Is the concept of one system of secondary education on the wane?

Visiting secondary schools for the last 18 years, initially under the Young Enterprise Initiative and the last 8 years as a STEM Ambassador, I asked many pupils what they think of maths. At first I didn’t distinguish between the answer “I don’t like maths” and “I can’t see the point of maths”, but later it dawned on me that these are very different responses

We should not be concerned with the first answer. Not everyone likes Mozart or Rutter, or even One Direction. These are choices. However the second answer raises serious concerns.

The annual reports from RAE – “Engineering UK + date” – reveal alarming forecasts for the shortfalls in new graduate engineers, with the report for 2016 forecasting a shortfall of 69,000 each year out to at least 2022.

Until last year I was convinced that STEM, although encouraging increased numbers of students to consider careers in engineering with many going into industry as apprentices, STEM had not been successful in steering sufficient numbers of students towards careers as graduate engineers.

However, reading these reports, the recently published Government paper “Building our Industrial Strategy” and the results of PISA rankings in depth now convinces me that STEM cannot succeed in helping to reduce these huge shortfalls. This is  becoming more widely recognised as being due to not nearly enough students attaining levels 3, 4 and 4+ , which are essential for pupils aiming to become graduate engineers. These levels are also required for other professions.

In short, our education system is woefully inadequate. Why else are we bringing in doctors, nurses, engineers from other countries?

This brings us back to the crux of the education issue.

Think about this. If a group of people (a large sector of the electorate) had been pursuing one single contender to solve a major problem for not 5 years; not 10 years but over 40 years without showing significant evidence of being successful, do you think a different contender should be sought?

This is the saga with which successive governments have been wringing their collective hands over for a long, long time.

What would it take to convince people that the current comprehensive school system is unable to attain the educational standards we desperately need?

However, may the penny have finally dropped?

Perhaps the protagonists of the single format school are in fact realising their arguments are running out of steam, and are turning their attention to seeking new angles aimed at diverting attention from the major issue.

Among these “new” diversions are social mobility and disadvantaged children.

Although it is highly commendable to urge that more effort be expended into helping more children reach their full potential, logic indicates that narrowing the range of abilities by improving the performance of children in the lowest decile  is statistically unlikely to increase the numbers of pupils attaining those elusive level 3, 4 and 4+’s

Thinking about these “new” diversions for a moment, I cannot recall these two terms being in my vocabulary as an 11 year-old, nor in that of our parents, or teachers.

We didn’t feel disadvantaged, in spite of our parents being poor. In using the word ‘poor’ I mean our mother selling meat and butter ration vouchers in order to buy shoes and socks for us. We didn’t worry about social mobility either. Although I and one sister were fortunate in attending grammar schools due to passing the scholarship, 11 was not a full stop. Our Technical Grammar school began admitting fourth-year (late-developing) pupils from local secondary modern schools in the late 40’s. Our own son gained admission to a grammar school at 16, where he gained A Level and AS level maths.

Another factor that hinders the aim of increasing the number of pupils studying maths and physics at A Level with the intention of studying engineering is the difficulty in financing a more comprehensive careers advice service. In my opinion it is not possible given the constraints on school budgets to expect schools to provide this service. Even allocating one FTE staff to this role would be unlikely to do more than ‘scratch the surface’, when considering the hundreds of jobs involved. How could one person amass the knowledge of each of these jobs to the level needed to advise pupils what education and training would be required?

It is equally doubtful if enough companies would be prepared to mount a comprehensive service through offering school visits by their staff, and in any case how could schools allocate the number of hours that would be required to host visits from a comprehensive range of businesses?

A contender solution to this seemingly intractable problem is a secondary school system that does not depend upon a binary selection at 11 years old, and makes more efficient use of the teachers we have.

If you have read this far, you may find my two previous blogs of interest under the same domain.

Education standards could be improved by heeding the basic laws of probability.

When I published my previous blog citing political polarisation as the main reason why all attempts so far have failed to lift our education standards from the current low PISA rankings, the pronouncement by Mrs Theresa May “Schools that work for everyone” had not been issued. Sadly even this latest endeavour is flawed.

The decision to allow more grammar schools to be created could indeed lead to a greater number of students achieving levels 3, 4 and 4+. However the title ‘grammar school’ will almost certainly exacerbate political polarisation. This title has become irreversibly emotive in spite of the arguments of social mobility and the ‘sheep and goats syndrome’ being easily debunked.

In an article by Ms Fiona Millar in the October issue of TeachSecondary she wrote “…So we could now be looking forward to a new stage of reform focussed on…and retention of great teachers…” I wonder if she realised that she had in fact given the main reason why all attempts to find a single type of school that will solve this problem are doomed to failure?

The laws of probability prevent one single type of school from improving the standards of education.

Whenever we use statistics, be they heights of people, exam marks or lengths of screws manufactured by machines, individual samples from the population (Population in this case being the total number of items from which the samples are drawn, eg 100,000 screws in one day), will vary from the arithmetic mean value in accordance with a so called Normal Probability distribution. For the distribution to be Normal, all members of the population must be standardised, eg, heights of people must be drawn from people of the same age and gender; proficiencies of engineers must be drawn from engineers who have the same academic qualifications: MEng degree.

Taking the latter case, there will be one or two ‘Reginald Mitchells’ ‘James Dysons’, ‘John Logie Bairds’ in any era, but the majority will lie within one standard deviation either side of the mean proficiency. However there will always be a number of engineers in any era who exhibit lower proficiency.

Teachers will inevitably conform to a Normal Probability distribution, so that should the Government decree that only one type of school will be allowed, Several schools will attract the very best teachers, many schools will attract good teachers, but the probability is that a percentage of schools will be forced to employ teachers having proficiencies of a level inadequate to yield students attaining levels 3, 4 and 4+

It is incomprehensible that governments and head teachers cannot seem to grasp this basic fact of nature.

Why else have all efforts to increase the output of students attaining levels 3, 4 and 4+ failed? It is not because teachers do not work hard. The latest reports place teachers near the top in the hours worked per week.

We should stop thinking that the proficiency of teachers alone governs students’ achievements.

Children do not all have the same DNAs, or aptitudes, or for that matter the same amount of support and encouragement from parents.

Another factor that impacts upon students’ achievements is the lack of discipline. Present laws limiting the measures able to be exercised by teachers lead to frequent disruption of classes by students who are uninterested in the subjects delivered. This is exacerbated due to many parents opting out of disciplining their children.

It was these factors that motivated me to offer the system proposed in my first blog, namely to create a series of school types; each type having curriculums appropriate for different careers. For this system to work I reiterate the point that it is essential that all the school types should be recognised as being of equal worth. Also there must be formalised paths for students to transfer at appropriate ages where it is found that the initial assessment was not optimum, or that the student’s aptitude or interest had changed.

If we do not make a first stab at selecting pupils to attend one of the types of schools at 11 yeas old, when should this be done: At 16, 20 or 30? No, the inclusion of transfer paths in the proposed system would solve this ‘old chestnut’

Young people develop at different rates and those finding themselves in an inappropriate school are likely to recognise which type of school would satisfy their aspirations. In any case they would have widened their knowledge of subjects that could be useful in adult life.

Readers who have continued reading this blog will probably by now be asking the question of how to control the numbers of schools in each group.

We do not need 1 million doctors, we do not need 1 million engineers and we don’t need 1 million teachers, but the many authoritative reports and papers available would be expected to guide an initial estimate. In the same way that events have begun to limit the number of academies likely to be viable, it could take several years to reach a state of equilibrium.

Politicians I feel are unlikely to welcome this proposal, because their very existence depends upon controversy.

It may be worth considering the other flaw in Theresa May’s address: her reference to encouraging diversity through the creation of more faith schools. If all faith schools adopted the same curriculums as the ‘grammar schools’ and academies, these schools will inevitably recruit their teachers from the same pool, and will run the same risk of being in the lower level of effectiveness with regard to producing students with levels 3, 4 and 4+. It is hard to see how overall standards would be improved.

On the other hand, by adopting the proposed multi-type schools system, only one or possibly two of these types warrant the levels of maths, science and English currently provided by the existing grammar schools, so the number of schools requiring the best teachers in the subjects would not reach down to much if anything below the mean effectiveness in the normal distribution for the whole teacher population.

Other school types would tend to seek teachers having specialist knowledge appropriate to the school type, such as sports or performing arts, craft skills. These types of schools would tend to recruit maths and science teachers from below the mean effectiveness, thus all the school types would be exploiting more of the whole Normal distribution. Faith schools would decide which of the school types they wish to create.

It is my fervent hope that educationalists will come to accept that however noble the urge to provide the same education for all children, the forces of nature will endure. Why not instead opt for providing a selection of education opportunities to satisfy the aspirations of our children. Forcing all children to study advanced maths and physics when their aptitudes and aspirations lie in other directions is surely unacceptable.

Political Polarisation stifles education improvement

A recurring thought throughout the last few years has been the recognition that had I been born one year earlier, I would not have attended a grammar school. Due to the Education Act in 1944 I was able to attend The Gateway Technical Grammar School in Leicester. The new act avoided my parents paying to attend the school

For nearly 7 decades I had never questioned the words Grammar School, until a few months ago, when I asked myself “Did it mean that we were only being taught the intricacies of verb declensions and punctuation?”

No, we were taught a range of subjects; and very well too, by excellent teachers. By the way, I cannot recall any additional staff other than the dinner ladies, cleaners and a librarian. There were no teaching assistants, learning mentors, behaviour professionals, just a teacher for each subject (32 pupils per class)

The education received at The Gateway was the passport to gaining almost uninterrupted satisfaction in work and life. Looking back though, I accept that the system then did not provide adequate education for the majority of children who did not pass the 11-Plus exam.

The UK’s dismal ranking in the regular PISA tests makes the need to find a new education formula extremely important, especially in view of the BREXIT result.

Sifting the many reports and articles in the professional and national press over the last 2 years reveals a nation divided into those who believe that selection should not be allowed, and those who believe that without some sort of selection it will prove impossible to improve our PISA ranking.

Why is raising our PISA ranking important?

The economic answer is that the UK faces serious shortfalls in graduate engineers (69,000 each year till at least 2022), GPs (data more difficult to obtain, but one report indicates a shortfall of 12,000), and teachers (until recently Government maintained vacancies amounted to only 1.5%, but November last year the TES reported we are short of over 1,000)

There is now solid evidence that the UK education system is not producing anywhere near enough students attaining Levels3, 4 and 4+, necessary to reduce these shortfalls in the professions.

The social answer seems to be that teachers should provide an education aimed at fulfilling the pupils’ desired careers, irrespective of whether there will be jobs available in the areas sought by the pupils.

It is worth asking how children decide what they want to do when they leave school/college.

Isn’t it likely that their aspirations are influenced by what they watch on television and DVD’s and by their social activities? Is it any wonder that many children want to become pop stars, sports stars, fashion designers, hair dressers?

If this scenario is accepted it is a fair bet that many children do not gain an insight into the work done by construction engineers, GPs and nurses, accountants, aeroplane engineering designers, politicians, journalists, and many other jobs requiring the higher levels cited above.

In spite of successive changes over the last 70 years by labour and conservative governments; from introducing comprehensive schools through to academies, our country is still languishing near the bottom of the PISA rankings,

I now believe that the main reason for the failure to improve our PISA ranking has been due to political polarisation

Perhaps there is a case at long last for a system that respects:

• Human beings each have different baskets of attributes and abilities.
• All pupils have a right to be taught the basic elements of arithmetic, language of birth and a first level of science.
• The education progression should depend upon the career aspirations and aptitudes.

What puzzles me is why people are surprised that all attempts since starting to replace grammar schools with a single type of secondary school have failed to improve education standards. The comprehensive schools did not achieve this aim and the much vaunted move to convert all schools to academies is showing signs of cracks already.

Instead of dividing pupils into “Success” and Failure”, why not have several categories of secondary schools, but first the term ‘Selection’ must be changed to mean an act to assess the aptitudes and abilities in order to recommend they attend a school in one of these categories. The titles of these categories should be non-emotive and the word ‘grade’ must not be attached to the categories.

As an example:

• EZH School: Pupils aspiring to performing arts, media, journalism, law
• KWB School: Pupils aspiring to craft skills, such as plumbing, vehicle servicing, hair dressing, building, carpentry etc,
• JFM School: Pupils aspiring to medical practice, engineering, accountancy, teaching,
• VGA School: Pupils aspiring to sport, ballet, physiology

Further categories could be worth considering.

Since it is unlikely that any assessment system would be 100% accurate, means to enable pupils to transfer to one of the other categories at later ages, eg 14 16 and later must be provided.

11 has never to my knowledge been a full stop for educational progression. In 1949 our grammar school began admitting ‘late developers’ at 14, while our son transferred from a secondary modern school at 15 to an independent school, gaining A Level and S Level in maths.

The Engineering Institution I belong to, although the recommended route to chartered membership is either the 4 year MEng degree, or the 3 year BSc degree, has always provided paths for late developers to gain entry.

There is one tenet that I cannot escape from: All people should have equal opportunity, but at the end of the day, people are not equal in every facet of life, for which we should rejoice.