The Role of UK Local Authorities to Support School Improvement

The role of UK Local Authorities to support school improvement.

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference,Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007

Danny Durant

Teacher Adviser

Worcestershire LA

P.O. Box 73

Worcester

WR5 2YA

Abstract

The paper provides an introduction to the Local Authority symposium ‘Research to support school improvement’ by looking at the ‘big picture’ and the range of issues associated with school improvement including the expectations on, and the changing nature and roles of, schools and LAs.

The opinions and interpretations contained in the paper are those of the author alone.

In recent years education has been a high priority for the UK government and there have been a vast array of projects and initiatives designed to improve standards. Some of these projects and initiatives are described. In the context of school improvement, standards have often been identified through measured assessments (typically National Curriculum standard assessment tests (SATs) and examinations (GCSE)). There are a number of ways in which assessment measures can be used e.g. for learning, for monitoring, for target setting, for accountability and the paper discusses some of the ‘assessment issues’ related to school improvement.

Schools and Local Authorities (LAs) have had major roles to play as part of the school improvement agenda. These roles have been set against a background of change for schools and LAs. The paper examines these structural and philosophical changes and looks at how they have impacted on the drive for school improvement.

ICT hardware, software and infrastructure have been widely used across the spectrum of teaching, learning and measuring and the use of ICT will continue to develop. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion in the amount of data that have become available. However ‘data rich’ does not necessarily mean ‘information rich’. A ‘cottage industry’ has developed to handle, analyse and interpret this data and the data have been used in a wide variety of ways by schools, LAs and others. The paper looks at issues associated with the collection and transfer of data, the use, analysis and interpretation of data and other ICT-related issues.

The paper concludes with a number of issues to be addressed during the symposium;

• the question of how to raise achievement in schools
• ways of measuring school quality
• the nature of underperformance
• limitations of the data and analyses
• the impact of ICT on pupil and school level attainment and progress.
• the role of LAs in supporting school improvement

Introduction

One might assume from the title of the paper and the fact that the author works in a LA, that the role LAs play in school improvement is clear. It is not and the role is being undertaken against a backdrop of continual change. Many themes are caught up with discussion of the role of the LA and colleagues in the symposium explore a number of issues.

In the pursuit for ever rising standards, Osbourne asks what is the impact of on-line revision on GCSE results and Kingdon looks at how effective schools are in helping their students to avoid low GCSE achievement. Standards may be rising, but the rise is not necessarily uniform across all children and there are gaps in attainment between different groups. Focussing on closing some gaps in some groups may have been at the expense of other groups. This issue is explored by Demie (A case study of good practice in raising achievement in schools) and Hayes (White working class boys: is their performance at school a cause for concern ?). Data are seen as a key part of the jigsaw and Elliot explores the use of data and the development of Pupil Achievement Tracker (PAT) within a local authority as a school improvement tool.

School improvement

Hopkins and Reynolds (2001) outlined the history of school improvement since the mid-1980s.

There is a view that school improvement theory is dominated by four principles;

• the primary purpose of education is to raise standards;
• the key priority for teachers is tracking each child’s current attainment levels and setting targets for improvement;
• the headteacher’s key task is to evaluate the impact the school is having on the standards obtained by its children;
• the key focus of inspection should be to determine the accuracy of each school’s self-evaluation systems.

The constant focus on school improvement is based on the premise that it lies within the capacity of all schools to guarantee a successful outcome to the education of each child. Where that will be the aim of any school, any failure to reach the required standard, however defined, is always the institution’s failure.

• Is this a fair viewpoint ?
• Is the school solely responsible ?
• Can any school guarantee absolute success (over and above doing the best for every child) ?

Children and their parents all have a contribution to make and the culture, values and commitment of them are important.

Harris (2001) “Concern over whether the school is the appropriate unit of analysis has been acknowledged by the school effectiveness and the school improvement research fields. Such arguments suggest that to analyse pupil achievement school by school is to overlook much closer influences on individual pupil performance. It also suggests that the school is not the only unit of analysis for ‘improvement’ activities, but that other levels or units within the school organisation also need to be considered.”

Schools are not uniform organisations and what works in one school may not work in another school. This is not a new finding. Gray (1981), Jesson & Gray, (1991) and Sammons et al (1993) discussed differential school effectiveness. Sammons et al (1993) concluded “the issue of differential school effectiveness for different subjects or kinds of educational outcome is clearly of importance in an era where the publication of school league tables is to become mandatory. The project's findings indicate that no simplistic division of schools into 'good' or 'bad' is possible.“

Wrigley (2004) “it seems indisputable that some schools achieve greater success, in examination and test results but also in terms of a wider view of educational achievement, than other schools in similar environments. The problem lies rather in an inadequate articulation of what counts as success, why some schools achieve it to a greater degree, and how other schools may aspire towards it.”

Some schools face bigger challenges than others. Lupton (2005) identified that “High-poverty schools would also face fewer organisational pressures under an accountability regime based on a broader notion of educational success than raw test scores, under which they are likely to fail, and an inspection system designed only to support improvements in quality, not to ‘name and shame’ schools that are failing.”

What works in one school may not work in that same school in the following year with a different cohort of pupils and/or different teachers. Gray et al (2003) report on their research that would “tend to support the view that changes in schools’ performance over time are a good deal more modest and variable than is sometimes supposed. Only a small minority of institutions seem to improve consistently over time; the greater majority has ups and downs. Furthermore, where upward movement does occur, it is of relatively short duration. Three years seems to represent a ‘good run’; four or more years currently seems exceptional. Three years is, of course, the minimum needed to establish a trend. Ironically, if our rather tentative conclusions come to be replicated on other datasets, it would also seem to represent the duration of such trends. School ‘improvement’ would appear to be characterised by bursts of activity over relatively short periods of time.” And that “attempts to impose a predetermined (and upward) ‘trajectory’ onto schools’ performances (such as are implied in target-setting and comparable exercises) are probably premature.”

How might the school generate improvement ?

Stigler & Heibert (1999) “If you want to improve teaching, the most effective place to do so is in the context of a classroom lesson. If you start with lessons, the problem of how to apply research findings in the classroom disappears. The improvements are devised within the classroom in the first place. The challenge now becomes that of identifying the kinds of changes that will improve student learning in the classroom and, once the changes are identified, of sharing this knowledge with other teachers who face similar problems, or share similar goals in the classroom”

Teaching is not mechanical or standard and it is often mysterious. For example, why should a child be able to grasp a specific concept on a particular day when they were struggling with it the previous week ? The answer lies in the coming together of a set of circumstances.

Things happen during the day in the classroom that may spark particular interest. What causes the ‘spark’ ? Regardless of how and why it happens, good teachers adapt and ‘seize the moment’. This is not possible when delivering a pre-specified lesson and is extremely unlikely to happen when an Ofsted Inspector is watching the lesson. More is the pity. During an inspection, the lesson typically follows the ‘good practice model’ and the ‘good practice’ (which probably isn’t always good practice), is reinforced, ownership is removed from teachers and innovation is stifled.

Children are different, have needs and emotions that are different from day to day. Good teaching takes account of these and many other factors to provide experiences through which the child can learn. In other words, encouraging learning and a love of learning (something that is required if ‘lifelong learning’ is ever to become a reality).

Hepburn (2007) reporting that Ellen Moir (Director of the New Teacher Centre at the University of California, in Santa Cruz) “Teacher quality is the single most important ingredient in raising standards of achievement and helping students learn. I think we need to invest more heavily in helping teachers become the best they can be.” One of the ways of achieving this as Hargreaves (1994) demonstrated is that teachers work most effectively when supported by other teachers and when they work collegially.

Harris (2001) in an article premised upon a view of school improvement as internally generated and internally driven at department level suggested that “department level within secondary schools is an underutilised but important means of mobilising and sustaining school improvement.”

The need for high quality teaching is recognised in 2020 Vision (Ofsted 2006) p12. In this context I am interpreting the phrase “high quality teaching” to cover the full continuum from didactic teaching to managing learning and providing experiences through which children learn. The issues associated with the recruitment and retention of good teachers are also recognised (p31).

In the same vein that schools are differentially effective, teacher effectiveness can fluctuate from one year to another. The VITAE project ( was designed “…. to assess variations over time in teacher effectiveness … The Department wants to understand how teachers become more effective over time.” “The project was able to focus upon two key policy agendas, each of which is important in its own right. One relates to recruitment and retention and the other to the ‘standards’ agenda. Analysis of the data suggest that there are associations between the two.” Day et al (2006). Among the key findings reported was that teachers vary significantly in their impact on pupils’ progress with teacher effects accounting for around 15%-30% of the differences between pupils’ in their progress after controlling for prior attainment and background factors.

Hepburn (2007) reported that Moir expressed concern that American teachers were being forced to focus on stringent yearly targets ahead of the wellbeing of their pupils. “There was ‘testing and accountability frenzy’ in the United States and not enough support for teachers from local authorities. We are too focused on test results at the expense of building the human capacity to do the best job possible,”. Hursh, (2005) also discussed these developments in education in the United States, noting that “Over the last decade all but one state, to varying degrees, have established standards and standardized testing requirements, including requiring students to pass examinations to be promoted to the next grade or from secondary school. However, with the passage of the federal ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act (NCLB), every state is now required to develop standards, standardized tests and accountability systems,”

Kerry (2002) “the emphasis on testing and the deep political desire to punish poor performers and those responsible for poor performance has blinkered policy makers to the true issue: operationalising social equality”. This was recognised by Ruth Kelly “academic attainment at each stage is also strongly related to social class. It is therefore particularly important to examine trends in gaps in attainment between social classes in the earlier stages of education.” (Kelly 2005b)

2020 Vision (2006) reported that “While some gaps have narrowed, for example, for black and minority ethnic pupils, others have proved to be extremely persistent nationally. The gaps persist in part simply because they are difficult to rectify: the factors that contribute to them are complex and inter-related.” (p6). Focussing on closing some gaps may have been at the expense of other groups. This issue is explored in the symposium by Kingdon (School quality and the incidence of low achievement at Key Stage 4), Demie (A case study of good practice in raising achievement in schools) and Hayes (White working class boys: is their performance at school a cause for concern ?)

Standards

Ever since Tony Blair famously declared in 1996 that his three priorities were “Education, education, education”, it has been consistent Government policy that education standards have to rise. However, there is a physical ceiling to all standards and they cannot keep rising inexorably. ‘Sustaining’ standards might be a sensible approach, but if forever raising standards is defined as a key purpose, then there is a treadmill from which nobody can ever escape.

One of the drivers of the policy to raise standards is based on international comparisons. Hilton (2006) concludes “It can be seen, therefore, that neither the PIRLS research ( nor the annual NC tests thus provide plausible evidence of a rise in standards in primary English since 1996.”

In a scenario of ever-rising standards, whenever a centrally defined standard is set, by definition, a proportion of students will be doomed to ‘fail’.

• What proportion of ‘failing’ students might be deemed acceptable ?
• At which point would standards be seen to have been raised ‘enough’ ? If there isn’t such a point, then ‘failing’ schools are also defined into the system.

The fact that there are always going to be ‘failing’ schools is emphasised in RAISE online Among the graphs available is the following quadrant graph. The vertical axis measures contextual value added (CVA). [For a summary of CVA see

Schools with CVA figures above the national figure display above the horizontal axis. The horizontal axis provides the relative attainment (the difference between the school and the national figure in terms of absolute attainment). Schools above the national figure are displayed to the right of the vertical axis. The graph, therefore, displays four quadrants and their official commentaries are provided below;

1)“Progress is below the national average – the pupils are making worse than average progress across the key stage compared to similar pupils. Attainment is below the national average – the pupils are gaining lower scores than average, raw results will be low, headline figures such as 'the percentage of level 5' are likely to be below the national figure. With progress poor and attainment low, the school is not performing well for its pupils and should focus on improving rates of progression (that will consequently raise attainment).

2)Progress is above the national average – the pupils are making better than average progress across the key stage compared to similar pupils. Attainment is below the national average – the pupils are gaining lower scores than average, raw results will be low, headline figures such as 'the percentage of level 5+' are likely to be below the national figure. With progress good, attainment is low, the school is performing well for its pupils and should focus on how to raise attainment (by raising progress further). This is likely to be a challenging situation.

3)Progress is above the national average – the pupils are making better than average progress across the key stage compared to similar pupils. Attainment is above the national average – the pupils are gaining higher scores than average, raw results will be high, headline figures such as 'the percentage of level 5+' are likely to be above the national figure. Performance is good.