Memorandum submitted by Tom Burkard
SUMMARY
Current efforts to "manage" the
behaviour of disengaged pupils are unlikely to make much difference.
The underlying assumptions of modern education virtually guarantee
that a substantial minority of pupils will find school such an
unrewarding experience that they will become chronic truants or
school-refusers (if we are lucky) or violent and disruptive (if
we aren't). The crucial factors are:
1. Discovery learning—described by Jerome
Bruner as "the most inefficient technique possible for regaining
what has been gathered over a long period of time"—poses
insurmountable obstacles for pupils with poor working memory;
deficits in this area are central to hyperactivity and low attainment
in literacy and maths.
2. The Early Years Foundation Stage has reinforced
teachers' perception that children must reach developmental milestones
before reading instruction can begin. This is disastrous for low-ability
pupils with any kind of learning difficulty: for them, keeping
up is a challenge, and catching up is all but impossible. Effective
reading instruction is the key to social and intellectual development.
3. The curriculum has been progressively stripped
of declarative knowledge—which virtually all children can
master—and replaced with a "problem-solving" approach.
In fact, problem-solving depends upon knowledge bases which children
of poorly-educated parents are unlikely to have.
4. Mixed-ability teaching necessitates "differentiation"—the
personalised learning agenda promoted in the Gilbert Review is
the ultimate expression of this absurdity. High school teachers
often have more than 150 pupils, and it is sheer fantasy to assume
that they can "personalise" instruction for all of them.
Pupils with low ability, as well as those who are very bright,
frequently become bored past all endurance.
5. "Inclusive" policies put low-ability
children in daily contact with pupils who are far more able. Low-ability
pupils have a very high incentive to disrupt any activity which
will expose their inferiority.
6. The SEN Code of Practice ensures that teachers
and psychologists explain educational failure in terms of problems
within the pupil, rather than failings in the educational environment.
7. Contrary to the assertions of ideologues,
competition does not demotivate low-ability pupils. In fact, nothing
motivates them more—my SEN pupils used to beg for quizzes
and contests.
8. Continual exhortations for pupils to "aim
high" and "don't settle for a dead-end job" demean
manual work, and ensure high continuing rates of immigration.
9. The consensual or corporate model of authority
has weakened the authority of teachers.
1. Discovery learning
Discovery learning relies upon children's inclination
and ability to conduct their own learning with limited input and
guidance from the teachers. If the work is to be of anything more
than the most trivial significance, the pupil must be able to
entertain complex material, weigh the importance and relationship
of various elements, and form judgements and new hypotheses to
guide further investigations. Pupils who lack this ability are
often considered to have an attention deficit disorder; alternately,
they may be dismissed as "lazy".
Psychologists now recognise the key role played
by working memory in behaviour and academic achievement. As a
recent Canadian study summarised,
What this new research has shown is that the
primary problem with ADHD is not behaviour, but rather cognition.
That is, the underlying deficit in ADHD is a cognitive control
problem that effects both cognitive functioning and behaviour.
One of the primary cognitive control mechanisms is working memory.
Working memory plays a major role in helping the mind focus on
task while screening out distractions. Working memory functions
as temporary storage of knowledge that is applied to tasks of
comprehension, computation and planning. As a result, researchers
have shown that poor working memory is related to poor academic
achievement, especially in subjects associated with language arts
and mathematics.[1]
Children with poor working memory normally make
good progress when taught with direct instruction. Basic sub-skills
must be thoroughly mastered before attempting higher-level work.
For instance, when number facts are learnt to the point of automaticity,
the pupil's working memory is freed to master basic algorithms.
When these have been mastered, the pupil's attention is thus freed
to apply these algorithms to problem-solving. The current practice
of encouraging children to "explore" number by using
alternative methods of computation—which supposedly teaches
"concept of number"[2]—places
an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of pupils who have
enough trouble mastering standard algorithms. However, modern
educators will do almost anything to avoid "rote learning"
(once described as "learning something so that it may be
reliably recalled at a later date").
It is difficult to judge the extent to which
our teachers rely upon self-directed learning. Obviously, there
is a direct contradiction between meeting mandated curriculum
requirements and allowing children the freedom to pursue their
own investigations. In practice, teachers probably rely on direct
instruction more than is commonly assumed; as Robin Alexander
once observed, discovery learning can degenerate into "a
charade of pseudo-inquiry which fools nobody, least of all the
children, but which wastes a great deal of time".[3]
We suspect that infant teachers are the worst
offenders: they are the most likely to have completed a three—or
four-year ITT course, and hence most likely to identify emotionally
with modern learning theory. The success of our own Wave 3 intervention
rests largely on the fact that it is normally delivered by teaching
assistants, who seldom have a problem with direct instruction.
But for most children with poor working memory,
infant school sows the seeds of future behaviour problems. A USDoE
study concluded that "What brings about the delinquency is
not the academic failure per se, but sustained frustration which
results from continued failure to achieve selected academic goals."[4]
Recent research on working memory, ADHD and cognition can be reviewed
at http://www.cogmed.com/adhd-working-memory
2. Early Years Foundation Stage
If the decision to introduce synthetic phonics
was a massive setback for the educational establishment, with
the introduction of the EYFS in 2008 they managed to claw back
a lot of ground. In 2007, we had little difficulty convincing
quite a number of infant schools to introduce our synthetic phonics
materials in Reception Year: but with the EYFS, this is no longer
possible. Now, pupils in Reception must "learn through play".
The EYFS has also re-introduced the concept
of "reading readiness". The old National Literacy Strategy,
for all its faults, at least recognised the overwhelming evidence
that children who fall behind in reading have very little chance
of catching up. The EYFS has introduced a developmental inventory
to classify children who are deemed to be unready to engage the
National Curriculum. Once more, schools have ready-made excuses
for failure. As the Southampton evaluation of our Bear Necessities
Wave 3 intervention pointed out, literacy instruction facilitates
development:
A noticeable development in children's ability
to concentrate and focus was also noted by several schools, a
difficulty which had been initially identified as a barrier to
children's success in reading… At the start of the pilot,
teachers had cited speech difficulties as one reason why some
pupils were not being successful at reading. Interestingly, data
confirmed that whilst 37% of pupils did show some speech difficulties
at the start of the intervention, this did not continue to intrude
as a barrier to learning… Furthermore, the number of pupils
manifesting initial speech difficulties, fell to 16% after six
months, suggesting that the programme itself had alleviated some
symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of maintaining
high expectations for these pupils and not using speech difficulties
as an excuse for poor attainment.[5]
Advocates of delaying reading instruction point
to the low rates of reading failure in Germany and Scandinavia,
where children don't start school until age six or even seven.
They neglect to mention that their languages are phonetically
very regular, and synthetic phonics has always been the norm—it
would be perverse to teach reading with any other method. Indeed,
teaching children to read these languages is so simple that most
children have mastered basic decoding skills before they start
school. A recent CfBT review of studies from around the world
came down firmly on the side of direct instruction for very young
children.[6]
Few would doubt that success in learning to
read is a crucial element in pupil behaviour. An American study
of youthful offenders arrested for violent crime reported that:
…The present study was unsuccessful in
attempting to correlate aggression with age, family size, or number
of parents present in the home, rural versus urban environment,
socio-economic status, minority group membership, religious preference,
etc. Only reading failure was found to correlate with aggression
in both groups of delinquent boys. It is possible that reading
failure is the single most significant factor in those forms of
delinquency which can be described as anti-socially aggressive.
I am speaking of assault, arson, sadistic acts directed against
peers and siblings, major vandalism, etc.[7]
If reading failure is strongly indicated the
most significant factor in violent anti-social behaviour, there
is good reason to believe that success in learning to read acts
as a prophylactic. Durand Academy in Stockwell has 900 pupils,
95% of whom are Black Minority Ethnic, and all of whom can read.
Head Greg Martin reports that "…in my 23 years as Head
Teacher, only one child was ever excluded."[8]
3. The corruption of the curriculum
Michael Gove acted swiftly to suspend the new
National Strategies, but it will take quite some time to purge
the system of the intellectual poison contained in the Gilbert
Review. As Colin McKenzie—an outstanding science teacher
in Cumbria—put it:
The drift away from content has become so pronounced
in recent years that many young and "successful" teachers
find it laughable that we might want to reinstate knowledge and
understanding as the central tenet of education.[9]
The young and "successful" teachers
he refers to are those who have completed the new Masters in Teaching
and Learning. The notion that children can be taught all-purpose
"critical thinking skills" is absolute moonshine: understanding
how a historian or a biologist works will be of very little use
to a mathematician. Knowledge and understanding are inextricably
intertwined. Our ability to evaluate new information from any
source is absolutely dependent upon our prior knowledge of the
subject. There are no short-cuts to wisdom. The intellectual pretensions
of the "21st century skills" lobby have been mercilessly
exposed by the eminent American cognitive scientist Daniel T Willingham
in Why don't students like school?. This book should be
required reading for anyone with an interest in education.[10]
The children of educated parents are spared
the worst consequences of modern educational follies. Unfortunately,
these theories have been dominant in England's schools for over
two generations, and many children born today have grandparents
who can barely read and write, and know nothing of the world beyond
what they see on television. The problem of the underclass has
nothing to do with "resources": in the last 45 years,
the United States has spent $150 billion on Head Start and other
Title 1 programmes, and there is very little to show for it. According
to Head Start Impact Study—by far the largest evaluation
to date—"the benefits of access to Head Start at age
four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population
as a whole."[11]
We should not discount the possibility that
there is a substantial genetic component to IQ. But whatever the
explanation for low ability, to date all attempts to raise it
have proved disappointing, and low-ability pupils simply are not
good at the "problem-solving" activities favoured by
educators. Bearing this in mind, it is clear that a curriculum
which devalues declarative knowledge—rote-learning, if you
will—dooms low-ability pupils to failure.
On the other hand, low-ability pupils can achieve
far more than they do now. My proposals to train ex-soldiers as
teachers came as a result of seeing what the Army can do with
the most unpromising recruits, young men who have left school
with absolutely nothing to show for it except attitude problems.
Having served as a military instructor in the Royal Pioneers,
and having taught in a Norwich comprehensive, I have no hesitation
whatever in claiming that the military's training methods are
vastly more effective and humane than the supposedly "child-centred"
practices advocated by our educational establishment. Military
instructors are given freedoms that teachers in state schools
can only dream about. The prestige of Britain's armed forces contrasts
starkly with the reputation of England's "bog-standard"
comprehensives.
4. Mixed-ability teaching
There is very little evidence to indicate that
pupils in mixed-ability classes learn more than those who are
grouped by ability. Jo Boaler and Dylan Wiliam have published
results of interventions which have shaped the "personalised
learning" project that was heavily promoted by New Labour,
but Boaler's ideas are, to put it politely, original. Her big
idea is "ethnomathematics"—a creed which, according
to a Wall Street Journal article by Diane Ravitch, argues
that:
…traditional mathematics—the mathematics
taught in universities around the world—is the property
of Western Civilization and is inexorably linked with the values
of the oppressors and conquerors.[12]
A more sober assessment of mixed-ability teaching
can be found on the Teaching Battleground blog:
…the movement for mixed ability classes
is indistinguishable from the movement against teaching. The mixed
ability class teacher is not a teacher at all. They are, often
quite explicitly, a facilitator. They are a person who designs
educational activities for children but doesn't actually tell
them what they need to know. They are a friend to the child, but
not an expert on an academic subject.[13]
It is usually argued that ability-grouping condemns
the least-able to an inferior education. Insofar as the bottom
sets are taught by low-ability teachers, this is undoubtedly true.
Giving heads enough incentives to sack useless teachers is, alas,
probably beyond the reach of any government.
However, it is far from clear that low-ability
pupils fare any better in a mixed-ability class, where group work
and project work frees teachers from the impossible task of "differentiating"
or "personalising" learning for all pupils. As the Teaching
Battleground blog notes:
[Group work] is actually misnamed as it is highly
impractical for an entire group to do the work. A better name
for it would be "Sarah, the bright girl and her friend Lucy's
work". However as long as Kevin, who sat at the same table
picking his nose, is allowed to write his name on the back of
the piece of work then the teacher can claim that Kevin has also
worked in the lesson.[14]
Ever since mankind discovered the advantages
of trade, increasing specialisation of function has created continuous
advances in productivity—a lesson which is lost on our ideologically-motivated
educators.
5. Inclusion
The violent aggression of a single pupil can
be enough to ruin a teacher's career and blight the education
of hundreds of pupils. It gives entirely the wrong message to
all parties concerned: extreme anti-social behaviour pays, and
the laws governing human society don't really mean anything. "Inclusive"
policies have exactly the opposite of their intended effect—they
destroy social cohesion, ripping apart human communities which
supposedly play a critical role in socialising young people. Other
pupils who would not otherwise have the courage to misbehave are
encouraged to emulate and follow the worst examples.
The reluctance of headmasters and school governors
to permanently exclude violent pupils is in part a function of
the fact that they don't have to directly experience the consequences
of their decisions, but mostly it is a function of moral cowardice.
No one wants to be portrayed as the meanie who says "no".
Nor do they want to take an action which could have unpleasant
repercussions if the excluded pupils' parents storm into the school
or take legal action. Nor do they want to jeopardise their chances
of promotion within the local authority.
Even the pupil who is spared exclusion does
not benefit, save for the dubious following he will attract as
a romantic anti-hero who has bested authority. He (and it is almost
always a he) will be denied the possibility of functioning as
a useful member of society. When he is older, he will almost certainly
supplement his welfare entitlements with the proceeds of crime.
It is perhaps a small mercy that he will not expect to live long.
The coalition is well aware of this problem,
and Michael Gove has accepted our proposals to train ex-service
personnel as teachers, and to encourage Skill Force to run pupil
referral units. New Labour's solutions—such as school behaviour
partnerships—were sticking-plaster measures which created
bureaucratic structures which had little function beyond preserving
the fiction that inclusion was working.
We are currently working on a radical proposal
to limit local authorities' responsibility to excluded pupils
to the provision of a school voucher to the amount previously
attached to the pupil—this is being presented to the Department
in our submission to the SEN review, and attached to this paper.
6. The SEN Code of Practice
It is hard to take seriously a document which
claims that:
A child has Special Educational Needs if
he or she has a learning difficulty which calls for special
educational provision to be made for him or her.[15]
The Code specifies in great detail the procedures
which local authorities and schools must follow, but is strangely
mute about outcomes. Its operating assumption is that educational
failure is due to factors within the child or his home—and
it never results from inadequate or misconceived teaching. The
main purpose of the Code is to protect schools and local authorities
from legal action for failing to meet pupils' individual needs,
as required by the 1981 Education Act. It operates by conflating
pupils with genuine medical needs with those whose problems only
began once they crossed the school gate. This egregious legislation,
for all its humane intentions, is unworkable and must be repealed.
At one SEN exhibition, our stall was next to
that of a company that sold software which enabled teachers to
create Individual Education Plans and other documentation by choosing
alternative phrases from drop-down boxes. Their main selling point
was that their software was continuously updated to reflect changing
DCFS requirements: needless to say, they did a lively trade.
My submission to the Department on the SEN consultation
suggests a market-led approach similar to the system created by
the MacKay Amendment in Florida.
7. Competition—the magic motivator
Unlike teachers, military instructors are advised
to incorporate competition into lessons wherever possible. However,
competition works just as well in schools as it does in the Army.
You just have to be careful when inspectors are around. Obviously,
it won't work well in mixed-ability classes. But when everyone
in the class has an honest chance, losing is a powerfully-motivating
experience. As a school in Essex discovered, competition can even
get boys reading fiction.[16]
8. Aiming high
These days, no high school is complete without
posters urging pupils to "aim high" and "don't
settle for a dead end job". No doubt these are well-meant,
but it is incredible that educators who claim to worry so much
about pupils' self-esteem can be so crass when it comes to pupils
whose lack of academic achievement will limit them to low-status
work. Insulting youths who decide that a "McJob" is
better than signing on is not an honourable way to encourage pupils
to go on to further education.
Indeed, one wonders why no one bothers to warn
them about "dead-end degrees", such as a BA in Media
Studies at one of our newer universities. Nor why NVQs are known
as "No Value Qualifications". Or that at least a half
of those starting a university degree are worse off financially
for their trouble.[17]
Contrary to what our educators would have you
believe, Britain's labour shortages are at the bottom end of the
market: for every Indian doctor or Hungarian dentist, there are
dozens of immigrants washing cars and cleaning offices. Our NEETs
are a direct result of the insidious propaganda to denigrate honest
work.
9. Authority
Teacher's authority has been so badly eroded
in recent years that it's hard to know where to start. The malign
influence of courses in "behaviour management" has created
conditions where teachers are assumed to be at fault when pupils
misbehave. This is not just a reflection on education: in the
real world, we are all uncomfortable with the idea of individual
authority. Managers derive their authority from committees and
consensual mechanisms.
It doesn't have to be this way. At the Durand
Academy in Stockwell, Headmaster Greg Martin writes:
Discipline is incredibly important in schools
if you hope to create an environment that is conducive to concentration
and effective learning. At Durand, from day one of a child's education
we make our expectations for good behaviour explicitly clear.
We expect children to wear their uniforms correctly, move around
the school in an orderly fashion, listen and focus in class and
respect one another. Most importantly we ensure that all teachers,
parents and carers are fully on board with this holistic approach.
"So, the youngest child aged three enters
into this whole-school culture, where the practices are observed
in every corridor, stairwell, dinner hall and of course classroom—it
is part of our DNA."
"With this consistent approach, new children
or late starters quickly adapt and settle in. A marked effect
of this has been that those that have joined the school with alleged
behavioural problems are led by the example of every one of their
peers and class leaders, dinner ladies and teaching assistants,
and we soon find that the bad behaviour is nullified."[18]
Visiting Durand Academy, one is immediately
struck by the lack of random movement and background chatter.
The pupils are very exuberant at break time, but their classes
(unusually for a state primary school, all pupils are grouped
by ability) are firmly led by teachers who have been recruited
and trained the way Greg Martin wants them trained.
CONCLUSION
The problems outlined above are systemic, and
they reflect an ideology with an international dimension. They
cannot be solved by creating more management structures: proposals
to "professionalise" the SEN workforce would do nothing
more than encourage teachers to look for excuses instead of solutions.
Politicians should reflect that the driving
force behind the Gilbert Review did not come from those who actually
have to teach our children. They should scrutinise every proposal
devised by experts, and ask themselves how many non-contact jobs
they would create—and how much non-contact work it will
create for over-burdened teachers. As a veteran of the SEN industry,
I can vouch that SEN professionals are very good at consulting
each other, and devising paper-chases that lead nowhere. School
partnerships, integrated delivery and inter-agency collaboration
are merely devices for diffusing responsibility and creating excuses
for more meetings.
October 2010
APPENDIX
Parents of pupils who are permanently excluded
for behaviour problems should also be entitled to a voucher, but
the local authority should have no further responsibility. This
would concentrate the minds of parents with poorly-disciplined
children—and it would stimulate the creation of effective
private or third-sector provision.
The welfare state originated as a benign safety
net for the weak, the poor and for people who were merely down
on their luck. Gradually, it has mutated into a monster which
shields people from the consequences of feckless or anti-social
behaviour. With the 1981 Education Act, the responsibility for
violent and disruptive behaviour in the classroom was effectively
transferred from the pupil and his or her parents to the local
authority.
We now have a bizarre situation where local
authorities are paying anything up to £150,000 per year to
contain a single pupil with severe behaviour problems—yet
at the same time, hundreds of thousands of well-behaved children
are not being taught the most basic skills they will need to survive
as adults.
We should be careful not to demonise all violent
and disruptive pupils. As much as it offends our sense of justice
when young bloods swagger back into school after a short temporary
exclusion for assaulting a teacher or a fellow pupil, few of them
are beyond redemption. I've worked with kids at the margins of
society for over 40 years—and very few of them are psychopaths.
Nearly all of them respond positively when they
are taught by someone they respect. Almost all of them are pathetically
eager when they are given a chance to excel. But in most mainstream
schools, the only way they can win "respect" is by misbehaving.
From their viewpoint, a temporary exclusion—like an ASBO—is
a badge of honour.
We have proposed that Skill Force—who
train ex-service personnel to work with pupils who are at risk
of exclusion—should be encouraged to run PRUs. This proposal
has been greeted enthusiastically by the Government. We desperately
need more PRUs which are run by people who are untainted by defeatist
"behaviour management" training—in other words,
we need people with the guts to say "no".
As a practical matter, we are not going to get
very far unless we create conditions where for-profit ventures
can compete successfully. Ironically, the only barrier to Skill
Force's participation is their own Board of Directors. Directors
of charities are almost always extremely risk-averse. When you
serve for no pay, the last thing you want is to be held accountable
if something goes wrong.
As positive as this idea is, it will not really
get to the heart of the problem. We believe that the responsibility
of local authorities for excluded pupils should be limited to
providing their parent(s) with a voucher to the value of mainstream
education. This could, and probably would, be topped up by businesses
and charitable foundations. Other than providing the parent with
a list of potential alternative schools, the LA should bear no
further responsibility whatever.
It is obvious that there will be casualties.
There will be some feckless parents who don't get the message,
and a few pupils who will become full-time criminals on the street
instead of part-time thugs in the school.
But where are we now? Policy-makers are fond
of creating systems where there is a theoretical safety-net in
place to cover any eventuality: witness America's "No Child
Left Behind" and our own "Every Child a Reader".
These policies fail miserably to achieve their goals, and we just
take it for granted. But suggest a plan which might actually work
with 99% of your pupils, and you still will be crucified if you
haven't created the fiction that no child will slip through the
net.
But in the long run, it will be worth it. England
is littered with council estates where people live hopeless and
servile lives, which are rendered meaningless because their betters
have decided that they can't possibly be responsible for their
actions or for themselves.
October 2010
1 Comments posted on http://www.ldrc.ca/contents/view_article/215/by
Peter Chaban, in reference to "Reconceptualizing ADHD",
by Dr. Rosemary Tannock, Senior Scientist, Brain and Behavior
Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Associate Professor of
Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and Rhonda Martinussen, doctoral
candidate, University of Toronto Back
2
I have yet to find a succinct definition of this fuzzy concept. Back
3
Quoted in Phillips, M (1996) All Must Have Prizes, Little
Brown & Co, London, p 59 Back
4
Brunner, MS (1993) Retarding America: the Imprisonment of Potential,
Halcyon House, Portland, Oregon, p 30 Back
5
Claire Belli (2009) "Next Steps in Literacy", unpublished
thesis, University of Southampton, pp 60-61 Back
6
http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/1028252/Analysis-Teacher-led-activities-produce-better-results/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH Back
7
Hogenson, D (1974) "Reading Failure and Juvenile Delinquency",
Bulletin of the Orton Society, 24, p 167 Back
8
e-mail to author, 9 Oct 2010 Back
9
e-mail to author, 12 May 2010 Back
10
Willingham, Daniel T (2009) Why don't students like school?,
John Wiley & Sons Inc, San Francisco Back
11
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/15/head-start-a-150-billion-failure/ Back
12
Ravitch, D, (June 20, 2005) "Ethnomathematics", The
Wall Street Journal Back
13
http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/mixed-ability-teaching-doesnt-exist/ Back
14
ibid Back
15
The Code, paragraph 2.1 Back
16
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/7976044/Extraordinary-School-for-Boys-helping-boys-love-literacy.html Back
17
http://www.popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=1740 Back
18
e-mail to the author, 8 Oct 2010 Back
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