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Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Response to Education Committee request for views on the Minister of Education’s proposal of 15 May 2008 for Transfer to Post Primary Education from 2010.

ATL is pleased to respond to the Minister’s 15 May document (1) read in the context of the Official Report (Hansard) of the Committee for Education deliberation of 16 May 2008 (2).

1. Regulation or Legislation? Although the Minister indicated (2,p3) that she would “bring forward regulations to the Assembly”, elsewhere (2, p14) the Minister commits that “I will bring forward the legislation necessary to cover every aspect of my proposals….”

The difference between regulation (and the use of Negative Disputes Resolution mechanisms) and legislation (clearly requiring cross community consent) is stark – as night and day. ATL considers that major systemic change requires the maximum possible consensus. As such, clarity on the Legislation vs. Regulation issue is vital.

ATL recommends that the Committee seek clarity from the Minister on this matter.

2. The Temporary Test: ATL can understand the possible political motivations of the Minister in seeking a transitional test. Seen as an attempt to manage change, or to seek compromise ground, the three year temporary test may be well intentioned.

From a trade union perspective, the tactic of unilateral compromise, without reciprocal movement, is not always wise. In this case, it is not clear which body of opinion might have sought, or welcomed, this gesture.

From an educational point of view, ATL are supportive of the Revised Curriculum. It is noted that the short test proposed is based on literacy and numeracy alone. ATL considers that there may be significant tension between teaching to the revised curriculum and parental pressure requiring classroom preparation for such a test. It is also noted that the Minister’s proposal will be the 13 th “qualifying” test since 1948.

We are concerned that the test may, for a temporary period, increase the high stakes nature of testing. Demand for the test may increase rather than decrease during this period. Parental demand, rather than the views of politicians or educationalists, is likely to be the determinant of this.

There appears not to be adequate time to design a fair, ‘non-coachable’, test, robustly pilot the test, and appropriately guide teachers and schools, as well as parents.

ATL recommends that the Committee seek the detailed views of CCEA on this matter.

3. Social Justice Criteria: ATL have been the main (perhaps only) protagonist in the post primary debate to have consistently argued for socially balanced intakes to be at the heart of school Admissions criteria. The educational need for socially balanced intakes has been articulated by ATL in all recent speeches and publications (3, 4, 5, 6). The Minister is to be congratulated for tackling this issue within her proposals. However, the proposals (1, Annex A) , as they stand, are far from clear.

Decades of research (7) demonstrates that there is academic consensus that improvements in systemic, or overall, education performance correlates closely to the achievement of socially balanced intakes. ATL poses “balanced intakes” as an educational, not ideological, argument. We have noted that all protagonists within the current post primary debate have argued their case in the context of increasing social mobility. Currently, there are stark social differences in intakes between school types in Northern Ireland (8) and we consider it unfair for some schools to shoulder a disproportionately disadvantaged intake. ATL notes the important question asked by the DUP’s Nelson McCausland MLA in this regard (2, p27).

We equally recognize that socially balanced intakes will be hard to achieve naturally. Achieving socially balanced intakes may require a mixture of both larger schools (with larger catchment areas) combined with some social “engineering” measures, neither of which sit easily with societal attitudes in Northern Ireland.

ATL’s proposal on Balanced Intakes : The ATL proposal therefore is that

A) There should be minimum and maximum school intake bands for pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM eligibility being a reasonable proxy for disadvantage in this matter).
B) That schools are set Targets (as opposed to Quotas) based on the deprivation statistics prevalent within their catchment area – rather in the manner in which the Fair Employment Acts required reporting and monitoring of community balance within employment returns from 1989 onwards.
C) That School Funding Formula weightings take account of disadvantage to help incentivise and realize socially balanced intakes.
D) That the Equality Commission be given a role to monitor the achievement of socially balanced intakes.
E) That socially balanced intakes should apply to all schools, not just post primary schools. As such, this measure would be an overarching obligation on all schools rather than simply an option within a menu of admissions criteria.

The Minister’s proposal is not explicit or clear. The social justice criteria may be voluntary, forming part of a menu of admissions criteria; it may be a criteria that schools could decline to adopt; the proposal does not enlighten on implementation issues, including monitoring, incentives, transportation and appeals.

It should be noted that, without compulsory provision in support of socially balanced intakes, ATL would oppose the “Geography, Family and Community” criteria proposed. Such “Geography, Family and Community” criteria alone could widen social segregation in some areas and schools.

ATL commends the Minister for including social justice criteria, but recommends that the Committee ask the Minister to further expand on her proposals in a more detailed paper. The Committee may also wish to take advice from the Equality Commission on the detailed implementation of the social justice criteria.

References

Balanced Intakes and External Impacts on pupil performance.

Balanced intakes : It has long been generally accepted academically, if not acted upon by policymakers, that overall school performance improves with balanced intakes. The following is a good summary, although the references are only a small selection of what is available.

Cassen R and Kingdon G (2007) Tackling Low Educational Achievement Joseph Rowntree Foundation/LSE concludes: “Our evidence as well as that of the DfES and of other researchers is that disadvantaged students and minority ethnic students are likely to attend worse performing schools. This can affect their performance adversely; it does so particularly for students with special educational needs. Anything which gives schools greater opportunities to select their pupils works to the detriment of the disadvantaged; measures which assist fair selection will help them.”

Coldron J, Tanner E, Finch S, Shipton L, Wolstenholme C, Willis B, Demack S and Stiell B (2008) Secondary School Admissions London DCSF concludes: “The theoretical benefits of balanced intakes are considerable but the practical problems arising from the complexity of local contexts are great.”

Karley K and Bramley G (2005) Home-ownership, Poverty and Educational Attainment: Individual, School and Neighbourhoods Effects, Edinburgh, Scottish Executive concludes: “…if children from middle-class backgrounds attend school with predominantly children from the same background they will do less well than if the school has a social mix. The same applies for children from deprived homes who attend school alongside children in similar circumstances.”

Sullivan and Whitty (2005) 'Life Chances and Educational Achievement in the UK: A Research and Policy Overview' in 'Maintaining Momentum: promoting social mobility and life chances from early years to adulthood' Eds Delorenzi, Reed and Robinson London: Institute for Public Policy Research, notes: 

'There is consensus that school composition effects are important and that schools with a high proportion of students of low social status or low prior academic ability are at a disadvantage (Coleman 1966, Henderson et al 1978, Mortimore et al 1988, Rutter et al 1979, Smith and Tomlinson 1989, Summers and Wolfe 1977, Thrupp 1995, Willms 1986)...Levacic and Woods (2002) find the concentration of social disadvantage in a school relative to other local schools has a strong impact on GCSE improvement over time. These school composition effects may be due to the influence of peer groups on aspirations and behaviour, or they may be due to other processes, such as schools with low proportions of 'able' students finding it hard to attract good teachers.'

Other References:

Coleman, JS (1966) Equality of Educational Opportunity  ( Washington D.C.., Government Printing Office)

Henderson , V., Mieszkowski, P. and Sauvageau, Y. (1978) Peer Group Effects and Education Production Functions, Journal of Public Economics 10, pp. 97-106

Levacic, R. and Woods, P. A. (2002a) Raising School Performance in the League Tables (Part 1): disentangling the effects of social disadvantage, British Educational Research Journal 28, 2, pp. 207-26

Levacic, R. and Woods, P. A. (2002b)  Raising School Performance in the League Tables (Part 2): barriers to responsiveness in three disadvantaged schools, British Educational Research Journal 28, 2, pp. 227-47

Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D. and Ecob, R. (1988) School Matters (London., Open Books)

Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P. and Janet, O. (1979) Fifteen Thousand Hours (London., Open Books)

Smith, D. and Tomlinson, S (1989) The School Effect:A Study of Multi-Racial Comprehensives (London, Policy Studies Institute)

Summers, A. A. and Wolfe, B.L. (1977) Do Schools Make a Difference?, American Educational Review 67, pp. 639-52

Thrupp, M. (1995) The school mix effect: the history of an enduring problem in educational research, policy and practice, British Journal of Sociology of Education 16, pp. 183-203

Willms, J. D. (1986) Social Class Segregation and Its Relationship to Pupils’ Examination Results in Scotland, American Sociological Review 51, pp. 223-41

  External/internal influences on pupil performance: Academics coming from a variety of directions have similar findings: economists using econometric methods, school improvement research, even the DfES own analysis - again, this does not feed into policy formation - indeed, the logic is that public spending on education would be better directed at other social policy areas.

Martin Johnson, in a chapter in the International handbook of Urban Education (forthcoming) comments:

“School improvement was as much a grass roots movement as a Government policy, but it provided support for two policy themes. First, it supported the contention implied in the earlier reform that autonomous schools could produce better pupil performance. Second, it underpinned the rejection of an apparent determinism which explained pupil failure in terms of social factors, as summed up by the Labour Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett – ‘poverty no excuse’. Whilst fatalism and low expectations were, and possibly remain, a feature of some schools, it seemed by the mid-nineties that the pendulum of rhetoric had swung excessively, leading to the title Schools making a difference: let’s be realistic (Thrupp, 1999), and ‘... improvement methods would make a difference. A little difference.’ (Johnson, 1999, p.166) Limitations on the utility of the school improvement model became clear (Mortimore, 1998, MacGilchrist this vol.).

One was the reliance on high quality leadership and management, when there was continuing concern about that quality which led to the establishment of a National College for School Leadership. The second was the recognition that school improvement placed heavy demands on a workforce already feeling overstretched. Thirdly, improvement research corroborated earlier findings (Coleman et al 1966, Hanushek 1992) and showed that 85% of the variation in pupil performance is due to factors external to the school (Teddlie and Reynolds 2000).

Of the remaining 15%, the classroom effect was shown to be the most substantial. This finding coincided with the determination of the Labour Government elected in 1997 to move to the third phase of reform, a programme to develop the teaching force and the quality of pedagogy.

DfES (2004) Statistics of Education: Variation in Pupil Progress 2003 is an important ref since a) it comes from govt b) it uses a huge database of pupil performance which is a by-product of the target/performance system. Forthcoming work by Cassen (LSE) will also analyse nearly half a million individual pupil attainment paths.

It found that prior attainment, gender, FSM and English as an Additional Language accounted for 92% of the variance in later attainment in secondary schools. It states 'some of the unexplained [ i.e.8%] variance may represent differences in school effectiveness' - n.b. may.