Put Teachers In Control Of Education
If the government really wants to build the profession and improve schools, it should use a school-led system. It could save £1.5 billion in the process, says Mick Waters…
Did you notice how little attention to education there was in the election campaign? A spat on funding, some promises around two year olds and apprenticeships, a call for qualified teaching status from Labour, a school meals pledge from the LibDems and a threat to make children resit their SATs if they didn’t pass muster at the end of the primary phase from the Conservatives. There was not one question on education in any of the televised debates. Now the election has passed, a whole host of urgent priorities will find their way onto the education agenda and the schooling system will be subject to the meddling of politicians who cannot resist ‘making a difference’ and ‘radical reform’. The current rhetoric from the big political parties is that schools know best, and yet they continue to prescribe the very detail of classroom practice. If the new government is, however, serious about creating a school-led system, there are ways to make it a reality.
No new central government policies for five years
If we want schools to lead then we might need to reduce leadership from the centre. So, for all the current ills, let’s have no new initiatives. Let’s confine the DfE to routine administration of the policy already in place. This reduced workload would allow for lower running costs at the DfE; no more consultations, media management, special advisers, publications, conferences or focus groups. Over five years that would save £600m and a whole lot of distraction, which would help schools focus on their core job of providing the best learning possible. Innovation might emerge as schools work together naturally.Let schools inspect schools
Reduce the size of Ofsted to the 200 highly-respected HMI. Suspend all Ofsted school inspections of the 72 per cent of schools judged to be good or better for four years. After all, the criteria for the good judgement include a capacity to improve, so they should be alright for now. Focus HMI attention on the schools currently judged to be less than good enough. Set Ofsted the target of planning new, fit-for-purpose inspection processes to be implemented after five years. In the meantime, put responsibility for school inspection in the hands of schools. Each school should conduct an inspection of another each year, using two of the five closure days currently available and setting another day aside for planning and reporting processes. Schools should inspect and report on a school with lower standards than their own, according to the current data dashboard. The opportunity to critically evaluate a school would be useful to both parties and involving all the teaching staff in carrying out the inspection would build professional responsibility. Such an approach would see the rapid spread of effective practice from school to school. Over five years this would save £800 million.Rationalise SATs testing
The industry that acts as product control for schools has run its course. Let’s cut out all the spending on test development, pilots, logistics, marking, moderating and administration – currently running at about £30 million per year. Instead, let’s use reprints of old SATs papers. It would give us a benchmark for standards to compare results for 2016 with, say, 2003. Marking could be done by a nearby school on a two closure days immediately after the SATs process. Results could be collated locally. Over five years this would save £125 million.Use phonics screening to help children
Why do we need a different phonics test annually with all the mystery of the machine of distrust? The phonics being screened are the same ones; it is the cohort of children that change. In a school-led system, we would trust the teachers to use the phonics check to find the children that need extra help…which is the purpose. Simply stopping the palaver around the screening would save £40 million over five years.Savings and responsibility
These simple steps put the leadership of the school system where the politicians say they want it to be – with schools. Such actions would spread professional involvement and responsibility and make the system improve itself, rather than wait to be told what to do next. At the same time, such steps would save the government a total of £1.5 billion. Individual school budgets could be held at the current level plus annual inflation using a proportion of this saving, and at least £1 billion would still be available. Perhaps we could allocate it to the NHS.Mick Waters is Professor of Education at Wolverhampton University and the issues in this article are addressed in his book, Thinking Allowed on Schooling.
