Time to abandon wider participation?

September 18, 2009 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Public policy, The RSA 

For decades Government has seen increasing young people’s participation in post compulsory education – particularly higher education – as a key objective. Michael Gove’s approach implicitly calls this goal into question. He may now find support from an unexpected direction.

Yesterday saw the launch at the RSA of ‘Learning Through Life’, an inquiry into the future of lifelong learning conducted by NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Learning). It is an excellent piece of work, combining powerful analysis and a compelling conceptual framework with solid policy recommendations. It didn’t have to be that way. In my experience inquiries like this conducted by commissions of the great and the good are often long on warm words and lofty aspiration but short on edge and innovation. Also, the subject matter isn’t always presented in the most fascinating of terms. I told a slightly shocked Great Room of the time I had met a colleague at IPPR and asked ‘were you at the lifelong learning seminar?’, ‘I don’t know’ she said ‘but it certainly felt that way’.

The report argues that we should see learning through life as having four distinct 25 year phases. It recommends that over the next ten years, partly in response to changing demography, we should gradually shift resources from the first phase (0-25) towards the other three phases and a particularly the last two. The benefits of learning for the employment prospects and well-being of adults and elders is well known yet they get a tiny share of the overall spend. Because 85% of spending is concentrated on the first phase, just limiting growth in this sector frees up resources that could transform provision in later years.

This is where there may be an opening to make common cause with the Conservatives. In alleging a dumbing down in standards, in criticising attempts to make learning ‘relevant’, and in pledging to discourage students from doing ‘softer’ subjects like media studies, Michael Gove is implicitly arguing that the bar for academic attainment (and progression) should be lifted. Whilst over the long term we all hope more children will reach higher levels of achievement, in the shorter and medium term this approach suggests an end to the expansion of post compulsory academic participation.

The NIACE Commission is suggesting shifting resources from the under 25 group by slowing growth in per capita spending, but if the Conservatives’ policies put a cap on places in higher education this would enable a greater transfer of resources. After all, wouldn’t it be better to spend limited resources on transforming the opportunities for personal growth and social engagement among older people than on shoehorning into college the last remnants of lower middle class youth not already there (regardless of whether they have any academic aptitude)?

Until now the Conservatives have not wanted to explore what their ‘back to basics’ approach to the school curriculum means for post 18 participation rates. This is one of the questions I posed to Michael Gove nearly two months ago. He and his team have promised me a response and I am still waiting. Maybe with the NIACE report they have a new – progressive – rationale for limiting state funding for HE to those who have reached the academic gold standard.

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Still no response from Michael Gove

August 18, 2009 by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Public policy, The RSA 

I have given up hope that Michael Gove will reply to the questions I posed to him – on his invitation – last month. I’d like to say this is because he is on the run from my brilliant interrogation but I suspect it’s just that I’m not worth bothering with (even if other bits of the Conservative Party are quoting me!).

But I will keep nagging away: because I know a bit about education, because it matters, because I am fascinated by the gap between the rhetorical attractiveness of the Gove agenda and its less convincing basis in concrete policy. Also, given how highly disparaging the Conservatives are about what is going on now in most schools it is only fair that they should have their own ideas put under critical scrutiny.

Today and later in the week I want briefly to explore two recurrent critiques in Michael Gove’s pronouncements. The first is the allegation of ‘dumbing down’; the second is of onerous or inappropriate national interference in schools by Labour ministers, particularly through exam targets.

On dumbing down MG has been very clear that he wants to set the bar higher. Pupils will be discouraged from taking ‘easier’ subjects; examinations will be more rigorous; more use of streaming and setting will encourage schools more explicitly to separate the able from the less able. I don’t agree with this approach for reasons I have described before. But the point I want to make today is that the Conservatives need to be clear about the implications of this policy. There are three interpretations:

a) The Conservatives think that raising the bar and forcing more schools to do what works best will swiftly increase the number of pupils achieving a significantly higher standard. The problem with this is that most international evidence suggests it is very hard in mature school systems like ours to achieve this kind of step change in absolute attainment. If the bar rises quickly the number reaching it will, at least in the short to medium term, have to fall. Also, the Conservatives’ ability to force schools to do anything will be limited by their other commitment which is to free schools from central interference and let parents set up and manage their own schools. As an example, MG has been clear that he is very unenthusiastic about competency based curricula like the RSA’s Opening Minds but over 200 school have voluntarily signed up to OM. Will the Conservatives force them to abandon an approach which so many schools say works for them?

b) The Conservatives recognise that raising the bar will mean fewer pupils reach it but they see this as a price worth paying. If so then the Conservatives are abandoning a long held cross-party commitment to increase participation rates in post compulsory education. There is nothing wrong with this policy (the Treasury would certainly be keen on it), but it is a radical break not just from UK but from international practice. If the Conservatives are intent upon it they should say so explicitly.             

c) The Conservatives want to raise the academic bar and also maintain the trajectory of high participation. They will do this by more clearly distinguishing between those with academic and those with vocational abilities. The problems with this are, first, that as far as I can see, the Conservatives don’t yet have a policy for school age vocational education. Second, they will need to explain how they intend to overcome the historic failure in England to develop a vocational route into post compulsory education with the same status as the academic. The Conservatives are clearly intent on doing away with diplomas (they said the other day that they will not count them in assessing school performance), but we don’t know what – if anything – they intend to replace them with.

The reason ministers, schools, and universities have ‘lowered the bar’ on the academic performance needed to get into higher education is that we have wanted to increase participation rates (at post 16 and into HE) faster than we have been able to increase underlying levels of academic attainment. There isn’t much evidence that this has damaged the performance of the top 10% (in most international surveys it is among this group that England scores highly). The policy has arguably been unfortunate for the bottom 40% as it means that not going into HE is now a bigger hurdle to employment than before (for example, you can’t now become a nurse without a degree).

The group that will be most impacted by the Conservative reforms is that which has benefited from the expansion in post 16 participation, a group largely but not exclusively comprising middle class children. So unless the Conservatives can find a magic bullet to achieve a substantial and rapid increase in underlying ability their policy will presumably make it harder for above average (but not brilliant) middle class children to get to college. This is a policy that I think Sir Humphrey would have called ‘bold’.

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