The responses to both the PISA statistics and the Chief
Inspector's report are depressingly familiar, with those who believe that more
assessment will drive up achievement (usually on the policymaker side of the
fence) cast against those (usually on the practitioner side) who claim our
children are over-assessed and over-tested.
This false divide has pervaded the education debate since the
1960s. Schooling has to be about more than just assessment and assessment
has to be about more than SATs in primary schools and GCSEs in secondaries. But
there is an important role for these forms of examination, partly because
children and parents deserve feedback on progress, and partly because the
exchequer needs to know whether substantial public investment brings a
worthwhile return for children, young people, their parents and society as a
whole; testing provides one means of measuring this.
We need to have the 'great debate' about the purpose of
education that James Callaghan called for at Ruskin College back in 1976 and we
need to decide on, as Professor Richard Pring argues, what qualities we want
the educated young person, of any background or ability, to have by the close
of statutory schooling. As any successful leader in any sector will point
out, we need to decide on purpose and objectives, then the means of
achieving them. In education, we endlessly tweak the means without having
the courage to address the discussion about purpose and objectives. How
are we to achieve educational success without deciding first on what it looks
like?
And what might it look like? That would be to pre-empt the debate,
but let us decide that we can 'have our cake and eat it'. The best
schools, state and independent, primary and secondary, are not afraid of formal,
traditional assessment. They embrace it but it has no more than its
proper place; they do not allow it to become 'high stakes' for the young people
in their care and they align it with projects that develop the whole child and
the young person as an effective citizen; they put as much focus on the
development of confidence and character, on sporting achievement, on having the
confidence to speak out in public in an informed way, on the opportunity to benefit
from work and community experience, and, of course, on the sciences, the arts,
the humanities and creativity.
Critically, they do not make false choices between endless
examinations or developing the whole child, between an academic and a
vocational curriculum, between maximising attainment and building inclusion.
We should be informed by their example, not by spurious comparisons with
completely different societies, some of which have their own educational
challenges in spite (or because?) of their PISA success. The headlines
might suggest that Sir Michael Wilshaw sits squarely on one side of these
divides. His record as a Headteacher in Hackney and Newham suggests that
he struck a better balance. That is the demand we should make of our
schools today.
A summary of this post was published as a Letter in the Evening Standard on Friday 13th December 2013
