Life after curriculum levels

The great debate: is the removal of national curriculum levels a good thing?

YES: Oliver Quinlan – Lecturer in Education at Plymouth University

For as long as I can remember, teachers have been asking for more professional freedom. From the first National Curriculum through to the Primary Strategies and the ever growing emphasis on data in school inspections, nearly all policy announcements have been met by teachers crying out for greater trust to be placed in their expertise. Recently we have seen a reversal of this curriculum micro management, although not the high stakes systems of accountability – in the form of inspections and league tables – that have developed in tandem. First we saw the publication of a considerably slimmed down draft National Curriculum. Now we have witnessed the removal of NC levels for assessment: a system to which schools have been wedded since the late eighties and, as such, is all many serving teachers have ever known. Why? The secretary of state says that it is complicated, difficult for parents to understand and encourages teachers to focus on the system rather than what children can actually do.

This is undoubtedly a big change and one that has been greeted with trepidation by many. However, I would argue it is another opportunity for the teaching profession to take control of what happens in schools and to provide the best for the young people with whom they work.

What happens next depends on what people do.

I would hope we are going to see schools examining, in depth, what is important in terms of assessing children’s learning and finding ways to make this work; both for accountability and ensuring progress. I hope we see diversity – different settings looking at their intake and deciding which assessment is most appropriate. We might see schools deciding that all assessment should be formative, developing systems like the ‘tagging learning’ project at Rosendale school in which children are given responsibility for documenting their learning.

We might see mainstream schools exploring the potential of truly ipsative assessment: tracking children’s progress based on their previous performance, rather than national standards – a method more common in the education of children with significant special educational needs. We might see some schools exploring more regular and intensive testing or, conversely, deciding to concentrate on the process of learning, making tests a much rarer occurrence.

This will result in diversity across the country, a diversity that some have argued will make it impossible to make national comparisons between children. However, there will still be national measures in place in the form of end of key stage tests. And even so, what matters for an individual child and his parents for most of the time is not how he compares to the national picture, but what he knows and can do in the present, and what he needs to learn to be able to move forward.

What I really hope we see is a wide variety of pilot projects whose purpose is clearly articulated and impact rigorously evaluated. The more control schools and teachers are given, the more important it becomes to be able to prove that the things we do have an impact.

When calling for professional freedom, teachers often draw comparisons between themselves and the medical profession. Doctors, as members of organisations such as the Royal College of Surgeons,create the field in which they work through research, publication and collaboration. They dictate which tools and methods they use and accept responsibility for the results. The teaching profession has now been given the opportunity to do the same. No longer bound to follow a formula set out by government, teachers can use their collective expertise to generate new methods and then assess the impact of these in the classroom.

Of course, with this increased responsibility comes greater anxiety. Good. We should be anxious. Our work influences young people’s futures and the stakes are high. We should also be glad we are being given professional freedoms and the opportunity to create the field in which we work. How this plays out will depend on whether we embrace that opportunity or decide we prefer it when the government tells us what to do.

Oliver is a lecturer in education with a background in primary schools, and experience working in education settings from pre-school to higher education. (oliverquinlan.com)

NO: Michael Tidd - Year Leader at Vale First & Middle School

I happen to think that National Curriculum levels are no bad thing. There, I said it. Not perfect, but not quite the work of the devil, either. It’s true they have their failings: too often their use has become corrupted; too frequently they are a driver rather than a measure. But rather than celebrate their demise, shouldn’t we be asking what led to that corruption in the first place?

The Attainment Target levels are broad and relatively vague. I’m sure that was deliberate. When you’re only using them to judge progress over periods of two to four years – as was originally intended – a bestfit approach with broad attainment bands makes perfect sense.

The problem comes when you try to use them once a term; or worse, once a week or once a lesson! This was never a requirement. It was not specified by the National Curriculum. The data collection wonks at the DfE did not demand it. Even the various testing agencies over the years have managed to restrict themselves to end-ofkey- stage assessments. No, the corruption came about because of the need to demonstrate progress and to show Ofsted that regular tracking took place. In scrapping levels, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we’re at risk of scooping up the baby, launching it out of the window, and finding ourselves stuck with the same dirty water in the bath.

The problems with levels are nothing to do with the levels. They are to do with the demands of Ofsted and the pressure of highstakes testing. A primary school in my authority has an Ofsted report which notes that pupils’ progress is checked only termly, and that it ought to be more often. The implication here is clear: it’s not that teachers are failing to regularly assess children’s achievements and adapt their planning accordingly, but rather that data about such assessments isn’t produced frequently enough.

Of course, many of those who are celebrating the demise of levels are often the same people who are quick to point out the woeful nature of the APP materials. I don’t blame them – APP assessment could be an unwieldy tool at best. But look again at the new National Curriculum and ask how long it will be before the old APP highlighter finds itself in full use across its pages. You can scrap the levels, but if Ofsted still demands a six-weekly score, then what of it?

The matter is particularly significant in primary schools. I well understand that a secondary Art specialist may have a far greater range of tools at his or her fingertips to offer guidance to his or her students about improving their work than the clumsy levels provide. I’m certain that with the existing framework of GCSE examination grades and whatever later replaces it, there is plenty of scope for building an assessment framework that moves towards that end goal without a separate structure of levels. In fact, I sometimes wonder why Dearing’s 1994 review didn’t go the whole hog and use GCSE grade letters from KS3.

But what of primary schools? What of the primary teacher with an fine art degree and one year’s on-the-job training who suddenly gets moved from assessing writing in Year 3 to teaching it in Year 6? Or changes school or authority? Now, with apparently no common framework to even begin to discuss progress and outcomes, what structures will be left to support him or her? Surely the solution to the current challenges of consistency cannot be simply to remove any attempt at achieving it? For all their flaws, the National Curriculum levels have provided teachers with a common language with which we can discuss content from across the curriculum, and a simple overarching framework to explain some elements of progression. That value could be lost in our efforts to correct the excessive or inappropriate use of the resulting numbers – and we’re unlikely even to achieve that aim.

It’s true that levels have had their problems, but if we strip them back to their original purpose, I can see no better system. The current arrangements offer a roughand- ready indicator of students’ attainment when changing class, key stage or school. To remove them because of their misuse will achieve nothing but further inconsistency. No, I’m afraid this is one primary teacher who will not be celebrating the demise of the National Curriculum level.

Michael Tidd is a Year Leader at Vale First & Middle School in Sussex. You can read his blog on education at: michaelt1979.wordpress.com