Schools Direct -changes to teacher education.  Links here and here and here.  Plus link to Scotland’s review of teacher education here

Of course the big news is the GCSE reforms: “Michael Gove unveils GCSE reforms” Richard Adams in the Guardian, BBC story: GCSEs: “Gove pledges ‘challenging’ exam changes’ by Sean Coughlan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22841266

David Wolfe’s “Can of Worms” blog

“Bring back polytechnics, argues higher education report” By Judith Burns http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22818497

Emily Duggan in The Independent: “Wave goodbye to another parenting myth: Children whose mothers go out to work do not suffer academically”

Twit Triangulation netcast with Howard Rheingold

“Phonics test ‘accurate but unnecessary” By Katherine Sellgren http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22783399

I-levels replace GCSEs: Gove’s great reform or another bemusing move? Warwick Mansell article and Richards Adams article 

Libraries – the end of books as we know it? Paperless public libraries switch to digital By Bill Hicks http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22160990

Up for a laugh, a head true to his word, Penketh High School Head Teacher Does Psy’s Gangnam Style Dance Video: here

Also mentioned is Frank Coffield et al (2004) literature review on learning styles: here

New curriculum workload story in Scotland as reported by the BBC.  Raises question about how innovation and workload and the poverty of our imagination. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-22642217

Also, in the news tonight we discuss:

positive discrimination for encouraging more male teachers into the profession proposed by the NASUWT, story in TESS here

Revision tips -what works? Only 2 main methods apparently.  Summary in this blog and full paper can be downloaded here

Unfortunately Fearghal is unwell tonight so Matthew and Steve talk through some news stories.  Matthew lays short odds on Steve doing Gove stories, he is not disappointed, and introduces a timer to limit our ramblings.

Does the government really want innovation in free schools? By Rachel Williams in the Guardian

Teachers resistant to CfE’s new thinking, say experts, TES article

Leadership methods ‘stifle innovation’, Keir Bloomer in the TES

Gove’s claims of teenagers’ ignorance harpooned by retired teacher by James Ball, in the Guardian

Jimmy Wales: Boring university lectures ‘are doomed’, by Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

Summer-born pupils ‘should have exam scores boosted’, by Judith Burns BBC News education reporter

Good golly, it’s Molly, could be one title for the podcast as we get a puppy interruption as michief Molly jumps on Steve’s lap and chews the headphones, in between planting kisses.

In the news: Headteachers and stress, article by Steven Robbins, in “Educational leadership programmes in the UK: Who cares about the school?”  Management in Education, 27, 2, 50-55

Matthew loses sleep over BBC journalism about sleep deprivation

Barry Schwartz “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less”

The International Futures Forum site here

Link to the book Transformative Innovation in Education

An interesting background article written by Graham here

First up is Mr G’s speech about needing longer school hours and shorter holidays;

Gove urges longer days and shorter holidays for pupils By Judith Burns BBC News education reporter

But is he misleading us about the evidence? See

Matthew is psyched out by psycho story. or rather by the way it was promoted

We get into a discussion about early years education and insidelearning’s lack of knowledge about the evidence base.  This follows from Liz Truss’s call for more French style nursery education and the reactions it provoked: here here & here

Bill Boyd’s blog

This article was partly inspired by reading the following article on Wired Magazine by Ari Wallach: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/04/ideas-bank/forget-short-termism

Photo from Wikimedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Crawshaw

This is what education should be focusing on now. In a recent Inside Learning episode/show, I realised that political oscillations and playing idealogical football with education would not provide the long term thinking we need to take us forward. At present, education in Scotland is run by a combination of 32 local authorities, with central government setting the main direction and monitoring the work of these authorities through financial controls and of course inspections. Interestingly, we have had a change of government in Scotland and it has held reasonably true to the “Curriculum for Excellence” implemented by the previous administration, so in some ways, we have long-term thinking happening at present. Contrast this with the English situation in which Michael Gove’s department has radically changed the approach to governance and now examinations. The next UK election is reasonably close, and if the conservative/liberal alliance is not returned then who knows what way the next administration will go. In episode 89 we discussed this with columnist and activist Fiona Miller who is clearly close to Labour policy makers but got no clear conclusion about Labour’s way forward. Pity the English schools who are constantly wary of the next big political storm while still at the centre of the current one. In Scotland we are enjoying more stability than that at present, but if Independence fails to happen, and the current SNP government wanes, we could be looking at a Scottish storm-of-change in due course. My point, it won’t serve us for a long term future, we need predictable leadership of education that is relatively independent of government fluctuation.

Various governments have enjoyed the politicisation of education and have made capital from moral-high-ground-adoption about slipping standards and society’s ills. However, most serious commentators are now accepting that the system is becoming so complex that simple solutions don’t seem to work and that education has not made the clear improvements in the couple of decades since the 1976 “Ruskin” speech that politicians might have hoped for. Indeed there is a danger that politicians may be beginning to see strong policy initiatives as poisoned chalices that simply lead to disappointment being pinned on the responsible politicians. More school autonomy from the Curriculum for Excellence is lauded, but schools are confused and lack confidence. Reduced class size pledges from the SNP administration have backfired as they can’t be afforded and haven’t made much impact anyway. A decade of strong inspection hasn’t raised standards significantly and has cost huge sums of money while possibly damaging school creativity. In short, this is a complex business with few easy answers and a track record of initiatives that cost a lot in time and effort and successively seem to confuse schools more.

It could be argued that part of the problem is that we haven’t actually got a well formed vision for education. Graham Leicester of the International Futures Forum has said that despite a huge focus on international comparison using PISA and other tools, no-one can point to any one system that has got it right; we really don’t know! If you want innovation within a system to lead to sharing of great ideas leading to desirable system change, then we need a direction to work toward. We don’t need a plan or a map, because we don’t know the details of where we are going, but we need a “North” and a compass so that we can explore the complex territory and still head in the right direction. For me that “North” will be a set of simple and consistent statements backed by simple and consistent values that we can align-to as we try to develop education to better answer the complex needs of the modern world.

Is a political party with a 5-year mandate the right way to develop this? Are our 32 Authorities with their ever-changing political leadership the right local stewards of the complex changes? While leadership at local and national levels is trying honestly and working hard, I believe that they are unable to provide the educational leadership that is required. I believe there is a loose precedent in Blair/Brown’s decoupling of the control of monetary policy when they handed inflationary targeting to the Bank of England. Successive governments have been able to leave the optimisation of monetary controls to control inflation to a relatively independent body, and the result has been relatively stable inflation  over a couple of decades despite the awful international financial situation. With hindsight, any current government is probably happy that they are less likely to be confronted with runaway inflation and there seems to be no political appetite to grab those levers again with the attendant danger of backfire then blame. The Bank of England does this relatively well because they can take a long view regardless of coming elections or prevailing political winds.

The financial analogy is limited, but I believe the time may be right to set up a National Education Council, decoupled from politics and with direct control of policy and practice. This body should combine academics, educators and representatives of business, industry and the arts. Perhaps similar to the kind of representation that the General Teaching Council Scotland has at present. The reason that the Bank of England decoupling has worked, is that a simple target for inflation could be set, (broadly 2%), in education our next challenge is to set targets, in a similar way for a National Education Council to work towards over the long term. Those targets cannot be the SQA exam results, as they tend to be at present, because that is not providing us the change incentives that we need at present; we mustn’t repeat the old targets and expect different results.

We can’t honestly say that short term political leadership has provided the great-leap-forward that our system needs. Perhaps the time has come, to quote Ari Wallach, when we should stop with the short-term planning and begin to “build metaphorical cathedrals”. Not using short term goals, but with an eye on our “longpath”.

What might these agreed targets be for a National Education Council? I will look at this thorny problem in a follow-on article shortly.

(Views in this article are personal and may not reflect my employer’s views)

Gove Daily Mail article

100 Academics

David Laws