A for Effort, D for Results

The Bow Group have today published a policy brief with this title, challenging some currently received wisdom in education policy.

Its author, Mark Nicholson, is a Chartered Accountant, financial analyst and former candidate for Ealing Southall.

He reveals some reasons for the failure of Labour's five education secretaries to produce results (despite a 53% real increase in their budget since 1997). His main findings are:

• Internationally, there is no correlation between performance in reading and maths, and per pupil spending.
• A lot of funding has gone into reducing class sizes, but international comparisons suggest that small classes make no meaningful difference to learning.
• Teacher salaries have increased but bureaucracy is putting them off, with the number of vacancies as a proportion of available positions staying at a similar level to 9 years ago.
• Money has been pumped into quangos (such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Learning and Skills Council) with little to show for it.

Nicholson concludes that resources are most effective when they affect "softer factors" like teaching time, teacher-student relations and school discipline. If the government had focused its massive influx of funding on these things, the quality of British education could have been transformed over the last decade.

Deputy Editor 

Comments

[Maths Teacher]

An astute paper by the Bow Group, well done for highlighting it. The Conservatives seem to want to match education spending but will it be spent on more flashy technology or on actually churning out children who can do basic arithmetic?

[Andy P]

As a History Teacher I can relate to much of what is reported. The real issue in our schools is the sort of curriculum we offer to our children. Too many of them are forced on to courses of no use to them while others sit in classes which they are clearly too bright for. I taught until recently at one of the most deprived schools in the country and thought the saddest thing was seeing kids who were bright and articulate held back by either their lower ability classmates are prevailing social attitudes within the local community were anyone who aspired to better clearly had something wrong with them. There current system is not only broken, it is beyond repair. That's why we need a really radical overhaul of our education system.

[Secondary Teacher]

As a teacher I cannot see what the red tape is. If people are working in schools where the workload remodelling is being ignored then I suggest you get in touch with your union.

[deborah]

It's tragic. Just think what could have been achieved if the money had been spent effectively!
We need less money thrown at whiteboards and gimmicks.
We need less money wasted on new "teaching resources" which are only necessary because the syllabus changes so often that teachers have difficulty keeping up. New maths text books are rushed through the system so quickly now they come out full of mistakes -The kids waste hours trying to work through faulty questions and end up totally confused ...... but, hey, the publishers are making a packet.
I could go on....
There is so much money to be saved here by doing things better - those savings can be used in other ways to make real improvements to education. One thing is for sure, if we are going to spend more we'll need a damned good plan of action to spend it all properly.

[Secondary Teacher]

Just read the whole paper - Mark Nicholson draws some odd conclusions. He cites an NUT survey (glad to see that the Conservative Party will call in at any port in a storm) which asks why people leave teaching, not why they join or stay. Believe me, higher rates of pay stop people looking elsewhere for jobs and the pay rate do win over some young entrants.

The other danger with the NUT report is that it possibly sets out to prove that the workload reforms are not working as the NUT have refused to sign up to the national agreement. To suggest that bureaucracy is still a problem helps their case.

Equally, the NUT has a large primary membership and some Primary Heads have been slow to implement the workload reforms. Therefore the survey may be unbalanced in that respect.

Another problem is that "bureaucracy" is often poorly defined. A poorly motivated, worn out or unskilled teacher may see "bureaucracy" in places that a reasonable person would not.

Other surveys had shown other factors, especially behaviour, as the main reason for leaving teaching.

[Secondary Teacher]

deborah,

I get the impression that you do not like change and possibly cannot use an electronic whiteboard effectively. As for poor quality textbooks - do what we do, read them before you buy them!

If you think the money is wasted being spent on your subject, give it to someone else.

[deborah]

Secondary Teacher,

Sorry, but impressions can be deceptive. I am not a luddite teacher, unfamiliar with modern technology.

I am (luckily) the parent of successful students at an excellent beacon school.

At said beacon school, the whiteboards were duly bought and used for a while until the novelty wore off. Now both staff and students find it more effective to use other teaching methods and the whiteboards lie dormant for most of the time.

"As for poor quality textbooks - do what we do, read them before you buy them!"

- I find it hard to believe that you work through all the questions in your maths text books before buying them.

"If you think the money is wasted being spent on your subject, give it to someone else."

- This is exactly my point. There is so much money already sloshing around which could be put to better use.

ps. Excessive bureaucracy IS an issue, however you define it.

[Secondary Teacher]

I'd move your children to another school - it's not as good as you think. I would never set a question for a studnet without first doing it myself.

"Excessive bureaucracy IS an issue, however you define it." Explain. I work in a successful school that does not suffer from excessive bureaucracy because out senior leaders, governors and unions have worked within the workforce reforms to eliminate it.

[Opinicus]

Now what does this say about this blog and the current state of politics.
Only 8 responses after 48hrs on a subject that matters second in any opinion polls list of issues.
Everything is about process and no one cares about the issues that matters to voters. No wonder voters don't care about politics any longer.

[Jon Gale]

I have never heard of electronic whiteboards before, how do they work, and why are they needed/better?

Jonathan,

That might be true, but it as far as I can see it wasn't mentioned on the main page, which isn't going to help!

[David Belchamber]

Jonathan @ 01.56 I do agree with your concern at so few comments on such an important topic as education.
However, in fairness, it has to be said that the matter has received a lot of attention on other threads recently.
I am passionately concerned at what Nulab has done to our system over the years and how unfair it is to both teachers and pupils who are being shortchanged by it.
While it goes without saying that a huge number of pupils do very well, it is a disgrace that after so much extra funding (here some credit to Blair) universities complain at the top end that A levels no longer identify the high flyers, the independents start to move away from A levels to the IB and the international GCSEs and the CBI and other employers' organisations despair at the poor level of skills of those entering the workforce, leading to companies having to offer remedial work in basic numeracy and literacy.
The first thing we have to do is to get real about what is right and what is wrong in our schools and look behind the apparently ever improving exam grades.