Targets and tables "squeezing out" what really counts in education
School performance measures like Progress 8 are in practice having “corrosive effects” on student wellbeing and “squeezing out debate about what ought to count in education”, an audience of education academics and practitioners heard at King’s College London.
Professor Sharon Gewirtz drew on recent research from the School of Education, Communication & Society to show how a decades-long culture of ‘deliverology’ has powerfully shaped the experiences of children and teachers.
“What looks rational and plausible at the level of policy generation is turned into something that is experienced as monstrous on the ground.”
“Measures which are nowhere near as robust as they are made to seem very powerfully define what goes on in schools.” This leads to the neglect of “less tangible but more durable outcomes of a good education, like developing curiosity, passion for learning and critical thinking”, and a “decline in pastoral focus”.
Professor Gewirtz suggested that a “more democratic model of community-based accountability, with cross-institutional peer reviews co-designed and conducted by teachers, parents, students and other community actors, would enable schools to find ways of counting things as valuable that might be squeezed out of uniform templates.”
This message was echoed by other members of the expert panel. “Targets dampen down aspiration and ambition” said Louise Ceska, headteacher of Newlands Girls’ School in Berkshire. “We don’t need to test our children every five minutes and we won’t make progress with more tinkering and more measurements.”
Ken Jones, Senior Policy Officer at the National Union of Teachers, added “Debate about educational purposes and objectives is increasingly expressed in terms of numbers. Progress 8 is the reductio ad absurdum of that trend.”
He agreed with the need for teachers and schools to connect with the wider community, pointing to the success of the Chicago Teacher’s Union which “took education issues to the streets of Chicago. Their vision talks about education in ways that make sense to students, parents and others, and not simply in terms of staffroom conversation.”
Finally Dr Kelly Coate, Director of the King’s Learning Institute* argued that applying accountability measures now used in schools to higher education, like measures of student attainment, learning gain, or final year projects would not be appropriate.
“We in higher education need to articulate the value of what we do ourselves. We need to set that in our own terms and not through some other logic that is inappropriate for the sector. If we don’t articulate the value, someone else will.”
The joint report A Curriculum for All? from the School for Education, Communication & Society and the National Union of Teachers can be read here.
*Dr Kelly Coate was speaking in a personal capacity