Cambridge Primary Review - Policy Priorities

Policy Priorities

The Review proposed the following as priorities for policymakers derived from the 75 recommendations with which the Cambridge Primary Reviewʼs final report ends (quoted with permission of the Cambridge Primary Review) .

1. Accelerate the drive to reduce Englandʼs gross and overlapping gaps in wealth, wellbeing and educational attainment, all of them far wider in England than most other developed countries. Understand that teachers can do only so much to close the attainment gap for as long as the lives of so many children are blighted by poverty and disadvantage. Excellence requires equity.

2. Make childrenʼs agency and rights a reality in policy, schools and classrooms. Apply the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in ways which reinforce what we now know about how children most effectively learn, but do so with common sense and an understanding of context so that ʻpupil voiceʼ does not degenerate into tokenism or fad.

3. Consolidate the Early Years Foundation Stage, extending it to age six so as to give young children the best possible foundation for oracy, literacy, numeracy, the wider curriculum and lifelong learning. And if there is still any doubt about what the CPR said on this matter, let it be understood that this is about the character of the early years and early primary curriculum, not the school starting age.

4. Address the perennially neglected question of what primary education is for. The Mrs Beeton approach - first catch your curriculum, then liberally garnish with aims - is not the way to proceed. Aims must be grounded in a clear framework of values - for education is at heart a moral matter - and in properly argued positions on childhood, society, the wider world and the nature and advancement of knowledge and understanding. And aims should shape curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and the wider life of the school, not be added as mere decoration.

5. Replace curriculum tinkering by genuine curriculum reform. Seize the opportunity presented by the dropping of the primary curriculum clauses from the Children, Schools and Families Bill and the launch of the new national curriculum review in January 2011. Understand that the Rose reviewʼs narrow remit prevented it from addressing some of the problems of the primary curriculum which are most in need of attention, especially the counterproductive sacrificing of curriculum entitlement to a needlessly restricted notion of ʻstandardsʼ, the corrosive split between the ʻbasicsʼ and the rest, the muddled posturing on subjects, knowledge and skills, and the vital matter of the relationship between curriculum quality, expertise and staffing; and that the curriculum debate therefore remains wide open. But donʼt think that the minimalism of the 1950s (or 1870s) is an adequate alternative. Look instead at the Cambridge model: an aims-driven entitlement curriculum of breadth, richness and contemporary relevance, which secures the basics and much more besides, and combines a national framework with a strong local component.

6. Abandon the dogma that there is no alternative to SATs. Stop treating testing and assessment as synonymous. Stop making Year 6 tests bear the triple burden of assessing pupils, evaluating schools and monitoring national performance. Abandon the naive belief that testing of itself drives up standards. It doesnʼt: good teaching does. Initiate wholesale assessment reform drawing on the wealth of alternative models now available, so that we can at last have systems of formative and summative assessment - in which tests certainly have a place - which do their jobs validly, reliably and without causing collateral damage. Adopt the CPRʼs definition of standards as excellence in all domains of the curriculum to which children are statutorily entitled, not just the 3Rs. And understand that those who argue for reform are every bit as committed to rigorous assessment and accountability as those who pin everything on the current tests. The issue is not whether children should be assessed or schools should be accountable – they should – but how and in relation to what.

7. Replace the pedagogy of official recipe by pedagogies of repertoire, evidence and principle. Recognise that this is no soft option, for in place of mere compliance with what others expect we want teachers to be accountable to evidence so that they can justify the decisions they take. Note that the CPRʼs evaluation of over 4000 published sources shows how far that evidence differs from some versions of ʻbest practiceʼ which teachers are currently required to adopt. As the Cambridge report says: ʻChildren will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected merely to do as they are told.ʼ

8. Replace the governmentʼs professional standards for teachers, which have limited evidential provenance, by a framework validated by research about how teachers develop as they progress from novice to expert. Retain guidance and support for those who need it, but liberate the nationʼs most talented teachers – and hence the learning of their pupils – from banal and bureaucratic prescriptions. Balance the need to give new teachers the necessary knowledge, skill and confidence for their first appointment with the vital ingredient that teacher educators have been forced to drop: critical engagement with the larger questions of educational context, content and purpose.

9. Grasp at last the primary school staffing nettle. Recognise that the generalist class teacher system inherited from the nineteenth century confers undoubted educational benefits, but that in terms of the range and depth of knowledge required by a modern curriculum it may demand more than many teachers can give. Initiate a full review of primary school staffing, assessing expertise, roles and numbers against the tasks which primary schools are required to undertake. Consider more flexible ways of staffing primary schools using a mix of generalists, semi-specialists and specialists, and exploit opportunities for professional partnerships and exchanges, especially for small schools. Reassess, too, the balance of teachers, teaching assistants and other support staff. Give head teachers time and support to do the job for which they are most needed: leading learning and assuring quality.

10. Help schools to work in partnership with each other and with their communities rather than in competition, sharing ideas, expertise and resources – including across the primary/secondary divide - and together identifying local educational needs and opportunities. End the league table rat race and - since Finland is the country whose educational standards policy-makers seek to match - note Finlandʼs paramount commitment to social and educational equity through a genuinely comprehensive school system of consistently high quality.

11. Re-balance the relationship between government, national agencies, local authorities and schools. Reverse the centralising thrust of recent policy. End government micro-management of teaching. Require national agencies and local authorities to be independent advisers rather than political cheerleaders or enforcers, and to argue their cases with due rigour. Re-invigorate parental and community engagement in schools and the curriculum. Abandon myth, spin and the selective use of evidence. Restore the checks and balances which are so vital to the formulation of sound policy. Exploit the unrivalled compendium of evidence and ideas which the Cambridge Review has provided on this and the other matters above.