A blog of two halves about grammar schools

The half with the evidence
Over the last month many of my friends and acquaintances have asked me, "Just what is the deal with grammar schools?" The fascinating thing is that it really isn't complicated. There is loads of evidence. And it basically comes down to three key points.

The first, most people already know, is that disadvantaged children in areas with grammar schools do worse than their counterparts in areas that don't select at eleven.

The second, some people know, is that when comparing other education systems around the world the ones that do best don't select.

And finally the bit that not so many people know is that those lucky enough to pass the eleven plus and go to grammar school do no better than their counterparts in areas without selection. The educational advantage is secured before they even start.

To summarise the best education systems in the world don't do selection by ability. Where selection happens the disadvantaged do worse and the lucky do no better.

So why the hell does the idea persist?

The half with the opinion
My first hypothesis is a cognitive bias called the endowment effect which basically states that humans tend to value things they have bought or selected. We like to think that we are clever and make wise choices.

People who went to grammar school tend to be positive about the experience. It made them feel special and valued. It gave them a leg up...

Well it didn't actually give them a leg up as we have seen above. Others less fortunate were hobbled and held back but the end result was the same. Those that went to grammars tended to get better jobs.

So they viewed grammars as good things. They feel preferable to private schools where any idiot can buy a better future if their parents have money. Those who went to grammar school did so as a result of their own merit and hard work. It plays nicely to those with an ethic to get on and better themselves.

But effectively the selection at 11 massively favours those with money and the ability to tutor their children through the exam so it is the perfect tool of an oligarchy.

You concentrate power in the hands of a select few but give the impression that you believe in a meritocracy. So your hold on power is never challenged. It is the educational equivalent of the 'Hunger Games' or a lottery. Although a lottery would actually be a fairer model of allocating places.

But why this government's interest?

My second hypothesis is that they want to distinguish themselves from the absurdly overpriveleged rule of Cameron and the Etonians.

Thirdly and perhaps more sinisterly is that it is a policy that sounds good but which can't be measured for a really long time. It would take a minimum of ten years and possibly more to actually be able to measure whether grammar schools had improved outcomes for all. All of which time you can report to the electorate that you are making progress towards an entirely invented number of new grammars (say 500) without actually being held to account for it being a stupid idea in the first place.

It's almost perfect politics. Something you can say with conviction and passion is the thing you are doing to improve education for everyone but which no one can challenge with inconvenient facts or reality.

Other than all that data that we already have.

And you thought that Donald Trump was post-factual.

Note: let me be absolutely clear that I don't have anything against grammar schools. I have a problem with the idea that only 1 in 5 children or thereabouts get the chance to go to one and that this selection is made at the age of eleven. If the challenge was to make all schools make children feel as special and successful as those that went to grammar schools then I would be all over it.

More evidence:
Full fact's summary
Huffington post's summary which leaves the door open if the admission criteria are changed
The RSA's letter to the debate

Neo liberalism and education - where have we seen this before?

I drafted this piece back in May but didn't post it because it was born of frustration and could be perceived as negative.  But looking at it now, I don't think there is anything overtly critical in it.  It is clearly ironic and with a bit of distance I think it shows how policy builds on policy.

Often the problem that you seek to solve requires you to start from somewhere other than where you are now...

"The week before last was a big week in education politics.  Or at least it seemed that way from the news media. The government rowed back from the forced academisation of all schools.  And everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

But was there really a change of heart in light of the opposition to the ideas published in the education white paper?  Or did the government simply take the opportunity to accept something that it already knew... That it doesn't have a hope of turning all the schools in the country into academies and furthermore, it doesn't really have the money or the expertise to run them if it did.

This is the continuing problem with policy and practice.  Policy is about big ideas; aspirations for society as a whole but it doesn't sully itself with reality.

The evolution of the 'academy' argument goes (a little) like this:

Lord Andrew Adonis (the Dr Pepper Phase)

• There are endemically failing secondary schools
• If we always do what we have always done we will always get what we have always got
• Central government can't improve them and local authorities can't improve them
• Let's try something different
• Inject some enthusiasm, extra cash and freedom and see how they get on

And you know what...  A lot of them got better.  But before it was possible to identify if this was just the Hawthorne Effect, regression to the mean or genuine system improvement along came...

Michael Gove (the Revolutionary Phase)

• The Labour government 1997-2010 spent more on education than almost all of its predecessors
• And yet outcomes did not improve in line with this expenditure [1]
• Why?
• Because much of the money was wasted on bureaucracy and middle management (the bourgeoisie) and didn't have any impact on the children
• Wouldn't it make more sense to get rid of the bureaucrats and give control of the money to those who understand what children need ie the headteachers? (the proletariat)

This is the rationale behind the creation of a 'school led system' 

It has the added benefit of reducing the size and scope of local and national government which is a long standing ambition of right of centre political parties. As well as destroying large urban education authorities who are often politically opposed to Tory government.  

Under Michael Gove the academy model was extended from secondary to primary and from 'failing' schools to all schools. It became a badge of honour to convert. The naughty chair still existed for forced academy status.

Lord Nash (the Neo Liberal Phase - but with echoes of Stalinism) 

• The revolution has happened
• But there's still no evidence that becoming an academy actually improves outcomes for children 
• What's holding us back?
• Governance. Governors (kulaks) always impeded local authority attempts to school improvement and are still doing so in MATs where governors have just moved over
• The 'Freedom' allowed to academies shouldn't include the freedom to resist the DfE
• If we push all schools to academy status the entire system will fragment allowing market forces to do their work (those that are good will grow those that are not will fail)
• If only we could also introduce robust corporate governance then under performance would have nowhere to hide
• Instead of having governing bodies in every school, lets have a higher skilled board of trustees for every 10 schools or so.  

And so in three steps we have come from, "Let's do something different, what's the worst that could happen?" Via, "Blow the whole thing up and start again, what could possibly go wrong?" To, "You are all free but some are more free than others.[2]"

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Footnotes

[1] Not sure the evidence bears this out but it was part of the argument

[2] “A  paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.”  George Monbiot

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse...

Oh goody. Grammar schools are back on the agenda.  That will help social cohesion and social mobility...

I was going to blog about it but when looking for evidence to support both sides of the argument I found this piece from Full Fact, which puts it much better than I could.

And, as I have said before, the difference in life chances is established before children leave primary school. So, if the government genuinely wants to improve social mobility it should look at improving primary funding. Not coming up with new whizzy schemes... particularly if the 'new whizzy schemes' are just repackaged failures from the past viewed the the rosy lenses of those lucky enough to be selected.

The straw man to end all straw men

I am dismayed by the English & Welsh vote to leave the EU. I am not surprised by the English vote, indeed I have been worrying about it for the last six months.  The Welsh I had thought would see which side their bread was buttered on... But alas no.

I will be angry for some time as this is electoral self-harm on an epic scale.  

But I am just as angry at the reaction of the remain lobby who jump to label all those who voted to leave as fascists and racists.  This is as stupid as that which they accuse of their opponents. 

I can completely understand why people voted at they did:

And it starts with this marvellous maths meme on the Iceland football team who recently beat the English (which is very funny)

I keep asking myself how on earth did 17.4 million people vote to leave the European Union. And of course the answer is that they didn't.  

Utterly invented but indicative tally of people who voted leave:



And before anyone gets upset the same thing applies to those who voted remain (ie there were lots of different reasons that added up to slightly fewer than the above).

The point is that plebiscites are the tools of politicians who don't actually care what the people think but just want to manipulate them (this is probably still part of the GCSE History curriculum).  They are the tools of demagogues and dictators.

David Cameron didn't have the courage or the decency to put remaining in the EU in the Conservative manifesto.  He thought he could split the vote and win or narrowly win the election and then either avoid altogether or manage the electorate through a referendum. But people don't like being managed or patronised or talked down to.  

Jeremy Corbyn is almost as responsible for his abjectly wet attempt to support remain. But so is Nick Clegg for destroying the Liberal voice in the UK. So is Tony Blair for not introducing Proportional Representation and making people in non-marginal communities actually think that their vote mattered (oh and for invading Iraq). Likewise the entire union movement for giving us Ed Millband and then Jeremy Corbyn.  Likewise Margaret Thatcher for undermining society as a whole. And so on through Callaghan, Wilson, Heath etc. Likewise the fourth estate for the most pathetic failure to hold both sides of the campaign to account for their shocking lies and exaggerations.

This is not a triumph of democracy. It is an abject failure.

We might as well have a revolution...

Well he would say that wouldn't he...

This will be my last post on the EU referendum.

It is probably the most important choice put to the UK electorate in the almost 50 years I have been a British Citizen.  But regardless of how passionate and scared I am about the outcome on June 24th, I know you can go too far in trying to convince people and end up simply alienating them; as Eddie Izzard did on question time last week...

[when you are sitting next to Nigel Farage in a debate and Nigel starts to look measured you must know you are doing something wrong]

My parting shots to the debate all come from conversations I have had over the weekend and sit under three broad headings.

Question people's motives
I spoke to someone on Friday night who told me that his mind had largely been made up following a conversation with an affable city trader (a decent sort of bloke) who had reassured him that the UK economy would be fine following Brexit.  The city would go on making money and based on this he favoured Brexit.

I got the distinct impression that this was a remain own goal.  If the campaign hadn't been so relentlessly negative about the UK spinning into an economic black hole of its own making (which of course it won't) then he might have opted for the status quo.

I think this highlights the importance of motives.  I am sure that the city trader my friend spoke to came across as friendly, credible and reasonable.  But he had a significant vested interest in my friend believing him.

[incidentally if you want to know about where we should be directing our anger, rather than against immigrants and foreigners, you might be interested to know that banks and hedge funds have commissioned exit polls so they can make a profit from the referendum because the broadcasters are not doing any]

So, whichever way you lean or vote please ask yourself what does this person stand to gain by my believing what he has to say?*

Look behind the first line of argument
The second conversation was with my plumber.  Who, incidentally, is about as wonderful a plumber as you could wish for. He is British, although his girlfriend is Polish and his concerns are all about the unelected eurocrats who tell us what to do.

Sovereignty has been put front and centre by the Brexit campaign.  They argue that British people should make decisions about British laws, which of course sounds like a good thing. Although the argument does hide the, 'nasty foreigners who can't be trusted idea' inside itself.  I would suggest that it is not about reclaiming sovereignty, it is about concentrating it in someone else's hands.

Brexiteers are not arguing to reclaim the power over your life from Johnny Foreigner to give it back to you.  They want the power for themselves.  And having left the EU, there will be significantly less counterbalancing power.  They argue that if we can take back power from the EU at least you will be able to kick them out at the next election if you don't like what they are doing.  But they make this argument knowing that we don't actually live in a democracy. The power to influence a British general election is concentrated in the hands of a terrifyingly small group of people and that group includes Rupert Murdoch.

I would never claim that the EU is a beacon of democracy, it isn't.  It's what you get when you build compromise on top of compromise.  But I would argue that the EU is significantly less vulnerable to minority control than a Brexited UK.

The concept of Boris Johnson claiming to be 'for the people against the elite' ought to make your brain leap outside of your head at its sheer nonsense.  Yet we let him get away with it only because the Prime Minister is even more privileged and lacks Boris's self-deprecating charm.

Above all do no harm
The third conversation was the only argument that I had some sympathy with.  Over a delightful game of mini-golf with my wife and daughter, my wife's oldest friend explained to me that he was backing Brexit because it might be the first step towards bloody revolution.

He argued that the current state of the nation is so terrible we must do something.  The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer. What little social cohesion remains is evaporating faster than the ice-caps.  Why not blow the whole thing up and start again? It's not as if it could get any worse.

Could it?

Well, yes it could. Because if we vote to leave, we will effectively be voting to transfer power from one group of elitist, greedy, selfish %$#@ers, without moral compass, who have no understanding of or interest in what life is like for normal people...

To another group of even more elitist, even more greedy, even more selfish but also racist @#$%ers who are simply pretending to care about you because they want your vote.

You don't believe that Donald Trump actually cares about anyone other than himself.  Why would you believe them?

Take a tip from doctors.  If you are unsure what is going on,  first be sure to do no harm. Please vote to remain.

I'll give you a hug if you do.

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* Personal disclosure so you can question my motives.  I don't think that my family will benefit financially one way or another.  My elderly mother's house in France may actually go up in value if Sterling collapses but the value of our house may also go down. I have no shares. My pension will probably be unaffected either way in that I will never be able to afford to retire.

Attempt #2 to raise the quality of debate in education

With a nod to my earlier post on creeping stupidity... I should declare in advance that I am CEO of an Academy Sponsor (the Elliot Foundation) and I have helped a number of of academy chains and groups of schools who are considering whether becoming an academy is in their interest.  But I'm getting a little bored with the spectacular inaccuracy and prejudice presented as fact on all sides of the education debate.

Yesterday the Times published an article under the title 'Huge Gulf in Academy Standards Revealed' (and I'm not having a pop at the Times as this is representative of the reporting on the sector as a whole and they have at least tried to inform).  They had commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers to analyse national school results and had produced a league table that I have pasted below:

You might think that I would be chuffed to bits to be running the second best primary chain in the country.  Particularly since I was in the media a fortnight ago calling for league tables of academy sponsors and for OFSTED to inspect academy chains.  But actually I think the whole table is probably rubbish because it doesn't give you enough information to decide whether it is meaningful. And I'm hoping that, because it says we are great, you might believe me when I pick it apart.

It would appear from the table that what PWC has done is to take the publicly available school performance tables (that were published last November) and stick them into a spreadsheet to work out collectively what percentage of children in each Multi Academy Trust achieved the expected level (in primary) and their average point score (in secondary) and then ranked them.

If this all that PWC has done (and it could be a big if as the Times has not published the actual report and the rankings are not in strictly numerical order at the bottom so they probably haven't) then it is so criminally simplistic as not to bear thinking about.  It's like comparing Havant Town Football Club with Real Madrid...

Not all primary schools are created equal.  This is not some pathetic, wet, lefty moan about unfairness.  It's blunt and simple.  Some primary schools deal with children who arrive at the age of four still in nappies and unable to communicate. And some don't.  To compare them simply in terms of the levels their children have reached at the end of the schooling is dangerous.

So if you are going to publish tables, and I believe we should because otherwise no-one will trust you,  then you need to publish them with some form of context data and seek to inform people about it.

English as an additional language Pupil Premium Index of Multiple Deprivation Times/PWC score Harris Federation Primaries 23% 36% 57% 84% Elliot Foundation 47% 45% 78% 78% Wakefield Diocese 37% 45% 79% 63% National average 19% 27% 50% 80%

In the above table I have quickly pulled together some of the more common measures that indicate challenge in schools for the top two and one of the bottom three (of the table above) and given the national average (source DfE data and ONS data but figures not in bold are my calculations so may contain errors) and you should immediately see that there is significant variance in all the levels of challenge (incidentally the Index of Multiple Deprivation ranks the post codes in the country from 1% least deprived to 100% most deprived).  So a blanket sponsor x is better than sponsor y is not immediately apparent.

And this is before we factor in the level of transience, which is pupils moving in and out of schools or other issues affecting performance.

If you want to have a reasonable comparison, you are much better off looking at pupil progress or value add rather than attainment .  But to do that you have to assess children very early in their schooling and that is a whole other debate...

So just to summarise:

• Making a school into an academy doesn't improve anything unless it comes with significant other changes to the way that school is run or children are taught (otherwise you are simply changing the name)
• Most of the most challenged schools in the country (particularly at secondary level) have already become academies so like-for-like comparisons with schools under local authority control is impossible
• Equally many sponsors have not had their schools long enough to claim that any improvement or deterioration was their fault or to their credit
• It could simply be regression to the mean (ie on average things are average)
• Although it is only human to want to simplify things into good and bad
• It is usually too complicated to give such a simple answer

Don't rush to judgement.  

Teachers and school leaders want to improve outcomes for your children.  

I wish I could say the same about everyone else.

Enough already! Can we stop the stupid please...?

Unfortunately, complete ignorance does not prevent strongly held opinions.  In fact the opposite is true.  He who shouts loudest, generally shouts stupidest.  And those who know more, generally doubt more...

In the past this was less of a problem.  You could walk away from the drunk in the pub or the nutter on the bus.  But the rise of social media has just given lots of idiots a megaphone and a soapbox. Moreover, we seem to have forgotten the caveat to the most common justification for self-endarkenment,

"Everybody is entitled to an opinion...."

Yes they are.  But they're not entitled to have that opinion taken seriously unless they can marshall evidence in its defence.

If you want to be taken seriously you must cite your sources and declare any interest so that other people can evaluate you opinion.

Rant over. Sorry.