10 Comments on The two worlds of education discourse

Ann Limb on Wed, 21st Oct 2009 10:18 am


The voice of parents and students is critical
How can RSA engage and give authority to the users of the education system

Lewesbusker on Wed, 21st Oct 2009 12:05 pm


Academics, I love them.

This is an amazing Review in its depth, breadth, evidence base and just about any dimension you care to measure it in.

However, I was at the RSA presentation and was struck by a couple of points.

Firstly, the presentation was rather dry with large extracts being read out and little or no acknowledgement of the make-up of those in the audience i.e. educational professionals and journalists. I wish that the eminently likeable and trustworthy Prof Alexander had just spoken to us as colleagues and supporters, which the show of hands to which you refer demonstrated. Talk to us like real, feeling people (rather like the way in which teachers ought to talk to their pupils, ironically).

Secondly, answers to audience questions were generally not answers at all, but sprawling restatements of some or other part of the Review. For example, Prof Bill Lucas’ question about how the Review sticks to the conventional language of ability, skills etc (and not, for example, dispositions) got no direct answer.

For me, one of the biggest reasons for the split in how the Review has been received (between the educational world and politicians etc) is its presentation.

75 proposals. 75, I ask you! Prof Alexander’s team must feel a bit gutted by the reaction to the Review, but 75 proposals already. Throw one ball at someone and they’ll catch it, but throw 75…? Perhaps there should have been 3 KEY proposals and then 72 ’sub’ proposals – I don’t know. But what I’m pretty sure of is that a communications expert such as a freelance journalist (who’d never seen the Review before) should have been given the task to make it not just media-friendly, but ‘ordinary person’ friendly. I know that there are Executive Summaries and little booklets, but, if it’s not too late, what is also required is a version for the Twitter age. One that is digestible by any and all groups.

Please don’t waste this excellent piece of work.

james greyson on Wed, 21st Oct 2009 1:56 pm


The debate falters, as always, because it is framed too narrowly. Politicians traditionally use education as a tool of social control. They don’t mean to be control freaks but no-one has explained to them how a system not run from the top wouldn’t end up as anarchy. This is because the talk gets stuck on what to teach and when (and the consequential assessment hoops) when the starting point should be a bit more humble. We could notice that via education to date, we have delivered precisely the conformist silo thinking and disengagement that have caused and then not solved quite a big list of scary global-scale problems. The minds that are the product of this education (ours) then go on to tinker with education in ways that exclude the big picture and the scale of opportunity for genuinely radical change.

As a non-educationalist I hope you’ll forgive me for imagining that this is not rocket-science. The creative and ambitious thinking that might allow civilisation to trundle onwards is by definition open-ended, so that rules out all prescriptive ‘here’s what we’ll learn today’ teaching. All learning happens in the mind of the learner following a previous arousal of curiosity. Every teacher in the world can cultivate the curiosity of their group, just so long as they’re not tied up with fixed routines that dictate what goes on. Anarchy? No, the practice of maintaining an atmosphere of curiosity means that kids learn first to be curious about everything, rather than just to have favourite topics. That takes care of curriculum coverage. Kids learn to be really engaged with what’s going on, rather than the skills of just seeming so. Authoritarian punishments and rewards are redundant when teachers model the respectful communication that educes curiosity and engagement.

Nice theory? No, my kids are thriving in just such a school. Their conference last Friday (http://www.newschoolthinking.com/page/conference-1) was ably led by Ivor Goodson and Bill Lucas. Hopefully there are other curiosity-led schools – I’d love to hear about them. Can anyone tell me why every school shouldn’t work this way?

Ian Fordham on Wed, 21st Oct 2009 2:44 pm


I agree – there seems to be a major disconnect between these kind of reviews and what is retained both in the public conscience and in the education community – which is by its nature pretty diverse and diffuse

I think the Cambridge Review is an astounding piece of work but as LewesBusker says – presentation is a major factor. It is similar to how educational research is normally presented to the teaching profession in a way that simply doesn’t engage and is therefore summarily dismissed or ignored or with grand centralist policy which turns into a dearth of powerpoint slides, drifts over people and eventually become background noise.

The second factor is ownership – how much of the review’s findings were already owned by the education community and embedded in practice before the report went live. I was always impressed by Mick Waters work at the QCA (i know not flavour of the month) on the big picture of the curriculum – as it was presented, refined and engaged with by the profession. People on the ground started to experiment and test and by the time the review came in – there was a groundswell of support

Thirdly – this is pretty obviously highly political. Like our area of work (school buildings) its tough to swim upstream and whereas the Rose Review had political buy in, this clearly did not – and it could be a huge waste of time and effort as a result. Strangely though, other similarly well researched projects such as the good childhood inquiry generated a one hit headline and the Clubs for Young People blueprint report only created a small ripple

In planning our own ‘Great Schools Inquiry’ we are trying to learn all of these lessons – presentation, ownership, political nuancing – and the 1:3:25 rule that governs how most of the corporate sector now present their work. We are also drawing a lot from the permission / social marketing approach that says you can’t just interrupt people and expect their behaviour to change. I really hope there is a way of getting the key findings out and used on the ground (we’re already using some of the excellent interim reviews), It would also be great to have the final report out in full so others can spread the most relevant findings to our own communities. We’d be happy to engage with the RSA on this issue

TimHood on Thu, 22nd Oct 2009 6:21 am


This is one of the most depressingly true reflections on the state of our media and political system I have read for a while, Matthew. Cheers.

Lewesbusker (I like your site by the way) , you may be right that it is partly a question of presentation but even if it had been spun better, I think the media would still have wilfully misrepresented it the way they did.

From the reporting I have read, particularly the inexorably awful Barbara Ellen Observer piece, too many individual journalists in this country all subscribe to the ’start them early-make them stay as long as possible-who cares what they do as long as it is tested’ school of parenting and education.

It’s almost as if the implications of the report are as much about parenting as education and it is this aspect that caused such an emotive response from the media (save the BBC).

At an atavistic level, perhaps when our children are away from us we need to convince ourselves that there is a good reason for it, some meaning to it, which can override the guilt and anxiety of not having them with us. The more thinking and intelligent the parent, the more guilt they feel perhaps and the more they need to convince themselves that the kids are getting something that they can’t deliver while they are away.

So we get perfectly intelligent, progressive journalists banging the drum for the traditionalist, utterly discredited policy of starting formal education way to soon.

The media really need to look to themselves on this one. Every now and then they get it collectively wrong and this is one of those occasions.

Matthew, perhaps the RSA could hold a debate on the reporting of education, with a focus on how the issues are presented in the run up to the election? invite all the editors and commentators you can.

Jane Dickinson on Thu, 22nd Oct 2009 10:57 am


The question that came to my mind while listening to Robin Alexander on Monday was – given the huge input, debate, analysis and resolution encompassed by the Primary Review and, on the other side, the apparent poverty of insight evident amongst policy makers – where’s the interface, how do these clearly disparate elements articulate? The emperor has walked out in unabashed nakedness for all to see and has been clothed in inaccuracy and cliche.

matthewtaylor on Thu, 22nd Oct 2009 5:21 pm


Hi Ann. Good question. Early next year we will be launching a new alliance for people who share a broadly progressive perspective and we hope to engage students, parents, businesses as well as teachers and educationalists.

Vesna Popovski on Tue, 17th Nov 2009 12:02 pm


I would like to take part in the new alliance. I am a former University Lecturer and mother of the 7 years old. I am very sad to hear the instant response from the Government which makes me think that not only they have not read the document but that they dread to agree with it. I am thinking of all the teachers who are doing a wonderful job as well as of all the childre who love to learn through play. I also dread to think that children would connect learning with pressure and taking time away from playing. I think we should show children that learning is a joy which stays with one one’s whole life.

Kevin J. Brehony on Fri, 20th Nov 2009 1:10 pm


The response by the government and the Tories to the Review is deplorable but predictable. The National Curriculum and the standards based paraphernalia that has so diminished primary schooling since 1988 is part of the neo-liberal hegemony which is hegemonic in popular discourse and shown itself to be electorally successful for both the Tories and New Labour and the prime consideration of politicians in our times are electoral. Neo-liberal regimes require that schooling becomes a commodity with exchange value which is why it is packaged, ‘delivered’ and measured before its value can be realised in the market place. As youth unemployment rises the market is diminishing but the principal objective of most of the schooled encouraged by New Labour is still to redeem the value of their schooling.
Such regimes have deep ideological roots which are very difficult to shift without new relations of power. Reason, in the form of evidence however valid, is not likely to be convincing when weighed against electoral considerations and the desire to hold on to or gain power. Neither is it likely to have much impact on the dominant neo-liberal consensus. In effect it would require a depoliticisation of schooling, along the lines Sidney Webb used to demand which would substitute for rational debate for ideological commitment. Alexander is wrong to say that ‘polarisation, sloganising, myth-making, misrepresentation and name-calling [...] have bedevilled the primary education debate since the 1960s as much of these actions he deplores have attended education debate since at least the state’s first interventions in the field. Historically schooling and ideological contestation are inseparable for a whole host of reasons.
Nevertheless, like the payment by results system before it, bit by bit the testing edifice that keeps schooling tied to measurable results, is crumbling. That part of the settlement brought about by the 1988 Education Act that has to do with assessment is suffering death by a thousand cuts. What would help it to collapse is if teachers, and it is gratifying to see the union’s supporting the recommendations of the Review, and parents gave it a strong push in the form of boycotting SATs.
The Report found that in general terms, primary schooling was in ‘good heart’ . Given that the main problem with primary schooling is the failure of deprived and disadvantaged children, a party that seriously addressed the problem of social and economic inequality through income redistribution and promoted education policies consistent with this aim might go a long way to resolving the problem. Nevertheless, such ideas are foreign to popular discourse thanks to the New Labour project’s acceptance and elaboration of Thatcherism that made them thus.

Education Tay on Sat, 13th Feb 2010 6:54 pm


Cambridge primary education is in general a good curriculum for teaching and learning, although many people in education think in a different way from the world. Academia is one world and the real commercial and social world is another for many people. Being an academic myself I spent 14 years in a commercial job and use this knowledge and experiences in teaching and learning. I use a holistic view in teaching and learning to students as this is the view I have of the world and learning.

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