Author: Fiona Millar

A-level results are out, but what about those not going to university?

Fiona Millar

By Fiona Millar

A significant number of young people are turned off by traditional higher education. They should have a decent alternative

This year’s A-level results day saw grades down slightly, universities awash with places, and signs that young people might be starting to vote with their feet, and not in the direction successive governments have predicted. What is going on? For the past 20 years, encouraging more young people into higher education has been a central aim of education policy. Until now there was no real reason to think this plan wasn’t working.

Around a third of all school-leavers go on to higher education at 18, and that figure rises to almost 50% by the age of 30. But a survey tracking aspirations for a university education among pre-GCSE pupils released on Thursday by a social mobility charity, the Sutton Trust, suggests that the wind might now be blowing in a different direction. The trust has been monitoring aspirations for the past 15 years and reports a falling proportion of young people who think university matters. The survey also shows there is still a marked difference in attitudes towards higher education between students from different social backgrounds.

A blip or a worrying straw in the wind? We should fear the latter as it would point to a growing and glaring omission at the heart of our education system – the failure to cater adequately for those for whom university may not be the right choice. One obvious reason for disenchantment (reflected in the survey) is the high cost of tuition fees and living expenses. A degree generally leads to higher wages, and employers increasingly seek this level of education when recruiting – even for non-graduate jobs. Up to a third of graduates may now be working in low-skilled jobs.

But the survey also reveals that of those not planning to attend university, 58% cite not enjoying “that type of learning”. We need to understand why this is, what we might do about it. The assumption that everyone can and should enjoy an academic education is almost certainly flawed. Like many other graduates from a Russell Group university – in my case at a time when only 10% of the population went to university and were fully funded to boot – I believe every young person should have the chance I had. Not just of an academic education and a route into professional work, but also the opportunity to learn and develop socially and emotionally, preferably away from home, without the pressure of having to earn a living.

However, as a parent and a school governor I also know this path isn’t right for everyone. The over-academisation of the school curriculum and the devaluation of any sort of assessment that doesn’t involve a high-stakes exam may now be demoralising many young people, in particular those who most need to see the point of education.

There have been signs throughout this academic year that the latest incarnation of the GCSE – increased content, no coursework and lengthy exam papers – might be a massive switch-off to key groups of pupils. And the failure over decades to develop alternatives to academic study, in the form of high-status technical education and apprenticeships, is starting to look like a criminal act, especially in the run-up to Brexit when skilled workers from elsewhere may not be readily available. Over the past 50 years, a series of vocational qualifications have come and gone and never garnered the kudos of O-levels, GCSEs or A-levels. So we should not be surprised that traditional qualifications still reign supreme, that university still sits at the pinnacle of the education system and that growing numbers of students see no realistic alternative routes into fulfilling work.

Most people probably haven’t even heard of the new T-levels – the current government’s answer to this endemic English problem. These apparently “world-class” qualifications won’t even come on stream until 2020; and they will have to be delivered in woefully underfunded further education colleges. Even worse – there are barely 100 degree apprenticeships on offer, a drop in the ocean compared with thousands of more conventional courses. So for the growing number of young people who feel university is not for them there really isn’t anything concrete to aspire to.

The Sutton Trust is right: more maintenance grants and apprenticeships would probably help. But what is really needed is a huge culture shift, away from the assumption that academic is best and towards a broader vision of what makes a real education. A vision that should include what might be seen as “that other type of education”: practical, creative, technical, engaging – and, above all, of equal status to a university degree.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/16/a-levels-results-higher-education-alternatives

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It’ll take more than an app to get children school-ready, Damian Hinds

Fiona Millar

By Fiona Millar

If the Tories hadn’t cut funding for early years support, perhaps children would have a fairer start in schools today

So, Damian Hinds has woken up to the fact that there are huge gaps in ability between children from different backgrounds before they even start school. In a speech yesterday, the education secretary described the fact that children are starting school unable to communicate in full sentences or having barely opened a book as “a persistent scandal”, which meant some children never caught up with their peers.

I am not going to knock this blindingly obvious observation, since any recognition of a great social ill that may lead to more investment in the early years can only be a good thing. But when Hinds suggested that this area, and the home-learning environment in particular, is the “last taboo in education policy” he was just plain wrong.

Until the penny-pinching coalition government came to power in 2010, the issue of parenting support (even for babies in the womb), what went on in the home, and high-quality early years care and education, was an integral part of education policy. Then along came Michael Gove, whose first act as secretary of state was to remove the words “children” and “families” from the name of his department. Anything unrelated to core academic learning was deemed “peripheral” with the current schools minister, Nick Gibb, even describing the idea of social and emotional learning in the curriculum as “ghastly”.

Glaring inequalities in outcomes – the gap in GCSE results between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and the rest is still around 19 months, and will take 50 years to close at the current rate – were to be resolved by a new generation of the taxpayer-funded faux private secondaries in free schools and academies. Rigid blazers and ties, military-style discipline (charged up by a troops to teachers scheme) and a traditional academic curriculum would apparently do the trick.

In the intervening years, as many as 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres may have closed, according to the social mobility charity The Sutton Trust, leaving the Labour government’s flagship early years programme “hollowed out”. Meanwhile, savage cuts to local government funding and real-terms cuts to school budgets mean that services such as parenting support advisers, speech and language therapy, mental health support and the sort of extracurricular activities that Hinds claimed could help to build vital character and resilience, are also evaporating.

Hinds is right to argue that an individual child’s educational, social and personal development cannot by perfected by school alone. The DfE-funded Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education Project has spent 17 years tracking the development of children from age three to 16, gleaning evidence about how the complex relationships between home, school and family works. But just as it is slow, painstaking work to gather the evidence about what helps children and young people to flourish, so it is slow, painstaking work to change cultures, aspirations and behaviour in the home. In fact, this type of work is so slow burning that we might only now be starting to see the impact of the Labour government’s policies for parents and children if they had been allowed to continue.

Hinds gets maybe two out of 10 for at least putting this vital subject back on the policy agenda, but it will take more than a few extra nursery places and “how to teach your kids to read apps” to resolve a deep-seated national problem.

In my experience as a parent, school governor and former chair of the Family and Parenting Institute, set up by the last Labour government to examine exactly these issues, the families most in need of support are usually the hardest to reach, and the least likely to respond to short-term gimmicks.

We need to wind the clock back to a point where the bigger political argument was about children, families, young people and schools, not just academic learning, exams and school structures. Hinds may have started a conversation about that yesterday, but, sadly, we have wasted a decade – and thousands of children have been let down as a result.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/01/damian-hinds-child-inequality-early-years-support-schools

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Elección de los padres en la educación ha creado el peor de los mundos.

Fiona Millar

Obligando a las escuelas en las cadenas y les obliga a conformarse está planchando la diversidad, mientras que la jerarquía es más pronunciada que nunca.

Fiona Millar.

La elección paterna está en un estado frágil. Casi 30 años después de la «gran» Ley de Reforma de la Educación, que dio paso a la idea de que la elección sería elevar los estándares y satisfacer a todos, apenas pasa un día sin un recordatorio de lo que una noción débil que es esto.

Lo más sorprendente fue la historia acerca de la confianza academia que decidió alumnos de autobús con necesidades especiales o discapacidades por el alto logro de la escuela a la que se les había dado un lugar, a una menos ilustre en la misma cadena. A pesar de que los alumnos no tendrían, aparentemente todavía en el rodillo de la escuela original esto no era lo que los padres habían elegido.

Luego fue la disputa entre entretenida señor waldegrave , el preboste (y antiguo alumno) de la universidad de Eton, y el ministro de la oficina del gabinete, Matt Hancock, sobre la agenda «movilidad social» del gobierno.

No estoy seguro de por qué Señor Waldegrave, que ha amenazado con abandonar el partido conservador, es tan descontentos con la idea de que la función pública, y posiblemente otros empleadores, se debe permitir que pedir a los solicitantes acerca de su escolarización. Dada la tendencia de la creación de reclutar a su propia imagen, que sólo podría reforzar la supremacía de los graduados educados en privado.

Por último, están las contorsiones en curso en Kent , donde el consejo del condado se está expandiendo la selección mientras retorciendo sus manos sobre el hecho de que tan pocos niños de familias pobres reciben en las escuelas de gramática.

Que posee reciente investigación en las grandes desigualdades que produce la selección es una lectura fascinante. Todo en este municipio, cuyo sistema educativo es un retroceso a los años 50, conspira contra los niños más pobres: la prueba, la tutoría caro, los gastos de transporte para llegar a las escuelas selectivas, y el alto costo de los viajes uniformes y escolares como las gramáticas jostle para emular las escuelas privadas – que son justo por encima de ellos en el orden jerárquico.

Sin embargo, en lugar de tener que desechar el 11-plus (la manera obvia para maximizar la elección y limitar la desigualdad) pequeños ajustes superficiales que se propone. Unas cuantas más niños elegibles para la prima pupila se shoehorned en las gramáticas mientras que el consejo se sube con la apertura de una nueva escuela selectiva sin siquiera correr una consulta legal .

Así que no hay opción en absoluto para los padres que no quieren una educación moderna secundaria para sus hijos, y la otra ilustración de la vena que corre a través de todas estas historias. En nuestro tipo de sistema basado en el mercado a los niños más pobres y marginados, inevitablemente pierden.

No hay nada malo con la idea de elección, o de su hermana gemela, la diversidad.Me gusta la idea de una serie de escuelas locales con diferente espíritu y la cultura que los padres pueden elegir entre – pero sólo si el acceso es justo para todos.

Por desgracia, esta diversidad se organiza como una jerarquía. Los niños más pobres terminaron en las escuelas del fregadero, y poco ha cambiado.

Eso es en parte porque la elección y la diversidad de post 1988 que nunca se había aliado a la reforma radical de la inscripción de los alumnos, sino también porque las herramientas del mercado – tabla de clasificación y Ofsted – quiere decir que lo que el ex ministro conservador David Willetts describió en una ocasión memorable como la carrera de armamentos de los padres » «ha chocado inevitablemente con las necesidades de cada escuela para maximizar su propio rendimiento.

Ahora tenemos el peor de los mundos: la jerarquía es más empinada que nunca, pero la diversidad que existía dentro del sistema no selectivo está siendo subsanadas como las escuelas están obligadas a cadenas y obligaron a conformarse en todo, desde planes de estudios, las calificaciones y la cultura, a la los códigos de vestimenta de los alumnos y el personal .

En pocos años alguien tendrá que venir y anunciar la revolucionaria idea de deshacerse de la academia «porquerías estándar» y le ofrece la oportunidad de algo nuevo y diferente.

Lo nuevo y diferente que debe haber es probablemente la materia para una pieza mucho más tiempo. Pero el 30 cumpleaños se acerca rápidamente de la Ley de 1988 podría – y debe – ser un disparador para todos nosotros para empezar a pensar ahora.

Fuente:

 http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jun/13/parental-choice-education-schools-chains

Imagen: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/150ca05441099e05d09a3d906d770e9a09f1b155/0_187_5616_3370/master/5616.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=28cab907b5ba3a028b7bd7481e2ec356

 

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