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By Jim Clarke, Deputy Chief Executive CCMS
With all the media attention given to the politically charged drama around selection and post-primary transfer one is tempted to ask if we have forgotten about education. Some people appear to regard education as an end in itself, hermetically sealed from any influence of parenting, home background or early life experience, from the impacts of other public services, the community or with any relationship to what it may lead to in later life. There is an African saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.
That is quite a profound statement implying that the socialisation, education and personal development of our young people to be the citizens of tomorrow is a shared endeavour. So let us take this concept and reflect upon it. This article will tentatively consider some of the wider influences which must be harnessed to ‘raise the child’. That process ideally begins pre-birth with significant investment in supporting parenting, particularly amongst vulnerable parents, in the formative years up to age four. Our ever expanding knowledge based on research evidence of early brain development and the potential of early experiences to shape life chances must be utilized to help tackle inequalities before they manifest as educational under achievements, health deficits or antisocial and aggressive behaviours.
Formal education must then embrace appropriate supports from other public services and the voluntary and community sectors to help identify and address emerging difficulties. The school experience will then be better placed to prepare young people for a tomorrow which will be different from today and very different from yesterday.
We can no longer see education simply as ‘schooling’ because learning is a lifelong enterprise and the ‘village’ has many teachers. But first let us briefly examine how good or otherwise our current education system is and how well it is prepared to make Northern Ireland a serious player in the global economy.
‘Leave the best and improve the rest’ is one of the slogans rather arrogantly used to dismiss the need for change in the education system. But what is the ‘best’ and is it really as good as it could be? On the positive side we have the best qualified teaching force in the UK and Northern Ireland outperforms England and Wales at both GCE (‘A’ Level) and GCSE and we have a greater percentage of young people entering higher education. On the other side, however, we have the highest level of underachievement with around 1,000 pupils leaving school each year with no qualifications. Indeed almost 20% of the population has no qualifications – almost double the UK average – and almost 25% has difficulties with literacy and numeracy. About 30% of young people with good ‘A Levels’ leave Northern Ireland for university but only about 28% of them return. The underlying difficulty is that our economy does not have enough high value jobs and until the conditions are right we will continue to be a net exporter of talent. Our economy has less that 20% graduate employment so even with high status qualifications many young people who stay end up in jobs they might have got without their degree.
There is a tendency to compare our education system only to the UK but the real competition in a global economy is the rest of the world. So how do we rate? Well according to the internationally recognised Programme for International Student Assessment (P.I.S.A) Northern Ireland comes behind England and Scotland on the three key competency measures of reading, mathematics and science but is ahead of Wales. The UK, however, has fallen to average overall while competitor countries are making progress. One reason, looking at the system as a whole rather that particular schools or individual pupils, is that in the most successful systems quality and equality are not seen as competing policy objectives. This means that the performance and outcomes are good but that the gap between the highest and lowest achievers is comparatively small. Northern Ireland, however, has one of the largest gaps between the highest and the lowest achievers. Our system is therefore underperforming and the longer we try to maintain an academic and, by implication, social divide the more difficult it will be for our system to be effective and for education to provide all in our society with equality of access to opportunity and our economy with the skills that it needs. This most certainly does not mean any reduction in standards. Indeed P.I.S.A also found that students tend to perform better in schools characterised by high expectations, the enjoyment of learning, a strong disciplinary elements and good teachers – student relations. This description fits many of our schools from all sectors in Northern Ireland but it must be the aspiration for all schools. Young people must be motivated by their learning which must be challenging and relevant to their learning styles and their ambitions. All schools provide the same curriculum up to the end of the key stage 3 (age 14) and thereafter they are required to offer a wide range of choice. They must be organised to allow for the varying pace of progress that young people may make in different subjects or areas of learning by differentiation through various organisational structures such as ‘bands’ and ‘sets’ for some subjects. But differentiation does not mean ‘selection’.
It is entirely sensible and indeed expected that parents will want the best for their child or children and that they will do everything possible to get them into the school of choice. However, politicians and education policy makers have a broader responsibility for the whole of the system, for all children and young people. At present expressions of choice where there is excessive demand mean that some will be disappointed. Politicians, therefore need to take the strategic perspective and do a number of transparent things including ensuring that all schools are of high quality, that their policies address inequalities and close the gap between the highest and lowest achievers, that the criteria for admissions when over-subscribed protect access by those living in the local community and that the school is the servant of the pupil not the other way round.
The socialisation, education and personal development of our young people is not the responsibility of the education sector alone. Government generally and some Departments in particular, such as health or social development, have a significant role to play along with parents and community resources. There is an emerging research evidence base to suggest that investment in early years intervention and prevention is a `strategic and economic imperative` that would help solve long-term persistent social challenges. Early years investment addresses many high level strategic objectives for government including reducing health inequalities and the cost of ill-health, improved education performance leading to more high quality employment opportunities and subsequent economic benefits, reducing spending on criminal justice and anti-social behaviour, and increasing tax incomes through a more productive and higher value economy while reducing the costs of remedial and social services. The challenge here is to commit to a long-term strategy of at least 15-20 years, to invest in early years intervention and break the cycle of disadvantage leading to underachievement. This has already been embraced by the three main political parties in Great Britain. The big advantage for Northern Ireland for this strategic transformation is that it is small and has a government built around a ‘mandatory coalition’. The potential to have this longer term strategy agreed and implemented ought to be greater here but only if we have the vision and the strategy to exploit the advantage. The costs required to get this process running are really quite small as a proportion of annual government spending, and could be found through more creative, `joined-up` and collaborative activity necessitated by reduced public spending.
Much of this activity needs to be focused on the 0-4 age range through parents and the support systems around them to improve their emotional experience and development to help them cope positively with the challenge of growing up. It seems crazy, knowing what we do about the benefits of early years intervention that expenditure on education gives the greatest percentage to the most able in higher education and the least to the under 5’s. Change in funding cannot be immediate. It requires Executive approval as well as new funding strategies within the Department of Education which now has policy responsibility for the 0-4 age group. It is essential that the Executive and Assembly invests some of the efficiency savings in ‘early years’ leading over time through a balanced and proportionate redistribution of resources and services to ‘closing of the gap’ in our society and a raising of prosperity for all.
Ironically the spectre of recession and the inevitable cutbacks in public expenditure may begin to focus minds and open up some new lines of thought as well as an acceptance of harsh realities. Of course it is not all about politicians. Public opinion, or rather too often the mobilisation of self-interest through the media, has played a part in helping us mistake genuine strategies to meet the educational needs of a fast-changing world with the threat of a diminution in standards.
Sony, during a conference of their senior executives earlier this year presented a series of facts, some of which are quite telling. They claim, for example, that the 10 most in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. They also state that in our schools we are currently preparing young people to do jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that have not yet been invented in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems. The world is changing so fast that it is estimated that (in the US at least) people in schools now will have had 10-14 jobs by the time they are 38 years old. These are only some of the `Did You Know` facts that you can check out on You Tube.
All of this poses the questions how can our education system cope with this vision of the future – even if the Sony facts are only half true – and what kind of education system do we need to prepare young people for this kind of world? One thing is clear; investing our time defending a selective system long since deserted by the competitors who are streaming ahead of us is not the way to go. It is obvious that our children need a whole new set of skills different from those that we as adults needed for the jobs which we are doing. It is also obvious that organising education, particularly learning and teaching, is also going to need to change. How can we reasonably expect the experience that you as an adult had to be right for your children when you consider how your life has changed since school, how you have had to up skill or retrain, how your reliance on technology has increased to the point where you can’t do without the mobile or the internet?
History is littered with examples of economies being overtaken because they did not see change coming. We in Northern Ireland have a great advantage in being small – but it is only an advantage if we have the vision and the strategy to know how to exploit it. So, out with the reliance on the ‘public sector’, the ‘job for life’, the ‘following in your mother’s/father’s footsteps’, and the deference to ‘professions’. In with a new skills set for the technologically advanced 21st century, new ways of working, in new environments with real commitment to and encouragement for entrepreneurship. But what are these skills and how can our education system change to deliver them?
A recent presentation by Michael Stevenson, who responsible for global education at CISCO, to a number of NI educationalists identified the skills need as;
- Gathering, synthesizing and analysing information.
- Working on ones’ own to a high standard with only minimal supervision.
- Leading other autonomous workers through influence.
- Being creative and turning that creativity into action.
- Thinking critically and learning how to ask the right questions.
- Attempting to understand other perspectives to grasp the entirety of an issue.
- Working ethically in terms of society and the environment.
- Communicating effectively in a variety of forms including through technology.
Northern Ireland has another significant advantage, at least by comparison to England and Wales, because we have already amended our curriculum to reflect skills. The question is how quickly and effectively this can change classroom practice to help our young people to develop those skills. Beyond that the next phase of development is to ensure that the assessment and qualifications that we use are fit for purpose. Of course none of this counts for anything unless our further and higher education establishments embrace new courses and qualifications. Even more important are employers. They often complain that job applicants or new recruits don’t have the skills that they need – but do the ever specifically ask for these skills? They tend to rely on generic qualifications such as a degree or 5 x GCSE’S at grade C or better. If young people knew what skills they are expected to have they would make sure they have them. That’s how they pass examinations; they work to the course specifications and assessment criteria. Careers advice and guidance is a key element in future planning but it should not be provided by the school alone nor focussed only on the young people. Parents need to have their horizons broadened and their aspirations raised to really help their children make positive choices, perhaps in skills or career directions of which they have limited understanding or a work pattern which doesn’t fit into a traditional 9 to 5. They have to be encouraged to see, for example, the increasing importance of S.T.E.M. subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and of the ‘green’ economy to future prosperity.
This vision needs to be understood and embraced by political leaders, stakeholders and the users. While this vision has education at its core it is part of a wider social and economic aspiration. It needs a strategy that will be influenced by the expected reductions in public spending, particularly in the next Programme for Government and Comprehensive Spending round from 2011-2014. There is also the problem that the number of pupils in our schools is still falling and will continue to do so until around 2018, even with growing numbers staying on beyond age 16.
The challenge for the Department of Education and the Executive is that international evidence produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggests that cutting education spending in the UK because of the recession could cause the loss of ‘trillions of pounds’ to the economy in the long term. In fact they state that `Relatively small improvements in the skills of a nation’s labour force can have very large impacts on future well-being`. The message is clear that the longer term advantages of education justify not cutting expenditure in the short term. But the Executive do need to do something. Part of the answer is to advance the Area Based Planning approach to education services. This means re-organising at both primary and post-primary level to deliver a more efficient services with, for example, greater choice of relevant and motivating courses for the 14-19 age group. This is what the Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education is accepting in considering how best to provide relevant and motivating courses for all young people in an area up to age 19 through schools collaborating or by restructuring to use the buildings that are already there and those that are in planning to get the best possible provision. This is only one of a range of possible ways of refocusing spending. Another is to radically consider the need for the retention of small schools below the minimum numbers set in the Sustainable Schools policy. Many of these schools have become smaller as a consequence of declining enrolments and might not have the same case for protection as others in very isolated rural areas or where the community balance might be in danger.
So let’s stop arguing over the narrow socially and politically decisive issue of selection. Let’s change the game to ask what we as a whole society and economy need. Let us take the opportunities that we have and instead of trying to ration achievement and success in education and in life chances invest to enhance our skills, to challenge the future together. If we do we can look forward to a fairer, inclusive and more prosperous Northern Ireland. If we do not we risk being left very far behind rather than exploiting our advantages and taking opportunities to lead from the front.