Memorandum submitted by the General Teaching
Council (GTC)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The General Teaching Council (GTC) welcomes
the opportunity to submit evidence on the White Paper, Higher
Standards, Better Schools for All. The GTC has a statutory
remit to contribute to the improvement of standards of teaching
and the quality of learning.
1.2 Our submission focuses on those areas
where the GTC has expertise and accumulated evidence and analysis.
1.3 In examining the White Paper, the GTC's
principal concern is to evaluate whether the proposals will in
fact "raise standards for all especially amongst the least
advantaged". The correlation between under achievement and
social class, gender, ethnicity and deprivation is more severe
in England than in many other countries. We have serious concerns
that the proposals do not currently contain the right balance
of measures to make real progress on the most intractable of all
education issues—the attainment gap. Furthermore, pockets
of extreme deprivation in relevantly affluent urban and rural
areas need to be better targeted.
1.4 There is clear evidence from Ofsted
and others that it is not school structures that have the foremost
influence on outcomes for pupils. It is the quality of teaching
and learning, institutional and professional leadership, the curriculum
offer, parent/carer engagement and resourcing that make the difference.
1.5 The White Paper proposals do not, in
combination, place sufficient weight on these factors and so will
not deliver an entitlement for all pupils to excellence and equity
in either provision or outcomes. The opportunity to make the difference
for those children who are least well-served by the system is
only half-grasped.
1.6 We share the Government's objective
to promote the best possible educational provision and outcomes
for all pupils but fear that the proposals on school structures
cut across that objective.
1.7 We propose a series of measures that
still deliver flexibility and authority to the local community
and schools. However, our proposals focus more squarely on the
goal of entitlement for all pupils to high quality provision tailored
to their needs.
SUMMARY OF
RECOMMENDATIONS:
— Greater incentives to collaborate
across institutions.
— Admissions policies that provide
equitable access to high quality provision.
— New providers to demonstrate how
they will enhance provision for all children and have a positive
impact on disadvantaged children.
— Further resources, including higher
staffing ratios, targeted at pupils at highest risk of under-achievement.
— Universal access to continuing professional
development for all teachers and staff.
— A commitment to extending expertise
in special educational needs throughout the system and to all
staff.
— A realignment of accountability of
schools from the centre to release local influence.
— Support for families in poverty and
with low literacy and numeracy to engage with their child's school.
— Greater clarity in local and national
accountability and monitoring combined with a central focus on
pupil outcomes.
2. THE IMPROVEMENT
OF TEACHING
AND LEARNING
FOR ALL
2.1 The White Paper relies on the ability
of Specialist and Academy schools to deliver quality, raise standards
and influence other schools for the good. However, as yet, there
are no unequivocal evaluation findings or data to support this
reliance.
2.2 Some of the most important success factors,
such as "whole-school ethos", are reported to be the
most difficult to transfer, whereas certain processes such as
the use of curriculum models, or performance data monitoring strategies,
can be more easily transferred. [109]
2.3 Other research into school improvement
indicates that schools respond better to participating in joint
projects to support learning rather than models where the "strong"
support the weak. [110]
Research evidence
2.4 The expansion of the numbers of Specialist
schools, specialisms and Academies, without in-depth parallel
research, leaves major questions unanswered. More research is
needed on how their distinct ethos and ability to innovate can
be sustained; what impact they have on the local area, and on
disadvantaged pupils; and the impact of enhanced funding in comparison
to other schools.
Collaboration
2.5 Research evidence[111]
indicates that collaboration between providers is more likely
to transfer effective practice than central determination. Collaboration
across the system can be an essential safeguard against inequitable
provision and helps to spread and scale up best practice.
2.6 The White Paper does not give schools
real incentives to act in collaboration to achieve better outcomes
across a whole local area. This is a weakness that should be remedied.
Instead it focuses on a market mechanism to remedy local failure,
support for quasi mergers in areas where entrepreneurialism is
greatest and on the economies of scale which can be produced through
forms of federation. The experience of the health sector should
be examined for the extent to which mergers and the creation of
multi-hospital Trusts has liberated good practice.
Variations in Attainment
2.7 In secondary education, variations within
schools remain greater than those between schools. [112]
2.8 The test of whether a school or group
of schools is successful or high performing, must be the extent
to which it secures high attainment of all groups of pupils and
has a positive impact on overall attainment in an area, analysed
by ethnicity and gender as well as by using a robust and highly
localised index of social deprivation.
2.9 This means that output measures must
not be distorted by excluding tranches of pupils from schools
or from tests and exams.
Replacing failing schools
2.10 There is a risk that using market mechanisms
will move failure around the system rather than tackling it, accentuating
the divide between the most and least advantaged families and
pupils.
2.11 It must be a requirement that any new
form of provision, whether a Trust, Trust Group, Academy or federation,
can demonstrate that the attainment and well-being of all groups
of pupils within an area will be improved through its creation
or expansion.
2.12 One role of the School Improvement
Partner (SIP) is to support schools in using pupil data to evaluate
the school's effectiveness. As well as examining data on gender
and ethnicity, local social deprivation and the numbers of children
with special educational needs should be taken into account.
3. MEASURES TO
TARGET UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT
3.1 The GTC believes the Government is on
strong ground in proposing a number of measures to support pupils
at highest risk of under-achievement. Evidence is available that
certain forms of sustained additional provision[113]
are effective in tackling the persistent correlations between
socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity and attainment.
3.2 However, the White Paper proposals in
this area do not go far enough and they are given much less weight
than the proposals for restructuring schools and using market
approaches, for which the evidence is less compelling.
3.3 There are a number of measures in the
White Paper for which the Government has earmarked funds within
the schools grant.
3.4 These are designed to provide additional
expert support and staff development where there are greatest
numbers of underachieving children and young people. Reading Recovery
once abandoned regains Government support with business involvement.
These measures are to be welcomed but their scope and resourcing
is limited.
3.5 Currently, the proposals simply bundle
together and extend existing provision for pupils at either end
of the attainment spectrum.
3.6 The White Paper also presents a more
limited interpretation of personalised learning than previously
suggested by Government. The GTC urges the Government to hold
fast to its earlier vision of personalised learning. This envisaged
much greater use of assessment for learning matched with resources
and flexibility to tailor the curriculum and teaching and learning
offer to each student. This is key to raising attainment.
3.7 Similarly, extended schools are represented
in the White Paper largely as a means of offering booster tuition
to those who fall behind, or additional teaching for the gifted
and talented. The GTC had previously understood the extended school
concept to be focused on enriching and supporting children and
young people in a holistic way in all aspects of development.
Special Educational Needs and Equalities
3.8 Crucial to system wide achievement of
higher standards for all is the use of special educational needs
(SEN) expertise beyond centres of excellence. All staff need support
and development in teaching and learning for SEN pupils, starting
in initial teacher education and continuing thereafter.
3.9 There is specific provision in the White
Paper to ensure that special schools use the School Evaluation
Form (SEF) to meet requirements of the Disability Discrimination
Act. The GTC urges the Government to extend this to all schools.
3.10 By the beginning of 2007 schools will
have to produce their Disability Equality Scheme (DES), alongside
their Race Equality Policy, and, in the future, a gender equality
scheme. There is scant mention in the White Paper of supporting
schools down the complex journey of mainstreaming equality in
policy and practice.
3.11 This will best be supported through
the increased emphasis on school self-evaluation. Additionally,
the role of the SEF, which Ofsted will evaluate, will be important
in monitoring school's progress in mainstreaming equality and
diversity.
4. PUPIL BEHAVIOUR
4.1 The GTC has conducted two major surveys
of teachers, using a fully representative sample of 10,000 teachers
drawn from the GTC Register. In 2005, we asked teachers to identify
the principal rewards and frustrations of teaching. The principal
reward can be summarised as the satisfaction gained from working
with pupils and helping them achieve their potential. Among the
frustrations identified by teachers, the poor behaviour of some
pupils was identified by 16% of the sample. Although poor behaviour
is not therefore a dominant issue for the majority of teachers,
it was the third most commonly cited cause for complaint. This
underlines the importance of continuing and concerted effort to
address this difficult issue effectively. [114]
5. IMPORTANCE
OF WORKFORCE
IN THE
QUALITY OF
TEACHING AND
EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES
Most sources of evidence (Ofsted, research studies
and teacher testimony) agree that the highest impact factor on
pupil learning within school is the quality of teaching. However,
in terms of factors external to the school, educational attainment
in the UK continues to be closely correlated with socio-economic
status. The GTC believes that the White Paper fails to place sufficient
weight on the effort to improve the quality of learning and to
personalise learning for all children regardless of background.
5.1 Any plan to link progression with professional
development must be underpinned by the requisite access to high
quality professional development, using the wealth of evidence
now available on effective approaches to professional learning.
5.2 Structured career development for support
staff is crucial. This must be based on clear and advancing standards
of practice and professional development.
Investment in the poorest communities
5.3 Greater proportionate investment and
external expert support for pupil learning and school development
must go to schools serving the poorest communities. Weighted funding
is needed to resource the wrap-around provision, staffing and
staff development that are pre-requisites to higher standards
for these pupils.
5.4 Falling rolls in primary schools offer
an opportunity to create better staffing ratios to support additional
provision, personalise learning, deliver on the five outcomes
of Every Child Matters and release further resource into staff,
curriculum and school development.
6. ACCOUNTABILITY
AND GOVERNANCE
6.1 The GTC considers that the model chosen
to encourage parental influence upon provision and to facilitate
parent and pupil choice is not sufficiently inclusive. Families
who remain in the cycle of inter-generational poverty and educational
disadvantage, where functional literacy and numeracy is lowest,
and newly arrived families, are least well-positioned to exercise
influence.
6.2 The measures intended to support inclusion
of these groups of parents and pupils—travel to school support,
advice on choice and an element of admissions banding which schools
can choose to adopt or ignore—are inadequate. They are not
a sufficient safeguard against the risk of the quality of local
provision being driven by socio-economic advantage. Admissions
policies must provide equitable access to high quality provision.
Securing the engagement of poorer families
6.3 There is a significant body of work
on parental engagement—research and evidence from family
learning programme outcomes. [115]
Both demonstrate that a key determinant of children's chances
is the engagement of parents and carers with their children's
learning. Where quality targeted programmes are in place to achieve
this, they have the added benefit of significantly increasing
these parents' engagement with the wider issue of whole school
development and governance.
6.4 It is this order of intervention which
the Government needs to focus effort upon to achieve its adult
literacy and numeracy targets and its aspiration to engage parents
inclusively in the schooling system.
6.5 From our work with teachers and parents
there is clear evidence[116]
that they would welcome a system in which schools were primarily
accountable to the parents and pupils they serve. The GTC acknowledges
that the requirement in the White Paper for more frequent communication
with parents, and existing measures within the New Relationship
with Schools policy both represent a shift in the focus of accountability.
6.6 However, the White Paper fails to deploy
two significant levers which would free up the system to deliver
personalised learning and local influence on schooling. These
are change to the assessment regime and a radically reformed approach
to the publication of performance tables.
Performance tables
6.7 It is clear from work undertaken by
the GTC that parents do not place the same value on performance
tables as Government. In this work parents express an overall
preference for verbal information on pupil progress and performance
as it is considered more tailored to the individual pupil and
offered the opportunity for discussion with teachers.
6.8 Parents want more tailored and descriptive
information, focused on both the academic and personal development
of the child. Parents see effective accountability on an individual
school basis rather than on a regional or national level. Performance
tables in isolation are not thought to provide valuable information
on schools. Parents raise questions over the tables' validity,
particularly as they do not take into account the broader context
of schools, such as the demographic profile of the pupils. Therefore,
parents believe schools are not compared on a meaningful basis.
6.9 Overall, performance tables are not
the significant factor in these parents' choice of school or their
subsequent evaluation of the school. [117]
6.10 Although the introduction of contextual
value added tables in 2006 will be a step forward in providing
more meaningful data, the continuing focus on cross national comparison
means that test results remain very high stakes.
Assessment
6.11 The introduction of cohort sampling
for the purpose of trend analysis would alleviate the high stakes
nature of testing and allow tests to be used for their proper
purpose, to ascertain individual pupil achievement.
6.12 The focus for the system must be on
combining quantitative and qualitative pupil level data and using
this, in partnership with pupils and parents, to plan the personal
learning pathway of the child or young person. As the White Paper
acknowledges, Ofsted reports that assessment is still one of the
weakest aspects of teaching.
6.13 It therefore requires a significant
commitment from Government and investment in the development of
teachers' and schools' ability to use a variety of assessment
techniques confidently and accurately and to communicate the lessons
learned to pupils and parents.
7. CONCLUSION
7.1 The Government's ambition is that its
proposals should be an enduring and ground-breaking vehicle for
educational reform. The GTC contends that this will only be achievable
if the proposals are rebalanced to focus squarely on the most
intractable of education issues, the attainment gap. In doing
so the Government should address variation of attainment within
and between schools to ensure that educational failure is tackled,
not merely moved around the system.
7.2 The criterion for change of school status
or school expansion should be whether change will improve the
attainment and well-being of all groups of pupils in an area.
This should be placed alongside sustained additional provision
to tackle the persistent correlation between socio-economic status,
gender and ethnicity and attainment.
7.3 The GTC wishes to see the Government
hold fast to a more rigorous and wide ranging vision of personalised
learning. It should extend expertise in special educational needs
throughout the service and to all staff; and give more weight
to the effort to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
There is a need to expand quality targeted programmes to increase
the engagement of parents and carers of pupils at greatest risk
of low attainment.
November 2005
109 Judkins, M and Rudd, P (2005). Evaluation of
high performing specialist schools. Paper presented at BERA
Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, 15-17
September. Back
110
Fielding M et al, (2005) Factors influencing the transfer of
good practice DfES. Back
111
Fielding M et al, op cit. Back
112
OECD (2001) Knowledge and skills for life: First Results
from Pisa 2000. Back
113
For example, family literacy and numeracy and reading recovery. Back
114
GTC/NFER 2005, Survey of Teachers 2005. Back
115
Basic Skills Agency/NFER Family Literacy Works (1996),
Family Numeracy Adds Up (1998) and Desforges, C and Abouchaar,
A (2003). The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support
and Family Education on Pupil Achievement and Adjustment: a Review
of the Literature. DfES Research Report 433. London: Department
for Education and Skills. Back
116
GTC Annual Survey of Teachers 2005, op cit. Back
117
Johnson, F and Millett, C (2005). Usage and Utility of School
Performance Tables: Parents' Views. London: MORI. Krishnan, S
(2005). Research among Parents: a Qualitative Study. London: GfK
NOP Social Research. Back
| 
