The GCSE retake challenge.

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Imagine a year when all our efforts to improve sixth form students’ English and Maths worked for nearly everyone. A year when the English and Maths skills of all those post-16 students who achieved grade 3’s at school improved to at least the standard required to achieve grade 4 in the previous year.

Imagine that year also saw much stronger Year 11 achievement in GCSE English and Maths than the year before. Exam boards would be looking at a potential leap in grade 9-4 pass rates with the achievement ‘Bell curve’ shifting sharply to the right.

In such a year, would we be allowed a moment of joy to celebrate this dramatic national success story; the genuine raising of standards so fervently wished for by everyone?

Probably not.

Why? Because the built-in assumption that each year’s cohort is roughly the same as the last means that results must tend towards ‘comparative outcomes’. So in a very strong year, results are adjusted downwards in a way which has more in common with cohort norm-referencing than criterion referencing.

So, in order to avoid dramatic shocks to the system, real improvement is under-reported and students in different years with exactly the same performance can end up with different grades.

For post-16 retake students, many of whom are working at the margins of a good grade and are more likely to be achieving near the good grade threshold, this means greater uncertainty about outcomes. These students are being required to retake GCSE English or Maths to demonstrate a level of competence – but it turns out that this level is a moving target; a moving target on a cliff edge.

If we are going to set a national threshold standard for English and Maths, it should really be described in terms of what students know and can do. This is the only way we can all be confident that we know when they have actually crossed that threshold. This is far more important than ‘stable’ pass rates from year to year or the politician’s fear of accusations of grade inflation or falling standards every time national achievement rises.

Now imagine a year which saw a big increase or decrease in the proportion of candidates achieving a Distinction in their grade 5 piano exam, or the proportion of candidates passing the driving test. Would this lead to soul-searching by the testing bodies or claims about standards? If they were confident that they were applying and interpreting a clear standard consistently for each candidate, the existence of variations would not in themselves require adjustment or ‘comparative outcomes’ to maintain credibility.

The GCSE retake challenge is a massive preoccupation in many colleges and sixth forms. We all want to develop the literacy and numeracy skills of our students. We all hate the fact that these courses routinely have pass rates below 50% when we expect rates in the 90’s or 80’s for all our other provision. We also hate the uncertainty of the annual grade boundary lottery which disproportionately affects our retakers.

These 2 GCSE’s are now the equivalent of a compulsory driving test. Students need to keep taking them until they achieve a good pass. We are setting a national standard by creating a national target. Those of us who are committed to making the policy work don’t want watered-down or more ‘relevant’ versions. We just want to be confident that the grades awarded will be defined by the skills students have demonstrated and that our students’ efforts to reach the threshold are properly recognised. Even advocates of norm-referencing accept the need for national reference tests to establish whether standards are improving across the system from year to year. In the case of GCSE English and Maths, the argument is that they should themselves be national reference tests.

It would also be helpful if the ‘stepping stone’ lower level English and Maths qualifications articulated with the content of the GCSE specifications and if students could ‘bank’ their achievement and build on it.

Interestingly, an opposite side-effect of the comparative outcomes problem was demonstrated by the kerfuffle around grade thresholds for some modern language exams this summer. For instance, the 17% of A-level German candidates who were native German-speakers managed to achieve 50% of all the A* grades. Concerned private schools had asked boards to look again at grade boundaries because ‘too many’ native speakers were being entered and achieving well, allegedly ‘making it harder’ for non-native speakers to get good grades. But if the grade criteria were clear and stable, we should surely be celebrating the fact that more students are doing better because some of the cohort bring more skills with them.

While recognizing that exam requirements and content will change over time, we do need to assert the key principle that we want to grade students as objectively and consistently as possible. And because cohorts vary and teaching does make a difference, we need to be prepared to live with variations in results from year to year; upwards as well as downwards.

See also:

Pick your own performance measure (September 2016)

The post-16 retake challenge (September 2015)

 

 

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Easing student debt won’t cut it.

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Apparently, the prime minister is considering ways to ease the burden of student debt (story here). That sounds like a good idea; she might also take the opportunity to consider how the tuition fee and loan system has changed the university system in this country and whether there’s a case for more fundamental change.

The popularity of Labour’s promise to abolish university tuition fees has clearly rattled the Conservatives. But it would be wrong to think of this as a simple political bribe which can be cancelled out by a counter-bribe. Such spending promises are the bread and butter of electoral politics, but the promise of free education, as part of a National Education Service, is more than just a spending commitment. It is a rejection of marketisation which many people feel has gone too far, with real consequences for quality and equality – in education and in other public services.

If that is the case, simply tweaking the interest rates on student loans won’t cut it. The prime minister is also said to be considering a plan to name and shame universities that fail to improve students’ earning potential. In other words, consumers just need better data about exactly how much their degree will improve their earning power and somehow the system will improve. This is one of those ‘pure’ market prescriptions which sees a public good as a purely financial good whose benefits to the individual can be quantified in value for money terms with no recognition of the wider social benefits or the macroeconomic and labour-market factors which impact on graduate earnings.

Such a move would be absolutely in line with the wider marketisation project. This has several elements, each of which can be specifically promoted by government policy while also taking root in the assumptions and behaviours of organisations and the people within them. In higher and further education, there’s no doubt that marketisation has changed the way people think and behave.

In summary, the steps in moving to a marketized education system include:

  1. Redefining education providers as businesses in competition with each other.
  2. Redefining students as consumers in competition with each other for the most valuable resources.
  3. Redefining educational achievement in financial terms.

Financialization (giving a monetary value to things) and marketisation (creating a market where things are exchanged for money) go hand in hand to drive the process at all levels, from the national to the institutional to the personal. In education, this threatens to reduce everything to essentially financial transactions; from our national priorities to the process of teaching and learning and the teacher-student relationship. At the national level it’s all about the success of UK plc and at the individual level it’s all about getting a better paid job. All social, political and cultural objectives are relegated to second order aims or ‘good intentions’.

This radical reductivism of the social to the financial fails to address the needs of a modern, democratic society trying to tackle any of the global and local challenges which we face. Reducing education, health, the environment, the economy, housing, human relations etc. to the purely economic is a recipe for disaster and economic failure. By forcing us to ignore the complexity of our societies and economies it prevents us from developing the complex policy responses which might actually take us forward.

If the prime minister wants to address concerns about higher education, perhaps she should be asking more fundamental questions about what we want from education in general and university degrees in particular.

See also:

Reconstruction in an age of demolition (July 2017)

Education 2022: market or system? (June 2017)

Shaping an alternative education policy (April 2017)

University Gold (October 2016)

University for all (September 2016)

Starting to think about a National Education Service (September 2015)

Re-imagining the university (February 2015)

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Challenging IQ.

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Behavioural genetics; the clue to the difficulty is in the name. As with Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology before it, the squashing together of two very different levels of understanding into a single discipline creates a real problem. Genetics and psychology are both respectable fields of study with their different methodologies and evidence bases but they are explaining phenomena at different levels.

On the whole, the best explanations for complex phenomena are to be found close to the level that the phenomena occur. Imagine a ‘Molecular Politics’ or a ‘Quantum Sociology’ trying to explain social and cultural phenomena by referring to biochemistry or physics. From the other direction, imagine trying to explain different human personalities based on the alignment of the planets and stars at someone’s birth. (OK, some people actually do that, but Astrology really isn’t a science.)

Aggression, alcoholism, religiosity… these are evidently socially determined and contextual behaviours subject to change and multiple complex influences over time. Investigating them reductively is difficult as they simply won’t keep still or fit into neat categories, even in single individuals. How useful is it to try to explain such complex social-level behaviours with reference to the much ‘lower’ molecular or genetic level?

Such translations are sometimes possible; for instance we accept that drugs can affect behaviour, and pharmacologists and psychologists can provide connected chemical and physiological explanations of these effects. But to be convincing, such explanations across levels need to be susceptible to robust investigation and provide very credible causal mechanisms.

And then there’s intelligence. If we could even agree on a definition, it would certainly be a complex, changing set of socially determined skills which are the result of development within social and cultural settings and shaped by many human influences and interactions over time. Parenting, education and peer groups would be just a few of these influences. Is it really possible that such complex phenomena can be usefully summed up by a single number on a linear scale?

These are some of the problems with the search for a single measure of general intelligence and why it seems so unscientific. These concerns are confirmed by a reading of classics such as Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ or ‘Not in our Genes’ by Stephen Rose, Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin and any number of other scholarly contributions.

So, surely the simplistic notion of intelligence as a single defined ability with a substantial genetic component has been definitively laid to rest? Well, apparently not. Uncritical talk of IQ and its genetic basis seems to be experiencing a revival. Has something changed? Is there some compelling new evidence which should lead us to revise a judgement that IQ test scores tell us little more than how good the sitters are at taking such tests? Have new mechanisms been found to demonstrate causation where there was only correlation?

We should be open to new hypotheses and there’s no harm in revisiting the evidence. However, in doing so, we can be forgiven for being very cautious because IQ testing has such a shameful track record. The long history of the use of such tests to justify racist, sexist and classist prejudices and discriminatory social policies is well documented, including in education. The 11+, which has a lot in common with IQ tests, is still used in parts of England to separate 11-year olds into two groups and decide which of two very different types of school they should attend, offering them different educational opportunities on the basis of this single measure of their ‘ability’.

Do the latest educational claims of Behavioural Genetics stand up to scrutiny at the social level? A few recent examples:

In a piece on The Conversation website in July 2016 entitled: ‘Your genes can help predict how well you’ll do in school’ a researcher from the Centre for Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry at King’s College London describes genetic studies which aim to ‘better understand differences in students’ performance’ and will help us ‘predict specific learning abilities such as reading and mathematical ability’. She concludes: ‘hopefully we will be able to create more powerful polygenic scores in the near future to predict even more of the individual differences in educational achievement’.

Presumably when these polygenic scores are available, experienced English and Maths teachers across the country will be expected to ditch what they have learned and change their practices.

A 2015 Scientific Report  in the journal Nature  from the same Centre at King’s College announces: ‘Genetics affects choice of academic subjects as well as achievement’. The team claim to have shown that young people’s decision to study A-levels and their choice of A-levels subjects shows substantial genetic influence as does their performance in those courses. Based on the study of over 6,000 twin pairs they found that these decisions are ‘highly heritable’ and conclude that this suggests ‘a genetic way of thinking about education…based on…genetic propensities’.

Anyone who has worked with students making these post-16 decisions will know of the many social and cultural factors, assumptions and expectations which come into play in the process. We also know of the high correlation between A-level achievement and prior GCSE achievement. It seems particularly obtuse to be leaping straight to a ‘genetic way of thinking’ to explain all this. One can only suggest that these folks get out a bit more and take a slightly broader view of the issue they’re researching. Isn’t it obvious that they’re looking in the wrong place?

This is not to dispute the results of any experiments or any of the calculated correlations but to question the assumption of causation and the subsequent interpretation and application. It’s not enough to say: ‘it’s Science – you can’t argue with Science’, the onus is on the advocates of the importance of such data to demonstrate their meaning and their usefulness.

At the interface of the genetic and the social, as at any other level boundary, there will be a tension between the emergentist who wants to say: ‘things are actually very different at the next level’ and the reductionist who wants to show that: ‘things are really quite simple’. It’s not easy to persuade those searching for simple causes that there might be more complex ones. It may sound a bit wishy-washy to respond to hard experimental data by saying ‘aren’t we missing something – isn’t it more complicated?’ but that’s exactly what we must do before moving between levels.

In summary, we need to ask:

  • What claims are being made about the usefulness of heritability data, ‘general intelligence’ or IQ?
  • How robust are these claims in the real world of these phenomena?
  • What policies or practices are being advocated as a result of these claims?

In the case of intelligence, the lumping together of very different social behaviours and labelling them as one simple thing (the process of reification) combined with the seeking of simple causes for complex phenomena feels like several steps too far. We are right to be suspicious of any behavioural, social or political claims derived from IQ or genetic data. The concept of ‘general intelligence’ is so poorly defined to begin with that it isn’t in a position to be translated from the behavioural level to the genetic level or to be taken seriously by educators.

See also:

Reducing culture to memes (August 2015)

Challenging neurosexism (January 2016)

Homology, analogy and metaphor (October 2014)

Edgar Morin on ‘Thinking Global’ (August 2017)

A few quotes:

The hereditarian fallacy is not the simple claim that IQ is to some degree ‘heritable’. I have no doubt that it is. The hereditarian fallacy resides in two false implications drawn from this basic fact: 1. The equation of ‘heritable’ with ‘inevitable’…heritability says little about the range of environmental modification to which these traits are subject. 2. The confusion of within- and between-group heredity… Variation among individuals within a group and differences in mean values between groups are entirely different phenomena. One item provides no license for speculation about the other.

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)

The products of one human generation’s intelligence and creativity have been placed at the disposal of a subsequent generation and the horizons of human achievement have been therefore extended. The intelligence of a schoolchild today, in any reasonable understanding of the term, is quite different from, and in many ways much greater than that of his or her Victorian counterpart…Its measure is itself historically contingent.

Alfred Binet, the founder of IQ testing, once protested against ‘the brutal pessimism’ that regards a child’s IQ score as a fixed measure of his or her ability, rightly seeing that to regard the child as thus fixed was to help ensure that he or she remained so.

Suppose that developmental biology were to reach the point where the developmental response to environment of specific human genotypes could be specified with respect to behaviour…the characteristics of an individual could be predicted, given the environment. But the environment is a social environment…the laws of relation of individual genotype to individual phenotype cannot by themselves provide the laws of the development of society. In addition, there must be laws that relate the collection of human natures to the nature of the collectivity. The problem of social theory disappears in a reductionist world view, because to a reductionist, society is determined by individuals with no reciprocal path of causation.

Not in Our Genes, Biology, Ideology and Human Nature by Steven Rose, Richard Lewontin and Leon Kamin (1984)

High heritability of a character need not say anything about genes. The genetic view is usually a chance of blaming the victim; a way of excusing injustice because it is determined by nature.

The Language of the Genes by Steve Jones (1994)

If the history of medical genetics teaches us one lesson, it is to be wary of …such slips between biology and culture. Humans, we now know, are largely similar in genetic terms – but with enough variation within us to represent true diversity….Tests that are explicitly designed to capture variance in abilities will likely capture variance in abilities…but to call the score in such a test ‘intelligence’… is to insult the very quality it sets out to measure.

Genes cannot tell us how to categorize or comprehend human diversity; environments can, cultures can, geographies can, histories can.

The heritability of a trait, no matter how strong, may be the result of multiple genes, each exerting a relatively minor effect…while some combination of genes and environments can strongly influence it, this combination will rarely be passed, intact, from parents to children.

The Gene, an Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016)

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NewVIc results 2017

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Students and staff at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) are celebrating another year of improvement in A-level pass rates and top grades, all of which have continued to increase faster than nationally. NewVIc’s A-level pass rate is up 1% on last year at 98% and is the highest ever for the college.

The proportion of candidates achieving the highest possible A* grade is also up and 10% of all entries achieved A or A* grades with 14 of these in Maths, 12 in Sociology, 10 in Psychology, 9 in Chemistry and 7 in Biology. Students in 22 A-level subjects achieved 100% pass rates. This improvement has been sustained by a comprehensive college despite the competition from highly selective sixth forms which cherry pick high achieving students.

Results for the A-level sized Subsidiary Diplomas taken by some A-level students were also excellent; a 99% pass rate across 149 entries with 73% of candidates achieving at least a Distinction and 48% achieving the highest possible grade of starred Distinction including a stunning 84% in Business intensive and 83% in Applied Science intensive.

NewVIc’s advanced vocational students have also excelled this year with an overall pass rate also at 98%. 75 students (18% of candidates) achieved a triple starred distinction (D*D*D*) which is the highest possible grade in the level 3 extended diploma. Half of all Extended Diploma candidates achieved at least a triple Distinction, equivalent to 3 A’s at A-level. A stunning 94% of Computer Science students and 82% of Mechanical Engineering students achieved at least a Triple Distinction. Most of NewVIc’s vocational students will progress to university, in many cases on to some of the most highly-rated specialist degree courses.

NewVIc’s university progression rates have always been very high and we are delighted that this year a record proportion of applicants will progress to the first-choice university. Just to pick two of our high achieving Honours students:

Mughees Hassan achieved A*A*A*A securing a place to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and Bibire Baykeens achieved A*A*A and will start her medical degree at Plymouth University. There are many more like them.

After opening her results, Bibire said: “It’s been an absolute pleasure being at NewVIc. Everyone here is on your side to help you succeed. They don’t just care about grades, they care about your future. Staff are happy to answer all your questions and ensure you know your subject as well as possible. They encourage you to aim high.”

Over the last 25 years NewVIc has helped many thousands of local young people succeed and this year’s excellent results continue our year on year improvement. This success means that many hundreds of young east Londoners will be able to realise their ambitions and progress to the university degree course of their choice. This success shows that excellence can be achieved within a comprehensive college which is there for everyone with courses at all levels.

Our students and staff have worked extremely hard for these results and their success is well deserved. As we prepare to celebrate our Silver Jubilee this year these excellent results show that we are a place of ambition, challenge and equality and truly a successful learning community.

I want to thank everyone involved in teaching and supporting the class of 2017 throughout the academic year and all the staff who worked so hard ensuring everything went smoothly on results day.

We wish our class of 2017 every success as they pursue their dreams.

Notes:

  • Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) is one of London’s largest sixth form colleges with around 2,500 full-time students and high success rates.
  • The college is proud to be comprehensive and to promote social cohesion.
  • NewVIc has a 25-year track record of widening participation in higher education and has a university applicant progression rate of 90%.
  • NewVIc sends more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to university than any other sixth form provider in England
  • The college has strong links with schools, universities, employers and community groups and hundreds of NewVIc students volunteer in the local community.
  • NewVIc has started a major campus investment programme by opening a superb new building earlier this year which houses a studio theatre, café and a modern university-style library.

See also:

The NewVIc class of 2016 (August 2017)

Newham’s outstanding record of widening participation (August 2017)

University progression for the NewVIc class of 2015 (December 2015)

NewVIc breaks all its university progression records (September 2015)

Russell group numbers soar in Newham (August 2015)

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The NewVIc class of 2016

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

As we prepare to celebrate the achievement and progression of our 2017 leavers on their results day, it’s worth looking back at our most recent previous cohort and where they progressed. As usual, the class of 2016 was a brilliant and diverse group, full of ambitious and determined young people, preparing to make a positive contribution by acquiring a range of professional skills and qualifications.

Key facts about the NewVIc class of 2016:

696 students progressed to higher education.

90% progression rate across all applicants; A-level and vocational. This is well above the national average.

86 students progressed to Russell Group universities.

Where did they all go?

Our ‘top 7’ university destinations account for 60% of students progressing and this group has remained the same for the last 4 years: Westminster, East London (UEL), Greenwich, Middlesex, Queen Mary University of London, London South Bank and City University. Going back further, the top 7 has always looked very similar but hasn’t always included City and has included either London Metropolitan (currently 11th) or Kingston (currently 9th)

In terms of numbers, the picture is one of stability with the biggest increases over 2015 at Greenwich (up 14 students) and Queen Mary University of London (up 11 students).

14% of NewVIc students progressed to universities outside the London area which required them to live away from home. This is down from 2015 with the highest numbers going to De Montfort (11 students), Anglia Ruskin (8), Coventry, Portsmouth, Surrey (7 each), Sussex (6) and Essex (5).

The Russell Group list remains dominated by Queen Mary University of London which is hardly surprising as it is the nearest Russell Group institution to our college. It accounts for two thirds of all NewVIc’s Russell Group places. Other key institutions are University College London (UCL) with 9 students and King’s College London (KCL) with 8 with a good spread of students progressing to 10 other Russell Group universities.  It’s also worth noting that, as usual, a good number of our vocational students also progressed to Russell Group universities, demonstrating that good vocational qualifications are valued by selective universities when they understand them well.

What are they all studying?

As usual, our students are progressing to pretty much the full range of degree courses available, with the most popular degrees being very broadly by title: Engineering (over 70), Accounting (60+), Business (50+), Law (40+), Psychology (40+), Criminology (30+), Nursing (20+), Education (20+), Early Childhood (20+), Mathematics, English, Design (around 20).

Using the UCAS subject groups, the most substantial areas chosen were: Business and Administrative Studies (147 students), Computer Sciences (82), Biological Sciences (66), Engineering (61), Subjects Allied to Medicine (55), Social Studies (54) and Law (54). The biggest increases over 2015 were in Computer Sciences (up by 19 students), Law (up 12), Mathematical Sciences (up 10) and Biological Sciences (up 8). The biggest falls were in Business and Administrative studies (down 36) and Creative Arts and Design (down 15). These changes reflect changes in cohort sizes for the associated college curriculum areas.

Top 26 universities for the NewVIc class of 2016:

University students %
Westminster 87 12.5
East London 71 10.2
Greenwich 66 9.5
Middlesex 58 8.3
Queen Mary University of London 57 8.2
London South Bank 42 6.0
City 37 5.3
Goldsmiths 23 3.3
Kingston 17 2.4
Brunel 14 2.0
London Metropolitan 14 2.0
West London 14 2.0
Hertfordshire 13 1.9
De Montfort 11 1.6
Ravensbourne 10 1.4
University College London 9 1.3
Anglia Ruskin 8 1.2
King’s College London 8 1.2
Buckinghamshire 7 1.0
Coventry 7 1.0
Cumbria (London campus) 7 1.0
Portsmouth 7 1.0
Roehampton 7 1.0
Surrey 7 1.0
University of the Arts London 6 0.9
Sussex 6 0.9

 

Russell group progression for the NewVIc class of 2016:

University students
Queen Mary University of London 57
University College London (UCL) 9
King’s College London (KCL) 8
Southampton 3
Imperial College 1
Bristol 1
Cardiff 1
Edinburgh 1
Warwick 1
Birmingham 1
Exeter 1
Leeds 1
Liverpool 1

See also:

Newham’s outstanding record of widening participation (August 2017)

Reducing London’s disadvantage gap (January 2016)

Let’s celebrate vocational success (January 2016)

University progression for the NewVIc class of 2015 (December 2015)

NewVIc breaks all its university progression records (September 2015)

Russell group numbers soar in Newham (August 2015)

From free school meals to university (April 2015)

Where do all our A level students go? (January 2015)

Vocational education: rejecting the narrative of failure (January 2015)

Investing in East London’s future (2014 university progression) (December 2014)

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Newham’s outstanding record of widening participation

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

Disadvantaged young people in Newham are more than twice as likely to progress to university than in England as a whole and their progression rate is the 4th highest of all local authorities in the country. The ‘disadvantage gap’ between them and their ‘non-disadvantaged’ peers is less than a third of the national average and the 3rd narrowest in the country. This very strong performance is not new and Newham has consistently been ahead for these measures for many years and has narrowed the disadvantage gap faster than average.

By any standard this is an outstanding record of sustained widening participation over many years and something everyone in Newham can take pride in. The lives of many thousands of young people in Newham have been transformed thanks to their own efforts and those of long established Newham schools and colleges. All of this despite the many challenges faced by young people in one of the poorest and most disadvantaged contexts in the country.

Data for this analysis were drawn from the recently published Widening Participation in Higher Education Statistics which cover the 9-year period 2005/06 to 2014/2015 for young people in state-funded schools and colleges who had progressed to Higher Education (HE) by the age of 19 and includes a breakdown by their Free School Meal (FSM) status.

Some key points:
1. Progression has increased overall nationally: There was a steady increase in the proportion of young people progressing to university in England from 30% to 38% of the cohort in this period.

2. Progression has increased for both disadvantaged and less disadvantaged students nationally: The proportion of students progressing to HE from both the FSM and non-FSM groups increased over this period; from 13% to 24% for FSM students and from 33% to 41% for non-FSM students.

3. There has been no significant narrowing of the ‘disadvantage gap’ nationally: Despite the overall improvement, the gap between the progression rates of FSM and non-FSM students has remained stubbornly high nationally, shifting barely at all; from 19% to 18% over this period.

4. Newham’s performance is outstanding by any standard: Newham’s progression figures are well above the national average, but it’s worth drilling down a bit further and looking at the Inner London region which is the highest performing region in the country with an FSM progression rate of 45% and a ‘disadvantage gap’ of only 8%. Even when compared to the high performing Inner London region, Newham’s record is impressive; the progression rate for FSM students of 49% is above the Inner London average and is the 3rd highest in the region behind only Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. Newham’s ‘disadvantage gap’ of 5% is also well below the Inner London average and only Westminster and Islington do better.

5. Newham has sustained high HE progression rates over many years: The proportion of Newham students progressing to HE was above the Inner London average every year throughout this 9-year period, in fact the borough actually improved its relative position in that time.

6. Newham has narrowed the ‘disadvantage gap’ over many years: During this 9 year period Newham’s ‘disadvantage gap’ has also fallen faster than average; from 11% to 5% compared to the Inner London fall from 12% to 8% and a mere 1% fall nationally from 19% to 18%.

All these improvements were achieved steadily over the 9 year period and do not correlate with the recent creation of new selective sixth form providers in the borough.

% of 15-year-old pupils from state funded schools and colleges who entered HE by age 19

2014/15 FSM Non-FSM gap
England 24% 41% 18%
Outer London 38% 52% 14%
Inner London 45% 53% 8%
Newham 49% 54% 5%

This demonstrates the strong commitment over a long period of young people in Newham to HE progression  as well as being a tribute to all the work done over many years by Newham’s post-16 providers. As the largest and most comprehensive of these, Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) has made a significant contribution to establishing a long-term culture of HE progression and helping to achieve Newham’s sustained record of success. Throughout the 25 years the college has been open we have consistently promoted high levels of student achievement and progression and we will continue to do so into the future.

See also:

Reducing London’s disadvantage gap (January 2016)

University progression for the NewVIc class of 2015 (December 2015)

England’s engines of mobility (October 2015)

London’s engines of mobility (October 2015)

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Edgar Morin on ‘Thinking Global’.

Posted on August 6, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

How do we understand the difference between the behaviour of an individual and that of a society, between a small group of like-minded people and a political movement or between the ecosystem of a few acres and that of a whole planet?

Clearly these are differences of scale, but some of the properties of the larger more complex systems can’t simply be explained as scaled-up versions of the properties of the smaller constituent parts. Those properties of the whole which can’t easily be explained at the level of the parts are emergent properties. These properties operate at a different level and require different explanations which is why social and political phenomena can’t be explained by psychology alone and biological processes can’t simply be explained by physics or chemistry. Reductionist explanations which involve understanding how the parts work can be very useful in helping us to understand the whole, but they never tell the whole story.

The most interesting questions are often about the translation between what is happening at one level and the next one ‘up’ or ‘down’. It’s by studying this interface that we begin to understand how chemical changes could have life or death effects on a whole organism, how individual human behaviours could influence a whole society or how human activity could have a planetary impact. To do these translations between levels we need to be confident with the rules and explanations governing both the levels we’re interested in, in other words to understand the properties of both the parts and the whole. This can put the overspecialised expert on just one level at a disadvantage.

In his brilliant book ‘Thinking Global’ (‘Penser Global’, Flammarion, 2015) the distinguished French sociologist Edgar Morin aims to help us get our heads around the overwhelming complexity of a modern world where so much is at stake, including human survival itself. Like Morin, holists reject the idea of breaking knowledge up into subject areas and fields of study but Morin suggests that this can itself be a form of reductionism – seeing only the whole and failing to take account of the constant dynamic interaction and feedback between the different levels. Morin is neither a reductionist nor a holist; going beyond the distinction between parts and wholes to see the key issue as the complexity of the system itself.

The first task, according to Morin, is to contextualise. Things only make sense if they are seen in their context; like a word in a sentence or human action within a human culture. In looking at humans in our world he sees both unity and diversity; a striking genetic, physiological and emotional unity – we all smile and cry, experience pain and joy, but this commonality translates itself into a great diversity of cultures and behaviours. Morin says that at a time when we all share a common planetary destiny:

We have to recognise others as both different to us and the same as us. If we see others as entirely different we cannot understand them. If we see them as entirely the same we cannot see what makes them original and different.

In order to start thinking about a global human society we need to understand the relationships between the parts and the whole and the emergent properties of a complex social system. Individuals and groups interacting with each other have produced languages, cultures and structures of power and regulation such as states with laws and institutions all of which can endure beyond any individual lifetime. The whole both releases and limits the potential of the parts but amounts to much more than the mere sum of those parts.

Social changes can be seen as disruptions at the social level which eventually transform the whole system, like capitalism growing from within feudalism or a new technology revolutionising the way people live. But historical evolution should not be seen as linear; the smooth flow of a majestic river. Instead, we need to understand that it is often triggered by apparently marginal events or accidents which set off deeper systemic change.

The more complex human society becomes, the more interdependent we become; relying on a web of connections, interactions and tensions which we barely understand. At the global level, this leads to greater uncertainty and risk. Emerging global challenges require some perspective to be properly understood and addressed and we need time to come to terms with these; time which we can’t always afford. Morin reminds us that during his youth in the 1930’s, European society seemed to be sleepwalking towards disaster and he quotes Hegel: “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk”. Given the colossal challenges we face today, we need to seek to understand the human condition a little better if we are to spread our wings a little faster. The parlous state of our human condition demands urgent action.

However, as Morin says, all action is a gamble full of uncertainty and success can never be guaranteed. No sooner do we make what we think is a wise and enlightened decision, it is released into a social, economic and political context outside of our control and may have all sorts of unintended consequences. This is not a counsel of despair, simply a reminder that our current understanding is always partial and that we need to combine the desire to deal with urgent problems with some humility about our abilities. We only need to reflect on the genuinely held fallacies and misconceptions of the past to recognise that we are probable just as prone to error and illusion today.

Morin makes the case for a new paradigm to replace a reductionist and atomised view of knowledge with a more ‘connected’ paradigm of complexity. We are in a period which Morin describes as the ‘prehistory of human thought’. Early Homo Sapiens had essentially the same brains and capacities as we do but we now have to operate at a new level and face new threats; fear, fanaticism, murderous conflict and political regression. We also have more powerful tools – both real and conceptual – at our disposal. But human society is a constant ‘work in progress’ and we need improved tools for global thinking.

Morin concludes:

Faced with all these dangers we need to seek a more open way of thinking, one which is both more global and more complex. We need to reject dogmatism; the hardening of our ideas and the refusal to test them against reality. We need to abandon a closed rationalism which cannot grasp what might be beyond conventional thinking and instead commit to an open rationalism which knows its limitations. We have to struggle constantly to avoid believing in those illusions which could acquire the solidity of a belief system. In this global world we are faced with the challenge of global thinking, which is the challenge of complex thinking. We are living through the beginning of a beginning.

Based on the final chapter ‘Pensée complexe et pensée globale’

See also :

Citizens of somewhere, citizens of anywhere (May 2017)

The social origins of human thinking (March 2016)

Gulliver’s levels (May 2015)

Reducing culture to memes (August 2015)

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10 things which could improve education

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

I’d like to offer the following tentative 10 point charter to improve education at all levels as an initial contribution to the debate about the future of education in England.

1. Build a comprehensive system rooted in equality:
We should all be regarded as being of equal worth and deserving of equal access to educational opportunities. Rather than creating more barriers and inventing new ways to select and segregate, education should be promoting greater equality and inclusion. Publicly funded schools, colleges and universities should have a common status and common funding regimes and should be required to work together and serve the whole community. We need a National Education Service to provide everyone with the opportunity to participate and benefit as equals, with access to a wide range of educational opportunities as part of a lifelong entitlement to free education.

2. Offer a broad liberal education to all as a universal entitlement:
We need to define what areas of knowledge acquisition and skills development we regard as essential for all and use this as the basis for an outline national curriculum from 5-18 culminating in an inclusive school leavers’ diploma accessible to all. This means defining what we mean by an ‘educated’ person and providing a good platform for lifelong learning which can support us in accessing the full range of human knowledge and culture and help us to understand our common humanity and diversity.

3. Inject more democracy into education:
We need to address education’s democratic deficit and create opportunities to debate and shape education policies locally, regionally and nationally. Education policy is the rightful concern of the whole community. Minimum expectations and standards should be set nationally and at local and regional levels those who shape and oversee the education system should be accountable to, and elected by, local people.
Education should help us to make our voices heard, individually and collectively and to play a part in creating our shared world. Our schools, colleges and universities should provide a practical apprenticeship in civic participation and foster the habits of democracy. This means educating about our institutions and the use and abuse of power. It also means acquiring the skills to bring about social change, to debate the world and to use democratic methods to shape it.

4. Give education clear social purpose:
We need to educate for solidarity and to learn to work with others for the common good. Education should develop and support our social bonds, our consideration and understanding of others and our ability to exercise and challenge power collectively. We should all be expected to engage in some service learning or civic action which benefits others. This ‘applied social learning’ could be part of a new mutual contract between the individual and the community to underpin the guarantee of free education.

5. Connect learning and work:
Learning is work and education is not separate from the ‘real world’. What we learn can help us achieve our personal, social or economic aspirations and the links need to be made clear. Every employer above a certain size should offer apprenticeships or paid internships and be expected to contribute to a local educational offer and release their staff to train, mentor or advise others.

6. Educate for global citizenship:
We need to think as global citizens at both the local and the planetary level if we are to understand and address the great global challenges facing us, e.g: injustice, inequality, conflict, disease and environmental degradation. We need to learn to make the best use of the finite resources at our disposal and consider our impact on others, including future generations and other living things. Education should promote an understanding of sustainability and the ways people, processes and resources are interconnected.

7. Encourage action, reflection and connection:
Every educational course or programme should be set in its wider context, supporting reflection and good judgement and making connections between past and present, with other areas of knowledge or skill and with different people and perspectives. We should value and pass on our common human intellectual and cultural heritage. Education should offer us a good understanding of tradition; what is known and has already been achieved while also helping us to exercise our judgement in learning critically from our past to support the creation of new knowledge and insights.

8. Develop a research culture:
Education should encourage inquiry, scepticism and rationalism and help us to develop as critical and questioning beings. We should continually foster and channel our natural curiosity about the world. We need to be capable of questioning the way things are and of exercising judgement based on evidence. We should all have the opportunity to undertake some substantial research and to contribute to at least one ‘masterpiece’, which could be of some benefit or interest to others.

9. Educate for liberation:
Education should empower and emancipate us. We need our schools, colleges and universities to be the workshops of a better future, broadening our horizons and helping us imagine new ways of living, of seeing things and of doing things. Every education provider should regard itself as a school for innovation where people’s enthusiasm for making things better is encouraged through opportunities for discussion and debate, community activity and community leadership. We have enormous unrealised potential which can be released by working with others.

10. Promote capability and creativity:
Making things and changing things requires knowledge, skill, creativity and teamwork. Everyone should have the opportunity to acquire and master at least one skill or craft in depth and “find their genius”. We need to recognise that this requires experimentation, false starts and some failure. We should understand and be open to change in the world and in ourselves. Education should promote the possibility of social and personal transformation and creativity and develop our understanding of historical change and the development of ideas.

For discussion and refining. Feedback welcome.

See also:
Giving young people a stake in their future (July 2017)
Reconstruction in an age of demolition (July 2017)
Shaping an alternative education policy (April 2017)
Going beyond (October 2016)
Education: what’s it all for? (January 2016)

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The last Corsican.

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

“I’ve decided to keep this diary because I’m going to die in the next few days…I am condemned because, having refused to be evacuated with the others, I will be annihilated by the incendiary bombs which are systematically ravaging the Corsican interior. Already, Zonza, the village where I took refuge is melting and all the houses in the local hamlets are collapsing under the effects of napalm. The molten rocks are forming a lava flow on the charred soil and occasionally a roof explodes like a forgotten pot in the oven. Soon, the Island of Beauty will be wiped off the map…”

So begins Jacques Mondoloni’s apocalyptic story Le Dernier Corse, available, in French, in the short story collection Corse Noire alongside stories by Mérimée, Flaubert and Maupassant.

The fictional ‘last Corsican’ of the title is the priest and former independence activist Pascal Geronimi whose mother was English and father Corsican. Having played an active role in violent resistance against the French state he has turned his back on extremism. During this final conflagration, he remains on the island and sends his account of his homeland’s destruction to a fellow priest in the Vatican.

In these diary entries, Pascal tells us something of his life as well as explaining how things have come to this. The premise is that the xenophobic, nationalist La Flamme party is in power in France and refuses Corsica’s call for independence. Citing the general ‘lawlessless’ and ‘terrorism’ of the Corsicans and their alleged ‘Arab’ origins, the government has won a referendum to apply a scorched earth policy and expel Corsicans from their homeland; deporting 200,000 Corsicans to North Africa and Italy;  precipitating a refugee crisis and ultimately a plan to completely eliminate the island.

Corsicans are used to the idea of emigration and diaspora; they have often had to leave home to escape poverty and underdevelopment. The island has experienced major falls in population, notably around the 20th century’s two world wars. But whether the island is shrinking or growing and wherever its people find themselves, they carry an idea of home – often an ancestral village – with them. For any small nation, the fact that home exists, however distant, is reassuring and essential. And the possibility of that home being destroyed is beyond imagining.

This story is not only a record of the last words of this ‘last Corsican’ but an exploration of the unthinkable; the end of Corsica itself. It’s majestic landscape destroyed and it’s people dispersed; leaving only a memory of Corsica, an idea of Corsica. This particular scenario may seem unlikely, and yet the Mediterranean today is the scene of greater refugee movements than envisaged in this story and sadly human history is not short of precedents for the deliberate obliteration of places and the annihilation of populations.

Other posts on Corsican themes:

Boswell in Corsica (March 2016)

Escher in Corsica (January 2016)

Sebald in Corsica (December 2015)

Edward Lear in Corsica (August 2015)

John Minton in Corsica (July 2015)

Paoli in London (March 2015)

Conrad in Corsica (August 2014)

Seneca in Corsica (August 2014)

Village wisdom: Corsican proverbs and sayings (August 2014)

Poem: Corsica (July 2015)

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Matisse in Corsica.

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

The great artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was inspired to use colour in radical new ways during his first visit to Corsica.
After their wedding in early 1898, Matisse and his wife Amélie Parayre spent their honeymoon first in London and then in Ajaccio.
In London, Matisse was able to view Turner's work of which he later said:

Turner lived in a cellar. Once a week he had the shutters fully open and then what incandescence! What dazzlement! What jewels!

Amélie and Henri then travelled to Ajaccio in Corsica, where Amélie's sister Berthe would later settle, taking up the post of Director of the Ecole Normale d'Institutrices (women's teacher training college) and welcoming Matisse family members regularly to the island.
From February to July, the couple stayed in the Villa de la Rocca (now the Villa Matisse) near the Hospice Eugénie (now the Académie de Corse) in the town's fashionable quartier des étrangers.
Matisse, who had grown up in North Eastern France, was totally dazzled by the light in Corsica. He said of this experience:

Everything glistens, everything is colour, everything is light.

This was one of the pivotal moments in Matisse's life as his own 'shutters' seemed to be opening.
As a young man he had started training as a lawyer but took up painting aged 20 when his mother gave him a paintbox to help him pass the time while he was convalescing from appendicitis; another turning point. In his own words:

From the moment I held the box of colours in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

By 1898 he had been painting for nearly a decade and had become more adventurous with colour, for example re-interpreting a Breton mill he had first depicted in a range of greys, using bold crimson, cobalt, yellow and green brush strokes instead.
But in Corsica Matisse literally saw the world in a different light. He seems to have developed a new, stronger understanding of colour as the key medium for his imaginative expression. The 50 or so paintings he produced in Ajaccio paved the way for his 'Fauvist' period which followed a few years later.
Fauvism (not Matisse's term) was characterised by the bold use of clashing colours to express feeling as well as form. Although short-lived as a 'movement' it led Matisse to further and greater innovation.
Matisse spoke of this period in Ajaccio as a "revelation":

I felt growing within me a passion for colour.

In Ajaccio he painted what was close at hand; views of the Hospice Eugénie (Landscape – the pink wall) using a range of pinks, blues and violets. He painted olive and peach trees, the sunset, the garden of an old mill and, of course, his wife Amélie. He loved the nearby coastal route des Sanguinaires but didn't venture far for his subjects.
Back in mainland France the reaction of colleagues to his Corsican canvasses was less than ecstatic and they were deemed too primitive and disturbing to be shown. One painter friend said of a batch which arrived in Paris that they looked like they had been "painted by a mad and epileptic Impressionist".
By July, Amélie was pregnant with their first child and they moved on to Toulouse in South West France to be with her family – another new location which inspired another series of paintings and a further phase of Matisse's artistic development.
Speaking to Hilary Spurling, Marie-Dominique Roche, former curator of Ajaccio's Musée Fesch, recollected that Corsica meant a great deal to Matisse and that he was always truly moved when he spoke of his time on the island:

He felt himself at home everywhere…the Corsicans appealed to him. They were the opposite of all those people who turn their back on you. Everyone felt at home, even in someone else's home. That was what struck him.

Hilary Spurling's brilliant biography is the definitive source for Matisse's life.

Illustration: Landscape – the pink wall (Henri Matisse, 1898)

Other posts on Corsican themes:
The Last Corsican (July 2017)
Boswell in Corsica
Escher in Corsica
Sebald in Corsica
Edward Lear in Corsica
Conrad in Corsica
John Minton in Corsica
Seneca in Corsica
Paoli in London
Village wisdom: Corsican proverbs and sayings
Poem: Corsica

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Giving young people a stake in their future

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

In the wake of the general election there’s been a lot of talk about the youth vote and young people’s renewed commitment to the political process. At the same time, there is evidence of young people’s pessimism about their future and what the chair of the Social Mobility Commission has called a ‘stark intergenerational divide’. If the turnout of young people has indeed increased, this has the potential to bring their concerns into the centre of political debate.  If young people are increasingly seeing the point of engaging with politics that must be good for our democracy, but only if that engagement offers some prospect of addressing the profound unfairness and inequality they experience.

Some of the talk is of the youth vote having been ‘bought’ with purely economic benefits such as the abolition of tuition fees. It’s as if tax cuts and pension triple locks aren’t also designed to appeal to particular demographics and somehow young people are uniquely motivated by self-interest. The fact is all spending decisions have winners and losers; the question is: what are the underlying values which lead to a particular set of priorities?

A vote for free universal education goes well beyond self-interest. It is a vote in favour of education as an unconditional human right in a civilized society and a vote against the idea of education as a commodity which has to be rationed and can only be valued for its economic benefits; a better paying job or social mobility for a select few. If we have no problem with the idea of universal free healthcare for all funded through general progressive taxation, why hesitate about the same principle being applied to education?

But if our support for young people and their education is expressed merely in economic terms we are missing an important dimension of the political case for universal free provision. Those of us who argue for the return to Education Maintenance Allowances and free tuition for all also need to explain why education matters to society as well as to individuals and we need to build young people’s experience of using their knowledge and skills for the benefit of others as well as of themselves.

I think this means making the case for a richer, more challenging and more demanding education and also for a new social contract between society and its young people. If we want government to fund 16-19 education at the same rate as pre-16 or higher education, we need to offer ‘something for something’ by broadening our uniquely narrow offer. Equally, if we are offering young people more, perhaps they should be encouraged to give something back and start putting their education to use as soon as possible through some kind of civic service.

We live in troubled times, but if recent tragic events have demonstrated anything it is the enormous power of the social bonds between people and their ability to connect and support others. Clearly we shouldn’t need a disaster or a terrorist outrage to bring people together in solidarity, that potential is always there even if it isn’t always tapped. Educators need to help with the work of building a stronger society where people learn to care for each other and to participate in democratic and collective action to improve the world they live in. None of this just happens, it needs to be worked at, and educational settings are well placed to develop the understanding, skills and habits of democracy and solidarity in a culture of equality.

I suspect we would be pushing at an open door. When the opportunities are available and well organised, young people are very willing to give their time to volunteering or ‘service learning’. When programmes such as the National Citizens’ Service go beyond outward-bound activity they show the transformative potential of civic service. I think it’s time that we designed a truly universal citizens’ service which could engage all young people in community and research projects as well as education for citizenship. Every hour of such activity contributes to building a stronger society and establishing lifetime habits of solidarity. This could reach across the generations and a mutual commitment to some form of national civic service could be everyone’s contribution to a social contract which promises us all free education.

Today’s young people are far from being a selfish or self-absorbed generation. Those of us who work with them are constantly impressed and delighted by their capacity for hard work, care for others, creativity and collective action. Their increased election participation is just the start of realizing what they can achieve given the opportunities. We need to expect more from ourselves and from the young people we work with if we are to really mobilize their potential and give them a bigger stake in the future.

A version of a Comment piece which appeared in the Times Education Supplement on 7th July 2017 as: ‘The next generation will reward our belief in them’

See also:

Reconstruction in the age of demolition (July 2017)

Citizens of somewhere, citizens of anywhere (May 2017)

Shaping an alternative education policy (April 2017)

Going beyond (October 2016)

Crick reloaded: citizenship education and British values (September 2016)

Post-16 citizenship in tough times (May 2014)

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Reconstruction in an age of demolition

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

A national project is always a ‘work in progress’ as implied by the title of Carol Ann Duffy’s brilliant performance piece based on the words of people across the country during the EU referendum campaign.

So what sort of work is our national project? A collective effort to build a better society or a ‘war of all against all’? Reconstruction or demolition?

It does feel like we are going through a self-destructive phase as a country. Much of our national effort is being devoted to dividing and demolishing rather than unifying and building. Examples abound, but the colossal demolition job represented by Brexit is perhaps the most obvious; committing us to years of dismantling for little evident benefit while also hardening and deepening divisions in our society. Under the circumstances it seems reasonable to ask: what is our strategy for repair and reconstruction?

Another example of national self-harm is the continuing disinvestment from our public services and the widening inequality it leads to. One recent story in the education press crystallised the inequality of educational opportunities for young people in England. It contrasted on the one hand the 16-year-old apprentice groundskeeper for whom general education will effectively cease, paid £3.50 an hour by a private fee-paying school to tend their extensive playing fields with on the other hand other 16 year olds attending that school at a cost of £35,000 per year – safely on track for several years more education and on the high road to a well-remunerated career. The chasm of opportunity between these 16-year-old is as wide as that between tower block residents in North Kensington and their more affluent neighbours in Notting Hill. If we find this shocking, what is our strategy for repair and reconstruction?

I was asked to review the current condition of post-16 education within the wider political context. In many ways, 16-19 education in England is a case study of deconstruction and disinvestment and it offers a warning of where pre-16 education could be heading. It is characterised by selection, marketisation, low expectations and inadequate investment. To take these in turn:

Selection:

We are plagued by binary thinking about learners and providers: ‘top’ universities, ‘academic’ students, the ‘skills sector’, ‘technical’ qualifications etc. These categories limit our thinking about young people’s capacities, they narrow horizons and undermine the idea of a universal entitlement to a broad general education. If we believe in a comprehensive system, we need to take care not to buy into these binary models which dictate what ‘kind’ of students we serve and what ‘kind’ of pathways we offer them. Rather than describing our learners as ‘bright’ or ‘less able’, ‘academic’ or ‘vocational’, comprehensive colleges like mine can offer countless stories of students who left school as ‘failures’ at 16 and have subsequently reached university after starting on level 2 or even level 1 qualifications.

Marketisation:

We operate in a market free-for-all where institutions decide what to offer and how selective to be and where there is no coherent planning to respond to need. The growth in the number of smaller, niche providers leads to consumer confusion and a rush to the ‘elite’ end of the market. At a time of limited resources, too much spending is tied up in wasteful duplication rather than improving the offer. New providers proliferate, leading both to over-capacity and lack of choice. The result is both Knowsley and Newham; the one with no A-level capacity available within the local authority area and the other with too much.

Low expectations:

We are simply not offering our 16-19-year-olds the full-time, rounded education which would equip them properly for life in the 21st century. Whatever the pathway, none of our typical 17h a week programmes are providing either the breadth or the specialisation which young people need. No other developed country allows its teenagers to stop studying their national language – whether on a general or a vocational programme and we have no expectation of citizenship or cultural education post-16. We need to raise our expectations of what all young people should be studying and could achieve. This could be done via a national baccalaureate which guaranteed access to the full curriculum; allowing for breadth, choice, exploration and specialisation. Having higher expectations does not necessarily require more high-stakes testing; putting students under even more pressure is not the best way to raise their educational achievements.

Inadequate investment:

16-18 provision is at the bottom of a funding ‘Grand Canyon’ with less being spent per student than in the school and higher education phases on either side. We may have made the transition to a fair national funding formula some years ago but we are simply not using it to invest enough in this critical phase of education. Rather than simply moaning about how underfunded we are, we need to make the case for ‘something for something’; investment in the more expansive and ambitious education we want for all our students.

Developing the alternative:

What of the alternative education policies which were on offer at the election? Labour was right to focus on universal free public education as an entitlement. And above all else, the idea of a National Education Service offered an answer the question about how we might bridge divides and reconstruct a proper national system – something which most developed countries take for granted. The party now needs to flesh out the concept and populate it with some strong signature policies, for example a single status for all schools, a national baccalaureate for all by age 19, a lifelong learning entitlement and a national civic service. Labour should also be drafting a single short Education Bill to create a new system in order to be ready to legislate immediately on taking office. As with the creation of the National Health Service, there will be lots of practical issues to be resolved about how accountability is shared and resources allocated. As with the NHS, a National Education Service will face many challenges. The important thing is to make a start on the construction of a system which we can then debate passionately as we continue to shape it.

All around us, the deconstruction of public education continues apace while we all work hard to do the best we can in our own sphere of influence. How much more worthwhile would it be if we could all work together to lay the foundations of a better system. That would be the kind of constructive ‘work in progress’ we could all sign up to.

One of the reasons for calling the 2017 general election was ostensibly to strengthen national unity. But the result has shown that simply speaking the language of unity is not enough, we need policies and actions which are genuinely capable of healing our divisions and building on the best of our capacities. We need to switch our default setting from demolition to construction.

Based on a speech made at the Annual Conference of the Socialist Educational Association (SEA) on June 24th 2017.

See also:

Education 2022: market or system? (June 2017)

Dear candidates (April 2017)

Shaping an alternative education policy (April 2017)

Going beyond (October 2016)

16-19 education: from independence to interdependence (April 2016)

Starting to think about a National Education Service (September 2015)

For a National Education Service (July 2015)

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The best of things

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

We were delighted to officially open our new building on 30th June in the company of our guests of honour: Greater London Assembly member for City and East London Councillor Unmesh Desai and Fred Jarvis as well as a number of governors, friends, partners, colleagues and NewVIc alumni.

We were particularly pleased that so many Newham councillors were able to join us for the occasion. It was 25 years ago that the London Borough of Newham made the bold and wise decision to establish a sixth form college in order to increase the participation, achievement and progression of 16-18 year olds in the area which were far too low at the time. The college was an immediate success; enrolling more students and achieving better results and progression than expected and it has grown and thrived ever since. The council’s decision to create the college was absolutely the right one.

25 years later, the college continues to educate around 25% of all Newham’s 16-18 year olds and sends 700-800 students per year to university. Tens of thousands of our former students / alumni live and work locally – most of them graduates now and contributing to the local economy in so many ways.

At the ceremony, we were entertained by former NewVIc student and singer-songwriter Lauren Dhamu who has just launched her first album on the E3 label, who sang ‘Didn’t you know’ by Erika Badu and ‘LKD Soke Remix’ accompanied by Femi Akinyemi and John Crockford. Lauren is the latest in a long line of NewVIc alumni who have made careers for themselves in the performing arts while keeping up their connection with the college and supporting other emerging artists.

NewVIc’s campus was created around the former Cumberland school which itself occupied the site of the former Plaistow secondary and Plaistow Grammar school – with some additional purpose-built buildings. The campus has grown since 1992 with new accommodation being added periodically – although most of it has been temporary.

It was wonderful to hear from our good friend Fred Jarvis; a lifelong champion of comprehensive education and the only person to have led both the National Union of Students and the National Union of Teachers and chaired the TUC. Fred attended Plaistow secondary school in the 1930’s and 40’s going back to the very earliest days of this campus. Fred has written about his time in Plaistow in his book ‘You never know your luck – reflections of a cockney campaigner for education’ Like the great actor Terence Stamp, who attended the school post-war, Fred is an honorary NewVIc alumnus.

On an occasion like this it’s slightly embarrassing to recall that for a number of years, we had actually planned to move the college to Stratford – based on the Olympic effect and allegedly better ‘travel to learn’. Looking back, we are delighted that instead we decided to build on our past and develop our current campus. The centre of London is certainly moving East but it looks like E13 is going to share the benefits as much as E15 or E20.

We developed a campus Masterplan which mapped out the complete renewal of our accommodation at Prince Regent Lane over a number of independent phases.  What did we want most urgently for Phase 1? Our priorities were: a new entrance with a new relationship with the street, more open and transparent social spaces, a new theatre and a much larger university-style library.

We want to thank our visionary architect: Charles Dokk Olsen from Shepheard Epstein Hunter (SEH), our project manager Grant Charman from CPB and our builders InterServe Construction for creating a beautiful, generous, light and functional space for young people to learn, socialise and circulate. They all worked closely with us throughout the design and construction process and many of the ideas have come through the involvement of staff and students. This building is already a source of real pride for the whole college community.

There’s more about the design and the process here.

It’s worth saying that we have paid for this building entirely ourselves; with no capital grants or donations from anyone else. Our reserves and borrowings are clearly public money and this shows what can be done by judicious and visionary public investment in public services. We hope that the government will come around to the view that investing in education infrastructure is important otherwise it will be some time before we see a Phase 2 built on this campus.

A new school or college building is an expression of confidence in the future and in young people in particular. We’ve seen a lot spent on regeneration in Newham and our borough has been transformed in many positive ways. The regeneration we’ve started here is a long-term investment in the transformation of a whole community; showing confidence in everyone’s potential and contribution.

What we’re doing is investing in learning, culture and exchange:

A library is a place of cultural preservation and transmission, of delight and discovery. It needs to be rich in information and communication technology but also full of books which can open so many windows and doors to us. Since we opened our new library we’ve already seen a doubling of the number of daily visits – a real measure of its success.

A theatre is a place of cultural exchange and creation, of critical dialogue and debate as well as of sociability, celebration and escape. It’s a place to assemble to reflect together on life; it’s joys and challenges.

This is what we’ve invested in.

We live in difficult times and young people face many challenges and uncertainties. One of our slogans is: “New thinking for a new future”. If we’re going to solve the problems we face as a society we will need new ways of thinking and new ways of doing. Education is about transmission and renewal but it’s also about transformation and developing that new thinking which is so essential. Even at the worst of times, that means doing the best of things – taking responsibility for each other and for the next generation.

So, our promise to our community is to continue trying to do the best of things based on the values we have always championed. NewVIc will continue to be an inclusive and comprehensive place of ambition and success, committed to renewing and building our community.

Based on my speech for the opening of our new building: 30th June 2017

The delicious snacks were provided by Roberta and her team from Mazi Mas, run by women from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Our guests were able to view an exhibition of beautiful photos taken by students of the site and some of the workers who helped build it. They were also able to see some of the amazing work on display in our annual Art show.

See also:

Design for learning (May 2017)

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More area reviews?

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

More area reviews of post-16 education? We’ve only just got through the last lot and that took up loads of everyone’s time for very little benefit. Surely this can’t be a serious suggestion…

Well, it might not be guaranteed to lift our spirits, and some wariness, or weariness, would be understandable. But yes, we could really do with more area reviews – albeit of a different type. The recent Area Reviews only looked at colleges, and left out the providers which account for the education of around 40% of all 16-18 year olds. Sixth form provision based in schools was not in scope in these reviews and the quality and efficiency of their work as well as their impact and contribution to local patterns of provision was simply not considered at all.

This was a major design flaw and one which was repeatedly pointed throughout the process. In many areas the key problem is the proliferation of new 16-18 capacity with no regard to evidence of actual local supply or demand. Stories abound across England of new sixth forms being allowed to open just down the road from existing good or outstanding providers with capacity. School and college sixth forms seem to plan in separate worlds while on the ground operating very much in the same world where there are only so many learners to go around. The result of this lack of planning is often a diminished and impoverished offer to young people while also being a pretty poor use of resources at a time when resources are scarce.

Since last year the official minimum threshold for a viable new sixth form is not less than 200 students and 15 A level subjects according to Department for Education guidance. However, over 1,000 school sixth form are well below this threshold and the pace of new proposals has hardly reduced with planned new sixth forms slipping through before the new guidance has time to bed down.

So this is where we are and we need to create a new type of area review to address this problem. David Hughes, the Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, told the Commons Education Select Committee in December that such reviews are essential: “It doesn’t have to happen in the same way for the same timetable, because there are 2,000-odd sixth forms, so it’s a big number. But we have to do it. Because young people are not getting the deal they need.” FE Commissioner Richard Atkins also seems to agree that there is a “case to answer” over small school sixth forms of low quality offering a limited range of qualifications.

What might such reviews look like and how might they work? I suggest that they should:

  • Involve the providers themselves (most if not all) and include student, staff and locally elected representatives.
  • Require a minimum of additional work and be based on an analysis of existing data.
  • Be short and focused and lead to agreed partnership solutions which have a real prospect of releasing resources and improving provision across an area.

The 4 key themes they should address can be summarized by the acronym S.Q.E.P:

Sufficiency: Is the full range of options which young people want and need available to them within a reasonable travelling distance? Is there enough capacity overall and can the system cope with any demographic change (whether up or down)? Are young people being offered sufficient breadth and challenge across the area?

Quality: Is the current quality of the offer good enough? Where are the best outcomes and how could the best practice be shared and spread?

Efficiency: Is the current offer cost-effective and sustainable or are there courses which are threatened despite there being sufficient aggregate demand for them across the area? Could resources tied up in inefficient provision be released to benefit young people across the system?

Partnership: What is the potential for collaboration to reduce inefficiencies while respecting student choices and institutional autonomy? How will the partners work together to implement the recommendations? The possibilities include: common information, advice and guidance, common application systems, common academic enhancement, shared provision of minority, specialist or threatened subjects and collective partnerships with employers and universities – none of which need to threaten institutional independence.

The reviews could follow a fairly standard pattern, informed by a standard data-set generating a standard report – the approach could be established by the first areas to volunteer and be adopted and adapted from then on.

Who will initiate such reviews? We cannot wait for the government or commissioners to propose something – welcome as that would be. Such reviews could start now in those areas where there is already a willingness to work together to build a better system. The evidence of being able to realise a ‘partnership premium’ (resources released by working together) should act as an incentive for other areas to follow suit and the process will catch on if it’s successful.

If we can’t bring ourselves to try this approach we will be missing a great opportunity to make sure that all the talent and resource we have between us in our sixth forms can be fully mobilised in the interests of all the young people we are here to serve.

See also:

London’s sixth forms (June 2016)

The challenge of small sixth forms (April 2016)

16-19 Education: from independence to dependence (April 2016)

A sixth form profile of the ‘Local London’ area (February 2016)

A level languages in London (February 2016)

A level minority report: Dance, Music, Philosophy (February 2016)

A level Drama in London (March 2016)

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Equality at the heart of our values

Posted on June 17, 2017 by Eddie Playfair

The more we discuss and explore ‘British Values’ with our students, the clearer it becomes: equality needs to be at the heart of our value system. We cannot teach these values without placing the idea of equality at their core and reflecting on what it means for the way we live our lives and make decisions.

Let’s take them one by one:

Democracy

The idea of democracy is based on citizens having an equal say in decisions which affect them. In a democratic state, the freely expressed wishes of each citizen, regardless of who they are, should carry equal weight. As we explore this concept more deeply with students we can discuss how well different democratic systems translate people’s wishes and aspirations into public policy and allow everyone’s voice to be heard. In an unequal society, the notion that each person’s voice should be of equal worth and carry equal weight is still a radical and precious idea.

The rule of law

The idea that we need rules in order to maintain a functioning society and protect people is generally well understood. Students also need to appreciate that in a democracy, the right to question and criticise particular laws is a legitimate and vital right. They should also recognise that laws can change over time and that different territories have agreed different laws. They key is that we should all be equal before the law. In any particular jurisdiction, the law should apply equally to everyone and the right to representation, the burden of proof and the application of the law should be blind to people’s position in society.

Individual liberty

The freedom to live our lives, to identify and express ourselves as we wish without unnecessary coercion, discrimination or oppression as long as we are not doing so at the expense of the fundamental freedoms of others also needs to be seen through the lens of equality. These individual and collective freedoms are only meaningful if they apply equally to us all. A society where some groups or individuals enjoy rights which others are denied cannot claim to value those freedoms.

Respect and tolerance

The idea of respecting others is also profoundly egalitarian. It means putting into daily practice the belief that others are entitled to the same respect from us which we hope to receive for ourselves. If we only show respect for those we like or agree with, or those we have more in common with, we would be denying the fundamental equality of human beings.

Young people are growing up in a society where they have plenty of lived experience of inequality. In our educational settings, we should aim to create experiences of equality while also acknowledging the shortcomings of the world we live in and encouraging critical engagement. The way we teach citizenship and British values should emphasize their egalitarian core even if their practical application in the world can sometimes be found wanting.

See also:

Crick reloaded: citizenship education and British values (September 2016)

Post-16 citizenship in tough times (May 2014)

Unashamedly egalitarian (February 2014)

 

 

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