Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
SIR JIM
ROSE AND
COLIN SEAL
20 OCTOBER 2008
Q320 Mr Stuart: That is a pretty
tight framework, is it not?
Sir Jim Rose: It is based on the
Children's Plan. That is what people tend to forget about this.
This is definitely growing out of a Children's Plan. So it has
a bit more porosity than people imagine. It is not just looking
at the national curriculum, but at what we can do with the national
curriculum—what we can do differently, add to it, take away
and so forth.
Q321 Mr Stuart: In the earlier
session, Dominic Wyse said that we should be able to look at whether
we need a curriculum at all in private schools.
Sir Jim Rose: We can do that.
There is nothing to prevent me from saying that we do not need
a curriculum, but actually I think that we do.
Q322 Mr Stuart: So you do not
feel constrained by that.
Sir Jim Rose: Not at all. Having
lived through the phonics debate, I must tell you that one cannot
feel constrained.
Q323 Mr Stuart: There are concerns
about the independence of your review. For the past quarter of
a century or more you have been employed almost entirely by the
Department or funded by it. There are also concerns about the
likelihood of getting a review that might challenge some of the
more fondly held views of the Secretary of State.
Sir Jim Rose: In 1992 we—Woodhead,
Rose and Alexander—conducted a review, and I do not think
that that was anything other than independent. I make recommendations;
I neither make nor unmake policy. I keep saying that almost to
the point of boredom.
Mr Stuart: You are the same us in that
respect.
Sir Jim Rose: Indeed; but on that
I must rest. Mine are independent judgments, having marshalled
all the evidence that I can in the time available. This is a particularly
complex and wide-ranging review, by any standard.
Q324 Mr Stuart: Can I ask you
about the parameters, because the ones that you have been given
seem a little contradictory? You have been asked to ensure breadth
in the curriculum but to reduce the entitlement. You have been
asked to encourage personalisation, but to retain strong elements
of curriculum prescription. You have been asked to emphasise the
development of the whole child and more time for the basics. You
will have to be a magician to deliver all those. How do you respond
to the NAHT's view that the outcome of the review is likely to
be a fudge?
Sir Jim Rose: Interestingly, we
spoke to the NAHT a couple of weeks ago—perhaps a little
more—and I put to them where we had got so far and rehearsed
the models that we are using and so forth. The NAHT was very much
in favour of the direction that we had taken. We are at the interim
stage at this point. I do not know whether you know the timing
for this review. It is quite interesting. It is an interim report,
hopefully by the end of this month or early November, and final
by spring term 2009. Because the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority has to do a lot of consultation on it and obviously
prepare it, implementation cannot take place much before September
2011, and if we took that further forward the first cohort of
primary children that would go through on this curriculum would
be in 2017. If we took that even further, the end of secondary
education for those children, having gone through the revised
primary and secondary curriculum, would be 2024. Hence, I keep
saying that we ought to try to get a proactive position on this
curriculum review whereby we do not do it in a piecemeal way—early
years, secondary, come back to primary, which is piggy in the
middle despite being the longest phase. We definitely ought to
discipline ourselves and try to do these reviews as a whole, giving
schools time to get things bedded in and so forth.
Q325 Mr Stuart: On that point
of dealing with this matter as a whole, do you regret the fact
that you have been specifically barred from dealing with testing
and assessment?
Sir Jim Rose: I think that testing
and assessment is such a big wicket that it needs doing separately,
to be frank; I just do not think that we could have done it in
the time available to us. However, it certainly needs to be looked
at and I think that what you heard last week was a strong signal
that it is going to be looked at. We now have this other group,
which is going to work in this way, and I think that that is a
very interesting possibility.
Q326 Chairman: You did not take
our view in our previous report on teaching children to read,
Sir Jim. What did you think of our report on testing and assessment?
Sir Jim Rose: I thought it was
very good. I am not just saying that—it really was good.
It was very thoroughly put together, and I thought it was well
worth—the juice was well worth the squeeze.
Q327 Chairman: We were disappointed
that you went so gung-ho on synthetic phonics, if you recall.
Sir Jim Rose: Let us take that
one for what it is; I do think that it is quite interesting. We
have heard today that systematic phonics is accepted and I think
that all the research points in that direction. We also heard,
in my view, a very interesting and contradictory description:
how on earth do you get children to comprehend their reading unless
they can actually read the words on the page? So phonics is not
really best described as a method; I think that that is the first
thing to understand. It is a body of knowledge, skills and understanding
about how the alphabet works to build words. That is what it is,
basically, although there is a lot more to it than that.
My review does not say that other forms of
phonic approaches, if you like, do not work. It actually says
that analytic phonics is good and synthetic phonics is better,
and I still believe that. Even if we were saying that they are
both the same, we might as well go for one. What I have tried
to do is to say why we should go for that one. Actually, I have
to tell you that the results where it is being applied well are
really quite startling. I also have to say that Clackmannanshire
was the biggest—I am afraid that that is your fault, Chairman.
You sent us up to Clackmannanshire to have a look at it, not to
consider the research, and that is what we did. Everybody thinks
that we were a one-winged bird on research—"Clackmannanshire,
Clackmannanshire". That is not true. Look at the back of
the report and you will see all the research that we considered.
My trick question on that report is always this: what is its first
recommendation? There is stony silence. The first recommendation
is to make absolutely rock-solid certain that full attention is
given to generating spoken language, because reading and writing
feed off speaking and listening, and developing speaking and listening
in young children is an extremely important first principle in
any language development. It is probably a skill that is as important
as any. Look at what we are doing now, and what we do throughout
life. So all of that is in the report and I will stand by it,
I think, through thick and thin for that reason.
Chairman: Sir Jim, that was very good
to clear the air. Thank you very much for that. Graham.
Q328 Mr Stuart: Chris Woodhead
said of the Rose review: "I would do exactly what it says
in the three wise men report. Strengthen traditional subject knowledge.
Stop thinking the national curriculum can solve every social and
political problem." Would you agree with him?
Sir Jim Rose: Yes. We have some
problems in terms of what we expect of primary schools these days.
The area of personal development has now become almost statutory—in
fact it probably is. If I ran down the list of those who have
come to see us about personal development, in a sense it would
almost be like listening to single issue groups. They all want
their slice of the pie and that has been a problem with the national
curriculum from the start. As soon as you go national and say
that something has to be core and something has to be foundation,
you get what you ask for. So, under personal development, we have
now got health and safety, sex and relationships, drugs and alcohol,
economic awareness and enterprise, financial capability, careers
and, partly, citizenship. I suspect if we stretched it a bit,
we would find things in religious education. We already have an
arrangement called social and emotional aspects of learning in
relation to that territory. It is almost an impossible task to
try to reconcile all that. Why have we got all that? Because we
are terribly concerned about the ills that beset society at the
moment—all of those things one way or another. We press
them into primary schools at an ever earlier stage. We have got
to be very cautious about some of that. We must say to ourselves,
"Yes, of course, these are extremely important issues and
throughout a child's education, they do have to be dealt with."
It is a question of degree: where and when should this be placed?
That is a question for the rest of the curriculum as well. It
is not so much that we have prescription; it is the degree of
prescription and testing that is at issue. That is what we are
really struggling with and that is why this review is quite important.
One thing I am determined to do—I shall probably fail in
the attempt—is to make it much more manageable. It is a
very big ask of primary teachers to deal with the whole of that
hand, as it were, in a class teacher system.
Q329 Mr Stuart: You answered that
pretty well. Was that pretty close to a yes? You did say "yes"
when you began.
Sir Jim Rose: Yes, I did say "yes".
Sorry, what was the question?
Mr Stuart: You are supposed to have wonderful
political antennae.
Sir Jim Rose: That was not a demonstration
of it!
Q330 Paul Holmes: May I just push
you a bit further on a question that Graham asked you about the
testing? The Secretary of State said to you that your review should
be focused on the curriculum and not consider changes to the current
assessment and testing regime, to which you said, "Oh no,
there wouldn't be time to do it justice." In most of your
opening comments, you were talking about the effects of the testing
regime and what it cannot test—you know, the Einstein quotes
and everything. You were talking about reality at the start. In
the real world, an awful lot of people who work in primary schools—and
Ofsted has said the same—are worried about teaching to the
test and the way in which it utterly distorts the curriculum.
How can you review the curriculum without looking at the effects
of that?
Sir Jim Rose: I can make it known—and
I almost certainly will make it known—that when we go to
talk with schools and look at what they are doing in terms of
curriculum and all the rest of it, the elephant in the room is
always testing. That invariably comes up. It would be terribly
disingenuous to say that there is no problem here; of course there
is an issue. It behoves me to make sure that that is recorded.
In terms of tackling it, we are into such a big piece of territory
and we do not want to lose sight of the notion that schools should
be accountable. Parents and professionals most certainly need
information about how well children are doing—so do all
of us and the children themselves. We have probably got more experience
in this country now about testing and assessment in their various
forms than anywhere else in the world.
Paul Holmes: Far too much, one might
say.
Sir Jim Rose: We are information-rich
in that respect and we now want to work with that.
Q331 Paul Holmes: So, outside
the remit of your study, do you have sympathy with, for example,
the New Zealand approach where they test a random sample of 3%
or 5% of a year group, rather than 100%?
Sir Jim Rose: The sampling possibility
needs to be revisited. The other thing that we need to do more
of is trust teachers. We have gone that way in the early years
and the moderation that now exists and the training that goes
with it, is beginning to pay big dividends. There is probably
still a question about whether we need to do all that is being
asked of children, but that seems to be almost an inevitable consequence
of putting something into place where you feel that you must atomise
every element of a child's life. That needs thinking through a
bit more.
Q332 Annette Brooke: May I just
ask a different question to start with on your add-on remit regarding
the early years literacy goals? Do you feel constrained in looking
at those, given that the Government effectively introduced them
only in September and it will take some back-tracking to say,
"We've got it all wrong and we have to modify them"?
Sir Jim Rose: Those are the two
early learning goals related to writing. I cannot say much about
that because I have not yet gathered the evidence in sufficient
volume, to be frank. But I shall certainly be looking at them
dispassionately, because there is a real issue—a real question—about
what could be pressing as an unrealistic demand on teachers and
practitioners at that level. However, I am reluctant to commit
one way or the other at the moment, because the figures as I have
got them so far—I know that they are not definitive—suggest
that if you see those early learning goals as aspirational, which
is the term used more often than not, you really want them to
be there for the spread of developing abilities that children
have. I have to say, because I have seen this at first hand more
than once, that children writing their own name at that age is
certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility. There might be
something to be said for the second goal, which is to do with
writing in sentences, and so forth. We need to look at that in
great detail.
Q333 Annette Brooke: So you will
not be constrained by the fact that they have only just been introduced,
effectively, in September.
Sir Jim Rose: No, not at all.
There will be a review in 2010 anyway, will there not?
Q334 Annette Brooke: Okay, I shall
move on.
People have been talking about issues with
the primary curriculum for a long time and, as Peter said earlier,
a lot of thought has gone into it. What is preventing schools
from achieving a balanced curriculum and all the things that most
people would agree are desirable?
Sir Jim Rose: Some of the answers
that were given were along the right lines. There is some confusion
out there as to what is statutory and what is not and it is quite
difficult sometimes to resist that which is coming—it does
not matter from which source—if it has that sort of authority.
We need to clarify, and I am hoping to set it down in the report,
what exactly is still within the gift of the school; there is
quite a lot, actually. But that does not mean that we should not
look—indeed, we shall look very hard—at the amount
of things that are statutory.
Q335 Annette Brooke: So you probably
would accept that some of it might be the curriculum, but that
there is also the issue of what the schools do with it. Will you
be considering that?
Sir Jim Rose: Yes, I think that
that is true.
Annette Brooke: Are we even focusing
on the right thing by looking at the curriculum? I think that
most people would accept the idea of the entitlement, but they
might just like a couple of pages specifying the national curriculum.
Is there not a better balance to allow us to focus on teachers'
skills and knowledge and then build them up to the position where
we really can empower them—but with a lightweight curriculum?
Sir Jim Rose: Yes, how light will
the cake be? We need to look at that.
On pedagogy, other considerations occur.
This is more than teaching as delivered; it is to do with how
you organise your classroom and how capable you are in respect
of the three levels of organisation. There is merit in whole-class
teaching, in group work and in one-to-one teaching and a good
teacher can mix those things effectively, depending on what they
are trying to get over. I do not think that this business of one
size fits all should be held up like a banner, as if to say it
can never be the case. One size sometimes fits an awful lot. We
ought to recognise what children recognise: they go to school
to be with other children, more often than not. For children,
learning together is an important thing to learn, both of itself
and because it empowers them so well. That is what they enjoy,
if a good teacher is handling that sort of situation. We have
a lot of shibboleths in primary education, and in education generally,
that just need holding up to the light, because they do not stand
up when you look at a good class at work. The balance that we
are trying to achieve in all of this is more than just the curricular
balance of content. It is the mix of pedagogy and all the rest.
There is a balance to be had there that is almost as important,
if not more important.
Q336 Annette Brooke: May I just
take us full circle? Is that possible, particularly in year 6,
given that there is a great deal of evidence about teaching to
the test even though the best schools do not do it?
Sir Jim Rose: Teaching to the
test certainly will constrain that, but I think that the problem
in year 6 is much more than that. It is the degree of expertise
that is needed to keep up with lively 11-year-olds who are on
the march to good quality work in secondary school. What 11-year-olds
can achieve is terribly underestimated, and if you are hanging
on to a class teacher system, you are asking a great deal of the
class teacher. We said that time and again in the so-called "Three
Wise Men" report. How do we get a bit more specialism into
primary education? You only have to look at what children are
capable of in music, where you often have a specialist teacher,
or in PE if you have a specialist teacher—that is, someone
who really knows their subject well. That is confirmed time and
again by Ofsted. I am amazed how often it keeps coming up.
Q337 Annette Brooke: Something
that is happening across the whole country is the demise of middle
schools, yet one might say that an advantage of middle schools
is that there are more subject specialists. Is there almost so
much focus now on the primary curriculum that parents are perhaps
losing something—which might, to some extent, be their choice?
Sir Jim Rose: Possibly, but I
thought that you would go on to ask whether there could be more
co-operation between primary and secondary at that level so that
we get better continuity between year 6 and year 7. Frankly, that
is an area where we should put things under the microscope a lot
more. We need to crack that one. I think that this is probably
true throughout early years and primary but certainly from primary
to secondary, and it has been the picture for a long time. There
is still a focus on the pastoral side but not such a strong focus
on what I would call the academic side. We need to think much
more about how we can enliven that.
Chairman: Of course there is quite a
movement to through schools, in parallel.
Sir Jim Rose: Yes, there is.
Q338 Mrs Hodgson: Sir Jim, QCA
research as part of your review—
Sir Jim Rose: QCA?
Mrs Hodgson: Yes, QCA. There is some
confusion in the system over the relationship between the national
curriculum, national strategies and the Every Child Matters
agenda. How would the new primary curriculum address that confusion?
Sir Jim Rose: I cannot let too
many cats out of the bag, to tell the truth. May I ask you to
wait for two weeks? The answer will still be tentative—it
is an interim report—but I think that the direction of travel
will be quite clear. If I could take a raincheck on that, I would
be very grateful. The second part of the question was to do with—
Mrs Hodgson: The confusion over the different
strategies. At present, there is the curriculum, national strategies
and Every Child Matters, and I suppose that we have also
added the Children's Plan. You often hear people say that there
are all these strategies. Will the new curriculum bring them all
together and will we have one coherent strategy?
Sir Jim Rose: I was going on to
say that you have to segment the national strategies. In Pete
Dudley's territory at the moment is what is called the communication,
language and literacy development programme, which handles reading.
It is a very good programme. Schools and local authorities that
take advantage of it have a useful and important resource because
they can get coaching going in schools. They can actually set
up a situation that teachers find hugely important and valuable:
do not just tell me how it works but show me, and show me in circumstances
that are like mine. They can arrange for that to happen, and are
doing so. As was mentioned earlier, there are obviously problems
about wrong messages getting through. However, it happens almost
everywhere in education that some advisers do not get the right
end of the stick. That problem is minuscule in terms of the communication,
language and literacy development programme. I have been to see
the results of that in several local education authorities where
it is having a transforming effect on the teaching of reading,
speaking and listening. It is also helping with boys' writing,
which has been a headache since we started the national literacy
strategy.
Q339 Mrs Hodgson: The NASUWT has,
as you are probably aware, called for key stages to be removed
totally.
Chairman: Key stage tests.
Mrs Hodgson: Yes. If we are to improve
transition between the key stages, is your review not constrained
by reforms to the early years foundation stage and Key Stage 3?
Sir Jim Rose: That is a good question.
It is constrained to the extent that that is what I am being asked
to look at. The whole idea is to make the path of progression
much clearer from the end of the foundation stage through to year
7.
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