Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-82)
MR KEITH
AJEGBO AND
MR JOHN
CLARKE
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q80 Mrs Dorries: If a headmaster
came to you and said, "I am thinking of taking on citizenship
in a big way in my school, show me the proof that this is going
to be worth all the effort to take it to the level in my school
which you have", can you show them any proof?
Mr Ajegbo: It is very difficult
to show them what the school was like then and what it is like
now, but in terms of evidence we would show them evidence of less
exclusions, improved exam results and more parents trying to get
into the school because they see it as a better school. Those
are things which have happened at the same time as we have been
developing citizenship. I am not saying we have any research to
show exactly what impact citizenship has had amongst other things
we have been doing, but citizenship has been the main difference
of the things we have done over that period of time.
Q81 Mrs Dorries: It cannot be proved?
If you are also a head teacher thinking of introducing this into
the school, obviously strong leadership is part of it—we
can see that you are a strong leader, Keith, that is obvious and,
John, I think this is your point—you would have to take
along all the adults in the school with you first. How difficult
is that? It must be incredibly difficult as a head teacher to
say to the teaching staff, "I cannot prove that this is going
to work and it is very variable. We cannot measure or evaluate
the outcomes", "We can teach it in a variety of ways"
"It is totally flexible, but let us go along with it".
How can a head teacher persuade all of his teaching staff to go
along with it given that other specialist schools have so much
pressure on them?
Mr Ajegbo: It was not totally
flexible in the sense that they are schemes of work and it was
a planned syllabus, that was the first thing. In fact, we had
two conferences which we invited teachers to come to, they were
weekend conferences. Right at the beginning when we set this up
we invited teachers to come. We got 30 teachers, I think, at each
conference. There were a lot of people willing to spend their
own time coming to the conference to discuss citizenship. The
reason they were interested in it was because they agreed with
our analysis of our pupils, which was a crude analysis, that our
pupils lacked self-esteem, were not independent learners, were
a bit switched off by the processes of education, were not particularly
turned on by getting qualifications and we needed to try something
different to see if we could get that measure of participation;
all of them agreed with that. When we started off on the journey
none of us knew for definite that citizenship would make the difference,
but it seems to have created a series of different relationships
in the school, apart from the other learning which has gone on,
which seems to have led to better attainment. Anything you do
you start off hypothesising, you cannot know the end of the journey.
For us the end of the journey has been successful. Last year 50
schools came in to look at citizenship in our school because they
heard it was working. By and large, when they saw what was going
on, in terms of the schemes of works, in terms of the pedagogy
and in terms of the other things we were doing, they felt it was
working in engaging children in their education. My personal view
is that providing children with a voice, certainly at Key Stage
4, engaging them in what they are doing and making education relevant,
is the way to break the plateau of achievement which we are beginning
to arrive at.
Q82 Chairman: So speaks a highly
experienced professional.
Mr Clarke: In answer to your question
of why would anybody do this, sometimes you have to do what we
are not very good at, it seems to me, which is to appeal to why
did they come into this work to start with. If it is true, as
it says in the National Service Framework for children, young
people and maternity services, that children are the living message
we send to a future, we will never see, if you are a professional
working in this business you have to ask yourself the question,
what kind of message is it we are trying to send to the future?
It seems to me, and I think a lot of people like me, that has
something to do with the sort of citizens we are expecting to
see in our society when we are no longer here. It is the core
work of the school as well as everything else that it does in
terms of academic subjects. The second point is that sometimes
I think teachers and other professionals working with children
want to change the world and everywhere they turn it grinds them
down; that is how they sometimes feel. This work has the potential
to lighten that load for them. I do not know about your teachers,
but I think some of the people I work with go home at the end
of the week and the end of the term thinking they have done a
better job than they did before.
Chairman: I am afraid we are going to
have to finish, and I am very reluctant to finish because the
quality of all we have heard today has been quite inspirational.
Can I thank John and Keith and tell you that we are going to invite
Nadine to join the rest of the Committee and perhaps come and
visit your school, Keith, and then she can see things for herself.
John, perhaps if you can find somewhere you would like us to visit,
maybe a rural setting as well. Can I thank you both and Sir Bernard
and his colleagues for giving us a good start to this inquiry.
Thank you very much.
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