Small Schools resolve Disadvantage
Mervyn Benford
Information Officer National Association for Small Schools.
Well, you would expect me to say that, wouldn’t you? I have argued the virtues of small schools for over 20 years, having been Head of one for 15 and inspected over 25for Ofsted in the days when they did the job properly. When 75% of 3 observation days had to be spent observing lessons across ten subjects, with just two or three teachers, then each teacher gets seen rather a lot! When Ofsted then in 1999 reported that in small schools quality of teaching was better than elsewhere- with proportionately more good teachers- we realise that those conclusions resulted from sustained levels of observation! In 2007 Ofsted reported that schools under 50 had more of its new ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ grades than any larger schools, with those between 51 and 100 the next most effective cadre.
It should not surprise, then, that the sadly large cadre of failing, disaffected children first identified in “All our Futures” in the mid-70s and still very much with us are rarely found in small schools. In 2007 The Sutton Trust- dedicated to improving prospects for the disadvantaged, reported that “deprived children were still bottom 30 years on.” The same Trust was reported in the TES in 2010 finding that at six years old poor but bright children were overtaken by less able but richer ones. They noted that at that age their vocabulary and sentence structure falls behind their peers. In effect by six “innate cleverness is trumped by wealth.” A Manchester School study published in May 2013 Vol. 82 Issue 1, into the impact of truancy on attainment reported that the problem was worse in 2012 than in 1997.
The Scottish Government in 2006 produced a comprehensive survey of primary school performance which showed the smaller the school the better: children in its smallest schools had a 25% higher chance of entering higher education and children in those same schools from impoverished and disadvantaged families actually made progress- rare evidence indeed. Incidentally the18+ findings matched those of JohnstoneHMIe in 1975 who found that at Scottish ‘Highers’ the most successful pupils were girls from remote highland and island schools closely followed by boys from those schools. This was reported in the Aberdeen University study by Forsyth and Nisbet for the then DOE looking at the impact of closures. The 1975 evidence remained true 31 years later!
Ofsted reported in 1999 that small schools out-performed the rest in attainment but qualified this by claiming free school meals take-up was lower in rural schools.Even so small schools remained as capable as the best of the rest. NASS disputed the significance since though a handful of dormitory shire counties adjacent to major Metropolitan areas would be socio-economically more advantaged the bulk of rural UK was rather low income and not at all so privileged yet the results across the board were as good. The most rural English counties have for many years received less in central Government grant than the rest. The f40 group, representing such Local Authorities has properly complained and lobbied for fairer distribution.The superior teaching quality in small schools will have had little to do with socio-economic differences in catchment areas.The argument by Ofsted and others that small rural schools are advantaged ignores decades of evidence that quality of teaching is one of the most significant contributions to pupil attainment.
Scotland used free meals data but also its distinctive free clothing allowance records and it is not difficult to observe that large numbers of small rural schools in Scotland are half way up mountains, or in remote valleys and of course on a lot of islands. Their disadvantaged children were disadvantaged.
When Sandy Longmuir, professional statistician and rural farmer who promoted small school strengths to the Scottish Parliament looked to England for evidence, he produced the information shown in the chart below. It can be seen that levels of deprivation in remote rural areas now approach those found in inner city areas but academic outcomes are vastly superior. It is the same evidence as Scotland found. It may not surprise, then, that in 2009 Scottish inspectors went to inspect an 8-pupil school in the outer Hebrides but decided after one day to cancel the inspection- the work was so good they preferred to document it as best practice. When Scilly Isles schools became an early example of federation the secondary school heading the group, some 250-300 pupils, was in Ofsted’sspecial measures, the largest primary of some 70 to 80 pupils was causing concern but the two island schools with 4 and 5 pupils respectively were receiving their second successive glowing Ofsted reports.
Such small numbers may seem somehow easier to teach- like children taught at home in families, but central to the case consistently made against small schools is that small numbers- for many Councils under 60 or 70 pupils in fact- are educationally unviable with a catalogue of alleged (never proven) deficiencies. Critics cannot have it both ways. The family model lends cogency to my view that we have to return education to its roots in families and communities. Smaller schools afford such possibilities far more naturally and effectively. The evidence from national test and inspection evidence shows schools under 100 pupils good as any others and in key respects- as quality of teaching already cited above- and relations with parents, often better. A detached observer may rationally ask why larger schools- without all those alleged deficiencies- do not out-perform them.
Hard research has long shown that two resources mainly, though not exclusively, influence ultimate educational outcomes- home background and quality of teaching. Both are lotteriesin that children can receive effective care and education or less effective. Inspection evidence openly praises the explicitly close and positive relationships between home and school. In the last report on school performance to the Welsh Assembly (2006) Estyn stated this as the second most significant factor explaining why in Wales small schools did as well as any others.The driving factor in small school success is that capacity for partnership between home and school. Human factors topped the league table of what makes education effective produced by New Zealand’s Professor Hattie from analysing large numbers of national and international studies of what worked in teaching and learning, covering nine million children in total. System, organisation and buildings were at the bottom of the league.
Such close partnerships become more difficult the more the numbers grow. Many schools, including large schools, can create effective teaching. Even so test and inspection analysis do not suggest too many of these reach such heights as those, for example, identified for best practice by the National EducationTrust. I would not mind my grandchildren attending any of those but it would be much more difficult to have the same relationships with their parents as I had as Head of my small village school. I knew every family, had been in every house, had shared village events socially, had seen several children from the same families through the school.
When parents and teachers are more on the same wavelengths, sharing ambitions, values, attitudes and effort, children feel safe and secure, that effort is worthwhile and achievement possible and this is what the hard evidence shows- and not only in the UK.An academic study by Dijon University of the closure of 22 of 50 schools in a rural Departmentshowed that after ten years costs of transport alone had almost overtaken the cost of keeping all 50 open and that as 50 schools they got better results. Once again we should not assume such parts of France especially advantaged areas.
Many will argue that smaller classes are a factor in the evident success of small schools. There is little firm evidence that size of class influences performance. Ofsted has praised science lesson at Fairfield Community School in Herefordshire with 60 or 70 pupils. Not all science lessons had such classes but introductory lessons involving teacher demonstrations lent themselves to such organisation where the follow-up lessons were in smaller groups and with individual tuition for pupils with special needs. I worked for many years in Sweden and was impressed by occasional examples where subject teachers put their timetables together to study common curriculum material- each pursuing specific subject targets but with more time available for interaction or depth of study.
There is considerable scope for more flexible ways to use time, space and people in best educational practice. Because of their small size- and necessarily mixed age and ability groups, it is less difficult for small school staff to work flexibly as needed. Asmall Leicestershire school Headteacher took YR and Y1 classes (51 children) for an end of day story and had them eating out of her hand. The NFER long ago reported it would be necessary to reduce class sizes to 15 to see any possible benefit and then only if the teachers adjusted their methods. Subsequent studies have tended to confirm those findings. The only evidence of possible benefit from smaller classes was in a recent American study in which it was confined to very young children- again more likely to be the greater interest of parents at that time of a child’s schoollife.
Mixed age/ability teaching and small peer groups are among the alleged deficiencies of small schools but in fact, in good professional hands, a significant strength. It is how children learn at home. It is how people work in the real world. It is the essence of the oldest and most effective teaching model in history- masters and apprentices. Sensitively managed the model is unsurpassable, wholesome and effective. Taken together with ready access to the curriculum outside the classroom which small village schools use so effectively the children have a better chance to identify with what they are taught- why the tools of language, technology and mathematics are useful; how the history and geography in books flows from their own hills and streams and work places; how landscape and the elements have influenced creative arts; how people in a community relate to each other;how they use practical and intellectual skills for real purposes- in other words building “readiness for life and living” which is the true goal of education.
One fine June day in the late 70s the 55 children in my 3-teacher school were having lunch when into the open doorway appeared a tall, elderly lady looking classically out of an Edwardian history book. She asked to come in and explained: “I’m 80, and I used to come to this school. My son is showing me round where I spent my childhood.” The first thing she did was look down this, the larger of our two classrooms. “Isn’t it small!” she exclaimed. It told me immediately that 75 years ago she remembered the same room being big. Three weeks later a former pupil I had taught, David. Came into the other classroom for a Bingo evening in aid of school funds. “Cor, Mr, Benford, isn’t it small!”Will we ever seriously debate just how damaging it can be for our youngest children to face the daunting space and hundreds in our urban schools? They turn up each day but does the Education ‘ON’ switch throw or are vital months of early development lost by just going through the motions?
UK inspectors almost unanimously praise the relations between small schools and parents, as well as the local community, and the positive curriculum and social enrichment this represents. They largely report very effective provision for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special educational needs. In other words children in small schools suffer less the quality lottery. They have good home background and good teaching. Their disadvantaged children should therefore succeed and they do.
Effective education for any children, and not least those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is not difficult- the recipe has been long around in research- effective home background and effective teaching. The latter is well documented as much to do with effective leadership and Ofsted has openly recognised the significance in small schools of the teaching Head- aware of standards being attained and involved directly in curriculum and other planning. The teaching Head is another of those classical deficiencies claimed by those wanting closures- including some professionals!
Professors Hattie and Galton have illuminated effective teaching and learning. We can reach parents with simple truths no-one tells them- that their bundles of joy from day one have brains imprinted for language and serious analytical powers that quickly inform us of their needs and resulting. “So talk to them!” And as the powerful links between music and Mathematics have long been documented and correspondingly ignored- “Sing to them!” The absence of these messages means even less is being done and more and more children arrive in school further disadvantaged by limited ability to speak!
Any parents, including a single mum- can do these simple things that research shows virtually shape educational effectiveness long-term. The time when a pencil one day can be a plane and the next a boat is the time for education. That is when the brain builds raw power the experts tell us is there still in abundance but never used even by the Einstein’s of the world. This is its best defence against the rapidly imminent redundancy it faces as technology replaces its driving functions. Teachers and parents have suffered so much and so long from the failure of society and government provision, local and national, to base policy on what research shows works! Every year I try to clear out what my wife regards as “junk,” including old brochures and articles and newspaper cuttings I kept decades ago as potentially useful. It so saddens me to see they concern problems we still have and strategies in response to initiatives seen as significant at the time but which just failed.
We can start by never building another large school.
Our partners, Human-Scale Education, sponsored bythe Gulbenkian Trust which funded earlier HSE work because of its growing concern for the state of childhood and the well-being of young people, has published a book by James Wetz,“The Urban Village School,”arguing for secondary schools to be no larger than 300 pupils. If 1500 places are needed then have five such units.NASS argues there is no more urgent or important place for such small-scale concepts as when children in our big towns and cities are just starting out on the big education journey. We need schools of 75 to 100 close to the streets where the children live, with parents able to pop in and out and be known and the riches of the urban environment as easily accessed as those rural ones cited above.
I have seen such provision in urban Sweden at pre-school level. It works much as federations here are designed to work- unitary management but across a square mile where rural ones attempt to shape several historically disparate communities miles apart into some kind of common identity.Sweden is also the epitome of effective, economical building methods: clinics, schools and classrooms, even houses come IKEA-like in pre-fitted units that are then effectively bolted together. At major education exhibitions for years classrooms so designed have been offered for sale. 30 years ago Tim, now Sir Tim Brighouse as CEO in Oxfordshire asked county architects if they could design a school to standard requirements but more economically. They produced designs that would do so at alittle over half the normal price. Of course nothing became of it- the sheer lethargy in the education system prevents any such radical movement. As I write this my newspaper tells me that architects are starting to plan and construct buildings using the revolutionary new 3D printers that are already able to replicate any material object desired.
NASS evidence collected over many years shows that long-term small schools deliver profit to taxpayers where those wanting to close them argue they cost too much. DfE figures show no more than 6% of allprimary teachers work in schools of 100 pupils or less. Those under 50, getting the best teaching but the principal closure targets, will employ a smaller percentage. Some will be needed wherever the children attend. Flawed economics closes small schools and blinds providers to the opportunity the model presents for our urban children enduring large schools crowded with people.
More sophisticated economic analysis than Local Authorities care or dare to use- the kind any responsible business would undertake- show that long-term initially higher costs repay the Exchequer by reducing the costs of failure and shaping more enduring success- leading to better jobs and higher tax revenues. We can give all our inner city children- where the bulk of educational disadvantage lies, the glowing reports such as those from Gilsland sitting under Hadrian’s Wall in remote Cumbria, or from a small Norfolk school at the time deliberately managing with a 3-day a week Headteacher. Extracts reflecting the tenor and tone of both reports sustain my argument that we need more small schools- in town and country alike!