Posted By Site Administrator at 20/10/2009 12:00:14
Arguably the most revealing statement of last week’s exhaustive and deeply impressive Cambridge Primary Review report is to be found tucked away on page 478 of this gargantuan read.
The review team, led by Professor Robin Alexander, were reporting on the level of engagement of ministers and officials with their work. Knowing that Whitehall, Westminster and media newsrooms are busy places, the team had decided to produce not just lengthy interim reports as part of the review process, but short three- to four-page summaries of them.
The team would then have meetings with officials to discuss the findings, knowing that the other side would have had a chance at least to read and digest these shorter reports.
But the review says: “At our meetings with senior DCSF officials and advisers, it became apparent that the full reports were rarely opened and even the briefings were unlikely to have been read.”
So here, then, was an inquiry which had built up an enormous amount of evidence, not just from the academics writing the report but from meetings (238 of them) with pupils, parents, governors, teachers and their representative organisations, as well as politicians; from written submissions (1,052); and from surveys of previous research.
But Whitehall was not interested, presumably since it did not fit its agenda. The inquiry had not been set up by Government, could not be controlled by Government and had things to say which were unpopular with Government. The fact that its findings were based on solid consultation with the public was, then, neither here nor there. It simply was not to be listened to.
If the above sounds world-weary, I think this is unavoidable, particularly for anyone who now watches the political process close-up. In recent years, for example, I have also seen ministers resisting calls for a proper inquiry into the effects of teaching to the test in schools, presumably because this could be politically inconvenient – never mind the effect on the pupils. And the fall-out from last year’s Sats marking debacle showed how political accountability, advocated as inescapable for those working on the frontline, can operate in such a way that civil servants and ministers are able to exert large influence behind the scenes but be nowhere to be seen when something goes wrong.
The paradox of this, and in the sense the tragedy of our system at the moment, is implicit in Professor Alexander’s report.
Consider two sets of people: those working in our schools, and those involved in education at the political level: politicians, civil servants and advisers.
Among the former, I think there is plenty of idealism and commitment, and a great many people trying to do their best for children.
In Whitehall and Westminster, many people are also, no doubt, well-intentioned. Yet their actions are constrained by the often cynical logic of the political process. For an example of this cynicism taken to its most extreme form, see a blog posting by the former political adviser Conor Ryan following the review’s curriculum report, in February.* To put it mildly, the fostering of independence of thought, constructive criticism and even-handedness with empirical evidence are not among the strengths of the political centre.
The great shame is that the accountability apparatus now vests so much power in the latter group, at the expense of the former.
The wave of support which seems to have come the Primary Review’s way, at the expense of those within the Westminster village who sought to rubbish it, is well-deserved. It suggests that we deserve better than what we are currently getting from our political masters, not least the courtesy to listen to what people really think about the education system, which they oversee on our behalf.
*Please read an entry on this on my blog, posted at the time of the review’s interim report on the curriculum: http://www.educationbynumbers.org.uk/2009/03/04/time-to-move-on-conor/
