Good schools first

There are two schools on the same street. They serve the same community and have the same students. School A is well-run. It has a tight behaviour policy, a rigorous approach to long-term memory, and strong pedagogy in every classroom. Almost all students are on time to lessons, complete their homework, and participate in every lesson.

School B is less well-run. The behaviour policy is loose, and students routinely disrupt learning. There is calling out in class, and some students never have their voices heard. Students are late to class, and most of them do not complete their homework. The school has a lengthy Teaching and Learning policy, but it does not reflect classroom reality, and the quality and style of pedagogy is highly inconsistent. School B hasn’t descended into chaos, and the students who go there are perfectly safe, but they aren’t doing as well as they could.

School A’s results are stronger than School B’s. School A tends to get a Progress 8 score of around +0.5, and School B tends to get a score of around -0.5. This means that students at School A score an average of one grade higher in all of their subjects than the same students at School B. A student at School A who gets 8 GCSEs at grade 6 each would, on average, have got 8 GCSEs at grade 5 had they attended School B instead.

Johnny and Jamie

Johnny and Jamie are identical twins. And when I say identical, I mean identical. They are the same in every respect, but Johnny goes to School A, and Jamie goes to School B. Now, Johnny and Jamie weren’t so well-behaved in primary school, and when they go to their respective secondary schools, they continue in the same vein.

School A doesn’t stand for it. When Johnny calls out in class, he is challenged. When he swears in the corridor, he is given a detention. When he is spotted in the corner of the playground on his phone, it is confiscated. When he fails to turn in his homework he is kept after school to complete it. Johnny soon learns that his behaviour needs to change and settles down. He never quite manages to behave perfectly, and doesn’t love school, but he doesn’t mind it either. Further down the line, he finds staying motivated during his GCSEs hard, but keeps his head up and leaves school with a string of grade 5s and 6s, including English, maths, science, history, Spanish, RE and design and technology. He secures a place at the local college, and has a range of academic and vocational choices available.

Jamie’s experience is a different picture. In the less structured environment of School B, his behaviour worsens. He calls out, showboats, and dismisses his teachers’ reprimands. He rolls his eyes, makes jokes, and doesn’t seem to care what happens to him. The school tries a few different things. He is given responsibility in class for handing out the mini-whiteboards. Teachers try making some lesson activities a competition. Nothing seems to work and while there are a couple of teachers he behaves fine for, his overall conduct continues to deteriorate. The school does an ADHD assessment, issues him with a fidget toy and a timeout pass, and puts him in a separate room for exams. At points they try a reduced timetable. These interventions don’t work much either, and there are now occasional high-level blowouts that lead to him being suspended. By year 9, his attendance at school is 5% lower than Johnny’s, and when he is in school he is rarely learning.

School B decides to put him on a technical pathway, so he does English, maths, science and construction. He’s fine in maths because he likes the teacher, and in those lessons he does a bit of work. He hates English and science and while he doesn’t mind construction, his attitude is still fairly lackadaisical. GCSE season comes around, and while Jamie manages to make it into school for all his exams, he often gives up halfway through the paper and doesn’t attend any additional revision sessions. In the end, he gets a 4 in maths, a 3 in his other subjects, and a pass in construction. He leaves school at high risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training).

Some schools are better than others

Of course, the above is a thought experiment. No two schools serve exactly the same communities like Schools A and B do, and no two students are identical like Johnny and Jamie. But the story represents a truth that lies at the heart of our school system, which is that some schools are better than others, meaning that the same student at different schools will have varying experiences.

This is rarely controversial when we talk about academic outcomes. It used to be controversial when we talked about SEND. But, as I have long argued, schools have an impact here too, and students in a school that is calm, routinised and predictable are less likely to end up on a SEND register than if the school is noisy, chaotic and disrupted. Or, as the Education Endowment put it:

“Strong universal provision reduces the number of pupils who require additional support and creates the conditions in which targeted interventions are more likely to succeed.”

Jamie’s schooling experience is a real problem that needs solving and, nationally, there are many Jamies - many students who are struggling with school. Behaviour, attendance, motivation - all are tied together in a toxic and deeply frustrating mix. I do not mean to dismiss or diminish the problem. It is real, and it needs to be solved.

The issue is how? What do we do to solve the problem? In School B, they put Jamie on the SEND register, made allowances for him and moved him onto a different curricular model to his peers. In Jamie’s case, it didn’t work. Jamie’s educational experience didn’t improve, and the school will have invested a significant amount of precious time in a highly individualised and non-scalable approach.

Improving schools

Critically, the existence of Johnny and School A shows us that there is a different way to support Jamie: and that’s simply by improving the school. Fix behaviour. Ensure all students participate in every lesson. Build a long-term memory strategy. These routes are, by now, well known, and School B even has a model on its doorstep that it can go to look at and learn from. Essentially, the closer School B can get to School A, the greater chance we have of “solving” Jamie without applying labels or narrowing his life choices.

If a school isn’t good, then it needs to be good. The approaches that School B took with Jamie didn’t work, and never will. Before we start labelling students or moving them onto different curricular pathways, we need to make sure that we’ve done everything else first: if the school isn’t good, we need to start there.

The frustrating thing is that getting to School A’s level of performance is hard, but it isn’t that hard. A systematic approach to school improvement that uses top performing schools as examples results in gradual year on year improvement. A model that allows us to hide or obscure our problems beneath a veneer of making our teaching or curriculum more accessible and inclusive won’t.

Simon

Let’s now imagine a third student, Simon:

Simon joins School A, and while his behaviour is exemplary he really struggles with some of the academic aspects of school. He finds studying hard, and his subjects do not come easily to him. He does better in some areas than others, but knows that despite the fact that he works hard and his teachers are doing a good job he isn’t achieving as well as his peers. In year 9, he decides to follow a technical route. He continues to slog it out in English, maths and science, but is also now doing construction, which he loves. He flourishes in the hands-on environment, and gets on really well with his teacher, who, as time passes, feels more and more like a mentor. He leaves school with a grade 4 in his academic subjects and a merit in construction. On results day, he gets a big hug from his maths teacher who is so proud of the work he’s done, and his construction teacher shakes his hand and wishes him good luck.

Simon already goes to a good school, which is well within the top 10% nationally. Of course, top 10% isn’t top 1%, and it could be that Simon would have had a different experience at a top 1% school. Realistically, we’re never going to get all schools to that level of absolute performance but, as mentioned, they could all get to the absolute level of School A. And, if they did, we would then be more comfortable separating the Simons from the Johnnys and saying “yes, this child is better suited to an alternative route aged 14.” But, critically, until a school is performing well, that option will remain a sticking plaster masking a deeper problem. At a policy level, we have limited energy and focus, and run a very real danger of looking in the wrong direction and covering up the real problems.

That a student in a particular school doesn’t seem to “fit” the system is not necessarily a problem with the system. It could be a problem with the school, a problem which we know how to fix. And when we look at schools which have fixed those problems, we see students who are able to make choices from a more level playing field and a position where they can really evaluate the available options and which one works best for them.

This isn’t an argument against vocational education. It isn’t an argument against SEND or attendance interventions or curriculum reform or any kind of special dispensation or allowance. It’s an argument against policy solutions that don’t first seek to drastically improve the quality of schools. We need to do that first. Once a student is in a good school with strong behaviour, routinised classrooms, high participation and strategic approaches to long-term memory then we can find establish if they genuinely don’t fit that mold. But up until that point, we’re pointing our solutions at the wrong problem.

We need good schools first.

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At Carousel we specialise in helping schools improve in simple and sustainable ways. Check out our CPD platform here, and our long-term memory platform here.