raise our voices to challenge the current system?

Date: 22/04/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

This week we’ve seen the power of those who are passionate about something (in this case football) coming together to defeat a change (the proposed European Super League) which they felt would harm the thing they love. It’s shown that acting together with a united voice can actually lead to a significant change for the better. This has made me think about the positive changes we could achieve in education if we can unite people around something that we all want to achieve.

There are many things we could look to change, but one of my priorities would be to create an education system which places equal value on the full range of qualifications and subjects, not just a small group which causes schools to narrow their curriculum. In particular, it would be fantastic to raise the status and availability of vocational subjects.

Setting out a favoured range of subjects and judging secondary schools on how pupils perform places a straightjacket around the curriculum which schools can offer. Although this is typically a secondary school measure, it also shapes the curriculum in primary schools, as primary OFSTED inspections now focus very much on the subjects which are part of this closely assessed framework, known as the “English Baccalaureate” or “EBacc”, such as Geography, History and Science.

Schools are no different to any other organisation; if something is going to be measured and used to judge your effectiveness then it will become a major focus and driver of your work. As there are no vocational subjects included in the EBacc framework, then it inevitably sends a message to schools not to focus as much time and energy on these as the ‘academic’ subjects. This is a great shame as it unintentionally downplays the importance of vocational qualifications, meaning that pupils and schools don’t always have their achievements recognised and many pupils who would benefit from a more vocational curriculum don’t have access to one in-school, as schools are forced to focus on the EBacc subjects instead.

I believe that if school leaders were better at explaining how some Government policy decisions force schools to follow a narrow curriculum, which they don’t feel meets the needs of their pupils as effectively as it could, then parents would be asking a lot more questions about these policies.

A report issued this week suggests that 48% of parents would prefer their child to get a vocational qualification over going to university or work when they leave school. This shows that there is a strong demand for a greater recognition of vocational qualifications and the creation of an equal playing field with ‘academic’ qualifications. This is something that is a key part of other successful education systems, such as in Germany.

This support for vocational qualifications encourages me to think that many people would welcome a radical review and overhaul of our school curriculum. This week’s astonishing overturn of the European Super League proposal by collective action tells me that if we can get enough people to agree that change is necessary, then we can make it happen. The challenge here is convincing enough people that we can’t continue with the current damaged system. Perhaps a reset after the impact of Covid could be this opportunity?

To be continued in next week’s edition of Lighthouse…