PQE0003

 


Written evidence submitted by Barnaby Lenon

 

Chairman of the Independent Schools Council which co-ordinates aspects of the work of the 1300 best independent schools, 2011-present.

Head Master of Harrow 1999-2011.

Board member of Ofqual since 2011.

Co-founder and Chairman of Governors of the London Academy of Excellence, one of the most successful free schools.

Governor of the Chelsea Academy since its inception seven years ago.

This statement is made in a personal capacity.

 

The purpose of education for children of all ages in England.

  1. The main purpose should be to transmit important human knowledge in a way which will ensure the student is able to recall a good proportion of it in the years after school.

 

  1. Important knowledge is that which provides essential life skills, which allows pupils to understand the world, which provides a basis for developing related interests after school, and which leads directly or indirectly to employment.

 

  1. Essential life skills can in large measure be taught by parents.  Where parents fail, it is up to schools to plug the gap - the ability to read and write well, the ability to speak well, basic numeracy, basic IT skills, the ability to concentrate, to memorize, to work hard, to be an effective part of a team, to be resilient in the face of difficulties, to be organised, to form good relationships, to live a healthy life.  For those with good parents the essential skills a school will teach include English, mathematics and a small amount of ICT.  For those with less good parents, schools have much more to do including teaching pupils how to behave, how to organise themselves, how to eat well and be healthy. 

 

  1. Enabling pupils to understand the world is the particular function of history, geography, science and religious studies.  These subjects allow us to make sense of the world and our place in it. They give life perspective.

 

  1. Providing the basis for developing interests after school is a function of all school subjects.  All school subjects have the capacity to do this, including sport, art, design technology, drama, music, languages and literature - areas of human endeavour that are part of what makes life worth living. Latin and Greek are two completely ‘useless’ subjects which bring great enjoyment to some of our most able pupils.  Many pupils I taught joined the armed forces – an interest they developed at school through the cadet force.  The areas of the Harrow curriculum which inspired Churchill were art, history and the Harrow rifle corps – the basis of lifelong interests salvaged from a curriculum which otherwise passed him by.

 

  1. Several school subjects can lead, after further training, to employment - including computer coding, design technology, A-level sciences and FE college vocational courses.  Specialisation in vocational subjects should begin at age 16, not before.

 

  1. The purpose of school education is that which can be achieved in 10,000 hours. Not all purposes of education can be achieved in that time.  If you spend time specifically teaching character or citizenship or British values or PSHE then something else has to be cut. Parents and politicians are always quick to suggest that schools solve the problems of society by 'teaching it' but never say what should be cut to make room. The multiple purposes of education exceed the time available.

 

  1. People responding to this consultation will rightly say things like ‘the purpose of education is to create nice people or good citizens.’  These are reasonable aspirations but are largely the responsibility of parents.  If you take your eye of the main game – improving children’s knowledge – then you tend to lose the match.  All schools aim to create nice people and good citizens but that comes as a by-product of the main function of the school.

 

  1. There will be some who say ‘the purpose is to produce a fairer society.’  No, that should not be the purpose, it should be an important side effect of educating all children well.  If you make fairness a principal purpose you lose sight of the main game.

 

What measures should be used to evaluate the quality of education against this purpose?

  1. Because we are mainly interested in knowledge (and the skills which come after knowledge has been grasped and assimilated) the best measure is testing under exam conditions.

 

  1. Exams put pressure on children, and that is their great virtue.  Girls are more likely to want to please the teacher and are therefore more motivated during the course.  Boys do not especially want to please teachers - in my experience of teaching boys, 80% are relatively idle during the term but most make an effort preparing for exams.  So exams are the essential building block of motivation.  Ask any teacher who has had to teach an unexamined course to 15-year olds, as many schools used to do with Religious Studies.  It was a hapless task, and almost all now insist pupils take the RS GCSE as a way of improving pupils’ attitude in lessons.  Anyone who thinks that exams are a bad thing has never taught a class of teenage boys.  Exams work because they make pupils work.
     
  2. The age at which pupils are required to be in education or training has recently risen to 18 so why do we need exams at all at age 16?  Because in the English system we typically drop down from ten GCSE subjects to three or four A-levels at that age.  On average one of those A-levels is a subject not done at GCSE, so most pupils drop seven subjects at the age of 16.  It is vital that, having studied these seven subjects for up to twelve years, pupils be examined in all of them in order to consolidate what they know and measure their progress.
  3. Pupils in successful countries take exams.  They force children to place the knowledge they have been presented with into the memory.  Once in the memory new things start to happen in the brain – like analytical thinking and the creation of links between different bits of knowledge.  Educated people know things and the reason they know things is not simply because ‘they have been taught it’.  Far too many children are taught things but know nothing.  The essential step in the process is commitment to memory.
  4. Of course exams cause anxiety and distress but those who think children should never be challenged in this way are the enemies of good education.  Teenagers, and especially boys, have to be driven to succeed.  Exams are that driver.
  5. In some important areas of education 1-3 hour written exams cannot capture the learning – the playing of a musical instrument, practical drama, practical design technology, or a lengthy piece of independent research for example. But such coursework should be limited to those areas of knowledge and skill which cannot be tested by an exam and can be reliably moderated by an exam board - experience has shown that teacher-assessed coursework can be easily corrupted.   In an ideal world it would be good to have more teacher-assessed coursework and less emphasis on written exams but that cannot happen until we reduce the emphasis on exam results (which I don’t think we should) and teacher assessment is shown to be more reliable, fairer and honest than it has been. 

 

  1. Whatever test measure is used it should be benchmarked against the average attainment of all pupils of a given age in England so we know where each student stands in a rank order – something which is needed by employers, colleges and universities selecting from a large pool.  Publishing ranks alongside exam grades would also reduce the ‘cliff-edge’ effect of grades. 

 

  1. Whatever test measure is used it should be benchmarked against the standards achieved in other developed countries because if England is to remain successful it must achieve educational standards as good as those achieved by students in other high-performing countries.

 

  1. Whatever test measure is used it should incorporate a subsidiary measure of progress over time.  Not all pupils are equally able and less able pupils may have lower test scores.  But measuring progress shows them that can succeed and is a means of assessing the work of schools with low ability pupils.

 

  1. All measures should be used to assess the performance of the pupil, of the teacher and of the school.

 

  1. There are some things which are harder to measure but which can nevertheless be measured.  Hard work, determination, resilience are all attributes necessary for success in public exams – let them be the measure.  The ability to work in a team can be assessed by observing a student working in a team – in a sport, or a play, orchestra or choir or through the Young Enterprise scheme.  Performance in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme is a measure of determination, organisation and resilience.  Leadership capacity is measured through school activities such as sports, societies and prefect systems.  These cannot be measured in the way that an exam measures knowledge but they all form the basis of comments made in references written by schools – so they are assessed.

 

How well the current education system performs against these measures.

  1. International comparisons tell us three things: as a country we place less emphasis of mathematics but more emphasis on other subjects than East Asia, we do well at the top of the ability range compared to other high-performing jurisdictions, and we do particularly badly at the bottom of the ability range.  The fact that our pubic exam results correlate closely with social class means that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds do badly compared with their peers in England and compared with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in East Asia. 

 

  1. The priority for this country should be to improve the public exam results of the bottom 30% of pupils, especially white boys.

 

  1. Getting a grade C in a GCSE is easy.  All my life I have taught less able boys who, by a combination of firm discipline and attractive teaching, can be got to a much higher level than a GCSE C grade.  The secret of the success of independent schools, if there is one, is that we start from the assumption that all pupils can and must achieve an A grade.  The large number of pupils in England who fail to gain five GCSEs grade A* to C including English and Maths is, in part, a result of low aspirations.  The fact that they can do better is demonstrated for us by those schools who achieve excellent results with disadvantaged pupils. 

 

  1. The English system allows pupils to specialise in a limited number of subjects at the age of 16.  This is a good thing.  As long as they have an adequate level of literacy and numeracy, the ability to specialise allows pupils to focus on subjects they like and can be good at.  This brings motivation and being motivated matters greatly.  Forcing pupils to study a range of subjects after the age of 16, such a maths, science and a modern language, would be demotivating for many and prevents them from studying subjects in which they could do well.

 

  1. We do not place enough emphasis on the ability to speak well.  Pupils from disadvantaged homes may achieve exam results but this will not translate into good jobs if they cannot speak well.

 

  1. In the state sector inadequate emphasis is placed on sport, societies and activities which develop those qualities described above such as leadership and team work.  Too little time is devoted to them.  Too much weight is placed on exam results because of the DfE accountability measures and too little weight is given to the non-examined qualities by Ofsted. There is a yawning gap between independent schools and state schools in this respect.

 

 

December 2015