Why are young people today so sensible?

Earlier today the Home Office released some eye-catching stats on drug use. Since 1998 the number of 16-24yr olds self-reporting drug use has halved.

 

 

Interestingly all the articles I've seen on these stats have chosen to focus on the numbers using Nitrous Oxide - reported for the first time this year - with the overall fall in drug use buried down the story. This is not an accident. All newspapers (and even the BBC) systematically under report good news and will nearly always look for a negative angles.

This tendency means that the extraordinarily positive trends in social policy data are largely hidden from the public. Did you know, for instance, that:

Teenage pregnancies are at their lowest level since records began in 1969. (Look at how that stat is buried beneath a supposedly negative story).

The number of 11-15 year olds who drank alcohol in the previous week has more than halved from 26% to 12% since 2001.

The number of 15 year olds smoking regularly has almost halved from 20% to 11% since 2002.

That the number of crimes reported in the Crime Survey have halved since 1995.

And it's not just the media's fault. These trends don't really fit with narratives of either the political right ("broken society") or the left ("austerity Britain") so they don't get talked about. It's also not particularly in the interests of groups that campaign on these issues to play-up the positive trends. It's much easier to raise money for drug prevention schemes if people don't think the problem is diminishing.

It seems to me that understanding why this is happening is pretty important. For a start it does seem to be generational. The drug stats, for instance, show use amongst 25-39 year olds rising. It's also unlikely to do with any UK specific issues or policies as these trends are manifesting across the developed world.

One journalist who has tried to focus attention on this phenomena is The Economist's Daniel Knowles. In an article last year he suggested a number of causes:

"Whatever has happened to carefree youth? Public-health campaigns, better education and more hands-on parenting have no doubt had some effect. Some young people are probably staying inside watching television and playing video games instead of smoking behind the bike sheds. And Britain’s population is changing. The proportion of 15- to 24-year-olds who identify themselves as “white British” has fallen slightly in the past decade, to about 80%. Among the groups filling the gap are British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who are less likely to drink or take drugs than their white peers."

I'd add a couple more suggestions to the list including the increasingly negative portrayals of drug, cigarette and alcohol use in TV and films. Another suggestion that arose in twitter discussion today is that these are the children of a generation that were the highest users of dangerous substances; and there's nothing less cool than being like your parents...

Of these the change in social behaviours seems particularly important to me. Young people are just spending much less time in the physical world and much more time in the virtual. Even since 2007 there's been, according to Ofcom, a 25% increase in the average amount of time 12-15 year olds are spending online (to 17 hours a week). And girls in that age category send a frankly mind-boggling 221 texts a week on average.

Whatever the reasons the trend poses some interesting questions about how these shifts might affect the next generation of children. We know that young people whose parents are teen Mums, drug or alcohol addicts or in are in prison are much less likely to do well in school. If there are fewer such parents in the future it should have a significant knock on impact on education (as well as other public services like health and prisons).

It also means that jeremiads about "young people today" can be safely ignored. A narrative of decline around young people has been commonplace throughout history (though that famous Plato quote about children disrespecting their elders is sadly not genuine). But now more than ever we can safely say that young people are much more sensible than their elders were at their age.

Why structures and standards are inextricable

Earlier this week I was on a conference panel. The question was "Do academies improve teaching and learning?" It wasn't a great discussion - there were too many panellists and not enough time - but speakers from both the panel and the floor kept coming back to "standards not structures".

This must be one of the most commonly espoused views in education at the moment and usually goes along the following lines:

"What matters is great teachers and leaders, with moral purpose, who are committed to improving the life chances of young people. Governments always fiddle around with structures because they can but it never makes more than a marginal difference. The quality of teaching and leading is key."

For me this is the equivalent of saying:

"What makes a good cricket team is excellent players and a great captain all of whom are committed to the team's cause. The only thing that matters is how good the players are and how well they're trained."

On one level this is obviously true. Banally so. But it's also incomplete. Do teams of great cricketers just emerge by chance or are there different ways of structuring a country's youth teams and domestic leagues that give a greater chance of having a good team? It seems obvious that the latter is true. Indeed one reason for the renaissance in English cricket over the past ten years was the introduction of central contracts for players in 2002. Prior to that the English Cricket Board had to negotiate with county sides to give their players time with the national side, not only for playing, but also training and analysis. A structural change led, over time, to a better side.

The same is true in any sector. Would you ever find a businessman arguing that the structure of their organisation had no impact on its performance?

And it's no different in education. Obviously the immediate driver of a school's performance will be the quality and motivation of staff (and, relatedly, the young people in it). But the idea that the wider structural system in which these staff work is irrelevant seems myopic to say the least.

My answer to the conference question was that academies can lead to improved teaching and learning because they offer scale. There are many excellent schools in England - some academy, some maintained, some foundation, faith or grammar. What the academy model has driven is much faster formal federation between some of these excellent schools and other less successful schools.

Outstanding schools that convert to academy status are strongly encouraged to bring other schools into their chain. Around 150 have now done so. Most of the so-called "forced" academies are now being partnered with local outstanding schools. The academies policy isn't the only way this could have been achieved but it is the easiest legal mechanism in place at the moment. As a result of these structural changes many schools are coming into the orbit of sustained excellent practise for the first time. (Of course there have always been less formal collaborations between schools but they have usually relied on personal relationships rather than governance and accountability).

To take just one example: Sir David Carter was head of John Cabot Academy in Bristol for some time. He and his team made it into a great school. Because of the academy programme Cabot has grown into a chain of eleven academies, with Sir David as executive head, and the other schools have seen significant boosts in performance since joining the network. Those improvements have, of course, been driven by excellent teachers and leaders but they wouldn't have been in a position to do so without the initial structural reform.

Of course there are reasonable questions as to whether the academies policy gets structural reform right. Is the regulation of chains strong enough? Is the complete elimination of the local authority link the right thing to do? Should academies have control over their own admissions policy? But these are all structural questions. Their centrally to the debate only proves the point.

As Tony Blair put it in his memoirs:

"We had come to power in 1997 saying it was 'standards not structures' that mattered. We said this in respect of education, but it applied equally to health and other parts of the system of public services. In other words we were saying: forget about complex, institutional structural reforms; what counts is what works, and by that we meant outputs. This was fine as a piece of rhetoric; and positively beneficial as a piece of politics. Unfortunately, as I began to realise when experience started to shape our thinking, it was bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How a service is configured affects outcomes."

I wonder if "structures not standards" is still a popular piece of rhetoric in the education debate simply because most English schools have so much autonomy - be they academy or maintained - already. It's easy to say structures don't matter if you're broadly happy with their existing configuration. I wonder if my fellow conference attendees would have thought structures didn't matter if their budgets were still controlled by local authorities as they were before 1988? I expect not.

What the spending review means for schools

The 2010 spending review was one of the most gruelling experiences of my career. It's difficult to express to anyone who hasn't been through it how emotional SR negotiations can be. I felt a huge weight of responsibility for squeezing the best possible deal out of the Treasury.

So I have a lot of sympathy for what my old colleagues in the DfE have been going through over the past few months in preparations for today's announcement. Perhaps this makes me prone to being overly sympathetic but I do think they've done a pretty good job.

But what does it mean for schools?

"Protection" for schools

The headline is that the "schools budget has been protected in real terms". What this means in practise is that the revenue budget for pupils aged 5-16 has been held flat taking inflation into account. As there is a rising number of pupils that will mean a (small) per pupil reduction. It doesn't cover the 16-19 budget so school sixth forms aren't included in the protection. There's no news yet on what will happen to this budget.

Now they'll probably be some political debate about whether this picture constitutes genuine "protection" but it doesn't really matter. The reality is schools will feel that budgets are tighter but won't find themselves facing big cuts. They will be in a much better place than other public services (including the NHS as, while, that budget has also been protected costs are rising at much faster rate than in education).


National Funding Formula (NFF)

The Chancellor also announced that a NFF would be introduced. This is a big win for the DfE as it has been in the pipeline since 2010 but neither the PM, DPM or Treasury have previously been prepared to commit given the political risk of big changes to the distribution of school funding. It is badly needed as the current distribution of school funding makes no sense. At the moment LAs simply receive what they got the previous year (per pupil) - and this has happened every year since 2005. There is no account taken of demographic changes since then at all. There are a couple of things to look out for as details start to be unveiled over the coming months:

• What factors are used? The, probably fair, assumption is that a NFF would see inner-city LAs lose out in favour of schools in rural and suburban areas. However, the distribution of funding is entirely dependent on which factors one decides to prioritise. If you up the amount attached to each EAL student, for example, inner cities will do better. If you up the amount for small schools then rural areas will benefit. There's no right answer.
• Will Local Authorities be given any discretion? There are two ways to implement an NFF - give money direct to schools and bypass LAs altogether or publish indicative figures for schools but give LAs some discretion to take local factors into account (e.g. high levels of migration into a particular part of the Authority). Both ways have pluses and minuses.

Update: I understand that the NFF being considered would be at LA level. Authorities would still decide school level budgets but would only be able to use a limited number of factors (as per changes introduced this year).

Education Services Grant (ESG)

The ESG is what academies get in lieu of services they would previously have received from local authorities. Maintained schools get the same amount but their money goes to the LA rather than them directly. This budget - which is around £1bn at the moment - is being cut by £200m. So academies will lose roughly £20-£30 per pupil and LAs will lose the same amount for any maintained schools in the Authority. The DfE press release also says £150m will be saved from efficiencies to the academies process. I assume this will mean reductions to the start-up costs sponsors receive when they take over a new academy.


And that's it really. There's no detail about any of the other big DfE budgets like childcare and teacher training but we can probably assume they will not be protected in real terms given the overall cut to the DfE budget (of around 2%) and the relative protection given to schools.

Why Fiona Millar is right

OK so I don't think she's right about everything but I agree with a lot of what she says here about school admissions.

She's right to argue that the school system needs to be genuinely comprehensive if all children are to get a good education. And she's right that arguments for diversity of provision and school choice are undermined if the admissions system is palpably unfair. For those of us who think school choice can be an important tool for creating real educational opportunity in disadvantaged communities this is an important challenge.

I've always found it odd that some proponents of  choice policies also want more grammar schools. The two are clearly completely incompatible. Imagine a town with two hospitals - the first is allowed to turn away anyone they think looks a bit too sick. The second has to take anyone who turns up. The really sick have no choice in this system - they're going straight to hospital number two. And - to stretch the analogy a little further - what would happen as a result? Hospital number one would get all the easy cases; look good in league tables and have no trouble recruiting staff. Hospital number two would have a much harder job; have to deal with all the deaths in town and struggle to find anyone prepared to work there.

The same is true for schools. Selection simply gives in-demand schools the opportunity to screen out the hardest to help pupils, leaving them to congregate elsewhere. More selection would do nothing to increase the overall number of good school places; it would just distribute them differently, and in a way in which the poorest would lose out most. No politician is going to take the political hit required to convert the remaining grammars to comprehensives.  However, they could be encouraged to federate with nearby schools on the model of the Bright Futures academy trust which is built around Altrincham Grammar Girls School. Parents still can't choose AGGS for their child they can at least send them to a school which has access to their staff, facilities and peer networks.

Fiona's also right to challenge academies' freedom to be their own admissions authority. While the vast majority of academies don't abuse this freedom, some do; and it's not an area where there are any obvious educational benefits to autonomy. When the first handful of academies were set up it made sense to protect them from often hostile local authorities who might have used control of admissions to undermine them. Now, though, it's a different story - well over half the secondary schools in the country are now academies and no local authority is academy-free.

I can't see any reason why local authorities shouldn't be given control over academy admissions - at least if academies make up a reasonable proportion of schools in the area. As LAs divest control of schools it makes sense for them to focus on ensuring choice is working and that schools have a fair intake. This means coordinating admissions but also exclusions and special educational needs (academies already have to participate in fair access protocols and take children with a statement of special educational needs). It may also mean working to attract the best academy sponsors into the area. (Lest anyone think this is a change of heart on my part, I said all this back in 2008.)

But enforcing the admissions code more thoroughly would only deal with one kind of unfair selection. It is well established that house prices act as a form of proxy selection. Because most comprehensives select by catchment area wealthier families can buy their way into the best schools; denying choice to poorer families who are displaced. This is much harder problem to deal with (and not one Fiona, or her fellow campaigners, talk about much).

One option would be to introduce cross area lotteries but, while they might have a wonkish attraction, they're highly unpopular with parents and for good reason. It would be such a logistical nightmare that you'd risk the middle classes departing state education en masse for cut price independent schools.

This is where I see the value of free schools. If great providers - usually already involved in running excellent schools - can respond to demand from parents, who can't afford to move, by setting up new schools, then choice becomes more meaningful. The free schools I'm most excited by are those that meet this need in genuinely deprived areas, like Greenwich Free School, Reach Academy in Feltham and King's Leadership Academy in Warrington. It makes sense, in a time of scarce resources, to focus the free school programme much more tightly on these areas over the next few years.

So I agree with Fiona that fair intakes matter and that those who want real school choice should support her campaign for a genuinely comprehensive system. I wonder if she agrees with me that free schools - if properly focused and regulated - can help make this a reality?

On Equal Marriage

Next week the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill faces its last major hurdle. The House of Lords will vote on Tuesday on an amendment that would throw the progress of the Bill into turmoil. Various faith groups and other anti-equal marriage campaigners are pushing hard to get this amendment accepted.

This issue is a particularly uncomfortable one for me. Not because I'm undecided - I'm a passionate supporter of the Bill. But because I try hard to approach all political issues - even contentious ones - analytically and with empathy towards those I disagree. But this one's making me angry.

In trying to understand why two defining moments come to mind.

The first was an argument with my best friend at the age of 18 (he's still my best friend). He is gay and I was the first person he came out to when we were 14. Because of our friendship I prided myself on having an unusually advanced understanding, for a straight teenager, of the traumas of growing up gay. On this occasion, though, I made a fool of myself. I can't remember the context but I told him that I wouldn't want to have a gay child because I'd worry they'd be bullied. He was furious with me; and it took me a while to understand why. Eventually I realised I was essentially admitting defeat on his behalf; resigning myself to accepting there would always be prejudice against him and anyone else of his sexuality. From that day on true equality for gay people has been right at the top of my personal agenda.

The second moment was in 2009 when I was working in David Cameron's policy unit. Somebody (possibly me) had suggested we should announce our support for equal marriage in the run up to the election. There was enough interest from senior people  for there to be some discussion on the merits. And I quickly realised that one of my colleagues was strongly opposed. We spent the best part of two days arguing it out. We got nowhere. My liberalism and her faith were irreconcilable. Others saw that too and decided not to press ahead with such a controversial announcement pre-election. I've never been more frustrated and disappointed in a professional context.

So this debate feels very personal to me and I do really struggle to understand the mindset of the opposition. I realise much of it, as with my old colleague, comes from a position of faith which I don't have. But then plenty of people of faith support the change. As the psychologist Andrew Solomon has written:

"In the gnostic gospel of St Thomas, Jesus says, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you." When I run up against the the anti-gay positions of modern religious bodies, I often wish that St Thomas's words were canonical...Keeping the homosexuality locked away within me nearly destroyed me, and bringing it forth has nearly saved me".

Even more bewildering is the opposition from commentators who claim to have no real issue with equal marriage itself but complain that Cameron is making a tactical error by "prioritising" the issue. For a start this change costs nothing and there's no pressure on parliamentary time. But more than that correcting injustices wherever we find them should always be a priority. Passing this Bill would be a huge signal to the thousands of young people around the country keeping their true selves locked away. It would give thousands more people the opportunity to celebrate their relationship on the same level as their straight friends. How many chances does any Government have to have such a direct impact on so many people for so little cost? How can that not be a priority?

Perhaps sometimes it's OK to be angry.

Ofsted's Challenge

As the last few weeks has shown yet again there are few areas of consensus in education. But if anything comes close it's this: Ofsted inspections are too inconsistent. And despite Sir Michael Wilshaw's genuine commitment to judging outcomes not pedagogy too many inspectors are ignoring him. (Though others aren't).

At the highest level these concerns are now openly discussed. In his Times' article on Monday Michael Gove wrote:

"The quality of inspection is still sometimes inconsistent. That’s why...the chief inspector, is rooting out weak inspectors and recruiting more serving heads to monitor other schools."

I take from this that conversations have been had and action is being taken but I fear toughening up the training and recruitment of inspectors, while essential, won't be enough. There is a deeper problem of trust which NAHT general-secretary Russell Hobby expressed well in his conference speech at the weekend:

"I believe Sir Michael Wilshaw when he says there is no model lesson, but it is a brave school leader who takes this to heart, when there is no way of knowing whether the team which turns up on your doorstop will have read that bit of the guidelines."

Until reasonably-minded leaders believe that Ofsted will judge them on impact not teaching style the prospect of an inspection will continue to act as a major drag on innovation and autonomy in many schools. I say "reasonably minded" because leaders need to take responsibility for not being unnecessarily cautious. But right now the uncertainty is too great. And it's very hard for teachers to stand up to their leaders' insistence that "Ofsted wants us to do it this way" unless they can be certain they really don't.

I'm sure many in the profession would argue the best solution is to scrap Ofsted altogether; but this would be a big mistake. We need to be able to hold schools accountable in a way that isn't entirely reliant on data; and that can help leaders and governors understand weaknesses in their school. This fascinating report from the LSE suggests that schools found to be inadequate do see a real and sustained improvement in outcomes.

However, while I think we need Ofsted, I also think it needs to do more to rebuild confidence than offer reassurances about their motives. Something more radical is needed. I'm not sure what it will take but perhaps they could start by stopping talking about teaching altogether and instead focus only on  learning. It is, in any case, unhelpful to brand an individual teacher as "requiring improvement" or "inadequate" on the basis of a single short observation. But it is, usually, possible to tell if there's good, or outstanding, learning happening in a school: if classrooms are calm; pupils are engaging with appropriately challenging material and their progress is being properly tracked.

As John Hattie has put it :

“I’ve given up on teaching. I don’t care a damn about teaching any more...[you go] into a classroom and seen some crusty bugger who sits in the corner and has been teaching this way for years, and it’s not the dominant style, but they have incredibly positive impacts on kids. Why would you change them? Our debates are too concentrated on how we teach, whereas all the visible learning work tells me it needs to be about the impact of how we teach. Observe the impact....It is a sin for a teacher to observe another teaching in the act. All they do is tell them (nicely and subtly) that they should teach more like them. The only reason for observing is to observe learning”

After all if inspectors weren't allowed to talk about teaching they wouldn't be able to criticise it...

Whatever it takes?

Last week I sat in a classroom while a teacher chastised an eight year old girl for taking a pencil from the boy sitting next to her. She was made to stand on a line at the back of the class and was “red carded” meaning she had to leave the class. In two hours in this school, in one of the poorest parts of Brooklyn, I saw no other examples of bad behaviour from any child. In fact I barely saw another child off task.

That eight year old didn’t know it but she is at the epicentre of the education reform debate in the United States. She attends a “no excuses” charter. A school that believes it can compensate for the entrenched poverty in the community in which she lives through a relentless focus on academic achievement and good character. Its opponents would say this method of compensation is authoritarian, excessive, unsustainable and even racist.

I’ve visited a number of “no excuses” charters in the past couple of years and, broadly speaking, I’m on the side of the schools. No one else, to my mind, has come up with a compelling alternative for creating meaningful education choice in America’s poorest communities. The best “no excuses” charters achieve extraordinary results that few public schools can match. (Critics would note they can have high attrition rates too and, often, a lot more money than public schools).

That said it’s difficult not to feel uncomfortable in some of these schools. They can feel like unhappy and authoritarian places where the pursuit of tests scores, and college, is coming at a pretty high emotional cost for teachers and pupils. But the very best “no excuses” charters I’ve visited show it’s possible to create a positive and warm environment while also pursuing excellence. As more and more sponsored academies and free schools look towards the charter movement for inspiration it is important to understand what differentiates the very best.

But before exploring this; some more background. Charter schools, like free schools, are publicly funded schools operating independently from the traditional public (state) school systems. 40 States allow charter schools and they all have different legal models which makes studying the system at a national level almost impossible. Typically they are not bound by the strict tenure rules which often prevent public school leaders from dealing effectively with poorly performing staff or by state level rules on curriculum or length of school day. As a general rule those States that have adopted very laissez-faire models have more failing charters whereas those with stronger quality assurance systems, like Boston, Newark, New York and New Orleans, have seen greater benefits.

Although the policy was originally designed to create more opportunities for diversity and innovation in education, the charter movement, at least in poor urban communities, has coalesced around a single model that seems to work better than anything else: the “no excuses” charter. In New York the big four chains (Uncommon, Success, Achievement First and KIPP) all have a “no excuses” model. They all perform well in state tests and have a strong record of getting pupils into college compared to public schools with similar demographics.

These are the fundamentals of the “no excuses” model:

·         An intense focus on college. Classes are typically given the name of their teacher’s alma mater or referred to by their graduating year (“the class of 2025”).

·         Lots of wall-displays with both motivational quotes and “shout-outs” to students who’ve reached a given goal or done well in state tests.

·         Extended days with a heavy focus on academic work and sometimes Saturday/holiday school.

·         Very strong behaviour management. At the extreme this can mean complete silence at all times including lunch break but more often will mean any off-task behaviour during lessons will be consistently punished.

·         The extensive and consistent use of techniques like SLANT to keep pupils on task and lots of professional development in these techniques (and behaviour management) for staff.

·         Fast paced teaching with rapid-fire questions to pupils and, often, significant amounts of direct instruction.

·         A predominantly young staff disproportionately recruited from Teach for America.

These widespread similarities, though, hide some significant variations that can lead to very different environments. Probably the most important is the relative importance given to teacher’s ability to develop an independent pedagogy. At some of the most successful chains lessons are essentially scripted. The executives in these chains will tell you, pretty bluntly, that what they want from new teachers is a willingness to work very hard and follow the set lessons plans without diverting. They have a formula that seems to work and they believe that following it is in the best interests of their students.

At other chains – notably KIPP (which isn’t really a chain at all but a set of regional franchises) – the attitude is markedly different. They aim to hire strong teachers, give them high quality professional development but then given them significant pedagogical freedom (as long as they get good results).

This greater freedom for teachers translates into a stronger relationship with their classes and the ability of both teachers and pupils to express their personalities. While all “no excuses” charters are strong on behaviour management it feels much less oppressive in those where teachers have had the opportunity to build strong relationships with pupils through teaching. It also leads to lower teacher turnover.

At the moment both models seem to generate good results and it’s not clear yet which model is more scaleable. It may that my preference for the more independent model is based on my own prejudices about what teaching should look like. I can’t help but feel, though, that models which give greater agency to teachers and pupils are likely to be more successful at generating long-term benefits above the ability to pass tests and get into college. One reason for KIPP’s move towards a more pedagogically autonomous, and more relaxed, model is that they found pupils, having reached college, were struggling to cope in a less structured environment.

As a teacher at one of the more formulaic charters put it to me “the things we’re doing seem necessary but insufficient”. Lots of structure is fine but it should be used to give the space to build strong relationships rather than to substitute for them.