A social historian looking back on 20th century education in the West might identify two major themes that ebb and flow through the decades. One is authoritarianism vs individuality – a pretty consistent shift from the former to the latter – and the other is an emphasis on teaching facts vs teaching ideas and techniques.

Giving children the tools to find knowledge for themselves has some sound pedagogy; the days of rote learning (and corporal punishment for that matter) are well behind us. But the extreme opposite essentially holds that we don’t need to know facts at all in an age when limitless information is only a click away on Google. The Battle of Bannockburn and the phyla of Nematodes are equally irrelevant to a modern student with Wikipedia to hand, so goes the theory.

It is in this climate that the new Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) was developed since 2002. Consultation and committees have produced something that replaces a specific and important historical battle with

I can discuss the motives of those involved in a significant turning point in the past and assess the consequences it had then and since

and learning about worms with

I can report and comment on current scientific news items to develop my knowledge and understanding of topical science.

The real issue for teachers is that assessing whether students have achieved the required levels of the new curriculum is much harder than some factual test. Does the ability to ‘comment on current scientific news items’ require the incoherence of your average YouTube comment, or the erudition of Stephen Pinker?

And ironically all that delay involved in consulting the community has meant the Secondary school CfE launch comes at a time when the tide is turning back towards learning facts. The Core Knowledge curriculum, adopted by many US states, now looks to be the favoured route for Primary curriculum change in England. Core Knowledge’s popularity stems from its clarity, not modernity – it was devised in the early 1970s, at the height of the relativist revolt against facts. It really does get specific: for year 8, students must know that ‘At room temperature, sound travels through air at about 340 meters per second’ and that the Latin for year is ‘annus’.

Teachers know what they have to teach, and precisely what should be imparted when. While the prescribed books for English may not prove to everyone’s taste, the maths and science content is uncontroversially what students need to know. Far from stifling creativity, the focus of innovation (as with Teachable’s content) is then on the how to teach and engage.

Parents can also follow their child’s progress more easily when topics are prescribed. Plus for a teaching resource library, such as Teachable, it is SO much easier for people to find materials linked to commonly known topics and events than abstract concepts.

Curriculum for Excellence might be the very latest, but in the broad sweep of educational history I suspect it will be seen as the last hurrah for ‘develop curiosity and understanding’ versus teaching identifiable facts.

So Becta are officially gone in the autumn: by closing the quango the government hopes to save £80m.

And beyond that the education department’s budget will be cut by another £590m. The Chancellor has said that schools’ funding, the Sure Start programme and spending on education for 16-19-year-olds will be protected. But that leaves a lot of the Education budget protected:

1. Sure Start: £1.8bn
2. General Schools Spending: £31.7bn
3. Teachers’ pension scheme: £10.7bn
4. Young People’s Learning Agency (the 16-19 part of Learning and Skills Council): £6.5bn
5. Academies and Specialist Schools: £1.1bn

That means only £9bn out of a total £61bn Education budget that can be cut. So that £590m will be a 7% cut of everything else.

If you assume that the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will continue in some form (or at least that many contracts have already been signed and won’t be reneged on), then there is only £5bn left unprotected – and 13% of that will be cut.

If you work in a quango or agency (or a supplier company) that gets publicly funded outside of these protected areas, I would be pretty worried right now!

The unknown part is how much of what these quangos do is seen as really essential, and will just be reabsorbed in a re-organised Department of Education (i.e. Becta employees become DfE employees) and how much will just be cut loose.

And let’s be honest; the government will need to reduce spending again by double the amount next year, so by the end of 2011 over 40% of those ‘non-core’ activities of the Education department could have ended.

As the full text of the Tory-Lib coalition policy framework was announced this afternoon we noticed some subtle shifts from the Tory manifesto on education. Yet the headline is that, out of a 3,000 word document only 60 words (2%) are devoted to schools policy; it seems that there are many other areas the parties can agree on more easily than education, and that it may take a back seat for the first year.

Schools
We will fund a significant premium for disadvantaged pupils from outside the schools budget by reductions in spending elsewhere.

We agree to promote the reform of schools in order to ensure:

• that new providers can enter the state school system in response to parental demand;
• that all schools have greater freedom over curriculum;
• and, that all schools are held properly accountable.

With a Tory education secretary in Michael Gove, his pet policy of independently run state schools is likely to go ahead, but there is no detail on what terms these would be run. The move to more school budgetary and curriculum independence is likely to increase, but without major overhauls.

Although money ‘from outside the schools budget’ is promised, this doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be cuts within it. There is certainly no commitment to spending increases.

Ben Barton, who advised the Tory party on aspects of their schools policy, has found in the finer analysis that there are many areas for broad agreement. The clearest of these are to promote Separate Sciences and MFL at GCSE, expand Teach First and give Head Teachers more control over pay.

Today the Conservatives launched their manifesto for the upcoming UK election, and I thought i’d unpack what we think this means for our teacher members. Here are some extracts (the bolding is our addition):

Restore discipline and order to the classroom … We will abolish the legal requirement of 24 hours’ notice for detentions; reform the exclusion process; and give headteachers the power to ban, search for, and confiscate any items they think may cause violence or disruption.

Sounds sensible, although it is not a major shift in power to the teacher. Savvy pupils will still have their ‘human rights’ and ‘Items they think may cause … disruption’ could mean anything from a games console to a lads mag, so it will be interesting to see how that is worded!

Raise the status of the teaching profession. Move to a high quality system of teacher recruitment and training by raising entry requirements, expanding Teach First and incentivising top maths and science graduates.

Teachable strongly believes in raising the status of the profession, but the only good way of ‘incentivising’ those top graduates, and retaining the talented teachers we already have is to pay more. Until we have more graduates wanting to become teachers there is no chance of raising the bar.

We love that they have mentioned our friends at Teach First specifically – it’s a great programme – but similar schemes are needed in other areas of the UK and for primary schools.

We will reform the National Curriculum, remove political interference from GCSEs and A-levels, and allow state schools to do the same high quality exams as private schools.

‘Political interference from GCSEs’ implies there is a big conspiracy to inflate grades. Of course there isn’t. It’s just that modular courses, coursework, teaching to the test and exam boards falling over themselves to offer the easiest course have meant it is a lot harder to do badly than 15 years ago. Schools also have every incentive to make sure their pupils get top grades.

Those ‘high quality exams’ (International Baccalaureate, IGCSE and Pre-U, rather that the not-so-favoured Diplomas) might be subject to same kind of grade inflation if the exam league table obsession of secondary schools isn’t tempered. That should be the priority.

We will replace Key Stage 1 Sats with a simple reading test, reform Key Stage 2 Sats, and make Ofsted report on schools’ setting policies and reading schemes.

Reforming Sats for primary schools is not exactly controversial, but making Ofsted report on anything extra isn’t going to help the Tories’ general focus on reducing bureaucracy.

A Conservative government will give every child the kind of education that is currently available only to the well-off: safe classrooms, talented and specialist teachers, access to the best curriculum and exams, and smaller schools with smaller classes and teachers who know the children’s names.

The most controversial of the lot. Education has implicitly been left out of the Tories’ funding commitments, which means funding will have to be cut in real terms over the parliament. But hang on – smaller classes = more teachers = more salaries. Surely. So unless they literally mean cramming the same number of pupils into a smaller room, this can’t possibly be a funded commitment.

There is every indication that the average pupil does better in a small class in a small school, but that costs real money that this country does not have currently. Rewarding and retaining great teachers would be our priority, assuming no more overall funding. That can be achieved by making schools a better place to work: attacking the target-led quangocracy that has grown up over the last 10 years, and is so sapping of school management and teaching time, would be a good place to start.

Reading an article in the New York times last week about Dr. Diane Ravitch made me think how similar the thrust of education policy in the UK and US has been over the last decade. And how similar the failings are.

Dr. Ravitch, a key academic supporter of the No Child Left Behind bill in the US, has developed increasing scepticm in three main areas of policy since 2003: Charter Schools (equivalent to the UK Academies programme), Standardised testing and private sector involvement.

I want to point out where her scepticism (based on observation of the results in America) has big implications for UK educational policy under the next government.

1. Repeat testing in core subjects = narrower, duller curriculum.

The unintended consequence of increasingly prescriptive curriculum guidelines, SATs and now Assessing Pupils Progress is that subjects that are not measured (or are hard to measure) get dropped from the teaching timetable. So humanities, arts and even the more experimental aspects of science and maths give way. Unfortunately, there is even little evidence that a decade of such testing in the UK has really increased numeracy or literacy rates either, probably because a dull curriculum does not inspire an inquisitive attitude.

2. Operational independence (i.e. Academies) DOES NOT necessarily lead to better results

Increasing educational standards relies on better teachers, but most Academies do not have the budget or flexibility to really pay much more for the best teachers, or the power to sack bad teachers. On the other hand, giving these independent organisations more spending power leaches talent away from LA-controlled schools. There are only so many teachers to go around, and unless new Academies make better use of them, by freeing them from paperwork and testing, they won’t produce much better results.

“Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect,” Dr. Ravitch said. “They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We’re on the wrong track.”

A new government in England should focus more on increasing status and respect for teachers and increasing the desirability of teaching (which is about pay, curriculum-flexibility and discipline) rather than just testing the outputs.

Last week the announcement came that Daniel Kinge, founder and manager of Sparklebox.co.uk, has been convicted of a second count of downloading and storing child pornography. Although there have been rumours and chatter since 2007, it seems most were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. As one forum post puts it:

Basically its a nice chap who was a teacher but quit to do Sparklebox full time. He makes teaching resources which you can download for free.

I’m afraid not, fellas. He did it to make money out of advertising (so yes, every time you click on you are boosting his income in jail), and possibly to build a profile and reputation to approach children.

One comment Teachable is tired of hearing is that because we charge our users for access to files, the service is somehow less useful to teachers. At the Teachmeet BETT 2010 meetup last week we got a couple of comments along the line of “chargeable product = bad, ad supported = good”. Every teaching website out there needs funding, either from:

1. Advertising
2. Government subsidy
3. Charging end users

We believe advertising alone is both insufficient to run a good service, and can lead to conflicts of interest when trying to impartially offer educational content. Government subsidy is likely to run out in the UK pretty fast in 2010, leaving 3 as the only viable business model. We are proud to charge our users for teaching resources and half that money goes to contributors.

Unless, like Sparklebox, it’s not really a business at all, but something altogether more murky.

This month we’re being featured in specialist magazine for D&T, science and ICT teachers called Technology in Education. They have lots of useful and detailed reviews for hardware (computerised and other) that might enhance your lessons.

We’re considering working with them to provide more reviews of real-world resources, so please tell us if this would be useful to you.

There was a good quote yesterday from Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, on efficiency in schools. He’s not running education, and has no say on how budgets are spent, but as one of the largest employers of school leavers his views should count for something.

“One thing that government could do is to simplify the structure of our education system. From my perspective there are too many agencies and bodies, often issuing reams of instructions to teachers, who then get distracted from the task at hand: teaching children.
“At Tesco we try to keep paperwork to a minimum; instructions simple; structures flat; and – above all – we trust the people on the ground. I am not saying that retail is like education, merely that my experience tells me that when it comes to the number of people you have in the back office, ‘less is more’,” he said.

Whatever you think about Tesco’s takeover of British retailing, you have to admit they know something about efficient organisation and lean management. For a company like Tesco, every unnecessary form-filler in the back office is an extra few pence on your loaf of bread. The same is true in schools; it just isn’t so obvious. Every extra pound spent by central government on ‘initiatives’ and advisors is one less pound going into teaching and teaching resources.

At Teachable we simply believe that every pound of the billions spent on schools each year should count, and that procuring teaching resources from teachers directly is by far the most efficient way spending this bit of the budget.

There’s lots in the news today picking up a survey by the Local Government Association showing a shortage of state school places, supposedly because the recession is forcing privately-educated pupils into the state sector.

We don’t think that’s true.

The reality, and contrary to what we predicted last autumn, is that private schools in the UK are doing OK. An Economist report pointed out that numbers of pupils at independent schools is steady this year. Parents try hard not to change schools if they possibly can … but may think twice about starting pre-school children in a fee-paying school. So, in the 1990s, the number of independent school places didn’t drop until 3 years AFTER the recession, and then only by around 3%.

What is happening is that the demographics of the UK are changing. Only one fifth of councils in the LGA survey reported a shortage of places, and these are likely to be in central London. More immigration of young adults into London over the last 10 years had lead to a boom in pre-school children, which will rapidly increase inner-city demand for primary places. Visa versa, schools in Merseyside have up to 25% surplus places as the population ages and young families move out the area.

The upshot is that more provision needs to be made for schools to expand and grow in areas of demand (London and the South East), and merge and shrink in areas of lower demand. This may mean some disruption for teachers, but the alternative is unacceptably high class sizes in already crowded schools in the inner-cities.

We’ve always thought textbooks have had their day, but this view has now been endorsed by no less than Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From the beginning of the next school year in August, maths and science students in California’s high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review, rather than buy any new textbooks.

‘Online teaching resources for maths and science texts that have passed an academic standards review’ … that sounds a bit like Teachable; and we include interactive whiteboard content as well.

The key reason is that textbooks are no longer thought to be good value for money. California spends approximately $350m on teaching resources, and is facing a big budget deficit – a bit like the UK. If education authorities are forced to cut either staff or textbooks, then most schools and parents would rather keep the staff. And that choice may soon come to the UK, which spends around £350m on equivalent materials.

So, although not all schools are equipped to make best use of fully online resources, the move towards Quality Assured online content is speeding up.

Textbooks are going. And no, they won’t Be Back.