The School Curriculum Ten Years Hence - UCET: Universities ...

OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 14 

December 2002 

THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM TEN YEARS HENCE: 

PROVIDING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS 

An account of the Joint UCET/HMI Symposium 

held in Belfast, 10/11 December 2001 

Edited by Michael Convey 

Contents 

1. INTRODUCTION Michael Convey 

2. SYMPOSIUM PAPERS 

Part 1: Looking Ahead at the Curriculum 

• The Future of the School Curriculum 

• The Future Curriculum - But don't forget the 

Past 

Part 2: A Client-centred View of Teaching 

• New Approaches to Encouraging and 

Supporting Effective Teaching and Learning 

• A Client-centred View of Teaching - A 

response to Frank Pignatelli's address 

Denis Lawton 

Richard Pring 

Frank Pignatelli 

Cliff Gould 

Part 2: Social Inclusion and Curricular 

Developments 

• Social Inclusion and Curricular Developments Susan Lewis 

• Social Inclusion and Curricular Developments 

- A response to Susan Lewis's address 

3. REPORTS FROM DISCUSSION GROUPS 

Denis Lawton 

Ian Menter 

Roger Woods 

Marion 

Matchett 

4. A SUMMARY NOTE Michael 

Convey, Mary 

Russell 

~ ONE ~ 

INTRODUCTION 

Michael Convey 

In December 1999, The Universities Council for the Education of 

Teachers (UCET) and Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) from the four

parts of the United Kingdom organised a joint symposium with the 

title, Improving Schools: The Contribution of Teacher Education and 

Training. This symposium, uniquely, brought together HMI, 

university and college staff involved in teacher education and 

representatives from government departments and agencies from 

all parts of these islands. There was a widespread view amongst 

participants that the symposium had been successful in providing a 

forum where valuable insights into the varying approaches to 

teacher education and training could be obtained, and that further, 

similar meetings should be held from time to time. 

With that conclusion in view, UCET and HMI set about arranging a 

second symposium in Belfast. It was planned originally for the 

spring of 2001 but unfortunately had to be put off because of the 

foot-and-mouth epidemic. It eventually took place on 10/11 

December 2001 at the Hilton Hotel in Belfast. Despite the 

postponement, the event attracted a range of participants similar to 

that in Edinburgh and was substantially over-subscribed. It was 

particularly pleasing that a large contingent from the Republic of 

Ireland was able to attend. Throughout, the organisers enjoyed the 

support of the Northern Ireland Departments of Education and 

Employment and Learning. Senior officials from both Departments 

contributed to the symposium and the two education Ministers 

spoke at the conference dinner. UCET and HMI were especially 

grateful to the Department of Education for a contribution of £2,000 

towards the cost of hiring syndicate rooms. 

The purpose of the symposium was to look ahead at the way the 

school curriculum might and should develop over the next decade 

and to consider the kind of training teachers would need to make it 

effective. There was a strong conviction that, while elected 

governments had a duty to develop clear education policies, there 

was an equally strong duty on those directly involved in the 

education of both teachers and pupils, and in its evaluation, to 

speak out clearly about curriculum and teaching on the basis of 

evidence from research, inspection and first-hand experience. While 

no one underestimated the challenge inherent in such a task, there 

was general agreement about the need to undertake it. 

The symposium was arranged in three parts, each of which 

contained a presentation of papers followed by group discussions 

centred on the issues raised in the papers. Two papers were 

presented in each part, the second being either a response to, or a 

development of, the ideas set out in the first. 

For the first part, Looking ahead at the curriculum, Denis Lawton 

prepared and distributed in advance of the symposium a paper 

which identified ‘the essential reform’ as requiring us ‘to move away

from 19th-century attitudes, values and institutional behaviour’. In 

his response, Richard Pring argued that, “Education must … be a 

preparation for an uncertain and unpredictable future” and should 

be prepared to “draw on the wisdom of the past”; though he was 

careful to identify the threads of conservatism he thought would be 

helpful. 

In Part 2, A client-centred view of teaching, Frank Pignatelli 

described a major initiative which the Scottish University for 

Industry was undertaking to re-engage the disappointed, the 

disenchanted and the disappeared. Although the programme made 

use of many types of communication technology, these were 

means, not ends. Education was about values and beliefs, “about 

the kind of person you are … not about things that are measurable”. 

In reply, Cliff Gould stated that, “Most of these disengaged learners 

have been failed, to a significant degree, by the school system”, 

and spoke of what HMI in England had found schools were doing to 

respond to these issues, and with what success. 

In Part 3, Social inclusion and curricular development, Susan Lewis 

spoke graphically of what the National Assembly for Wales was 

doing to “(improve) the lot of excluded and disengaged young 

people and … to make sure that everyone has the chance to fulfil 

their potential whatever their age, gender or religious, cultural or 

ethnic background”. Her concluding question, “Is the whole 

construct of a school one that will help or hinder our tackling of 

disaffection?”, echoed strongly the anxieties expressed by earlier 

speakers about the current nature of schooling and curricula. Marion 

Matchett responded by describing successful initiatives in Northern 

Ireland to counter exclusion and disaffection but was “not satisfied 

with the current response to social inclusion” which was too often, 

“ad hoc … , (approached) in terms of general discipline (rather 

than) a supportive individual programme, (and seen as) a shortterm 

funding issue … as opposed to an integral aspect of the 

education system”. 

Some strong common themes were evident in the three parts. Most 

striking was the concern that our current approaches to the 

curriculum and schooling were failing large numbers of young 

people. In more positive terms, it was evident that, to have a 

chance of remedying this situation, the future curriculum would 

need to be: 

• based on values and beliefs – on the rights and duties of 

individuals in a democratic society 

• designed to encourage curiosity and self-directed learning 

• flexible enough to engage the talents and interests of all learners 

• in principle, life long, rather than confined to the school years

The discussions which followed the presentations focussed on the 

implications of these themes for the education of teachers. A 

unifying concept in the discussions was that in order to have a 

chance of success, teachers themselves would need to be learners 

for life rather than competent deliverers of a centrally determined 

curriculum. New information technologies would undoubtedly affect 

the teacher’s role – in future to be more that of leader and mentor 

than giver of knowledge – but would certainly not replace it. 

This Occasional Paper is a working record of the symposium rather 

than a commentary upon it. It presents the papers as they were 

delivered in Belfast and the accounts of the group discussions as 

they were recorded at the time. They are published here because 

they are serious and significant contributions to an important 

debate which needs to be both continuous and well-informed. 

~ TWO ~ 

SYMPOSIUM PAPERS 

PART 1: Looking Ahead at the Curriculum 

The Future of the School Curriculum in the 21st Century 

Professor Denis Lawton, Academic Secretary, UCET 

It is not very sensible to talk of the future of the curriculum without 

first discussing the ways schools are likely to change as institutions. 

It is usually better to see the curriculum not as a bolt-on 

complication to school organisation but as an integral aspect of a 

changing culture. In the last few years there have been many 

discussions about the school, sometimes from the point of view of 

new technology, sometimes concerned with improving efficiency in 

order to compete with international rivals. I want to see the 

problem of schools from the point of view of a third group of 

educationists: those who, while not accepting the de-schooling 

solution, want to change the ethos of schools and the nature of 

schooling. 

The school as we know it now was largely a 19th-century invention 

deriving from 19th- century social theories and practices which gave 

rise to a number of different kinds of institutions such as 

workhouses, factories and prisons. Schools shared a number of 

their characteristics - including architecture. Such institutions were 

developed to solve social and economic problems. What they had in 

common was the need for a large number of ‘inmates’ to be 

controlled by a smaller number of supervisors. In all cases there 

were two features in common: strict discipline and hard labour. And

to make the task of the supervisors possible, certain practices and 

rules became customary. For example, silence, strict control over 

time (marked by bells, sirens or hooters) and restrictions of space 

(in schools sitting in rows or in prisons Bentham’s panopticon) and 

movement (such as marching in lock-step). Many rules were 

necessary for this bureaucratic- autocratic form of organisation. In 

all cases, including schools, control was the dominant factor. 

For various reasons which need not concern us here, schools have 

been slower to change than other institutions such as factories. In 

many respects schools are now out of step with the rest of society. 

Schools are probably now more Fordist than factories – at least 

those in the West. Workhouses have been abandoned; prisons are 

generally thought to have failed but continue to exist. Schools have 

changed a good deal and have proliferated throughout the world. 

But have they changed enough? Do they still have too many 

features in common with 19th century factories, prisons and 

workhouses? 

Many educationists - for example, Andy Hargreaves (1994) - have 

expressed the desire to move away from that factory model of the 

school to some kind of institution which would be less bureaucratic, 

probably smaller, and with an emphasis on more enlightened 

teacher-student relationships and modern teaching and learning 

methods. At the level of the classroom Elliott (2000) and Posch 

(1991 and 1994) have advocated radical changes in teaching 

methods and pedagogic relationships. Elliott (2000) also drew 

attention to the recent announcement by the Labour Government of 

the Healthy Schools Standard which relates to school ethos but has 

implications for teacher-student relationships in the classroom, 

especially encouraging young people to discuss their experience as 

learners. Posch (1994) specifically relates social and economic 

changes to desirable reforms in curriculum and pedagogy. The 

relevant changes may be summarised as follows: 

1. Attitudes to authority in society generally make it necessary for 

schools to change the curriculum away from ‘a culture of predefined 

demands’ to one which is open to negotiation and discussion. 

2. Other social changes may result in students ceasing to see 

teachers as relevant guides for their futures. This challenges 

teachers to create learning situations which provide new conditions 

of trust. Schools and classroom teachers need to develop forms of 

collaborative learning which foster mutual respect and a sense of 

community. 

3. Current economic and social conditions seem to be not only 

complex but often beyond control. Teachers need to be able to

encourage students to develop techniques to cope with the 

unstructured situations of everyday living – that is, curricula and 

learning processes that help young people to make sense of 

practical problems and to take responsibility for their own action. 

4. We live in a ‘risk society’. Teachers need to be able to help 

students to understand and evaluate risks in their own 

environment, making use of relevant scientific and technical 

knowledge. 

Elliott (2000) suggests that all four of the above challenges demand 

new pedagogical processes in schools. 

We should not underestimate, however, the extent to which the 

school is deeply entrenched in obsolete traditions. S B Sarason 

(1990) was so concerned with these problems of school culture that 

he called one of his books The Predictable Failure of School Reform. 

The main thrust of the book concerns the inability of reformers to 

accept that past efforts at change have failed. This inability to 

diagnose past failures dooms their reforms to failure. The gap 

between rhetoric and reality is too great. Sarason agreed with John 

Goodlad (1984) who made the point that schools are amazingly 

similar in terms of classroom organisation, atmosphere or ethos. 

School systems are very resistant to change. Schools are very 

complex - to change them you have to get to know their cultures. It 

is no use seeing unconnected parts. Another important issue that 

we should not forget is that despite the disadvantages of schools as 

they are now, it has often been pointed out that for many young 

people the school is the most moral institution they ever encounter. 

What we urgently need to do is to re-think the functions of the 

school in the 21st century with the intention of changing the 

organisation of schools so that a caring community is enhanced in 

an ethos where pupils take more responsibility for their own 

learning. Not a programme of total individualised self-instruction 

(because social learning is also very important) but a considerable 

shift in the balance away from teacher direction to individual 

responsibility for and ownership of the teaching-learning process. 

There are many available prescriptions for improving schools, but 

some are dangerously close to the false gods of technology and 

consumerism. I would like to build in another hypothesis at this 

stage: good schools (not effective schools) give their pupils more 

than efficient instruction in English, maths and other learning areas. 

A good school and a good curriculum focus on values and beliefs. A 

good school sees as its main purpose the provision of ideals and 

visions: sometimes religious but not necessarily so (and some 

religious schools conspicuously fail in this respect). Schools need to

provide the young with a wider vision of values as well as 

knowledge and skills. 

What specific changes might be suggested? How have the best 

schools already changed? In the 21st century schools need to be: 

• less hierarchical and authoritarian 

• more concerned with individuals and individual needs rather than 

age group needs 

• concerned with learning as well as teaching 

• concerned with the kind of learning that is both experiential and, 

where possible, self-directed 

• concerned with students who are more autonomous and selfevaluating 

Andy Hargreaves has suggested that some schools are already 

changing in the following ways: Schools have 

• flatter decision-making structures 

• reduced specialisation 

• blurring of roles and boundaries 

I would add a list of desirable changes in teachers: 

• teachers with the ability to learn with students (ie even if a 

teacher does not know the answers, he/she should be good at 

finding out) 

• teachers who are authority figures without being authoritarian 

• teachers who are experts in curriculum design (rather than just a 

narrow range of subject matter) 

• teachers who are experts in learning styles as well as teaching 

methods 

More specifically on curriculum I have elsewhere (1997) made five 

suggestions: 

1. Moving from content and objectives to skills and processes 

In England the Higginson Report (1988) complained that A-level 

students spent too much time memorising and recalling facts and 

arguments rather than acquiring fundamental understandings. 

Similar comments have been made about the curriculum for 

younger pupils. And Charles Handy (1997) has suggested that he 

would ‘have more faith in a national curriculum if it were to be more 

concerned with process than with content.’ 

Robert Reich (1993) has discussed the need for much higher levels 

of thinking skills in the computerised world of symbolic analysts who 

need skills of ‘abstraction, system thinking, experimentation and

collaboration’. Bruner (1960) talked about process, structure and 

the need for children who were learning science to begin to think 

like scientists. 

2. Moving from subjects and cognitive attainment to holistic 

learning 

Subjects may be useful up to a point, but they are limited - some of 

our most pressing problems are not conveniently packaged within a 

single subject. In real life we have to get beyond the subjects. But 

young people grow up unable to cope with real-life problems 

involving an understanding of their own society, including its 

political structure, and unable to cope with questions of values and 

morality. 

Recent work in psychology has shown that conventional intelligence 

tests have concentrated on one very limited form of ability and 

encouraged teachers to ignore many other kinds of intelligent 

behaviour. In the USA Howard Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple 

intelligence reinforces the view that we should think of a broader, 

more integrated curriculum. The traditional curriculum is too 

academic and neglects personal and moral development. The 

Gardner theory suggests that not only is the traditional curriculum 

too narrow in terms of human abilities, but also that we should be 

looking for abilities and talents in all pupils. Professional teachers 

will have a richer concept of ‘ability’, and will try to adapt teaching 

to the intelligence of the learners; children do not all learn in the 

same way, and whilst it is not possible for all teaching to be 

individualised, it is possible for teachers to diagnose individual 

difficulties and take account of them. There is promising work in 

Canada and more recently in England (the Avon Learning to Learn 

project), and in Ireland at U.C.Cork. 

3. Moving from didactic teaching to self-directed learning 

In England our National Commission on Education (NCE) Report 

(1993) drew attention to the need for older pupils to take 

responsibility for their own learning programmes. This does not 

mean that teachers should not continue to give direction (including 

some whole class teaching) but the emphasis should move, as 

students mature, in the direction of learning how to learn - learning 

how to become autonomous learners. One of the greatest 

difficulties is for the teacher to encourage the whole class to move 

along in the same direction whilst recognising that the styles of 

learning and the range of achievement will be considerable. 

Part of the task for the teacher is to plan carefully what kind of 

learning needs to be individual, what should be learned in a group, 

and when it would be better to have a whole class presentation by

the teacher, always bearing in mind that pupils benefit from verbal 

interaction with the teacher. 

There is a further complication: part of the teacher’s plan should be 

to cater for different levels of ability. This is difficult, as Neville 

Bennett (1987) and HMI have observed. One of the most sterile 

arguments in the last twenty years has been the debate about the 

advantages and disadvantages of setting and streaming by ability. 

This debate misses the point: it is not enough to have a class set for 

ability - what is needed is a much more complex pattern of 

organisation and pedagogy to cater for a range of individual 

differences. In 1993 the National Commission on Education (NCE) 

recognised this and devoted a whole chapter to “Innovation in 

Learning”. It was particularly impressed by ‘flexible learning’, where 

pupils learn to take some responsibility for their own learning 

programmes. The Report recommended that by the age of about 

14, pupils should be equipped to work independently in a flexible 

learning environment. It goes without saying that the flexible 

curriculum demands flexible assessment - it is also necessary to 

avoid age-related testing. 

4. Moving from academic or vocational to integration of both 

aspects of experience 

We need to overcome the false and sterile opposition of academic 

and vocational (see Richard Pring, 1995). Many outside education 

have complained about this characteristic of educational thinking. 

This is by no means an English phenomenon, but we have the 

problem intensified because our social structure is so dominated by 

class. Curricula should be designed with a view to eliminating the 

distinction between academic and vocational: young people need 

aspects of both traditions, as suggested by the IPPR (1990), the 

National Commission on Education (1993) and Richardson et al 

(1995) Learning for the Future. We need a curriculum which gets 

beyond thinking in academic and vocational terms: this will not be 

easy because the two concepts are deeply embedded, and 

segregated, in our culture. All pupils need more social and moral 

education. 

5. Moving from a national curriculum 5-16 to life-long learning 

We have at last reached the stage where most young people stay 

on in education beyond 16, but although much lip service is paid to 

the idea of life-long learning, very little thought has been given to 

relating the national curriculum 5-16, or education 14-19, to 

providing related opportunities throughout the whole of working life 

and beyond. Not only because most people will need to change jobs 

four or five times, but because they need to have opportunities to

continue learning actively for the rest of their lives. These 

opportunities need to be planned - they are too important to be left 

to the market. 

And there are no quick fixes. A worrying trend in most countries, 

more critical in some than in others, is the growing problem of 

teacher recruitment. There is a general shortage of some kinds of 

specialist teachers in secondary schools (mathematics and science 

in particular but many others as well). In countries such as the UK 

and USA the problem is getting worse and will soon reach crisis 

point. In addition, the problem of retaining or even improving the 

quality of teachers is widespread. It is a problem which tends to be 

tinkered with rather than accepted as a major and increasing 

difficulty. Perhaps if we address the problem of educating teachers 

for the new schools envisaged above, more young people would be 

attracted into the profession. 

REFERENCES 

Bennett, N. (1987) ‘Changing Perspectives on Teaching Learning 

Processes’ Oxford Review of Education 13,1. 

Barber, M. (1994) Young People and their Attitudes to School Keele, 

Staffs. England: University of Keele 

Bruner, J. (1960) The Process of Education Cambridge, Mass: 

Harvard University Press 

Chapman, J. and Aspin, D. (1997) The School, The Community and 

Lifelong Learning London: Cassell 

Dearing, Sir R. (July 1993) The National Curriculum and its 

Assessment: Interim Report London: School Curriculum and 

Assessment Authority 

Dearing, Sir R. (December 1993) The National Curriculum and its 

Assessment: Final Report London: School Curriculum and 

Assessment Authority 

Department of Education and Science (1978) Primary Education in 

England. A Survey by HMI London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 

Elliott, J. (2000) ‘Revising the national curriculum: A comment on 

the Secretary of State’s proposals’ Journal of Education Policy 

Volume 15, Number 2, March-April 2000 pp 247-255, London: 

Taylor & Francis 

Fullan, M.G. (1991) The New Meaning of Educational Change 

London: Cassell 

Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind Fontana 

Goodlad, J. (1984) A Place called School: Prospects for the Future 

New York, USA: McGraw-Hill 

Handy, C. (1997) ‘Schools for Life and Work’ in Mortimore and Little 

Hargreaves, A. (1994) Changing Teachers, Changing Times London: 

Falmer 

Hargreaves, D.(1995) ‘School Culture, School Effectiveness and

School Improvement’ in School Effectiveness and School 

Improvement: An International Journal of Research Policy and 

Practice Vol.6. No.1 pp. 23-46 (March 1995) Editors: Bert P.M. 

Creemers and David Reynolds. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & 

Zeitlinger 

Higginson, A. (1988) Advancing A Levels London:HMSO 

Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (eds) (1997) Dearing and Beyond: 14- 

19 Qualifications, Frameworks and Systems London: Kogan Page 

Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) (1990) Education and 

Training Paper No.1 A British ‘Baccalaureat’ Ending the Division 

Between Education and Training (David Finegold et al) 

London: IPPR 

Lawton, D. (1996) Beyond the National Curriculum: Teacher 

professionalism and empowerment Hodder & Stoughton 

Lawton, D. (1997) ‘Curriculum Theory and a Curriculum for the 21st 

Century’ in Mortimore and Little (1997). 

Mortimore, P. and Little, V. (eds) (1997) Living Education PCP 

National Commission on Education (1993) Learning to Succeed 

Heinemann 

National Curriculum Council (NCC November 1989) Circular No.6: 

The National Curriculum and Whole Curriculum Planning York: NCC 

National Curriculum Council (NCC 1990) Curriculum Guidance 8: 

Education for Citizenship York: NCC 

OECD (1985) Education and Training after Basic Schooling Paris: 

OECD 

OECD (1990) The Teacher Today Paris 

OECD (1996) Lifelong Learning for All Paris 

OECD (1997) Towards a New Global Age: Challenges and 

Opportunities Paris 

Posch, P.(1991) Environment and School Initiatives: Background 

and basic premises of the project in Environment, Schools and 

Active Learning. Part I Paris: OECD CERI 

Posch, P. (1994) ‘Changes in the culture of teaching and learning’ in 

Educational Action Research: an international journal 2(2), 153-61 

Pring, R. (1995) Closing the Gap: liberal education and vocational 

preparation London: Hodder & Stoughton 

Prost, A. (2000) ‘The creation of the Baccalaureat Professional : A 

case study of decision making in French education’ Journal of 

Education Policy, Volume 15, Number 1, January-February 2000 

pp.19-31 London: Taylor and Francis 

Reich, R. (1993) The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st 

Century Capitalism Simon & Schuster 

Richardson, W. et al (November 1995) Learning for the Future 

Initial Report London: Institute of Education University of London 

Post-16 Education Centre and The University of Warwick Centre for 

Education and Industry 

Sarason, S.B. (1990) The Predictable Failure of School Reform: can

we change course before its too late? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 

Spours, K. (1997) ‘GNVQs and the future of broad vocational 

qualifications’ in Hodgson, A. and Spours, K. (eds.) (1997) Dearing 

and Beyond: 14-19 Qualifications, Frameworks and Systems 

London: Kogan Page 

The Future Curriculum - But don’t forget the Past 

Professor Richard Pring, University of Oxford 

1. Facing an unpredictable future 

In his lectures to the College of Preceptors in 1966, entitled 

Education and Change, Derek Morrell reflected upon the foundation 

of the Schools Council, of which he was the chief architect, and 

asked 

Why educators, in all parts of the world, are finding it necessary to 

organise a response to change on a scale, and in a manner, which 

has no precedent … Why can’t curriculum modification follow the 

simpler pattern of partial and piecemeal change which we and other 

countries followed for so long? 

Remember that this question was asked in 1966, before the 

beginning of history, which, at the DfES, began in 1988. It was 

before we had computers and the internet, before the recognition of 

global warming and environmental disaster, before the vast 

migration of peoples due to war, famine and economic hardship, 

before there was such an obvious rejection of institutions which 

were perceived to sustain the wider community and society. The 

answers which Morrell gave were two, though closely connected. 

The first consisted in the pace and unpredictability of change. 

The many reasons … stem from the pace of change in modern 

society. Its rapidity, and the extraordinary difficulty which we face 

in defining its characteristics, and in communicating the implications 

of change throughout complex systems of human relationships, 

have destroyed or at least weakened the broad consensus on aims 

and methods which was taken for granted when our educational 

system took its present form. 

Once there seemed to be general agreement about the values which 

education should serve. But, with the changing social, moral and 

economic context of education, such consensus has disappeared. 

The second answer to the question, concerning the need to organise 

a curriculum response to change of this magnitude, was the

consequent crisis of values within society. No longer could one 

assume a consensus over what was worth teaching or over aims of 

education or over the values which should be promoted through 

schooling. He continues 

Our education crisis is fundamentally part of a general crisis of 

values. If education, and by implication, the curriculum is not 

thought of as contributing to a solution of this crisis of values, it can 

all too easily become an agent of the worst sort of conservatism. 

‘Conservatism’ can be understood in two senses. The first is the 

retreat to traditional ways of identifying and responding to the 

problem. It is as though nothing has fundamentally changed. Old 

solutions will be perfectly adequate for the future needs. And, 

therefore, there should be the maintenance of or (where necessary) 

a return to traditional values and approaches. 

The second sense of conservatism concerns the deep suspicion, by 

those in power, of ‘radical solutions, and thus the reluctance to 

relinquish control over the management of public affairs and 

services. There is a guardian class, which knows better than the 

community as a whole what is best. Such a class has some special 

insight into the transcendental values of ‘goodness, beauty and 

truth’, and thus is prepared to enforce these insights upon those 

who are less gifted, wise and knowing. 

These two senses of ‘conservatism’ often get mixed together. 

Steeped in traditional values, those in positions of power enforce 

those values against all opposition – and by all possible means. 

When I was first appointed to Oxford, I shared a platform and later 

a dinner, with Keith Joseph. He told me that I was responsible for 

all the problems of our schools because I (and others like me) had 

introduced teachers to John Dewey. For some time Dewey was 

attacked in pamphlet and popular press by such philosophers of 

conservatism as Anthony O’Hear and Roger Scruton. Dewey was 

(wrongly) seen as the ‘patron saint’, if not the ‘religious founder’, of 

child-centred education, which was deemed to undermine both 

traditional values in the curriculum and traditional modes of teacher 

authority and control. 

However, the two senses need to be kept apart. The paternalistic 

controller, the self-appointed guardian, could conceivably exercise 

his or her power to enforce a radical agenda in the belief that 

solutions, even radical ones, are to be found at the centre of policy 

decision making, not amongst those who implement the policies. 

For Morrell, however, there was no one who had the wisdom or the 

knowledge to say clearly and unambiguously what the problems

were or what the solutions might be. There was not the consensus 

over values within society which would give those in positions of 

power the confidence to set out the detailed aims of education 

which would reflect those values. Nor indeed could there be 

agreement over the means of successful teaching because teaching 

itself embodies the very values which are not agreed upon. 

Teachers differ in style of teaching (for example, sharing or not 

sharing with the students the ambiguity of the problems posed, 

encouraging or not encouraging open ended discussion of the 

solutions offered) because they differ in the values which those 

styles embody – not necessarily because of differing estimation of 

the appropriate means for attaining some educational aim. Hence, it 

was important that ‘teachers must themselves become problem 

solvers’, that is, engaged in the deliberations over the ends and 

means of educating these students in these contexts against this 

background of ambiguity and social questioning. But that was too 

radical and the Schools Council was finally closed down. 

In looking to the future I want to look at these two senses of 

conservatism. What we know from the recent past is that we cannot 

possibly see what the future holds for us. Education must therefore 

be a preparation for an uncertain and unpredictable future. There 

are no certainties about the kind of qualities and skills which will be 

needed; no guarantees of the economic scene which students are to 

be prepared for; no consensus over the values which will sustain 

communities or gain allegiance. However, preparation for such 

uncertainty, and living with plurality of beliefs, must draw upon the 

wisdom of the past. What else has the educator to draw upon other 

than personal whim and inclination? To that extent I want to 

advocate a degree of conservatism in looking to the future of the 

curriculum – remember the past. On the other hand, that wisdom 

lies in an educational tradition which is not the peculiar possession 

of those in positions of power. The politicians and civil servants 

have no more insight on these matters than anyone else, and 

certainly they lack the experiential knowledge, the contextual 

understanding of the teacher. Hence, in looking ahead we need to 

guard against the second kind of conservatism – the one which 

Morrell warned us against. 

2. Curriculum 

Morrell talked of a ‘crisis of values’. There are different ways in 

which one might respond to a crisis. One might, on the one hand, 

retreat to what has seemed to work in the past – to a traditional 

way of doing things, to a re-assertion of previous values and 

practices, to the ‘gold standard’ set in previous years. Or one might, 

on the other hand, condemn such values as irrelevant to a very

different social and economic context which requires more radical 

approaches. Yesterday’s knowledge is not today’s; the educated 

person of a more aristocratic society is not the educated person of 

the entrepreneurial economy; indeed, the disinterested learning of 

previous decades must give way to the more useful and practical 

concerns of today. 

What then might one pick out as the ‘crises of values’ to which we – 

and the educational systems that we belong to – need to respond 

either conservatively or radically? Each one will no doubt have his 

or her own list. But let me suggest the following. 

First, there has been a fairly radical shift in the respect for authority 

of all kinds – the authority of the Churches or parents or teachers or 

politicians to pronounce on matters of knowledge or of value. 

Authority, both in the sense of being ‘an authority’ in an area of 

knowledge or ‘in authority’ in matters of social control, needs to be 

earned much more than it used to be. It cannot be taken for 

granted, as though it belongs to one’s office or role. Teachers are 

challenged by parents and pupils who not only have access to many 

sources of rival opinions but also see themselves (under 

government influence) as ‘customers’ of a public service rather than 

as ‘apprentices’ in a form of life to be entered into. 

Second, although one can oversell the cultural homogeneity of a 

previous age, now it is much less easy to dodge the plurality of 

world views, of moral beliefs, of what is seen to be a worthwhile 

form of life. That – combined with the value attached to choice – 

shifts the educational enterprise from one in which the school or 

university aimed to guide the young learner into making worthwhile 

and wise choices, to one in which increasingly the school or 

university responds to the choices which the customer brings to the 

institution. Institutions of higher education replace departments of 

physics or philosophy with departments of golf and business 

studies; modern languages and the humanities in school give way 

to work-based learning and vocational options. There is no longer 

the confidence in an educational ideal to which one seeks to seduce 

the young learner. The seduction works the other way. 

Third, the society, for which schools and universities seek to 

prepare young people, is one in which the virtues of performing 

have succumbed to the effectiveness of the performance. The 

‘effective school’ (measured by ‘output’ in relation to ‘input’) – one 

which adopts the most effective means for attaining its targets – 

has replaced that which previously was appraised in terms of its 

intellectual and moral seriousness; the language of effectiveness 

has replaced the moral language of education.

In sum, the ‘crisis of values’ in society (lack of agreement on the 

values to be pursued, resort to violence in the pursuit of one’s 

goals, failure of many to respond positively to changing economic 

and social conditions, racial and ethnic conflict, prevalence of drugs, 

lack of stability in relationships and family life) is reflected in a 

‘crisis of values’ in education. That crisis lies in a failure of 

confidence in both the aims and the content of education, and 

therefore in the continuing responsiveness of educational authorities 

and institutions, in a more consumer oriented society, to the 

changing demands of the ‘customer’ or to the changing targets of 

those who are in financial and political control. It is as though the 

institutions and the teachers no longer belong to an educational 

tradition which retains a certain independence of, on the one hand, 

those (the young people and their parents) who they should be 

introducing to that tradition, and, on the other hand, those (the 

politicians and the employers) who have the power to shape it to 

their own ends. 

The ‘conservatives’ at their best wish to preserve the independence 

of that tradition. But, at their worst, they fail to see the nature of 

the crisis – the need to respond to the moral and social world which 

shapes the demands of the ‘consumers’. 

There is, I believe, a way out of this crisis, but it requires a 

rediscovery of those aims of education which are embedded within 

an educational tradition – which are part of a distinctively 

‘educational practice’. Such a ‘practice’ concerned the development 

of a person – the development of those qualities, moral and 

intellectual, which make us distinctively human. 

This is captured most effectively in Jerome Bruner’s account of his 

1960s social studies course ‘Man: A Course of Study’. The three 

questions which shaped the course were: 

What is it that makes us human? 

How did we become so? 

How might we become more so? 

There is, of course, no definitive answer to any of these questions. 

The exploration of them is the very stuff of the arts and of the 

humanities, of philosophy and of theology, of the sciences and of 

social studies. And that exploration might be seen at two very 

different levels: the level of an evolving intellectual and moral 

tradition, found and argued in books and drama, or through the arts 

and artefacts; and the level of the individual explorer – the young 

person trying to make sense of his or her own humanity as he or 

she draws upon those resources. In this particular case, the school 

pupils would draw upon the resources of anthropology and the

social sciences, of linguistics and biology, but would do so through 

the formulation and refinement of questions. 

An ‘educational practice’ would be this struggle to make sense, to 

understand, to become more enlightened in matters of personal 

significance – but doing so in the light of what others have thought 

and said. Within such an educational practice, the teacher is crucial, 

for it is the teacher who helps the young learner to bridge the gap 

between his or her own personal understanding and puzzlement, on 

the one hand, and the wider culture which we have inherited and 

which provides the resources for that struggle to understand. In 

that way, Denis Lawton was right in insisting that the curriculum is 

‘a selection from the culture’ – a selection of those forms of thought 

and experience which is judged to shed light on matters which are 

of personal and social significance. The curriculum, therefore, is the 

interpersonal mediation between teacher and learner of what often 

seems the impersonal reflection of that culture (in books or plays or 

artefacts) to the personal needs of the student. 

There are, therefore, two sorts of danger, as we respond to 

Morrell’s ‘crisis of values’. The first is to treat the ‘impersonal’ 

sources of knowledge as just that – dead texts to be learnt or to be 

grappled with, certainly, but not to be treated as resources for the 

intellectual and moral development of young people. Or (a version 

of this kind of conservatism) would be to treat them as open to 

personal significance to only a small minority of young people, as 

though only an elite minority is capable of participating in such an 

educational practice. 

The second sort of danger (what might be called the extreme childcentred 

approach) is to be responsive to the personal needs and 

struggles of young people but, in doing so, to ignore that evolving 

intellectual and moral tradition whose value lies in helping those 

young people to make sense of their worlds. Rather is the 

classroom the forum in which the teacher brings the two together – 

the personal worlds of the learner and the public world of meaning, 

expressed in books and artefacts. 

Such a view of an ‘educational practice’ is neither novel nor overly 

idealistic. It is to be witnessed in the daily teaching of many – the 

drama teacher who, through Lorca’s Blood Wedding, helps the 

pupils to identify and explore the values embedded within the 

complex relations of bride and lover, or the teacher of Othello who 

enables the young learner to confront, in a safe but dramatic 

context, the powerful emotion of jealousy, or the teacher of biology 

who provides a more objective base for the exploration of living 

phenomena. And so one could go on. The point is that the links 

made by the teacher in such an ‘educational practice’ between the

esources of literature and the sciences and the arts, on the one 

hand, and the individual’s struggle to make sense of his or her 

world, on the other, applies as much to the less able as it does to 

the academically brilliant. The art of the teacher is to bridge that 

gap – to select from the culture that which is appropriate for these 

pupils with these personal concerns at this stage of their 

development. And to do that the teacher has to be both rooted in 

that intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture (must feel intellectually 

alive within it) and experientially attuned to the thoughts and needs 

of the student. 

In this way, the principles of curriculum thinking are much the same 

for the future as for the past. 

First, that curriculum must be existentially significant, addressing 

questions which are meaningful to the learners, allowing the 

learners to articulate their concerns, to ‘have a voice’, to be so 

treated with respect for their views, however distasteful objectively 

they might be – for it is that voice and those views which need to 

be refined, developed, subjected to critical scrutiny, explored 

further in the light of evidence and argument. 

Second, the curriculum participates in that intellectual life – what 

Oakeshott refers to as the ‘conversation between the generations of 

mankind’ – which is embodied within plays, texts, artefacts which 

we have inherited. It is a selection from that culture, and the 

selection itself is constantly open to review and criticism. The 

teacher, where properly plugged into that intellectual life or into 

that ‘conversation’, draws from it what is judged to be significant 

and would no doubt be critically engaged with others’ selections 

from it. The teacher, in helping young people to engage critically 

with those ideas (to come to appreciate the different ‘voices’ in the 

conversation of mankind), will him or herself be participating in it, 

too. The good history teacher will, in that sense, also be ‘doing 

history’. 

Third, however, such an ‘educational practice’ – that transaction 

between teacher and learner – is a social event, taking place in a 

particular social context. It will be partly shaped by that context – 

by prevailing pressures and interests, by economic and political 

needs. The constant refining of the intellectual and moral tradition 

upon which the teacher draws is itself open to social understanding 

and critique. It cannot remain entirely independent of that social 

context. On the other hand, nor should it be reduced to it. Those 

intellectual and moral traditions have a life of their own; they 

remain the resources through which one might review and critique 

the social context. One might, for instance, see this particular time 

in history in a wider perspective.

The curriculum of the future, therefore, must reassert the authority 

of the teacher – an authority which is rooted in a moral and 

intellectual tradition from which what is of value to these or those 

young learners might be selected. Such authority must not be 

subverted by the demands of the new ‘consumer class’ – by those 

who seek to demote the expertise of the teacher to that of a 

technician who has mastered the craft of ‘effectiveness’. Such a 

curriculum, if it is to be part of an ‘educational practice’, would be 

shaped by the aim of enabling the young learners to enter into that 

world of ideas we have inherited, through which sense is made of 

themselves and of their world. It is not a quick response to 

anticipated wants and wishes of the public. And, thus, such a 

curriculum embodies in particular the intellectual virtues of 

respecting argument wherever it leads, of opening the mind to new 

ideas and possibilities, of respecting criticism and evidence, and is 

suspicious of those who seek to capture worthwhile learning in a 

limited number of pre-specified targets. The life of the mind – 

curious, questioning, trying to make sense – is not like that. 

3. ‘Worst sort of conservatism’ 

In pointing to the ‘crisis of values’ Morrell warned us of the worst 

sort of conservatism. One sort of conservatism, as I have pointed 

out, is that which sees the intellectual traditions we have inherited – 

the ‘classical literature’, the subjects, the historical picture of the 

world – as somehow frozen in time and to be internalised 

unquestioningly. ‘Learning it’ becomes an end in itself, but 

accessible only to the few. Its ‘relevance’ is unimportant. Attempts 

to bridge the gap between such literary and intellectual resources 

and the subjective interests of the learner would be dangerously 

like John Dewey. To such ‘conservatives’ John Dewey was and 

remains thoroughly subversive. 

But the more sinister form of conservatism, and one not really 

anticipated by Morrell, is that which, unconsciously perhaps, 

believes in ‘a guardian class’ – a select group of people who believe 

they know what is good for everyone else and who tighten their 

administrative grip on what is learnt. 

Prior to the 1976 Ruskin speech by the Prime Minister, Mr 

Callaghan, both universities and schools, though in practice 

interdependent, were relatively free to develop the curriculum as 

they saw fit. Universities both produced and protected the 

intellectual traditions upon which the schools might draw – and both 

remained free of political interference in what they were doing. As 

Dr Marjorie Reeves, selected for the Central Advisory Council in 

1947, was told by the then Permanent Secretary Redcliffe Maude, 

‘the purpose of the Advisory Council was to be prepared to die at

the first ditch as soon as politicians get their hands on education’. 

And, in the words of the Minister of Education, Sir David Eccles, the 

school curriculum was still a ‘secret garden’ in 1962. 

However, since the late 1970s, we have increasingly come to think 

about the curriculum (in the words of the last Permanent Secretary, 

Mr Bichard) ‘in business terms’ – the setting of clear targets; the 

cascading of these targets to agencies, local authorities, schools, 

teachers and pupils; the regular measurement of performance 

according to targets set; the explicit labelling of target 

achievements to maximise client choice; the increasing 

responsiveness to that choice within quasi-market conditions; the 

increasing responsiveness to the perceived needs of other clients (in 

particular, the employers whose interests need to be served). 

But such managerial control is the very worst kind of conservatism 

for two reasons. First, it makes the assumption that there is a group 

of target setters who have the wisdom to say what is good for all 

the ‘consumers’ of education – hence, the confidence in the 

constant setting and cascading of targets, or in the definition of 

benchmarks and standardisation of degrees, or in the detailed 

definition of standards for initial training of teachers. But there is no 

such group of people with this superior wisdom. In facing the 

future, we are uncertain of the world we are entering into and of the 

intellectual and moral resources which we need to draw upon in 

order to face such uncertainties. And, in the face of such 

uncertainties, one must rely upon the maintenance of a strong, 

rigorous and independent tradition of scholarship, research and 

criticism, created within universities and transmitted through the 

school curriculum. 

Second, however, even if there were such wisdom at the centre, it 

could not anticipate the consequences of its wise decisions and 

actions. For these have to be filtered through the professional 

judgement of thousands of teachers, and those judgements interact 

with unpredictable circumstances, thereby creating new contexts, 

new educational situations. The thoroughgoing assessment regime 

– the chief tool in the hands of the controllers – does not leave the 

situation as it is, does not then reflect the achievements and 

failures as they are, or were, independently of the assessment. 

Teachers respond in different ways, changing the practices which 

are to be assessed, devoting their intelligence and energy to beat 

the system. 

More seriously and sinisterly, however, is the transformation of the 

language of education. A shift in metaphor brings with it a different 

way of conceiving and evaluating an ‘educational practice’ – as, 

indeed, everything else. Thus, if an ‘educational practice’ is

essentially a meeting of minds – the mind of the pupil trying to 

make sense and the mind of the teacher (which itself draws upon 

the minds of others reflected in literature, drama, scientific texts, 

etc) – then the metaphor of ‘conversation’ is an appropriate one. 

The pupil enters into a world of ideas, and no one can predict 

exactly where that engagement will lead. Exploration, argument, 

discussion, critical appraisal are crucial to such an educational 

encounter. 

But such a metaphor is untenable where the ‘educational practice’ is 

controlled by, indeed is a response to, the detailed and easily 

assessed targets cascaded down from those who treat education ‘in 

business terms’. The language, through which one describes, 

evaluates and appraises, changes. Teaching becomes a delivery of 

targets; students and pupils become customers and clients; 

professional judgement is equated with testing against benchmarks; 

progress is seen in terms of ‘outputs’ compared with ‘inputs’ (with 

value-addedness in between). Time is devoted to assessment 

against ‘performance indicators’ – and the performance indicators 

are confused with targets (and educational objectives). Educational 

values are reduced to effectiveness. 

It is fascinating how the absurdity of this receives so little 

recognition amongst those who do control the system, but it is little 

short of scandalous to witness how universities in general, and 

education departments in particular, have been seduced by such a 

metaphor. The institutions whose main aim is to protect educational 

values seem hell-bent on destroying them. My fear for the 

Curriculum of the Future is that it is in the hands of those who think 

in business terms and that the very bodies whose raison d’être is to 

protect educational values, have entered willingly into a business 

relationship. They have become partners with the worst form of 

conservatives. 

4. Implications: Institutions and Teachers 

The implications of what I have argued do not lie in any curriculum 

prescription. Rather do they lie in the need to reclaim the 

educational high ground by the educational profession – by 

universities and schools working together to preserve and enhance 

an educational tradition. That educational tradition – one which has 

built into it the values of open but critical enquiry, of respect for 

evidence, of recognition of various well developed forms of thought 

and experience, and of the links between intellectual development 

in schools and scholarship and research within universities – has, in 

many respects, been hijacked by those who want to twist the 

curriculum to meet specific and often quite utilitarian ends.

That reclamation of a distinctively educational tradition requires, in 

my view, five things – several of which have serious implications for 

university departments of educational studies. 

First, the role of teachers must shift from that of delivering 

someone else’s targets to that of thinking about the aims and 

purposes of education, as well as the means. But such thinking 

requires rootedness in intellectual traditions. Teachers, too, must be 

partners in that ‘conversation between the generations of mankind’, 

which it is their duty to convey to their pupils. In preparing the 

pupils for their future, the teacher is in that sense rooted in the 

past. He or she is the mediator of the very best which our culture 

offers in addressing the questions that matter. 

Second, education, at its different levels, must find expression in 

the many forums where that ‘conversation’ can take place – where 

moral values and educational aims are explored and criticised and 

revised in the light of debate and of evidence. Such forums are in 

classrooms where discussion is central to the exploration; they are 

in schools where teachers constantly review their educational 

purposes and values; they are in the wider community where 

educational values are reviewed in the context of social and 

economic realities. Such, indeed, had been the ideal of the Schools 

Council, brain-child of Morrell as he prepared the educational 

system to face ‘the crisis of values’. But, of course, such openness 

and discussion are anathema to those who seek to control, to define 

standards, to set precise targets and to ‘audit’ against the 

‘performance indicators’. In Northern Ireland, one has seen brave 

attempts to move in that direction in the programme ‘Education for 

Mutual Understanding’. Jean Ruddock’s work demonstrates the 

importance of the pupil’s voice in the development of a meaningful 

educational experience. 

Third, an educational practice is concerned with the development of 

a person within a wider community. There is something odd about 

the idea of an educated person whose mind is totally unaffected by 

that community or who fails to contribute to it. That development of 

ideas, that freedom of exploration, takes place within various 

communities. It feeds on those communities, and in turn it 

illuminates them. There is much talk about the importance of ‘stake 

holders’, but the interaction between community and learning 

institutions rarely runs deep. And yet one can see how such beliefs 

begin to transform the community, as in the case of the Integrated 

School Movement in Northern Ireland. But this is not always 

possible. One thinks of Chris Searle in the 1970s, ejected from his 

Hackney School because of active community involvement, or of 

Eric Midwinter, a decade earlier, whose attempts to see the

curriculum, not as an escape from the community, but as a means 

of transforming that community. 

Fourth, it is surely the duty of universities and their educational 

studies departments, as custodians of an educational tradition, 

rooted in scholarship and the world of ideas, to fight against the 

deference to ‘thinking in business terms’ and against the 

mechanism and impoverished language of central control. The good 

UDE curriculum tutor raises the sights of the novice teacher beyond 

the latest requirements of DfES standards. 

Finally, that curriculum looks to the present concerns of the young 

people and to the future which is what the pupils are being 

prepared for. But it also must look to the past for the resources 

upon which one might draw (‘the best that has been thought and 

said’) in illuminating the present and in facing the future. 

PART 2: A Client-centred View of Teaching 

New Approaches to Encouraging and Supporting 

Effective Teaching and Learning 

Frank Pignatelli, Scottish University for Industry 

Frank Pignatelli based his presentation on a set of PowerPoint slides 

describing the development of the Scottish University for Industry’s 

(SUfI) Learndirect programme. The text of the slides is set out 

below. The programme, which was funded by the Scottish 

Executive, aimed to re-engage people who had dropped out and to 

bring them back into education for their own sakes and to help 

them into employment. By proposing a ‘client-centred’ view of 

teaching, with its implication of the learner as a purchaser of 

professional services, Frank Pignatelli called for a significant shift in 

our understanding of curriculum and teaching towards one which 

centred on the needs and interests of the potential learner who 

must be active in shaping his or her own learning SUfI was 

employing all available means of communication – information 

technology, television, advertising, call centres, etc - to reach out to 

socially excluded individuals and communities, as well as 

establishing learning centres across Scotland. Frank Pignatelli 

argued that the use of technology and business approaches, far 

from usurping the role of the teacher, aimed to liberate teachers to 

carry out their essential role of guiding and supporting the 

individual learner. Although it was early to assess the impact of the 

programme, the level of response from those for whom the 

programme had been developed was encouraging.

1. “In a successful Scotland, knowledge skills and innovation are the 

keys to providing security and future prosperity.” (Henry McLeish 

MSP, First Minister) 

2. Learndirect Scotland (exists to): 

• provide you with the specialist support you need when you need it 

• work with you to develop the skills that help you to learn and stay 

learning 

• give you the chance to relate your learning to your own longerterm 

ambitions 

• help you to feel part of a wider learning community and put you in 

touch with other people studying the same things 

• link your learning to key areas of your life such as work, family, 

citizenship and your own personal development 

• encourage you to value learning and see it add value to your life 

3. The Learndirect model: 

• Awareness Raising (through): 

• TV advertising 

• Radio advertising / sponsorship 

• Press advertising / sponsorship 

• Case studies 

• A helpline, with a target of 120,000 calls in year 1. 

• A website with information, advice, case studies, etc. 

• Learning centres, with a target of 300 centres by March 2002. 

These centres to be based in, for example, High Street centres / 

kiosks, homes, community learning centres, employee development 

centres as well as schools / colleges / universities and the web. 

These centres to offer support through: 

• hardware 

• software packages 

• software licences 

• telecommunications 

• training 

• refurbishment 

• Information, advice, guidance using the National Learning 

Opportunities database offering 70,000 opportunities through ca 

2000 providers. 

• An on-line support system offering: 

• cost-effective on-line content 

• staff development

• supporting and tracking learners on line, with a target of 50,000 

new learners in year 1 

The support system would: 

• provide initial information for learners 

• provide support for learners 

• use an integrated learning system 

Aims for phase 1 include: 

• creating an on-line lifelong learning log 

• making available high quality on-line materials 

• offering on-line feedback and support 

• offering on-line/helpline tutor support 

• creating on-line discussion groups for learners 

• offering on-line/helpline technical support 

Future phases will include: 

• administration, reporting and control 

• skills gaps analysis 

• training needs analysis 

• career planning 

• competence mapping 

• resource management 

• curriculum building 

4. In summary, the Learndirect programme will provide: 

• a national marketing campaign 

• a national helpline 

• comprehensive partner and client websites 

• a national network of learning centres 

• a national database of learning opportunities 

• guaranteed client focus 

• a clear service-driven approach 

• a one-stop shop 

• honest broker advice 

• supported guidance and learning 

• cost-effective content offering 

• an integrated learning system 

Further information: Scottish UfI; 0141 285 6010; 

info@scottishufi.com; frankp@scotishufi.com 

A Client-centred View of Teaching - 

A Response to Frank Pignatelli’s Address 

Cliff Gould, HMI, Head of teacher education at OFSTED 

Frank Pignatelli has focused particularly on the work of his 

organisation in re-engaging young (and not so young) adults with 

learning. Most of these disengaged learners have been failed, to a

significant degree, by the school system. It would clearly be much 

better to tackle failure and disengagement from learning at the 

point at which it occurs - in schools. It is more difficult and costly 

for organisations like his to attempt to re-engage learners as adults. 

One of the main foci of the inspection work by HMI in OFSTED in 

recent years has been the response of schools, and those who work 

with schools, to the interrelated problems of disaffection, 

disengagement, disadvantage and underachievement. What I have 

to say in response to Frank’s presentation will therefore focus on 

what schools are doing in response to these issues and the evidence 

of their success. At the heart of many of these responses has been 

a recognition of the need to match provision more flexibly to 

individual learners. 

In a recent review of the research evidence on school learning 

processes, Charles Desforges (Desforges 2001) noted the following 

four key features of successful learning environments. That they 

are: 

• learner centred - in the sense that learning must start from where 

the learner is and develop from that point. (Frank has used the 

term ‘client centred’ to make much the same point. A problem for 

schools is that they are generally engaged in ‘batch processing’ of 

learners.) 

• assessment driven - formative assessment that informs the 

teaching/learning process and underpins accountability 

• knowledge rich - a learning environment that requires 

understanding rather than rote recall, that encourages problem 

formulation and problem solving 

• community connected - recognises that learners spend four times 

as long outside of the classroom as in it so that the wider 

community is a vital resource and context in which understanding 

can be developed 

Desforges goes on to summarise what research has shown to be the 

four most important factors in promoting learning or achievement: 

• the degree to which learners are engaged in thinking and learning 

and in reflecting on these processes (cognition and metacognition) 

• the orderly flow of appropriate classroom work 

• time on task 

• home support 

Although perhaps expressed rather differently, inspectors have 

concluded much the same in relation to how good teaching 

encourages effective learning. And we would certainly join 

Desforges in cautioning against getting distracted by too great a 

focus on ‘issues’ - such as ‘gender’, ‘ICT’, ‘teaching thinking skills,

and ‘work related learning’ - not that these are themselves 

unimportant but so that we do not lose sight of the key principles of 

good teaching and learning. 

We must not forget that far too many of our young people fail to 

achieve to their potential. Too many disengage from learning during 

the secondary years and present a very considerable challenge to 

schools and teachers to re-engage. Experience of failure and lack of 

support, from peers, family or the wider community, can be 

intensely demotivating for pupils in our schools, particularly those 

from homes where education is less strongly valued. 

In our recent report Improving City Schools (OFSTED 2000a), HMI 

identified some of the key features of the teaching in those schools 

that are most successful in tackling these problems of 

underachievement and disengagement. The report says: 

Teaching has to be especially well-planned, systematic and 

incremental. Work must be purposeful and within the capability of 

pupils, but it must also move them on in knowledge and 

understanding. This is a critical factor where pupils’ motivation, selfbelief 

and capacity to organise themselves can be low - notably, but 

not only, on the part of some boys. The impact on the classroom 

climate of poor concentration and sometimes poor behaviour by 

even a handful of pupils can be debilitating; astute management 

and considerable stamina are needed to deal effectively with them. 

This report goes on to identify a number of key features of effective 

teaching in these schools: 

• an insistence that pupils will do their best, coupled with support 

that enables them to meet the challenges set 

• sustained interaction by teachers with pupils, including the skilled 

use of questions and the call for pupils to articulate their thinking 

• clear and uncomplicated classroom routines 

• good use of time and resources, a premium placed on maintaining 

concentration and pace 

• use of assessment to target action to address individual learners’ 

needs 

• skilful use of support teachers and/or support assistants to create 

flexibility in grouping and to target individuals or groups for 

intensive support 

These are not only, of course, the features of effective teaching in 

disadvantaged city schools only but apply more generally - it is just 

that they are more crucial to success in these schools. The 

individual learner must always be a key focus for the teacher but 

especially so where, for whatever reason, the learner is in danger of 

disengaging.

An earlier report from HMI, Access and Achievement in Urban 

Education (OFSTED 1993), pointed to the tendency of schools in 

challenging circumstances to focus on the care of pupils to the 

exclusion of attention to their learning. Schools are now more likely 

to strike a better balance: a positive approach to attainment and 

progress going hand in hand with a positive approach to behaviour, 

attitudes and personal development. 

Put simply, good behaviour is based on good classroom work: 

teachers have high expectations of what pupils should achieve and 

set challenging targets; they support pupils in their work so that 

they do not lose their way; pupils respond well; their progress is 

tracked and supported; and success is rewarded. The reality is, of 

course, more complex. For example, winning the support of parents 

is crucial and working with other local agencies can play a vital part. 

It is often argued that a key part of the solution to remotivating 

learners who are disengaging and to make teaching more learnercentred 

is the much greater use of ICT. I hope I will be forgiven if I 

express a little caution here. I have been around long enough to 

have heard confident predictions over the past twenty years or so of 

the teaching and learning revolution that the use of computers 

would bring - and similar predictions for teaching machines before 

that! Perhaps we really are on the brink of a break-through but I 

will limit myself to the current evidence. 

In the vast majority of our schools, the use of ICT to support 

teaching and learning is still in its infancy. There is, however, 

enough evidence of effective practice to be confident that it can 

improve the motivation of learners and make teaching and learning 

more interesting. What is also clear is that effective intervention 

and mediation of the ICT resource by the teacher is crucial to 

successful learning. We need to learn much more about how ICT 

changes the role of the teacher, including the use of teaching 

assistants. There is also evidence that ICT, especially integrated 

learning systems, can help to manage the learning of the individual. 

But however sophisticated the on-line materials, the teacher 

remains crucial to the whole learning process. 

I will just make one last point on ICT. As Frank has indicated, we 

are seeing increasing availability of on-line lifelong and community 

learning resources for adults. It is crucial therefore that we ensure 

that young people in schools and colleges are given the skills to 

access and use these on-line materials. Physical access to these 

resources for all our communities is also essential. 

An important and developing strand of policy with respect to 

retaining and improving the motivation of learners in the crucial 14-

16 age group is the provision of work-related programmes of 

learning. These need not, and should not, be seen primarily as a 

response to disaffection and disengagement of young learners but I 

will focus on the evidence we have on these programmes from that 

perspective. I will draw particularly on the evidence from our 

recently published survey of work-related learning in Key Stage 4 

(OFSTED 2001a). 

In general, pupils respond positively to work-related courses and 

benefit from them. Among the benefits noted by schools are: 

• increased confidence, social skills and maturity 

• wider career aspiration, more likelihood of planning to proceed to 

further education 

• improved behaviour, though not always in other lessons 

These positive outcomes do not necessarily translate into greater 

success in terms of more formal educational outcomes. The impact 

of involvement in work-related programmes on attendance and 

achievement in GCSE and other qualifications is much less distinct 

and consistent. For example, up to a third of the pupils in the 

survey schools gained higher GCSE points scores than were 

predicted from their attainment in the Key Stage 3 National 

Curriculum tests. But there were also examples of the reverse 

happening. Although the development of key skills with long-term 

value is frequently a stated ambition of work-related programmes, 

the outcomes were often rather disappointing in this area. Much 

more needed to be done to plan experiences more systematically to 

ensure progress in these skills. The most effective provision 

capitalised on the increased motivation of the learners to get them 

involved in relevant activities that improved their literacy, numeracy 

and ICT skills. 

One of the most encouraging findings of this survey relates to post- 

16 participation rates. Although the evidence base was incomplete, 

those pupils following an extended work-related learning 

programme were more likely to go on to further education and 

training. In a minority of the schools, however, the work-related 

programmes did not lead to any recognised form of accreditation 

and this did not provide a secure route to further education or 

training. 

Overall, there is good evidence of the positive impact on many 

pupils of following a Key Stage 4 curriculum modified through 

extended work-related learning. The largest and most consistent 

effect is on motivation and self-confidence. Less consistent were 

effects on attendance and attainment in key skills, GCSE and other 

qualifications.

Very similar conclusions arose from OFSTED’s evaluation of the New 

Start projects (OFSTED 2000b and 2001b) whose aim was to raise 

the participation of underachieving and disaffected young people in 

education, training or employment. This is the key target group of 

14-17 year olds that are likely, without effective intervention, to 

end up needing the kind of support as adults that Frank has 

described. Many of these young people were, at best, erratic 

attenders at school and were not expected to achieve success in 

GCSE or other qualifications. Outreach work was an important 

feature of these projects - working with the young people wherever 

they were. 

The more successful projects demonstrated the importance of 

dealing with individuals and focusing on the particular social and 

personal, as well as educational, obstacles to educational progress. 

The role of the personal adviser or mentor was important here in 

providing personal advice, diagnosing needs and procuring a wider 

range of contexts for learning and evaluating the outcomes. The 

new Connexions Service is intended to build on some of these 

positive features of New Start. 

The results of the different New Start projects were very mixed but 

there were sufficient examples of success with some of the most 

disadvantaged young people in the education system to be 

optimistic about what can be achieved. 

Finally, what might the implications be for teacher training? While 

initial teacher education and training can only be just that, initial, it 

does need to reflect the increasing diversity of the secondary 

curriculum and the teacher’s skills that are needed to accompany 

this. 

Of course, you will not be able to produce someone with all the 

necessary knowledge and skills on a one-year postgraduate course 

but, I would argue, you must start them on that learning pathway. I 

began with the key features that promote effective learning - this is 

surely where we should place our emphasis. But they must also 

become familiar with a wider range of learning contexts than has 

traditionally been the case in initial teacher education and training. 

REFERENCES 

Desforges, C (2001) Knowledge Base for Teaching and Learning. 

Teaching and Learning, 3, October. 

OFSTED (1993) Access and Achievement in Urban Education. 

London: HMSO. 

OFSTED (2000a) Improving City Schools. (HMI 222). London: 

OFSTED. 

OFSTED (2000b) New Start Partnership Projects for 14-16 year-olds

in schools 1997-1999. (HMI 219). London: OFSTED. 

OFSTED (2001a) Extending work-related learning at Key Stage 4. 

(HMI 276). London: OFSTED 

OFSTED (2001b) New Start Partnerships 1999-2000: learning to 

connect. (HMI 244). London: OFSTED. 

PART 3: Social Inclusion and Curricular Develoments 

Social Inclusion and Curricular Developments 

Susan Lewis, ESTYN 

Thank you for the invitation to this important symposium. Thank 

you too for the warm welcome and introduction. 

My purpose here today is to share with you what Wales is trying to 

do in the area of social inclusion and in doing so to reflect on what 

this means for education and teacher training. I’ll spend a little time 

setting the scene, then move on to give some examples of work and 

some of the challenges for teacher training and end up with some 

thoughts on schools. 

The National Assembly for Wales has given high priority to 

promoting social inclusion, improving the lot of excluded and 

disengaged young people and trying to make sure that everyone 

has the chance to fulfil their potential whatever their age, gender or 

religious, cultural or ethnic background. 

There can be few things then that are so relevant, not only to Initial 

Teacher Education and Training, but also to the continued 

professional development of all teachers. 

Looking around the room today, I would say that perhaps one of 

thing that we have in common is that we have all benefited from 

our education system. We appreciate and value the power of 

education and want to pass this on as a vocational imperative to 

trainee teachers. 

Thinking back to our schooling, I am sure that we can all remember 

a teacher who influenced us deeply. We remember them well. Those 

we loathed and learned little from, those we learned regardless of, 

and those others who had faith in us, who inspired and supported 

us and contributed to our personal and professional development. If 

we experienced the latter, we were lucky. But there are many 

young people who have not benefited fully from education. There 

are many who do not find school a pleasant and rewarding 

experience. There are many who have not felt the true pleasure of 

achievement.

The recent Audit Commission paper Missing out notes that every 

day: 

• around 400,000 pupils are not in school in England and Wales 

• at least 40,000 are absent without school permission 

• 3000 pupils are on short fixed-term exclusion 

• about 6000 have been or are being permanently excluded 

Not surprisingly, persistently absent and excluded pupils: 

• have low self esteem 

• have underdeveloped basic and key skills 

• tend to do poorly in examinations 

• are less likely to secure a good job 

• are more likely to become teenage parents 

Wales has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in Western 

Europe. Throughout the developed world, teenage pregnancy is 

more common amongst young people who have been 

disadvantaged in childhood and have poor expectations of education 

or the job market. In turn, early parenthood is associated with 

poverty, and poor outcomes for the children. 

Persistently absent and excluded pupils often become involved in 

crime. A study of 100 juveniles aged 15 to 17 who were sent to 

custody found that 55% had been permanently excluded from 

school and 42% had been regular truants. 

Another UK study of 500 offenders aged 17 to 20 found that 21% 

could not write their names and address without error, half had 

difficulty in telling the time and putting the days of the week in the 

right order and less than a third could fill in an application form 

satisfactorily. 

The lack of basic and key skills has been identified as a key factor in 

disaffection. If young people cannot read, they cannot access the 

traditional curriculum. They quickly fall behind, frequently give up 

trying and are also more likely to become socially disadvantaged. 

By the time they reach the age of 16, young people should have 

spent at least 11 years in compulsory schooling. There has been 

undoubted progress in recent years in schools in Wales. Yet, large 

numbers of young people still leave our schools unable to read and 

write well, unable to use number confidently and solve problems 

effectively. There are still too many who achieve few or no 

qualifications and have little idea of what they will do for a living. In 

a small minority of our secondary schools, up to a fifth often do not 

attend school at all.

The National Assembly for Wales Circular 3/99, Pupil Support and 

Social Inclusion identifies specific groups of young people who are 

at significant risk of disaffection. They are over-represented 

amongst those who are regularly absent, who truant or who are 

excluded. These are: 

• children where families are under stress 

• children who are looked after 

• ethnic minority children 

• travellers 

• young carers 

• pupils in transition 

• children and young people with special educational needs 

• children who have a family member in prison 

The full impact of social inclusion can be graphically understood by 

referring to one of the groups listed earlier, that is - young people 

who are looked after. They are not only likely to have psychological 

and emotional problems, but are also likely to have poor 

educational achievement that will further limit their life chances and 

disadvantage them in our society. 

75% of young people leaving care have no academic qualifications 

of any kind. 

20% become homeless within two years. 

Many of these young people do not enjoy school, are not interested 

in learning and too often find the curriculum difficult and irrelevant. 

Of major concern is the fact that their potential is not fully realised 

and their self-esteem is damaged. They often have no positive adult 

or peer role models to emulate. Without appropriate intervention, 

their negative experience remains with them throughout their adult 

life. It is a sad, but true, fact that if young people are not engaged 

by the education system by the time they are 16, then they are 

nearly ten times more likely to be unemployed by the time they are 

25. 

The impact that school life has on us all for the good or otherwise 

cannot be underestimated. For many it is a positive experience, but 

for too many it results in insecurity, humiliation, bullying and 

discrimination. These are serious indictments of our education 

system. The challenge is to ensure that all young people have the 

opportunity to achieve success. This is, I believe, a major challenge 

for teacher training. Throughout their training, trainees must 

develop, from the very early stages of their teaching career, 

teaching strategies that will help them to teach effectively pupils 

from all kinds of baselines. Bearing in mind some of the headline 

reasons for some teachers leaving their jobs, this will not only 

benefit the pupils and students, but also help ensure that young

teachers especially stay in the teaching profession instead of 

deciding that the career is not for them. 

Dealing with the education of those who are disengaged is a great 

opportunity. It gives us the chance to think afresh about the 

purposes of education. If education is to be a route out of poverty 

and oppression, a way of opening doors, providing choices, raising 

self-esteem, creating enjoyment and discovery, and a liberation of 

the mind and spirit, then judged on any of these, it has not 

succeeded for many of those I am talking about today. But, and 

here is the big responsibility, … 

Schools and teachers have a pivotal role to play in ensuring that we 

break the cycle of disadvantage. 

When vulnerable children do make the effort to come to school, 

what they experience must be so good that they want to maintain 

this effort. They must be enabled to gain the skills to help them to 

function successfully both whilst they are at school and in later life. 

They must not miss out on gaining the knowledge that will develop 

their cultural understanding of the world in which they live. 

They must feel the warmth of success that makes you want to go 

on learning throughout your life and results in you making a 

positive contribution to society. If we do this we will break the cycle 

of disadvantage and avoid creating a social underclass that then 

costs us dearly in all sorts of ways. 

The National Assembly for Wales circular that I mentioned earlier, 

(3/99, Pupil Support and Social Inclusion), makes a definite 

connection between disaffection in school and social exclusion as an 

adult. It also offers helpful guidance to schools and outlines the 

responsibility for identifying and supporting those most at risk. 

So what positive moves have policy makers and schools made in 

Wales to increase social inclusion? 

Developing an education system that will combat disaffection and 

speed up economic regeneration by equipping the people of Wales 

with the skills needed to meet the demands of local industry and 

commerce. 

Wales’ recently published paving document, The Learning Country, 

emphasises the importance of developing an education system that 

will combat disaffection and speed up economic regeneration by 

equipping the people of Wales with the skills needed to meet the 

demands of local industry and commerce. The Learning Country

arose in part from work already started through the Assembly’s 

programme ‘Learning Is For Everyone’. 

A number of initiatives have been developed in support of this 

policy direction. They are designed to address the problem facing 

many of our young people who are excluded and miss out all round. 

There are the short-term measures and the longer-term issues to 

be tackled. It is now widely recognised that intervention must take 

place as early as possible, if we are to prevent disaffection where it 

begins. 

The Sure Start programme has been designed to tackle such issues 

from birth. Many primary schools are introducing ‘positive 

discipline’. Secondary schools are looking at what has come to be 

known as ‘the alterative curriculum’. A whole raft of initiatives has 

been introduced, including the Basic Skills Strategy for Wales. A 

new Youth Policy Division has been set up in the Assembly to 

implement the agenda emerging from ‘Extending Entitlement’. 

The work of the Youth Access Initiative and the Youth Work and 

Schools Partnership programme has given schools the opportunity 

to work in partnership with colleges, other agencies and their local 

community. 

Over the next few minutes I’ll talk about some of these initiatives 

and the impact they have had. 

These programmes have helped young people to: 

• regain their self esteem 

• believe that learning is useful and relevant 

• reintegrate into mainstream education 

• progress to other effective forms of education and training 

• secure jobs 

I would like to share with you some examples of how these have 

worked in practice. 

My first example is from one comprehensive school based in the 

Welsh Valleys which has set up an effective attendance project 

targeting Y11 pupils. Based in the Learning Support Unit of the local 

Further Education College (Ebbw Vale), the project caters for young 

people whose school attendance is below 50%. Young people are 

referred to the unit by schools and the Educational Welfare Service. 

They are offered a range of activities leading to accredited 

qualifications not generally available in school. These include NVQ 

Word and Number Power, CLAIT, and ASDAN Youth Awards.

As the young people become more confident, their basic skills 

improve. They are also able to access vocational courses in Hair and 

Beauty or in Construction that include extended work experience 

opportunities. Attendance improved from 29% when in school to 

89% on the project. Young people progressed to vocational courses 

at a higher level in the college, and many considered that the 

project had given them an aim in life. Previously they had no career 

aspirations at all and several had been involved with the criminal 

justice system. 

My second example involves work in another comprehensive school 

(Tonypandy Comprehensive, Rhondda Cynon Taff), where young 

people selected for an alternative scheme remain part of their year 

group for registration, the school’s pastoral programme, PSE 

lessons, IT and the Youth Award Scheme. They follow examination 

courses in the core subjects where they remain fully integrated with 

mainstream classes. For the remainder of the time, pupils 

undertake a programme of activities outside the usual curriculum. 

For example, a recent photography project has resulted in work of 

outstanding quality. Pupils took photographs in a range of sites to 

show contrasting aspects of the local environment. They compiled 

albums of the photographs and selected some for a public 

exhibition. They constructed display boards, mounted the 

photographs and arranged and lit them to make an attractive 

gallery. 

The resulting high quality exhibition in the school foyer has been 

much valued by pupils, staff and visitors to the school and given the 

pupils concerned a status and recognition they had not previously 

enjoyed. Surely what we need is a curriculum that is flexible and 

imaginatively taught to ensure that all pupils can benefit from 

developing skills and knowledge of things that will capture the 

imagination. The provisions in the new Education Bill for England 

and Wales will provide more opportunity for such flexibilities. 

Schools engaged in these kind of initiatives have been helped to 

think creatively about what works in re-engaging pupils. Valuable 

lessons have been learned from these projects that should have an 

impact on what happens inside schools, making such projects less 

and less necessary in the future. As part of the partnership, one 

higher education institution has seconded a member of staff from a 

socially disadvantaged partner school to provide, amongst other 

things, first hand examples of the sort of projects I have just 

discussed. 

This sort of practice makes good use of the skills of experienced 

practitioners from partner schools and provides training and

continued professional development for trainees, lecturers and the 

seconded teacher. 

In cases like these, teachers have shown skill in establishing an 

ethos of mutual respect with young people. They have developed 

teaching approaches and relationships that have contributed to the 

growth of young people’s personal confidence and self-esteem. In 

this context, young people have learned and made mistakes, 

without fear of being punished or ridiculed, irrespective of past 

history, limited communication skills or appearance. 

There are clear messages in all of this work about how to be more 

effective in teaching pupils who are not attending or attaining well. 

Estyn has been drawing out from these projects exactly what is 

being done to win back young people who have stopped engaging 

with learning in school. By the way, in 15 years in the Inspectorate, 

I cannot think of inspection work that has had such a profound 

effect on so many of our inspectors. It has made them think hard 

about what schools do, or don’t do, to ensure that fewer young 

people are excluded from school or become disengaged from 

learning. 

I might just draw your attention to a few of the positive highlights 

in this encouraging work. 

First and foremost, improvements in attendance, in some cases 

pupils who had previously achieved around 20% attendance in 

school are now attending 100% of the time in their project. Others 

have improved less spectacularly but still significantly. 

In another case, there were marked improvements in attitudes 

towards learning. 

In one example, every young person could give a clear account of 

his or her intended career path and plans for the coming year. 

Almost all intended to enrol for a course at a local college. The 

group had visited the college at their own request and a special day 

had been set up for them. They had visited the departments of their 

choice, had been interviewed and had completed application forms. 

Many young people have shown improved levels of confidence, selfesteem 

and skills. 

The informal but purposeful relationships between young people 

and staff are a particular strength in all the projects seen.

In most cases, programmes are closely matched to young people’s 

individual needs, interests and abilities. Educational visits, work 

experience, formal training sessions, tutorial type activities and 

residential experiences are all used to fully enhance the young 

person’s potential. 

Where provision is best, a more flexible curriculum has been built 

around a core of key skills and core subjects (English, Welsh, 

mathematics, science and ICT). Work in school is supplemented by 

a range of vocational course tasters in college or experience in work 

placements. Sometimes these have resulted in off-site provision for 

the most disengaged. In other cases, efforts have been made to 

supplement and modify the school curriculum to enhance the 

opportunities available thereby maintaining young people on-site. 

A wider range of activities is now available to young people as a 

result of the projects. 

In one case, the project base provides a good range of educational 

activities on the school site, including office based and playgroup 

work experience, outdoor pursuits, photography, IT, basic skills, 

study support, recording studio and other musical activities, multi 

gym, art and craft work. Careers and training advice, support in 

basic skills, PSE and recreational activities are also features. 

Many parents reported how participation in the projects had 

contributed to the personal development of their sons and 

daughters. They were delighted to see their children eagerly 

attending the workshops and work placements. Parents and young 

people commented that life at home ran more smoothly because 

everyone was happier. 

There are clear benefits to providing our young people with a sense 

of belonging, and the background necessary to make sense of the 

world in which they live. 

For example, Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig, designed to add a Welsh 

dimension to the curriculum, has an important role to play in 

promoting a sense of belonging and cultural identity. Used well it 

can encourage inclusiveness among some of the groups most 

vulnerable to disengagement. One school serving an urban area 

with a large proportion of pupils from ethnic minority groups has a 

strong and long-standing commitment to Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig. 

The headteacher views this as one of the organising principles of 

the school. It is seen as a means of establishing the common 

ground for a multi-ethnic school population. It creates the 

framework for exploration of values and attitudes about identity and 

mutual respect.

This is an effective vehicle for developing the self-esteem of pupils 

through informing them about roots and identity, and celebrating 

cultural diversity within the school community. Pupils are 

encouraged to refer to themselves as ‘Welsh Bengali’, ‘Welsh 

Yemeni’, ‘Welsh Somali’, as well as Welsh Welsh! The way in which 

teachers present Y Cwricwlwm Cymreig at the school emphasises 

that all are citizens of Wales and this reflects the plurality of Wales. 

The national flag, the Ddraig Goch, flies above the school and is 

used to focus pupils’ awareness that the school is in Wales. This 

approach reinforces in pupils an awareness of different tiers of 

identity from that of the home, to that of a local or civic culture 

acquired through education and social interaction. 

So what were the critical factors leading to success in these 

projects? 

Firstly there must be a wholehearted commitment from all parties 

to overcoming difficulties and making a more effective response to 

the needs of young people experiencing disaffection. Good school 

leadership is essential to foster a whole school approach to the 

young people experiencing disaffection. Schools must have 

ownership of the project and not perceive it as a bolt on extra or an 

opportunity to get rid of problems. Things have worked well when 

well-qualified and experienced youth workers who can implement 

effective action have been employed and well supported within the 

school or college environment. 

Other features of good practice in the most successful projects 

include: 

• mutual respect and skilful interaction between schools, youth 

workers and other providers in off-site projects 

• clear objectives and SMART targets both in relation to the project 

and young peoples’ development 

• projects where curriculum issues have been thoroughly thought 

through and include the use of alternative accreditation routes and 

credit-based learning 

• creative use of ICT 

• involvement and positive support from parents and the 

community 

• starting activities where there is a reasonable chance of some 

early success 

• a self-critical approach to evaluating outcomes 

I’ve talked about the success of initiatives that take place outside 

schools. Ones that are designed to cater for the most difficult young 

people whose behaviour is challenging. And ones who aren’t difficult 

as such, because they just don’t turn up.

But, what about those who do make the effort, who aren’t any 

trouble? Those who sit there dutifully, not achieving? Those who 

leave with very little to show for their efforts and very little belief in 

themselves? 

What about those left inside school but outside learning? 

The 15- and 16-year-olds who are taking their GCSE examinations 

have experienced the National Curriculum throughout their 

schooling from its phased introduction in 1989. Whatever criticisms 

there have been (and no doubt will go on being) of the National 

Curriculum, it has had a very powerful, positive effect for ever, on 

our perceptions about entitlement and what all pupils could and 

should be trying to attain. 

In the past decade, schools have made a great deal of difference to 

the lot of those who, for all kinds of reasons, would, in the past, left 

school with little or nothing to show in terms of success and 

achievement. No longer do we have secondary schools where 40% 

are simply not entered for a single external examination, as we did 

15 to 20 years ago. 

However, there is still too great a gap in both the entry levels of 

pupils for GCSEs from school to school and the achievement at 5A*- 

G level. Although the all-Wales achievement level at 5 A*-G has 

edged upwards over the years, there is a wide range of entry and 

achievement levels with achievement from just over 50% in some 

schools to 100% in others. 

There is still too great a gap between the attainment levels of boys 

and girls and the attainment levels of pupils in similar schools in 

different parts of Wales. 

Despite the challenge remaining, we have identified good practice 

that helps schools to achieve with young people of all abilities and 

to help them see themselves as learners and gain a sense of 

belonging to their school community. 

In the best examples, schools are constantly thinking about and 

working on the improvement of the quality of teaching and learning. 

• They aim to get every young person involved by making all 

lessons enjoyable. 

• They know that the way to do this is to make sure that everyone’s 

work is at an appropriate level of challenge.

• They use a range of strategies to raise literacy levels so that 

everyone can take part in the lesson. They improve young peoples’ 

key skills. 

• In these schools, senior managers consider monitoring the quality 

of teaching and learning as a top priority. They have the courage to 

say if teaching and learning isn’t good enough. They set targets that 

encourage all young people to aim for improvement in the 

standards they achieve. 

• The most effective schools are welcoming places that celebrate 

success. Yes, some buildings are old and shabby, but the best are 

clean, well looked-after and decorated with young people’s work. 

Young people feel ‘ownership’. They demonstrate high levels of 

respect for one another and their teachers. 

• These schools offer a wide range of extra curricular activities that 

raise self-esteem. 

• They develop working links with social services and other outside 

agencies. 

• They actively promote links with parents, developing shared 

understandings and partnerships. Many of these parents will have 

had a poor personal experience of school themselves as pupils. 

Family Literacy and Family Learning projects attached to many of 

our schools are beginning to re-engage whole families in the 

learning process. 

So there is good practice and it is part of the job of inspection to 

make that practice widely known. It is equally important for initial 

teacher trainers to continue to draw on this good practice and 

encourage heads, teachers and other providers to contribute to the 

delivery, design and content of the training in the college. 

Unfortunately, there is occasionally a reluctance on the part of some 

schools to address the fact that some young people aren’t always 

impressed with what school has to offer. At worst, schools see this 

as someone else’s problem and are willing for difficult pupils to be 

taken off their hands. They blame the area, the young people’s 

background, lack of discipline, and so on. Teachers and young 

people may simply try to get through the day with the minimum of 

stress. Work is not challenging enough and does not excite and 

motivate. 

Even after 30 years of working in education, this still affronts me. If 

schools take this line then the valuable initiatives I have talked 

about become merely a series of rescue operations that are always

going to be necessary. We have to believe that our young people 

can do better if we are to avoid for some of them a downward spiral 

that leads to despondency and low morale and results in a high cost 

to society both in economic and social terms. 

In Wales, all our maintained schools are comprehensive in their 

intake. We could think, therefore, that those who go on to further 

and higher education and become teachers will have learnt 

alongside pupils across the ability range and with varying levels of 

commitment and will feel better able to cater for them when they 

come to teach. Even though all pupils in an area will all have gone 

to the same school, I suspect that many of our younger newly 

qualified or prospective teachers will have little real understanding 

of what it is like to find limited success or alienation within the 

environment of a school - the very place that they, in choosing 

teaching as a career, have clearly found comfortable and rewarding. 

Indeed, the only contact that some of our aspiring teachers will 

have had with those who were disengaged may have been quite 

hostile and even frightening. It takes maturity and bravery to have 

empathy with those of whom we are afraid. 

Newly qualified teachers will come into contact with young people 

who have lost interest in school and present behaviour that present 

a challenge to even the most experienced teacher. 

This is therefore a considerable challenge for teacher educators and 

for teachers in training. Do we create sufficient opportunity for 

trainees to meet and talk to young people who are, for whatever 

reason, disengaged? Or do our trainee teachers leave unprepared 

and hoping to apply to teach somewhere where they will not 

encounter such alien beings! 

Where colleges are doing well in preparing trainees for 

comprehensive schooling, they build on the experience of trainees 

corning through access courses and less conventional routes than 

school sixth form to college and back to school. Other useful ploys 

involve analysing some of the negative experiences the trainees had 

at school to encourage reflection on different approaches to 

learning. Trainees can only learn to develop different approaches 

really well where they have the opportunity to try them out with 

young people with good support from their trainers and more 

experienced teachers. 

Estyn’s work has identified the need for training for adults working 

with disaffected young people. In Wales, emphasis is being placed 

on improving in-service training including professional development 

for heads. It is essential that this training tackles issues to do with 

social inclusion.

The Revision to the DfEE Circular 4/98, Framework for 

Development, recognises the increasing importance of dealing with 

social inclusion issues within initial teacher education and training. 

Ministers have recently agreed that TTA should produce guidance on 

social inclusion issues. They have also highlighted the need for 

trainee teachers to have training on how to manage difficult 

situations which lead to children failing. It is equally important for 

initial teacher trainers to have access to such professional 

development opportunities to maintain skills and credibility. 

The extent to which learning experiences respond to the needs of 

the wider community. 

The extent to which learning experiences tackle social disadvantage 

and ensure equality of access and opportunity for all learners. 

As you know, the basis for all of Estyn’s work is inspection. We have 

recently gone out to consultation on a revised inspection 

framework. This framework is intended to be used in the inspection 

of initial teacher education and training and for school inspection. 

Within the framework, we reflect the importance across all phases 

for providers to make sure that the learning experiences they offer 

respond to the needs of the wider community and the workplace. 

Part of this is inspectors making judgements as to how well the 

provider tackles social disadvantage and ensures that there is 

equality of access and opportunity for all learners. 

To summarise: We would expect that as part of their initial teacher 

training, trainees need to be: 

• aware of flexible ways of teaching and learning within the 

curricula available to young people 

• introduced to strategies that will help them to challenge 

disaffection 

• encouraged to reflect critically on their teaching and what pupils 

are learning and achieving 

• skilled in teaching basic and key skills and PSE 

• provided with the opportunity to link their college based sessions 

that deal with social inclusion issues with real experiences out in 

schools 

It is therefore essential that newly qualified teachers are well 

prepared in their initial training to deal confidently with the issues of 

disaffection as they arise. Young teachers are, after all closer to the 

thinking and influences on many of the young people they will 

teach. It is equally important that all adults working with 

disengaged youngsters have access to on-going training. The 

organisation of joint training for teachers, youth workers and, for

example, initial teacher trainers will enhance and promote the 

importance of working in partnership. 

We must: 

• learn from best practice wherever we can 

• be open-minded about the contribution that adults other than 

teachers can make to young people’s progress 

We must ask hard questions about: 

• the appropriateness of the day-to-day experiences young people 

have in our schools 

• how the quality of the experience provided for all young people 

can be improved 

Social inclusion is an issue for all schools and teacher trainers. It is 

an issue for the whole school and for all teachers. No one is saying 

it’s easy, it’s a struggle. 

But, it does require, quite fundamentally, a belief that all young 

people are entitled to excellence in their teaching and learning. And 

it does require a belief that all young people are capable of making 

progress and achieving of their best, regardless of their starting 

point. Everyone has the right to be valued and hopeful. 

Part of the growth of every teacher comes from the stimulation of 

meeting the challenge of disengagement and limited understanding. 

This is part of the leadership challenge for teachers. Being able to 

add to the intrinsic worth of the people whom they are there to 

serve, striving to achieve excellence in what their teaching offers, 

and realising that young people and their behaviour are not 

necessarily one and the same thing. 

But I’m not convinced that our schools, designed as they were a 

couple of centuries ago, will deliver our vision of inclusion and 

advancement. I’d like to leave you with some thoughts as to what 

our schools of the future might be like by asking how many of these 

ten features you would include in your blueprint for schools of the 

21st century: Would you have: 

• opening times of fewer than 200 days per year 

• a working year based on the child labour demands of the 19c 

agricultural year with a crammed time schedule at certain times of 

the year depending on when Easter falls 

• built-in inflexibility and stress in the time scheduling 

• inefficient peaks and troughs of activity caused by having 

variable-length fixed holidays and term times 

• a cycle of activity that starts in September when people’s body 

clocks are beginning to slow down, rather than in the spring which

would tie in better with the planning and finance cycles 

• examination of the learners for vast stretches of the nicest, 

warmest parts of the year when there are more natural distractions 

than at any other time of the year that takes place in rooms that 

are not usually air-conditioned 

• a requirement that all the people who work in the organisation are 

there at exactly the same times every day and take their holidays at 

exactly the same time of the year, even though some parents have 

to take their children away at other times because of their work 

schedules or financial reasons 

• built-in efficiency losses caused by sending everyone on a long 

holiday in July/August so that on return the learners have forgotten 

much of what they have learned and the teachers take a few weeks 

to get back in stride 

• separation of education from training 

• accord training a lower status than education whilst at the same 

time acknowledging that education is failing many of our young 

people 

We do need to think hard about what going to school and college 

might mean as we work our way through the 21st century. Is the 

whole construct of a school one that will help or hinder our tackling 

of disaffection? 

To sum up then: Where we see outstanding practitioners at work 

they have certain things in common. They challenge those they 

work with and they achieve more. They expect young people and 

adult learners to give of their best and they are not disappointed. 

They expect success and inspire interest and engagement. They 

build-up self-esteem and self-belief. 

Our challenge is to ensure that all young people have the 

opportunity to succeed and to feel included and that we mean what 

we say when we talk about ‘excellence for all’. We cannot rely only 

on initiatives to solve this problem. We must be able to make the 

mainstream of education work really well for more of our young 

people. We need to build into all our schools the features many of 

the successful initiatives and good mainstream practice that we can 

see that have enabled the disaffected to find a way back into 

learning and self-respect. 

There are countless reasons for young people losing interest in 

school, but if you are a teacher, or you work in other ways with 

young people, you have to have a belief that you can make people 

interested in learning. You have to want to engage with young 

people to that end. You have to feel that you can make a difference 

to young people’s lives.

Anyone working with young people must not only feel that they can 

make that positive difference, but also be equipped to do just that. 

Young people learn what they live. The challenge for the curriculum 

in Wales is to make sure that what they live is what we want them 

to learn. 

Social Inclusion and Curricular Developments - 

A Response to Susan Lewis’s Address 

Marion Matchett, The Education & Training Inspectorate 

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comprehensive and 

detailed address from my good friend and professional colleague 

HMCI Susan Lewis. 

The issues of social inclusion and curriculum development are 

important and high profile matters for all, and particularly for us in 

Northern Ireland. The Executive Programme for Government sets 

out social inclusion as a main priority, the statutory curriculum is 

under review, as are the structures for post-primary and the 

funding arrangements. We are living in interesting times. 

In responding, I would like to focus on three of the many issues 

raised by Susan. 

Firstly, I acknowledge and agree with Susan’s analysis of the 

features and importance of social inclusion and the curriculum. In 

Northern Ireland we have been wrestling with these issues for the 

last 25 years, with some degree of, but far from complete, success. 

In terms of scale of the challenge, 5000 young people aged 14-16, 

that is 10% of the Key Stage 4 cohort, were referred by schools to 

the Education and Library Boards in 1999. The reasons for the 

referrals mirror those to which Susan refers and include nonattendance, 

child protection, teenage pregnancy, those young 

people in care, or those in the juvenile justice system. 

Further, we know something of the additional costs to the system of 

trying to engage these young people 

• in school - £250 per pupil 

• in a partnership arrangements (school, FE or TO) - £1400 per 

pupil 

• in alternative arrangements - £3800 per pupil 

• in a Juvenile Detention Centre - £118,000 per pupil 

At a more general level in the province we can take comfort from 

aspects of the findings of the very recent PISA research, but we 

cannot be complacent. There are real messages for the debate on

social inclusion in terms of the range of results for Northern Ireland 

pupils. 

We share similar concerns with Wales about: 

• Attendance rates in some schools 

• The extent to which the existing curriculum contributes to the 

sense of disengagement with education, notably by boys 

• The issue of long-term young unemployed - highlighted by work 

under the aegis of the Department for Employment and Learning 

which replicated the status 0 research from Wales 

• The challenges such disengagement can cause for even the most 

able, energetic and experienced of teachers 

And there is no doubt that in Northern Ireland we are fortunate in 

the quality of our teaching force - a couple of speakers have already 

referred to the need for the profession to be assured of its 

contribution to young people’s learning and I agree entirely. Two of 

the themes in my first year of office have been: 

• to acknowledge the work of teachers (and thus of teacher 

education) wherever and whenever I can 

• to highlight the importance of the continuing development and 

improvement of my own organisation, as well as that of others 

Your presence here today reflects your commitment to that 

continuing professional development. 

In this context Susan indicated graphically the examples of highquality 

practice and success in Wales. I am confident that we have 

similar illustrations of outstanding work, including: 

• Two schools, both in areas of multi-deprivation and which have 

experienced periods of extreme civiI unrest over a 30-year period: 

• One on the outskirts of Belfast in which the parents confidently 

assert, ‘the school has improved the community’ - what a wonderful 

tribute to the staff and governors. 

• The other in Derry which has changed the culture and mind-set of 

the local community so that it is now the normal expectation that 

the vast majority of its pupils will enter Higher or Further Education. 

• A partnership exercise based in a housing estate in East Belfast, 

involving a youth centre and neighbouring schools. In this initiative 

the team mapped the profile of the long-term unemployed as set 

out in the Status 0 research against the profile of the young people 

with whom they worked. Unsurprisingly there was a close fit: 

• long-term absence from, and low achievement in school 

• single parent family 

• father unemployed 

• the background of living in an area of multi-deprivation

The research predicts that such a profile leads almost certainly to 

long-term unemployment at age 18. In this initiative only 20% were 

unemployed at 18, the others re-engaged with education or training 

or found employment. The provision in this community is certainly 

making a difference! 

To complete this list of examples: 

• The first three people to attain the European Computer Driving 

Licence in Northern Ireland were students who had left the formal 

system and were re-engaged in education through a community 

initiative - an initiative, by the way, with no funding from the public 

service. 

I agree with Susan’s analysis and, like others today, Northern 

Ireland is able to provide examples of good practice. The good 

practice is set within our policies of: 

• The school improvement programme - support for all schools in NI 

• The school support programme - intensive support for some 

schools 

• Group One schools - a handful of schools existing in areas of 

multiple deprivation and which have experienced a period of longterm 

civiI unrest 

These programmes are well funded and have made a difference to 

the quality of provision and standards being achieved. Nevertheless, 

we have a distance to travel before we can be content with the 

provision for all. Like Susan, I am not satisfied with the current 

response to social inclusion, which may be characterised as too 

often being: 

• Ad hoc and reflecting the excellent provision in some but not all 

schools, colleges and youth centres. 

• An approach in terms of general discipline and not a supportive 

individual pastoral programme. 

• A short-term funding issue to deal with a problem of remediation, 

as opposed to an integral aspect of the education system which 

demands early and sensitive intervention, supported by adequate 

funding and teacher training and development. Those of us who 

have worked in such areas know only too well the demands on 

teachers and others. 

What therefore would I like to see and what are the implications for 

the education system in general and for teacher education in 

particular? In general terms there need to be: 

• Acceptance of the need for alternative provision within the 

mainstream education (education, not school) system. We need to

ensure that such an approach is not perceived as a ‘dumping 

ground’ or as a ‘perverse incentive’. 

• Acceptance that it is possible to re-engage some young people in 

school and within the school curriculum. For others re-engagement 

will mean involvement in a partnership exercise, perhaps in a FE 

college or training organisation. For others re-engagement may be 

back into society through a community initiative 

• Understanding that early intervention ‘pays off’ - it is equally 

important to use resources for Year one Nurture Units for the four 

year old as for Alternative Education Provision for the 16-year-old. 

We need to appreciate that social inclusion is much more than a 

funding issue. 

• Understanding that the problems of disengagement do not always 

spring from deep-seated resentment with the school or the 

curriculum. The 25/0 ‘Warnock’ group, the 10/0 of KS4 pupils 

referred to the Education and Library Boards include young carers, 

those who may have suffered a bereavement, may be enduring a 

family break-up, may have a parent made unemployed, or are 

trying to cope with bullying or peer pressure. Such pupils require 

individual pastoral support and it is the duty and the privilege of the 

teacher to help provide such support, in person or at second-hand. 

Teacher education, at initial, early and continuing professional 

development has a vital role to play in ensuring beginning and 

experienced teachers keep such issues to the forefront. As a former 

teacher educator I am conscious that my last statement can be 

seen as yet another priority that teacher education has to address. I 

do believe, however, that the integrated nature of our provision in 

Northern Ireland (already referred to) provides a good model for 

continuous professional development, involving the many who have 

a growing expertise in this field. 

There is a specific need for teacher education wherever that occurs: 

• To examine the relevance to the learner of the curriculum and the 

teaching approach used. In terms of the teaching approach much 

could be gained from the application of the approaches of Youth 

work which aims to help young people shape and develop their own 

experiences, and to participate in decision making on matters that 

affect them. 

• To be familiar with the provision of recent relevant up-to-date 

materials and development training courses. 

• To be aware of the availability of high-quality general guidance. I 

believe such guidance exists for Northern Ireland schools through: 

• The Department of Education’s Circular 1999/10, Pastoral Care 

• Promoting Positive Behaviour 

• Evaluating Pastoral Care 

• The provision of more specialised counselling support - as a 

service available for all. 

• Training in how to cope with the ‘hard-to-help’ young person. For

example, how the teacher/tutor might better work with the 

disengaged young person to identify and agree on: 

• the young person’s learning potential 

• the barriers to achieving that potential 

• the programme to attain realistically achievable objectives 

• the provision of accreditation routes, if possible, by doublebadging 

national awards, but at least, to show the distance 

travelled to provide a sense of achievement for the learner and the 

teacher 

Conclusion 

The theme of the conference is challenging, the address by Susan 

wide-ranging and relevant. I hope that my response gives you some 

sense of the value we place on the conference in general and 

Susan’s address in particular, and that we are taking these matters 

very seriously in Northern Ireland. I look forward to the opportunity 

for my colleagues in the Inspectorate to continue to debate these 

matters with you. I believe we have something to contribute to that 

debate. I know we have much to gain from participation. 

Finally chairman, can I express my appreciation for the opportunity 

to respond to the plenary address by HMCI Susan Lewis and to 

express my appreciation to all of you for all that you do in the 

interests of young people. 

~ THREE ~ 

REPORTS FROM DISCUSSION GROUPS 

I. Professor Denis Lawton 

This was a lively group with the distinct advantage of having 

members from all five countries with a wide range of experience - 

and views. The main difficulty for the Chair, Frank Adams, was that 

there was simply too much to discuss: no sooner were we getting to 

grips with one topic than we had to move on to the next plenary 

session topic and a different set of questions. Nevertheless we felt 

that the quality of discussion was good and a degree of coherence 

emerged in the end. 

We began by reacting to the Papers by Lawton and Pring, both of 

whom were convinced that schools needed to bring about changes 

in structure and ethos for a variety of reasons, including the fact 

that most schools’ concern for control distorted more educational 

purposes, including the kind of moral and social education suitable 

for the 21st century. Most of the group were prepared to accept 

that position but a small number felt that many schools were

producing excellent results as they were, and only minimal changes 

were called for such as greater use of technology. The majority 

were doubtful about the possibility of retaining the status quo, and 

this doubt was reinforced by the fact that the shortage of teachers 

in England (but not necessarily in other countries) was reaching the 

‘melt-down’ crisis - i.e. schools would not be able to continue 

without many more teacher assistants and using more ICT. This 

might force schools into changes, desirable or otherwise, but there 

was a serious danger that simply employing more teaching 

assistants and expanding the use of computers in the classroom 

would not necessarily bring about educationally desirable changes 

(as distinct from expedient solutions to staffing problems). 

What were the educationally desirable changes? It was agreed that 

teachers should not be seen as classroom managers, or deliverers 

of the curriculum, but as specialists who could successfully engage 

students in the learning process. That was the key issue. ICT could 

not be a total solution to the need for change, but once reforms 

were specified in terms of greater flexibility and individualisation 

then ICT could go a long way towards making desirable 

differentiation possible. But, at present, initial teacher education 

and training was too much concerned with ‘delivery mechanisms’ 

that had been insisted upon by the Teacher Training Agency in 

England and copied to some extent within neighbouring systems, all 

of which seemed to be over-concerned with what one member 

referred to as ‘content-delivery’. 

The view that ICT could be a beneficial assistance to good teaching 

(rather than a poor master) was reinforced by Frank Pignatelli’s 

lecture which, although focusing on the 16+ age group, showed 

how individual programmes could be made available to large 

numbers of students. Most were impressed by what ICT could do, 

whilst remaining convinced that teachers would be just as essential 

as before, but with a significantly changing role. We liked Frank’s 

notion of ICT as a means of ‘liberating teachers to teach’. 

Further evidence for the need for change was provided by the next 

plenary session - on social inclusion. Detailed information was 

provided by Susan Lewis about poverty, deprivation, inequality as 

well as large numbers of pupils for whom school offered very little. 

All five countries seemed to be concerned by this problem and to be 

reacting in more or less the same ways, except that in Wales and 

Northern Ireland greater efforts were being made to integrate 

education with other services (‘joined up thinking and policies’) 

There was no real disagreement within Group 1 about either the 

seriousness of the problem or giving it extremely high priority. 

Some felt, however, that the curriculum was unsuitable for many

children; others thought that the solution lay in improved teaching 

methods and better teacher-pupil communication. This took us back 

to the Lawton-Pring vision of schools that were less obsessed with 

control and more concerned with individual needs, interests and 

development. The school as an institution needed to change, but 

the culture of many schools was very difficult to reform. We were 

also impressed by Susan Lewis’s description of the typical school, 

with a relatively short day, closed in the evenings and at weekends, 

and not available for long vacation periods throughout the year. If 

we were starting from scratch it was hardly likely that we would 

plan schools to operate in this way. But obsolete institutions and 

practices are very difficult to alter. 

In England the new Education Bill (in England) seemed to some to 

present a more flexible view of the common curriculum, but others 

thought that there was a danger that some attitudes to flexible 

curricula might be interpreted as preparation for work for those who 

were not reacting well to the academic curriculum. It would be 

ironic if moves towards greater social inclusion resulted in ‘selling 

some children short’ - legitimately. Similarly, we had no quarrel 

with the New Labour view of the classroom as an ‘adult-rich 

environment’, but were anxious to distinguish between that vision 

and solutions to teacher shortages that rested mainly on providing 

teacher assistants instead of professional teachers. One member of 

the group - from England - pointed out that one of the functions of 

teacher assistants suggested by Estelle Morris in her Social Market 

Foundation Lecture was to cover for absent teachers. In desperate 

situations a teacher assistant in the classroom might be better than 

no one, but to see this as a solution to the problems of teacher 

recruitment was extremely dangerous. 

The Chair skilfully brought the group back to the main purpose of 

the Symposium: to look at the future of schools and the curriculum 

together with the changing role of teachers. We agreed that there 

was a need to do more to break into national debates about 

teachers and schooling, and to move the discussion away from the 

sterile debates typical of the 1980s and 1990s about the importance 

of good practice rather than sound theory. It was clear that 

teachers needed both and also needed good education as well as 

good training. The career structure of teachers should be seen as a 

process of continuous development from initial teacher education to 

induction and to professional development. Universities had much 

to offer at all three stages and should be regarded as essential 

partners in the process. It was also stressed that it would never be 

enough to prepare teachers for schools as they are now: good 

teachers must be able to cope with changes in society, in local 

communities and in the needs of students.

II. Professor Ian Menter 

1. Democracy and Education 

The overall orientation of the group stemmed from a desire to 

explore the connection between ‘democracy’ and ‘good education’; 

indeed the two terms were felt to be interdependent - ‘you can’t 

have one without the other’. 

However the contemporary structuring of the polity and education 

did not always seem to concur with this belief. The changing polity 

and the question of the interaction between society, state and 

nation are factors which impact directly on educational forms, 

structures and practices. At a time when the concept of nation state 

is being challenged in several ways and when ‘nation-building’ has 

taken on a new salience, not least in the United Kingdom, it is to be 

expected that a number of controversies will emerge in education. 

Furthermore, the increased awareness of diversity within societies 

and nations, calls into question the legitimate role of the state in 

defining national education. Where do the rights of individuals or of 

minority groups get considered within the reformulation and 

development of national education systems? 

With education playing such a dominant role in the economic and 

ideological commitments of contemporary governments (in the UK 

and elsewhere) does this reduce the scope for genuinely 

imaginative, radical approaches. Is there not an overwhelming (and 

anti-democratic/anti-educational) pressure to conform to monistic 

approaches where the slightest deviation or experimentation is 

scorned or banned? 

There is no argument but that education should play a key part in 

the development of citizenship and identity, but there are very real 

questions about the extent to which these should be national, rather 

than global or local. These developments involve learning of 

knowledge, skills, concepts and values - rarely are all four of these 

dimensions given the attention they deserve. These broader and 

more complex conceptions of the responsibilities of education in a 

democracy are frequently downplayed at the expense of a more 

functional and pragmatic approach to such matters. 

A fundamental problem in all four parts of the UK is the tension 

between genuine participatory democracy, based on the full 

involvement of all stakeholders on the one hand and the domination 

of short-term political imperatives for those in power on the other. 

Those with political power have difficulty thinking of anything other 

than the next election, which is never more than five years away. 

Planning the school curriculum and the teacher education

curriculum which underpins it is by definition a visionary process, 

requiring as it does an assessment of personal social and economic 

needs more than ten years ahead. 

There are also significant tensions between national and local 

institutions and processes. The rapid shifts of power along the 

continua from national to local over recent years have created even 

greater uncertainties and have led to the disenfranchisement of 

some key players. These threats have perhaps been realised to a 

greater extent in England than elsewhere, but there are very real 

possibilities of similar changes elsewhere. 

2. Learner-centredness 

Much of the group’s discussion focused on putting the learner at the 

centre - very often construed by the group as ‘the voice of young 

people’ - rather than either the teacher or the policy maker. These 

discussions can be divided into three areas. 

2.1 Curricular Principles 

A learner-centred curriculum would ensure engagement with the 

learner. This is still taken for granted in the early years sector 

(although even there is pressure on this principle), where for 

example in England there is still greater autonomy for the teacher 

than at other stages. The personal development of the learner is a 

key feature of the kind of curriculum planning supported by the 

group and this would include a clear and explicit consideration of 

the difficult field of moral values. An awareness of metacognition 

should be built in from the start, so that from the earliest stages, it 

should be assumed that learners are learning how to learn as well 

as knowledge, skills and concepts. The social development aspect of 

the curriculum must also be promoted. This relates both to the 

social nature of learning and to the social network within which the 

curriculum is set. So for example, there is concern that an 

overemphasis on learning through ICT will make the process too 

individualised. Also, the engagement and involvement of families 

and local or wider communities are central to effective curriculum 

development. Finally, there is a desire to see an increasingly 

negotiated framework for the curriculum, so that it can be more 

responsive, dynamic and flexible in recognition of the pace of social, 

cultural, technological and economic change. 

2.2 Changes to Schooling 

At present the realisation of many of the foregoing aspirational 

principles is severely hampered by arcane constraints on the formal 

structures of schooling. The particular example given was that of 

the calendar of the school year, but many others such as the

phases of schooling, the processes of allocation of school places and 

the financing of schools can each be seen to impose restrictions 

which are at best artificial and at worst arbitrary of the lived 

experiences of teachers and learners. 

2.3 The education of teachers 

While many of the principles outlined in 2.1 also apply to the 

curriculum for teacher education (initial and in-service), there are 

some specifics which are especially important. 

All beginning teachers must be entitled to study models of learning 

and motivation and learning for young people. They should also 

have structured and systematic opportunities to develop their 

interactive skills, include significant awareness of negotiation. 

Furthermore, there needs to be a clear focus on individual learning 

and the significance of the teacher knowing individual learners. 

Beginning teachers need also to have a keen awareness of the preand 

post-schooling settings - both institutional and private - in 

which young people are learning. So, for example, student 

involvement in early excellence centres can be a very powerful 

experience, creating not just a better understanding of the meaning 

of potentially abstract concepts such as social inclusion, but creating 

also an existentially powerful personal experience for the student. 

At the post-school end, involvement in a local ‘Connexions’ setting, 

could have very similar benefits. 

The teacher education process becomes post powerful and effective 

when there is a genuine synergy between the personal experiential 

dimension of placement and the scholarly activity of studying the 

reports and accounts of researchers and practitioners. 

3. Training or Educating? 

Many of the principles outlined during the discussion had as an 

underlying concept an awareness of the distinction between 

education and training. Both school education and teacher 

education must inevitably include elements of both, however the 

balance was in some instances felt to have become one which 

underplays a broad and humanistic commitment to education, both 

in schools and in much teacher education. Patterns across the UK 

are not uniform in this respect and indeed much might be learned 

from more interaction between the four jurisdictions of the UK and 

of the Irish Republic in this respect. The idea of teachers moving 

between these nations both during initial training and later in their 

careers found significant support in the group (not least in the 

context of free movement of labour in Europe). In general it was

felt that there is too little flexibility and imagination in the way in 

which the preparation of teachers is currently structured. 

Conclusion 

The group gained greatly from the interaction between colleagues 

from the five nations represented. In general, there was 

considerable evidence of increasing divergence in a number of 

matters, notwithstanding some supranational trends. Economic 

imperatives and new technologies are among the common features. 

However, there is more difference in a number of curricular matters 

and approaches to teacher education than noted before, including 

continuing divergence in systems of quality assessment. The 

different economic and political contexts were clearly a key factor in 

creating some of the differences. For example, nearly every aspect 

of policy concerning teachers in England is currently directly 

affected by the crisis in teacher supply. Not surprisingly however, 

what united all participants was a strong commitment to the 

concept of partnerships between HE institutions and other 

stakeholders in the provision of teacher education. 

III. Professor Roger Woods 

Session 1 

Context: A discussion focused around the points made by Professor 

Richard Pring in his address ‘Looking Ahead to the Curriculum’. 

The discussion opened by considering Richard Pring’s plea in his 

Plenary address that teachers should be central to the future 

development of schooling and the curriculum. He argued that 

profound respect should be paid to their views. Not surprising this 

view received general support but it was acknowledged that 

teachers have lost a great deal of the autonomy they once 

possessed with regard to the curriculum. There is a tension between 

the desire to accord due respect to the professional judgement of 

teachers and the move to establish central control of the curriculum 

and the methodology of teaching. 

In the discussion the group was cautioned by one participant, not 

for the only time, to guard against a simple comparison of the 

present situation with the past. Teachers who join the profession 

now have been through the National Curriculum and have different 

perspectives on the degree of centralised control to those of us who 

may have been teaching before the National Curriculum was 

introduced. While teachers may have less control of the curriculum 

we might identify other aspects of schooling to which teachers are

central. These aspects could include the shaping of aims for 

example or development of policies for inclusion. 

The point was made, in response to Richard Pring’s address, that 

‘Managerialism’ is not always a negative feature of life in schools. 

‘Management’ should focus efficiently on the needs of the children 

and young people in schools. A parental viewpoint was expressed 

supporting this. The group agreed that effective management is 

vital and that the less teachers have to be involved with dealing 

with business and resource management the better. 

A colleague from Wales observed that there is no strategy for 

literacy in Wales and no QCA schemes, Welsh teachers download 

the material produced for English schools from the internet. Clearly, 

having access to such resources was valuable to those teachers and 

they were exercising their professional judgement in choosing to 

make use of them. The Chair asked Richard Pring, who had joined 

the group, whether he could expand on his presentation. He 

reminded us that we shouldn’t confuse managerialism with effective 

management. He argued that we should respect teachers as 

educational thinkers and work wherever we can to encourage them 

to see themselves as such. He gave an example of an ‘Enrichment 

Week’ at his own institution. Heads and teachers spend a week 

interacting widely and creatively with dons and departments and 

teachers are extremely pleased with such a programme. One reason 

for the success of this exercise is that teachers are valued as 

effective learners who can identify a learning agenda for themselves 

rather than having continual prescribed areas of learning. The 

discussion contrasted the idea of teacher autonomy with what was 

depicted as a managerialist stance of target setting for staff 

appraisal. 

We turned then to pick up the notion of learner ‘empowerment’. By 

encouraging the development of learner autonomy we might make 

better use of an inflexible curriculum. One group member suggested 

that at Key Stage 4 this is beginning to happen with the elevation of 

the vocational curriculum. Such learner autonomy as exists at Key 

Stage 4 is harder to identify in earlier Key Stages. It was pointed 

out that the literacy and numeracy strategies were comparatively 

prescriptive. A colleague argued, however, that it is necessary to 

have a framework within which a degree of autonomy can be 

exercised. At this point the group once more looked back to the 

past and the debate centred round the perceived autonomy 

teachers once had compared to the position now. Once teachers 

devised and created the materials for the Nuffield Science Scheme. 

Now their horizons for in-service work are more narrowly focused

on the prescriptions of the various literacy, numeracy and science 

strategies. 

A recurring theme of the discussion was the need to emphasise the 

place of teachers as educational decision-makers at a time when 

much of their previous autonomy had been eroded through the 

drive for increasing levels of accountability. This was exemplified 

through a further example from science. One participant argued 

that prescribed curriculum themes and schemes of work have 

blinkered teachers. Topics such as animal rights would be more 

likely to be raised in a general studies lesson rather than a science 

lesson, although the context could suggest that discussion of this is 

important to the public understanding of science. This was 

challenged as having always been the case but the counterargument 

was put that as teachers appear to be leaving the 

profession in larger numbers we should seek ways to augment their 

position as educational thinkers and policy makers. 

It was noticeable in reviewing the group discussion that a number 

of orthodoxies were challenged. While some bemoaned the 

imposition of curricula and teaching strategies others pointed to the 

efficiency to be gained by adopting the QCA schemes of work. In 

Wales, which doesn’t have the strategies or the QCA schemes, 

teachers explore the material on the internet. Again, while we might 

be alarmed by the apparently dramatic migration of colleagues from 

the teaching profession a group member pointed out that in some 

ways it’s a good thing that teachers can move on into other 

professions. Such behaviour confirms their possession of 

transferable skills. Likewise when considering the place of schools in 

the wider community it was pointed out that where education 

expands peoples’ horizons and provides the opportunity for young 

people to ‘escape’ from their local community, the community is 

likely to suffer. 

The group concluded on an optimistic note, although this was 

probably inspired more by those working in countries other than 

England. When compared to the daily grind of medical and legal 

practitioners the varied day-to-day lives of teachers working with 

the young could seem to be far more rewarding. One colleague 

argued that there is substantial potential for continual professional 

development as the literacy, numeracy and science strategies rollout. 

Session 2 

Context: A discussion following the plenary presentation by 

Professor Frank Pignatelli on a client- centred view of teaching, 

followed by a response from Cliff Gould HMI.

The session opened with a recap of the main points of the two 

presentations. The group was at something of a disadvantage in not 

having a great deal of knowledge about the operation of 

LearnDirect. A start was made by reflecting on ‘on-line’ learning and 

confronting the paradox that on- line learning both depends upon, 

but also replaces, the teacher. It was clear to the group that unless 

teachers are competent and confident in their use of information 

and communications technology (ICT) they are in danger of being 

excluded from a significant and growing feature of modern teaching. 

We had been encouraged in Dennis Lawton’s paper and Richard 

Pring’s address to anticipate an increasingly learner-centred 

curriculum. We turned then to the subject of the ‘client-centred’ 

curriculum. One participant pointed out that the ‘client-centred 

curriculum’ limits learners to studying their chosen curriculum. How, 

it was asked, does the learner know what he or she needs to know? 

At what age do we begin to negotiate the curriculum with children? 

One member of the group pointed out that many parents have very 

particular and orthodox views of the content of the curriculum and 

that as stakeholders their views must be acknowledged. 

At this point we moved on to consider the position of disaffected 

pupils in schools, asking whether the curriculum has to change to 

reach out to the ‘disaffected’ before they become the ‘disappeared’. 

Cliff Gould, expanding on his plenary address, emphasised the 

crucial importance of schools having the expectation that children 

and young people will not fail. He pointed to the fact that some 

schools in areas of considerable difficulty and deprivation convey 

high expectations to pupils. A number of anecdotes about pupil 

performance followed and the discussion drew to a close. 

Session 3 

Context: A discussion following a plenary presentation by Susan 

Lewis followed by a response from Marion Matchett on the topic of 

Social Inclusion and Curricular Development. 

We considered first the extent to which Initial Teacher Education 

and Training explores the purpose of education with its trainee 

teachers to build their capacity to respond to the call for social 

inclusion. One of the barriers to building awareness in trainees here 

is the limited perspective they possess when they enter our 

courses. Courses for intending teachers are selective and there’s an 

element of pressure to recruit candidates with high points counts at 

A-level and equivalents. Such strategies for recruitment militate 

against extending the social mixture of people on courses. It was 

pointed out that in Northern Ireland many students come from rural 

and isolated backgrounds. This adds to the difficulty of them

attempting to understand or empathise with the young people they 

teach in cities. We returned to this theme two or three times during 

the discussion. A colleague from Northern Ireland urged the group 

not to neglect the fact that ‘middle class’ students have problems. It 

is a mistake to think that they can’t understand the situations of 

those who are defined as socially excluded. It is rather a question of 

the degree of understanding they may have. 

We agreed that students face considerable difficulty in having to 

train to teach in schools that have significant indicators of social 

disadvantage in their pupil body. We wondered whether it is in fact 

too difficult for them to learn and thrive in such schools. We agreed 

it would be neither possible nor desirable to do so. Students cannot 

be protected from the issues of urban deprivation and the 

concomitant difficulties associated with schooling. Students need to 

gain a range of experiences in schools and of different types of 

schools. The revision of DfES Circular 4/98 and the establishment of 

new requirements for the award of QTS in England and Wales have 

led to suggestions in the consultation process that it would be 

acceptable for trainee teachers to work in only one school during 

their training. One group member from England argued strongly 

that this would lead to poor training and those in the group who 

would be affected by the revision emphasised the importance of 

trainee teachers having a variety of school experiences. We 

returned again to this topic before the session closed. We were 

encouraged by the Chair to consider our own experience as tutors 

for dealing with issues of inclusion. 

The group felt that issues of social inclusion should be considered 

through exploring the purposes of education and schooling with 

students. It was pointed out that the curriculum is already very full, 

particularly on post-graduate courses. However issues of social 

inclusion, as both speakers had illustrated, are complex and farreaching 

and there should be enough groundwork undertaken with 

students in initial education and training to make students aware of 

the issues. 

A colleague raised the issue of selection and recruitment. It is clear 

that we are seeking extremely capable and competent candidates 

who, in addition to being able to teach a complex curriculum, have 

also to be able to understand the social and psychological features 

of learning. There are a number of professions with initial training in 

our institutions and which have to deal with issues of social 

inclusion. 

Disappointment was expressed that there is little opportunity on 

courses for intending teachers to mix and study with future youth

workers, career teachers and others training to enter related 

professions. 

The discussion concluded by considering how partnership 

arrangements enable trainee teachers to develop the personal skills 

needed when working with young people who are disengaged from 

the curriculum or disaffected from school. Ground that had been 

covered in Session 2 seemed relevant. One person argued that the 

inspection bodies could have a role to play here. It is possible that 

partnerships avoid placing trainees in ‘difficult’ classrooms to 

safeguard against negative comments during inspections. Such 

actions could deprive trainees of important learning opportunities. 

The group concluded by asserting the importance of addressing 

issues of social inclusion throughout initial education and training 

courses. While there are no easy answers these are issues that 

must be raised with future teachers at the outset of their careers. 

~ FOUR ~ 

A SUMMARY NOTE 

Michael Convey and Mary Russell, UCET 

In the final session of the symposium, which was chaired by 

Professor Ivan Reid of Bradford University, the group reporters 

attempted to draw some threads of agreement from the many 

discussions which had taken place. These were not ‘conclusions’ in 

any definitive sense. Rather, they gave participants, to take away 

with them, a sense of what the main foci of discussion had been. 

A key concept had been that of change. How much was needed or 

could be expected? Most discussants found it difficult to envisage 

how schools could do justice to the needs of all young people 

without substantial movement towards a curriculum which was 

more learner-centred and which teachers played a central role in 

developing. However, there were some who thought that most 

schools were already serving their students well, so that modest 

improvements to the status quo were all that was needed. The 

obstacles to a major change in the culture of schools were 

formidable. In addition to the legacy of schools as institutions of 

control, successive recent governments, particularly in England, had 

deliberately created centrally determined, subject-based curricula 

which lacked the flexibility many had advocated. Even assuming 

radical changes were possible, just how ‘negotiated’ and ‘flexible’ 

the school curriculum should be would need a lot of careful 

consideration.

Another concept which ran through the discussions was that of 

values. While, not surprisingly, there was general support for valuebased 

curricula, there was concern about whether, in an age of few 

shared moral certainties, we could ever be specific enough for the 

concept to be helpful. Few demurred from the view that the 

imperative governing education at the beginning of the 21st century 

was an economic one, and that the balance had swung too far away 

from the needs of the individual. There was some optimism, though, 

that forceful arguments for the rights as well as the responsibilities 

of individuals in a democracy, and for social justice and inclusion, 

could, if continuously pressed, begin to have an influence on 

curricular development. Many had been encouraged by the 

willingness of the General Teaching Councils to make clear 

statements about professional values and felt that these could be 

carried forward into the area of curricular reform. 

The substantial discussion of information technology probably 

produced the highest level of agreement in the groups. Frank 

Pignatelli had shown that technology could be used in radical and 

imaginative ways to support initiatives that nevertheless had values 

and teaching at their heart. The groups agreed that this priority was 

the right one; once the purposes of education had been clearly 

established, technologies, including perhaps some not yet 

envisaged, could support them. A frequently mentioned anxiety was 

that, in a situation where teachers were in short supply, 

governments might be tempted to see technologies as substitutes. 

The view was that such developments should be resisted strongly. 

Since the symposium was substantially about the implications of all 

these issues for the education and training of teachers, it is not 

surprising that this theme permeated the discussions. If anything, 

the symposium seemed to confirm the convictions that many 

brought to the event that: the education of teachers needed to be 

seen as life long and continuous - any suggestion that the kind of 

teacher implied by everything above could be ‘produced’ in a year 

would be seriously misleading; ‘good practice’, though clearly 

important, was not enough – scope for reflection on principles and 

purposes had to be available from the start of initial training, as 

apart from anything else, it was an important element in motivating 

teachers to remain in the profession; professional development 

needed in future to include significantly more attention to the 

requirements of the alienated groups so clearly identified by those 

who addressed the symposium. 

Finally, it was heartening for the organisers that participants felt 

that they had gained from being able to discuss all these issues, 

some of them intractable, with colleagues from the five countries of

these islands. The main benefit derived from the fact that, while the 

challenges were similar and familiar, responses to them differed – 

significantly on some matters. There was general agreement that 

such meetings should continue and, if possible, be broadened to 

include teachers working in schools.

The School Curriculum Ten Years Hence - UCET: Universities ...

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