Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-499)
MICK WATERS,
TERESA BERGIN,
PROFESSOR DAVID
HARGREAVES AND
TIM OATES
17 NOVEMBER 2008
Q480 Fiona Mactaggart: This issue
takes me to the place that David went to fairly fast. I was a
post-Plowden primary teacher for a bit, and I saw some really
brilliant practice, which engaged children, making them think
beyond the limits of the standard primary curriculum—one
of them—but I also saw that that way of thinking about learning
could be a cover for appalling practice, which particularly let
down the most disadvantaged children, who did not have in their
outside life the bits of glue that filled in the holes that such
practice, if not done excellently, can leave them with. I was
struck by an article that I read at the weekend by Malcolm Gladwell,
one of the most innovative modern thinkers about mathematics teaching,
the number and structure of such subjects and the risk that, if
there is not a disciplined structure in a child's life, they will
in effect fall off the wall of mathematics. We see it happening
all the time. One of the things that I saw, when I then became
a primary teacher educator, was the number of very able young
people who had not achieved a level C in GCSE mathematics, which
is a requirement for primary teaching. They had so many holes
in the underpinning—they had the intellectual ability, but
just not enough stuff that could give a base to it. I am worried
that that modern approach to the curriculum will reproduce all
those weaknesses.
Mick Waters: I do not know what
the modern approach is, except to say that we have moved on quite
a long way in terms of time since post-Plowden. We have checks
in place, such as an Ofsted inspection regime. We have the advantage
of data that we have never had before and two national strategies,
particularly on literacy and numeracy, that set a framework within
the context of the curriculum. In fact, the strategies seek to
develop the very routine that you were talking about to help youngsters
get that bedrock. In what we are doing, we are certainly not talking
about going back to an age that I hope we have left behind. We
are saying, in terms of the secondary curriculum review, let us
look at what came out of the Tomlinson inquiry into the experience
of youngsters in schools where the aim was to declutter the thing,
and to give people real clarity about the essential elements of
each subject. We want to give schools a way in which they can
make learning matter to youngsters and fill them with motivation
for Key Stage 4 whereas, previously in Key Stage 3, we had widespread
disengagement, disaffection and a real challenge to help youngsters
make progress. We must see that we are moving from where we were
a few years ago—not from a considerable time ago. Post-Plowden
was a long while ago.
Q481 Fiona Mactaggart: I feel
as though we are going round in a circle back to the same place.
We have recently been doing that, and I want to be reassured that
there is no risk of that happening.
Mick Waters: I do not think that
there is.
Q482 Fiona Mactaggart: Using projects
in secondary schools sounds very like what I saw back then in
primary schools and, apart from catching them after they have
done it badly—which is what Mick described is provided by
the inspection service—I cannot see what is in place to
prevent it from being done badly. I cannot see what has been put
in place in teacher education to ensure that it is excellent.
Yes, I give you that the strategies are part of it but, beyond
that, I am not sure that there is enough that is sufficiently
robust to ensure that that approach does not further advantage
those already advantaged and to sustain disadvantaged children
in their learning in a way that gives them real opportunities
to compete and be successful.
Mick Waters: There is not that
kind of approach. The curriculum leaves in bags called subjects,
and how it is organised when it gets to the school is the challenge.
There is no recommendation that it will be taught in the way in
which you are describing. The recommendation is that the schools
work out the best way in which to teach their youngsters to achieve
the aims of the curriculum and a bottom line way in which to reach
high levels of attainment, make good choices about their health,
participate in civic life and end up in further education, employment
and training. If we look at some of the indicators over the past
15 years, such as health choices, some things about NEETS and
those aspects to do with youngsters participating in a wide range
of activities as they come out of schooling, we must question
whether it was all as rosy just a few years ago—let alone
40.
Professor Hargreaves: That is
correct. Nothing robust is in place to stop what you fear. The
complication is that the centre has not seen that as its task.
The growth of project-based learning, about which there is a good
research base, is because schools are redesigning how they deal
with the curriculum in order to motivate youngsters. In my experience,
that reform has been led at school level. It is not being led
at the centre, but by schools. We have a real dilemma for our
education service in that, because of the national curriculum,
the centre has become used to prescribing what schools should
do in a top-down way, and the schools follow it. What has been
happening in more recent times, and will continue to happen with
the loosening up of the national curriculum, is that schools are
quite properly trying out new ways in which to engage young people.
In my judgment, the centre should be asking, "How can we
identify what is really rigorous in what you are trying?"
and feeding it back. Matters should be iterative between the centre
and the schools. At the moment, we do not have that kind of partnership—we
have schools sitting, expecting the centre to dictate to them
which does not work. That is the whole point of personalisation.
Customisation has to respond to the needs of the clients, but
the role of the centre is to say, "Are you sure that you
are doing it well?" Although I may be wrong, I am willing
to bet that if you asked Ofsted what criteria it uses to judge
whether project-based learning is good in schools, it does not
have a research-based checklist by which to judge what they observe.
In my view, your concern is well placed, and we need to find ways
of meeting the robust criteria that you are asking for.
Tim Oates: There is no risk of
unanimity breaking out among your public witnesses. With regard
to the notion of whether the flexibility that has been associated
with the liberalisation of the national curriculum will result
unequivocally in high quality provision because there are adequate
checks and balances at every level in the system, my view—like
David's—is, no. Very high expectations have been placed
upon schools, in terms of the skills required to structure the
curriculum. There are very high demands, in terms of putting in
place appropriate assessment processes on a day to day basis—forms
of assessment and so on. I go back to the international work that
I referred to—the notion of curriculum coherence. By that,
I do not mean coherence in the national qualifications framework,
I mean curriculum coherence; that things should line up and promote
the specific learning objectives in which one is interested in
the particular phase or stage of a young person's life. Everything
should line up: inspection, funding, curriculum, classroom interaction,
learning materials and so on. The demands of these revisions that
we have seen in the national curriculum are laudable in their
aspiration, but are the structures in place to make them real?
From the point of view of an assessment agency we think the answer
is no. We are therefore busily thinking through how qualifications
can support that kind of curriculum coherence, how they can outline
very clearly the topics that should be tackled and at what stage,
and what the expectations and standards are. Although some national
authors have come out against the idea of curriculum materials
being aligned to qualifications, we see that as being important.
The research tells us that these should be mutually reinforcing—you
should pick up the sources and learning materials aligned to the
learning objectives and the content of the assessment. That is
why qualification bodies work in conjunction with educational
publishers—to achieve that. We therefore see qualifications
and assessment being a fundamental structuring force to bring
about a contribution to the kind of curriculum coherence we deem
to be essential, by looking at international research.
Teresa Bergin: I was going to
make a similar link to Tim, but in a very different way, and that
is how we ensure that young people have the theoretical and subject
knowledge, which I think you are expressing potential concern
about getting lost in a project-based approach. At Key Stage 4,
in the assessment regime, particularly GCSEs through to diplomas
and other qualifications, there is a great emphasis on subject
knowledge. So, even though the curriculum has been organised in
particular ways, we have assessment of the knowledge basis of
those subject areas. I am therefore less concerned, because teachers
negotiate—both the curriculum, in relation to the qualifications
through which young people will be assessed, and from a diploma
perspective. The engineering diploma has the requisite mathematics
and science requirements. Similarly, in manufacturing and product
design and in the IT diploma, there is a requisite business and
mathematics knowledge and communications within that. As long
as the assessment regime focuses on assessing what we need young
people to have—the theoretical and subject-based knowledge—but
looks at teaching and learning, and the framing of the curriculum
in ways that engage young people, and the acquisition of that
knowledge and their ability to apply it in a variety of contexts,
I think we can secure the knowledge base. I do not think anybody
would disagree that that is required for young people in order
for them to be able to go out into this fast-changing world that
they need to be responsive to and, on the other hand, to learn
in very creative ways that also give them the skills to respond
to an environment and an economy that are changing and that require
them to be project-based learners but also to have the theory
to underpin that.
Q483 Fiona Mactaggart: My final
question focuses on recommendations that we could make. I think
I have heard from you that if we are trying to ensure that curriculum
innovation is sufficiently well delivered to benefit pupils, including
those pupils who are most likely to fall off—a group that
I am very anxious about—we need to make sure that the qualifications
and assessment regime assists and to have a checklist for Ofsted
on how it might assess the curriculum. I might have concluded
that we want to make part of teacher education and training the
concepts of things like curriculum coherence; that should be embedded
in there. What else should we recommend to make sure that giving
this flexibility to the front line, so that personalisation can
happen, does not bring with it the risks of failure, which has
happened with past educational innovations and which most often
hits the least advantaged children, which is what I am concerned
about?
Professor Hargreaves: My view
is that it would require, in addition, a rather deeper change
from the centre. The centre, since the Education Reform Act 1988,
has prescribed very substantially what schools should do and then
has monitored whether there is compliance, through either Ofsted
or tests. When we move to a period of less prescription from the
centre and more innovation from the front line, which I think
is the step we are now at, it means the centre has to do more
than simply monitor; it has to look for intelligence. We need
an intelligence system that says, "Where is the most interesting
innovation occurring, and how can the centre assist to apply rigour
and identify it as good?" A lot of nonsense is talked about
good practice. It often means it is interesting practice. It is
not good because it has not been checked; there is no research
or evaluation. In my view, Ofsted could do that role, but I do
not think Ofsted sees its role particularly as acting as an intelligence
force for the centre, for Parliament, in order to say, "What
is going on, what is interesting and exciting and what needs looking
at more closely?" It is still looking essentially at a compliance
model. If we are to get the best and avoid the things that Ms
Mactaggart is rightly pointing to, it requires change from the
centre. We could do it. It would be a novel thing to do, but it
is essential if we are to generate the kind of innovation that
will solve the problem of too many disengaged young people, too
many youngsters dropping out at 16. That requires a change from
the centre, not just from the schools.
Mick Waters: The list you called
out was a good list, particularly the point about teacher education,
teacher training, and helping people to understand at an early
stage how the curriculum evolves, how it is put together and how
it can make an impact. David is on to a really good point: we
need research into what works and why, so that other schools can
take that forward. I would support them wholeheartedly. I shall
leave the other bit.
Q484 Fiona Mactaggart: I have
just one more question. I am thinking back to my teaching career.
I used to think that the children I taught would love creative
writing in English and projects and lessons like that. Actually,
the lessons they loved were the maths lessons, because they knew
when they were right and that made them happy. One thing that
I worry about is that we assume that all children are motivated
by the same things. Creating projects is fine and can really stimulate
children, but actually some young people just like predictable
stuff that they are used to and comfortable with and where they
know when they are right. I am worried that we risk moving from
one thing to another, like a pendulum.
Mick Waters: That is why the curriculum
design should not always fall into one slot—one format,
method or system—but should provide for a range of experiences.
Most will move pupils forward, but sometimes they will have to
learn how to get through something in order to make progress.
We must give youngsters width of curriculum experience in all
aspects of their work. Before hesitating earlier, I was going
to say that assessment is another element of this. We assess curriculum
strength using a very narrow range of measures, but if we measured
it using wider measures—perhaps we could consider the balanced
score-card method being discussed—we might see how the curriculum
affects different children differently. You are right that the
collective noun, children, is used too much: "Children will
enjoy," "Children make progress" and so on. It
is not all children all the time, but some children some of the
time. Compared with 20 years ago, when the national curriculum
was introduced, diversity in this country is phenomenal—in
all aspects, whether the diversity of ethnicity or of special
needs that we did not know about 20 years ago, diversity is affecting
the way we teach. Some way of measuring the effectiveness of the
curriculum beyond the simple, narrow measures in place at the
moment might help schools to understand what they need to do to
meet the needs of young people, and they might teach them differently
and offer the curriculum in different ways in order to meet those
needs.
Q485 Chairman: In response to
an earlier question from Fiona, David said that nobody is gathering
that intelligence. Ofsted does not see it as its job to say, "What
a good piece of work that is. We will ensure that other people
know about it." Who on earth in the Department for Children,
Schools and Families or its predecessor Department does, did or
should do that sort of thing?
Professor Hargreaves: In the old
days, up until 1988, HMI probably did a degree of it. You will
remember, Chairman, all the documents published on the curriculum
in the '70s and '80s, much of which consisted of what we now call
think pieces and some of which described interesting practice.
However, one way in which things have changed is that we are no
longer in danger of moving from one version of "one size
fits all" to another. That might have been the case to a
degree under Plowden and certainly was with the national curriculum,
but what I now see is schools saying, "If it ain't broke,
don't redesign it." And why should we? We are not getting
another standard version of a redesign, but growing diversity.
Next week, the trust will have its annual conference, at which
there will be 2,000 head teachers and school leaders. As you know,
at the core of that event will be people sharing ideas. Although
some will say, "That wouldn't fit in my school. It is inappropriate,"
others might say, "That looks like a good idea and would
fit my needs." That seems to be a better, more professional
approach than looking for the latest fashion or fad. However,
somebody needs to be at the centre of things collecting intelligence.
There have been several attempts to find an organisation to act
as an intelligence of what is going on in schools, particularly
in areas of innovation, and to make a link to research communities,
Ofsted and so on, but we do not have such a body. Ofsted could
do it, but it probably is not ideally placed and might need a
separate arm. However, it would get us out of the problem in this
Government document, which is not based on what schools are doing,
but on the Department's current policies. It has put in an illustration
from a school, which essentially is decorative, of something that
it has already decided upon. We are moving towards making a switch
and looking not to the academic community, but schools to find
some of the outstanding new practices that will drive us to higher
standards in the 21st century. It is commonly said that we have
a very able teaching force, and we certainly have very able school
leaders. However, we are not finding ways of paying sufficient
attention to what they are doing to ensure that we separate the
wheat from the chaff. If we did, and were able to spread that
outstanding work around, we would move very fast—much faster
than we are doing.
Mick Waters: We do not have a
great force or volume of people working for us, but significant
investigations are looking at schools that have made progress
in curriculum design and seeing what the impact on youngsters
has been. Examples in Nottingham have shown a significant rise
in attendance in secondary schools, as the result of the design
changes that schools have made. There are schools in Sunderland
where involving youngsters in the design of the curriculum has
made an impact on their willingness to attend and try out lessons
and on other outcomes. There are examples of primary schools in
the West Midlands where a change to the curriculum has seen a
marked impact in the results of assessments at the end of Key
Stage 2. We can show where things are working, and conversely
where they are not, and we can alert people to the fact that something
may not be the best way forward. We do not have significant volume
to be able to show that right across the system all the time but
nevertheless, our information is developing and the data are unfolding.
Q486 Chairman: When you say "we",
is this commissioned research that you are asking people like
Tim to do?
Mick Waters: Some is commissioned
and some is done through our own team. Sometimes it is done by
a school in an area, working with a local university or other
organisation that we commission through it.
Q487 Mr Chaytor: Is that not something
that the QCA should have made a central function of its being
during its whole period of existence? We now have websites, so
why has there not been, for the last eight, nine or 10 years,
a QCA website that is like a national clearing house for good
practice in all kinds of schools all over the country? It is such
an easy idea so why has nobody taken the trouble? Does it exist
and is run by somebody else?
Teresa Bergin: This is in the
context of the diploma, and is only one aspect of the secondary
curriculum and how those things relate to each other. In terms
of diploma delivery, with the Learning and Skills Improvement
Service—the ex-QIA— we are currently building a site
where we can gather, collect, push back and begin to look at evidence
about the kind of practice that is emerging. As part of the QIA
work, there are 4,000 practitioners engaged on that site although
it is not yet live. We are in the process of building that kind
of infrastructure. That does not deal directly with the curriculum,
but there are possibilities for it to do so at some point in the
future, and we are looking at its development.
Mick Waters: We have a curriculum
evidence panel that informs our view on the way that things are
developing. There is a structure underneath that to examine the
effectiveness of the work. There is a website and we include things
on that. The problem is that we must somehow police that website
to ensure that it offers validity and something worth taking forward.
The danger of a clearing house is that it is simply there for
people to grumble at. That ends up with the problem that was articulated
a few minutes ago—people are copying practice, but it is
not necessarily the best practice. We are keen to ensure that
the practice we show is the best it can be.
Q488 Mr Chaytor: That is for the
individual teacher to judge. I am amazed that the spirit of Wikipedia
has not permeated the whole of the teaching profession, and that
teachers in schools up and down the country are not posting up
their best ideas. If something is not good practice, the teachers
who look at it will decide that it is not. Your idea of the QCA
policing the website is a bit sinister.
Mick Waters: I could not think
of a better word at the time.
Teresa Bergin: Moderated.
Mick Waters: Moderated is better.
Chairman: Tim has something to say. He
is enthusiastic today. He wanted to join in the discussion and
might say something that we could learn from.
Tim Oates: Thank you. I wanted
to say that I was previously in the QCA, and during the period
to which you refer, David, there was a tendency to gather examples
of good practice in order to distil them into a single set of
national guidelines. Those did exist and were called schemes of
work. The notion was not that of celebrating diverse practice,
it was about looking at diverse practice and pulling them out
into dirigiste single guidelines. That tendency was alive and
well and has probably not been tackled in that regard. That is
the point I want to make. Mick, you mentioned the extent to which
you want to see interesting diversity, measures of attainment,
innovative ways and order in content, but we have to interface
with different parts of your organisation. It would be helpful
if you were to tell other parts of your organisation to welcome
more diverse forms of qualifications. In the 1990s and late 1980s,
schools engaged in very interesting curriculum innovations, such
as Wessex science, Suffolk science and Ridgeway history. We had
well grounded curriculum innovations coming from the bottom up.
They were highly motivating for students and covered the necessary
areas in each subject. Groups of schools then contacted an awarding
body and said, "We have developed this exciting curriculum,
can you please provide us with an appropriate assessment and certification
regime for it?" Through those means, innovative qualifications,
which operated in partnership with schools, were born. I am afraid
that that is a long-gone era. The qualifications approval strategy
that now exists is one in which we go up to the centre and the
centre goes back out to schools. The form of innovation that was
bottom-up, educationally sensitive, rigorous in its assessment
is no longer a feature of the system. If we take those types of
qualifications to the organisation responsible for accrediting
them, it is incredibly difficult to get anything approved that
departs, even in its minutiae, from the laid-down centralised
dirigiste criteria. We believe that there is far too much convergence
on narrow criteria. Therefore, the very innovation that Mick champions
is not embodied in the qualifications approval system, which is
extremely serious.
Professor Hargreaves: I think
that Mr Chaytor and you, Chairman, have raised the interesting
issue of how we spread a practice that we know is good. It is
the issue of knowledge transfer. What we know is that this kind
of stuff—paper-based means of knowledge transfer—is
singularly ineffective, although it is commonly used by people
such as myself who write pamphlets, and by Government Departments.
The most effective way of moving knowledge around in a complex
area such as teaching is by mentoring or coaching. We know that
for a fact. One of the reasons why I am enthusiastic about the
disappearance of autonomous schools and seeing people put into
groups is that we now have people going from one school to another—staff
and students—and seeing new practices at work. Assessment
for learning, which may be on your agenda later, is one of the
most important things that improves the quality of children's
learning and achievement. We know that. It is well established
by research. If you talk to Dylan Wiliam, he will say that you
cannot spread it by having a little course or a handbook on it;
it requires sustained mentoring and coaching and sustained continuing
professional development. The heart of your work, which is to
improve curriculum and teaching, requires the reform of our approach
to continuing professional development, much of which is based
on centralised top-down models and not on innovation that is transferred
through mentoring and coaching. If we do not revise that, we will
slow up the process. We must stop relying on paper as our principal
means of spreading ideas.
Chairman: We will come back to
that, because we want to talk about personalisation. It is John
assisted by Sharon.
Q489 Mr Heppell: Certainly in
my mind there is some confusion, but elsewhere there is confusion
about what personalisation is. The British Educational Communications
and Technology Agency carried out a survey in 2007 in which it
asked teachers, head teachers and pupils from 67 different schools
how they defined it. It received not just more than three views,
but more than 67 views. I will ask you to define personalisation.
I think that I understand the theory, but can you tell me how
you define the theory and how it works in practice? That is where
I have the difficulty. Let us see whether I get one or four or
more answers to that.
Teresa Bergin: What I can say
is that it is not what Tim was describing as a proliferation of
qualifications. I am just getting back to the whole issue of qualifications
for a moment. I will come back to the personalisation issue. We
already have young people who are quite confused by the number
of qualifications that are out there in the school system, and
one part of the 14-to-19 qualifications strategy is that young
people can make the kinds of choices that have real meaning in
terms of their progression and aspirations. I did not want to
leave that last comment from Tim uncontested; apologies for that.
My understanding of personalised learning is that it is about
a young person negotiating a number of aspects about their own
learning, including their learning styles, having an opportunity
to learn in different contexts, being able to experience a range
of learning styles, and having a menu or choice on offer to them
around the qualifications that they can take. In addition to that,
the environment needs to be the right kind of environment for
a young person to study in, where they feel very much that they
are part of and in control of negotiating their own learning.
By that I do not mean negotiating which curriculum they take but
how they navigate that curriculum, how they understand their own
skills and how they begin to develop their own skills themselves.
Personalisation for me is about a number of aspects related to
the way a young person learns. But fundamentally it is about the
way they plan their own learning; the way they understand how
they learn; and the way they can then negotiate the kind of learning
that will enable them to achieve what they need to achieve. It
is very much linked to assessment for learning—a young person
understanding where they are right now, where they need to go
and what they need to do to get there, whether it is in a formal
classroom, doing their mathematics, physics, chemistry or language,
or doing a particular project that involves all those subjects.
That to me is what personalised learning should be about and I
do not think that anyone would disagree with that, as one aspect
of it.
Q490 Chairman: That is a big challenge,
saying that no one would disagree with that. Would you agree with
it Tim?
Tim Oates: I am with the Select
Committee in respect of personalisation being flexible, fluid
and defined in different ways in different places by different
people. I think there is a significant issue around clarifying
it in practice. I think David has done very good work on it, but
we are not there at all yet. Only Ofsted mentioned the Leadbetter
concept of personalisation, which it refers to as deep personalisation
where the very structures of schooling are discussed and negotiated.
The time is ripe for really thrashing through the definitions,
otherwise confusion will exist in different agencies at different
levels of policy. If I can come back to the issue of the number
and coherence of qualifications; we have looked at the issue in
considerable detail. You might be pleased to know that we have
a comparable number of qualifications in this country to Germany,
which is not often heralded as a deeply incoherent system. We
have 5,850 qualifications on the QCA database. Those are vocational
qualifications.[1]
This is comparable to 4,000 in the German system. The notion of
an excessive number of qualifications giving rise to an incredibly
incoherent qualifications system in this country is just not right.
If young people learn differently and are taught differently in
different schools why does one stop at having different syllabuses
and forms of assessment? If the concern is standards—one
should be concerned about standards being expressed in different
qualification specifications—we have a completely adequate
technology for ensuring that the standards across different specifications
in the same subject are at the same level. For example in Australia
it is acknowledged that all qualifications equivalent to A-level
are not of the same level of demand. They are referenced back
to a system that enables universities to understand how different
A-level equivalents are at different levels of demand. The facts
here suggest that we have pushed the notion of reducing the number
of qualifications, and seeing that as consistent with coherence,
far too far in this national setting. As to personalisation it
needs to be realised in practice and defined in practice through
examples of good practice. I believe the work of David and colleagues
is taking exactly that forward.
Q491 Mr Heppell: A trick I learned
years ago was never to mind what question you are asked, but to
figure out what you want to tell them in the first place, and
tell them. That was nothing to do with my question. The veil has
still not yet been lifted from my eyes. Does anyone else want
to give us a definition?
Chairman: David is bidding.
Professor Hargreaves: We have
been struggling with this definition for four years, and I have
concluded that it is a total waste of time trying to find a tight
definition—it does not work; there are too many of them.
In that sense, my sympathies are entirely with Mr Heppell. The
current booklet from the Department quotes the definition given
in the Gilbert report on teaching well in 2020, of which I was
a member: "A highly structured and responsive approach to
each child's and young person's learning in order that all are
able to progress, achieve and participate. It means strengthening
the link between learning and teaching by engaging pupils—and
their parents—as partners in learning." In my view,
that is well-intentioned waffle. It is well intentioned, but it
means nothing. In fact, many schools will say that that is what
they do. There is no implication of action at all. Perhaps I can
share with Mr Heppell, through you, Chairman, the approach that
we took.
Mr Heppell: If you are David, I am John.
Professor Hargreaves: What we
did, John, was to ask what line they took for the definition of
personalisation in the business world. The answer was very simple:
"Instead of giving our customers a mass-produced product,
we will try to meet their needs"—
Q492 Mr Heppell: Customisation.
Professor Hargreaves: Yes, customisation:
"We shall try to meet the needs of customers more fully—for
more customers—than we have ever done before." So every
firm was challenged, because every firm had an opportunity to
do better. We took as our working definition a simple lift-over
from the business world. We said that customisation, or personalisation,
in education is intended to meet more of the educational needs
of more students, more fully, than we achieve today. The line
we took was exactly like an industry, which says that, to meet
those needs, it may have to redesign its product or service. We
have taken that line in schools: if that is what we are trying
to do, we may have to redesign what we offer as schooling. That
is the challenge. There is no straightforward definition. It is
not a state that a school reaches; it is a challenge to say, "You
can always do better with the children in the your care. What
do we need to do to redesign our product or service?" That
is what drives the business model. You always have to strive harder
to meet the needs and demands of your customers. Our line is that
you have to do that with young people, too. You do not have to
define it as an end product; you have to define it as a drive
from a profession—politicians, too, of course, have long
been involved—to reach higher standards for young people
by constantly challenging whether the design of what you do is
meeting your target.
Q493 Mr Heppell: Has Mick got
a view?
Mick Waters: Unless pressed, I
never use the word, because I think that it has become one of
those things that everyone says but hardly anyone does. However,
when it was first used in educational contexts, it was used to
describe the way in which you tried to bridge the gap between
achievement and social circumstances, securing equity for all
learners. It had to give everyone the best deal possible. If you
take that principle forward, every teacher in every school would
be looking at their children and thinking, "How can we make
the best progress possible for you?" You drive children as
far as they can; you pull them along as far as you can, and you
help them to make maximum progress in all aspects of their life.
That is about personalisation; it is looking for every trick.
At the simplest level, it is not creating one size fits all—we
are struggling with it, are we not? If you are a parent and you
take a child to buy a new coat, the average chain store will say,
"Coats for 8 to 10-year-olds here." What would not occur
to parents is the idea that you would put a coat on to a child
who is way too small, making the coat oversized, or that you would
ram a child into a coat that is three sizes too small. They would
say, "You're the wrong size for this; we'll try the right
one for you." I think that it is about finding the education
that fits the child, to take them as far as possible. But I do
not like the word.
Q494 Mr Heppell: What I think
I am hearing is that it is an ideal, rather than a system that
you want to put in at the moment. That is the difficulty for me.
I worry that people will take it as being a system. I was in a
school about a year ago where a head teacher told me, when I was
talking about SATs, that they were not too bothered about that,
as they had already adopted personalised learning. When I said,
"Well, how does that work?", they said, "We assess
each child individually; we don't believe in looking at them as
a group or as classes; we look at them as individuals." I
said, "Well, how do you keep a track?" They said, "We
have a record book with all of their work in." I asked if
I could see one of the children's work books. They did not exist.
Being blunt, it was quite obviously being used as a mechanism
for somebody who did not want to be tested or assessed by the
normal methods, to say that he was doing something different that
I would not understand, because I was not involved in education.
I worry about the fact that it could be misused if the language
is still used. What you are talking about is choice and entitlement,
is it not—how much of it should be choice and how much should
be entitlement? There is a difficulty with people saying, "That's
how I want to be taught, and this is what I want." It is
almost a case of asking what about the resources for doing it
that way, and what about the resources for doing it your way.
What are your views on that?
Tim Oates: I can assure you that
I will address your point. You have encapsulated it very well.
There is a risk that personalisation crashes headlong into the
concept of entitlement that was originally in the national curriculum.
For example, we know from research that girls have benefited in
respect of mathematics attainment by virtue of having been required
to study certain areas of mathematics, such as 3D representation,
which was systematically avoided by young females at certain ages.
In terms of their developmental stage, relative to boys, it was
an area that they preferentially avoided. That showed in the qualifications
data and in the assessment data prior to the national curriculum.
Requiring that young women tackle issues of 3D representation
in mathematics within the national curriculum has meant they have
become much better at it. You have to work against the natural
preferences that are inherent in the developmental phases of the
child. There is a risk that personalisation does exactly what
you are concerned about, which is to remove the requirement for
certain topic areas and areas of knowledge to be tackled at particular
key phases in a child's development. It is therefore incumbent
on us to make it clear where the margins of personalisation lie.
Sheila Dainton, who has now retired from the Association of Teachers
and Lecturers, and I became very concerned that the margins of
personalisation were not being specified with any degree of clarity,
running all the risks that that involves.
Q495 Mr Heppell: Does anyone have
any other view on that? What you are telling us is that you cannot
define this. Well, we had one definition that you tell us is waffle.
How do teachers in the field understand this if there is no definition?
Could you say, "Well, I'm not sure that person really needs
maths. It's quite obvious that they're not going to go into anything
that is values-based or anything."? Arts could be left out
of an individual's curriculum, too. I know that it sounds as though
I am going to the extremes, but that seems to be a possibility
if you are talking about personalisation that nobody can define
for us.
Professor Hargreaves: When you
cannot define it, the best thing to do is to not use it. I agree
with Mick. I think that it has outlived its usefulness. When Tony
Blair made the original challenge back in 2004, it was a very
real challenge. Today, our interest is in how to redesign the
whole experience of schooling, so that our young people achieve
more and find their education a good one. Personalisation was
a useful way forward at a certain period, to draw attention to
something. I am personally sorry that the Department has a thing
called "personalised learning", as though it is a thing
we can identify. It is not. "Personalised" was always
the wrong word; it was always a process of personalising, as in
the business world. It is past its usefulness. We would be much
better looking for words on which we can find more agreement—such
as curriculum, choice and entitlement—than having the debate
strained. Frankly, I wish the Department would drop the concept.
Q496 Mr Heppell: In some respects,
that is a point. Is not the idea of having a personalised curriculum
a contradiction or a bit of nonsense?
Professor Hargreaves: Yes.
Mick Waters: Just like the cars
that David was talking about earlier, there is the same chassis
and a particular style, but then you ask what refinements you
want. It is about offering youngsters real clarity about the chassis
of education that they need and the refinements, so the challenge
is that you need to find the right ones for the right children.
It is not just about preference. The point made earlier by Ms
Mactaggart was about the youngsters who were falling away and
not showing an interest. What about the youngsters who cannot
grasp what is there? There must be something that hooks them back
in. It is not just about preference and choice, but about saying,
"Come on, you need this. You are growing up. It is a chance.
Now, I am going to give you the chance and help you to learn it
through a good curriculum, through a good examination and through
a good learning experience." It has been a common term that
is easy to say.
Mr Heppell: I look forward to hearing
the Minister's definition.
Q497 Chairman: If you drop the
word, there is a balance between choice and entitlement. David,
I do not know whether you have faced that squarely.
Professor Hargreaves: There is
much more to this than choice and entitlement. It is quite interesting
that curriculum choice was one of the four components first used
by the Department in its first document in 2004. It no longer
appears in this document. I am not quite sure why, but I prefer
to talk about how we design schooling, so that it meets the needs
of young people. We need a very rich and extensive vocabulary
but, if you talk in those terms, we can debate various elements
of it, such as choice and entitlement; but there is a lot more
to talk about as well.
Q498 Mr Heppell: I have just thought
of the pamphlets. They are not personalised.
Professor Hargreaves: Yes. Well,
the early ones are called "Personalising Learning",
but the later ones are not, because we changed the language; it
ceased to be useful. The first series was called "Personalising
Learning", then it changed in the next two series. It had
really outlived its usefulness. It is referred to occasionally,
because the schools took a continuous journey, but Tony Blair
probably intended personalisation. It was a challenge to get you
to rethink certain things in education, and when that challenge
has been met, you have to adjust the language that you use.
Q499 Mrs Hodgson: I shall change
tack slightly. Research conducted by DCSF suggested that, to date,
schools' efforts in personalisation had focused mainly on helping
struggling pupils to catch up. That is not necessarily a bad thing
and, coming back to definitions, when I first heard of the concept
of personalisation and personalised learning, I understood it
to mean that it would be there to help struggling children to
catch up, as well as a gift to talented pupils to excel. Our whole
discussion on whether personalisation and personalised learning
should be dropped as a concept was all about the language. I tend
to disagree. As a concept, it is a good idea, but obviously pinning
it down in practice proves problematic. I am interested in the
whole area of special educational needs. I always manage to ask
about it in any investigation that we are carrying out. When I
first heard of the concept of personalisation and personalised
learning, I thought, "Great: we can have specialist teachers."
As Teresa said about her definition, if it is not a choice of
curriculum, but how they choose to access it, that is fantastic.
Let us say, for example, that children with dyslexia do not have
to access modern, foreign languages within the curriculum, while
gifted and talented children can perhaps do Latin and ancient
Greek. That is the definition of the phrase in my head. Mick's
definition—bridging the gap between achievement and social
background, to help them achieve maximum progress—is almost
similar to David Miliband's original definition in 2003.
Mick Waters: That's what I said;
I said the original definition.
1 Note by witness: The 5,850 qualifications
on the QCA website includes over 900 academic qualifications.
The rest are vocational qualifications. Back
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