Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an enquiry- based pedagogy, where students take the lead and the teaching style is facilitative. Its aim is to drive questioning, reasoning and independent learning skills, and although its transformational effects on the entire student body are clearly evident, it does seem to work especially well for the children who are most disadvantaged.
As a recent trial by the Education Endowment Fund (EEF) and Durham University discovered, when involved in just one period of P4C a week over 16 months, children eligible for free school meals (FSM) made four months’ more progress in reading than expected, as well as an additional three months’ in maths and two months’ in writing.1 Feedback from the teachers involved suggests that P4C also had a beneficial impact on wider outcomes such as confidence, patience and self-esteem.
Our aim at SAPERE is to promote P4C across the UK, especially in communities that need it, and will benefit from it, the most. With this in mind, we launched ‘Going for Gold’, a three- year project to train teachers in areas of high deprivation to do P4C with their pupils.
The pilot project began in East London, and involved 400 teachers in the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham, where schools have between two and four times the average number of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now, more than 40 schools are taking part across the country. Training for most began in the summer term last year, with regular philosophical enquiries in classes beginning last September (2015).
We’ll find out more about how they’re getting on later, but first: What is P4C, and why is it so effective for our most disadvantaged and troubled children?