Freedom, what freedom?

I recognise quite a lot of what was in the English and Maths curriculum materials issued by the Department for Education last week. They bore an uncanny resemblance to the documents that accompanied David Blunkett's national literacy and numeracy strategies in the late 90s. The expectations on spelling, grammar and punctuation were all there, as was a focus on mental arithmetic and times tables. So, the nonsense in the Tory press about this being the first time since the 1950s that schools had such expectations suggested that they were being even lazier than usual in accepting the line being spun by Michael Gove's spinners.

So far as I can see, all that is really new is that children, bizarrely in a decimal age, will have to learn their 12 times tables in case Britain abandons decimal currency in sympathy with a Greek return to the Drachma.

Equally, today's focus on synthetic phonics is not new either. Phonics were a part of the literacy strategy too, but the specific focus on synthetic phonics gained traction with Sir Jim Rose's report in 2005. This, too, was for a Labour government, for the benefit of confused Tory columnists. However, we didn't, it is true have the phonics screening check which seems to having some bizarre requirements.

So, I welcome quite a lot of this renewed rigour in the primary curriculum. I also think that most primary schools have been doing quite a lot of this, at least since the late 90s.

But I can't for the life of me see how it fits in with the philosophy of a government that insists it will set schools free. Is it any wonder that several members of the curriculum review have quit in the confusion?

Boycotts, testing, targets and cuts

The publication of today's national primary school test results - the last taken under the Labour government - show both the limitations of the NUT/NAHT test boycott and the importance of externally validated national testing. The improvements since 1995 when the tests began have been remarkable, and this year's Maths results are the best ever. When we took the decision to make Key Stage 4 the expected rather than the average standard (ahead of the 1997 election) we faced a lot of criticism then from those same unions that felt a boycott somehow benefited students this year: they said we were being too ambitious. But using targets, particularly floor targets, combined with the literacy and numeracy hours in the late 90s allowed a big change in results. The fact that this is now a standard that can be achieved by 4 in 5 eleven year-olds vindicates that ambition. Over 100,000 more pupils each year make the grade. The schools minister Nick Gibb is right to argue that even more should reach this standard.

But he and his colleagues must be careful in what they are cutting. If Gibb wishes to strengthen the quality of teaching in primary English and Maths, he needs to find ways to incentivise schools to do so. Simply providing a cash premium on its own for poorer pupils without such incentivisation will make little difference, especially if it removes money from programmes directed at the 3Rs and improved in-service professional development. The majority of pupils and teachers defied the unions, enabling today's results to be published. But it is important that the coalition balances its welcome commitments to strong accountability and a pupil premium with the sort of floor targets and agreed ambitions that have also played such an important part in the improvements of recent years.

Don't lose a primary focus on the basics

I have a column in today's Independent, reiterating the case for testing after last week's disappointing Key Stage 2 results. You can read it here. Here's an extract

The most important feature of the years between 1995 and 2000, when results rose rapidly, was single-minded momentum. Schools were in no doubt that their top priority was the 3Rs. That momentum disappeared as ministers merged the literacy and numeracy strategies into a catch-all primary strategy, and began to give equal emphasis to welfare issues. Of course, primary schools should offer a broad curriculum and care for their pupils' welfare. And they should ensure that pupils who can read get access to plenty of good books.

But the focus of government needs to be clear. After all, those pupils who don't reach level 4 are unlikely to gain five good GCSEs. And without them, they will find it much harder to get a good job or progress to university...... let's not lose sight of why testing and accountability were introduced – too many primary schools assumed that children would acquire the 3Rs through osmosis or their parents. The losers in this lottery were poorer pupils without supportive or fluent parents.

And, given the evidence that rigorous phonics, a sound grasp of grammar and punctuation, and a facility with mental arithmetic are essential building blocks for the 3Rs, governments should not shy away from expecting schools to deliver them. But if government wants schools to do better, it must avoid mixed messages.

Ministers made a big error allowing the abandonment of Labour's literacy and numeracy strategies to be seen as an admission of their failure. And the Tories played a foolish game when they suggested that the Key Stage 2 tests could be replaced by teacher-marked tests in secondary school (they have since indicated that external marking is more likely).

The main reason there has been so little recent progress has been that – with the exception of a renewed focus on phonics – there has been too much muddle over what matters in primary schools. The latest thematic review of the curriculum is in danger of adding to the confusion. But the strategies should not be revived: schools must be held accountable instead for the extent to which they successfully teach the 3Rs, and encouraged to use the best of the available commercial teaching programmes. Ofsted inspections should ensure that children are taught the basics properly, and show how some schools succeed against the odds.

Yet, in the end, the only way that we can know whether individual primary schools are doing their job is through independently set and marked tests. To imagine that our children would be better taught without them is to ignore the lessons of history.

Power to the parents and pupils?

I'm enjoying the French sunshine this week, so readers will have been spared listening to me on Today or WATO (and for the benefit of BBC researchers, I'm still on holiday). But I thought I would share a few reflections on today's schools white paper.

And the next instalment of Gordon Brown's 'power to the people' package of reforms, looks like it will have some good things going for it. The idea of chains of schools forming with common curricula and shared resources is a good thing, that has been developing in Academies. (It is definitely less effective as with most such programmes if good schools are forced into them). The report cards may provide useful additional information, particularly where they include parental satisfaction surveys, provided they are not seen as more important than either Ofsted reports or published test scores. Plans to take the parents of unruly pupils to court are an extension of existing powers on truancy, which rightly set the primary responsibility for poor discipline where it belongs. But with responsibilities come rights: so the entitlements on one-to-one tuition are good; hopefully there will be more in the paper on extending parent powers when it comes to demanding a new school.

But there is a worry about the general direction of travel on accountability (which David Aaronovitch ably reflects in today's Times) - which is as important in raising standards as parental pressure or choice - which was heightened with the abandonment of the literacy and numeracy strategies last week. Don't get me wrong: the strategies were largely abandoned by Charles Clarke when he merged them into the all-singing, all-dancing Primary Strategy, and that's what was really scrapped. The point of the literacy and numeracy lessons was that there would be dedicated, distinctive lessons in the 3Rs each day in primary schools, because until then, they were often merged into other subjects. There is nothing wrong with reinforcing the teaching of English and Maths across the curriculum; quite the contrary. But the scrapping of the strategies must be reinforced by a clear expectation from Ofsted and the national curriculum that schools teach pupils to read phonetically, learn maths tables and gain the intuitive knowledge that will save them when their computer or calculator throws up some odd spellings or calculations. If that happens, kitemarked alternatives to Capita may even be a better bet.

Similarly, the main reason why specialist schools have been a success in lifting secondary school achievement is because schools have to set targets (not ministers) and are judged against them every few years in a national bidding process with national goals. Up to £150k a year rides on the results. There is a balance to be struck here, and some national pressure and acountability initiatives, including floor targets (which Ed Balls has extended sensibly) have made a real difference. With the government and the Tories battling to appease the teaching unions over testing - from scrapping Key Stage 3 to Tory plans to abandon national primary tests -there have been worrying signs that the balance is tilting too far from the interests of parents and pupils.

Today's package is good in that it shows some sense of purpose on public sector reform that had clearly been lost in recent months, and in that it has a strong focus on information and rights for parents. But it is also important that it starts to reverse the trend against accountability, which includes national standards. And that means avoiding sending the sort of signals given to teachers in last Friday's Guardian headline, which I understand went rather further than intended by the government. Those in government believe their reforms will provide parents with real power in a system of strong accountability: I hope for the sake of the next generation of pupils they are right.

Teaching the 3Rs

The fetish with localism will clearly be fully realised in next week's schools white paper, as the National Strategies are abandoned in literacy and numeracy. In truth, what matters most is that pupils are taught the basics properly, including phonics, and not that they are taught through the strategies which had not been as effectively delivered in recent years as they were when they first started.

But there should still be a role for government in kitemarking quality, whether provided by other schools, local authorities or private providers. Schools should be able to choose from quality providers. Otherwise the danger is that there will be a return to the haphazard teaching of the 3Rs that occurred before the strategies. And ministers must be very clear that the primacy of the basics is not being compromised, and that every pupil will still have an entitlement to learn to read (using phonics), to write clearly, and to learn arithmetic skills.

Denying a fair chance for all

It may well be the case that the government has too many targets in its Foundation stage. And middle class parents whose children are unlikely to grow up illiterate and educationally disadvantaged should, perhaps, have much more choice to send their offspring to Steiner or Montessori schools. But to imagine that the very children whose poor education the Times and other media bemoans several years later will ever catch up without a decent early years education - as today's letter from children's authors does - is fantasy of the first and worst order. If the government doesn't set some minimum pre-literacy goals - to be achived by age seven - do we really believe that every child will have a fair chance of success? Of course, play matters. But seven year olds should be reading too. They might even advance to Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo if they are not consigned to poor literacy from the start.

The reading revolution is working

Two pieces of good news on reading in schools today. First, Ofsted reports that phonics has become more embedded in primary schools than was thought: there is still a challenge in one in five schools, but the report suggests that the revolution started by the Rose review is having a real impact. Second, the government's Every Child A Reader catch-up programme is helping those who need extra help to learn to read. Both measures mean that the progress made in the early years of testing and the literacy strategy is now being renewed after a hiatus. The important thing is to make sure that phonics is taught first and fast, and the success of the recovery programme doesn't detract from that goal with the vast majority who can and should learn to read earlier. Moreover, it also shows a Labour government continuing to deliver where it matters, whatever the polls say.

Reading behind the international surveys (2)

Coming a week after the PIRLS reading survey, today's PISA results appear to confirm a trend. It is not, as the more excitable right-wing commentators suggest, that our students have dipped significantly in their performance because of central government policies - in fact on reading and science, only seven countries score significantly higher than England (though, our maths performance is rather less good); rather, it is that some other countries that have introduced strong reforms are improving faster. As I argued around PIRLS, the intensity of the strategies around literacy and numeracy (and this is as true at Key Stage 3 - age 14 - as it has been at Key Stage 2 - age 11) was lost between 2001-2005. In primary schools, the focus is being re-energised; in secondaries, the requirement that English and Maths results are included in the five good GCSEs recorded in the league tables is starting to have a similar effect (it is noticeable that far more pupils get a GCSE C+ in English than Maths (See Excel Table 7)). But the lesson of these international surveys is not that we should abandon testing, leave teachers alone or give up. Have a look at the dismal performance of Wales - against which 16 countries do significantly better on reading - to see what that approach brings. It is instead that - as the 2000 and 2001 surveys showed - when government has a clear overall strategy, schools are clear about their priorities and public accountability is strong - then pupils will achieve not just at the average level of their international counterparts, but significantly above average.

Reading behind the international survey

Today's PIRLS international study (pdf) of reading literacy standards - the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society - raises some interesting issues. On the one hand, English pupils do better than the average for their international counterparts, outperforming countries like New Zealand, Scotland, Spain and France. On the other, English readers fell back to 19th in the world in 2006 (though a raft of Canadian provinces appear individually this time, distorting the rankings), compared with 3rd in 2001. There is more to this than whether youngsters enjoy reading, or indeed whether the brighter or weaker youngsters are dragging the results down. The 2001 survey came after a period of rapid improvement in primary schools, as a result of national tests and the literacy strategy. But the improvements have been slower since, while other countries have clearly improved more rapidly, not least places like Germany which were startled by their low performance in international studies.

Much of the increase in the proportion of children achieving the expected standard – level 4 – in English from 49% in 1995 to 80% this year took place by 2000, when the figure was 75%. (The proportion doing so in reading is now 84%.) The same was true of the top pupils - the proportion reaching level 5 rose from 12 to 29% from 1996 to 2000, and is now 33%. This test improvement was also reflected in Ofsted inspections: the literacy and numeracy strategies nationally had a dramatic effect on the quality of primary school teaching between 1996 and 2000 – only 43% of lessons for 7-11 year-olds were deemed good or better in 1996. By 2000, this had risen to 72%. That figure fluctuated a little until 2005, when it stood at 74%. Under a tougher inspection system, it has again started to rise.

There is no doubt that we need to regain the momentum of the period before 2000. The government is now rightly promoting synthetic phonics – using letter sounds to build up words - reflecting the growing evidence that it is the most effective way to teach children to read. Jim Rose's review in 2005 set this in train, and phonics has been the expected method since September 2007, as a result. This will need the sort of intensive rollout that accompanied the literacy strategy, with Ofsted inspecting how effective schools are in teaching reading, and whether they are using phonics. And it must be pushed hard before falling back on Every Child A Reader, which should be used as a recovery programme for the few who don't learn through phonics, not to provide literacy help for the many.

Return to Cranford?

The consensus is that not a lot happens in BBC1's brilliant new adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford trilogy, which started last night, but that it is played rather beautifully. One of the most telling moments was when Cranford’s reigning aristocrat, Lady Ludlow (played by Francesa Annis), turns down Mr Carter's (played by Philip Glenister) suggestion of a new maid because the girl can read and write; Lady Ludlow has instead set up a school on the estate where the girls can busy themselves learning to sew. But we've come a long way since then, haven't we? After all, nobody would want to stop children learning to read now, would they?

Phonics first and fast

The shadow schools secretary, Michael Gove, is right to put teaching children to read at the heart of his schools' policy. But, as Ruth Kelly pointed out on the Andrew Marr show this morning, she was the secretary of state who introduced synthetic phonics to the whole school system, following Jim Rose's excellent review. The challenge for policymakers is not whether or not this is the right policy - the evidence shows that it is, despite the moaning of the 'leave 'em to learn to read in their own good time unless they're our own kids' brigade - but how to ensure that every school uses phonics. Gordon Brown has chosen to put rather too much emphasis on his reading recovery programme, Every Child A Reader, which may be an effective catch-up but is a rather expensive one. Instead, there should now be a cross-party consensus on the Rose recommendations that synthetic phonics should be taught first and fast. Ofsted should inspect primary schools specifically on this aspect of their policy. The programme needs the sort of intensive leadership and training given the national literacy hour in 1998. And, there is merit in having an independently validated national reading test - and one in Maths too - to replace the 'teacher assessments' that were brought in to replace national tests at seven by Charles Clarke. But all parties should be clear that reading early is the key to later success - and clear about how phonics is put at the heart of early learning in every school.
UPDATE: There is a very peculiar thread about this post running over at the Reading Reform Foundation website - the home of the shock troops for synthetic phonics. Most readers of this post might (rightly) imagine that I am a rather strong supporter of synthetic phonics, which I have been since at least 2002. I had a good deal to do with the Rose Review being established when I worked for Tony Blair, and I welcome the fact that both main parties support it. But what I suspect upsets my should-be friends at the RRF is that I have dared to suggest that Every Child A Reader may help with catch-up - there is evidence (pdf) that it does; however, most youngsters could and should be taught more quickly through synthetic phonics, as Rose recommended. My second sin in RRF eyes is probably mentioning the literacy hour: yet before it, phonics had been allowed to die in many schools. Phonics would not be debated now without it. As a result of its introduction, many children were taught much better how to read, spell and write: the evidence is there in the improved test results (pdf - go to table 1). But there is now much clearer evidence from Rose and elsewhere that synthetic phonics is the way forward. And the government should ensure - with Ofsted's support - that it is taught first and fast.

Lifting expectations

This is a more thoughtful piece of research by Donald Hirsch for the Joseph Rowntree Trust, deserving of rather more attention than the Staffordshire suppositions. Low expectations bedevil education in this country, and until we raise them among both teachers and pupils, we will not narrow the gap between the poorest and the best off youngsters. In fact, the evidence (pdf: see Table A) suggests that it is the skilled working classes who have gained most from educational improvements in recent years, but the bottom fifth (or probably tenth) have made fewer gains. Whether a wide-ranging children's review is the answer seems doubtful, though clearly both extended schools and Sure Start have a big role to play. Far more important will be maximising the number of youngsters who make the grade in the 3Rs as early as possible.

Getting the 3Rs right

The latest primary school test results, showing one point improvements in all subjects are not only good news for the government, but evidence that some top down pressure is needed to achieve improvements. Labour has finally met its ambitious targets set in the first term. The literacy and numeracy strategies went through a fallow period when ministers downgraded their status within an all-singing, all-dancing National Primary Strategy in Labour's second term. There was little sense that learning to read, write and add up should be the first challenge of primary teachers, and the momentum of Labour's early years and the shock of national testing was lost. Both Ruth Kelly and Alan Johnson, with Andrew Adonis as the minister in the driving seat, deserve credit for recognising the need to change gear. Today's results are the first evidence that their new sense of mission is working. With phonics now central to the teaching of reading and a renewed emphasis on basic maths, there should be more good news to come.