Originally published - @ 10:02 am, Thu 11th Nov 2010
The scrutiny committee for serving young people in Nottingham met yesterday to consider the first pass of this year's exam results. Recognition for yet another year of progress, but beyond that, there was a concern that despite rapid relative progress against national averages at foundation stage, and good progress at key stage 4 and some at key stage 2, there was no relative progress at key stage 1 this year, or in the previous four.
Progress in education is important for its own sake, but it’s become clear that education’s ability to give an equal opportunity to all and break up social immobility has been ailing since the sixties. We still need change and to get more of Nottingham’s children into level 3 and level 4 jobs and careers.
But where to go if we’ve made so much progress in terms of understanding child development and pedagogy (the science of teaching) and invested in new schools, classrooms and facilities and nearly trebled the cash spent on delivering education? Especially since the ConDems are cancelling new schools projects and cutting education spending outside of direct grants to schools themselves.
Well, recognise that thinking on curriculum is still developing. Secondary school curriculum has recently been reformed with a greater focus on making it more interesting. There is scope for improving the primary curriculum.
On understanding progress can be made by developing better approaches beyond seeking -
- good numeracy, literacy and communication skills;
to include other criteria for a child’s successful development –
- wide range of friends;
- range of interests;
- supportive family network;
- teacher and carer pleasing behaviour.
But hasn’t progress been made from the rigour, drive and focus on the academic element? Isn’t considering these wider elements a return to some kind of soft thinking that some consider hampered progress at schools in the eighties and nineties, especially by not driving aspiration?
Well, the proposal for seeking a further step change in attainment makes, is that it’s not an either / or; the rigour on the academic element can and should be sustained, but there is an opportunity to make the primary curriculum more interesting and to show more rigour on the other elements.
Such thinking might also be extended to the greater achievement that a fitter (and more often than not, lighter) cohort children.
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News had broken however, just before the committee meeting started, of the violence and criminal damage occurring at the Conservative HQ, as 50,000 students were marching to protest about the new proposals for tuition fees which could be almost 3 times higher than exist now and may be being delivered a scheme that is regressive once a student has to pay.
This on top of drastic cuts in grant to universities. A colleague has written to me to explain -
“The Government’s announcement that they will be raising the cap on tuition fees dramatically could affect Nottingham students dramatically. Not only will there be a risk of deterrent for those wanting to go on to higher education, but our local universities are being hit hard by the cutbacks. It’s barely believable, but the two highest cuts are going to hit the Open University (which has a strong presence in Nottingham East constituency) whose teaching grant will fall from £149million currently to just £40million. The second biggest cut in the country will hit Nottingham Trent University, where the grant will fall astronomically from the current £77million to just £10million. These are the headlines – but the reality is about to bite.”
And the Educational Maintenance Allowance, designed to help the year 12s and years 13s most in need through further and sixth form education is to be replaced by another scheme.
So now maybe, if the aim is setting up more children to be ready to take on level 3 and 4 education, we need to scrutinise –
1. How would the replacement scheme for EMA work and what changes in support for how many Nottingham young people might we see?
2. What is the impact of changes to finance for further education?
3. What is the scale of cuts for the universities serving Nottingham in grants likely to be, and how might we estimate the impact on the number of Nottingham's young people going to university?
4. How progressive or regressive are the proposed tuition fees, and might any regressive solution deter Nottingham’s year 13s from going to university, and if so, how many?