Telling stories
Posted on 13/03/2024
Ofsted’s English subject report tells a story the Department for Education will be happy to hear. Patrick Yarker takes issue, and celebrates the publication of FORUM’s Spring 2024 number.
Once upon a time I taught English, so an article in Schools Week about Ofsted’s newly-published report into English teaching caught my eye.[1] The report comes 20 months after Ofsted published a research review of the subject English,[2] a document trenchantly criticised by leading professional groups. The English Association, for example, pulled no punches:
Ofsted’s Research Review of English does not do justice to the full breadth and range of research in English, does not support the National Curriculum and is inadequate as a guide for leading the discipline.[3]
The National Association for the Teaching of English acknowledged the review’s handful of helpful recommendations before roundly castigating it:
The review posits a view of the subject primarily in terms of skills and processes to be taught prior to engagement in language in use. This does not align with the construction of the subject that has been developed over many years or with the practical experience of English teachers at every level. The research drawn on is limited and partial, and referencing does not always support the claims that are made.[4]
The English and Media Centre (EMC) called for the review to be withdrawn.[5] It offered no coherent vision of the subject, and its intellectual basis—grounded in various laboratory findings from cognitive research entirely unconnected to day-to-day English teaching—was misconceived and otiose.
The EMC authors offered many examples of (classroom-based) research which the Ofsted review chose to ignore or overlook, the better to buttress a straitened view of the subject and how to teach it. Ofsted’s meagre conception is characterised by an insistence that good teaching is little more than correct sequencing of predetermined subject-content or sanctioned knowledge. Such a viewpoint cannot help teachers come to terms with the dynamic and surprise of a living classroom, let alone harness and exploit the unpredictability that attends enabling people to learn. Teaching and learning English is not so much to do with sequenced delivery, or even with exchange, as with the complex, nuanced, trusting, sustained relational process—impossible fully to script in advance, and requiring respect for the unanticipated—whereby knowledge, understanding and capacity come to be co-constructed and reconstructed. This is one reason why imagination is the beating heart of learning, and why the deficit models of pupils and students with which Ofsted reviews are replete constitute a barrier to good teaching.
Of course the Ofsted subject report endorses—disgracefully—the statutory imposition of one sole way of teaching beginner readers to read, and lauds the supposed result:
There have been notable improvements to the reading curriculum since the introduction of the phonics screening check. All the primary schools visited adopt systematic synthetic phonics programmes to teach pupils to read. Most primary leaders recognise phonics as the curriculum for teaching all pupils to read, including those with SEND, not just as an approach that works for some pupils.
Just as unreflectingly, the report blames teachers and schools for being caught between government policy, the high-stakes public testing and League Table regime, and Ofsted itself, and consequently coerced into working in ways perceived to be inadequate:
Assessment continues to distort the curriculum in a few schools, especially in writing, where there is a focus on GCSE-style assessment tasks.
Few schools use formative assessment effectively.
In secondary schools, much of the professional development time focuses heavily on exam practices and moderation. We also saw this in primary schools.
[School leaders should] ensure that statutory tests and exams do not disproportionately influence decisions about curriculum and pedagogy
Ofsted has been a principle agent in imposing an educational culture that forces test-readying and assessment-as-learning deeper and deeper into the fabric of daily practice, displacing much else of value. It takes some gall for Ofsted to lament that Teachers do not always give story time priority beyond Reception and key stage 1… or that, when asked what the subject English is, most pupils refer to the skills they acquire in English so they can complete the national curriculum tests, rather than [to] the stories, plays and poems in the English curriculum.
Ofsted’s general stance towards schools has been cited time and again as a factor in the deepening crisis of teacher recruitment and retention. The Inspectorate cannot be surprised that in secondary schools English is taught mainly by subject experts. ‘Mainly’; not ‘entirely’.
The English Education Subject report is called: ‘Telling the Story’. There are better stories to tell about the subject English, and about education more generally. Forum exists to tell some of them. The Spring 2024 number, just published online, leads with an article about what motivates teachers and keeps them hopeful. It is written by Erica Halley, a teacher. Another teacher, Abigail Milligan, explores how the subject History might be taught in ways that empower pupils and students, not least by enabling them to use their voices and be heard. In her conversation with David Kazamias, Professor Maria Nikolokaki underscores the importance of hope for teachers, especially those who see themselves as, among other things, agents of change. Julie Platten anatomises the National Tutoring Programme and its failings. Charlotte Haines Lyon explores the elements of political theology which imbue currently-fashionable authoritarian approaches in school. Claire Plews offers a case study which illuminates the mental health crisis inexorably intensified by current education policy. Sally Tomlinson and Craig Johnston evaluate the government’s reasons for establishing a parallel system of ‘alternative provision’. Brian Stillings weighs up why policies for school improvement and accountability continue to fail working class students. Ian Duckett and James Whiting urge the Labour Party to meet the moment, rise to the occasion and reconfigure radically the state education system along comprehensive lines.
Such a reconfiguration must change minds along with structures and practices. The thrust of education policy since at least 2010 has rendered too many English schools joyless and oppressive places from which more and more pupils and students absent themselves regularly, while more and more parents and carers remove their children entirely from the system. The teacher recruitment and retention crisis is unrelenting. Only a thorough-going reconfiguration which bases itself on an optimistic view of human educability and all which that demands in terms of extending trust to practitioners and those they teach, democratising school structures and governance, dramatically diversifying approaches to assessment, and enabling practitioners to have a meaningful say in what is taught, will write a new chapter in English education, rather than once more copying out a version of the old, old story. For to change any one thing—really change it—we must change everything.
Click here to read the Spring number of FORUM
[1] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-six-key-findings-from-its-english-subject-report/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/curriculum-research-review-series-english/curriculum-research-review-series-english
[3] https://englishassociation.ac.uk/response-to-the-publication-of-ofsteds-curriculum-research-review-series-english/
[4] https://www.nate.org.uk/ofsteds-curriculum-review-of-english-a-nate-response/
[5] https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/emc-response-to-ofsted-curriculum-research-review-english/