Chalk and talk
Changeable as the May weather, we waltz towards the exam room with year 11. Some are ready, some resentful, some panicky, all a bit nervous. Some show welcome signs of maturity, others not yet. Some do foolish things, but on Tuesday night we were treated to a wonderful evening of dance, and on Wednesday night, at Bromley FC and in a new strip, our boys WON! The final of the London U16 cup. Both evenings were characterise by elegance, patience, enthusiasm, dedication, collaboration and skill.
I didn't play footy or dance at school but I did act and speak and I remember very clearly the excitement of participating and cooperating and the uncertainty of the unique performance on the night, of triumphing over the unknown. It's completely different to the classroom experience.
A person who qualified in the same decade as me came calling and we reminisced. She said, rather tentatively, 'you know, I don't think it was all bad, in the old days'. Of course it wasn't. Her comment transported me to a meeting room next to a canal in Sheffield four years ago where a Young Thing gave a group of us to understand that the past was such rubbish that it effectively needed to be erased from the history of education.
I had a few words in response. It wasn't perfect, but then we're not perfect now. Children went to school, teachers worked hard, stuff got learned, art was made, cups were won and exams were taken. What is this trope that schools are uniquely culpable for being the product of their times? Do we blame the Army for not having the right boots in the Falklands, and insist they're sorry about it all the time? Do we say to the NHS 'why did so many people die in the 90s, what were you thinking of?' Not so much. So why do it to schools? Times change, things improve or get worse, we reflect the society in which we are situated, for good and ill.
Oh, and we talked about chalk. There are fewer of us who remember that quintessential teaching skill and the challenge of looking after a beautiful diagram you'd drawn and coloured nicely (I was talking to a geographer). I told her about the old soul I worked with who hoovered up the school's chalk stocks when the whiteboards first arrived, hoarding it against an upturn in the market. He may have been a mathematician but the gamble didn't work and when he retired he was offered the chalk to take home. One of our own Young Things was in this conversation with us. She'd had a terrifying and entirely unexpected encounter with chalk in rural Yorkshire, this decade. Taught her a thing or two about thinking on her feet.
Which is what the young people in the exams have already started learning quickly. The language speaking tests are situated near me so I can see them sitting mouthing the phrases, going over everything they've learned and worrying about facing the unexpected. The value of examinations is arguable but one of the useful things they promote is the development of confident and lucid responses in uncertain circumstances. There's value in that experience which our obsessive high-stakes culture has dissipated.
Life is both untidy and unpredictable so schools have to prepare young people for that too. Learning to face things when you're not ready is also a life skill. Even the young people who struggle against the exam hall tractor-beam know that.
Mind, some embrace uncertainty early. I was emerging from a difficult conversation when two small boys accosted me politely. In a conspiratorial whisper, one with sticky-up hair asked 'have you got the rugby ball?' This I could answer definitively. 'No.' 'Someone's taken it off us' 'Who?' 'We don't know' they chorused. We looked at each other for a moment then parted company, none the wiser on either side. I await developments.
A larger boy stopped me abruptly, silently, later on the bridge. I laid some groundwork for the exchange. 'How are you?' 'I'm good' (not strictly true). He investigated my habits. 'Have you seen Endgame?' 'No, is it good?' 'I can't tell you, it'll spoil it'. Once again, none the wiser. He has some distance to travel before work as a film critic puts food on his table, I fear.
And a man from Australia who joined the school in 1971 wrote to us. He wants to contact his English teacher. With the benefit of many years, he recognised those whose creativity and relationships formed him and made him. That's what he remembered, and that's what we try to do in every age. Knowing things and getting qualifications are important. Knowing that life takes unexpected turns is also important. Learning it in a positive community is priceless.
You can start a year where you like, but it has to end at some point and another one begins. Years actually start in September, but I understand that others may believe it to be January. Seems odd to me: it's very dark, and cold even here in the south, and by January we're actually nearly halfway through the real year which starts mellowly in September and chugs on until the examiners have had their pound of flesh. January with its much-hyped resolutions is just a reboot to keep us going until the sun comes back.
Year 11 had a nasty shock in December with mock exams based on what the new GCSEs will look like. You understand that I'm talking about maths and English here, where A*-G is being replaced by 9-1 and no one really knows what's going to happen. Well, year 11 do. They had a look at a maths paper produced by the exam board and it had given them pause for thought. Revision sessions were popular this week. Perhaps we'll even offer biscuits. We hand out the mock results in a mock-August manner early next week, in the hope of focusing the mind of those who lack imagination about how they might feel on the actual day. It works for some, but for others 8 months is an eternal sort of time, even 5 months to the exams is unfathomable, like the age of the earth or the distance to Jupiter. One pleasant sort of chap told me he'd not done much revision because he wanted to find out how well he'd do without it. He knows now. Resolutions all round.
Just as well the young ones aren't in charge of the institution (for all sorts of reasons, really). They're easily distracted and very much concerned with the interior of others' heads and phones, rather than devoting themselves to defeating the examiners. As I heard one remark to another 'Yes, but you're just trying to impress Ellen'. Has she noticed?
I go upstairs to take issue with year 9, the awkward squad of any school. This particular bunch of comedians was inhospitable to a visiting teacher and will be mending their ways. Some get to spend extra time reflecting on their manners. At lunchtime the dining room's overcrowded because of the rain and there's some huffing. I see some of them later, the huffers and ill-mannered, in punctuality detention. Every term the same, we re-embed the rules with those whose lives mean they forget them over unstructured holidays. Every term's a new year.
And I make a hash of having a new idea and in fine cart-before-horsing put out a proposal without any time to discuss it or refine it. It's not Machiavellian, just inept, so I press pause and give us all time to think. There's a lot going on and just because the government change everything every year until our heads are spinning doesn't mean that we should do it in school. There's always time to think. Well, nearly always, and when there isn't, you'd better be pretty experienced at making snap decisions. I am pretty experienced, but still spooked this week by a combination of budget reduction, accountability measures, assessment and curriculum change.
But I enjoyed a few minutes this morning watching a new teacher talking to an old stager across the yard. I couldn't hear them but the hand gestures were magnificent. If they were devising an entirely new language, its one I want to learn. We can add it to the gestures we already use in school such as 'take your coat off' (plucking your own shoulder), 'get in a line' (a sort of repeated flapping motion) and 'Really? Would you like to reconsider that action?' (hands thrust outwards combined with a Gallic shrug, outraged eyebrows and goggly eyes, try it at home). All those being ones teachers have to avoid using when out and about among the populace in the holidays and at weekends, for fear of being incarcerated.
I think the latter gesture would work well for the West Sussex Heads, the unlikely shock troops of the Reasonable and Exasperated Tendency, as they take on the Department over the money issue. How are we to make the books balance? Employ fewer teachers for more students? Close for half a day? Turn the heating off? Stop doing all the things that have made such a difference to vulnerable children's lives over the last 15 years? Altogether now: shall we reconsider?
I gesture at the weather as the sun suddenly goes in as we approach break. Snow. Really?
The Hare and the Tortoise
Marcus Gheeraerts 'De Lieure & de la Tortuë', 1578
By the time you read this the Ebacc consultation will have closed. We'll be a little nearer knowing what government thinks we should do, but nowhere nearer doing it. May I share some thoughts, dear readers?
​First: to what problem was Ebacc the solution? Gove believed that state schools were sloppy about knowledge so enforcing a core of academic content would put this right. This was at a time when GCSEs or 'equivalents' had been bent out of shape by the pressure of the performance tables. Knowledge is fundamental to teaching and academic rigour should be the norm. So far so good.
​Second, the subjects (English, maths, two sciences (see below), hist or geog and a modern foreign language)? People got terrifically agitated about the omission of RE and you'd think I would too, as a theologian. I used to argue that RE is a universal entitlement which everyone ought to be doing so it didn't need including. I'm now persuaded that it should.
The new GCSE RS specification requires everyone to study Christianity and another religion. The world would be a better place if everyone understood Islam a bit better and calm teaching by skilled religious educators would be a public good. Put it in.
​Third, bizarrely, if you do triple (separate) science, you have to do all three for two of them to count. That's just barking. What's wrong with doing chemistry and physics? Sort it out.
Fourth, languages. Take a deep breath. Tackling a foreign language is a hallmark of being civilised and languages rewire the brain in a particular way. I know some outstanding languages teachers, whole departments of them, but we've made a real pig's ear of languages education in the UK and we need to pause, reflect, plan, fund and start again.
Why? We don't have many languages teachers because we made languages optional at GCSE years ago. That meant fewer young people with languages A levels, fewer undergraduates und so weiter. Then there's the British antipathy to the foreign tongue, so we behave as if languages were an unnecessary luxury. We beat ourselves up for not being like the Dutch and the Germans, but motivating a young person to learn globally dominant English is different to motivating them to learn a language for which they might not see a ready and pressing use. We should teach Mandarin and Arabic widely but that'll take a generation and some serious funding to get the teachers. Worth it if the result is an outbreak of global understanding?
But it gets worse. We need to overhaul how we examine languages because we do it really badly. GCSE languages are about the hardest of them all and the same paper is used for native speakers as for ab initio learners. Making any progress is hard even for acquirers of average speed, let alone those who take longer. We need a total redesign of assessment in languages so we can actually measure what children know, rather than what they don't know. It's a really depressing experience for a gloomed youth if, after a shedload of work with a gifted teacher over 2, 3 or 5 years he ends up with an F or a G. No Ebacc for you, chum, no matter how hard you've worked.
Which is my fifth point. Hiding under its umbrella of aspiration and rigour, the Ebacc is outrageously unfair and a denigration of slow and steady learners. There are two ways of solving this. If Ebacc was a progress rather than a threshold measure then it would encourage all learners to have a go at some hard stuff. If it was assessed at level 1 as well as level 2 we might have an education system that embraced rigour, knowledge and integrity for all. What does it say about us if we only value the swift? What does the fable say?
Year 11 are deep in the alternative reality of maths. There's a joke doing the rounds from the States: 'math, the only place in the world where someone buys 60 watermelons and no-one wonders why'. Today's question considers Joe who bought a hot dog, a coffee and a cheese sandwich (and a prescription for statins), then Sita who buys two unspecified snacks followed immediately by Sam who wants a saxophone. Sam's in the wrong shop: he needs geography or business as well as maths and he needs music to be valued too. For the government as well as year 11 there is much work ahead.
Entering harbour
Alfred Wallis, The Schooner the Beata, Penzance, Mount's Bay, and Newlyn Harbour
We bought a grand piano in the early spring and last week we launched it. We had a recital with pianists of many ages, guitarists, singers, films and so forth. It was quite wonderful, Chopin to Hendrix, Beethoven to Glass played by young people, staff, friends and a remarkable old boy. It was, in the best sense, a bit of a do - drinks on the concourse, posh nibbles. That was Thursday. Friday was a languages extravaganza for year 7, France v Spain in cooking, dance, sport, everything. Tallis beribboned, bedecked, singing and dancing on the concourse, Spanish-quality sunshine.
What else has happened as we sail for harbour? Year 8 have been to the Tate Modern. PE won a quality mark. Year 10 had a Directions Day to help them think about the future. We've interviewed young people about our three-year KS4. There's been a Tour de Greenwich for year 7 cyclists and apprenticeships for Business students. We had year 12 taster week and geography field trips. The foyer designs starts to happen. Some staff are leaving, some changing roles, all are thanked, clapped and smiled on their way. We've had celebration assemblies – year 7 so enthusiastic they nearly missed lunch. The timetable is roomed, we ready ourselves for exam results and wonder how this term got to be quite so long.
And as the outside world turns, Mr Gove falls off. A remarkably long-lived post holder, did we lose him because he picked too many fights, or because 1 in 10 women work in education and there's a women issue? Have we got Ms Morgan because she's calmer or because she's female? When will we next have a Secretary of State of any party who went to a state school? Where are the 93% in politics? Why are the 7% in charge even in Sanctuary Buildings? Is there no one who understands how we live, to direct what we become?
In the week when the Trojan Horse inquiry reports, perhaps we should muse on our sun-loungers on where the manipulation of schooling structures has brought us. Autonomy is not an educational good of itself and neither is freedom. What joins us together is worth more than what sets us apart. We need the Nolan values of selflessness, honesty, objectivity, leadership, openness, integrity and accountability. We need the principles of public education to be publicly understood and agreed.
However, it is week 39 and I won't solve that this term. I'm a fan of the Cornish poet Charles Causley, a former primary school teacher. He wrote a wonderful poem about the end of a school day whose opening words fit the end of term too:
At 4 o'clock the building enters harbour
All day it seems that we have been at sea
Now having lurched through the last of the water
We lie stone-safe beside the jumping quay.
The good ship Tallis has reached safe harbour for 2013-4 and now we'll take a little shore leave. We'll see what August brings and chart our next course from September. Wherever your dinghy takes you over the summer, I hope the weather is set fair for you and yours.
CR 22.7.14