Turbulent times

This week we welcome our Deputy Head (Academic), Dr David James, who explains why we are hosting our inaugural Education Summit later this year.

We live in turbulent times. Every day seems to carry a strapline of ‘what fresh hell is this?’ And the politicians, who are charged by the public to provide answers, seem at best stunned into inaction by the speed of events or, worse, actively conniving to make things more chaotic. WB Yeats’s lines from The Second Coming seem especially apposite at this moment in time:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It is easy to see how prosaic matters, such as education, slip down the Government’s To Do list. But I have argued elsewhere that, for schools, there is only one thing worse than a busy, conviction-led Secretary of State at the Department for Education, and that is not having one. And there is no doubt that ever since Michael Gove was defenestrated by a Prime Minister who wanted to win the last election, schools occupy fewer headlines, and probably take up less discussion time in cabinet, than they used to.

This can lead to drift, and drift in turn can lead to uncertainty, which in turn can store up problems for society in the future, because the issues affecting schools (such as academic underachievement or poor behaviour) are rarely contained behind the school gate. There are worrying trends developing in the maintained sector: it is estimated that four out of ten newly qualified teachers leave the profession within their first year of teaching; at the other end of the career ladder there is a retention crisis, with record numbers of headteachers stepping down, or taking early retirement. With so much talk about the crisis in the NHS this winter it is understandable that the challenges facing schools are overlooked, but they are there, and this is something that the National Funding Formula seems to be exacerbating, with some headteachers warning of a ‘bleak’ future for schools.

You will no doubt have noticed that I have decided not to discuss new GCSEs, with their still-to-be understood new grading system, as well as the death of AS examinations and the new, more rigorous A level with high-stakes terminal examinations that nobody, including our more selective universities, has total faith in.

It would be easy to be cynical. But of course there is much good happening in schools: students continue to excel beyond their own expectations, and regardless of what happens to the courses they study, or how they are assessed, thousands of inspiring, committed teachers will continue to do their best for the young people they teach. Public trust in teachers is second only to doctors (and considerably higher than politicians and estate agents, which is reassuring). To paraphrase George Eliot, it is because of the ‘unhistoric acts’ that teachers do every day that the ‘growing good of the world’ is added to. Or I like to think so anyway.

In such a climate we felt it appropriate to run an event that addressed some of the major issues facing schools today. And so, on 7 June, Bryanston is hosting its first Education Summit, which will bring together some of the most influential and knowledgeable voices in education today. Among those speaking is Lucy Crehan, whose book, Cleverlands, has been rightly praised as providing us with a startlingly clear insight into how teachers in other national systems achieve outstanding results with their students. It has been described as ‘audacious’, but mandatory reading for all those designing future education policy. Other contributors include Professor Dylan Wiliam, a seminal figure in education, consulted by leading companies, universities, and governments. There are few who know more about teaching than Dylan. And he is joined by Professor AC Grayling, one of this country’s leading intellectuals and academics. Toby Young and Claire Fox are also going to be asking difficult questions, and no doubt provoking strong responses. Other confirmed speakers, such as Ian Fordham, Microsoft’s Director of Education, will be focusing on the role of technology in the classroom; and others will be discussing the importance of partnerships to schools, and new developments in teaching and learning.

Why run an event like this, especially at the end of a tiring term? Because we believe that by bringing people together from across the education sector, to establish new connections, we can begin to find solutions to issues that affect everyone involved. It would be easier to not do this, to sit back and passively accept the slings and arrows hurled at us daily by opinion-formers and policy-makers, or to hunker down, and retreat into a bubble, hoping that the changes happening will sweep over us, leaving us untouched. Both approaches are unwise, especially as there are challenges and issues for all schools, including those like Bryanston. Both are also inimical to Bryanston’s ethos which actively promotes in its pupils an active engagement with the world around them. It is better to shape the debate than to be talked over and ignored.

This is not an event for teachers only: it is for everyone, including parents, who are interested in education today. Do join us, and take part in the debate.

For more information visit www.bryanston.co.uk/educationsummit.
More speakers will be confirmed nearer the time, and please do keep checking our website for further details, as well as following the summit on Twitter (@bryedusummit).

Against the clock

It’s a term of exams; one which is more complicated than any of my teaching career, as the latest round of national exam tinkering starts to bite. The country’s Year 12 pupils (we call them A3) are engaging, depending upon their choices, in a mix of legacy and reformed A levels - and it is a cocktail that is producing headaches across the country. Our job, parents and teachers, is to keep our charges sane. And to allow them to do their best.

Exams are one of those unavoidable snapshots of life; not attractive to many of those engaged in them, apart from a few odd souls who relish the adrenalin rush of proving themselves against the clock and without access to any notes that may help them. I remember my tutor at college, the wonderful Stephanie West, asking me as I was getting a little ‘stressed’ preparing for my unseen papers in Greats (which means ‘Finals’ in almost every other part of the world): “If we found a new manuscript of a Greek author, to whom would we give it for the better translation: a nervous finalist student in an exam with no dictionary, or a focused and rested expert in a library surrounded by all the texts one could possibly need?” That helped me a lot to realise what a damn silly idea in lots of ways an unseen translation exam is. It has to be done of course, but the aim of the test is not the production of a perfect translation, but the production of the best you can do in the most unnatural of circumstances. Doing well in exams is all about recognising upon what it is that you are being tested and making your peace with that.

My husband is a big horse-racing fan. He often talks to me about the horses, the trainers and the races and I understand a (very small) percentage of what he says. This is of course the secret of a long and happy marriage. He talked to me recently about ‘breeze up sales’, in which young horses (two-year-olds) are galloped (‘breezed’) for a quarter of a mile or so, the better to inform the on-looking prospective purchasers as to their potential as racehorses. Recently, it has become modish to time this test gallop. And still more modish to pay the highest price for the fastest horse. This has resulted, of course, in young horses being specifically prepared to excel in the test gallop, with less regard for their future health and racing prospects.

I was struck by, and indeed moved by, some of the language of horsemen who see the limits of this exercise. One said: “It’s a fad. But the shrewd guys are seeing through it. They know that if you push these young horses too hard, their heads will be fried, their legs will be fried, and you can forget any idea of them becoming racehorses. Best of luck to these lads with their stopwatches … I know we’re being penalised for not doing fast breezes. But our turn will come. People will come full circle.”

We all have to do ‘breezes’ against the clock. We call them exams. But whilst we accept we have to do them, and that it is generally a good thing to do well in them, I do hope that by next year we shall indeed be seeing a full circle. We will very soon be returning to the days of a two year sixth form (i.e. no AS exams) and, by 2019, we’ll be going back to something like 1926 and the School Certificate, with GCSEs graded 1-9, rather than A* to G. With that might return also the educational memory that not everyone is supposed to get only the highest grade; not everyone is first in a particular race. Or as another racehorse trainer put it: “A lot of the real ‘road runners’ that break the clock at the sales don’t turn out to be ‘race runners’, so to speak … and some of our best horses were bought simply because we liked their make and shape and attitude.”

I have two OB daughters in their early twenties who I very much hope, having been pretty decent ‘road runners’ at Bryanston, are now much more importantly ‘race runners’. All I have ever cared about is their ability to be independent, happy, and fulfilled. I wish them lives of brave choices and paths explored. I wish them loving and loved. These ‘breeze ups’ or exams are, and always have been, just irritating snapshots on the way to these greater goals. I do very much hope that between us we can make sure all our children have the right priorities in life. Some of achieving that is in making sure we don’t buy into any nonsense.

In other words, focus long-term. Or if you prefer, it’s not the snapshot or the stopwatch that matters but how it fits into your plans for a happy, fulfilling, and contributory life.