0 items
(Close Menu)

Tag: Underachievement

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

What’s the (gender) difference?: Views on male primary teachers from three Controlled primary school communities

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

Click here to access the free download of the report

The Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement, in collaboration with the Controlled Schools’ Support Council, have recently undertaken a pilot research project investigating views on male primary teachers.

Northern Ireland, like most developed countries, has experienced a long-term decline in the proportion of male primary teachers, to around 15%. The question of males in teaching has been connected in public discourse to the long-standing problem of underachievement lying particularly with working class, Protestant boys. According to existing research, this is mainly due to the joint assumptions of gender matching (the idea that boys will achieve better outcomes with a male teacher) and compensatory theory (the idea that male teachers provide role models that compensate for the lack (or shortcomings) of a father figure at home). However, these theories remain largely unexplored in the context of Northern Ireland’s school communities. This qualitative pilot research project investigated the perceptions of male and female pupils, teachers, parents and principals in three Controlled primary school communities in East Belfast and North Down, regarding the difference a male primary teacher might make.

Three key themes emerged from the project data. Firstly, it is clear that gender equality is a strong shared desire across all stakeholders in the primary school. This is both in terms of having a more equitable balance of male and female teachers and a balance in distribution across year groups, with parents in particular calling for more males ‘down’ the school, working with the youngest children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 classrooms. Secondly, male teachers were seen as particularly ‘fun’ by pupils, parents and teachers alike. We suggest that this perception could be related to their rarity within the primary school environment, but is also counter-balanced by the similarly widely shared view that male teachers lacked ‘caring’, ‘nurturing’ styles of teaching. Thirdly, the theme of male teachers providing vital role models for children coming from disadvantaged and/or single-parent households was strong in parents’, principals’ and teachers’ interviews. This theme aligns closely with compensatory theory, demonstrating that this is a widely shared point of view amongst adult stakeholders in primary education.

While this small pilot study cannot claim to provide generalised conclusions, the rich qualitative data gathered here goes some way to supporting calls to work harder to change the prejudicial views in society which appear to discourage males wishing to embark on a career in teaching, especially in primary schools and, most acutely, working with children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Further research could explore the issue of the impacts of teacher gender in primary education across a wider range of schools of different management types and in different community settings across Northern Ireland and further afield.

 

 

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

Report: Home-Schooling in Northern Ireland during the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on by Andrew McAteer

The past few months have been utterly remarkable. They have: forced parents/carers to assume a greater role than ever before in their child/ren’s education; tested schools and teachers to their limits in terms of adapting fast to providing (mostly online) resources for home learning; and thrown children into a new, confined online learning environment at home. All amid a broader context of fear and uncertainty caused by a global pandemic.

Despite the upheaval, it is vital that our children’s education and our families’ wellbeing is monitored and understood by policymakers, service providers, and the research community. It is likely that the shutdown is leading to widening educational inequality. The Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement ran an online survey on parents/carers’ experiences of home-schooling during the lockdown in early May 2020, which received over 2000 responses from across Northern Ireland. The survey asked how parents/carers were approaching home-schooling, how schools were supporting them, and what could be done to better support their households.

Click here to download the full report, and read below for a summary of the key findings.

1. Parental education and employment status make a big difference

The level of parental education and employment status appears to mediate a strong divergence in experience. Parents/carers educated to university level are over 4 times more likely to be working from home than parents/carers with no qualifications, who are much more likely to have been furloughed. Those with university-level education are the most likely to become directly involved in their children’s home-schooling through teaching them directly (26.7%) or actively supporting their children’s learning (52.6%). In contrast, parents/carers without a degree are more likely to report lower levels of confidence in managing home-education, and to report simply ‘monitoring’ their child’s learning.

2. Essential Workers are least able to devote time to home-schooling

This survey highlights the particular challenges faced by Essential Workers. They are least likely to engage directly in their child/ren’s home-schooling (e.g. least likely to teach or actively support their learning) and are most likely to encourage their child/ren to learn independently as a result of having to work shifts outside the home. Essential Workers are often working longer hours than before and are at greatest risk of becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus. While not universal among the group of Essential Workers, the strongest expressions of frustration and desperation came from within this group, struggling with physical exhaustion, fear of infection, an inability to spend as much time with their children to support their learning, and, in several cases, a resulting sense of guilt and anger.

3. Parents/Carers are calling for live teaching and pre-printed resources

Almost a quarter of respondents do not have a printer, and many expressed a desire for more printed packs of work to be provided and complained of the costs incurred in providing printer ink and paper. We also found that only half of children have their own device to access online resources for schoolwork.

When asked for a single recommendation to improve home-schooling, parents/carers’ most common call was more live interaction with teachers. This could be for as little as twenty minutes once a week, either to introduce new curricular topics, or (especially with younger children) to allow some peer or pastoral interaction to raise motivation levels. We acknowledge the valid concerns of teaching unions and school leaders around the safeguarding of children and teachers, and encourage creative thinking about how the benefits of teacher/pupil interaction may be achieved safely.

4. Lockdown is affecting each child differently

The study provides some insights into children’s experiences of the lockdown learning period. Older children tend to prefer learning at school (and miss school more) while younger children are more likely to prefer the home environment. Most parents/carers suggest that children’s social skills and behaviour haven’t changed since schools closed. The area where children are most likely to have benefited is in their emotional well-being, where around 1 in 5 claim that there has been an improvement. By contrast, 3 in 5 claim that their child/ren’s level of motivation to learn has become worse since home-schooling began. Overall, we observe a very broad range of experiences, from accounts of more relaxed children enjoying peaceful family time and playing outside or engaging in many different leisure activities within the home, to children who are missing their friends and their teachers, struggling to learn, and falling further behind their peers.

“It’s flipping hard work”

The purpose of this report is not to ascribe blame, to undermine professional reputations, or to expose individuals. We share a joint responsibility to improve the situation for everyone, especially those disadvantaged by this continued period of home-schooling.

To quote some respondents, it is clear that for many engaged in home-schooling, “it’s flipping hard work”. “The novelty has worn off”, and “Nobody chose this”. Let us hope that we can learn the lessons of the past eight weeks so that all children can learn more successfully, happily and equitably for the remainder of the lockdown period and beyond.