A multi-dimensional approach. By James Park.
Reviewed/summarised by Bruce Hammonds
Published 2013 by http://www.demos.co.uk/
Britain’s leading cross party think tank driven by the goal of a society
populated by free, capable and powerful citizens. DEMOS’s approach challenges
the ‘ivory tower’ model of policy making by giving voice to people and
communities.
‘This report takes
aim at the target-driven accountability in the English education system:
principally, the Ofsted inspection regime, tests and school league tables.
For the past twenty years, teachers and school leaders have worked under this
regime in one form or another. The
argument of this report is that this has proved profoundly toxic, damaging
trust between staff, pupils, parents and policy makers, leading to adverse
outcomes for students’.
New Zealand schools,
since the establishment of self-managing Tomorrows Schools, have been exposed
to a similar regime through ERO (Education Review Office) although up until
now New Zealand schools have not been exposed to comparative league tables
based on national literacy and numeracy testing but it is not hard to see that
this situation could well change under the current government.
An incoming
Labour/Green government could well consider the recommendations of the DEMOS
Report if they wish to develop more community oriented schooling implicit in
the, all but side-lined, 2007 New
Zealand Curriculum introduced by the previous Labour Government.
‘Detoxifying School
Accountability proposes an alternative model, one which is built around
multi-perspective inspection. Such a model would value the opinions of
leaders, staff, students, parents and inspectors about a school’s performance,
instead of allowing the judgements of one group to prevail against others’.
‘The report argues
that, taken together, these changes would generate richer, more useful accounts
of each school’s strengths and weaknesses, achieve greater buy-in from all
key stakeholders and guarantee all schools are on a path to steady improvement.
In turn, this would help to ensure that all young people have a rich experience
of learning, and the best possible opportunity to learn.’
The report is
concerned with the target driven accountability of the English education system
principally the OFSTED (the UK equivalent of ERO) inspection regime, tests and
school league table – the latter two are on the horizon for New Zealand
schools.
In the UK schools,
for their self-preservation, have found that focussing on literacy/numeracy
targets have held them back from providing a good, well-rounded education for
their students. This scenario is already unfolding in New Zealand as
schools are being forced to assess students against National Standards.
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| An ERO visit - anticipatory dread |
The report argues
that the current model is profoundly toxic and failing to achieve its stated
goal of improving education and sets out an alternative which would allow
all children to achieve their potential while ensuring the quality of education
in schools is of a high standard. The current system has a toxic impact on four
groups of people:
School leaders - who must focus their school on achieving
targets (in New Zealand achieving Standards) at the expense of wider
educational goals. School leaders end up with what the report calls ‘door
knob polishing’ to look good rather focussing on things that really matter.
Such compliance culture creates a risk averse culture throughout the school. In
such an environment ‘top down’ teaching becomes more common rather than
delivering engaging educational practices where teachers work collaboratively
with each other.
Teachers – who are
under pressure to achieve targets (Standards) rather than providing a more
fulfilling education. Teachers are being put in a position where they feel
‘they have to put on a show’ and that they have to sacrifice their own teaching
beliefs to comply with imposed expectations limiting their ability to be
creative, responsive and spontaneous. In such an environment teachers seem to
prefer ‘the safety offered by formulaic lesson plans’ rather than provide
opportunities for deep learning.
Students – suffer
from test anxiety many of whom as a result of poor performance will develop
negative impressions of themselves. If students were to be involved in
school improvement disaffection would diminish and engagement increases
particularly if students were to be assessed on their strengths through more
personalised learning experiences and not just in targeted areas.
Policy makers – who
continually tinker with the system to avoid perverse outcomes.
I would add a fifth,
parents – who will judge the success of the children by narrow targets (Standards)
and in turn not appreciate talents ignored by the targets (Standards).
The report argues
that it is trust between all involved that improves educational outcomes and
that the current system has eroded this trust. The singular judgements of OFSTED
(ERO) ignore the voices of staff, students and other stakeholders. In contrast involving
parents in their children’s education has been shown to have a positive effect
on learning and this involvement is vital where schools face the challenge of
helping children who come from areas of social and economic disadvantages.
The report argues
that introducing a multi-dimensional perspective of leaders, staff, students,
parents, along with official inspectors, would detoxify school review by
engaging all key stakeholders.
Such an approach would make simplistic comparisons between
schools by the media more difficult.
The multi
–dimensional school review team would collect data from staff, students and
parents about their experience of the school and the use the data collected
to inform in-depth conversations involving all involved about what the data
means and how they can demonstrate ways in which the school can improve
teaching and learning. In this way the whole school community has the
opportunity to analyse the factors that get in the way of great learning and
suggest solutions.
The review would
conclude with an honest account of what is strong and what is less strong in
the school, together with its strategy for improving the school to ensure
all students were equipped with the skills they need to thrive in the modern
word. The staff would then be involved in on-going action research to trial and
assess improvement ideas.
The advantages of
such a multi-dimensional approach, the report states, would be:
The analysis and the
solutions would be generated within the school rather than be imposed on the
school. Carried out at least once a year would enable schools to generate
more up to date accounts of their progress than through OFSTED (ERO). The
reports would be more responsive to parents. The data collected would assess a
wider range of learning dispositions (as outlined in the 2007 New Zealand
Curriculum) rather than a narrow range of targets.
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| External reviewers |
Such a multi-dimensional
review process would make it harder for politicians to distort educational
principles for political ends. Politicians , the report states, ‘what tends
to be forgotten in arguments about accountability, is that schools are sensitive,
multi-layered organisational systems seeking to engage in the subtle and sophisticated
process of developing individual learners’ and continues, ‘schools need to be
helped to grow organically, to build on their strengths and to cut away at
their weaknesses.’
The current system
has created the belief that schools cannot be trusted to assess their strengths
and weaknesses nor develop improvement strategies unless under the supervision
of outsiders whose judgements are heavily influenced by how well students
perform on tests in core subjects. Both in the UK and NZ educators who speak
out against the current system of accountability are spoken of disparagingly
and are thus ignored.
One reason why the
much admired Finnish system performs well on international tests is the level
of trust between teachers, parents and policy makers. Pari Salberg, the
systems roving ambassador has written that the Finns emphasize the importance
of ‘collaboration, equity and trust based accountability’ in contrast to the
neo liberal ideology of imposed accountability, standardised testing and school
choice( a privatisation agenda). In
contrast Finland has no national curriculum or testing.
The system in England
( as in New Zealand) is reasonably good at promoting the achievement of around
half its students, and rather poor at promoting the achievement of the rest,
a significant proportion of whom come from socially and economically
disadvantaged homes. The report argues
that the current testing and accountability system is contributing to schools
failing disadvantaged students. The current system ‘fails because it does
not recognise the need for schools to build trust, open up communication and
build up their internal capacity to become more intelligent about themselves.’
The current inspection system (OFSTED or ERO) risks subverting and sabotaging
the development of the school’s own systems for finding answers to important questions
as to what will enable disaffected students to become fully engaged in their
own learning? How can we develop the creativity of all students?
The future will require students with more than standards in
basic subjects; we will need entrepreneurial and creative individual with
identified diverse talents who can find solutions to intractable environmental
and social problems, who have the imagination to work with others for the
common good and not just selfish ends. In the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum we
have a guiding document waiting to be made central by the possibility of a new
reforming government in 2014.
The people who will
be most valuable in the future are students, who through their personalised
educational experiences will have identified their unique set of talents and
skills (built on a strong foundation of literacy and numeracy skills) as
outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum. The current standards approach is
pushing schools in the wrong direction.
A multi –dimensional
approach to school review is a way to ‘release a schools intelligence about
itself’ – an approach that encourages honesty and openness rather than the
anxiety created by an imposed system. As long as people are being judged by
external agencies (often by unclear criteria) people will be careful about what
they reveal, in contrast those who work in a school will know much more about
its strengths and weaknesses. The ‘dipstick’ or ‘tick box’ approach of OFSTED
(or ERO) needs to be replaced with a collaborative and negotiated process.
Currently schools may collect the data but the ultimate responsibility lies
with the external agency.
The trouble with
school based review is that it could look like the profession’s attempt to take
on the power to decide what happens in the school rather than a way of sharing
power with all stakeholders; school based reviews do not promise not enough
protection to avoid senior managers subverting the process.
The multi
–perspective inspection avoids such distortion. Although staff, parents and
students gather the data publish reports and suggest improvement strategies
there is still a need for accredited external agencies to work with schools Such external review people ( reformed
OFSTED/ERO) would need to check the
process involved in the review has been followed, to check the quality of
the inputs, and to ensure the improvement strategies are valid and, if needed,
to make suggestions.
Such reviews would
create a strong sense of shared ownership in the school and improve
relationships between all concerned and create a positive school climate or
ethos. This is not to say there would not be healthy debate especially with
those who will have to learn to share their power and learn to value others perspectives.
It will take real leadership to ensure
all involved feel that their voices and concerns are heard, valued and acted
upon. It is important that ‘we are interested in what was said, not in who
said it. This is important if people are to be completely open in describing
their experiences. This applies importantly with students and parents.
The multi-dimensional
approach opens up the possibilities of richer conversations about the way young
people in particular experience the school. The role of the external agency
(reformed OFSTED/ERO) is to keep the space open for those different
perspectives to be heard and reflected on. As perspectives are gathered up
patterns emerge both where they help to promote learning and where they block
it. Such conversations recognise that
everybody has some responsibility for what happens. When ideas have been
identified plans can be made to try out solutions – involving staff, students
and parents as appropriate. With experience schools form cultures where people
are continuously identifying issues, tacking problems, and revising approaches. The advantage of this system is that
solutions are derived from within rather than being imposed and final
report would communicate what is really going on in the school. And the process
itself would model to the students the learning skills, the research process,
students themselves need to employ grappling with complexity, as they move into
adult life. Such research will become part of the daily life of teachers as
they try out possible solutions – often in collaboration with their students
over such things as behaviour or developing engaging learning challenges.
The validity of this
sort of multi – perspective inspection would largely derive from the need to
reconcile the perspectives of multiple participants.
Schools could also be
encouraged to work together to diagnose sources of problems and devise
solutions that are in their mutual interest.
A wider role for a
reformed external agency ( OFSTED/ERO) would be to gather information about
what schools are doing and synthesising this into reports on what is successful
and then to disseminate to schools. Such reports would move away from
making judgments to collecting data on innovative and inspiring work that is
going on and to providing guidance on what works in particular contexts.
To conclude a
multi-perspective school review process has the potential to empower all involved
and to ensure all students are given the opportunity to develop positive
learning identities, to be given the best opportunities to learn and grow and
to release the creative energy of everyone involved in the school community.
And though they are with
you, they belong not to you
