Personalisation
31. The Government explicitly promotes increased
personalisation of learning as a means of improving levels of
attainment:
"To drive up standards while also improving
social mobility, we are determined to provide more personalised
services for children and their families. Personalisation is the
key to tackling the persistent achievement gaps between different
social and ethnic groups. It means a tailored education for every
child and young person, that gives them strength in the basics,
stretches their aspirations, and builds their life chances. It
will create opportunity for every child, regardless of their background."[26]
32. The White Paper acknowledges that this is not
a new concept, and lists some of the current best practice and
some of the initiatives the Government has brought forward in
this area, but says that there must be an increased focus on tailored
learning:
"Now we must go much further and create an education
system that focuses on the needs of the individual child. This
means intensive small-group tuition in literacy and numeracy for
those falling behind, including one-to-one support where appropriate,
and extra stretch for the gifted and talented. It means every
pupil being able to extend their learning and develop their interests
and aptitudes through extra support and tuition beyond the school
day. And, most important of all, it means excellent, tailored
whole-class teaching with all the resources available from extra
support staff to improved ICT being used to ensure that every
pupil gets the education they need."[27]
33. The Government also acknowledges that this change
will not come cheaply, and says that it intends to prioritise
personalised learning within overall schools' funding to enable
every child to benefit from this tailored approach.[28]
Precisely how this will be done is not made clear, not least given
the Government's desire to move away from separate funding streams
and ring-fencing. Nor did we receive much evidence to show that
the government had properly considered the training programme
required to deliver this agenda. The DfES needs to provide
more detail on its plans for funding personalised learning, and
in particular how it will ensure that funding is used for its
intended purpose. The department also needs to give much more
careful consideration to the changes in Initial Teacher Training
and the amount of in-service training which will be required to
make personalised learning a reality.
34. As with the Government's plans on behaviour,
this proposal met with general approval. Mary Bousted from ATL,
Chris Keates from NASUWT and Steve Sinnott from NUT all welcomed
the Government's plans.[29]
Professor John Adams of the National Association of School Governors
was equally supportive:
"We welcome particularly the emphasis on personalised
learning, the whole area of individual attention and the recognition
that the dispersion between the performance of the best and the
worst schools, using that shorthand, has narrowed but the dispersion
between the best and worst pupils, using again a very particular
shorthand, has not. A personalisation agenda, trying to attack
that, I think is extremely important."[30]
35. We welcome the Government's proposals to provide
more individually tailored education. These policies, directed
at what actually happens in classrooms, are as important as anything
in the White Paper. These proposals could directly and
beneficially affect every child at school in England, and we look
forward to seeing how matters develop in practice.
36. We do, however, sound two cautionary notes. Included
in the chapter on personalised learning are proposals on the gifted
and talented programme and for an increase in setting and grouping
by ability and attainment. Professor David Gilborn, from the Institute
of Education at the University of London, drew our attention to
the fact that, according to DfES statistics, white pupils were
twice as likely to be identified as gifted and talented as pupils
from minority ethnic backgrounds in general (10% of white pupils;
6% of pupils of Indian origin; 5% of pupils of Pakistanis origin;
4% of pupils of Black Caribbean origin; and 2% of pupils of Black
African origin).[31]
Professor Gilborn says:
"The government is committed to 'evidence-informed
policy making'. The evidence on race and education is very clear:
race inequality is sustained, and even worsened, where judgements
are made about ability and academic potential but no safeguards
are built-in to ensure that stereotypes and unintended consequences
do not further institutionalise the disadvantage faced by many
Black students."[32]
If the Government wishes to address educational
disadvantage, it needs to take seriously the problem of the under-representation
of minority ethnic groups in the gifted and talented programme
to ensure that implementation of its policy does guard against
stereotypes and unintended consequences.
37. In tackling educational disadvantage by personalised
learning, the Government has also to have strong regard for children
with special educational needs. The Committee is well aware that
there are concerns at present—and witnesses touched on this—that
some children particularly on the autistic spectrum and for example
with Aspergers Syndrome can have abilities that bring them into
a high intelligence/gifted and talented category. Their needs
also have to be specifically addressed in personalised learning.
38. The Committee is conducting a concurrent enquiry
into Special Educational Needs but also heard concerns from witnesses
within its White Paper enquiry that admissions policies and unintended
consequences of new school structures should not disadvantage
children with special educational needs. We have further recommendations
to make on this later in this report.
39. There are also questions about the effectiveness
of setting and grouping. Recent research indicates that the use
of ability grouping does not increase attainment at GCSE.[33]
The researchers found that "Socially disadvantaged students
achieved significantly lower grades", and that performance
essentially depended on the set in which pupils were placed: "students
of similar ability achieved higher GCSE grades when they were
placed in higher sets". Much depended on the way in which
sets were created and the extent to which pupils could move between
sets. At the least, this evidence suggests that the case for
further setting is not proven, and we welcome the Government's
intention to publish independent research into current best practice.[34]
Workforce and leadership development
40. The school workforce is key to the drive for
improvement in standards of educational provision and attainment.
As the Committee in the last Parliament said in its report on
teacher retention and recruitment, "without sufficient appropriately
qualified and experienced teachers, all plans for improvements
in school provision will come to nothing."[35]
The Government notes in the White Paper that:
"The quality of teaching in our classrooms has
been transformed since 1997. Ofsted judged teaching to be good
or better in 78% of secondary schools inspected in 2004/05 compared
with 59% in 1996/97, and in 74% of primary schools, compared with
45% in 1996/97. According to Ofsted, we already have the best
ever generation of teachers."[36]
41. The Government proposes a revised set of teachers'
professional standards laying down what can be expected of teachers
at every stage of their careers, with a particular emphasis on
continuing professional development. It also envisages a greater
degree of specialisation amongst teachers, teaching assistants
and support staff, in areas such as: "catch up and stretch";
literacy and numeracy; health and welfare (of particular importance
for extended schools); sport, music and modern foreign languages
in primary schools; people with recent practical experience of
the workplace to provide vocational education; dealing with disruptive
behaviour, truancy and behavioural issues; and trained bursars
and other administrative staff "freeing teachers to teach".[37]
42. The White Paper also makes proposals for the
development of school leadership. It says, rightly, that "Good
leadership is at the heart of every good school. A strong headteacher,
backed by an able leadership team and governing body, is vital
for success."[38]
In seeking to develop this situation, the Government makes four
imaginative proposals: to train heads to lead the most challenging
schools; to identify and train the next generation of school leaders;
to bring in people from a wider range of professional backgrounds
to act in expert non-teaching roles in the management of schools;
and, through the National College for School Leadership, to identify
the most effective heads as national leaders of education. [39]
43. This makes for a very impressive, progressive
agenda, but does it take account of the realities of school life
and the pressures on teachers' and other staff time? We asked
Sir Alan Steer, as a current head teacher, for his view. He told
us:
"..there is the potential in schools to vastly
improve training if you get the culture right. That is a very
easy thing for a head teacher to say with all the dangers of the
poor classroom teacher saying, 'Well he would, would he not'.
My school has embarked, in the last four years, on probably the
most exciting educational initiative of my entire professional
career, which has been the Assessment for Learning, which has
very little, if any, resource implications, is hugely motivational
for teachers and highly effective…often in a school it is
an issue not that we have too many meetings, we have too many
bad meetings."[40]
44. We believe that the Government is on the right
lines with its emphasis on training and professionalism, and with
its emphasis on the importance of leadership in schools. The Committee
in the last Parliament made recommendations on the desirability
of specific training for teachers who wanted to teach in the most
challenging schools,[41]
so we welcome the proposals on training for headteachers of these
schools, particularly in the light of the recent findings from
the National Audit Office on the difficulties in filling some
head teacher vacancies.[42]
We recommend that detailed consideration be given to training
teachers for the most challenging schools and to ways of supporting
them in their teaching career. As with the implementation
of more personalised learning, however, there are resource implications,
principally in freeing staff time to engage in training and development
activities. As our predecessors said, there will be no improvement
in educational standards unless appropriately qualified teachers
and other staff are in place. To be successful, the Government
must ensure that there is time in teachers' timetables to pursue
appropriate training. We recommend that the Government looks
urgently at setting a minimum entitlement in teachers' timetables,
particularly in primary schools, for continuing personal development
and such training. This is especially important in respect
of newly-introduced elements to the curriculum , such as citizenship
education, or significant curriculum changes in other subjects.
18 Learning Behaviour, The report of the Practitioners'
Group on School Behaviour and Discipline, DfES, 21 October 2005. Back
19
ibid, para1. Back
20
Ibid, para 3. Back
21
ibid, para 222. Back
22
Q 246 Back
23
Q 302 Back
24
Education and Skills Committee, Fifth Report, Session 2004-05,
Secondary Education, HC 86, para 90. Back
25
Q 659 Back
26
White Paper, para 4.2. Back
27
ibid, para 4.6. Back
28
ibid, para 4.7. Back
29
Qq 246, 247 Back
30
Q 343 Back
31
Ev 23 Back
32
ibid para 20 Back
33
What are the effects of ability grouping on GCSE attainment?
Judith Ireson, Susan Hallam and Clare Hurley, British Educational
Research Journal Vol 31, No. 4, August 2005, pp 443-458. Back
34
White Paper, para 4.36. Back
35
Education and Skills Committee, Fifth Report, Session 2003-04,
Teacher Retention and Recruitment, HC 1057-I, para 145. Back
36
White Paper, para 8.5. Back
37
ibid, para 8.15. Back
38
ibid, para 8.21. Back
39
ibid, para 8.22. Back
40
Q 234 Back
41
Education and Skills Committee, Fifth Report, 2003-04, Teacher
Retention and Recruitment, HC 1057-I, paras 84 to 86. Back
42
Improving poorly performing schools in England HC 679 2005-06,
9 January 2006, Executive summary para 37. Back
