NEWS FOCUS SecEd: On Your Side


The EBacc is plain and simply farcical Pete


Education minister Michael Gove’s assertion that the five A* to C GCSE including English and maths benchmark is still the “key performance measure” is a joke. All you need do is peruse the newspapers and you will


Henshaw Editor SecEd


see that from now on, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) is all that matters in the eyes of journalists, parents, and indeed to Mr Gove. This is a landmark moment in his ongoing battle to truly undermine the standing of vocational education in this country. By forcing schools to promote geography and history


above ICT and the arts, he is sending a clear message that only the academic matters to him. By refusing to allow applied sciences or languages to be counted as part of the EBacc, he again makes clear that he considers these courses not to be worth anything. His policies refuse to recognise that practical education


in the context of academic rigour is exactly what this country needs. Of course we need good English and maths skills, of


course languages are important, but so is IT, so are the creative subjects, so is applied learning. Geography and history are important, but not every child should study them. And what of religious education and citizenship? You cannot prescribe the subjects a child should study,


you must look at the child and allow them to find their own talents and then inspire them to make the absolute most of them. We should school every child to the best of their ability in maths and English, but we should then recognise that our role as educators is to help children find their path in life, find what they shine at. And what of creativity – possibly the most important of


all skills that we should be instilling in every child? The ability to be creative will be the hallmark of this century and will be the benchmark of our future workforce. With a curriculum review to come, I fear we are


returning to a world of rote learning, of naked knowledge, at the expense of the increasingly applied and relevant education that we have seen in recent years. This is a very worrying move. Creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and other crucial skills are being laid to waste as we force students to focus on a prescriptive EBacc. Our education system is not a failure. We are constantly


improving, but the benchmarks have been moved once again and students who began their GCSEs two years ago have been judged on measures announced seven weeks ago. It is a farce. Do you notice how Mr Gove always talks in the first


person? It is not them, as a government, it is him as a minister who has decided without mandate on the direction of our education system. “I believe,” he begins most sentences. Our education minister is in danger of creating a legacy of being the secretary of state who tried to recreate his own school days. He will be remembered as the man who took Britain’s education system back to the 1970s.


Funding questions


We must be careful with the implications of the move to publish figures showing what every school spends per- pupil. The government’s decision to release these figures is not wrong per se, but without proper expertise it is very easy for parents to misread and misinterpret the statistics. On paper you could see many schools with similar results spending vastly different amounts on their students. This could be down to any number of reasons. And what is considered good? Schools that spend a lot to achieve, for example, 60 per cent pass rates, or schools that spend much less? What exactly do you look for? Having said this, the absolutely convoluted way the tables have been published will probably ensure that no parent apart from the absolute statisticians will attempts to delve into the figures. They could just – shock horror – ask their child’s school.


www.sec-ed.com A changing market


With funding cuts and policy change, Gavin Beart predicts that the education sector is set for a shake-up in its


recruitment methods


OvEr THE last year we have seen some big changes in secondary education as a result of the change of government and the consequent alterations to education policy. Although the UK may be officially out of recession the public sector is only just beginning to feel the full impact as the government’s Comprehensive Spending review comes into force. A few trends are emerging in


the schools job market, including the increase in NQTs, a continuing lack of candidates for vacant headteacher roles, and big changes to how supply teachers are used. recruitment methods are beginning to change and the rise in academy schools is something that will continue to impact on the sector for years to come. Permanent teaching roles have


been inundated with applications as huge numbers of NQTs have surged into the workforce. This is partly a result of many private sector employees being made redundant and choosing to take a PGCE. Even though many of these have


a banking and finance background, we are still seeing shortages of maths and science subject teachers. Also, demand for headteachers is


currently outstripping the supply of qualified candidates. For classroom teachers this may result in a short- term approach to management and mean that any development of the school’s objectives is put on hold until a permanent head is in place.


We have seen a continuation in


the decline in the demand for day- to-day supply teachers due to the increased use of cover supervisors. Some large state schools even employ a bank of cover supervisors of anything up to 10 staff. Education minister Michael


Gove’s Academies Act in May 2010 has changed the academies system and we have started to see a rise in demand for teaching staff for academies. This demand is only likely to increase as more and more schools become academies. As they have more ownership


and accountability on how they recruit staff, the move toward academies will result in a different style of recruitment including assessment centres, partnerships with agencies, and increased head- hunting. This means that teachers


looking to change jobs to join an academy might have to go through an application and interview process vastly different from what they have experienced before. It is also possible that academies


will be more open to recruiting from the commercial world and attracting a different type of candidate. While there is opposition to


academies, for the vast majority of teachers the important factors when applying for a job are the school’s ethos, support structures and leadership. If academy status improves those key areas we may find that more applicants are


IN RESPONSE…


Anger greeted the publication of the school league tables last week, after the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) was retrospectively included. The tables as a whole showed


that 69 per cent of state schools have improved and that 53.4 per cent of students achieved five GCSE passes at A* to C including English and maths – up 3.6 per cent. The coalition had raised the floor target from 30 to 35 per cent and 216 schools found themselves below the new level. However, the controversy


came with the EBacc, which is awarded to students who achieve A* to Cs in maths, English, science, a language, and either geography or history. Despite only introducing the idea recently, the coalition decided to measure last year’s cohort of students against it, with only 15.6 per cent of pupils achieving the EBacc. Fewer than 10 per cent of students got it in 1,600 state secondaries and 270 schools scored zero.


SecEd


• Pete Henshaw is publisher and editor of SecEd. Email editor@sec-ed.co.uk, visit www.sec-ed.co.uk and follow us at www.twitter.com/SecEd_Education


Michael Gove, education secretary: “As the international evidence from PISA shows us, England still lags behind other nations.We have not succeeded in closing the gap and in raising attainment for all students. In nearly every other developed country in the world children are assessed in a range of core academic subjects


at 15 or 16. That is why the coalition introduced the EBacc as a measure of performance. The key performance measure remains the number of children who get five A* to C passes at GCSE including English and maths.”


Andy Burnham, shadow education secretary: “I am worried that Michael Gove’s new league tables will have a devastating effect on morale in our schools and create a new generation of failing schools. Labour supports academic rigour, but we also support student choice which this prescriptive and narrow EBacc will take away. Improving schools in some of the most challenging areas will see themselves plummet down the league tables. It will knock the stuffing out of them, particularly those that offer a mix of academic and vocational learning.”


Brian Lightman, general secretary, Association of School and College Leaders: “I don’t know of any employers or universities that say they need more applicants who have studied geography or history instead of other rigorous academic GCSEs. As the government has said, GCSE A* to C including English and maths will continue to be the standard on which performance is judged. Until that changes, schools will continue to offer a broad and balanced curriculum that meets the needs of their students.”


Christine Blower, general secretary, National Union of Teachers: “Teachers and headteachers will be dismayed that not only has the government once again changed the goalposts for school accountability but also made it retrospective. You can’t have schools judged against criteria that were not previously in place.”


Russell Hobby, general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers: “The emphasis on the EBacc in the coverage of this year’s performance tables demonstrates how it is being regarded in some quarters as the prime measure of how schools perform. This has deflected attention away from the improvements in performance. For example, 300 schools failed to achieve the 30 per cent floor target in 2009 while the comparative figure in 2010 in 82.”


Elizabeth Reid, chief executive, SSAT: “Heads are very concerned that the new EBacc should not disadvantage pupils who are already part way through GCSE courses that do not appear on the list approved for inclusion. Sudden shifts in schools’ league table positions will need to be understood in this context. Schools want to raise standards in traditional subjects. But equally it would be wrong to dismiss courses simply because they offer vocational skills.”


Libby Steele, head of education, Royal Society: “The introduction of an EBacc target is a logical step to ensure that young people receive a rounded education and are in a position to make better qualified decisions about their progression through the education system.”


Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary, Association of Teachers and Lecturers: “What complete nonsense the league tables are. They don’t give parents any of the information which they most need – the best school for their particular child and one in which their child will learn and thrive most.”


Chris Keates, general secretary, NASUWT: “The coalition is pursuing a relentlessly elitist approach to education, condemning schools to live or die by the narrow range of subjects identified in the EBacc. This narrow focus on a core range of academic subjects fails to acknowledge the different learning requirements of pupils.”


Miles Templeman, director general, Institute of Directors: “No single performance measure is flawless; it is impossible to distil into one statistic a representation of the quality of an education system. But the fact that fewer than one pupil in six achieved the threshold for the new EBacc is very worrying.”


driven towards academies. They can also offer more enticing benefit packages and, while they cannot deviate from set pay scales at the moment, it is possible that in the future they will be able to set wages at amounts they choose. Despite the Department of


Education’s funding falling overall, the dedicated budget for schools has been largely protected. However, factoring in incremental pay drift, loss of funding for any teaching assistant training, and the £2.5 billion set aside for the pupil premium, it is clear that there will be some effects on secondary schools. In the short term, this should not mean redundancies for secondary teachers as incremental pay drift will not impact on staffing budgets to a great degree. By the time it does begin to affect budgets, schools will have


had time to plan their recruitment and staffing levels to decrease the likelihood of any shock job losses. However, the wider impact of


the spending cuts on society means that rising unemployment and the end to lifetime tenure for social housing could result in a more transitory workforce. This would then mean that


school roll numbers would be harder to predict so teachers may find that permanent teaching roles become harder to find as schools choose to use fixed-term contracts or long-term supply arrangements. If this happens across the UK it could change the face of teaching as teachers would need to change jobs and schools far more frequently than they currently do.


SecEd


• Gavin Beart is regional manager at Reed Education.


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SecEd • January 20 2011


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