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Charismatic leaders may succeed in rescuing schools from
failure, but such success is unlikely to last, new government-commissioned
research reveals. School that rely on strong individuals to
bring about improvement risk returning to square one when
those leaders move on to another school or become government
advisers.
Instead of relying on one person, politicians and policy
makers should encourage schools to ensure all staff take a
role in leading school improvement, Daniel Muijs, of Newcastle
University told the American Educational Research Association
Conference in Montreal. He is co-author of a study, commissioned
by the Department for Education and Skills that suggests nine
steps to school improvement:
- Focus on teaching and learning: positive feedback for
pupils and a strong foundation in the basics
- Train staff in leadership skills
- Learn how to use pupil data productively
- Promote high expectations and share the vision of how
the school should improve
- Create improvement teams to focus on specific problems
- Tailor teachers' in-service training to their needs and
the needs of the school
- Involve parents
- Bring in external support and advice for areas where
you do not have expertise
- Take care of the pennies: money is not all, but spending
it wisely is important
The report examined existing research and the experiences
of eight secondary schools in former coalfields areas whose
GCSE results have increased in every one of the past five
years. It was commissioned by the DfES to find out what helps
schools in challenging circumstances succeed. The study shows
that elements most likely to bring improvement, such as changes
in unemployment, demographics or competition from other schools,
are outside of schools' control.
Professor Alma Harris, who is co-author of the study, said
she had been surprised by how hard it was to find schools
that had sustained improvement over five years. "One
of the myths about school improvement is that it is an escalator
effect," she said. Heads of the improving schools admitted
they ignored some government initiatives, giving priority
to those, such as Excellence in Cities, with money attached.
One head said to her, "Alma, this would be a good school,
but the parents keep sending us the wrong children."
The study is available from louise.hopkins@warwick.ac.uk
(TES, 22 April 2005)
Ofsted inspection has had no positive effect on examination
achievement according to research that studied more than 3,000
schools over six years.
A four-strong team of researchers from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
reporting in the British Education Research Journal, examined
the GCSE results of 1,933 mixed-sex comprehensive schools
(among the 3000-plus state schools of all types studied) over
a period of six academic years between 1992 and 1997.
County mixed comprehensives are the most common type of school
in England and Wales, but the researchers found that "Ofsted
inspection had no positive effect on examination achievement
[in these schools]. If anything it made it worse."
The results were scrutinised by using a tried and tested statistical
technique called multilevel modelling. The technique is able
to evaluate the individual effects of a number of factors
that might be influencing GCSE results. It allows for such
things as general changes of GCSE results over time, differences
among LEAs and school types and the possibility of any effect
that inspection might have on these other factors.
Most alarmingly, the Newcastle researchers found the depression
in examination results was not just confined to the year of
inspection. They found "inspection had a consistent,
negative effect on achievement, depressing it by about one
half of a percentage point. This effect persisted during the
period studied."
Inspections did bring about some slight improvements in GCSE
results in selective schools.
Ofsted is in its 10th year of inspections and costs the public
purse £197 million a year. Recently its own director
general for schools, Peter Housden, said to the National Grammar
Schools Association that he was "not persuaded that the
current section 10 inspections and the public expenditure
of Ofsted really deliver for us. It is a seriously expensive
activity."
Do inspections of secondary schools make a difference
to GCSE results? by I Shaw, DP Newton, M Aitken and R Darnell
(British Educational Research Journal Vol 29, NoI).
(Guardian, 8 July 2003)
A popular Government scheme which gives grants of up to £2,500
to teachers so they can carry out research is to be dropped.
The scheme, which was piloted in 1999, has enabled 1,000
teachers a year to benefit from the best-practice research
scholarships for small-scale projects. From 2004 direct financing
for the £40 million scheme will end. Instead the money
will be included in cash for professional development to go
straight into school budgets. Heads and governors will decide
how to spend it.
John Bangs, head of education for the National Union of Teachers,
believes that teachers have been forced to surrender valuable
professional development in order to finance the Government's
workload reforms.
(TES, 31 January 2003)
Slower pupils are falling even further behind because of
the Government's Key Stage 3 Strategy, research claims. Fast-moving
lessons left some students struggling to keep up. Nearly half
of the teachers surveyed also believed the stress on pace
led to superficial learning.
The Strategy or Strait-jacket report was commissioned by
the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. Researchers from
Kings College, London, questioned more than 100 English and
maths teachers in the 205 schools which piloted the strategy.
Catch-up classes for 12-year-olds who failed to achieve the
expected level in their last year of primary came in for the
most criticism.
The two-year ATL study found that English teachers thought
the three part lessons were useful. However, the majority
of teachers had serious concerns about the shift of emphasis
from works of literature to studying the use of language.
To order a copy of the report, priced £8.99, call 0845
4500 009 or visit www.askatl.org.uk
(TES, 17 January 2002)
The idea was excellent: clear digests of cutting-edge research
findings for teachers. But producing them has proved trickier
than expected.
The long-awaited Evidence for Policy and Practice Centre
reviews attempt to do something dauntingly difficult - establish
what researchers throughout the English-speaking world have
discovered about key educational issues, then provide digests
of the findings intelligible to those outside academia.
Some are aimed at heads, others at teachers, governors, parents,
students or policy makers.
EPPI is based at London University's Institute of Education
but the reviews are undertaken by a groups of specialist researchers
around the country.
Systematic reviewing of research is well established in medicine
but EPPI's launch in London last month suggested that education
reviewers are finding it difficult to mimic the medical model.
The problem is a lack of concrete findings. Review groups
panning for golden insights into inclusive education and gender
stereotyping had little to show for their efforts. And the
group who spent a year trying to work out how ICT affects
literacy development admitted: "The answer is inconclusive.because
there is insufficient research of high quality."
Professor David Hagreaves, former chief of the Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority commented: "This reviewing exercise
can only be helpful. We now have a knowledge base that can
be adapted and built on." But other researchers said privately
that some reviews did not justify the time or cost involved.
The DfES must also have some misgivings as it has agreed
to spend £2.6 million on the EPPI-Centre between 2000
and 2004. Only one of the first four reviews, on assessment,
produced strong findings and they were largely critical of
the Government's tests regime <link here>.
Professor Michael Bassey, academic secretary of the British
Educational Research Association, has suggested the department
would get better answers if the reviews addressed broader
questions. At present highly regarded studies are being disregarded
because they do not focus on the precise review topic.
The review reports are available at http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk
(TES, 12 July 2002)
The Betrayed Generations - Standards in British Schools,
by Dr John Marks, accuses teachers, politicians and education
authorities for bolstering up a comprehensive education system
"in which too many children are condemned to a life of failure."
He argues that the rate of A level improvement in England
and Wales slowed after the introduction of comprehensive schools
in 1969. Although the introduction of GCSEs did boost results,
the report argues that this was because the new exams were
easier to pass - not because standards had risen.
Dr Marks published studies in the early 1980s suggesting
that pupils did better in grammar and secondary modern schools
than in comprehensives. He is now secretary of the education
group of the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think-tank.
The Betrayed Generations - Standards in British Schools 1950
- 2000 can be obtained from the Centre for Policy Studies.
Tel 020 7222 4488
(TES, 12 January 2001)
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