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Schools must broaden focus to improve results and boost pupil well-being

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25 May 2008

Schools need ambitious reform to improve learning and help lay the foundations for children to enjoy a healthy and happy adulthood, says the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The think tank unveils a range of proposals to tackle the recent plateau in pupil progress and enhance young people’s well-being – including helping to fuel their natural curiosity and giving adolescents support in tackling the many challenges they face.

A refocused curriculum for infant pupils, a broader means of assessing student progress, a network of school counsellors and reform of the school term structure would give children a better education, says ippr.

Concern has grown that progress made in the 1990s may have plateaued more recently. England’s schools perform poorly in some comparisons with those in other countries. English children have more negative attitudes towards reading than their counterparts in many other countries.

Meanwhile, one in five children aged between eight and ten years suffers from declining or consistently low well-being* – with their experiences at school being a key factor.

ippr makes a raft of recommendations to tackle these problems in a forthcoming report, Thursday’s Child, having looked at the successes and failures of English schools, and how they compare with those of other countries such as Finland and Canada.

The report calls for a new curriculum for five- to seven-year-olds, capitalising on children’s natural desire for discovery and structured around flexible themes rather than rigid subjects.

This should be supplemented by a new Kindergarten PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) for aspiring teachers of three- to seven-year-olds, and strengthened training for teaching assistants on play-based approaches to learning.

ippr also recommends changes to the whole five-to-14 curriculum to promote development across a broader range of skills – like communication, team-working and self-management – alongside the core skills of literacy and numeracy, in order to prepare young people for work and life. National curriculum tests need to test for this broader skill range and should be supplemented with more teacher assessment in schools.

ippr is calling for a school counsellor in every secondary school - to work in conjunction with existing professionals including parent support advisers and school nurses - to help pupils through challenges such as puberty, secondary school transition and managing increasing independence from their families.

Primary school pupils should also benefit from a network of counsellors, as part of an approach that embraces pupils’ health and happiness – both inside and outside school.

The think-tank calls for the school year to be restructured in light of UK research which has shown that pupils’ reading ability scores fall over the summer holiday. In the US, a study found that children from disadvantaged backgrounds were particularly likely to fall behind in their reading over the vacation.

Terms spaced more evenly throughout the school year – possibly in five eight-week terms, with a fortnight’s holiday in-between and a month-long summer holiday – would sustain learning more effectively.

Sonia Sodha, Research Fellow at ippr and the report’s lead author said:
“There have been many positive gains in education over the last decade. But in recent years, results have plateaued. If we are serious about continuing to improve outcomes for all children, we need long-term reform that better gears our school system around the needs of children and young people.

“Children’s well-being is fundamental to their learning. Improving results can’t just be about focusing on maths, English and science. Schools need more support in developing healthy and happy young people.

"In other countries we visited as part of this research, such as Finland, there was more of an emphasis on well-being as the key to improving outcomes, with school counsellors and welfare teams for all schools.”

Thursday’s Child, by Sonia Sodha and Julia Margo will be published in June. It recommends:

Introducing a broader curriculum, more flexible to the needs of particular schools, teachers and pupils – supported by reform to teacher training and assessment of pupil progress;
Promoting pupils’ well-being – including training teachers in early identification of children’s needs, providing a network of school counsellors and building out-of-school teams comprising at least a child psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker and nurse, with each team serving a cluster of schools;
Establishing a new curriculum for five- to seven-year-olds with learning through play at its heart – supplemented by reforms to training for teachers (a “Kindergarten” PGCE) and teaching assistants;
Reforming the structure of the school year to establish a more even spread of time in school throughout the year, with a shorter summer vacation;
Improving the quality and status of teaching 11- to 14-year-olds, with more specialised training in early adolescent development, and trialling teaching in ‘middle school communities’ within secondary schools, of up to 120 pupils by four or five teachers throughout the first three years of secondary school;
Changes to improve teaching – including harnessing the expertise of retiring head teachers and older non-professionals, introducing more rigorous selection procedures for candidates applying for teacher training, strengthening performance management and extending teacher training and development.

Notes to Editors:

*Well-being in this case is a composite measure developed by researchers at the Institute of Education. It includes measures of emotional and psychological health, engagement in pro-social behaviours (such as talking to their teacher, liking school and being satisfied with their friends) and engagement in anti-social behaviour (such as bullying).

Attainment figures 1996-2007 for boys and girls in English, science and maths at age 11 (Key Stage 2) and age 14 (Key Stage 3) show that increases in the percentage of pupils reaching expected levels of attainment observed in the late 1990s – particularly at age 11 – have slowed down or levelled off since then. (Figures available on request.)

In the OECD’s international study of attainment at age 15 (PISA), the UK ranks 13th among 30 countries in reading, 18th amongst 30 countries in maths, and 9th out of 30 in science.

Children’s attitudes to reading are poorer than in some other countries: in 2003, England ranked 9th from the bottom (out of 41 countries) in terms of children’s attitudes towards reading. There has been no improvement in attitudes from 2003 to 2007.

In 2007, a UNICEF report placed Britain at the bottom of the international league table in terms of children’s well-being.

Nine out of ten head teachers say they would like to be able to access better emotional and behavioural support for their pupils.

There is only one educational psychologist (EP) for every 3,761 children aged five to 19 in England, and only one educational welfare officer (EWO) for every 1,839 children. For children estimated to have emotional problems, the ratios are one EP for every 626 and one EWO for every 306 children.

The curriculum for five- to seven-year-olds in England is more formalised and prescriptive than, for example, in Finland or Denmark, where the aim is to prepare children to start formal instruction from seven years and where a higher priority is placed on children’s personal and interpersonal development.

Ofsted research has found that some teachers of 5-7 year olds say they find it difficult to cover everything in the Key Stage 1 (5-7) curriculum and that the shift between the pre-age 5 and 5-7 curriculum is too abrupt.

Research showed that in the US, long summer holidays had a negative effect on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. While students from higher socio-economic groups were more likely to use and develop their reading skills during vacation, students from lower socio-economic groups were less likely to do so.

Greater summer learning loss for children from poorer backgrounds contributes to later academic achievement – impacting on whether they stay on at school and go on to university.

A study of 16,000 children found that 80 per cent had nothing to do outside school in their summer holidays, and 70 per cent attributed involvement in anti-social behaviour and crime to boredom.

The authors of Thursday’s Child studied a range of international data and made research trips to Finland, Canada and Belgium.

The Government has estimated that education investment will continue rising at around £4-5bn a year, from £81.9bn a year in 2008/09 to £86.1bn in 2009/10 and £91.5bn in 2010-11. The report argues that the priority for investment in forthcoming years should be improving teacher quality and providing more support for schools in improving well-being.

Delivering reforms to teacher training and development, including lengthening initial teacher training and increasing teachers’ entitlement to continuing professional development is estimated to cost in the region of £481 million each year.

Providing all secondary schools with a school counsellor, and introducing school counsellors for every three primary schools, is estimated to cost in the region of £310 million.

ippr recently published Those Who Can?, a report tackling the problems of poor teaching.