Nansi Ellis

Education Policy Consultant

A new professional identity for new times

You and your work are essential to the change this government wants to achieve across the country, and I want our renewed relationship to reflect that.’

Bridget Phillipson’s words to the education profession are a far cry from being called ‘enemies of promise’ and ‘the Blob’ in years gone by. They’re also a great ambition. A new relationship between the profession and government is long overdue, but it can’t be dictated from the top. That new relationship needs a profession with a strong identity.

An activist professional identity

I’ve been re-reading Judyth Sachs, The Activist Teaching Profession. First written in 2003, but still remarkably relevant, it explores a professional identity based on expertise, altruism and autonomy, and rooted in principles of equity and social justice. Where ‘teacher knowledge and expertise are recognized and rewarded [and which] fosters new forms of public and professional engagement’. Teachers are ‘agents of change’, responsible for ‘changing people’s beliefs, perspectives and opinions about the importance of teaching, teachers’ social location and their role’.

Who defines teaching?

Many people have views on the role of teaching. It was pretty clear during the pandemic, when I was working for the National Education Union, that opinions were divided. Either school staff were lauded for stepping up, risking their health and building the greatest technological revolution in education ever in order to keep teaching remotely. Or they were dismissed as unwilling to work, technologically incompetent, and wanting to keep schools closed for as long as possible.

Parents and pupils have a different view too. As teaching went online, it became public for a while, and some parents took on an active teaching role themselves. Some felt that gave them a better insight into the work of schools, some began to critique the curriculum or the teaching, while others felt let down by a system that didn’t work for them. Young people, who used to see school as inevitable, started to see it as optional. They started to openly question why, in a crisis, their needs were last to be met.

And, more generally, society continues to believe that schools can solve all ills. The cost of living crisis, on top of a pandemic, on top of austerity, bringing children to school who are homeless, hungry: schools can find support. A climate crisis: teachers can teach children how to live in a deteriorating world and give them the skills to build a better one – while also helping them to manage their climate anxiety . The increasingly divisive rhetoric in politics, the press and online, amplifying a divided society, and fuelling racist and hate-filled violence: teaching will make sure pupils don’t fall prey to misinformation, challenge their stereotypes, engage in difficult conversations about controversial topics and report any extremist views. A rise in children with SEND, with mental health needs, still suffering the aftermath of a global pandemic: teachers can just adapt their teaching to meet all needs.

For many teachers, their identity could be best described as ‘tired’. They have been expected to be responsible for delivering the programme of government, be accountable to the data and to Ofsted, and be efficient in meeting the needs of pupils using dwindling resources, absorbing increased workload and filling the gaps as colleagues leave. And to do all this while being denigrated for speaking out about pupils’ needs, about school funding, and about their own workload and pay. It’s time to tell a new story.

So, in these new times, what should underpin a new professional identity?

It seems to me that these five are key attributes are key, but there will be more.

Resilience – not the ‘bounce back from everything that’s thrown at you’ sort of resilience that leads to a crisis of retention and recruitment, more an emotional honesty that looks for (and gives) support. A collective resilience, where it’s possible to say ‘no’ and to have each other’s backs.

Courage – the willingness and determination to be disruptive, and to speak out about the injustices of the current system. The bravery to dream of a new education where everyone flourishes, to work together towards those dreams, and to share and fight for those dreams.

Inclusivity – an openness to the perspectives, opinions, knowledge, and lived experiences of everyone involved in education, whether as classroom experts, academics, participants, supporters or users. With a bias towards hearing the voices of those who have been ignored and underserved by the system.

Agency – the space and expertise to try new things and build new knowledge, to make different choices and to learn from them.

Adventure – a sense of excitement at the possibilities ahead, a willingness to embrace the risk and uncertainty, and enjoyment of the journey rather than a constant measuring of the distance still to cover.

Sachs puts partnerships and practitioner research at the heart of the principles that underpin her activist professional identity – partnerships and networks to provide supportive structures, and research to provide the strategy and process for transformation. It’s clear that developing a strong identity can’t be done alone. Nor is it easy or a quick fix. But does it make a profession worth joining, and worth celebrating? What would you add?

Judyth Sachs (2003) The Activist Teaching Profession Open University Press. Quotes taken from chapter 8, The activist teacher professional.

Photo taken by me. A winter sunrise (because who’s up early enough to photograph a sunrise in the summer?)

5 ways the Advanced British Standard should be more ambitious

Education provision post-16 in England narrows young people’s options too soon, forcing them to make choices about their future direction while they’re still trying to work out who they are, and to base those choices on their success or otherwise in an academic – and packed – curriculum. Proposals for an Advanced British Standard (ABS) are welcome in their recognition of these issues, but it’s not ambitious enough in lots of ways. Here’s how it could do better.

  1. Aiming bigger for young people and for education

Making a big change to education requires big vision. Government has aims for the ABS – to be the best in the world! Ambitious in improving outcomes! And more clearly – ‘ensure more young people progress into skilled employment, apprenticeships, or high-quality further study by age 19’. Of course education should prepare young people for work and further study.  But preparing young people for what they’ll do when they’re 19 seems a somewhat limited ambition. 

Why is it important?

To decide what changes to make, we should ask why making changes is important. The consultation explains that the changes will help young people to ‘reach their potential’, and to ‘grow the economy and to increase the UK’s competitive advantage’. But we would build a better system by thinking beyond what young people will do at 19. Changes to education are important because the way we work, the sorts of jobs that will be available, is changing.

Most people would also say we want more than just job skills for our young people. The world outside work is changing too, our responsibilities to each other, our communities and to the world; our understanding of our bodies, minds and relationships. We need to learn how to live better. The broader question as we contemplate change is what kind of young people do we want to emerge from our education system? Or to take from the Nuffield review in 2009: ‘What counts as an educated 19 year old in this day and age?’ Are we supporting them to ‘fit’ the new world or empowering them to make change? And it’s OK to want a bit of both.

Answers to these questions should make policy-makers think more broadly about the changes needed at 16-19. But clearly, these are the same young people, and in many cases the same teachers, who are part of the broader secondary school system. People don’t suddenly learn how to learn or teach in different ways; most students won’t suddenly know what they want to study or what kind of work they want to do. For those with educational needs, with family needs or financial needs, those who live with disadvantage or prejudice, those choices may be even more difficult to make. What we want for young people at 19 has to permeate through the whole of the education system. 

  1. Exams, exams, exams

Making a big change to education needs big thinking, and in particular it needs open acknowledgement of biases. The ABS is constrained by the continued belief that everything needs to be graded, and that exams are the best and fairest way of doing that. A more open process of policy-development would start from a question about who needs to know what: what evidence does an 18 year old need to take with them as they leave, does an employer or an admissions tutor need in order to judge capabilities, does a government need to judge schools? It would consider which subjects, which knowledge and skills are best judged by written exam. 

Can we change the way we examine?

When Michael Gove sought to bring back ‘terminal’ exams – those that happen at the end of the phase of education – part of his rationale was that the raft of modular exams led to pupils constantly being under the shadow of testing. It was true that young people sat many exams during the 16-19 phase, and that a return to terminal exams has (perhaps) reduced that number. But the shadow of exams still looms large over everything that students do, and influences the way they learn and the way they are taught. 

If our aims for this phase include building teamwork and leadership skills, empathy and self-knowledge, then the ways in which we assess need to reflect that. There will be knowledge – and skills – that lend themselves to paper and pen tests. And there will be others that could be assessed far better through portfolios, vivas, technology. These may be harder to moderate, harder to make ‘rigorous’, they may take longer and there may be different groups of young people who are disadvantaged by a change of approach. All these issues can be worked through, if only we acknowledge that the work needs to be done.

  1. Solving the teacher problem

Big changes to education need to be open to possibilities of broader changes across the system. The ABS is constrained by the idea that it will be delivered in broadly similar ways to how A levels, T levels and BTECs are taught. If that’s the case, the changes stand or fall on the likelihood that we can recruit more teachers – to teach the additional hours and the ‘majors’ and ‘minors’. Yet we haven’t managed to do that in the current system. 

Where will the teachers come from?

According to the NEU, “One in six English teachers and one in five mathematics teachers do not have a post A-Level qualification in the subject. We need an additional 4,300 mathematics teachers and 2,600 English teachers to cover current needs.” The ABS proposals would need a further 5,300 teachers according to the same report.

So we need to think differently about how post-16 education is organised, who teaches it, or where those teachers will come from – or perhaps all of those things. Where is the openness to think about different ways of structuring timetables and subject content, or different people with expertise to support learning, or different ways and places for students to learn, including (but not limited to) through technology? In FE, lecturers may continue to work in their professional jobs, bringing up-to-date knowledge and skill from the world of work into their teaching. In HE, lecturers may be involved both in the workplace or in research. Are there ways in which engineers, physicists, musicians, translators could become teachers while also continuing in their workplaces? Are there aspects of the broad curriculum that could be led by health visitors, employers, financial advisers? Of course this is problematic, and there will rightly be concerns about safeguarding and teacher professionalism. But we change nothing if we don’t ask the big questions.

  1. Involving people who know what’s needed

Thinking big carries risks – which is why big policies need to be thought through with those who will be impacted and those who will implement them. Perhaps there have been conversations between civil servants and teachers, or teacher unions – I don’t know – but public consultation responses suggest that any concerns haven’t been listened to. There’s little evidence here that anyone has worked with, observed, or even spoken to people in Pupil Referral Units or Special Schools, rural schools and colleges or those in areas of high deprivation – or employers in those areas.

Can we have better conversations?

Written consultation is necessarily a limited and limiting way of involving people. This one sets out the ABS that Ministers want to see, and invites comments on how to make it work, rather than asking the deeper questions of policy. Which will make it hard for the policy itself to survive contact with reality. Provision for pupils with special needs is an afterthought, young people in rural areas with limited (or expensive) public transport have little choice, too few employers can offer placements or work experience.

There is the promise of a ten-year timeline for implementation. This gives an opportunity for real conversations with professionals, parents, employers and young people, time to build shared understanding of the problems, to consider deeper changes, to prototype and trial different models for change, and to develop ownership of the solutions. Better conversations include the outliers, the schools and colleges, students and areas of the country where change is the hardest, to build a system, together, that can deliver the big aims for education. Yes, this carries risk – but the risks (political, financial and educational) of imposing new qualifications are perhaps greater now than they were twenty years ago, when Tomlinson’s diplomas fell.

  1. Learning the lessons

Big changes to education policies can’t happen in isolation. There are lessons to be learnt from past reforms – successful and less so – and from the present education system. Changes in education also need to reflect changes in broader policy areas.

Where should we look?

Changes to 16-19 year old education have been proposed in the past: the Nuffield Review (2003-2009); Tomlinson (2004); even the current T levels changes – and yet there is little evidence that any of the lessons have been learnt in considering the next changes. It’s worth reading, as an example, Paper No 7 in Edge’s series of Learning from the Past, to understand some of the difficulties that beset the 14-19 Diploma programme – including the complexity of the plans, late involvement of practitioners in the design of the qualification, and the focus on qualifications at the expense of a holistic, systematic approach. But it’s not just the distant past that holds lessons – changes need to build on the successes of the current system, and mitigate its problems, and policy-makers need an honest appraisal of what those problems and successes are.

We can look at how changes have been made in other countries, and other UK nations. Not so much to copy or to denigrate, but to understand how those changes have been made. The Independent Assessment Commission looked at Singapore, New Zealand, Queensland and Norway for example, while Edge compares a range of different models of a baccalaureate proposed or in use in England.

A holistic proposal for 16-19 education would also consider other pressing issues in education: how digital tech, including AI, could change how education works, the impact of crumbling school buildings, pupil mental health, poverty and deprivation. Education doesn’t, and shouldn’t, develop in a vacuum. And it would look more broadly at other policy areas, particularly to understand the skills needed in a workforce of the future, and for a changing world. These would include Industrial Strategy, the NHS workforce strategy, Local Skills Improvement Plans, and the Climate strategy.

We need to be more ambitious – for the system as a whole

Important though it is to get education right for young people, framing the changes in the 16-19 silo is the wrong way to do it. There are too many other problems that need fixing, and these proposals don’t even break the surface.

What ‘quiet quitting’ says about the education system

Social media has been highlighting ‘quiet quitting’, a push back against the ‘hustle culture’ of high productivity and long hours. While it’s about workers, pupils are doing it too. For both workers and pupils, this isn’t an individual problem, it’s systemic. 

Why are people ‘quiet quitting’?

People who can’t leave their jobs and who haven’t been able to come together to demand changes, are ‘quiet quitting’. Workers are questioning the fairness of a capitalist system, where working harder doesn’t necessarily lead to promotions or higher salaries. They’re finding that where once they volunteered to do more, that extra work is becoming an expected part of their jobs. They’re deciding that their worth won’t be defined by their jobs, and that success doesn’t have to mean climbing the career ladder. They’re refusing to be mentally and emotionally invested in their jobs. And so they’re doing the bare minimum. 

What about pupils?

Pupils (mostly) can’t leave. And schools aren’t usually places where pupils can come together to demand changes. But cancelled exams and pandemic algorithms means many are questioning the fairness of a system where working harder doesn’t necessarily translate into better career outcomes. Where once pupils might have relished the opportunity to take on some interesting projects, to research an issue in depth, there’s a huge focus on ‘catching up’ and pressure to get to the level you ‘should’ be at. They’re wondering why their worth is defined by their academic success, and deciding that success doesn’t have to mean the highest exam grades, the most prestigious university, or even going to university at all. They’re refusing to be mentally and emotionally invested in school learning, they’re asking whether ‘this’ will be on the exam and if not, they’re turning their backs. 

What’s new?

A lot of this isn’t new. But the pandemic has exacerbated it. The pressure to catch up and close gaps, to bring test and exam results swiftly towards pre-pandemic levels, doesn’t leave much space for pupils who are grieving or caring for family members, or living in poverty. It doesn’t leave much time for playing, hanging out with friends, rebuilding relationships. The packed curriculum doesn’t give schools time to build on the lockdown experiences of those pupils who found meaning in new ways of learning, the opportunities to help others, and the challenge from movements for racial justice, women’s safety, and climate change. These are the pupils who are ‘quiet quitting’.

How can we build learning no-one wants to quit?

What if we stopped defining success as exam grades or ‘expected’ levels? What if we allowed pupils to choose some aspects of their subjects to learn in depth, and took the pressure off other parts? What if we stopped defining pupils by what they can’t do, by how far away they are from  some artificial standard?

For those things to happen, we’d need some pretty radical policy shifts. We’d have to stop ranking schools by their grades, and think more carefully about what we want our school leavers to be and to do. We’d need more conversations about what learning is essential and what we could drop to give more space for the serendipitous and the self-directed. We’d need policy-makers who realise that teaching is about building relationships not delivering a prepackaged curriculum. And for all this, we’d need to move away from the politically driven policy cycle, to build a long term plan for education that doesn’t change with every new education secretary, leadership election or party manifesto.

With all the challenges we face, economically, environmentally, socially, we all need to keep learning. We can’t afford education that pupils want to quit.

Qualifications reform: reaching the tipping point

Recently, SecEd published my blog outlining what’s wrong with the current qualification system, and what could be done about it. The original article can be found here.

As we come to the end of summer exams, many will breathe a sigh of relief. In-person exams have resumed, and while there were changes it has felt like a return to “normal”.

But the questions aren’t going away – why are we still commandeering school gyms for teenagers to sit in silent rows, hand-writing what they can remember in eight and 16-mark segments, in papers that will be painstakingly collected and driven around the country to be marked?

What is wrong with the system?

Not everyone is dissatisfied with the current model. Nick Gibb, former minister for schools, told his successors “to resist thesiren voices of those who call for GCSEs to be abolished”, arguing that it would widen the attainment gap, leave too many students without any academic certification, and allow weak schools to grow weaker (Gibb, 2021).

Not that Nadhim Zahawi needed persuasion. He too believes that “exams are the best and fairest form of assessment”. Elsewhere in government, Michael Gove has said that there is “not enough emphasis on examinations”, the “proper assessment” that ensures pupils acquire knowledge and demonstrate skills.

But the dissatisfaction is building, becoming increasingly widespread across the political spectrum, with the Times Education Commission’s final report (2022) being the latest iteration. There is growing agreement about the problems: the system doesn’t work for young people nor will it meet our future needs.

We know about “the forgotten third” of young people who don’t achieve at least a Grade 4 in English and maths (ASCL, 2019), but we also know about the stressed achievers, those who get good grades at the expense of their mental health, or by intense focus on exam technique rather than deep learning. Poverty, neurodiversity and bias mean too many students face additional barriers to exam success.

We know that exam grades don’t tell employers enough about young people, and that narrow preparation for exams can damage the independence and growth mindset needed for work (IAC, 2022).

We are increasingly seeing university students wanting to know how to get a good mark, rather than to “study the subject until my head hurts” as Professor Mary Beard has put it (Woolcock, 2021).

There is little in our qualifications system that encourages personal development, community engagement or citizenship. Instead, it narrows curriculum, forcing students to specialise early, to focus on academic or vocational study, and to choose between sciences, humanities or the arts. As Covid showed, there are risks with the focus on exams as the only method of assessment.

We have lost sight of the purposes of education in our national quest to “increase standards”.

What needs to change?

There is growing agreement around a model that celebrates the achievements of every young person, including the practical, sporting, creative, civic, personal, technical and academic. One that encourages a broad, interdisciplinary curriculum that is future-focused, develops deep learning, imagination, independence and empathy, and keeps a firm eye on wellbeing and mental health – of students and teachers.

Assessment that is authentic, assessing skills and knowledge in ways they will be used in the real world, and sustainable – environmentally, economically and educationally.

What could change look like?

What the many commissions and reports show is the need for an integrated qualifications system including “vocational” and “academic” elements, skill development, extended interdisciplinary study, and community contribution (IAC, 2022).

Different reports propose baccalaureate-style models: with pathways that can be academic or career-related, and include an extended project, community service, literacy and numeracy (see the Times Education Commission); or academic, applied (broad areas of employment) and technical (specific occupations) – see Tom Richmond’s Re-assessing the future report (2021). The National Baccalaureate Trust has a credits system, using components of current exams, incorporating core learning and personal development (NBT, 2022).

GCSEs can be rolled into the baccalaureate, with exams taken when ready, or replaced: with national computer-based assessments of national curriculum subjects at age 15 (Richmond, 2021); or a slimmed down set of exams in five core subjects, with continuous assessment and online tests forming part of the grade (Times Education Commission).

We can also make better use of technology. The Times Education Commission proposes a Digital Learner Portfolio, an idea already being tested by Rethinking Assessment, and already national policy in Australia.

The World Economic Forum suggests assessment via presentations, projects and interviews, much of which can be done online. Exams board AQA and exams watchdog Ofqual are trialling online exams and adaptive assessments.

What next?

So far so good. But there have been many reviews before. Changing the status quo needs political and professional will. It needs movement at national, local and classroom levels. I suggest we need to:

Clarify what we mean: Conversations with politicians show that there is, rightly, concern about maintaining standards and rigour. Does that mean “exam standards”, having similar proportions of students at each grade year-on-year, improving our position in international tables? Does rigour have to mean testing everyone in the same way at the same time? Does reforming qualifications mean scrapping all exams, or are there changes that will improve them? What would it mean to integrate academic and vocational qualifications? A lot of argument could be avoided if we were clear about what we are arguing about.

Reflect on the possible consequences of change: Even well planned changes can have negative impacts and we need an honest assessment of how these proposals might impact on standards and accountability, the school and college system, teacher workload, and student wellbeing. For change to be sustainable, every part of the system needs to be considered and adapted.

Continue the conversation: As the IAC reported in February, change requires a high degree of engagement from all affected communities, and it particularly needs open and honest engagement with those who are not part of the broad consensus. Change is limited when we operate with caricatures of “the other side”.

Concluding thoughts

Paradigm shift is hard. These reports show increasingly widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. We are beginning to see the development of new models to better fit our needs. But the difficult bit is still to come – agreeing a model and a long-term strategy, reaching a tipping point where advocates of the new outweigh those supporting the old.

Sustainable change requires commitment, leadership and time. We need to start now.

Further information & resources

Times Education Commission

Education for sustainable development needs a sustainable education system

Much of what’s being written about education for sustainable development (including the government’s strategy) is about climate change. Vital though that is, sustainable development goes beyond the environmental, to include economic and social: planet, prosperity and people. 

What is sustainable development?

Sustainable development is about ‘[meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. We need to balance economic growth with environmental and social realities. 

What’s wrong with growth?

Economic development has focused on mass-production and consumption; assuming that growth can continue indefinitely. Success is defined by your place on that pathway, and how you compare to others. But it turns out that the benefits of this growth are distributed unevenly, and when we try to ‘fix’ our way out of problems with technology, we create new problems. 

Education is about growth. Just as children learn and develop, the education system can get better. But we seem to be using an old economic model of success, measuring output by test scores, exam passes, and ‘outstanding’ schools, and assuming that these can grow indefinitely. League tables and exam grades position you along the pathway and in competition with others. And we find that the benefits are distributed unevenly, and ‘fixes’ create more inequality, increase workload or deepen deprofessionalisation.

Finding a balance

Environmental sustainability means living within our limits: natural and human resources are limited, even renewables take time to renew. Ecosystems are complex and interrelated, and diversity is vital for a balanced system. 

To build social sustainability we need to focus on relationships, communities, equity and inclusion. We need to develop agency, democracy and participation. We have to acknowledge that what we do has an impact on people and planet.

There is a tension in education policy too. Resources are limited: teacher and pupil time is finite; health and wellbeing need time to renew. Education is a complex system, changes in one area will have impacts on others, an increase in accountability can lead to greater pupil exclusions; more curriculum content can lead to pupils being demotivated and learning less. And we’re in constant danger of focussing on outcomes at the expense of relationships, agency and community. 

Is education sustainable?

Policy based on an old model of educational growth is unsustainable. We’re decreasing curriculum diversity, with literacy, numeracy and test preparation in primary schools cutting into time for other subjects, and with fewer pupils studying non-EBacc subjects at secondary level (art, music, drama, PE, RE) year-on-year. We’re narrowing the understanding of pedagogy, focusing on control and transmission at the expense of creation and play, even in the EYFS. Resources are being depleted: numbers of teacher trainees are dropping and teacher leaving rates are increasing. We’re not giving time for renewal: teacher workload is increasing, teachers’ working hours are long compared to similar professions, and their real-terms pay is lower than in 2010/11. One in eight children are unhappy with their school lives, feeling increased and unhealthy pressure.

Sustainability is both the destination and the journey

A sustainable education strategy would acknowledge the impact of actions, and policies, on people. It would look at the causes of teacher workload, instead of centralising professional activities like curriculum development and then adding new targets and accountabilities. It would develop a long term process to review curriculum and qualifications, rather than squeezing in a new GCSE on climate change. It would look at how time is used in schools, the opportunities pupils have to engage in depth for long periods in their learning, instead of making blanket proposals on increasing the school week. And it would consider the impact of all policies on the school as a learning community and pupils as active participants in their learning.

Of course schools need to be environmentally sustainable. They need to teach about sustainability – environmental, economic and social. But they also need to be sustainable places to work and learn. For that, we need education policy with sustainability at the centre.

References

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sustainability-and-climate-change-strategy/sustainability-and-climate-change-a-strategy-for-the-education-and-childrens-services-systems

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5987our-common-future.pdf

https://neu-era.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/downloadable/BJsJE4HobiNYRd7QUSNbyiraxtbFSCWu6eahtU7Q.pdf

Teacher Labour Market in England – Annual Report 2022 

The Good Childhood Report | The Children’s Society

 Education for sustainable development lens: a policy and practice review tool p16

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