Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
LESLEY JAMES,
MICK WATERS,
ROBERT WHELAN
AND DR
BEN WILLIAMSON
4 JUNE 2008
Q20 Mr Carswell: You talked about
political interference. I do not want to be disrespectful to Mick,
but we know that he probably has more say in the National Curriculum
than any Minister, and certainly more than any MP or member of
this Committee—we are just the guys who talk about education
at election time. We do not actually decide what goes into the
Curriculum, as officials do that. Does that political interference
come from the politicians and Ministers, or more subtly from the
quangocrats and the inherently leftist quango state? [Interruption.]
It is a probing question, Mr Chairman.
Chairman: Robert, surely you are not
going to agree with any of that.
Robert Whelan: I think that I
will defer to the superior knowledge of the members of the Committee.
I do not know where those influences are coming from.
Q21 Chairman: Mick, you mentioned
that in dispatches, so do you want to come back on Douglas's question?
Mick Waters: I will just pick
up on what Robert said about the need for the teachers to take
responsibility and be accountable for their actions. Since the
National Curriculum was invented, it has been expected that schools
will take responsibility for sorting out the order of that teaching
and the way that it is presented. The level of prescription in
the actual curriculum is relatively minor. There is no prescription
about the order in which children should meet things or the amount
of time spent on various areas in the Curriculum, but hearsay,
myths and legends have developed over the last 20 years, around
which the system is called into question.The National Curriculum
is there to be exploited—it is neither a burden nor an anchor.
It is something to enjoy and treasure, and to give children opportunities
to open doors to higher and further education, training and a
successful adult life, in which they take full part and make full
decisions about their civic responsibility and enjoy healthy lifestyle
choices that make them really feel a difference, and a full purpose
as people. If teachers can grab that and make sense of it, and
if governors can take their full responsibility for the Curriculum,
you will see it blossom. I have thousands of examples of schools
across the country that are really enjoying learning with their
young people through a fully exploited National Curriculum.
Chairman: Paul, you wanted to follow
up with specific questions.
Q22 Paul Holmes: How many New Model
Schools have you opened and how many are planned for the next
five years?
Robert Whelan: We have one full-time
school and the aim is to have 10 within five years, but I am afraid
that that will depend entirely on the property market.
Q23 Paul Holmes: You said that the
problem with the National Curriculum was that it is highly prescriptive,
so when you open school number two, three, four and 10, will you
tell the staff of each school that they can do what they like
with the Curriculum, that there is no Civitas model, that they
do not have to use Civitas publications and that it is up to them
to use what they like?
Robert Whelan: We would give them
goals to achieve, and it would be up to the teacher. There is
the example of the first school. We feel very strongly about teaching,
reading by phonics—we think it works.
Q24 Paul Holmes: It is compulsory
in the National Curriculum now.
Robert Whelan: It is now. So,
we said to the teacher, we want to teach reading by phonics. The
teacher looked at the different courses available, and chose Ruth
Miskin's course. That is what we are using at Maple Walk School,
which is our only full-time school. In supplementary schools we
use a system called "Butterfly Book", which is written
by Irina Tyk, who is one of our governors. We are not saying that
everyone has to use the "Butterfly Book" or Ruth Miskin.
Q25 Paul Holmes: If at school No.
5, when it opens, they said, "No, we don't agree with synthetic
phonics," you are not going to let them have that freedom.
A dictatorial curriculum?
Robert Whelan: It is not very
likely that we would appoint a head who did not believe in reading
and writing.
Q26 Paul Holmes: Right. So you do
want to prescribe what your schools do.
Robert Whelan: We want to prescribe
what we expect the children to know by the end of their time at
the school. How the teacher gets there is up to them.
Q27 Fiona Mactaggart: With respect,
you said that you would not prescribe what you expect them to
know, and then you said that you expected them to teach it by
phonics. Those two statements are in contradiction. You said just
then that you do not want to prescribe how people teach, but you
want to prescribe what children know, i.e. that they should be
able to read—an aim that I utterly concur with. Then you
said, but we expect them to do it by synthetic phonics.
Robert Whelan: Yes, but we do
not say that they have to do it by the "Butterfly Book"
or that they have to do it by this method. We do not say that
they have to have so many hours a day reading or so many classes
a week. That is up to the teacher.
Fiona Mactaggart: Neither does the National
Curriculum.
Chairman: John?
Paul Holmes: Hang on, just one more on
the same theme.
Chairman: Okay, but John is being very
patient with you.
Q28 Paul Holmes: Assuming that you
move on to secondary schools eventually, you edited a book that
came out last year, Corruption of the Curriculum, and one
of the chapters I was reading was about the history curriculum—I
was a history teacher, the head of history and so forth. It complained
bitterly about the prescription of the National Curriculum, but
its complaint was not that the National Curriculum prescribed
certain things, but that it was prescribing the wrong things.
The author of that chapter in your book was objecting—he
wanted to prescribe what history children learnt, but the National
Curriculum was not insisting on the right things. There is a bit
of a contradiction there.
Robert Whelan: I thought that
that chapter was the most interesting in the book. It was written
by Chris McGovern, who was a bit of cause célèbre
when the National Curriculum came in. He was head of history at
a comprehensive, and he and his deputy refused to teach the National
Curriculum in history, because they thought it undermined the
possibility of teaching history as a coherent academic discipline.
They were both suspended. After a year, he realised that he was
never going to be reinstated, so he went into the independent
sector. He is now the head of an independent school. He also says
in the chapter how Mrs Thatcher, when she saw the national history
curriculum, was so worried by it that she called him in and asked
him to have a look at it, to see if he could sort it out. But
it was the weekend before it was going to be published, so there
was not a great deal that he could do then. He objected not to
specific things being taught or not taught, but that it made it
impossible to teach history as a coherent narrative.
Q29 Paul Holmes: No, what he also
objects to in the chapter, in the book that you edited that was
published last year, was that certain things were not being taught.
He wanted to prescribe them—basically, that we should go
back to the kings and queens version of history or that we should
teach only the positive things about the industrial revolution
and not about what happened to 95% of the population in the industrial
cities. He wanted to prescribe what was taught. Would Civitas
want its secondary schools in the future to teach prescribed things
or not?
Robert Whelan: If we stick to
history, I think it is very difficult for children to understand
the nature of the country that they are living in if they do not
know about the Glorious Revolution and what happened at Waterloo
and Trafalgar. These are huge events.
Q30 Paul Holmes: So, Civitas would
insist in their schools that there was a prescribed National Curriculum
for history—it would be their prescribed curriculum rather
than another one, but they would have a prescribed curriculum.
Robert Whelan: Yes, we would say
that we must have a narrative of British history and, to a certain
extent, continental and world history.
Q31 Paul Holmes: So, when your opening
comments criticised the highly prescriptive National Curriculum,
you just mean that it is not your prescription—but you do
want a highly prescriptive curriculum.
Robert Whelan: But we are running
private schools. Parents can either opt in or opt out. If they
do not like the results that we are achieving, they can go somewhere
else. The problem with the National Curriculum—the reason
that I am complaining about the prescriptive nature of it—is
that it is the same in every school. You cannot opt out. Well,
you can opt out of the state education system in the sense that
if you are well off, you can go private. Most parents are not
in that position. Your children are growing up with an extremely
sketchy view of history, which I think is what they get.
Q32 Paul Holmes: Having taught history
for 22 years, I beg to differ; I think that you are absolutely
wrong. You do want to have a curriculum, but with your prescription
not somebody else's.
Chairman: Mick, would you like to come
in briefly?
Mick Waters: I just want to come
back to the notion of prescription. The National Curriculum, as
it stands—say—in secondary schools, defines the range
and content of what children will study over the three-year period
of Key Stage 3. It also defines the skills that they are expected
to learn related to that subject and the processes that are essential
for the subject. Those are all brought together in what we have
called an importance statement. Most academic bodies, learned
societies and subject associations see emphasising to children
the value of the subject to society and the impact that that subject
can have on an individual as absolutely essential. The way in
which the National Curriculum is exploited varies enormously across
the country and the way that teachers are able to interpret that
curriculum varies terrifically. In Lesley's and Ben's different
programmes you see schools taking advantage of the opportunity
that is there. The notion of a prescription that leads teachers
down one single path with their children is wrong.
Q33 Mr Heppell: I want to go back
to Mr Whelan, albeit very briefly. It may be that my logic is
badly flawed, but it seems that what we were saying was going
wrong with the supplementary schools was that people were coming
who did not understand the core subjects and you had to go back
to teaching reading, writing and then science. As all of those
are included in it, why do you blame the National Curriculum for
that situation? The question was whether the National Curriculum
is a factor in that, and your answer was yes, it is the National
Curriculum that is wrong. If they were not included in the National
Curriculum and they were being missed out, I would see some logic
in that answer. It is the exact opposite; emphasis is given to
them by the National Curriculum. Do you see something wrong with
the logic in that or is it just me?
Robert Whelan: You can include
a subject in the National Curriculum, but that does not mean that
the children will necessarily know it at the end of a certain
number of years, unless it is taught properly in a way that is
responsive to their needs and by using the best methods and so
on. You can have a literacy hour every day for umpteen years,
but that does not mean that the children are going to be able
to read if the techniques being used will not encourage them.
Q34 Mr Heppell: But it is not the
National Curriculum that is at fault for children not reading.
Do you see that?
Robert Whelan: It is in a sense.
Let us go back to the question of phonics. It is compulsory in
state schools as of this year, but for many years that has not
been the case.
Q35 Fiona Mactaggart: I do not think
that it is compulsory. I think that there is a national literary
strategy which advises it.
Robert Whelan: It was reported
as if—
Chairman: Can we be sensitive here because
the Committee's predecessor conducted a thorough inquiry into
teaching children to read? We recommended that any systematic
teaching of reading worked—not just phonics or a particular
kind of phonics, for example synthetic phonics, but any system.
That was allowed by the National Curriculum and the Department
and what was necessary. We are a bit sensitive about that. We
discovered that it was not compulsory, so Fiona is right about
that. John?
Robert Whelan: I have not made
my point yet. For years—
Chairman: Let John speak; he has been
very patient.
Q36 Mr Heppell: Had you finished
Robert?
Robert Whelan: No. I was going
to say that whether or not phonics is compulsory, there seems
to be an agreement now that it works, but for many years there
was no such agreement. In many schools reading was not taught
by phonics. We have spoken to teachers who have said that they
had to teach phonics surreptitiously because it was actually disapproved
of by their heads and by officials in the education sector. "Real
books" was not working for children, and teachers had to
take them in the lunch hour and try to teach them to read by phonics.
I am talking about a level of prescription that you can get when
one thing is fashionable in Whitehall and is then imposed on every
school in the country. That is the problem. You have no opportunity
for teachers to experiment, to try out their own things or to
find out what works for their own children.
Q37 Mr Heppell: Except for two things.
First, teachers will use phonics and the National Curriculum will
not stop them doing so. Secondly, when you said that people were
using them secretly, you also said that the head disapproved of
it. Under the old system the head could step in and say that he
did not like this and did not like that. That is not to do with
the National Curriculum. Does the issue of phonics show, as Robert
is trying to say, that if we gave teachers the research about
what was good and bad and just left it to them, we would have
a better system than if we applied a national curriculum?
Chairman: Who is that question for?
Mr Heppell: Everybody.
Chairman: We will start with Lesley because
I think that she is being left out a bit.
Lesley James: This is not my specialist
area. We work mainly with secondary schools.
Mr Heppell: It is the principle that
I am asking about.
Lesley James: It is, yes. It is
helpful for teachers to be given a range of information, including
the most up-to-date research and advice, and then essentially
be left to do what they feel is best. They are professionals and
their judgment is to be respected. However, it is often difficult
for teachers to keep up with the most up-to-date research. It
is unacceptable if children reach the age of 11 and cannot read.
There are familiar reasons for that, but that is unacceptable.
As people have said, they cannot then access the Curriculum in
secondary schools.
Mick Waters: The National Curriculum
has always laid down the expectation that children will be enabled
to learn to read. It has set standards at certain levels that
children are expected to achieve. Within that, the descriptions
of what needs to be done are very clear and always have been.
The Curriculum has always included helping children to understand
the relationship between sounds and the words on the page; that
is phonics. The recent revisions simply try to clarify that, based
on recent research evidence. The question of whether you should
simply lay the evidence in front of teachers and let them go for
it is a good one. A true professional takes cognisance of new
developments, understands the way in which research impacts on
their job and takes it forward. There needs to be an element of
training. What is being talked about is the craft and the quality
of teaching in bringing the Curriculum to life and making it work.
That is about the way in which teaching takes place and that is
different from the issue of the Curriculum. The Curriculum is
the definition of the experiences that children are expected to
have and what they are expected to learn. Some of the things that
are being debated here are about teaching techniques and approaches,
which are important. The national strategies have had an incredible
effect over a long period of time and have seen the performance
of children in reading and mathematics improve. We still worry
about a significant and important tail of children who struggle.
I do not know a teacher who does not try to include every single
method they can to help a child who cannot read to do so. There
must be a balance between professional autonomy, training, being
very clear about what is expected and the endeavour to carry that
through. It is not simply about prescription.
Dr Williamson: Any attempt to
prescribe a particular approach or to define a curriculum is overtly
political. It says certain things about what is expected of children
coming through that system. I do not want to dwell on phonics.
My work started as an English teacher in secondary school and
I do a lot of work with English teachers in secondary schools.
They emphasise that the learning of reading should be about the
making of meaning and that children should be allowed to think
and to make up their own minds. I appreciate that there is value
in having the initial functional skills. We need to see the teaching
profession in the context of its practice. The policy that Mick
has been outlining and the kind of research that Lesley, myself
and other colleagues are doing should be seen as a unity of things
that inform each other. For too long, teachers have been seen
as people who are given documentation and go away and do what
is in it. We know that that is not the case. We know that most
teachers are quite creative about what they do with policy documents
and the various different pedagogical approaches that they are
advised to take. What increasingly does not happen is that some
of the great stuff that comes from research, which can inform
the professions, is not adequately communicated to the teachers
and the practitioners. Occasionally there is a bit of a mismatch
which, in part, is to do with the language of research and that
of the classroom. Some of the teachers who I have worked with
say, "We do not use words like pedagogy. That was when we
were doing a PGCE." There is that barrier. It is about finding
ways to support policy research and practice, and seeing each
other as a mutually benefiting whole.
Q38 Chairman: Interesting. Would
you like to come back on that?
Robert Whelan: I think that I
have said everything I need to say.
Chairman: I do not want Graham and Douglas
to suggest that I am not giving you a full chance to say as much
as you like. Graham, you wanted to come in.
Mr Stuart: Apologies for my late arrival.
I do not know to what extent the balance between skills within
the Curriculum and content—which particularly came out in
the history chapter of the Civitas book that Paul referred to—has
already been examined.
Chairman: It is in section 3 of our questioning.
You can come back on that but ask a quick one now and I will call
you in a minute.
Q39 Mr Stuart: I would like to ask
people to comment on that. The criticism is that the Curriculum
puts too much emphasis on skills as opposed to the inculcation
of knowledge and providing the best tools with which children
can, further on in their education, make up their own minds. Perhaps
they need time to allow them to think for themselves—before
they are given the tools to do so, they need the knowledge, and
that is a mistake in the current curriculum.
Dr Williamson: Unfortunately,
sometimes skills-based approaches get seen as remedial approaches.
In the absence of children being able to grasp the curricula or
subject knowledge, there is a focus on skills. That exacerbates
some of the social and educational polarity that we already witness
in classrooms. Of course, skills must go alongside knowledge accumulation,
but it is a dangerous practice to say that skills perhaps refer
to something more vocational that is different from a more academic,
subject-based aspect of education. We mentioned earlier that we
need to find a balance between the two, rather than seeing them
as incompatible.
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