Labels we can't Afford

Imagine this. You’ve invested billions of pounds in a project, given it your best intellectual capital and- whisper it softly- you are having some success. Most ordinary mortals would quietly tiptoe out of the room at this point, give a loud cheer and let the magic continue to work.

But politicians are no mere mortals. Here they are, at the end of ten years of remarkable investment in education for which they deserve recognition. In addition, the benefits of their policies are now showing evidence of success in improved results. So why go and spoil it all?

One stealthy success has been the re-branding of comprehensives. Not sure? Well ask yourself when you last heard the term used. We’re all specialist now. It’s been a clever marketing exercise- change the status, change the name and move away from the education profession’s obsession with equality. After all, it doesn’t play well with the public.

But now the destruction. The DCSF have now created two new classifications by which all secondary schools will be judged. It can only lead to a new three tier system, far more damaging than any of the old myths around comprehensive schools.

First there is the now infamous 30% figure for the lowest tier to rise above, the newly named National Challenge Schools. This is the category of ‘failing schools’ but ministers will deny they ever used the term.

They argue that they have to raise standards but their premise is false. Many of the schools are truly special in their intakes- a high proportion with pupils for whom English is a second languages, with high levels of learning difficulties or even secondary modern schools with creamed off intakes. Would they expect a designated special school for pupils with learning difficulties to achieve these scores? Of course not: point made. The top category will be those schools designated as High Performing. Again the classification has simply been dreamt up by a policy wonk. Insultingly, it even moved mid year from 60% five A* to C to 65%, including the by now familiar English and Maths mantra.

They tell us that only 30% of schools will ever be allowed to reach this designation and so admit that the goal posts may shift again. The reason? They can’t actually afford to have more schools than this funded in this way! But there are, of course, funding implications for the schools themselves as they see their specialisms snatched away.

And if these goalposts can be shifted, then so can the ones at the lower end. Why stick at 30% for failure? Who will give me thirty five? Do I hear 40% from the north west? What about 45% from the south east? The effect of this will be to demoralize many of the schools in the middle category who will see the lower classification as fluid and also realise that the high performing standard is beyond their reach, a glass ceiling.

It’s a refinement of the League Table torture. Now schools will not only be ranked in the media but a handy label will tell the public if they are high performing, middle or failing. It’s neat and everyone can understand it. There’s nothing so complex about a school that you can’t sum it up in one word!

And that, of course is the real issue here. Behind every statistic published this summer, there are stories of many individual successes and also a few failures as well, sophisticated reasons for interpretations that need to be placed on raw scores.

There are also fairer and wiser ways of judging schools. A measure of the ‘within school variation’- the difference in performance between the highest and lowest achieving departments- would at least be a success criterion within the control of the school’s themselves, the leadership in particular, to influence.
Mere mortals are often wiser than politicians whose ignorance of schools never fails to amaze me. An MP, for example, once asked me how long I’d been head of my school, before offering me some confidential career advice: ‘So you’re now in a position to apply to be the head of a private school!’ Well at least I would be free of the political interference.
But for now let me get the story right. We’re a comprehensive school, though we try not to mention it, a specialist sports college and training school and, at the last count, we were high performing but now we will now drop into the middle tier because the money has run out. Confused? We mere mortals certainly are.