NEWS FOCUS SecEd: On Your Side


Creative learning must be supported


“Whatever happens you’ll be alright.” this was the general consensus of my peers in the world of arts education before the general election. this conclusion was made


Fiona Banks Guest


Editorial


on the basis that: 1) shakespeare’s Globe receives no government subsidy and therefore could not be hurt and 2) that nobody would dare touch shakespeare and that his works would stay on the curriculum whatever happened. While the first point was true and reassuring, I rather


felt that their second had, well, missed the point. My main concern has never been about whether shakespeare is taught, but rather how.as an educator, I’m concerned that all young people feel engaged with the arts. My work is to ensure that art forms, and the major cultural institutions, are accessible to young people, regardless of cultural or social capital. so nine months on from that election, are the arts in education “alright”? What is the future of creative arts in school? What will be the place of creativity in the revised national curriculum? the short answer is we do not yet know. education


secretary Michael Gove has often stated that one of the reasons for the slimmed down curriculum is to create more space for subjects like “art and music” to be taught in schools.at the same time, known proposals for that new curriculum remove statutory engagement with arts subjects, while the english Baccalaureate (eBacc) does not include an arts subject.simultaneously, programmes like Creative partnerships have been cut. this is not encouraging. however, the government’s response to Darren henley’s


recent review into music in schools is encouraging, pledging £82.5 million to music across england next year and a commitment that the curriculum review will look at extending the “space for all students to pursue music and arts qualifications”. somehow, though, we feel a long way fromsir Ken robinson’s view that “creativity is now as important as literacy”. Drama specialists have long known that inclusion in


the national curriculum is not necessarily an issue. Drama has never been a part of the national curriculum but nevertheless is a strong subject in schools. Maintaining the status of the subject though may or may not be a different matter, depending on each school. It is interesting that during recent years although drama remains a strong subject, pGCes in drama have been diminishing. there is no denying that inclusion in the national curriculum and eBacc will ensure a subject is given curriculum time. this issue extends beyond arts subjects themselves to


the ways in which we teach in schools. In recent years the potential for creative approaches to learning across the curriculum have been officially recognised. superb practice has been developed. how will this methodology fair in a climate which places stress on “essential knowledge” and “traditional” subjects? Globe education is coming to the end of a research


project which looked at the impact of active approaches to teaching shakespeare at key stage 3. Initial findings “give us pause” in the current climate. teachers trained in active approaches to shakespeare liked using them, saw immediate benefit to students, but almost universally found them difficult to integrate into the pressured environment in which they were working and so did not do so. My hope is of course that changes to the curriculum


will provide this longed-for time and space for creative learning to flourish. My fear is that the status of the arts and creativity will fall and that the lack of statutory curriculum time will result in no curriculum time. the government has made a commitment to a review


of cultural learning provision. While much is uncertain, now is clearly the time to make our views known. I would like to be entering into a period in education where the arts are more than “alright”, but flourish and play an inspiring, nourishing role in every child’s educational journey.


• This guest editorial has been written by Fiona Banks, head of learning at Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe. Contact Pete Henshaw, publisher and editor of seced, on editor@sec-ed.co.uk or visit www.sec-ed.co.uk. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SecEd_Education


EBacc under fire


The row over the government’s controversial English Baccalureate measure continues. With the views of higher education vital to the debate, SecEd this week hears from Professor Jim Taylor of Lancaster University who believes the measure discriminates against too many pupils


any serIous measure of school performance has to be reasonable and fair. the english Baccalaureate (eBacc) – hurried into existence to the surprise and dismay of education professionals across the schools system – will have very obvious winners and losers. the motivation to create the


eBacc came directly from educa- tion minister, Michael Gove, who is concerned about the sharp decline in the teaching of languages in secondary schools following its removal as a core subject in the national curriculum in 2004. the minister clearly believes


that studying a foreign language is important and should be encour- aged rather than simply being offered as an option. according to the minister, the baccalaureate system adopted in many european andasian countries means that for- eign pupils benefit from a broader education at secondary level than pupils in england. In particular, the minister


believes that the flight from lan- guages “not only breeds insular- ity, it means an integral part of the brain’s learning capacity rusts unused”. although such bland and unsubstantiated assertions made on national television should not be taken too seriously, it is worrying that blind faith in the baccalaureate could lead to a reduction in subject choice, which in turn could have a negative impact on educational outcomes. Criticism of the eBacc has so far come mainly from school heads.


First, the eBacc was introduced retrospectively without consulta- tion, so there was no chance for educationalists to argue the case against the effective reinstatement of languages in the core curriculum. there already exist several well


established performance indica- tors and the introduction of the eBacc shifts the goal posts yet again without a careful consid- eration of the consequences for student motivation and parental choice. Many heads have also argued that restricting one of the required subjects to history or geography is unduly restrictive and the consequent reduction in student choice could have serious adverse effects on motivation and hence attainment for some pupils. Why, for instance, should creative or vocational subjects based on the development of skills be excluded, especially as these are often valued by employers? Whether the eBacc will lead to


any improvement in educational outcomes in secondary education is highly debatable. But as a perform- ance measure it is clearly unfair and elitist. the eBacc naturally favours


schools that decided to specialise in languages, ignoring achieve- ment in subjects such as music, drama, technology and business studies. schools specialising in languages, for example, had 30.9 per cent of pupils achieving the eBacc compared to only 10.8 per cent in schools specialising in busi- ness studies.


IN RESPONSE… Dear sir,


We write to express our anger and frustration at the behaviour of the coalition government in relation to the publication of school performance tables this year. For many years schools have


been required to set challenging targets in relation to GCse and equivalent qualifications at the end of year 11. these targets have


SecEd


traditionally related to the achievement of five or more a* to C qualifications. More recently the measure has extended the requirement that two of the five include english and mathematics. schools have also more fairly in our view been judged on contextual value-added, which seeks to measure the relative progress students make in different schools. this government without any


prior notification has decided that the judgement of school performance should now be based on an english Baccalaureate


comprised of five GCse qualifications which must include english, mathematics, sciences, history or geography, and a foreign language. this is despite the fact that students have been “free” and at liberty not to study a humanities subject or modern foreign language for many years. this is akin to someone


learning to drive a car only to be told that when they come to sit the test they will be required to demonstrate their achievement by flying an aeroplane. Daft, ludicrous, unethical,


unfair, spurious are just a few of the words which spring to mind. For members of the public


seeking to interpret these league tables, we would ask them to consider the following. Why has a measure of school


performance been introduced retrospectively if it is not to rubbish the educational record of schools and the previous government and lay the groundwork required to demonstrate their own success in raising standards in years to come?


Why does the humanities


requirement include history and geography but not religious education, economics or other such courses of study? Why is biblical hebrew


considered to be a suitable foreign language and others not? Why is it that students in 2011


are being required to achieve these qualifications while no mention is made of ICt which we maintain should be an essential skill requirement of young people in the 21st century? Why are the arts conspicuous


by their absence when most civilised societies have chosen to define themselves through this aspect of their culture? Why has applied learning been


entirely excluded from the eBacc measure at a time when our skillset for young people needs to grow? sadly, governments of a variety


of political persuasions have introduced initiatives with little merit in recent years as far as the education system in this country is concerned.


this crass measure however


“trumps” all others and, in our view, represents nothing short of political expediency. We despair when our political


masters choose to ignore concepts such as equality, fairness, transparency and principle and we fear for the long-term consequences.


Headteachers of Somerset secondary schools


paul scutt, Bishop Fox’s school;ann Winter, robert Blake science College; elliott Furneaux, heathfield Community school; ray McGovern, sexeys school; steve Jackson, Blue school; Geoff tinker, Kingsmead school; peter elliott, east Bridgwater Community school; rob Benzie,ansford Community school; paul James, Crispin school; Jo stevenson, st Dunstan’s school; pat hollinghurst, Chilton trinity school; Gill rennard, Whitstone school


It also discriminates in favour of


schools which attract the most aca- demically able pupils, such as gram- mar schools, which have a long tra- dition of language teaching between 11 and 16. Grammar schools have 67.5 per cent of pupils achieving the eBacc compared to only 13.3 per cent in comprehensives and 6.3 per cent in the moderns. the measure discriminates


against schools with a high propor- tion of pupils with special educa- tional needs, especially those with learning difficulties, who may nev- ertheless do well in more vocational subjects. one in three pupils in schools with the lowest proportion of pupils with special needs, for example, achieved the eBacc. this falls to around one in 20 pupils in schools with the highest propor- tion of pupils with special needs. there is also discrimination against schools with a high proportion of pupils from low-income families. around one in three pupils from schools where the lowest propor- tion are eligible for free school meals achieved the eBacc in 2010, compared to around one in 20 pupils in schools with the highest. Crucially, the eBacc tells us


nothing about the progress made by pupils. the current performance indicators based on the percentage of pupils achieving five or more a* to C grades also say virtually nothing about the performance of schools themselves, just about prior attainment and family background. the value-added indicator – which takes previous achievements


into account – was designed to overcome the problem with raw exam scores, and comparisons with eBacc demonstrate its flaws. For example, while schools specialising in business studies have a very low eBacc score, they have a higher value-added score than all other specialist schools – pupils make more progress. since the eBacc suffers from


such serious bias, and with no con- sensus about the value of impos- ing the teaching of languages on unwilling secondary school pupils, common sense says the eBacc should not be included in school performance tables. Instead, I would argue that a


better approach to measuring a school’s performance would be to supplement a school’s value-added score with a measure that would be more clearly understood by parents. For each school, a benchmark


would be provided against which the actual GCse outcome could be compared. the benchmark would simply be the percentage of pupils that would be expected to achieve five or morea* to C grades (includ- ing english, maths and science) given each pupil’s prior attain- ment and given a range of fam- ily background variables. this kind of benchmarking is much easier to understand and would be far more valuable to parents than any of the existing indicators.


SecEd


• Professor Jim Taylor is from Lancaster University’s Management School.


www.sec-ed.com


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SecEd • March 3 2011


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