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Why holding a postponed, single transfer test is likely to widen educational inequalities between wealthy and poor within the current P7 cohort

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

This short piece presents an argument that the recent decision by AQE to cancel the three transfer tests in January and schedule a single test on 27 February is likely to widen educational inequalities between wealthy and poor within the current P7 cohort. It is not intended to re-examine the rights and wrongs of the system of academic selection at 10/11 currently in place across most of Northern Ireland’s schools.

Research over more than twenty years on the problem of educational inequality in Northern Ireland has established that the single strongest predictor of a pupil’s academic achievement is whether they gain entrance to a grammar school for post-primary education. Put simply, statistically pupils at selective schools achieve higher grades at GCSE and A-level than pupils at non-selective schools in Northern Ireland, regardless of other factors such as wealth, gender, or religion. The question of how to make Northern Ireland’s education system as equitable, accessible and inclusive as possible, and thereby tackle the persistent problem of educational underachievement, is therefore closely related to the impacts of the selective system. Due to the closure of schools owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the cancellation of GCSE and A-level exams, the wisdom of conducting the transfer tests for the 2021 post-primary intake has been widely questioned. Preliminary studies from across the UK indicate that a ‘lockdown learning gap’ has appeared between the wealthy and the poor, as children are experiencing widely different educational outcomes due to access to technology, parental availability and competence, access to quiet space, and school resources. Furthermore, it is likely that a focus on test preparation in the already pressured context of remote learning, transitioning back to on-site schooling, and constant disruption due to COVID-19 transmission within schools has further impacted P7 pupils.

Transfer tests postponed, cancelled, and re-scheduled

The tests were originally postponed until January 2021 following a judicial review in September in order to allow P7 children a period of preparation time in schools, a decision that the Education Minister argued would benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, due to the rampant spread of the coronavirus since mid-December, schools have now been closed until at least the February half-term break. The transfer tests due to take place in January have been cancelled, and whilst the PPTC have no plans to implement any new transfer test, at the time of writing the AQE have replaced their cancelled tests with a ‘single paper’ planned for 27th February.

Whilst this move has been clearly rationalised by a defence of the principle of academic selection, it is now more likely than ever to widen educational inequalities between wealthy and poor for the current P7 cohort, with long-lasting effects. We know that distance learning has been least effective in low-income homes and the homes of key workers. We know that wealthy families are able to best prepare their children for the transfer tests either because of their own high levels of education or by paying for private tutoring. We know that any single test could give an inaccurate reflection of a child’s ability, either due to how they perform on the day, or how their paper is marked. For this reason, candidates are usually able to sit three tests and attain the average of the best two scores. Finally, we know that the mental health of children, and their families more widely, has been seriously negatively affected by the pandemic, and all the more so in already disadvantaged households.Because of all of this, both postponing and resorting to a single test is now likely to widen educational inequalities for the current P7 cohort, with the children of parents most able to insulate them from the negative effects of the pandemic handed a significant advantage.

Is there a workable alternative?

The existing fall-back option, to offer selective school places based on “other more random criteria, such [as] family ties, geographical proximity to a school or some form of lottery for places” to quote AQE’s latest statement, based on the criteria set out by DE is admittedly far from a perfect solution. Other ideas, building on the proposal from Robbie Butler MLA to use existing attainment data held by primary schools and practice test results to assess pupils, need to be developed into a workable form with great urgency if they are to be worthwhile. Of course, any alternative criteria may also result in widened educational inequalities based on wealth. However, if alternative criteria truly are ‘more random’ than the administration of a single test which, as we have argued above, places already deprived pupils at an even more significant disadvantage as a result of this pandemic year, there is a strong chance they will not widen educational inequalities based on wealth to the same degree. What cancelling the transfer test outright could do is save P7 children, their teachers and their families the continued stress of preparing for the test, give them the chance to enjoy a broader curriculum in their final months of primary school, and nullify the risk to public health that conducting the transfer test represents. However, to go ahead with a single test postponed to the (hopeful) end of an extended period of lockdown home-schooling, is certain to widen educational inequalities based on wealth for this P7 cohort in comparison with other years.

Dr Jonathan Harris, CREU Research Fellow

Dr Noel Purdy, CREU Director

Dr Glenda Walsh, CREU Assistant Director

Left to their own devices…again! The enduring inequality of lockdown home-schooling

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Less than a month into the first national lockdown, I wrote a CREU blog highlighting the dangers of the digital divide. The blog concluded that “unless action is taken in the days to come, the current lockdown and the differentiated experiences of home-schooling have the potential to further disempower and disenfranchise, thus exacerbating the social injustice of an already deeply divided education system.” A subsequent research report based on a large parental survey carried out by our CREU team at Stranmillis confirmed my fears that pupils’ experiences of lockdown home-schooling in Northern Ireland were mediated by their parents’ backgrounds, especially their level of education. We found that better educated parents were more likely to be able to work from home, spent longer on home-schooling, were more directly involved in teaching their children and felt more confident throughout the process, despite the challenges. In contrast parents without university degrees were more likely to be essential/key workers, and often felt under enormous pressure to juggle their work and family commitments, to access online resources, and to motivate their children to engage with learning.

As I write this in January 2021 at the start of the second lengthy period of national lockdown and a return to enforced home-schooling for the vast majority of children, much has changed. Unlike the sun-kissed spring days of last April and May the weather is now cold, dark and (let’s be honest) dreary. The novelty of home-schooling has well and truly worn off to be replaced by lockdown fatigue and a sense of ‘here we go again’, while stretched family budgets must deal with the additional challenge of heating their homes during frosty weather when their children are off school.

However, I think some lessons have definitely been learned.

Teachers are better prepared for online teaching

We must all commend the dedication and commitment of our teachers who have worked incredibly hard to develop a range of digital learning skills since last March, often through the generous sharing of expertise and resources within their own communities of practice (such as @BlendEd_NI). As a home-schooling parent as well as a teacher educator, I can already see how during this second lockdown the confidence and competence of teachers is much greater than before as they embrace a wider range of interactive pedagogies including, this time, more of the recorded/live video sessions which were largely missing from the first lockdown. This time around it is clear that, for teachers, technology is much less of a barrier to be surmounted or even circumvented, and much more of a pedagogical springboard to engagement – that is definitely progress, and is something to celebrate.

Some households are no better prepared for online learning

We must also commend the work of the voluntary and community sector as well as the Education Authority over the past few months in providing digital hardware to those most in need. However, I fear that significant challenges remain in terms of access to laptops, tablets, and printers for home learning in too many households. Broadband access also remains patchy in many rural areas and will take years to improve. How can children be expected to learn remotely when they still don’t have a suitable device to access their resources, when they don’t have a printer to print their work, or when there is no broadband availability in their rural community? There is a world of difference between, on the one hand, waiting for your exhausted key worker parent to return from work in the evening to access your schoolwork on their mobile phone, and, on the other hand, sitting at your own desk with your own laptop and printer and degree-educated parent all available to support the learning process.

And in our preoccupation with tests, examinations and curricular content, let us not forget our commitments expressed following the first lockdown to promote the emotional health and wellbeing of our children, including our youngest learners. As fully expressed in another CREU blog by colleagues Glenda Walsh and Stephanie Gillespie, the September ‘restart’ was to focus on understanding, reassurance, connection and opportunities to play, relax and have fun, not least as a protection against social isolation and an uncertain future. Those principles remain centrally important in the return to remote learning.

SEN pupils spared lockdown home-schooling

Finally, we should be encouraged that in this second extended period of lockdown (unlike in March 2020), it has been decided that special schools should remain open to all pupils. This is not to underestimate the challenges facing special school principals in maintaining their high staffing ratios at a time when so many teachers and classroom assistants are off work, but it does represent a welcome acknowledgement that every effort must be made to provide access to education and on-site health therapies for some of our most vulnerable children and young people.

However, although we have learned much and our spirits have been buoyed by the roll-out of vaccines, my fear remains that this second lockdown is likely to reproduce and exacerbate many of the inequalities of the first. It could lead to a perpetuation of the ‘Matthew effect’ of accumulated advantage we saw then, as the rich get even further ahead and the poor get left even further behind. As we enter this second extended period of home-schooling, we need to work together to learn the lessons of the first lockdown, to honour the commitments we made then, and to ensure that all our children, whether rich or poor, urban or rural, are given equal opportunities not just to learn but to thrive.

Dr Noel Purdy is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement

International Perspectives on Educational Underachievement – Symposium Report

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Usually at this time of year, Stranmillis University College plays host to a group of visitors from international partner institutions, for an enjoyable few days that include lots of friendly exchange about teaching and research. Instead this year, the year full of ‘first times’, we held an online symposium on “International Perspectives on Educational Underachievement”.

Although it was a pity not to be together in person this year, it was a great opportunity for us to connect with new colleagues and bring them into conversation with some of our local partners in Northern Ireland. It was a pleasure to welcome speakers from Poland, Antigua, North Carolina and Massachusetts, and participants from France, Poland, Germany, Norway, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and elsewhere.

Our theme was “International Perspectives on Educational Underachievement”. At CREU, we have focused our work on Northern Ireland, where the particularities of the economy, society, history and educational system necessitate a grounded and contextualized approach to understanding and reducing educational and socio-economic inequality. We are therefore keenly aware that as the socio-economic contexts and indeed education systems differ greatly between nations and sometimes regions, the problems faced as well as the approach taken by educational researchers will also vary.

However, internationally we as educationalists are united in a commitment to fairness in education. The OECD described fairness in education systems like this: Education systems are fairer if students’ achievements are more likely to result from their abilities and factors that students themselves can influence, such as their will or effort, and less fair the more they are conditioned by contextual characteristics or “circumstances” that students cannot influence, including their gender, race or ethnicity, socio-economic status, immigrant background, family structure or place of residence. There is so much we can learn from one another about how to go about achieving a fairer education system for our societies. Below is a brief summary of the talking points from each presentation.

First, Dr Allen Guidry of East Carolina University (USA) shared his recent work tracing the links between historic slavery and modern-day inequalities in some of the poorest counties in the United States, those served by his University. Though in its very early stages, his research suggests a geographical relationship between counties with high enslaved populations in the mid-19th century and a contemporary barrier to accessing higher education. This barrier comes in the form of a requirement for teacher recommendations and parental waivers to allow students to progress to higher level college courses.

Next, a collaborative presentation by Dr Amy Maynard of Lasell University (Boston, USA) and Antiguan teacher Sacha Mills outlined the ‘shoulder to shoulder’ partnership they have developed over the past six years. This multifaceted international exchange focused on classroom learning, teacher education and early literacy development, and with student teachers from Lasell travelling to Antigua and Antiguan teachers visiting in return. During the pandemic, online collaborations have intensified, with Sacha Mills creating a teaching website and Lasell student teachers developing online teaching materials and lesson plans to contribute to it.

After a short break, Dr Dorota Chimicz of UCMS Lublin (Poland) shared about her work on a recent large-scale survey with parents and teachers regarding wide-ranging reforms to the school system, and the question of inclusion within that system. A wide variety of attitudes towards SEN pupils, and provision for those pupils, pointed to various difficulties and irregularities in the process of supporting students with SEN in Polish mainstream schools.

Finally, we heard from Dr Noel Purdy in his capacity as chair of the ministerial Expert Panel to Tackle Educational Underachievement. Though the work of the panel is still in its early stages, Dr Purdy outlined how the panel was going about gathering evidence from across Northern Ireland, including regional days, written and oral evidence, parental perspectives and consultations with children and young people.

The event ended with wide-ranging discussions in smaller break-out groups and a final open forum. Three broad questions emerged at the end: firstly, should there be a resource or repository of ‘what works’ at the school and classroom level to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged?; secondly and relatedly, what kind of changes are needed at the systemic and structural level to reduce educational inequality, rather than putting the onus on schools and teachers?; and thirdly, in light of the current pandemic, should large-scale external assessments go ahead? Input from international partners was particularly helpful on this point, as some countries had already pressed ahead with examinations despite the pandemic, whilst others had cancelled planned exams and put in place alternative arrangements.

Dr Jonathan Harris is the Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement

What we can learn about Educational Underachievement from the GCSE and A-Level experience of 2020

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

If we were to consider final grades alone, 2020 will superficially appear as a highly successful year in the Northern Ireland Executive’s long-standing commitment to tackling Educational Underachievement. As with the other administrations in the UK, average GCSE and A-level grades have risen significantly since 2019, following the cancellation of formal exams and belated government decisions to award grades based on teacher predictions rather than those produced by controversial algorithms (unless the latter was higher). The proportion of pupils achieving the benchmark of 5 GCSEs at C grade or above has certainly increased. When full details of these statistics are published by the Department of Education, it will be interesting to see what effect this general bump-up in grades will have had on the various ‘attainment gaps’; between boys and girls, between FSME and non-FSME pupils, and between pupils of different religious/community backgrounds. Although the full picture is not yet clear, the controversy over A-level and GCSE grades points to a fact worth remembering even in ‘normal’ years: our system of examinations and grading is designed to produce a spread of outcomes, and plays a part in re-producing patterns of what is perceived as educational underachievement.

In their article entitled ‘What is ‘underachievement’ at school?’ Stephen Gorard and Emma Smith wrote that in education policy and practice, underachievement can mean one of three things: low achievement, below a particular benchmark; lower achievement than would be expected by the observer; and lower achievement of one group or individual relative to another. As such, underachievement is intrinsically related to standard assessments that invite comparison across the population – particularly GCSEs and A-levels.

All GCSE and A-Level exams were cancelled this year

What do grades mean?

This year, more than ‘normal’ years, concerns have been repeatedly raised about how ‘meaningful’ the grades students receive are. They are important for employers and higher education institutions attempting to make a selection from a pool of applicants for limited places. They are also important for the governance of the education system, for governments and schools to measure their performance against previous years. The fear of ‘grade inflation’ has shone a spotlight on the role of exams regulators, and the entirely normal practice of moderation and the adjusting of grade boundaries to maintain a distribution of grades that is broadly comparable to previous years. Put simply, the fact that many students achieve grades below a C does not indicate a widespread problem of educational underachievement – it is the way the system is designed to work. Despite a nominally criterion-referencing system of grading, where in theory every candidate can achieve a passing grade if they demonstrate the required level of knowledge or skill, in reality marks are always moderated and/or standardised to produce a spread of grades. What has been highlighted this year is how arbitrarily an individual student might have their marks revised downward, particularly if they are perceived as ‘overachieving’ in relation to their school’s performance history. In normal years, moderation is applied to non-examined assessments (NEAs) in this way, and standardisation applies across the board. This perpetuates downward pressure on the likely attainment of disadvantaged pupils, widening the gap between their grades and those of their more advantaged peers who are more likely to request and obtain a re-mark that will revise their grade upwards. Such practices are justified on the basis that a) pupils’ grades should be broadly comparable to the cohorts of previous years, and b) that universities and others need to be able to fairly allocate limited places to applicants. However, the former imperative reduces the likelihood of disadvantaged students ‘breaking through’ and the latter builds inequality of outcomes into the education system as a necessity. This isn’t objectively unfair, but neither is it objectively fair – rather it is a political judgement passed off as a technically unavoidable problem.

Whose grade is it anyway?

The recent controversy has also broken down the widely held assumption that an individual pupil’s grade belongs solely to them. In a ‘normal year’ standardised public exams are meant to provide a way for an individual pupil to demonstrate their own individual competence in a given discipline by ‘taking the test’ – with no outside help allowed. The recent removal of controlled assessments (coursework) from GCSEs has served to make this individualization more acute, as the pupil is, in theory, removed from the ‘unfair’ help of their teachers, parents, friends and tutors. The absence of these tests taking place in 2020 has highlighted that GCSE and A-level grades belong not only to individual pupils, but also to their teachers, to their schools and ultimately to their governments (via independent exams regulators). Basing pupils’ grades on teachers’ predictions has been attacked on the basis that teachers and schools will inflate their pupils’ grades to game estimates of their own performance. The stakes are high, as teachers and schools perceived as underperforming may be subject to punitive managerial measures or a lack of applicants in future years. Schools with disadvantaged intakes were particularly likely to be downgraded by the algorithms of Ofqual and CCEA on the basis that their estimates were too far above the historical average for their school. Such is the power of this accountability regime, that the initial attempts to award grades through algorithms focused on parity with previous years on a national scale and at the scale of the school, whilst individual grades could be wildly different from pupils’ and teachers’ expectations. As Jon Andrews of the Education Policy Institute has pointed out,

“we had ministers celebrating the fact that A level results had only increased by a couple of percentage points, that standards had been maintained. But this was not a model that needed to work at a national level, it needed to work for hundreds of thousands of individuals in thousands of schools. It does not matter if your total number of grades is correct if a large number of them have been assigned to the ‘wrong’ candidates.”

If we recognise that a pupil’s grade belongs not only to themselves but to their teachers, their schools and their governments, who are in some way held accountable for the grades their pupils attain, then we may be able to critically re-examine educational underachievement and understand that it cannot be ‘solved’ under the current system of exam-driven selection for teacher/school accountability and options for higher education and employment.

However, this is not to say that nothing can be done, rather that our perspective on what constitutes achievement in education must be broader than the grades pupils obtain aged 16 and 18. This might mean abandoning standardisation in favour of true criterion-referencing, so that fewer young people are necessarily branded as ‘underachievers’. It might mean disconnecting accountability regimes from these grades, and thereby allowing them to ‘belong’ entirely to the pupil, whilst teachers and schools’ success is measured in another, less easily quantifiable way. There is no unshakeable rule that schools must be made to compete with one another on the basis of grades in order to improve standards. Could a teacher or school’s performance be assessed through criterion-referencing, rather than the zero-sum game of absolute competition embodied in league tables and England’s new Progress-8 scoring system? Of course, parents and the press might continue to fixate on league tables, but accountability measures can and should take a different approach. At the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement we take this attitude forward in our qualitative work, which valorises the voices of pupils and foregrounds early years and primary education as an arena for meaningful progress in bringing about greater social justice through education.

Dr Jonathan Harris is the Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement

Prioritising Play when Schools Reopen

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

In this blog John McMullen reflects on his lockdown experiences as a parent and his hopes for playful learning as schools re-open, making links to relevant research. Glenda Walsh concludes with some practical ideas for how we can prioritise and promote play post-lockdown.

Dr John McMullen is an Educational and Child Psychologist, and Senior Lecturer at Stranmillis University College.

Dr Glenda Walsh is Assistant Director of CREU, Head of Early Years Education and Principal Lecturer at Stranmillis University College.

The last CREU blog considered the positive experiences of some children and families during lockdown. Whilst not negating the severe challenges for many, this was a welcome, hopeful piece. When asked about hope in a recent podcast, the words of Howard Zinn came to mind: ‘If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.’

I’ve been inspired by the creativity, support and fun emanating from many teachers, parents and carers during lockdown. Much of this innovation would not have occurred without the adversity of a pandemic, and the most hopeful aspects appear to centre around play. Children have spent more time playing, and the adults appear to have become more playful too, including dads! During lockdown fathers have nearly doubled the time they spend on childcare. While it’s still less than mothers do overall, this is important. Recent research tells us that father-infant play, often in the form of physical play such as rough and tumble, is linked to positive social, emotional and cognitive outcomes.

Playing with my daughter has been the sunshine through the grey clouds of COVID-19. The closing of childcare put pressure on work life but provided, and necessitated, more play in family life. We’ve enjoyed camping trips, lighting fires, Lego, building rockets, exploring woods and rivers, eating fruit that we grew, and catching bugs. Caring for children can be demanding, but when we allow ourselves to see the world through a child’s eyes, in their adventure and their wonder, playfulness can benefit our well-being as much as theirs. As schools start back it feels like it has never been more important to prioritise play.

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; We grow old because we stop playing.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Importance of Play

Regardless of a child’s situation, learning through play is crucial for development. Playing helps children to be happy and healthy in their lives today, but also to develop the skills to be the creative, engaged learners of tomorrow. Play experiences can support the development of early literacy and numeracy skills in an integrated manner, while also cultivating children’s social, emotional, physical, and creative skills. Through play children also develop executive functioning, language, and a sense of agency, which are pre-requisites for success in school.

Learning through play is sometimes associated solely with preschool and viewed as purely child-directed and unstructured. However there is a growing evidence base for the importance of playful experiences throughout school and in life-long learning. Pedagogical approaches including active learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, problem-solving and project work are highly relevant to learning through play beyond the early years of schooling. Play may be important in helping children of all ages to move beyond the learning of key content and facts, to a deeper conceptual understanding that allows them to apply their knowledge to different situations, spark new ideas, step into uncertainty, create opportunities for themselves and their communities, and learn throughout life.

The Problem with Play

Despite near universal consensus on the importance of play, research has identified obstacles in practice such as appropriate provision, adults’ roles, parental expectations, top-down pressures, and a perceived dichotomy between play and work. Where teachers do not have confidence and competence in translating quality playful approaches into practice, it follows that not all children will have access to play, let alone good quality play, in their educational setting. This situation could potentially worsen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as teachers are asked to prioritise ‘catching up’ on academic learning.

We caution against a dichotomous mindset. We argue for a more expansive understanding of play as learning in practice, where all aspects of children’s learning – personal, social, and academic can be fully enhanced and where playing, learning and teaching become fully synchronised. Perhaps if we see play as ‘the highest form of research’ as Einstein (may have) stated, it will embolden the community around each child to provide consistent, high quality, playful learning experiences.

The Impact of COVID-19

Not all children will have enjoyed playful experiences during lockdown. Almost all will have spent less time playing with children outside of their own family, i.e. their peer group. We do not know the long-term impact, if any, that widespread social isolation will have on their wellbeing.  However, some insight is offered by a recent rapid systematic review of 80 studies, published from 1946-2020, of the impact of social isolation and loneliness on the mental health of children and adolescents. This suggested that social isolation and loneliness increase the risk of depression and anxiety in children, and that duration of loneliness was more strongly correlated with mental health symptoms than intensity of loneliness. The authors concluded that there is likely to be high rates of depression and probably anxiety during and after social isolation ends. As a response, a number of mental health experts have urged the government to prioritise children’s play, socialising and emotional wellbeing over formal lessons and academic progress when schools reopen. This was supported and emphasised in the Department of Education NI guidance sent to all schools in June 2020.

How to Prioritise and Promote Play Post-Lockdown

The Lego Foundation have identified five essential characteristics of playful learning, namely joy, meaning, active engagement, social interaction, and iteration. Practical suggestions for facilitating these rich playful learning experiences were highlighted in a previous blog. For example, through child in playful bubbles wearing the same coloured wrist band, discouraging as far as possible children interacting in bubbles beyond that of their own in an effort to maintain a form of social distancing between groups. In addition, instead of making use of commercial play resources which may require deep cleaning on a daily basis, the time is ripe to make greater use of junk play materials such as cardboard boxes, rope, string, polystyrene, plastic bottles, and containers to name but a few, and an array of natural resources including bark, seeds, sand, mud, stones, pebbles, leaves, twigs and straw, all of which can be easily replaced on a daily basis. Indeed, as the risk of infection from Covid-19 is less prevalent in the outdoors, according to the scientific evidence, it seems only fitting to make greater use of the outdoors and in so doing provide a range of playful experience that are filled with many possibilities and adventure. Outdoors, children can engage in a variety of playful experiences in their bubble, whether it be building dens, climbing trees, exploring wildlife, gardening, playing in mud kitchens, engaging in STEM activities with water and sand, undertaking a range of physical exercises or simply having fun with their peers.

At present we are only too aware that further lockdowns might be re-introduced and if this happens to be the case, it’s vital that a playful pedagogy continues. Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen provides some useful ideas from a school in Denmark for transitioning to distance learning using playful pedagogies. In recent months during the lockdown experience in Northern Ireland it has similarly been encouraging to see the excellent response of the Education sector in advocating a playful approach to teaching and learning in the home (e.g. https://www.stran.ac.uk/ideas-for-active-minds/).

Perhaps the way forward lies in extending these home-learning ideas practised during lockdown, by introducing a somewhat playful approach to homework tasks. As parents, we know only too well the challenge it is to get young children to complete sedentary worksheets at home, already tired after a long school day and by so doing, frequently denying them that precious time to engage in more play-based activities at home and outside. As schools begin to re-open after lockdown, we suggest that not only is it a priority to foster a playful approach to teaching and learning in our classrooms but a more playful approach might also be infused into homework tasks in general.

“Play with me Daddy!”

My 3-year-old doesn’t know it yet, but this is an invitation to join her, not only in fun and adventure, but in the highest form of research; in her wonder and questioning; in her cognitive, social, emotional and physical development; and in building life skills she will need now and after this pandemic. What a privilege for parents and teachers alike.

 

“There is no education like adversity”: learning from the positive experiences of lockdown

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

As Disraeli once wrote “there is no education like adversity”, a maxim that seems just as relevant during the current pandemic crisis as when it was first penned a century and a half ago. In this blog we consider what can be learnt from the positive experiences of home learning for some children and families during lockdown.

Dr Noel Purdy is Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement at Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

Alistair Hamill is Senior Leader in Lurgan College, responsible for Teaching & Learning, and Learning Lead in Craigavon Area Learning Community.

There is now a wealth of evidence from studies here in Northern Ireland (Walsh et al., 2020, O’Connor et al., 2020) across the rest of the UK (Sutton Trust, 2020; IFS, 2020), in the Republic of Ireland (Mohan et al., 2020) and further afield (Goldstein, 2020), that lockdown has been very challenging for many children and for their parents/carers, often leading to an exacerbation of existing social inequalities (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2020; ONS, 2020) and widely divergent educational experiences.

Among those most likely to be negatively impacted have been those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, those with special educational needs and those in rural areas with poor internet connectivity (Walsh et al., 2020; O’Connor et al., 2020). Most of our attention has now justifiably turned towards planning for what has been referred to as a flexible ‘recovery curriculum’ to prioritise emotional wellbeing needs, to redress the imbalance of educational access and to bridge the learning gap which will inevitably have widened during lockdown.

However, it is important to acknowledge that there have also been some children who have had overwhelmingly positive experiences of learning at home since March, and we argue here that there is also an onus on schools to meet their needs during the Restart and, where possible and appropriate, to seek to learn from and use their positive experiences to promote better learning dispositions among the wider peer group.

Many families have enjoyed home learning

First, and most broadly, the findings of the CREU online parental survey carried out in April/May  highlight that for a sizeable minority of families, the experience of home learning has been enjoyable, offering them an opportunity to spend more time together, enjoying a calmer pace of life, giving parents time to engage confidently and more directly than ever before in their children’s learning, supported by appropriate online resources from the school, while also giving children more time to play, relax and enjoy the outdoors.  Indeed this resonates with a recent UK-wide study where 26% of parents reported that their relationship with their children had improved during lockdown (especially where the youngest child was under 4 years old) and only 4% said the relationship had worsened.  In open-ended comments from the Stranmillis CREU study, several parents also commented specifically on how their children were really enjoying the home-schooling experience (though often missing their friends and classmates), feeling less stressed by the pressure of external exams, benefitting from a ‘slower pace of life’, and enjoying opportunities to re-connect as a family:

The difference in our kids is amazing they are so much happier and more relaxed the whole house is much less stressed, adults included.

I think my children have coped very well – they are settled, contented and enjoy the cocoon of home.

It has given my children more time to play freely which is positive.

My son suffers with anxiety at school and with being at home with the lockdown I find it really has helped my son focus more on school work and not the class clown or feeling anxious or worried so he definitely seems more relaxed and has the head space to study better with less stress

Some children with ASD and ADHD are benefitting

Second, and more specifically, while it has been noted by NICCY and others that many children with special educational needs have undoubtedly struggled with the lack of additional learning support, therapeutic intervention, familiar structure, leisure and respite opportunities, conversely a smaller number of other children with special educational needs have actually thrived.  Some parents in the CREU survey spoke of children with ASD and ADHD in particular whose anxiety levels have fallen, free from the social pressures of a busy school environment, away from the threat of bullying, and able to learn in a less regimented, more flexible and secure home environment:

Our son has Aspergers. He is v bright but lacks concentration. When he is in the mood to do work, we do it. He needs a lot of attention to keep him in tasks.  Generally speaking he is much less anxious than when at school, he struggles with the social side of school which results in massive anxieties and OCD behaviours. These have significantly reduced since he has been at home.

My child is currently being assessed for ADHD which does at time impact her focus and motivation and I feel she has enjoyed the flexibility/autonomy of our lessons.

I think my dyslexic son benefits as he doesn’t have the same pressures as the classroom and I can work with him 1-1 and produce much better work than when he is in a class of nearly 30 pupils. I can also work one on one to improve his attention issues.

Remote learning has benefits for pupil self-regulation

Third, lockdown has highlighted the importance of self-regulation among learners.  Schools provide a highly structured, regulated environment, with a high degree of timely accountability for the pupils as they do their work. For pupils who struggle with self-regulation, this environment can, at the very least, produce compliant learners: pupils who will turn up to class, generally do the work set by the teacher and mostly hand work in on time. In the lockdown environment, the loss of the direct experience of this structure, regulation and accountability has left pupils with much more freedom – and responsibility – to self-regulate. A recent ETI report found that many post-primary pupils struggled even with basic levels of compliance in this context, but there is evidence that other pupils managed this freedom very well, supported by learning resources from, and interactions with, their teachers.  More significantly, there is evidence from studies such as a recent school-based study in the Netherlands that learners who can self-regulate go on to achieve more highly.

So, what are the qualities exhibited by such pupils and what can we learn from them? An Education Endowment Foundation report summarises the evidence on self-regulation and metacognition, and cites a range of strategies that help pupils learn independently, including: ‘setting specific short-term goals, adopting powerful strategies for attaining the goals, monitoring performance for signs of progress, restructuring one’s physical and social context to make it compatible with one’s goals; managing time-use efficiently; self-evaluating one’s methods; attributing causation to results and adapting future methods’.

Based on the additional experience of online teaching of 14-18 year olds in one local grammar school during lockdown, it has become clear that some pupils, especially those in KS4/5, have developed sufficient self-regulation skills not only to comply with the work set, but to become fully engaged in their learning. More than that, it has given some pupils a high degree of agency in their own learning, as they have shown significant self-awareness to adapt their learning schedules and strategies based on self-reflection to align with how they learn best. These include pupils who have designed their own learning timetable for the week, using the learning support from the school as a foundation, but adapting it, based on a high degree of self-awareness, to best facilitate their own learning.

Looking ahead we would recommend that schools seek to do more to develop self-regulation skills among pupils, a view echoed by the EEF, whose report on remote learning published at the start of lockdown, made the following recommendation:

Supporting pupils to work independently can improve learning outcomes. Pupils learning at home will often need to work independently. Multiple reviews identify the value of strategies that help pupils work independently with success … Wider evidence related to metacognition and self-regulation suggests that disadvantaged pupils are likely to particularly benefit from explicit support to help them work independently, for example, by providing checklists or daily plans.

With the possibility of further school disruptions in the 2020/21 school year, the need to train pupils in self-regulation skills early upon their return to school is imperative.

Learning from lockdown

As schools transition back to a blended model of face to face and remote learning, how do we respond to what has been learnt from this time? The following questions might facilitate some self-reflection for teachers, school leaders and policy-makers:

1. How do we ensure that our approach to education after lockdown is more balanced?

In what ways can we make school less pressured, more pastoral, less assessment-driven and more focused on the well-being of individual children, while recognising the potential to build on positive experiences of family and parental engagement since March?  How do we prioritise relationships – within schools, within families and between schools and families?

2. How do we best prepare some of most vulnerable learners with special educational needs for the return to school in August/September?

It must be acknowledged that this will not be a return to school as they knew it before, and that during the last few months, new routines will have become established in settled home environments where face-to-face social interaction and communication could be kept to a minimum.  How do we ensure that these pupils’ anxiety at the prospect of the Restart is minimised, and that school itself is a safer, happier place for all learners, irrespective of their needs?

3. How do we best support the full range of pupils’ self-regulation habits as schools open more widely?

How do we find ways of fostering and encouraging the continued growth of effective self-regulation shown by some pupils? In what ways do we ensure that the re-introduction of the highly structured environment of school does not cause them to lose the agency they have developed during remote learning? How can we find ways of sharing this effective practice with those pupils who have struggled more with this, encouraging them to learn from the example of their peers? And, how do we explicitly teach and upskill all pupils in the learnable techniques of self-regulation and metacognition?

We not have not sought here to deny or minimise the reality of the challenges faced by many children and their parents during lockdown (and these have already been well documented).  Instead we set out to look for learning opportunities as a result of positive experiences where they did occur, despite adversity.  In reporting these here, we hope to have provided some encouragement, though also many further questions to consider together over the coming days.  In so doing, we have every confidence in the educational workforce of Northern Ireland to rise to the challenges that lie ahead.