I guess there always have been (and always will be) market forces in education. It’s certainly a place for big business now. But who do we want to be driving provision for the children and young people of today? When the love of money starts to take hold, what happens to the most vulnerable in our society?
I want to return to the process of education. The development of critical thinking that requires the investment of effort and time. Blood, sweat and tears have taught me this: education isn’t a ready-made package you can buy off the shelf; there are no quick wins nor easy routes to the power of knowledge and understanding.
My Memories of Reading Recovery
In my experience, turning the process of education into a product can lead to the pollution of promising pedagogy.
My Reading Recovery teacher training started in 2010 and was the best In-Service Training I have ever received. One of the intervention programme’s strengths was the excellent professional development opportunities it provided for its teachers. Every fortnight, my colleagues and I met together for an afternoon of training, led by Wendy Jenkins. We took turns teaching a live lesson observation behind a one-way window in a mutually supportive environment. We then spent time in shared reflection and analysis of the teaching and learning behaviours we had encountered.
My practice improved exponentially as a result of my peers and I being actively encouraged to observe closely and think critically about the individual needs of each child. My knowledge and understanding of highly-tailored early literacy intervention were enriched through shared insights and fresh perspectives during our bi-weekly collaborative training sessions. But the promise in the pedagogy was shortlived.
After our first year of funded training in Herefordshire and Worcestershire, I found that the pressure to amass evidence to prove the programme’s worth swept under the carpet the emerging flaws in the methodology. My confidence in the programme’s claims grew weaker as the demands for data grew stronger.
The last straw came for me in my second and final year delivering the programme. My colleagues and I were told to restrict the intervention to the children who showed the most potential to make significant progress – in order to boost the evidence of success. I questioned the message our new Teacher Leader had passed on to us, what about the children in greatest need of the intervention, how would their needs be met? My questions remained unanswered and my conscience gave me no rest.
When I returned to my school, I met with the head and deputy. I received their full support to continue working with the children whose observation surveys had shown most need of support. At the end of the 2012 academic year, funding for the Reading Recovery Programme in Herefordshire ended and I returned to full-time class teaching.
I returned to the classroom far more equipped to meet the needs of children struggling to take off with reading and writing than I’d ever been, but my experience left me with a distrust for glowing claims, shiny ‘research evidence’, and soaring statistics. It was a painful lesson to see how product trumps process when money is at stake.
The Matthew Effect
The Matthew Effect is alive and kicking in the marketing of education – and the rich are certainly getting richer. Look at the phonics schemes used in schools. Do the most popular schemes deliver the biggest benefits to the children, or were they purchased in response to mega marketing campaigns?
Recently, my sister (Community Engagement Lead at Liverpool Council) invited me to a CBeebies Parenting event at the Five Children and Families Trust Hub in Speke. I was delighted to visit the family hub, meet new people and learn more about CBeebies’ parenting resources.
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One of the highlights for me was a conversation with Dr Jamie Lingwood, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool Hope University, about his research into shared reading at home. He told me about new innovation funding for children learning at home with their dads.
My ears pricked up. I was preparing to start a little reading research project of my own on Saturday 6th June. I had paid £20 to hire a room at Ledbury Library for the trial. I wondered if there might be a potential avenue to develop my ideas into a funding application through a local community group…
But when I searched out more details of the funding Jamie had told me about, my hopes fell flat.
The scope for the government’s funding was way beyond me:
‘Phase 1 projects can range in size up to total eligible costs between £200,000 and £500,000, inclusive of VAT.’
Was this another outworking of the Matthew Effect? When I saw the numbers, I pictured the big players in prime position to equip their funding teams to put forward appealing and ambitious applications.
Grass Roots
What if, instead of opening the coffers of fame and fortune, policy makers and researchers were to get down on their knees in the dirt and pay close attention to the grass roots?
Who has ears to hear the reliable and authoritative voices at ground level under the hubbub of the loud and proud?
Who has eyes to see teachers who have been quietly rooting and grounding their pedagogy, slowly but surely honing their craft, and carrying out action research day in and day out for decades?
Come on, Bridget, get up off the sofa and search out the tried and tested practitioners, who are too busy battling a broken system to get dolled up for a glossy Instagram reel.
Find the heavy hearts, work-worn hands and trudging feet. Learn from the ones who have been persevering along rough, rocky roads and uphill climbs, painstakingly mapping out better ways to meet the needs of today’s children and young people.
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne’er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me.by Robert Browning Hamilton
Read with Julia 