Blog by Sonia Blandford
If we are to embrace new ideas, raise our expectations of and aspirations for children, and really give teachers the support they need to do their job, I’d also suggest we have to have new measures of success that move beyond academic knowledge, and embrace both social and cultural areas.
While quantitative analysis has a place in assessing the start and end point, what happens in between is descriptive, empirical and lived, and really values the profession of the school staff. Too often and too easily, the initiatives that many see working in their community or school are cut or changed or challenged because they don’t meet someone else’s criteria for success. In schools, we know this can be those hallowed exam grades carving a path to university, and a reversion to that idea that it’s the best, if not only measure of
social mobility.
In his latest study, What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-course Model of Wellbeing (84), Professor Richard Layard and his team at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance have concluded that a child’s emotional health is far more important to their satisfaction levels as an adult than other factors (including academic success when young or wealth when older), another challenge to the assumption that academic achievement matters more than anything else. It was interesting, too, to see one of the most shared teacher blogs following the 2017 GCSE results relating to a boy who’d triumphed by getting two Fs in his GCSEs (85), his special school headteacher Jarlath O’Brien arguing that the child in question had overcome phenomenal challenges to get into and stay in school, and demonstrated life changing positive behaviour change while sticking to his studies as a result of the commitment of school staff and the support of his mum. Most would agree that we need to hear more about students like this.
While grades are important, there are a myriad of measurements of success. Decision makers should listen hard to teachers as they talk about attendance and the disadvantaged – meaning that children want to be in school, and their families recognise its value. Some heads feel huge success if their children – who may be new to the country, or have been through trauma – are smiling at the end of the day, or feel able to approach them (or their staff ) when they have an issue. Others celebrate the lunchtime club that has fostered friendships
for children who’d felt isolated or the books children love to read. Or teachers can simply remember the day when pupils discovered a talent or a passion for something new.
Campaigns and initiatives driving these less celebrated outcomes may not get as much attention or the levels of funding seen elsewhere, but they are equally important in promoting success and – in turn – helping support those grades schools are after. I can trace my own desire to get on to the discovery of books and a love of reading. I see now how The Read On. Get On. Campaign, led by a coalition of charities, works to challenge head on the fact that a fifth of all children in England, and close to a third of the poorest children, are unable to read when they leave school - a crucial contributing factor in the educational divide.
I have found that learning and the area it covers can be a way to communicate with a family, and with individuals in it. If relevant, it can empower them to get a job, to open a bank account and manage a budget and secure a home. Of course, algebra and languages and Shakespeare are important and I’d never suggest for a minute that we shouldn’t be teaching and enjoying them and celebrating them. The introduction of the national curriculum in 1988 changed teaching and opened up the possibility that every child could access the same knowledge, skills and understanding in every subject. What was missing at this point was an understanding of social and cultural relevance.