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This paper considers the public debate surrounding assessment in English education and presents evidence of the misuse of public data from national tests. Statistics generated by pupil assessments in schools and colleges in England are argued to be subject to misinterpretation by the media and policy makers. The discourse tends either to be sensationalist—for example, raising public anxiety by claiming falling standards—or politically charged—for example, where the incumbent government is criticised by its political enemies for pursuing failing policies—rather than being framed by objective and purposeful interpretations. Examples are provided to illustrate how interpretations by the media and policy-makers can be strikingly at odds with how the figures should properly be read. The paper analyses the propriety of these interpretations and makes suggestions as to how a more cautious approach to the use of results in the public sphere can be promoted.

Bernard Barker's thesis that schools have been undermined over the past quarter of a century by a damaging combination of top-down, centralised reform and a desire to impose a market philosophy on education is powerful. This article analyses the nature of the apparatus of control – both statist and free-market – which has been applied to schools over this period. In particular, it will focus on the key control mechanism: the use of test and examination results as apparent measures of schools' quality. It will assess the success of this system, comment on its design faults and its problematic implications for the broad conception of education as understood in The Pendulum Swings, and argue that the concluding note of optimism sounded in Barker's book – about a future of communities exerting greater influence over education locally – appears not to be being realised in policy under the new coalition.

No country is pursuing education reform with such speed and breadth as England. Is this because of stagnant achievement or politics?

British teachers are gearing up for what could be a continuation of the largest program of strike action to hit classrooms here since the 1980s. And this could make life very interesting for the United Kingdom government over the next few weeks. The source of their ire will be familiar to American readers: pension reform, amid an argument that goes to the heart of the debate over who should bear the cost of reducing the nation's public finance deficit. Teachers are in the front line of attempts by the coalition government here to find [pounds sterling]2.8 billion ($4.6 billion) of annual budget savings by cutting the public sector pensions bill. Unlike in the U.S., however, where local control still largely rules in education, the U.K. debate is happening at a national level because pay and benefits for most U.K. teachers are set by the Department of Education. This move, already hardly likely to go down well with public servants, also has been marked by a series of breakdowns in negotiations between the government and the unions, culminating in a one-day strike that closed or partially closed nearly half of the schools in England and Wales on June 30. (There appeared to be no relationship between these teacher actions and the rioting by mostly youth in August.) At the time of this writing, further industrial action in the fall seemed likely, with all seven teacher unions highly unhappy with the government position, and associations representing professions from civil servants to nurses also disenchanted. Teacher unions say the Conservative-led coalition is asking their members to pay more into their pensions, to work longer for them and then to receive lower annual payments when they do retire. Ministers respond that public sector pensions are more generous than those typically offered by private firms, and that they want to reduce the burden on taxpayers. The last set of public sector pension reforms here occurred just four years ago. In 2007, under the Labour government, which lost power to the right-of-center Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010, a review led to changes designed to lessen the cost of public sector pensions to taxpayers. For teachers, the 2007 changes required people entering the profession to work until 65, rather than 60, before retiring and drawing their pensions. They raised the amount teachers were required to pay into their pensions annually from 6% to 6.4% of their salaries. Finally, they backstopped the pension fund by requiring public sector employees to raise their annual contribution to the pension fund if life expectancy rises faster than expected and produces higher costs. Emergency budget When the current government came to power, it promised to look at the pension issue again. A so-called emergency budget consultation, called in June 2010 by Chancellor George Osborne to tackle the overall public finance deficit, announced a technical change in how inflation is calculated for pensions and pay purposes. This reduced the amount of pension payment and teachers' salary increases annually to reflect rising living costs. Teacher unions calculated that measure alone could cut the amount an employee receives over the lifetime of a pension by 15%. Last fall, Osborne followed this by setting out long-term public funding plans that would save the government [pounds sterling]2.8 billion ($4.6 billion) a year by 2014-15, by making public servants pay more into their pensions. In the spring, an independent report commissioned by ministers recommended further changes, including extending the retirement age so that most young public sector workers would work until age 68. In late July, ministers set out further details on how public sector workers would have to make a higher contribution toward their pensions. This was calculated on a sliding scale, with increases highest for the highest-earning workers: Contributions for teachers would rise by nothing for those earning less than [pounds sterling]26,000 ($42,500) a year, but by between 0. …

The funding of England's schools, like so much of our education system at the moment under a new government, is a matter of hot debate. And the rural dimension is one important aspect, which becomes particularly interesting when you consider how England voted at the last general election in May. The election, which was the closest since the 1970s, saw no party winning an overall majority and thus the Conservatives and the centrist Liberal Democrats taking over from Labour as a ruling coalition. If you look at a map showing how the nation voted, the two governing parties dominate Parliamentary seats outside the big cities especially in the south of England. Labour's core vote is in the inner cities. In recent years, however, when it comes to school funding, those in urban areas--which tend to have more Labour voters--have been better off. Will this change under the new coalition government? You might expect so, given the reality of how politics works, but it is by no means clear what's going to happen to funding for England's schools. To understand why, I will need to explain something about our funding system. But beware: This may not be for the fainthearted, as funding does tend to be complicated. English System Now, unlike in the United States, the funding of schools in England is more or less a national system, with the bulk of cash allocations decided centrally according to complex rules overseen from London. Local councils have some powers to vary the cash their schools receive under the funding formula, but only at the margins. And, since the current calculation mechanism began life in the 1990s, rural areas, in particular, have been complaining because they tend to be the losers. A list of the most well-funded local school authorities in England is dominated by those in inner London, with the top 50 of the country's 150 council areas almost entirely made up of urban districts. By contrast, the 50 lowest funded mainly comprise those serving schools in small towns and the countryside. The differences can be huge: Average perchild funding in Camden in central London is more than double what it is in North Somerset in England's South West, according to one government spreadsheet I've been studying. Traditionally, the funding formula has given weight to deprivation. With deprivation higher in the cities, this helps explain why schools in these areas have in the past tended to be better funded. Schools in London are also given extra funds to reflect higher living costs. Also, during its 13 years in power, Labour undoubtedly channeled extra money toward inner cities through specific grants targeting complex urban issues. Whether any of these disparities is about to be redressed depends on the impact of changes that have been given a huge amount of attention during the early period of this government, and that are part of the new regime's attempt to be seen as doing more to help students from poor backgrounds achieve. Under the plans, the main part of school budgets will continue to be calculated through existing national formulas. However, on top of this, for the first time the government will provide a set amount of money specifically for the education of each child who qualifies as disadvantaged. …

How innovative are English schools? This is, it turns out, a tough question to answer. One might expect that those at the forefront of developing new thinking about how we educate might be uniformly upbeat (almost as a professional requirement) about future prospects. But that isn't always the case. Some brim over with enthusiasm about the opportunities afforded by new technology; others see English schools as generally risk-averse organizations operating in an environment that's often inhospitable to new thinking. Paul Kelley is head teacher at Monkseaton High School in Whitley Bay in northeast England and has been featured in national newspapers for the groundbreaking work at his school. (At the time of writing, CNN was about to feature Monkseaton because of its policy of starting school an hour later than normal based on evidence that teenagers learn better in the afternoon.) Last year, Monkseaton captured headlines after an experiment, which the school said was based on research on how the brain works, in which students took an important biology exam after only an hour's lesson in the subject, broken up by 10-minute breaks in which students could play basketball to relax. A quarter scored higher than they did in another biology test that was taken after four months' teaching. In spite of the innovation at Monkseaton, however, Kelley was downbeat about the prospects for new thinking taking hold in schools more widely. "Education is risk-averse. Schools [in England] are controlled by governing bodies, or trusts, or churches, so they generally have limited freedom, and there are few mechanisms for sharing good practice. Similarly, in the U.S., school boards have ever such tight control over what happens, and even charter schools are not necessarily geared to help each other make improvements," he said. "In reality, I think it's difficult to see where the innovation is going to come from. There's no direction for it, there's no funding for it, there's no easy way of sharing it," Kelley said. Valerie Hannon, a director of The Innovation Unit, a nonprofit that was spun off from a government agency originally charged with encouraging new thinking in schools, also believes the United Kingdom lacks serious government investment in school innovation, of the sort now being promoted by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan through the $650 million i3 (Investing in Innovation) Fund. "Governments [in the UK] ... are very reluctant to take the lead on innovation, particularly because of the level of risk it is perceived to entail. They are small c conservative about it," Hannon said. "So, it is left to those at the fringes, rather than at the political centre, to undertake this work. And some schools are doing terrific work. But the issue is: how to make it large scale." Moving beyond standards Hannon believes educators need to think beyond the "standards" or "school improvement" agenda that has animated politicians and school leaders from the previous (Labour) government's election in 1997 onward. The standards movement has seen a huge concentration on improving test scores and exam grades in both elementary and high schools. However, after sharp improvements in national test scores in English, math, and science in the mid-1990s, the gains slowed dramatically from the year 2000. The figures now show around one in five 11-year-olds, for example, fail to reach government expectations in each of the tests. While the standards agenda had made a "huge contribution," Hannon said, the figures suggest new approaches may be needed. "People have to rethink on a deeper level why it is that many students are not really engaging in a deeper sense with learning," Hannon said. …

Many debates in education are echoes of past arguments. This is true of teacher education in England. Michael Gove, our new education secretary, inspired an outpouring of anguish after setting out some brief thoughts on how people should prepare to enter the teaching profession. "We will reform teacher training to shift trainee teachers out of college and into the classroom," he promised in a major, wide-ranging speech delivered within six weeks of the new centre-right Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government assuming power, taking over after 13 years of Labour rule. Gove is a Conservative. "Teaching is a craft and it is best learned as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman. Watching others, and being rigorously observed yourself as you develop, is the best route to acquiring mastery in the classroom," he added. This speech appeared to mine a rich seam of thought, followed politically in England mainly by Gove's party. This has, for at least 25 years now, sought to emphasize the importance of trainee teachers learning the practicalities of their future profession "on the job" in school classrooms rather than mainly absorbing theory in university lecture halls. Readers who don't live in the United Kingdom might not realize that most people training to be teachers here already spend most of their time working in schools. In 1984, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government introduced national guidelines designed to increase the time trainee teachers spend learning "on the job." In 1989, these figures were increased. In 1992, Thatcher's successor, John Major, raised the figures again so that postgraduate teacher trainees, who make up the bulk of the 40,000 people trained to enter the profession every year, now must spend two-thirds of their time working in schools. Given this existing requirement, there might not be much opportunity to increase it even more without doing away with theoretical study altogether. The government has not signalled its intention to do this, perhaps knowing that doing so would provoke a monumental outcry. So what was Gove getting at in his speech other than playing to old fears on the right that universities are, as one observer put it incredulously to me, "hotbeds of radicalism" whose influence always need to be curtailed? He may have some answers to this charge. He is likely to be able to put forward one way of strengthening the emphasis on in-school teacher education that has commanded some cross-party support. In recent decades, the dominant route into teaching in England has been university-based, with students either completing undergraduate degrees in education or taking a postgraduate course. However, since the 1990s, another route has developed, which is called School Centred Initial Teacher Training. In this case, student teachers work in at least two schools with their training designed and delivered by a consortium of schools in partnership with other institutions, which are often universities. Only one in 25 new teachers is currently trained through this route. But, in January, a cross-party Parliamentary committee recommended increasing that number, and the new government seems likely to heed this advice. Gove is also an enthusiastic proponent of Teach First, a scheme modeled on Teach for America in which graduates from leading universities are encouraged to spend the first two years of their careers working in challenging high schools. …

Like so many aspects of education policy in England over the past 20 years, performance-related pay has been an area of high-profile, frequently changing development. But has it been effective in improving what goes on in classrooms? Unsurprisingly, opinions tend to diverge on this subject, which seems to be debated around the world. But one thing appears clear: The Labour government, elected for the first time 13 years ago, has expended considerable political energy on this topic. In one sense, performance pay has a very long history in England. In 1862, a system of payment-by-results was introduced so that the government would reward elementary schools according to their pupils' performance in reading, writing, and arithmetic tests. This was abandoned in 1897 amid concerns about the narrowness of the teaching that resulted. The experience then appears to have cast a shadow over any possibility of performance pay for most of the 20th century. However, this began to change in the 1990s. Almost as soon as they came to power in 1997, Labour ministers were keen to put forward the idea of merit pay. Then-Education Secretary David Blunkett told the House of Commons that merit pay would be part of a set of "radical," "modernizing" reforms that would create a "new professionalism" among teachers. The aim was clear. The government was unhappy with a system in which most teachers, unless they gained management responsibility, were simply paid according to their years in service. English schools control their own budgets and have some flexibility to reward teachers for excellent performance, but they still must abide by central government stipulations on teachers' employment conditions. The paper that proposed the new system said that fewer than 1% of teachers had actually received awards for excellent teaching. So Labour sought to introduce an alternative. Instead of a single pay scale for all classroom teachers, there would be two. Teachers in their first five years in the profession would typically earn pay increases annually until they reached the top of this scale. They would then have the chance to cross a "threshold" to a higher pay scale if they could provide evidence of good performance to the school principal. The first "rung" on this new ladder, known as the Upper Pay Scale, was worth an extra [pounds sterling]2,000 ($3,128, at today's rates) to the teacher. There were four more rungs, with progression in each case dependent on demonstrating continued strong performance. Teachers had to present their principals with portfolios of evidence of their capabilities in eight categories laid down by the government. One of these related to the teacher's students making good progress in their test or in-class assessment scores, while the others were grouped under four headings covering the teacher's "knowledge and understanding," "teaching and assessment," "wider professional effectiveness," and "professional characteristics." The first proved the most contentious, with the largest union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT), warning that linking pay to exam scores could lead to teaching to the test. NUT then launched a legal challenge on the ground that the government had not consulted properly on its plans. NUT won, forcing the scheme's delay in 2000. However, months later, following consultation, the pay plan was implemented. And opposition dwindled, largely because, remarkably, almost all teachers who applied for merit pay got it: 80% of eligible teachers applied, and well over 90% of those applying were successful with their threshold applications in the first round. …