Why we need a general diploma accessible to all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley

 

The Guardian 15/04/08

 

 

The government’s new strategy for 14-19 follows the peak in numbers of 18-year-olds entering higher education (42.5% in 2005-06), along with those achieving two A-levels (34% in 2006).

 

Although more than 80% remain in full-time education for a year after the compulsory school-leaving age, increased participation has been accompanied by increased division. The upper years of secondary education replicate past divisions as tripartism is reinstated at tertiary level. It is in this context that the government has launched its specialist diplomas in five vocational areas from September and in 17 “lines” to which all 14- to 16-year-olds will be entitled by 2013.

 

The academic-vocational divisions in many secondary schools will be intensified by further divisions between schools and also between schools and the FE colleges that are likely to be the main diploma providers in local consortia. About 100,000 14- to 16-year-olds currently attend FE colleges for part of the week but if, as the government wants, up to 40% of the cohort follow them on the diploma, colleges could become the new tertiary moderns.

 

For, despite government claims that nearly 80% of schools have signed up for a local diploma consortium and that 140,000 places will be available from September 2009, closer inspection suggests the actual numbers will be well short. The strategy document therefore announces diplomas in more academic subjects and a new “extended” diploma supposedly worth four A-levels. It hints also that all current standalone vocational qualifications like BTecs will be absorbed into diplomas.

 

Diplomas replace applied A-levels, which thus join a long line of failed vocational qualifications supposedly promoting new workplace skills and designed to motivate the “non-academic”.

 

Having conceded that the diplomas are not really directly vocational but more “applied”the government seeks to revamp the faltering modern apprenticeship as a work-based alternative. But many private-sector employers do not need them, and modern apprentices only receive an “allowance” and no guarantee of a job.

 

 Meanwhile, students continue to flock to A-levels as the only reliable route to HE. But for private schools and the elite universities they supply, A-levels are no longer the gold standard. They prefer the new Cambridge Pre-U qualification. The Pre-U is unashamedly elitist, designed to re-establish the exclusivity of top schools while leaving A-levels – to which there are 800,000-plus entries each year – to the masses. And the 14-19 strategy announces that it will no longer support the international baccalaureate as an alternative to the Pre-U in all local authorities.                                                               

 

If private provision crams pupils for the Pre-U and other elite university entry exams, A-levels should secure entry to the next tier down of campus-based teaching universities, while diplomas may serve for the million-plus group of former polytechnics. Raised fees in 2010 will heighten these divisions by subject and institution. 

 

Rather than trying to resurrect Tomlinson’s “overarching” certificate, which Labour rejected in 2006, by “Tomlinsonising” the diplomas, a new multi-level general diploma accessible to all students is needed. Such a qualification must safeguard the right to a common core curriculum, while at the same time enabling genuine specialisation. It should also be binding on all institutions, including the private ones; otherwise diversity and division can only widen. To ensure this would require renegotiation of the current relationship between central government and schools, limiting school autonomy.

     

                                                                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cruellest con of all

     

 

Patrick Ainley 

 

Times Higher Education Supplement  07/02/08

 

 

 

Widening participation is a cruel con but the people academics fool the most with it are themselves.  The government target of 50 per cent of 18-30 year-olds entering higher education by 2010 presents itself as a professionalisation of the proletariat but it disguises a proletarianisation of the professions.  Not only the academic profession but the professions which many graduates will enter – if they are lucky. 

 

                                                                                                          

Occupations of all sorts now calling themselves professional (not merely in the sense of doing a good job and being full-time as opposed to amateur, like footballers or criminals) have expanded with the decline of industrial labour and the expansion of service and office employment, especially for women.  These occupations have also professionalized themselves by their association with higher education.  Teachers were a case in point, moving from the teacher training colleges to Departments of Education in universities.  Now teacher education, as it briefly became, has once again reverted to teacher training in competences dictated by the central government Training and Development Agency, even though still nominally within higher education. 

 

                                                                                  

Widening participation on a reduced unit of resource was also a recipe for turning higher into further education.  Without the extra support necessary for ‘non-traditional’ students, ie. those without the top A-level grades guaranteeing their preparedness for traditional HE, it is impossible for them to reach the standards of academic literacy and numeracy demanded by the unchanged HE that lecturers persist in inflicting on the new mass of students. 

 

 

Meanwhile, the selecting elite have used widening participation to cream ‘bright working-class’ applicants in the way the grammars used to do.  As has been pointed out many times, this only makes the situation worse for the rest of us. Academics have only themselves to blame for this.  Partly we were arrogant in thinking that what we had to teach was what everyone else wanted and needed to know.  We did not recognise that knowledge is not power and that most of our students are not in the personal, social or economic situation to be empowered by it.  Partly we were stupid in not seeing that our eagerness to enlighten the masses entailed levels of support that are unavailable to us.  

 

 

Worse, since the polytechnics – as Tyrrell Burgess wittily said at the time – were allowed to become universities to disguise the fact many universities had become polytechnics, there is now no surviving alterative to academic HE.  Instead, all new and old universities compete on the uneven playing field of a traditional curriculum. 

 

 

When academics belatedly realise that ‘more means different’, our only option is to ‘dumb down’ towards competence-based programmes like many of the two-year Foundation ‘degrees’. 

 

 

This is the likely future for the vocational diplomas and apprenticeships government is conjuring up.  Since no schools want to run the dips and employers aren’t going to pay for them, they will predictably be picked up by desperate FE and then passed on as F‘d’s to what are becoming the training universities. 

 

 

 

Here comes the ‘Burgerluarette’ !

 

Martin Allen

 Campaign Teacher Spring 2008

 

News that McDonalds are offering  employees a  ‘training’ equivalent to A-levels  got its fair share of media attention at the end of January, particularly when it became known that QCA was recognising it – along with courses from two other major companies, the airline Flybe and Network Rail.

 

From January 2008, McDonald’s will pilot what it is calling a basic shift manager’s course. The course will cover everything the 7,000 managers of McDonald’s outlets across the country need to know about the day-to-day running of a restaurant. This ranges from basic operational requirements, to finances, marketing and human resources. Learning on this course will be divided up into credits. The standard of these credits will equate with GCSE grades, A-levels or a national Diploma. 

 

Though an employee will not be completing a full A-level equivalent, only part of one, when 17 year olds are legally required to participate in education and training from 2013, a ‘Mcqualification’ will probably suffice (the fast food giant could design a course which was equal to a whole A-level). Gordon Brown quickly gave support, while skills minister  John Denham said it was an important step towards ending the old divisions between company training schemes and national qualifications.

 

Criticising McDonalds is not an example of ‘academic snobbery’ towards practical/vocation learning as some daily newspapers implied.  In  an increasingly uncertain labour market, most teachers would welcome government backing for good quality vocational training delivered by  reputable employers preferably in collaboration with FE colleges, but many will be bewildered if not appalled at why this has been extended to the fast food chain. 

 

 

McDonalds have been exploiting youngsters  from the earliest opportunity, not just with the ‘Mcfood’ they sell to thousands everyday, but also through  ‘Mcjobs’ fitted around school and college hours and which any self respecting teenager seeking to earn a bit of cash will tell you, are the lowest of the low. Promoting ’Mclearning’ is the latest attempt at extending  ‘McDonaldisation’ into the lives of kids and young people. 

 

 

QCA support  for McDonalds is particularly nauseating, considering the Government’s own vocational diplomas have been plagued with problems, not winning support from parents, headteachers or universities and when many Modern Apprenticeship schemes continue to flounder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crisis of childhood. A critique of the Children’s Plan

 

 

 

Richard Murgatroyd and Martin Allen    Morning Star  04/01/08

 

New Labour’s recently published Children’s Plan sets itself the modest target of making Britain the “best place in the world to grow up.” Unfortunately, the mixture of good intentions, technocratic changes and small-scale reforms on offer don’t add up to sort of radical vision that is needed to tackle the growing crisis of childhood. But a little caution is needed before the left throws this particular baby out with the bath water.

 

For, whatever its other shortcomings, the plan does at least identify the real issues that are blighting the lives of so many children in the real world – child poverty, the commercialisation of childhood, the near-replacement of independent outside play with indoor screen-based entertainment, fatty foods and childhood obesity. Hidden away in chapter 3 is also the first real indication that the current version of scholastic aptitude tests (SATs) might be replaced by a more personalised “test when ready” approach, even if this does not guarantee that comparative school performance tables will necessarily disappear. The plan’s proposals are also wide-ranging and include many things that reformers would want to support, such as more and better playgrounds, youth clubs, the integration of children’s services and more effective use of school resources in the community.

 

Children spend only one-sixth of their waking hours at school, so it is perhaps surprising that so much of the plan focuses on education. The reality is that the plan has been published at a time of increased concern that the school “standards agenda,” which is still a major cornerstone of government policy, is running out of steam, the education system is not quite as “world class” as it should be and that there appears little chance of reaching the 90 per cent A-C GCSE target by 2020. In many respects, the plan is largely an extension of the standards agenda. If things were not going wrong for Labour with schools, it’s questionable whether it would have even reached print. For example, a whole chapter is devoted to the government’s proposals for “staying on” in education, such as raising of the leaving age and creating new vocational diplomas. It also reiterates that every secondary school should have specialist, trust or academy status and a business or university partner.

 

Libertarians from both the left and the right might fear a further extension of the “surveillance culture” that is creeping into more areas of family and personal life, but the plan is careful in its language and its tone and designed to be supportive rather than coercive, while many of the proposals are too shallow and far too limited to represent anything Big Brother-like. Pointing the finger at schools and teachers is another matter. The plan continues to do its fair share of this – “weak and failing” teachers are criticised, schools are set a minimum standard of 30 per cent of students attaining five A-C GCSEs and, in future, all teachers are to be expected to gain masters degrees. Labour strategists, however, understand that blaming parents, who are ever more financially overstretched despite working longer and working harder, could spell electoral catastrophe.

 

The only section of parents directly addressed by the plan are from “disadvantaged” areas. These will receive expert parenting advice, encouragement to access Sure Start and 20,000 subsidised places in nurseries for up to 15 hours a week.

 

 

A disappointing number of the commitments contained in the Children’s Plan are either too small-scale to make a difference or are unlikely to be adequately funded. Some spending commitments are paltry, the largest being £220 million on playgrounds over the next three years. Most kids would soon be able to calculate that the yearly spending increases are unlikely to be more than their monthly pocket money when divided by the total number of children in the population.This last point is going to become ever more relevant as Brown’s bubble economy deflates over the next few years, squeezing public-sector resources. Perhaps that explains the emphasis on information and consultation, with new parenting advisers, personal progress records and new focus groups called “parents’ panels.”

 

 

However, other key proposals need to be carefully considered. While reformers have rightly sought to extend subsidised nursery places as a means of liberating women and teaching co-operative and communal values to the young, the plan clearly envisages more target-based, formalistic and standardised early years provision. This raises the question, is it really a good idea to ratchet down the sorts of prescriptive regimes to ever younger children?

 

 

Some commentators on the plan have also noted that many action points only involve publishing and commissioning further reviews and reports, the most important of which will look at the commercialisation of childhood and on the risks of video and internet games. There is also a lot of technocratic tweaking and rearranging of departmental deckchairs on offer, but these sorts of organisational solutions will not transform those aspects of everyday life in advanced consumer capitalist societies that are fuelling the crisis of childhood. And this perhaps brings us to the real empty hole in the plan – the lack of any clear vision. For there is nothing at all to suggest that the government is ready to start questioning the free-market dogma that has helped fuel the crisis of childhood. Instead, the plan continues to parrot the increasingly empty claim that unlimited opportunities and personal fulfilment are available to all in a globalised economy.

                                                                                                

Nevertheless, the publication of the first ever Children’s Plan will hopefully encourage wider discussion and debate among socialists and radicals about the condition of our young people. The left urgently needs to sharpen up its thinking about contemporary childhood. That calls for some honest discussion about the relationship between young people and their parents or carers. About the ways in which young people are being encouraged to think and act. About the limits of the education system in a society like this. About the ways in which parents may be able to reclaim the spaces in our children’s lives that have been colonised by commercialism, consumerism and the state, but also about the way in which the “workaholic” culture inhabited by many parents actually props up the sort of economy that new Labour says that it wants to protect children against.

 

Above all, the left needs to ask more searching questions about the way in which our young people are being prepared to respond politically to the economic and environmental crisis that they are likely to experience later in their lives. If youth is the future, what next?   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Functional for who? A quick assessment of the new functional skills

         

 

 

Martin Allen

Post-16 Educator  March-April 2008                

 

 

 ‘Functional skills’ are being piloted in 1000 schools and colleges. Part of the Tomlinson working group proposals for 14-19 education, their introduction is a response to demands from employer representative for higher standards in literacy and numeracy amongst young people. Completing functional skills will be a necessary requirement for moving on to a GCSE grade C pass in English, maths and ICT from 2012. They will also be mandatory in the specialist diplomas.

 Even if students have often used them as ’second chance’ qualifications -recruiting universities accept them as alternatives to GCSE passes in English and maths- Key Skills were designed to be ‘generic competences’ reflecting new kinds of working practices. This was particularly the case with the ‘wider skills’ of Working with Others, Improving Own Learning and Problem Solving. Even is elite schools and ‘selecting’ universities largely ignored them, Key Skills were promoted as being important for everybody.

 

In comparison, Functional Skills are seen as ‘compensatory’ skills. This is reinforced by the QCA’s decision to rebrand them as ‘stand alone’ units rather than embed them into GCSE syllabuses and to assess them on a ‘test and task’ basis, details of which will emerge from the pilots. Functional Skills are also distinguished from the more ‘finely tuned’ and higher level ‘personal, learning and thinking skills’ (PLTS)

 

 

Despite being promoted as part of the ‘new’ secondary curriculum, the reality is that functional skills are hardly new. Looking at the specifications, teachers and lecturers who have delivered ‘key skills’ and adult ‘basic skills’ programmes will quickly spot similarities with these existing programmes. For example as in key skills Communication units, Functional English will be divided into speaking and listening, reading and writing. Unlike key skills however, there will be no requirements to submit course-work. 

  

Having to complete additional tests in basics before proceeding to GCSE is unlikely to inconvenience ‘high flyer’ students – schools will be able to enter these students early, maybe even during key stage 3. More of an issue is the sizeable number of students whose access to the rest of the GCSE syllabus may now be restricted because they cannot clear the functional skills hurdle.

 

The replacement of English by what is essentially literacy instruction will not only impoverish students, but will worry English teachers trying to safeguard the more creative aspects of their subject. It is a further example of how divisions are appearing in the upper years of secondary schools.

 

Once again the push towards this style of learning raises questions of alternatives. We should be concerned about the types of skills young people need in the workplace, but we should also recognise that employers’ leaders, regardless of changes in the curriculum, have consistently criticised schools and derided the abilities of their students. Surveys also show that many individual employers are unclear about which skills they really need. Many reformers would support the inclusion of ‘basic’ education for those needing it, but as part of a general core-curriculum that provides a variety of learning experiences in a variety of settings. Unfortunately there is little current discussion about this.

 

 

Dropping selection? UCL and the Camden Academy

Patrick Ainley  

Letter   Education Guardian   27/11/07 

 

Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London and chair of the Russell Group of universities, is sponsoring a non-selective mixed academy in his borough of Camden as a way of widening participation to elite higher education (A university is the best kind of sponsor for an academy, Education Guardian November 20)       

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2213577,00.html

 

I take it, then, that UCL will now be dropping its use of specially selective super academic pre-U tests and similar for medicine, law and other subjects. Or will the new University of Camden London run in parallel to the existing University College London?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desperate Diplomacy – Ed Balls announces more diplomas

                                                                                                                                                                      

Martin Allen 

                                                                       

Post-16 Educator  Nov-Dec 2007 

 

 Ed Balls’ announcement of 3 new ‘subject based’ diplomas does not represent a fundamental change of heart by the Government. Neither, as Head teachers leader John Dunford correctly observes (TES, 26/10/07), does it constitute a return to the spirit of Tomlinson.  

 

As Balls’ announcement makes clear, New Labour are not planning to replace A-levels. In an age where what you learn is less important than what it will allow you to earn, who among the thousands of existing A-level students would risk untried diplomas in subject areas already well provided for and where there are established market leaders? 

 

It is already possible for aspiring science students for example, to take alternative courses in science by following an ‘applied’ A-level (VCE). In 2005/6 the VCE double science option attracted a staggering 800 entries compared with over   23000 for physics A-level, 34000 for chemistry and more than 46000 for biology.

 

Even in business studies, where vocational/applied courses have become more established, entries for VCE both single and double, were less than a third of those for the ’equivalent’  GCE A-level.  At level 2 – where we assume the new courses will also be available – it would be inappropriate to encourage this level of specialisation. Here again it is already possible to sit double, even triple GCSEs in science and there are several different humanities combinations.  Because of government changes at Key Stage 4, many Year 10 students opt-out of modern languages completely – so   proposals for a languages diploma seem particularly bizarre.

 

It is true that at this stage, we know nothing about the course content for the new courses, but rather than being a change of direction, or an attempt to reconstruct Tomlinson, Balls’ announcement smacks of desperation- an attempt to shore up an ailing programme that has attracted few friends and with only one in 120 students signing up for the first round of diplomas starting in 2008(TES, 26/10/07) is already becoming an educational white-elephant. The only serious challenge to A-levels continues to emerge ‘at the other end’ so to speak: with elite schools ditching the ‘gold standard’ and turning to the International Bac and the new Cambridge Pre-U. Any review of 14-19 qualifications, must take place now, by 2013 it could all be far too late.                                     

 

Learning for Labour: specialist diplomas and 14-19 education.

 

Martin Allen

 

 FORUM      Vol 49  No 3   2007

http://www.wwwords.co.uk/forum/content/pdfs/49/issue49_3.asp

 

 

Despite reports of ministers wanting to delay implementation, government have given the go-ahead for 5 new specialist diplomas to begin from September 2008 in a limited number of schools and colleges. The 2006 Education Act gave young people a ‘national entitlement’ to study one of 14 vocational areas outlined in the 2005 14-19 White Paper. According to the White Paper up to 40% of KS4 students will be taking one by 2013.  A level 2 diploma will equate to GCSE grade C, occupying about half total timetable space. Level 1 can be used in conjunction with the White Paper’s proposals for a new workplace based learning route for more ‘disaffected’ students, while post-16 students can follow a two year level 3 qualification which, like current vocational qualifications, would constitute the majority of their study time.  

 

 

Education and the economy. A new correspondence?

 The White Paper emphasises  the importance of responding to globalisation and increased international competition by improved educational provision, particularly vocational education. The Government wants the diplomas to ‘put employers in the driving seat’ consequently; Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) have been assigned a leading role in diploma design.

 

 

We cannot automatically assume that SSC involvement will raise the currency of the diploma with individual employers. Furthermore, the need to meet Government deadlines has resulted in QCA taking an increased role in overseeing diploma development. In fact QCA material now plays down the direct vocational relevance of the diplomas and instead emphasises their status as an alternative ‘applied’ qualification. As with existing vocational qualifications, for the majority of diploma students learning will continue to be classroom, not workplace based and remain teacher directed.  They will be required to complete 10 days work experience, but this is invariably what many Year 10 or 11 students do now.

 

 

 

  At a general level, there is also an issue about whether concentrating on one vocational area will help the ‘employability’ of young people. For example the same White Paper points to the transient nature of employment in the 21^st century.   

 

 

Unfortunately, rather than embracing the world of the highly mobile ‘knowledge worker’, able to work in different economic sectors, the reality facing many young people could be very different. Government continue to predict a general   ‘upskilling’, but for others, the 21st century economy is likely to be increasingly polarised (Henwood, 2003) or ‘hourgalss’ (Cruddas, 2002) with as many new ‘Mcjobs’ as professional and managerial opportunities.

 

 

Functional skills

The introduction of ‘functional skills’ is the result of CBI criticism of school-leavers abilities in maths and English ‘basics’ (CBI, 2006); however employer condemnation of young people is not new.     As Rikowski (2006) wryly observes:

 

After James Callaghan’s Ruskin College Speech of 1976 and the resulting Great Debate on Education, the 1988 Education Reform Act, ushering in the National Curriculum, national testing, SATs, league tables, and then Ofsted, together with New Labour’s focus on standards early on after 1997 and then the introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Hours – and school-leavers’ reading, writing and maths are still inadequate for employers! The CBI Report could have easily have been written in the 1970s or 1980s.

                                                                                      

Each diploma will require students to pass functional skills, (an amalgam of current  ‘key skills’ and ‘skills for life’ qualifications) in English, maths and ICT, but functional skills will also be a compulsory part of GCSE syllabuses, students will not be able to obtain a maths and English GCSE without them. Many diploma students, particularly those at level 1, could be restricted to functional skills work, alarming English teachers seeking to safeguard the more creative aspects of their subject.  In addition, we should expect humanities, arts and modern foreign languages, (already no longer included in the Key Stage 4 mandatory core) to be absent from diploma students timetables.

 

 

 School and FE. Reconfirming a two tier system

It is in the way in which diplomas are to be delivered that the uncertainties are the most pronounced. As the White Paper recognises, it is unlikely that individual schools will be able to offer more than one, at most two, of the diplomas and few will have the resources to offer more specialist areas like Construction and the Built Environment. The Government plan to establish 200 vocational schools and The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust website lists the ‘trailblazing’ schools already identified (www.specialistschools.org.uk).  New Academies programmes, particularly in city areas where there is both commercial sponsorship and support from local labour councils could also be particularly significant as a Trojan horse for establishing the new diplomas.

 

 

The main vehicle for diploma delivery however, will be a network of local partnerships, involving LEAs and Learning and Skills Councils (LSCs). ‘In every area, providers will ensure that between them they are making a full offer’ (14-19 White Paper 7.25). The number of school students attending college for part of the week is predicted to increase significantly. As a result of the Increasing Flexibility scheme up to 120 000 14-16 year olds currently attend FE colleges for at least a day a week. However according to the DfES as 350 000 14-16 year olds could be enrolled, FE attendance may double (DfES, 2006).

 

 

Despite increased collaboration with schools, colleges continue to be the poor relation. Unable to compete with school sixth forms, which enjoy significant funding advantages, many colleges have abandoned A-level teaching altogether.  Salaries of FE teaching staff still remain up to 30% less than those of school teachers in equivalent positions. The fact that FE colleges will continue to provide a disproportionate number of level 1 and level 2 diploma courses will compound these differences and as a result of cutbacks in provision for adult learning, leave colleges in danger of becoming the new ‘tertiary moderns’.

 

 

Research findings about the experiences of 14-16 year olds in colleges have been positive, but there is concern whether colleges can provide adequate support for these increased numbers.  There is also concern about child protection issues and whether school students would always be taught by a trained teacher. New systems of monitoring attendance and travelling arrangements would also be required (NUT 2007). Many students however, may not want to ‘travel to learn’ for part of the week and opt for the vocational courses their schools currently offer.  This would suit cash strapped schools and avoid them having to hand over resources, (we assume that students migrating to FE will take funds with them) or lose teaching staff.  So rather than actively supporting the local partnerships, schools may be just as likely to look after their immediate interests. Research by LEACAN, a network of LEA inspectors and consultants (LEACAN, 2006) shows many schools and LEAs unprepared for the diplomas, not convinced about their potential success and unclear why they are needed at all.  The speed at which the diplomas are to be introduced – final syllabus details are still not available, the lack of input of teachers and lecturers and absence of professional development has worried both UCU and the NUT.

 

 

 

The real crisis of vocational qualifications

Employer representatives have been present on bodies like BTEC and City & Guilds that have delivered full time vocational education courses, but their input has been ad hoc. Rather than developing real employment skills,  vocational qualifications, despite being  promoted  as  new  style ‘competences’,   have continued to be used to manage changes in the composition of the secondary school population, a  response to behaviour problems and disaffection, in short, as a new form of social control. (Allen and Ainley, 2007).

 

In the 1970s for example, new courses, many with a workplace theme were introduced for those 15 year olds who, as a result of ROSLA, now remained in school for another year, while the 1980s, jobless school leavers were provided with compulsory Youth Training Schemes (YTS) – which Finn (1987) aptly described as ‘training without jobs’.  In the 1990s, a period which Allen and Ainley refer to as ‘education without jobs’, qualifications like the GNVQ were established to serve a new cohort of students who, after the failure of youth training and the continuing uncertainty in the job market,  were remaining in full-time education for much longer.

 

GNVQs should be seen as another attempt at constructing a ‘technical’ stream.  However they continued to suffer from ‘academic drift’ as students used them as educational qualifications to enter HE – invariably post 1992 ‘new’ universities rather than Russell.  As GNVQs became Vocational Certificates in Education (VCEs) and then applied A-levels, students have experienced the worst of both worlds with a qualification that could only imitate the status of its A-level counterpart and no longer provided a different sort of learning experience. As the number of students taking VCEs stagnated, other qualifications like BTEC Nationals – officially given the kiss of death by the introduction of GNVQ – have resurfaced as alternatives.

 

After the rejection of Tomlinson’s comparatively modest  proposals for linking academic and vocational learning through an overarching certificate, the vocational diplomas represent an attempt to consolidate Sir Ron Dearing’s ’pathways’ approach of the 1990s, representing a ‘middle’ track between academic and workplace learning.  Yet ironically, it may be the A-level that will occupy this position (Allen, 2006). As well as excusing themselves from participating in local learning partnerships, private schools and elite state schools may continue to gravitate towards the International Baccalaureate or the new Cambridge Pre-U award. If A-levels become a second division academic qualification, then the status of the level 3 diploma becomes even more uncertain.    

 

 

 

 

 

Rethinking Vocationalism

This year’s NUT conference called for a halt to the diploma programme and for a national review of vocational education. With another ROSLA looming, we should continue to support all attempts to improve the quality and status of vocational learning. Vocational learning post-16 must be accompanied by guarantees of  worthwhile employment, while at  post 14 it should only remain  a subject option,  rather than serving as an alternative track  for ‘non academic’ students.  However our conception of vocationalism has to be broadened. All students should have the right to learn particular occupational skills of their choice, but there must also, as part of any core curriculum, be an entitlement to a more general intellectual and critical understanding of the world of work.  A precedent to this argument can be found in the work of early 20^th century educationalist John Dewey who in opposition to a narrow trade learning argued for:

 

An education which acknowledges the full intellectual and social meaning of a vocation would include instruction in the historic background of present conditions; training in dealing with material and agencies of production; and study of economics, civics, and politics, to bring the future worker into touch with the problems of the day and the various methods proposed for its improvement. Above all, it would train power of re adaptation to changing conditions so that future workers would not become blindly subject to a fate imposed upon them (Dewey, 1916, p318-319).

 

Suffice to say, ‘Deweyfication’ of the curriculum   would also require radical changes to other aspects of education, but it can still provide a starting point to mobilise around.

 

 

 

 

 

                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting personal?

 

Martin Allen 

The Teacher  Secondary and Sixth-Form Supplement

September 2007 

 

 

 

The chances are that as a high school teacher, you will have had some introduction to the  idea  of ‘personalised’ learning. At the very least, SMT members will have referred to it at one time or another and there might also have been school INSET.  Many teachers, already overstretched, could be forgiven for dismissing it as ‘yet another initiative’, but what is personalised learning and why are government promoting it in the way they are?

 

More significantly will a ‘personalised’ classroom be any different to a current one? First of all, at least according to government, personalised learning does not mean students being left to ‘learn by themselves’. Ministers have distanced themselves from the  pre-National Curriculum ‘child centred’ approaches used in primary schools, neither is there any  real appreciation  of ‘independent learning’ – a feature of GNVQ type vocational courses.  

 

Instead, 2020 Vision, the working group chaired by Christine Gilbert, now OfSTED chief inspector, offers a list of strategies that will enable schools to personalise their classrooms and ‘strengthen the relationship between learning and teaching’. Arguing that many pupils still spend too much time ‘listening to teachers or copying from the board or a book’ Gilbert calls for greater variety.

 

In addition to small group or one-to-one provision for ‘children who fall behind’ she encourages  open-ended tasks, better study support, greater use of classroom learning and more individual target setting. She wants curriculum materials to be matched to the needs of learners suggesting – to provide one example – that teachers make greater use of non-fiction material when reading with boys.  

 

Government enthusiasm for personalised learning is part of a more general enthusiasm for the personalisation of social services in general, allowing it is argued, the potential for increased participation in both design and delivery by users. Personalised learning fits neatly with the government’s condemnation of ‘one size fits all’ or ‘bog standard’ comprehensive schools. The 2005 White Paper Higher Standards Better Schools for All argues that tailoring education to the needs of every child allows inequalities to be tackled more thoroughly. It claims that having more flexibility and being able to promote a variety of teaching and learning skills will help close the ‘gender gap’ now increasingly apparent in secondary schools.

 

But personalisation also tallies nicely with moves to increase diversity and create new inequalities within and between schools. For example by the introduction of specialist diplomas post-14 and the creation of city academies and trust schools. As part of a more general attempt to make the Key Stage 3 curriculum less prescriptive government are proposing changes to National Curriculum assessment to enable teachers to test students “when ready”. Testing  will be shorter and more frequent, focussing on NC levels, rather than just the end of each Key Stage, with teachers encouraged to make greater use of this data to tell them what each child can do and well as the things they are finding difficult.

 

At the same time government are anxious to assure teachers that the personalised classroom does not mean having up to 30 separate lesson plans. On the contrary there will be one inclusive teaching plan which allows as much room as possible for individual engagement. 

 

Many practitioners will agree with these ideals but, in view of the way education is currently organised, will be extremely wary about their feasibility. In fact practitioners hardly need telling that students learn in different ways at different speeds, let alone that they have different needs and interests. 

 

Teachers and lecturers have been trying to personalise learning – in other words provide the personal attention their students require, for years – but lack of resources and lack of time continue to be major obstacles. It is unlikely that genuine personalised learning, where teachers’ skills continue to be promoted and valued rather than diluted, will come about without a reduction in class sizes, but ministers have made clear that this is not a likely scenario.

 

What is certain is that government proposals for personalising learning are inseparable from those for workforce remodelling – increasing the role of other adults, either as classroom assistants, mentors or general support workers in the classroom.   Remodelling is central to many of the proposals put forward by Gilbert’s working group, particularly her call for every secondary school student to have a ‘learning guide’. This was quickly qualified with the observation that this would not necessarily need to be a teacher.   It is not clear either whether the new personal tutors that Alan Johnson is encouraging schools to invest in are expected to be trained teachers. 

 

Despite QCA intentions, it is difficult to see how teaching and learning is going to become less prescriptive if  ministers continue to  be convinced that collecting test performance data is integral to monitoring school performances.  Neither is it clear how the new proposals will reduce pressure on teachers to ‘teach to tests’ On the contrary, some fear a culture of ‘permanent testing’, an avalanche of data and tighter performance management of teachers.      

              

As research evidence continues to point to the damaging effect of constant targeting and testing on the morale of both teachers and pupils, it is unlikely that the ‘personalised classroom’ will encourage the new collaborative relationships that most teachers would desire. Moves to personalise learning have gone hand in hand with developments in ICT, but the potential advantages of e-learning cannot be guaranteed. Instead, disaffected students may be ‘parked’ on computer terminals so as not to disturb others or ICT supervision might be handed to poorly paid classroom assistants. 

 

With smaller classes, greater resources, less of a ‘gradgrind’ curriculum and with the end of the targeting and testing culture that dominates schools, it would be possible to create real personalised learning in which teachers could enjoy a more relaxed but also more productive atmosphere in the classroom.  This would mean teachers constructing a new type of professionalism for the twenty-first century.  Students would also be able to develop much higher levels of independence and self-confidence, as well as finding learning more enjoyable.    

Social tinkering spells disaster for our young

 

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen  Times Higher  20/04/2007     Raising the school-leaving age to 18 could do more than any other measure to widen participation in higher education. But not in the heavy-handed and incriminating way that the Government proposes.   Staying at school or going to college is now the norm for most 16-year-olds. But widening participation beyond that is problematic for at least four reasons.   First, the Government’s target of 50 per cent writes off “half our future”, as the 1963 Newsom report put it when referring then to those previously neglected by selective secondary education. Leaving school at 18 would be a shared goal for more young people if it signalled assumption of full citizen rights from that age. In countries with a republican tradition, these include an entitlement and expectation of entry to your local university. In England, universities that select only genetically “first-class minds” while failing the rest negate any entitlement to higher education. This Platonic principle is nowadays imposed on every tier of education to create a new tertiary tripartism with sixth-form A-level factories at the top, technical centres of vocational excellence in the disappearing middle and non-advanced further education at the bottom.    This makes selective higher education – with its hierarchy of researching, teaching and training universities meshed with tripartite schooling and further education – the second reason that the repressive raising of the school-leaving age will not widen participation.   Introducing vocational diplomas supposedly linked to employment will be no more successful than current vocational qualifications have been. Most schools don’t need them and, while some employers say they welcome them, in practice they continue to deskill and outsource their labour. Young people know that with few exceptions such “vocational options” are second best and unlikely to lead to secure jobs with prospects. They will therefore continue to sign up for traditional academic courses even though they know that glittering places at elite universities are available to only a few.    Third, widening participation is itself a cruel con. It is presented as professionalising the proletariat while disguising an actual proletarianisation of the professions in which wages and conditions deteriorate. Qualification inflation that outruns employment demand means that many school, college and university graduates lack opportunities to use their qualifications as they had hoped. Consequently, many students are running up a down escalator.   Students pay more for less in this worst of both worlds that combines a mass higher education for the many with an elite higher education for the few. In the latter, at best they teach themselves since academics are too busy researching. At worst, students’ experience is increasingly virtual and chaotic. Only big corporations benefit from the glut of certified, if not qualified, graduates that they sift through selection centres.   Last, and most obviously, widening participation is contradicted by raising fees. This explicitly links cultural capital with the money capital needed to acquire it in the “better” private and state schools. Class and ethnic differences are consolidated and heightened. Snobbery and racism raddle the system from top to bottom.    If fees were uncapped, the full-on market would make this transparent. It would no longer be possible for vice-chancellors to play the game of nearly all charging the same and so remove the market, as few could follow Oxford University to the £18,000-plus it needs to cover its annual undergraduate teaching costs.    If fees rise to the exorbitant rates already charged to overseas students, the researching elite may privatise itself out of a system where few teaching universities offering a “quality campus experience” could follow them. Teaching universities will merge with training universities and their associated further education colleges delivering competence-based courses for local employment to locally living students. This will turn large parts of “higher education” into further education while franchising foundation “degrees” to further education redesignated as “higher education”.    This process of market-managed consolidation has already begun closing “uncompetitive” departments, as institutions compete on undergraduate bursaries and other offers, while more expensive, longer and postgraduate courses cost more. The same thing has happened in further education to reduce the number of colleges since incorporation and it could also face schools under the 2006 Education and Inspections Act.    Those in the different sectors of education should learn from each other as they are increasingly in the same boat. So is education now more about social control than emancipating the minds of future generations? Certainly, criminalising those who leave school before 18 as the Government proposes will only increase the divisions in our increasingly violent and self-destructive society.