Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 174)
MONDAY 24 MARCH 2003
MR BARNABY
SHAW, MISS
ANNABEL BURNS
AND MR
ANDREW MCCULLY
160. All others that should have progressed
have at an equal rate. Why is this middle band progressing less
rapidly?
(Mr Shaw) We were wondering that the same thing.
161. Is it because my head teacher is giving
individual tuition to five children so that can increase his or
her GCSE score?
(Mr Shaw) I do not believe it is that.
162. What else could it be?
(Mr Shaw) It is resource. Schools in the middle budget
may have felt their budgets have not increased as fast and have
not felt as free to use those resources in effective ways. I suspect
it is also the accountability regime in which they operate. The
accountability regime has emphasised very much raw scores in GCSE
for secondary schools. The greatest pressure has been felt by
those schools with the lowest scores, those scores are not on
the league tables. Now we are shifting attention more to value-added
as a measure for children and what schools are really doing for
their students in the process. We are particularly looking at
schools which are relatively under-performing on value-added measures.
163. Are there any conclusions that could be
drawn at this stage following publication of this year's value-added
scores? There has been analysis of this, is there any broad brush
conclusion that can be drawn upon about value-added in different
types of schools?
(Mr Shaw) Broad brush conclusions are I think two-fold,
one is that the highest value-added tends to be in those schools
with the most able children. You can imagine why that is, there
is an environment of a serious level which is easier to achieve
in a school that may be diseffective and unhappy at being in a
lower performance school and may be in an environment that is
not conducive to learning. That is an uncomfortable conclusion,
that means we have to work very hard at trying to help schools
add more value where they have children with a lower prior attainment.
164. Does it suggest that the value-added methodology
that has been chosen is designed to produce that conclusion?
(Mr Shaw) It is not designed to produce that conclusion,
you could redesign it to produce a different conclusion if you
wanted according to practice, like gender or poverty. The Government
has set up value-added as a completely neutral measure without
any weighting, simply looking at individual children and their
progress.
165. Does that not almost undermine the purpose
of having a separate value added score to the raw score. The whole
concept of value added is to give this weighting, if there is
no weighting we might as well use the raw scores. It is one means
to indicate or to reflect the series of raw scores.
(Mr Shaw) That shows a different picture. You can
see schools that are adding enormous value with high poverty and
tough circumstances and what I was describing before was an average
position. If you look below the average at individual schools
you will see a very mixed picture. The other big conclusion we
draw from it is there is a very big range between those schools
that add very high value and those that add very low value, that
is a difference that really matters. One percentage point in value
added is worth a term's worth of learning. Three percentage points
is a year's worth of learning, it puts a focus on those schools
with low value added to ask themselves could they do better. If
my children were going to a different school they would be making
a term or a year's worth more progress. What should I be doing
about that?
Chairman
166. Do you get together and discuss recent
research or publications? Did you read Alison Wolfe's book on
the relationship between increased expenditure and achievement?
(Mr Shaw) I did not read it. I should
do, I know Alison.
(Mr McCully) I have not read that either.
Chairman: Recommended reading from this
Committee. I want to move on lastly to talk about league tables.
Valerie Davey
167. Fundamentally, do league tables help raise
standards in schools?
(Mr McCully) The focus that they have
given to an individual school and the performance in the measures
that they need to take to improve their performance has been substantial.
The initial point I would have added to the previous question
in relation to why we have seen greater performance in the areas
of higher deprivation, as measured by free school meals, that
has been the extent of improvement in those at the bottom end
of the performance tables. We have a rather clearer picture in
primary schools than we do in GCSE, where the gap between the
levels and each of the three bands there has been greater levels
of improvement in those traditionally low obtaining schools. Quite
how you then separate out the impact of performance tables themselves
from the other degree of high challenge and high support, that
is quite that difficult to do. I think the level of challenge
that has been in the system is significant in some areas and some
of the impact in recent years.
168. Does it not seem to be a contradiction
we have certainly on the raw score basis, even now with added
value, an emphasise on attainment which does not reflect the other
policy which is inclusion along diversity of sharing and all of
the other things which Excellence in Cities led us to believe
was now the new value?
(Mr McCully) I am not sure I see the whole contradiction
between inclusion and the actual attainment levels the performance
tables pick up. Indeed one of the experiences of both primary
strategies, which is the literacy and numeracy and the Key Stage
3 strategy, is you should not write-off the performance of individual
schools with a high degree of challenge and support making improvements
across the board. That remains the case for those for whom the
challenge of inclusion is particularly great as well as some of
the areas of under-performance. Barnaby Shaw mentioned earlier
on how some of the value added performance tables now are pointing
out the need to actually make further progress in under-achieving
schools, schools who have given their prior attainment ought to
be making greater progress. Alongside the changes of value-added
tables is raw score, which makes the schools examine their own
performance and match those with their statistical neighbours,
and it is necessary to look again at the levels of performance
in that particular light. We may see different tactics and different
approaches applied by governing bodies and head teachers when
we locate those different measures.
169. You are speaking as though this is a whole
theoretical process, that parents are not actually moving their
children as a result of these league tables and staff are not
getting demoralised, all of those other very human factors which
are going on out there influencing the next set of league tables.
(Mr McCully) Certainly my experience from talking
to the LEAs and to schools has been the seriousness with which
schools look at their own performance, look at the comparison
with their statistical neighbours, and look at best practice of
their statistical neighbours to see how they can lever up their
own performance. Indeed the degree of determination and competence
that you see, especially when the level of achievement in areas
such as primary strategy has seen a gradual rise over time, I
do not think that is a demoralising approach, on the contrary,
it has been one of challenge and support.
170. You are not teaching in some of those schools,
dare I say.
(Mr Shaw) I have worked quite a lot with schools of
that kind and they certainly feel challenged. I think what I have
observed in recent years is that a psychological shift has taken
place, people used to say in schools that you cannot expect children
from this kind of locality to perform and they are now asking
themselves, could we expect children from this kind of locality
and this background to perform? That is wholly difficult. It is
an uncomfortable experience to be challenged as much by the performance
table, it is uncomfortable that parents have that much knowledge
about schools and that much to choose. We are quite conscious
of the discomfort that causes and that is the reason why we think
we ought to shift towards a richer mix of performance measures
at schools so that it is not simply how many children get five
GCSEs grade C and above, but also how many children get GCSEs
at a lower level and how many get vocational qualifications, not
GCSE, how many children are making good progress. A more sophisticated
range of measures seems better than no measures at all.
Mr Turner
171. You said earlier Mr Shaw that some Afro-Caribbean
parents feel their children are treated as if their children are
dimmer—I suspect they are not alone—one of the solutions
to this, a partial solution was if you had a gifted and talented
pupils programme. What are these gifted and talented pupils getting
out of their normal day-to-day schooling if it needs to be topped
up with summer schools and master classes, and so on? Is it not
pretty tragic they are not getting more from 9.00 until 4.00.
(Mr Shaw) It was tragic when they were
not getting it. Now that schools are enriching what they are offering,
both outside the classroom and within the classroom, it is much
less tragic, it is not a tragedy any more, it is a decent range
of opportunities and higher expectations for those children. The
problem is how to change the thinking and the way of teaching
teachers who have been used to teaching and who have been maybe
oppressed by the demands of the classroom and are unable therefore
to concentrate on the children at the margins. The brighter children
might be getting bored and disaffected and children with special
needs may not be able to keep up. The children with language problems
may not be getting help. Our intention is through enriching the
curriculum for gifted and talented children to also make teachers
think harder outside their immediate line of sight.
(Mr McCully) We can do more, outside the Excellence
in Cities areas we are looking to build the experience, build
the expectations in other schools through the work of the new
academy for gifted and talented youth, which the Government has
established based in the University of Warwick. It is early days
yet, the academy is still in its first pilot year, but already
establishing its reputation initially through the Summer Schools
Activity, which started last year, and building up a repertoire
for extension this year. Looking at the particular focus of work
in London where, at the moment we are contracting on a specific
focus of gifted and talented work within the London challenge
and looking to build on the pedagogy, the experience that children
need for working with this particular base of a small band of
expertise within this spectrum.
172. How does this all affect pupils in rural
areas where although there is not as much deprivation there are
deep pockets of under achievement?
(Mr Shaw) We are extending this programme to pockets
of deprivation in rural places either by creating for them an
excellence cluster, where there was nothing before, or by taking
an EAZ, there have been some effective EAZs in very, very rural
places, and allowing them to move their programme into the Excellence
in Cities programme. There are places like Herefordshire, Thetford
in Norfolk, Norwich, West Cumbria, North West Shropshire, very
isolated rural places, which are able to benefit from this programme.
We are looking for clusters of school with high levels of free
school meals and low attainment.
Mr Pollard
173. People are suffering from initiative overload,
do you have any view on that? They are blaming you, I do not mean
you individually, you collectively, and the Ministers, of course.
(Mr Shaw) There is an apologetic and
an unapologetic answer. The apologetic answer is, yes, we have
been hitting the school system with a lot of initiatives, what
we need to be better at is making government policy into fewer,
more coherent chunks rather than a scattering of minor initiatives.
That seems to be one of the great virtues of programmes that we
have been talking about this afternoon. Excellence in Cities has
eight or nine different strands, which schools could organise
themselves into a single policy. The unapologetic part of the
answer is that we badly want standards to improve, we want to
close the attainment gap and we are keen to find ways that will
work.
(Mr McCully) Ministers hear that as well. Within the
primary sector which is not a specific focus of this Committee's
work at the moment after the development of the literacy and numeracy
strategy at a primary level, the Minister is looking to see how
we can take matters a stage further. The first thing we have done
is go out and talk to primary heads and Stephen Twigg over the
past couple of months he has met 2,000 primary heads. One of the
key aspects has been the question of how we can better bring coherence
to the support for primary schools with a commitment to do just
that in a further strategy document we will bring out, probably
at the end of May, to give sense and direction to primary schools
about the issues that you just raised.
Chairman
174. You know that we are going to look at admissions
in secondary education, would you say in a sense that much of
what we have been discussing today has had a back drop of admission
policy? When the Secretary of State came before the Committee
he himself referred to the fact that Commission's policy, the
existing system left a number of scores, if you like, at both
of the hierarchy with severe problems in terms of under achievement.
Does that concern you? Does that engage you or do you see that
as a separate part that you do not get involved in?
(Mr Shaw) I am grateful that is not my
policy position. It may be a simplistic answer but it seems to
me that we ought to be able to provide parental choice and high
standards. If we succeed in providing parental choice and high
standards parents will be less anxious about which secondary school
they send their child to, we could be more like the Scandinavian
schools, where there is parental choice but parents do not worry
too much about exercising it. Another observation is that selection
is not the whole of the problem, if one looks at parts of the
country where there is not selection there are still very low
performing schools suffering many similar problems.
(Miss Burns) There is an issue for minority ethnic
parents, many of whom may be less informed about the school system,
that came out at the end of last week that there was a need for
research about whether minority ethnic parents are as well informed
about the school system as many white parents.
Chairman: We saw some interesting evidence
in Birmingham in the largest girls school in Europe and ethnic
minority parents did not have a bad level of what they wanted
and what they wanted to achieve. Thank for your attendance and
the frank way you have answered questions. Thank you.
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