Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-619)
RT HON
JIM KNIGHT
MP, SARAH MCCARTHY-FRY
MP AND IAN
HARRISON
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Q600 Mr Carswell: So the QCA has
perfect knowledge?
Jim Knight: No, I am not saying
that, but I think it is right that there should be some regulation
to ensure that we have more consistency, and the national curriculum
offers that consistency. Some advocate the scenario of 5,000 schools
on the Swedish free school model or the American charter school
model, which would assume that every secondary school was an independent
school, and that therefore we would have the end of the national
curriculum at secondary. I think that given the amount of public
interest in whether Churchill is taught in our schools, and that
when we specified the Second World War on a programme of study,
we assumed that everyone would understand that it would include
Churchill—
Q601 Mr Carswell: Surely, Mr Knight,
if there is all that public interest in ensuring that Churchill
is taught, and you as the Minister and officialdom from the centre
let go, then Churchill will be taught? Surely, if people want
that to be the case, it will be the case? It does not require
you, me, or any other here-today-gone-tomorrow politician or Dr.
Ken Boston, with his big contract, to dictate what is best for
every classroom. Surely, even you, a wise and eminent Minister,
will recognise that you do not have the wisdom to put your hand
in every classroom and tell them what is best?
Jim Knight: I would absolutely
agree that it is not up to me to prescribe what should be in every
lesson. It is not up to me to prescribe what should be covered
in any year, for any individual, but the public expect us to apply
consistency, because pupils move around quite a lot. The public
want us to say that there is a national curriculum with programmes
of study that are covered during the key stage—over that
three or four years—and wherever you go in the country,
that is what you will find.
Q602 Chairman: But why do you
free up some schools, such as academies, to have a much freer
hand with the curriculum? It is as though the cre"me de
la cre"me does not have to do what everyone else does.
Jim Knight: In some ways it is
the opposite to that view of the cre"me de la cre"me.
Academies are dealing with particularly difficult circumstances.
I do not agree to an academy in a locality unless there are particular
reasons why it needs to have the flexibility to innovate, including
curriculum flexibility. That does not apply in every secondary
school in the country—we do not need anywhere near that
level of innovation—but we do need it in circumstances where
we allow academies to go forward. Academies can then use their
curriculum flexibility, given the change that we made a year ago
for them to adhere to the national curriculum in respect of the
priority subjects.
Q603 Mr Carswell: So rich kids
at top schools like Eton and kids who are privileged and lucky
enough to go to academies can be not part of this standardisation,
but everyone else must go along with it?
Jim Knight: As I say, you can
buy into the argument that we should have an entitlement that
everyone understands and that you should have consistency, except
in certain circumstances where you need flexibility in order to
allow schools to focus on the basics and for pupils to be able
to catch up, which is what happens in academies. For those who
choose not to use the public system, that is up to them.
Chairman: We want to get on to Shakespeare,
but first there is a quick question from Paul.
Q604 Paul Holmes: I am the last
person, unlike my colleague Mr Carswell, to want an unregulated,
unfettered free market everywhere. You talked about the Swedish
free schools example to show that every school would do its own
thing. I have looked at those schools and they are quite a small
sample of Swedish schools—about the same as the number of
schools private schools in this country. When I was in Sweden,
I did not get the impression that in the Swedish schools system
every school was off doing wild, wacky and wonderful things. The
Swedish national curriculum is about six pages long, so they tell
me. They seem to manage to arrive at a national compromise, as
they do in Norway, Finland, and in Ontario, which the Committee
recently visited.
Jim Knight: But you will also
have been to see some of the American charter schools. There is
a huge variety in the charter school movement. I have visited
some of those schools, including the Green Dot schools in Los
Angeles, and the way in which they are run is very similar to
how the school district runs its schools. The KIPP—the Knowledge
Is Power Programme—schools run very long days. I saw some
excellent teaching in those schools.
Q605 Paul Holmes: We are talking
about curriculum content. For example, whether we should teach
Churchill and world war two in British history.
Jim Knight: But I see quite a
lot of differences when I look at those charter schools—some
I like, and some I do not, and I think that it is right to have
some consistency.
Q606 Paul Holmes: I know it shows
my age, but I taught history, and I was a head of history for
nine years before the national curriculum was imposed by the Conservative
Government in 1988. In that nine-year period, I never saw a school
that did not teach world war two and Churchill. After the national
curriculum came in they taught it, and as the national curriculum
gets slimmed down more and more they will still teach it, because
people just agree that they are important things to be taught.
Jim Knight: Did you teach the
Holocaust and the slave trade?
Paul Holmes: Yes.
Jim Knight: Did every school?
Paul Holmes: Certainly the Holocaust.
I never came across a school that did not. And the slave trade,
by and large.
Jim Knight: I am not so sure.
There are a range of subjects that people think it is important
to cover.
Q607 Paul Holmes: That is what
the national curriculum has always done in history. You would
specify in great detail exactly which bits should be included.
The Conservative education spokesperson would then talk in great
detail about the bits that they would specify.
Jim Knight: The only things specified
for Key Stage 3 are the Holocaust, the slave trade and the world
wars. We do not specify in any more detail than that.
Paul Holmes: But the next politician
of whichever party or colour would specify their pet hobby-horses.
It is a bit like Shakespeare, to whom we are coming next.
Chairman: We will move on to Shakespeare.
Q608 Fiona Mactaggart: I am slightly
struck by the previous remark that Shakespeare might be some politician's
pet hobby-horse. Shakespeare is regarded, fairly universally,
as probably the world's greatest playwright, and as I understand,
his work is a mandatory part of the Key Stage 3 curriculum. I
am interested in what mechanisms are used to enforce this terribly
impressive curriculum that I have been hearing about from my colleagues.
You will be aware of the written notice that we received from
the Royal Shakespeare Company. It says that since the announcement
that Key Stage 3 tests are to be abandoned, nearly half the schools
registered on its training courses for Shakespeare have cancelled.
What do you think of that?
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: From a personal
point of view, I think that Shakespeare plays are meant to be
watched and listened to, and not necessarily read. I do not think
that they come alive until people see them performed. We recommend
that schools should study Shakespeare through the experience of
watching performances. You are right—it is a statutory programme.
Students must study two plays by Shakespeare, one of which should
be studied at Key Stage 3. That emphasises the importance that
we put on the study of Shakespeare.
I am disappointed that schools have taken
that line, and we must do more research to find out why. However,
there are other ways for schools to access performing arts, other
than through study. We are looking at learning outside the classroom,
which I mentioned earlier. Many of those packages take the classroom
into the theatre. We also have the Find Your Talent
pilot projects that are jointly funded by the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport. Many of those projects are about getting students
into theatres, and result in children not just watching Shakespeare
being performed but actually taking part. However, I agree. We
are right to be concerned about schools not taking up that option.
Q609 Fiona Mactaggart: You said
that you would like more research. Will you monitor whether this
is a blip or a pattern and, if it looks like a pattern, can you
tell the Committee what you will do about it?
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: You are absolutely
right. We must check whether this is a blip or a reaction to something,
which might resolve itself later when people realise that there
are other options. The scrapping of the Key Stage 3 test is quite
new, and schools are still exploring how they will flex their
curriculum in line with that. If it looks as if we no longer wish
to watch Shakespeare being performed and are going to study it
only in writing, I would be worried and would want to do something
about that.
Jim Knight: Within the wider context
of the Key Stage 3 test announcement, we set up the expert group
and we expect it to come back to us about this matter. We should
not pretend that the teaching of a Shakespeare play at Key Stage
3 was an unadulterated success. I think it put some young people
off Shakespeare, because of what Sarah described. If a play is
just read out in class, the experience is not the same. The RSC
produced the excellent Stand up for Shakespeare manifesto,
which is about performing Shakespeare and seeing it performed.
We have had pilots, with 20,000 pupils going to Shakespeare live.
I have seen some of the letters from the young people who went
to see Shakespeare, transforming their opinion of Shakespeare,
so we can learn from that as well as seeing what the expert group
tells us about how we ensure that the use of teacher assessment
and some of the earlier assessments in years 7 and 8 ensure that
we deliver the Key Stage 3 commitment to studying a whole Shakespeare
play.
Q610 Fiona Mactaggart: There is
another area where we are putting something into the curriculum,
and I am interested in how that works and how the accountability
for it will work. I am referring to making PSHE—personal,
social and health education—a mandatory part of the curriculum.
Jim, you just talked about how positively the SEAL materials have
been received by schools, and I have certainly had that feedback
in schools in my constituency. If we look at the Ofsted report
about how schools are doing on personal development and well-being,
it is quite an impressive record: except in pupil referral units,
where there is a 6%. unsatisfactory rate, in no other area of
education, apart from those private schools that Ofsted inspects,
is there a worse than 1%. unsatisfactory rate. In the private
sector, there seems to be a higher level of unsatisfactory education
in pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and
the overall welfare, health and safety of pupils. Do you think
that that might be because they do not have clear enough guidance
about how to deal with issues of personal, social, health, moral
and cultural education? If that is the case, what can be done
about it?
Jim Knight: It may be the case.
Obviously, I focus on state-maintained schools and academies.
When we were doing the review that led up to the decision to make
PSHE statutory, we looked at the Ofsted themed review of PSHE,
which said that although the standard of PSHE teaching was improving,
it was still not consistently good enough. In respect of how independent
schools deal with those personal well-being issues, given that
Ofsted inspects and Ofsted is independent from me, I probably
have to reserve judgment to some extent and leave it to your evidence
sessions with Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty's chief inspector
of schools.
Fiona Mactaggart: My colleague wants
to ask about PSHE from a slightly different perspective.
Q611 Mr Slaughter: Yes, I shall
turn it round the other way perhaps, although it may be better
to start with a comparison about the practicalities. PSHE appears
to have grown, a bit like a monster, from what it originally started
out as, and some of the things that we have heard are part of
it are health and safety, sex and relationships, drugs and alcohol,
economic awareness, financial capability, careers and citizenship.
Jim Knight: Citizenship is separate.
Mr Slaughter: Exactly, but it is all
the same sort of thing, is it not? It is things that would not
have been thought of as part of the mainstream curriculum 20 years
ago and that may well be very good things for children to know
about, but that increasingly impinge on those parts of the curriculum
that were previously reserved for what one might call rather more
established learning. Do you feel that they are pushing subject
knowledge, for want of a better phrase, out of the curriculum,
and are they altering the balance of education, including up to
secondary school level, in a way that perhaps is not helpful to
achieving a rounded education?
Chairman: Sarah, shall we start with
you?
Mr Slaughter: Let us start with Mr Harrison
and work up the line.
Ian Harrison: I can comment on
the SEAL materials, because we are responsible for producing them,
and they have been welcomed by just about all schools. They are
central to developing improvements in schools and improving teaching
and learning. It is all about ensuring that teachers relate to
pupils and their emotional development, attendance and behaviour
in a very constructive way, and in a way that links to learning
and develops a positive learning environment. That element is
important in underpinning everything else that we do in English,
maths, science and so on.
Q612 Mr Slaughter: I do not disagree
with the principle. It springs out of a child-centred learning
concept, which is about getting the best out of the individual
child and ensuring that each child gets the support that they
need so that there is a more level playing field as a basis for
learning. However, if we go too far along that route so that the
curriculum is filled with things that I have talked about, which
is not really established teaching, is there enough time to educate?
Ian Harrison: Very briefly, what
the new secondary curriculum does for us in terms of the core
subjects is what we are responsible for. It leaves greater flexibility
for schools to spend time on them if they need to do so. What
you say simply does not apply to English, maths, science and ICT.
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Anecdotally,
when I go into schools, particularly in some of our more deprived
areas, teachers say, "I have kids coming in here without
social or communications skills. It has taken me a couple of years
to get them up to a level at which I am able to teach them."
As Ian was saying, building that into the curriculum helps to
deliver the core subjects. As we move into the secondary area,
it comes down to the question of what we are educating young people
for. Are we just educating them to be able to spew out facts,
or are we educating them to be rounded citizens, employable and
to have the skills that employers want, which is where we need
to bring in those bits as well?
Jim Knight: To some extent this
goes back to the earlier questioning from Graham and Douglas about
the linkage of subjects. It is possible to cover a lot of the
citizenship programme study through the traditional academic subjects
if people design the timetable and curriculum in that way. I have
seen SEAL taught in primary schools. One school in Nottingham
was using Shirley Hughes's excellent book Dogger to explore
the issue of loss. It also helped with literacy, reading books,
understanding them and understanding the whole meaning—not
just the words in a book. Creative use of timetabling and curriculum
means that we can cover PHSE and citizenship, which some people
might describe as "new, trendy stuff", within the traditional
setting. Equally, we have to ensure that we have it covered so
that people have life skills, as Sarah says.
Q613 Mr Slaughter: I agree with
what Sarah said. If we are going to be anecdotal, we have all
seen how horrifically unprepared for school or life children can
be at nursery and primary school level. They need to be taught
social skills and things of that kind. I do not know whether that
is different from how it used to be. If we get on to secondary
school level, in which, hopefully, that is not so much the case—
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: I would not
bank on it, which is why we need to have it come through the primary
curriculum. I do not want to interrupt, but that transition phase
from primary to secondary is crucial, and it is an area in which
many children are falling behind. If we are using that life skills-type
education through primary, children will be more able to cope
with the transition to secondary.
Q614 Mr Slaughter: Let me tell
you about an unfortunate by-product of it. You get a lot of introspection
with children in schools now and a lot of quite lax teaching because
a lot of it is talking about children's lives and experiences
and things of that kind in a way that is not rigorous or focused
on learning. I did about an hour-and-a-half in a very good sixth
form college—we are not talking about somewhere that is
not performing—and the questions were about student grants
and knife crime, which are important subjects, but when somebody
got up and said, "How can you justify the future of the Royal
Prerogative?" it was such a breath of fresh air because suddenly
we were talking about a serious, rigorous, academic subject. I
know that that is not necessarily what is going to happen in every
lesson, but do you not feel that too much time of the curriculum
is taken up by issues which are essentially about social and life
skills and not about learning?
Jim Knight: I simply do not. I
think that when employers and university vice-chancellors and
so on talk to us about who is coming in to the workplace or university
and when others talk to us about young people, the criticism is
more likely to be that they have lots of academic knowledge but
they are not applying it sufficiently in real-world settings.
It is not that we have given up on the academics—we are
doing well in terms of people studying those academic subjects
and doing well in tests and examinations—but the application
of that and the confidence to be able to communicate is something
that we need to do more of, not less.
Q615 Chairman: I do not see whether
we can agree on this. We have one more section but can I just
take you back, briefly, to do a bit of a forensic on Shakespeare?
The answer you gave Fiona on that deeply troubled me. It seems
to me that if we look at why 50% of schools have ceased sending
their kids to the theatre—
Paul Holmes: The Royal Shakespeare Company
said that 50% of the teachers booked on continuous professional
development courses—teaching them how to teach for the assessment
tests—had cancelled.
Chairman: Correct me if I am wrong on
this, but it also said that the number of children going to see
performances has dropped. It is a worrying trend. It seemed to
key into a different view of the curriculum that you have, Ministers.
You have stopped doing a Key Stage test and suddenly people say,
"Oh, we don't have to do that anymore. We can get on with
doing preparation for other tests. We can get back into the curriculum.
We don't want to go out of the school unnecessarily, just to expand
the children's vision about Shakespeare, or learning outside the
classroom." This takes us back to the real worry. We found
that, when looking at testing and assessment with our method of
accountability—with inspection and what happens to teachers
in schools if they do not do the GCSE A to C, and all that—it
frightens everyone into doing nothing that is not there for improving
the tests, which will then improve you and the inspectorate. Is
that not frightening? To me, that is not the description of a
broader, exciting curriculum; it is still a whole group of people
who are frightened to expand the imagination of children by taking
them to see Shakespeare. Is that not rather worrying?
Jim Knight: It is undoubtedly
the case that, if something is part of a statutory test, that
focuses minds and drives behaviour so that teachers will then
be likely to sign up to the RSC and the Globe and ask for some
help in how to teach with the test in mind. It stands to reason
that that would be the case. Having moved on from the Key Stage
3 test in English and maths, some people have said, "What
shall we do instead?" which is why we have people such as
Ian and his organisation offering those people helpful advice
to empower them to do better. It is also why it is good that in
respect of Shakespeare, we have already been working over the
past year or so, on how to improve the teaching and appreciation
of Shakespeare at Key Stage 3, including a whole Shakespeare play.
If 20,000 pupils go along to see a whole Shakespeare play—for
the first time for many of them—and if some of them get
up on their hind legs and perform Shakespeare, that appreciation
will come.
Q616 Chairman: All I am asking
is that you look at this in a different way—in the way that
Fiona asked you to look at it—and do some research, because
it is quite chilling if schools do not want their students to
go and see Shakespeare if that will not be examined. There is
something worrying about that, and it is all very well for you
to have a manifesto for out-of-school learning and so on, but
unless you do something, our children will increasingly not go
out of school.
Jim Knight: We will happily look
at this. I am going with some young people to the RSC to see The
Comedy of Errors in January as part of these visits. I will
talk to the RSC and Michael Boyd about whether there is evidence
of a reduction in the interest in Shakespeare and the number of
people going to performances, or whether it is, as Paul described,
just a particular thing around the relationship between Shakespeare
and Key Stage 3 SATs.
Q617 Chairman: You realise that
I have a vested interest in this, because a Huddersfield lad,
Patrick Stewart, is performing in Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare
Company.
Jim Knight: Excellent. I am also
hoping to get a ticket to see Patrick Stewart and one or two others
in "Hamlet".
Mr Stuart: He is not playing the title
role.
Chairman: No, he is not playing the title
role; he is a bit old for Hamlet.
Jim Knight: You know who is, Graham?
Doctor Who.
Chairman: Behave yourself.
Q618 Paul Holmes: To go back to
the point, as someone who loves Shakespeare, and before Fiona
gets too cross with me, I learned that love not at school, but
as an adult. She made the same point as me about history. Just
as I never met a history teacher, being one myself, who did not
want to teach world war two and the Holocaust, I never met an
English teacher who did not want to teach Shakespeare, but the
fact that they may not want to go on training courses on passing
the Key Stage 3 assessment test is not the same as saying that
they will teach Shakespeare at school, or get the kids to perform
it, and so on. My particular point is that in the submission that
your Department made to the Committee, you said in paragraph 72
that assessment follows and reflects the curriculum. Surely, as
the Chairman said, the fact is that, as soon as you remove the
assessment bit, people stop going to the training courses on passing
the assessment. Surely, it is the other way round, as our report
suggested some time ago: the curriculum follows the assessment,
not the other way round.
Jim Knight: As I said, undoubtedly
the assessment drives behaviour to a certain extent and it is
important that the expert group considers the issue of having
taken away that driver and how to ensure that we consistently
apply the national curriculum through Key Stage 3, teacher assessment
at the end of it, and sampling to ensure that we are getting that
consistency that I have talked about all the way through, and
that pupils are getting their entitlement to learning across a
broad and balanced curriculum that we want in the national curriculum.
Q619 Paul Holmes: One of the big
criticisms of English teachers concerning literature and Shakespeare
is that because of the assessment tests all the kids are doing
is reading extracts from books, Shakespeare and so on. They are
not reading a whole book.
Jim Knight: Yes, I discussed with
Michael Rosen and the Secretary of State last week the importance
of more whole books being studied throughout pupils' school careers.
That is an important legacy that we want to achieve through the
national year of reading, instead of testing extracts so far.
Chairman: As we get to this stage, I
must declare an interest because, in terms of out-of-school learning,
you will know that John Clare has just been put on the national
curriculum.
Jim Knight: That must be as a
result of excellent campaigning by the Chairman.
Chairman: The last section will be led
by Edward, who has been extraordinarily patient. He who would
be first will be last, and vice versa.
| 
