The Oxbridge challenge

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Having successfully increased the number and proportion of our students progressing to the most selective universities, why is it that we have not seen a similar increase in the numbers progressing to Oxford and Cambridge?

In a recent post I outlined the strong improvement in the numbers of NewVIc students progressing to Russell group universities and also to the “top third” of 54 universities with the highest entry requirements. Between 2012 and 2013, Russell group numbers rose from 42 to 60 and are set to rise further in 2014.

Newham has high numbers of students progressing to university overall and these improvements will help the borough and its neighbours bridge the gap with more prosperous areas when it comes to progression to selective universities.

However, despite our best efforts, progression to Oxford and Cambridge is not moving in the same direction. In a typical year, between 5 and 10 of our students apply and between 0 and 3 actually progress to one of these two universities. The likely outcome in 2014 is 2 students progressing (both to Oxford) out of 7 applications in total. From 2010 to 2014, the numbers progressing are: 2, 2, 3, 0, 2. These numbers vary from year to year but there is no upward trend.

If Oxford and Cambridge represent the pinnacle of what British Higher Education has to offer, we need to ensure that a fair share of qualified young people from Newham and the country’s other most deprived areas are accessing what it has to offer. For our college, this probably means at least double the current numbers applying and getting places. So what are the challenges and what can we do?

The geographical challenge: Our students are reluctant to move away from home when they progress because for many this represents too much change and risk all at once. Staying at home is less expensive and does not require a sudden break from the network of family and peer support. Only 9% of our university progressors move away from home. Clearly, Oxford and Cambridge are not in London. Students do not need to be persuaded to apply to University College, King’s College and Queen Mary College but convincing them to use one of their applications to Oxbridge (or even Birmingham, Bristol, Warwick or Manchester) can be a real challenge.

The application challenge: The Oxbridge application process has more obstacles to negotiate than that of most other universities. Because there are both college and subject considerations operating students can find the choice of college and the additional layer of inter-college ‘tactics’ quite bewildering. Our most successful students cope well with the admissions tests but the additional prospect of going to a strange place and speaking to strange people does pile on the pressure and create barriers which put off some excellent applicants. We do a lot to overcome this ‘strangeness’ and we prepare them well for interviews and but there’s no doubt that a number of our ‘straight A’ students simply don’t want to put themselves through this.

The socio-cultural challenge: Despite all the outreach work, open days and residential visits, our students’ perception is that Oxford and Cambridge have very few students like them; working class and overwhelmingly of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) heritage. Often the material which aims to promote Oxbridge as being full of ‘ordinary’ students simply emphasises how middle class it feels. To many of our students the prospect of being able to create a strong new support network for themselves within the university or the smaller college community seems remote. The stakes and the risk of failure seem high and the safety nets more distant.

The partnership challenge: For colleges and schools, partnership work tends to be channelled through the designated link college for your local authority area. In some cases this means accessing a range of well organised activities but this does vary from college to college. There is no coherent structure for the Oxbridge college to engage with all the post-16 providers in a local authority area and so links often depend on a few good bilateral relationships with some providers which can end up benefiting some students and not others.

So what can be done?

Much good work is being done. Having invested in a previous project with Pembroke college, Oxford which has moved from Newham, we are now delighted with our developing partnership with Wadham College, Oxford and the ‘Civilisation and Barbarism’ programme which we have designed with them to stretch and challenge students who might aspire to apply to Oxbridge. Wadham is also helping to curate the classical civilisation strand of our liberal arts lecture programme. Colleagues from both Wadham and Caius college, Cambridge have been very generous with their time in coming to speak to groups of students or welcome visiting groups. We are also excited about the possibilities of working with Fitzwilliam, Cambridge and others on specific initiatives which may help potential applicants.

However, all this commitment and hard work has not yet led to the breakthrough which everyone agrees is necessary. So here are a few suggestions:

Engage with London and other major cities: Oxford and Cambridge are where they are, but both universities could engage in a concerted and high profile way with some of the country’s most disadvantaged communities. In the past, Oxbridge colleges did this through university settlements in the East End. Mansfield House for example pioneered free legal aid in the 1890’s around the corner from where NewVIc is now. These settlements might date from a more philanthropic era but what would a 21st century version of Mansfield House look like?  Can we imagine an Oxbridge presence in London which offered an open, democratic and community focused approach to scholarship and intellectual inquiry? This could be co-located in colleges and provide a real bridge to progression.

Highlight pastoral support: If students are put off because they are concerned about moving away from home or being ‘fish out of water’, the universities should do more to highlight the human scale of the college system and the excellent pastoral support offered. They should also strengthen their networks of students from working class and BME backgrounds, to provide mentoring and advice both pre- and post- admission.

Improve interviews: Interview styles vary but we know that applicants are more likely to do themselves justice if they can start on familiar territory before being invited to respond to the unexpected. This might mean asking candidates to prepare a short presentation which could be followed up with questions from a panel. Clearly, candidates could over-rehearse but they would at least have the opportunity to open the conversation confidently on their ground. Another technique used by some universities is to invite candidates to a lecture on a topic they can’t prepare for and to follow up with an observed activity in response to the issues raised in the lecture.

Create local sixth form hubs: Link colleges should establish a hub for all the post-16 providers in their patch and negotiate an academic programme for their sixth formers which address their needs, this could combine academic subject enhancement with study skills, such as critical reading, essay writing, research and presentation skills. In London, link colleges in neighbouring geographical areas could agree to create larger hubs providing economies of scale and increased impact.

Consider setting local targets: Why not give the link college system some real responsibility for recruitment from their area by setting them targets based on the number of high achieving students from under-represented groups? These would not be quotas but would set the sixth forms and the universities a clear objective, for instance: “the university should be getting at least x applications from students in this area and helping them to be well prepared for the selection process – with a view to making y offers.”

Nothing suggested here requires any drop in standards or special treatment in admissions, but if we are serious about wanting to change the profile of our most selective and least representative universities, we will need to be more focused and more radical.

Based on my talk to admissions tutors at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge on 26th June 2014.

 

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College success with disadvantaged students

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) in East London sent more disadvantaged students to university than any other sixth form in the country in 2011. Overall, England’s 338 colleges sent more disadvantaged students to university than its 1,839 school sixth forms: 7,300 compared to 4,290.

London colleges have consolidated their success since 2010 in getting disadvantaged students to university with increases above the national average (see my earlier post about the 2010 data).

The most recent national data on young people’s progression to university shows that in 2011:

  • Just 10 London sixth forms accounted for over 11% of all young people eligible for free school meals in England progressing to university and 28% of the total in London. 5 of these are sixth form colleges. See table 1.
  • Just 5 inner London sixth forms accounted for over 31% of all young people eligible for free school meals in inner London progressing to university. 2 of these 5 are sixth form colleges. See table 2.
  • A higher proportion of young people eligible for free school meals progressed to university from these sixth forms than across London which itself had a progression rate well above that for England as a whole. See tables 1 and 2.
  • These sixth forms are getting disadvantaged students into selective universities at the same rate as across England as a whole. See table 3.

It is clear that in London the greatest engines of educational mobility for young people are colleges.

Table 1. Top 10 London sixth forms for FSM students progression to HE

FSM students progressing to HE Proportion progressing
Newham sixth form college (NewVIc) 250 64%
City & Islington college 230 63%
Sir George Monoux sixth form college 180 67%
Leyton sixth form college 160 65%
Richmond upon Thames college 140 63%
Tower Hamlets college 130 67%
Christ the King sixth form college 110 74%
Ealing Hammersmith & West London college 110 56%
St. Francis Xavier sixth form college 100 76%
Westminster Kingsway college 100 64%
Top 10 sixth forms 1,510 65%
London as a whole 5,425 62%
England as a whole 13,522 47%

 

Table 2. Top 5 inner London sixth forms for FSM students progression to HE

FSM students progressing to HE Proportion progressing
Newham sixth form college (NewVIc) 250 64%
City & Islington college 230 63%
Tower Hamlets college 130 67%
Christ the King sixth form college 110 74%
Ealing Hammersmith & West London college 110 56%
Top 5 sixth forms 830 64%
Inner London as a whole 2,678 63%
England as a whole 13,522 47%

 

Table 3. Proportion of FSM students progressing to “top third” universities

FSM students progressing to top third HEIs Proportion progressing
Newham sixth form college (NewVIc) 27 7%
City & Islington college 32 9%
Sir George Monoux sixth form college 21 9%
Leyton sixth form college 25 10%
Richmond upon Thames college 16 7%
Tower Hamlets college 18 9%
Christ the King sixth form college 26 17%
Ealing Hammersmith & West London college 11 6%
St. Francis Xavier sixth form college 21 15%
Westminster Kingsway college x x
Top 10 sixth forms 197 8%
London as a whole 1,000 12%
England as a whole 2,302 8%

These data are for 2011 and there have been 2 years of university progression since then so we will need more up-to-date data to see any longer term London-wide trends. However, data for Newham sixth form college (NewVIc) show a strong increase in both the numbers and the proportion progressing, including to the most selective universities. Colleges with higher numbers of vocational students will tend to have a lower proportion progressing to the most selective universities.

Recent years have seen the creation of many new sixth forms, some via convertor academies and some via free schools, often with substantial start-up costs and vacant funded places. Many of these new providers aim to increase the numbers of disadvantaged young people progressing to university. In London, the evidence from these tables is that there are many existing colleges with an excellent track record of doing exactly this. So, in a recession, why establish so many expensive new sixth forms rather than seeking to build on the success stories we already have?

Note: The data are drawn from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/destinations-of-key-stage-4-and-key-stage-5-pupils-2011-to-2012 and numbers are rounded to the nearest 10 so some of the derived numbers in the tables have a small margin of error. Students are those who entered advanced qualifications drawn from the National Pupil Database and matched to HESA higher education data. The top third selective universities were the 52 most selective universities in the UK based on the A level tariff score of their entrants in 2011/12.

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How to achieve high university progression rates

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) in East London is a large comprehensive sixth form college serving one of England’s most socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Most of our advanced level students start with below average prior achievement.

Yet we have university progression rates well above the national average. The vast majority of our second year advanced students apply (9 out of 10) and the vast majority of applicants progress.

767 NewVIc students progressed to university in 2013, this included 99% of all A-level applicants and amounted to a 91% progression rate for applicants overall; including vocational applicants.

Russell Group progression, which is historically low in East London, is improving rapidly. 60 students progressed to Russell group institutions in 2013, which was up from 42 the previous year. This included 13% of all A-level applicants.

All the signs are that 2014 will be another record year and that Russell group numbers will increase further; with 121 students having firmly accepted an offer from a Russell group university compared to 107 last year.

How do we achieve this?

  1. First of all we have the advantage of a very aspirational community. Although many of our students come from families with little history of going to university there is a strong commitment to education and a strong drive to want to benefit from what it has to offer; not least economically. So in general our task is not one of raising aspirations but of realising them
  2. We provide continuous, up-to-date, information, advice and guidance to students from the first time we meet them as applicants to after they have left us. This is embedded in our tutorial programme. We have well-informed dedicated staff such as specialist tutors, careers advisors and senior tutors whose aim is to help students understand their options and make strong, realistic applications. The fact that we meet the demanding ‘Matrix’ standard confirms the high quality and objectivity of our work.
  3. Our honours programme and specialist pathways, for example the medicine pathway, allow us to focus on the specific needs of those students who are keen to apply for the most selective courses and universities and who need to prepare for essential entry tests such as UKCAT, BMAT, LNAT etc.
  4. We have nurtured strong partnerships with a range of universities, including Oxbridge colleges, and these help us to provide a range of academic experiences both in and out of college; lectures, seminars, visits etc. The various strands of our Liberal Arts lecture programme are curated and delivered by academics from institutions such as University College London (UCL), SOAS and Wadham College Oxford. The Wad-ham project develops university level analytical skills, our work with Queen Mary University of London on students’ critical skills is likely to influence the way we teach across the college and the Generating Genius group at UCL are able to engage in cutting edge scientific research.
  5. We foster a mentoring culture throughout the college. Many of our students are peer mentors, some work with younger students in school and we employ a team of former students as academic mentors and regularly welcome in our alumni, as well as mentors from HE and business.

We still face many challenges, for example:

  • Ensuring that our strongest applicants are able to demonstrate their potential in challenging interview settings and to meet additional demanding selection criteria
  • Achieving a critical mass of students progressing to Oxbridge so that this is no longer such an ‘extraordinary’ journey
  • Doing more to understand the factors which lead to retention and success in HE once students have progressed

The Linking London partnership is a good example of colleges and universities coming together to share the understanding of all the issues around transition to HE and what the factors are which contribute to student success.

There are also forces which can work against good practice. Greater competition for sixth form places as a result of the proliferation of new providers means that colleges and sixth forms tend to keep any good links or projects they have with universities to themselves. These are often used as part of institutional marketing rather than being shared. This can make life harder for the universities who are trying to engage. Perhaps we need to create new ‘AimHigher’-like collaborative initiatives which encourage sixth forms to share their links in a efficient way which can benefit all students, wherever they study.

In a recession, where jobs are scarce and higher and further education become more stratified and marketised, the stakes have been raised. Young people’s choice of course and university feels more critical as they have more to lose. We have a responsibility to ensure that we are doing our best to prepare young people for the transition to HE and to help them navigate successfully through the next phase of their education.

This is a slightly extended version of a presentation made at the Sunday Times Festival of Education on 20th June 2014 as part of the Further Education strand organised by the Association of Colleges (AoC).

See also:

Colleges are real engines of social mobility

London college’s promoting social mobility

 

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If not now, when?

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

So, first we slashed the funding for education for 18 year olds

Even if they were half way through a 2 year advanced course.

When was education ever the wrong choice?

 

Then, if they haven’t yet achieved an advanced course and can’t get a job

We cut their Job Seekers Allowance and require them to join a training scheme

When did training schemes create a single job?

 

Nearly a fifth of all young people are unemployed

This is a lack of jobs not a lack of training

When did blaming the victims ever solve a crisis?

 

We need to invest in the future if we want things to get better

If young people are the future, we need to invest in them

If not now, when?

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Market madness #3 The well-informed educational consumer

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #3 The well-informed educational consumer.

An ideal market requires well informed consumers who are in a position to make choices between products based on accurate information about the things that matter to them; for example quality and price.

If public services like education are really to operate in a market, consumers – whether parents or students – need to be well informed about the alternatives available before they exercise their choice. It is after all a very important choice with longer term consequences that most consumer purchases.

This means having access to good information, advice and guidance from disinterested and well informed experts. It means trusting and understanding the data in league tables, their value and limitations. It also means being able to evaluate a wide range of other ‘objective’ published data and statistical claims.

In reality, the market in education as in other areas is far from perfect and it tends to reinforce the prior advantages of some consumers. Providers with good reputations will tend to attract the kinds of students who are most likely to further enhance their attractiveness in an upward spiral of positive feedback. Other providers can easily fall into a downward spiral.

In post-16 education, it is widely known that many secondary schools with sixth forms work hard to ensure that their most promising students ‘stay on’ at 16 and as a result such schools fall short of the ideal of providing independent advice and guidance about the full range of options open to their students. They often cannot resist describing these options in their own words rather than allowing alternative providers to do so themselves. These tendencies are a natural product of the market system and all its various incentives and pressures.

On top of this, markets lead to marketing. Glossy brochures, prospectuses, press releases and advertising campaigns boosted via social media are now key elements of many providers’ strategy. They aim to boost recruitment and manage reputation and are seen as essential for survival. Besides, if everyone else around us is doing it how can we avoid doing it?

I enjoy celebrating educational achievement, so I like to see the benefits of learning promoted in the public sphere and I applaud the best and most imaginative campaigns of colleges and universities. I am of course delighted when I see the giant images of our successful former students smiling at me from so many buses driving around East London’s streets. However, all this has cost us a pretty penny and at a time of spending cuts, I can’t help thinking about what else we could have spent this money on.

I am always impressed by the way that the French election authorities give equal national billboard space to each presidential candidate however small their party or poorly funded their campaign; the argument is that the state should underwrite some parity of exposure if citizens are to have a real choice in the democratic ‘marketplace’. Perhaps a similar level playing field might be possible for educational marketing here?

At the moment it seems that in the Hobbesian “war of all against all” where every educational provider is clamouring for attention and favour in the marketplace there is no way of stopping us all from spending public money on campaigns which portray us in the best light and which tell our best story.  Let’s just hope that we all have enough integrity to ensure that the stories we tell are reasonably accurate and that our consumers aren’t too disappointed when they have a chance to test the reality against the rhetoric.

All the Market Madness posts:

Market madness #1 Oversubscribed?

Market madness #2 “Choice and diversity”

Market madness #3 The well-informed educational consumer

Market madness #4 A good system can help schools improve

Market madness #5 Qualifications as currency

Market madness #6 Students as commodities: premium, discount and remaindered

Market madness #7 What markets do to us

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Maxine Greene: resisting one-dimensionality

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Maxine Greene, the eminent American teacher, teacher educator and educational philosopher died last month aged 96. She is relatively little known in the UK and her passing doesn’t seem to have registered much in the British education media. It’s too early for a full assessment of the importance of her work but I think that anyone interested in education will get a lot from reading Greene. I think we will be doing so for some time and finding new meanings and new inspiration from what she has left us.

What I’ve read of Greene’s work is a delight. ‘The Dialectic of Freedom’ and ‘Releasing the Imagination’ are full of ideas while far from being academic philosophical texts. Greene repeatedly draws on her personal response to art and literature to offer insights into our common humanity and the constant tension between self and community. She often starts from a “cultural” experience and then gently and tentatively draws out some reflections on personal and collective learning.

I think this easy movement from the personal to the social and political and back again is what makes her work so compelling. Because she is not dogmatic and sees contingency, tension and change wherever she looks it’s the kind of writing you want to return over and over to test your own thinking again and again.

Maxine Greene worked in very practical ways at New York’s Columbia University Teachers College and Lincoln Centre Institute to enhance young people’s aesthetic learning. She believed that all children should have a wide range of opportunities for perceiving, noticing and being ‘wide-awake’ as an essential starting point to thinking about their condition in the world and being open to change; both personal and social.

“…one of the great powers associated with the arts is the power to challenge expectations, to break stereotypes, to change the ways in which persons apprehend the world.”

I first came across ‘The Dialectic of Freedom’ at a time when I was starting to think about education as being built on tension, challenge and difference – in other words as a dialectical social process and it was the title that caught my eye. The book is a revelation, full of fresh insights and juxtapositions drawing on a wide and eclectic range of influences: W.H. Auden, Bertolt Brecht, Kate Chopin, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, Scott Fitzgerald and Antonio Gramsci – and that’s leaving out all of H to Z.

In ‘Releasing the Imagination’, Greene argues passionately for the place of the arts, reading and writing in school and against a standards-driven agenda which appears to value them so little.

I love the way she builds a whole chapter from her reading of a brief passage from a Thomas Mann novel (‘Confessions of Felix Krull’) about the need to “see the world small”; to be aware of social and systemic change, as well as to “see the world big”; to adopt the perspective of individual participants. Greene uses this to make the case that teachers need to be able to move back and forth between considering education systems and policies in an unequal society (seeing the world small) and understanding the specific challenges faced by their individual students (seeing the world big).

“at least part of the challenge is to refuse artificial separations of the school from the surrounding environment, to refuse the decontextualizations that falsify so much.”

To make sense of our lives and our work, all of us need to see the world both small and big at the same time and to learn to translate between the social and the personal levels of our experience.

Maxine Greene shares with John Dewey a burning passion for education as a shared social endeavour, one which is vital for the creation of a democratic society and which only has meaning for us as individuals if we work at it collectively. She is as earnest and rigorous as Dewey but always brings a freshness and lightness of touch which welcomes us into dialogue.

“What I have been calling the common…has to be continually brought into being…There is always a flux in the things and ideas of this world and there is always the need to catch the flux in networks of meaning. Whatever the networks, the focus should be on that which dislodges fixities, resists one-dimensionality and allows multiple personal voices to become articulated in a more and more vital dialogue.”(‘Releasing the Imagination’)

“The crucial problem…is the problem of challenging what is taken for granted and transmitted as taken-for-granted: ideas of hierarchy, of deserved deficits, of delayed gratification and of mechanical time schemes in tension with inner time.” (‘Landscapes of Learning’)

 There are excellent personal tributes by Paul Thomas and Bill Ayers and her own website is a good source.

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A pale shadow of democracy

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

The government’s new local arrangements for overseeing schools are a pale shadow of what we need.

A new regional architecture is being created to oversee England’s schools and we are beginning to see its outlines. Mostly, it’s made up of central government appointees like the 8 new Regional School Commissioners (RSCs) who will monitor the performance of academies, decide on the creation of new academies, shape the system and work with sponsors to ensure they meet local needs.

For London, the regional carve up makes little sense with the capital split between 3 massive regions bringing Newham, Norfolk and Peterborough together into one region and Islington, Milton Keynes and Wokingham together into another. It’s almost as if someone deliberately set out to deny the existence of a Greater London Authority which is after all elected by Londoners to manage a range of strategic functions across the capital.

Nevertheless, there is a democratic element in the structure. The RSCs will be ‘advised and challenged’ by a Headteacher Board (HTB) of 6-8 members, 4 of whom will be elected. Nominations are open and voting closes on 11th July.

The problem is that this oasis of democracy is the wrong sort located in the wrong place offering us none of the benefits of local electoral accountability.

So, before we gear up for a vigorous election campaign where we get to discuss and choose between competing visions of education, we need to examine what’s on offer.

These representatives will be agents of central government sprinkled with a thin dusting of localism. The successful candidates will have:

  • no real power; they will still be creatures of central government
  • no accountability; elected by a tiny electorate of headteachers, how will they account for their actions and who to?
  • no oversight of the whole system; their remit excludes all schools that are not academies
  • no transparency; on what basis will their decisions be made? Will the case for or against particular sponsors or conversions be made in public with scrutiny of the arguments?

Another consequence of the new structure is to further fragment any decision-making about local post-16 provision. With the number of sixth form providers proliferating, the new RSCs and HTBs will presumably be ruling on the aspirations of any existing or convertor academies to open new sixth forms while having no influence or relationship with FE and sixth form  colleges which are usually the major post-16 providers in an area. The decision not to include these incorporated colleges in this structure is another sign of its incoherence. This will do nothing to stop more selection post-16 as new sixth forms scramble for the “best” students.

It is bizarre that the government which gave us police commissioners and trusts us to elect them by universal suffrage doesn’t want us to elect the educational equivalent or the boards which will advise them. We should welcome any injection of democracy into the running of our public services but this structure is a spectacular missed opportunity to create some local responsiveness and accountability where it might do some good.

“Je serais…l’ombre de ton ombre” sings Jacques Brel in “Ne me quitte pas” as he begs to be allowed to stay: “I’ll be…the shadow of your shadow”.

These elections are not just a shadow of democracy, but the shadow of democracy’s shadow – with as little hope of promoting democratic debate as Brel’s spurned lover has of getting back together.

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Headteacher Board elections: excitement mounts

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Elections? This month? About education? With policies, candidates, proper voting and everything? Overseen by the electoral reform services? Cool!

Yes, indeed, there are national elections taking place right now across England which will shape the education system in every part of the country.

I love elections, I want to see what policies are on offer and question the candidates. Show me my ballot paper.

Well, yes…before we all get too excited by this outbreak of democracy there is some small print.

Small print?

These elections are for the new Headteacher Boards to advise the new Regional Schools Commissioners. Each board will have 6-8 members, 4 of whom will be elected.

Advise? So they’re not actually running anything?

No, just advising, but this is important stuff and the Regional Schools Commissioner will certainly take account of their views.

Important stuff? You mean overseeing the whole school system?

Not quite. Only those schools which are academies or planning to convert to academies.

OK, so can anyone stand for election to these important roles?

You’re joking. Only current or recently retired headteachers of outstanding academies or those rated outstanding for leadership.

I see. That narrows the field a bit. Still, I can’t wait to vote.

Ah, well, here’s the thing. You don’t actually have a vote unless you’re an academy headteacher yourself.

But I…

Cheer up though, this is a real election and it is the only democratic element in the new system.

Yes, but…

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Sixth forms working together against the tide

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Opening speech to the Sharing Good Practice conference at St.Angela’s school, Stratford, 4th June 2014.

We are all here today because we are committed to providing the best possible educational opportunities to young people aged 16-18 and because we think we can learn something from other educators working in the same field in order to do our jobs better.

Events like this are centripetal rather than centrifugal; they bring us together rather than pushing us apart and I think in a centrifugal context we need to do more centripetal work. So thank you for inviting me to speak and congratulations to Mark, Sakhdeep and the team at St.Angela’s and St.Bonaventure’s sixth form for organising this excellent day of sharing good practice and for putting together such a broad and interesting programme.

I want to start by saying something about the importance of what we do. We are working with young people at a key point in their lives; a time when they should be broadening their horizons while also thinking about greater specialisation and depth, when they are starting to take a view about what needs to change in the world and how they might contribute to making changes. At this stage we should be offering young people the widest possible educational opportunities and the richest most stimulating and challenging experiences possible and building on the foundations of their prior learning.

I am sure we are all doing our best, but how well does what we offer measure up to our aspirations? Are we able to provide all young people with the full and broad liberal curriculum which they deserve? Are they being exposed to the best our civilisation has to offer? Are they being prepared to take their place as skilled, active, reflective, critical and confident citizens, workers and carers? Will they have what it takes to help build a vibrant democracy and a successful economy – including the caring economy?

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.” Hannah Arendt

If we are falling short, part of the reason is that the public funding available for 16 and 17 year olds does not match that available for 5 to 16 year olds and has not been protected from cuts. We also cannot draw on tuition fee income for over 18’s as our colleagues in universities can. So we are uncomfortably squeezed between two kinds of protected funding and particularly vulnerable to cuts. Also, our poorest and most marginal students have lost much of the financial support which helped to keep them in learning; the new bursaries are a pretty poor substitute for Educational Maintenance Allowances and, although very welcome, the funding for free meals hasn’t made up the losses. It’s paradoxical that while private fee-charging schools increase their rates at sixth form level to reflect their growing needs, the state cuts its funding for the same age group. We also know that the contact time we are able to offer our students would be too thin to qualify as a “full time” programme in most other European countries.

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” Derek Bok

Of course it’s not all about money and having got the “moaning about money” out of the way what else can be said about the context we are working in?

I would suggest that for young people in education, their experience feels increasingly like “a race to the top …. of the down escalator”. In other words they have to work harder to achieve more with less hope of a rewarding outcome. Youth unemployment is high, with dozens of young people chasing every job vacancy. Competition is accelerated and new institutional and qualification hierarchies mean that there always seems to be a “better” sixth form, a “better” course or a “better” university to aspire to. There is a strong bias against modular, piecemeal learning, vocational and non-facilitating courses despite the fact that all these are valued at university level. The ethos of competition, the awareness of the cost of failure and the anxiety associated with high stakes has become a normal part of teenage life and changed young people’s relationship with the education system.

And what about us; the educators working with young people in this hyper-competitive world? Well, we too are subject to the pressures of a high stakes environment. Post-16 education in England is essentially an unplanned open market, often a “frontier” market where sixth form providers; schools and colleges, established and new, selective and comprehensive are competing for students. All of us are subject to intense scrutiny, via league tables and OfSTED and we’re all only as good as our most recent inspection report, our most recent recruitment figures and our most recent league table rankings. Inevitably our context shapes our outlook; the need to recruit the “best” students, to be acknowledged as successful and to hold our own in the market against the competition. All this inevitably affects our identity and our attitude to professional collaboration.

“World class achievement and benchmarks are superficial, if not absurd in a world filled with inequality, fear and uncertainty.” Maxine Greene

Wherever we work, we are all essentially doing the same job with the same group of people and they all deserve the best that’s on offer. I think we are all still motivated above all by a commitment to public service education. So what should we do? What questions should we ask? Here are a few for starters:

Is it acceptable that some young people don’t get the best possible information and advice about the full range of options post 16?

Does it make sense for year 11 students to make multiple sixth form applications like a scattergun with no central management of their priority choices – couldn’t we have a UCAS type system (FECAS?) for 16 year olds?

Can it be right for each sixth form provider to jealously nurture their own bilateral university links and enrichment programmes rather than sharing them?

Is all the money we collectively spend on marketing a good use of resources?

Do we and the young people we serve really benefit from all this competition? My answers would all be based on the observation that we can choose to collaborate. As successful, autonomous providers and as mature and experienced educators we can decide that working in partnership with each other would make better use of our skills and resources and would better serve our students’ interests.

Partnership days like today help to weave a web of support and relationships across competing providers and we should nurture and build on this. There may be no national post-16 education system but I think that as headteachers, principals and senior leaders we have a responsibility, a duty in fact, to offer system leadership as well as institutional leadership. This is difficult. It takes courage, It means looking beyond the immediate interests of our institution, investing in building trust and relationships and seizing the opportunities to work with others when they arise.

London’s 12 sixth form colleges play a key role in post-16 education in the capital, helping many thousands of young Londoners succeed and progress to university and employment, including many of the most disadvantaged. But we also recognise that we are not the only show in town and we are keen to work in partnership with others and that this is how we will improve on what we all do and to start building a better system.

“Creativity takes courage” Henri Matisse

So, once again my thanks to the organisers and I hope that today’s sharing of good practice is successful for everyone here and that it is part of a process of building a culture of collaboration at all levels between us.

For a few months now I have been blogging about education policy, young people, teaching and learning at eddieplayfair.com and if you’re interested I also tweet @eddieplayfair

 

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Market madness #2 “Choice and diversity”

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #2 “Choice and diversity”

“Choice and diversity” was the last government’s euphemism for marketisation in public services, putting a positive spin on something which is not particularly popular with public service users. In education, it meant promoting new providers and encouraging competition between them. This was sometimes also described as “contestability”.

Looking back to those pre-2010 days, this version of marketisation seems pretty tame, but it paved the way for the current government’s market strategy for education.

The idea is that good schools will attract more students and less good schools will be motivated to improve by the competition for students from the good schools. The less popular schools might get some support to improve or be rebranded and relaunched with new leadership. The possibility of decline, failure or closure sharpens everyone’s focus on doing better.

And we like choice don’t we? When we’re shopping we like to be able to choose between different products, check prices and value for money and make our own judgement about what’s best for us. Choice is a good thing – up to a point.

But do we really want to shop around and choose between different educational offers for ourselves or our children?  Can education be both a public service and a commodity? Isn’t it too important to be placed in the hands of ompeting providers based on what they are prepared to offer within the local market? We’re paying for it anyway so surely we want the best possible public education for ourselves as well as for others as a civic right.

As with our other public services, we want education to respond to our needs and aspirations and ultimately to be accountable to us; all of us. Any choice and diversity in what is available; specialist programmes or facilities, experimental or innovative approaches, should be available to all within a system of public education and not be the result of luck eg: “I happen to attend an excellent specialist music school”.

When the market is combined with the lack of a coherent national framework, the absence of local whole-system leadership or planning, the result is actually a loss of choice and a lack of diversity. In post-16 education for example, providers or systems need to be of a certain size to offer the full range of courses to students including minority subjects like A level German or Classical Civilisation. Encouraging new smaller competing providers can give the impression of more choice – of provider, but lead to less choice – of course. Where there are many competing sixth forms there may be enough demand overall but no single provider can run a viable A level German or Classical Civilisation group, thereby restricting choice for everyone.

So we should be very cautious about the panacea of more choice and diversity in education as we could find ourselves losing more than we gain.

All the Market Madness posts:

Market madness #1 Oversubscribed?

Market madness #2 “Choice and diversity”

Market madness #3 The well-informed educational consumer

Market madness #4 A good system can help schools improve

Market madness #5 Qualifications as currency

Market madness #6 Students as commodities: premium, discount and remaindered

Market madness #7 What markets do to us

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Post-16 citizenship in tough times

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

The times we live in demand more than ever that we assume responsibility for ensuring that all young people are educated for global citizenship, in other words for survival. What might this look like post-16?

The context

The current context for post-16 education in the UK is characterised by an emphasis on valuing:

  • institutional diversity rather than a comprehensive system
  • achievement of qualifications rather than development of the whole learner
  • personal progress rather than social purpose
  • competition rather than cohesion
  • employment rather than citizenship

This offers us a model of education as a market commodity and a positional good. But we also need to remember that learning can never be detached from its social context.

“Education is a social process” John Dewey

In the wider political and cultural scene, the emphasis is on:

  • competitiveness rather than collaboration
  • social mobility within an unequal society rather than egalitarianism
  • defining national identities rather than our global humanity

Again, this is a very partial perspective. If we are to tackle the global challenges we face we will need a global awareness, shared global values, global dialogue and some really good ideas for global collective action. We will need an education which has global citizenship among its central aims.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” Herbert George Wells

Why post-16 citizenship education?

The post-16 phase of learning offers probably the best opportunity to fully educate about wider social concerns. Young people at this age are ready to look beyond their immediate preoccupations and start to think about what difference they might make in the world. Citizenship education in this phase should be driven by concern for equality, human rights, pluralism, solidarity and conflict resolution and should teach the benefits of democratic collective action to bring about change. Our learning communities should model the values of the good society.

Citizenship education can provide a unifying purpose for the 16-19 curriculum, ranging from local to global, addressing diversity and identity, promoting reflection and active engagement and building on young people’s interests and concerns. Like all the best learning programmes it should connect subject knowledge and skills development.

“Through others we become ourselves” Lev Vygotsky

“Plan for 1 year and plant rice. Plan for 10 years and plant trees. Plan for 100 years and educate people.” Confucius

Starting from our values

We need to start from our mission and values. At Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) for instance our mission is: “creating the successful learning community”, our values are “ambition, challenge and equality” and among our strategic objectives is: “promoting citizenship and our shared values.” We also aim to develop each student as a skilled learner: dedicated, organised, enquiring and social.

The educated young person

In aspiring to be a successful learning community we need to define what we mean by the educated young person. The ideal is that they should be becoming both a skilled learner and a skilled leader. Post-16 citizenship education can offer a single coherent vision of the skilled citizen as part of a broad education. If it is well managed it can help us make sense of a set of disparate learning experiences and make sure they are part of a single coherent experience of democracy and solidarity.

At NewVIc we use the Sixth Form Baccalaureate, also used by other sixth form colleges, as an overarching framework . This can promote citizenship through its three elements:

  • main learning: subject knowledge and skills
  • skills development which can include a research project emphasising the wider social benefits of student-led research
  • Personal challenges or service learning through community activity as peer mentors, mediators, advocates, representatives, campaigners, community organisers etc.

We can also support this with our Liberal Arts lecture and discussion programme as well as our international links and projects.

The citizenship-rich learning community

We should be aiming for a citizenship-rich learning community first by describing it and modelling it in small ways and then encouraging it to grow. The signs of a citizenship-rich learning community might include:

  • staff and students seeing themselves as lifelong learners, researchers and community members
  • all students contributing at least 50hrs of service learning per year which includes volunteering and being able to demonstrate what has been learnt
  • students working on a major drive to improve the health and well-being of the local community
  • global links enriching the college curriculum, student experience and professional knowledge base as well as promoting mutual understanding and lasting friendships across continents
  • by their second year in college, many students becoming peer mentors, mediators or volunteers in some capacity within the college
  • most students working in study circles led by a senior student or learning mentor with teachers encouraging and resourcing these study circles as an effective way of helping their students learn outside the classroom.
  • students developing their understanding of the finite nature of our planet’s resources and its biodiversity as well as developing the skills needed to provide creative solutions to the greatest challenges humanity faces.

Creating the citizenship-rich learning community will be an organic process which requires leadership and vision as well as staff commitment. We need to be able to “see the world big and see the world small”; to describe how the parts relate to the whole and to be prepared to constantly challenge and question and to be both active and reflective.

The global challenges we face; inequality, injustice, conflict and environmental degradation require global solutions and the least we can do is to ensure that all young people are ready for global citizenship. Anything less would be a dereliction of our duty of care to them and to the future.

“Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life”

“Now is the time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” W.E.B. DuBois

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Johann W. Goethe

“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” Dr. Seuss

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.” Hannah Arendt

This is an updated version of a presentation given in March 2010

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Blob and anti-blob

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

‘Lump and label’ name-calling is a poor substitute for real debate in education as elsewhere.

The use of the term ‘blob’ is a classic example of ‘lump and label’ thinking or inappropriate use of agglomeration and reification. A wide and varied set of arguments are lumped together because they have something in common, in this case that the speaker disagrees with them, and then they are given a single overarching label; in this case the ‘blob’, which creates a single target to aim all criticism at.

The scientist Steven Rose, writing about neurogenetic reductionism, identifies a number of steps in faulty reductive reasoning applied to complex social phenomena and human behaviours such as violence, sexuality and ‘intelligence’.

One such step is reification; this is when complex, diverse and dynamic processes are described as a single phenomenon which can be studied and measured in isolation. So, for example, the wide range of violent interactions between people are described in terms of a single fixed property; aggression which can then be isolated and studied away from the dynamic social world in which people sometimes behave violently.

A further step is agglomeration which takes things further by lumping together many different reified interactions as if they are all examples of the same thing. Aggression is used to describe a man abusing his lover, people fighting at football matches, demonstrators resisting police, racist attacks on black people, acts of war etc. Agglomerating these very different social processes assumes they all come from one single underlying property of aggression which can then be measured and potentially linked to genetic causes.

‘Lump and label’ thinking is not always wrong and reductionism has its place in the scientific method. Scientists need to group their observations together or split them from each other in order to look for patterns, differences and commonalities. But any lumping and labelling needs to be justified at the level of the phenomena being studied and any evidence that it isn’t must be taken seriously.

Back to the ‘blob’…

While we may allow politicians some rhetorical licence in debate, ‘lumping and labelling’ one’s critics too readily can backfire; whether because it is obviously over the top or because it allows them to do the same back to you. If you seek to establish a Manichean dualism by claiming to embody all that is right while your critics are the incarnation of all that is wrong, the tables can easily be turned. Many excellent, committed and rigorous educators could be driven to describe themselves ironically as proud members of the ‘blob’ or ‘enemies of promise’. Any strengths of your original position will be overlooked and the possibility of having a nuanced, rational debate is reduced.

So, we need to question the use of terms such as the ‘blob’, the ‘enemies of promise’ or any other gross examples of ‘lump and label’ whether in science, politics or education.

 

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Market madness #1 Oversubscribed?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #1 Oversubscribed?

“6 applicants for every place”…”heavily oversubscribed”. These sorts of claims are often used to establish how popular, and by implication successful, schools and colleges are. They should be taken with a heavy dose of salt.

Being able to measure demand is very important in a market system. Many providers want to show that what they offer has some scarcity value; that more people want it than can actually get it. Saying “we are oversubscribed” is a neat shorthand way of letting punters know the scarcity value of the commodity you’re offering.

But choosing a school or college is generally a single-outcome decision; each consumer will only choose one at a time. Both the school application system and the post-16 free-for-all allow for multiple applications. Consumers make several applications but will ultimately choose only one. So a high number of applications is a very inadequate measure of demand. Only the final number of students actually enrolling is a true indication of choices made. Schools and colleges have target numbers and each either does or doesn’t achieve this.

Our college has always had more applicants than places and has therefore always been “oversubscribed”. This is not because we are selective but because we understand that many make multiple applications. In a competitive environment with new post-16 providers opening up every year, this will intensify, so what matters is the proportion of applicants who actually enrol; the conversion rate.

Selective post-16 providers have no problem turning people away as they think it contributes to an impression of success. Comprehensive post-16 providers operating in a market have to understand the dynamic of that market if they want to plan to be full without wishing to turn students away. Quite a challenge!

All the Market Madness posts:

Market madness #1 Oversubscribed?

Market madness #2 “Choice and diversity”

Market madness #3 The well-informed educational consumer

Market madness #4 A good system can help schools improve

Market madness #5 Qualifications as currency

Market madness #6 Students as commodities: premium, discount and remaindered

Market madness #7 What markets do to us

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Voting and the habit of democracy

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

Do young people see the point of voting? Is democracy important in their lives? Should ‘something be done’ about low election turnouts among 18-25’s?

Today, we are voting in elections for the European parliament and in many areas we are also electing local councillors. Those of us who work with sixth formers have been encouraging them to register and now to vote. We tell them that this is their big opportunity to make their voice heard and to bring about change. We remind them that not so long ago people fought hard for the right to vote. We also warn them that a low turnout among young voters makes it easier for policy-makers to ignore them as a group.

But what is the point? Are we simply asking young people to join in a ritual which has little meaning and which will bring about little change? Is our call to them to exercise their right to vote just a way of giving some legitimacy to a bankrupt system as a substitute for the real change they might prefer?

Voting every once in while is only one of many routines within the habit of democracy. But voting is not enough to ensure a vibrant democracy. Simply telling young people they should vote is like handing them a hammer and chisel without teaching them how to carve. Hitting the chisel is fairly easy, but the skill is in knowing what to do with it to create something.

So, among its other aims, the citizenship education we offer needs to develop the practice of democracy. Young people need to learn how to evaluate policies and candidates, to develop a personal belief system and model of leadership and to challenge and engage others in debate. Voting needs to be seen as the periodic culmination of this democratic practice as well as the expression of an individually considered collective popular will.

We need schools of democracy where the habits of democracy are learnt and exercised daily. Our schools and colleges should be places where deliberation, debate, disagreement, persuasion and compromise are celebrated as important aspects of community life, in the governing body, staff, student and parent councils and in every classroom, study circle or friendship group. To get better at democracy we need to practice working alongside others, including people we might not have chosen, in communities of citizens and learners, each of whom has clear rights and responsibilities and each of whom is deserving of respect. If we don’t learn this at school, where else will it start?

Collective activity is vitally important but we shouldn’t fetishize active citizenship at the expense of reflective citizenship by insisting that campaigning and volunteering are the only ways of demonstrating citizenship. Being a citizen is just as much about quiet contemplation; thinking things through and asking ourselves: “Do I understand this? What more do I need to know? What do I really think? What should I do?”.

Building citizens is a big responsibility and one which all educators should take seriously. Working together to shape our collective life for good is a difficult endeavour so it’s not surprising that some get frustrated with how much work is needed and how long change can take and search for short cuts.

Politics can sometimes seem like a spectator sport with most of us consigned to the sidelines cheering our team and jeering at the opposition with elections as an occasional popularity contest. It’s understandable that some people simply lose interest or switch off because it seems both too aggressive and too remote.

But elections give democracy its pulse and by exercising our right to vote we help to generate that pulse. So, voting is crucial, but it’s only one part of the habit of democracy.

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A tale of two boroughs

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Eddie Playfair

I want to start by telling the story of 16-18 education in two London boroughs; a story which illustrates some of the things I think we should be concerned about.

Borough A was an economically disadvantaged area where most secondary schools had small, inefficient and unsuccessful sixth forms. The post-16 staying on rate was low, achievement was low and progression to university was low. The elected local authority decided to do something about this and following wide consultation and debate, it closed most of the school sixth forms and created a comprehensive sixth form college to replace them. The new sixth form college offered a very wide range of A-levels and vocational courses, grew fast and performed above all expectations. It became the largest sixth form college in London, achieved good results and very high progression to university. It also went on to increase the number of students progressing to the most selective universities while remaining a comprehensive and inclusive provider offering courses for all students at all levels.

Borough B was an economically disadvantaged area where the number of post-16 providers tripled from 3 to 9 over a couple of years because a wide range of new post-16 providers opened up. This change happened without much evidence of demand and without any partnership with existing successful post-16 providers. All the new provision was highly selective, aiming at the highest achieving year 11 students, setting high entry requirements and excluding many potential applicants. One of the new sixth forms was opened by a group of the most selective fee-charging private schools in the country claiming to offer great new opportunities to the most disadvantaged young people. In effect public funding for increased social mobility was being entrusted to the leading practitioners of social immobility and social segregation. At a time of deep cuts to the funding for post-16 students, substantial sums of public money were invested in opening these new sixth forms, most of which did not fill all their funded places. Even the local authority joined in, opening its own selective sixth form centre. Duplication of courses across the growing number of providers threatened the viability of some “minority” subjects and more institutional choice was in danger of leading to less course choice. Competition for students meant that between them the sixth forms were spending more and more on marketing themselves and had little incentive to co-operate.

So guess what?

Well, if you haven’t already worked it out, borough A and borough B are the same borough – only 20 years apart. The difference between 1994 and 2014 is the intensification of post-16 market madness, leading to unfettered expansion of selective new providers: academy converters, new academies opening sixth forms and new 16-18 free schools. Virtually all these new sixth forms exploit the fact that publicly funded institutions can be as selective at 16 as they feel they can get away with. They can choose to set high entry requirements which allow them to “cherry pick” those students who are the most likely to do very well at 18 because they did very well at 16.

Similar changes are happening all around us, encouraged and funded by the government. Instead of moving towards a comprehensive, holistic approach to meeting the needs of all young people over 16, the government funds and cheers on more and more selective providers.

All of this is happening in a context of high youth unemployment and austerity policies which have hit young people hard. Their lack of work is blamed on their lack of skills, an argument hardly heard at times of full employment. Financial support to the poorest has been cut, funding for tutorial and enrichment and bigger programmes has been cut and funding for students who need to continue their studies beyond 18 is about to be cut.

Young people are encouraged to see education as a positional good rather than a personal and social good. It is made to feel like a scarce commodity whose value seems to fall faster than most people’s ability to keep up. Young people are in a “race to the top” but they’re running up a down escalator. This feeling of never quite being good enough is reinforced by the constant reminder that only the highest grades and the most valued courses at the best schools, colleges and universities will do. You’ve got A levels? Only facilitating subjects will do. You’ve got A grades? We want A*. You’ve got in to university? Only the Russell group really counts.

In this desperate race, the value of a rounded, humanistic, liberal education is too often forgotten. Under such a system education becomes an engine of polarisation rather than an engine of cohesion and we are all the losers.

We need to remember that things don’t have to be this way. Our education system should reflect the kind of society we want and we should be making the case urgently for another way of doing things; one which values everyone and invests in everyone.

Speech to the Future of Post-16 Question Time, Islington on 14th May 2014 organised by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and University and College Union (UCU)

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