Target-setting and Classroom Practice – A Secondary School Case Study
John Beresford, University of Cambridge School of Education
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Lahti, Finland 22-25 September 1999
Abstract.
The paper examines some of the claims made for target setting in the literature. In looking at a case study of King Harold School, Waltham Abbey, it suggests that as a management tool for school improvement a modified form of target setting operates best in a school culture where there is an openness to external ideas, where there is an interest and willingness to experiment in the field of teaching and learning, and where students’ views are recognised as an important element in school improvement.
1.The National Context.
The 1988 Education Act, and subsequent legislation, established a system of site-based educational management with measurable inputs and outcomes, known as Local Management of Schools (LMS). The initial interest in developing performance indicators for the system (see, for example, CIPFA 1988, Young 1989, FitzGibbon 1990) has burgeoned into one of identifying elements of school effectiveness (for example, Sammons et al. 1995), of predicting and comparing the performances of similar schools (see Fitzgibbon 1992), of calculating the ‘value added’ by individual schools (SCAA 1994, DFE 1995), and most recently of setting targets.
The educational genesis of target-setting is difficult to locate. The early government guidance on school development planning included advice on target-setting as a management device (Hargreaves et al. 1989). The Confederation Of British Industry (CBI), as long ago as 1991, promoted a set of National Targets for Education and Training, many of which related to desired levels of academic achievement at the ages of 19 and 21. Target-setting appears as part of a political agenda in the same year, though with little justification other than a mimicking of industrial practice:
In business, companies make projections and calculate targets which are necessary and achievable. If Britain is serious about competing in industry we must do exactly the same so that the best resource we have - our people - get the best.
(Labour Party 1991)
From 1992, schools were encouraged to set targets in response to key issues identified in OFSTED inspections, although they appear not to have been very proficient in the process (Sebba and Loose 1996, Cuckle et al. 1997).
The CBI targets were subsequently endorsed by the Government and, after an extensive period of consultation, were updated in May 1995, to coincide with the launch of the DFEE’s Improving Schools Programme. As part of that programme Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Education, commissioned OFSTED to survey the best practice in schools in setting targets for higher achievement. The results of this survey were published in May 1996 (DFEE 1996).
In August 1996 the Conservative government announced that each school would be given an exam-related target (Carvel 1996). Guidelines were subsequently produced (SCAA 1997, DFEE 1997a, DFEE 1997b). There was no mention of target-setting in the 1997 Labour manifesto (Labour Party 1997), but after the election school targets were locked into government education targets for 2002, particularly those relating to literacy and numeracy in the primary sector:
Each school will have its own challenging targets to raise standards, and will be held responsible for achieving them.
(DFEE 1997a)
2.The Literature of Target-setting.
The debate on the efficacy of target-setting has taken place around five main areas:
- its impact on the academic outcomes of particular groups of students
- its usefulness as a management tool
- its motivational function
- its impact upon classroom practices
- its place in a system of accountability.
Academic outcomes.
Although the requirement for all schools to set targets is only a year old, examples of good practice suggest spectacular results for schools who anticipated government legislation (DFEE/OFSTED 1996). Nationally, the percentage of the student cohort achieving 5 A*-C grades at GCSE has risen for the seventeenth consecutive year in 1999 (Carvel 1999), but there has been a suggestion from head teacher associations that the improvement has not been matched by that of less able students:
The fact that there is a smaller increase in the success rate lower down the scale demonstrates a polarisation between the educational haves and have-nots.
(David Hart, NAHT, quoted in Carvel 1999)
The greater improvement in the higher grades reflects the pressure of the government and league tables to increase the proportion of pupils with five passes at Grade C or above.
(John Dunford, SHA, quoted in Carvel, ibid.)
The government has unsurprisingly said that there is no evidence of schools ignoring the majority of students to concentrate on those on the C/D borderline. Yet examples of good practice quoted in past government publications suggest that teachers have been encouraged to channel energy and resources towards improving the performance of such borderline students, for example the school where
the senior management team mentored specific groups of pupils for whom extra attention and support would mean the difference between good and merely average examination results
(DFEE/OFSTED 1996: 10)
and the school where
a major task was to identify pupils on the C-D borderline, and to mentor them
(DFEE/OFSTED 1996: 32).
If such strategies are commonplace, they suggest that some schools are prepared to prejudice the fairness and equity of their educational provision in responding to externally-imposed pressures. They also suggest systems of school improvement based upon the channelling of the finite resource of teachers’ energies rather than ones designed to develop the capacity of schools to improve. The first smacks of a short-term tactic to achieve immediate results, the second suggests a culture of openness to examining various strategies to achieve steady improvement over a long period.
Management tool.
National target-setting is clearly seen by the government as a tool to manage its educational system, and in particular the primary sector. By prescribing national targets for literacy and numeracy and providing funding to facilitate their achievement, government has also effectively prescribed the ways in which they are to be achieved (DFEE 1998, DFEE 1999).
Target-setting is also perceived by the government as a useful management tool at school level:
Pupil performance targets are especially valuable in clarifying goals and providing specific measures against which to judge success. They add clarity and focus to the planning process.
(DFEE 1997a: 4)
The advice given for drawing up targets suggests the necessity for schools to be involved in systematic data collection and analysis in order that targets are meaningful and relevant to improvement projects. Surveys of schools involved in the IQEA (Improving The Quality of Education For All) School Improvement Project (see Beresford, in press) suggest that such a culture is by no means commonplace. Where such collection and analysis do not take place as a matter of course, target setting becomes a ‘bolt-on’ to the other processes in the school.
Writers on school improvement have pointed out the dangers of attempts to impose such arrangements upon a school’s management structure:
Strategies which ultimately do not change the schools’ culture do not get at the crux of all school activity - the learning process.
(Dalin 1998: 182)
Commenting on the proposals for target-setting in the Government’s White Paper, teachers meeting the challenge of change, one of the original co-authors of the DES advice on school development planning writes that they are
illustrative of a tactical rather than a strategic approach to school improvement ... Without a focus on those strategies that lead to enhanced performance then the setting of targets usually becomes an end in itself rather than the first step in an improvement process.
(Hopkins 1999)
The government itself acknowledges that some sort of change of attitudes in schools may be necessary:
Head teachers and governing bodies are responsible for creating a positive climate, in which staff understand why pupil targets are needed, and take a full part in deciding levels
(DFEE 1997a: 15)
and a recent writer is optimistic that the process itself can have a transformational effect:
Target setting itself can change the culture of a school and its classrooms by fostering an atmosphere of collaboration between students and between students and staff.
(Lawley 1999)
The literature of school improvement suggests that it takes more than the imposition of a single teaching and learning strategy to bring about such a change (see Hopkins et al. 1994, Hopkins et al. 1996, Gray 1996). There seems to be general agreement, however, that for target-setting to be effective, it has to take place in a collaborative school culture in which enquiry into teaching and learning is intrinsic.
Motivation.
The present government is in no doubt about the motivational effect of target-setting on the whole of the school community:
Pupils, teachers, schools and LEAs ... need the motivation that comes from clear targets for success.
(Labour Party 1995)
Observers of successful practitioners, for example the head of a Birmingham secondary school, testify to the inspirational effect that they have:
The head ... breathes life into the belief that the school is proud to have students of all abilities and that the school should be accountable for all students achieving their best.
(Worrall 1999)
The head of a Lancashire primary school, after introducing target-setting to his students, noted that
pupils began to take an interest in their own achievements. They checked their work more and were keen to try other targets.
(Perkins 1999)
In the same vein another commentator writes that
target setting enables students to take control of their own work through supported self-evaluation of progress, time management and the development of study skills matched to their individual needs.
(Lawley 1999)
Clearly, target setting that is badly done can have a demotivating effect:
Failure to hit targets that are too ambitious can disappoint and undermine improvement initiatives.
(DFEE 1997a: 16)
Similarly, an overly instrumental approach to improving a school’s examination results can affect attitudes in a school:
Work within the field is now beginning to encounter students expressing doubts about the genuineness of their school’s interest in their progress and well-being as persons, as distinct from their contributions to their school’s league table position.
(Fielding 1999b)
Writing elsewhere, Fielding is in no doubt that what he terms the ‘tyranny of targets’ imposed by the Government will mean that
teachers and their students will continue to feel and respond as objects rather than agents of policy and their value will continue to reside ... in school performance rather than personal or communal significance.
(Fielding 1999a)
The suggestion here is that a locally-negotiated agenda for target setting will be more motivating than one which involves “a reality defined largely by others” (Ibid.).
Classroom practices.
Lawley suggests that target setting fosters a sense of adventure within schools:
Target setting can only be achieved through bringing about changes in the learning of the individual student ... [This] may involve a degree of experimentation and trial and error while different teaching and learning strategies are tried to solve a particular problem or lack of understanding which is impeding progress.
(Lawley 1999: 32, 67)
However, the survey of target setting practices undertaken in 1996 found that
strategies adopted to achieve targets ... often place greater onus on pupils to do better than on teachers to improve their effectiveness.
(DFEE/OFSTED 1996: 6)
In other words, it would appear that many teachers in the featured schools relied upon exhortation and ‘more of the same’, in teaching terms, in order to progress targets. It would also appear that in some cases it may be necessary for teachers to test out teaching strategies they have previously not tried in order to effect improvement in their students.
Accountability.
The Government has inextricably linked its own political agenda to the achievement of certain levels of student achievement by 2002 (see Barber and Sebba 1999). The Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in primary schools constitute a system of enforced accountability, where schools have been mandated to help meet externally-imposed and very specific targets. Individual teachers are accountable to their head teachers, head teachers to their governing bodies, and schools to their local education authority to meet these targets. Schools need to justify to OFSTED where they do not follow the Strategies. Primary schools are thus under pressure to teach Literacy and Numeracy in a prescribed way to meet targets they have had little say in devising.
The government has no doubt that it shares accountability with its schools:
Each school will have its own challenging targets to raise standards, and will be held responsible for achieving them.
(DFEE 1997b: 6)
Yet warnings about the dangers of mixing systems of planning and accountability were being issued some ten years ago:
The role of performance indicators as a management tool for improvement is distinct from their role vis-à-vis accountability.
(FitzGibbon 1989)
Today, the use of generally accessible outcomes data for target-setting in schools
tends to make teachers concentrate on the end product of learning rather than on the learning processes themselves.
(Lawley 1999: 65)
This suggests that the assertion that
schools will want to set further targets to reflect their own concerns and priorities
(SCAA 1997: 4)
is, perhaps, an optimistic one, particularly when the same organisation recommends that
OFSTED’s inspection reports should comment on whether the school’s targets are appropriate and on the progress towards them.
(Ibid.: 14)
A target setting regime which serves the internal purposes of the school is more likely to be embraced enthusiastically by schools than one which serves the external requirements of a public accountability system.
3.School Improvement and Quality Assurance at King Harold School.
King Harold School, in Waltham Abbey, had been one of the first schools to join the IQEA School Improvement Project based at the University of Cambridge Institute (now School) of Education, in 1991. The project aims to develop the capacity of schools to improve by both helping in the development of certain management conditions within the school and by advising the school in its chosen improvement focus. Key elements of those conditions are reflection and enquiry by staff through the collection of school-based data.
Writing in 1994, the members of the Cambridge IQEA team wrote the following tribute to the school’s involvement:
Even under the present pressures for change, King Harold School has found time to impose its own agenda on development activity within the school... It has been possible because quality management is seen as a vehicle for securing the school’s agreed policies. The outcome is teachers who work not harder, but more effectively. The collection, analysis and appropriate use of school-based data is a key to the more effective use of staff time and energies
(Hopkins et al. 1994: 150).
Such was its success in monitoring the processes of teaching and learning that King Harold became one of the first secondary schools to be awarded what was then called BS 5750 registration by the British Standards Institution.
In the course of its involvement in the IQEA Project, the school developed what it termed a Quality Improvement Process. This process began with the school development plan. In King Harold School, this plan represents a synthesis of statutory requirements, school targets (derived from meetings of the whole staff), and various targets produced from the teams operating within the administrative units, or Houses, within the school. The governors are involved in each stage of the process, and contribute their own comments and ideas.
From this corporate plan the staff agreed an agenda for school improvement. Key areas for improvement were identified, success criteria were determined and a timeline for the particular improvement initiatives were drawn up. The initiatives were implemented, and evidence was collected by curriculum team members in order to evaluate them. The pastoral and curriculum teams, the whole staff and the School Management Team each met to review and reflect upon the success of the initiatives. The findings from this review were fed into the school development planning in the following year, consolidating the gains of the various initiatives and helping in the design of further strands, thus providing an agreed agenda for development work and new initiatives.
In 1995, following its departure from the IQEA Project, the school management team expressed a concern that the development process could be accused of lacking the academic rigour and external validation that membership of the Project had brought. In addition the process, while emanating from a jointly-agreed school development plan, in reality fragmented the staff. Each initiative developed at its own pace, and employed its own research and evaluation methods. What was intended to be a series of co-ordinated improvement initiatives turned out to be sets of discrete activities. It proved difficult to generalise the findings of the various initiatives across all of the teams, even when the individual initiatives addressed general issues of teaching and learning. It was decided, in 1996, to address these particular issues.