The Tim Brighouse view: ldr September 2009

From giant leap…to small step

September is a good time to start planning the transition for next year’s new Year 7s, says Tim Brighouse.

"If you could wish for only one change that would make the most difference to improving the education system as a whole what would it be?”

It was a good question, reminiscent of the invitation to castaways on ‘Desert Island Discs’ to take one luxury item with them. And it came at the end of an ‘Any Questions’ type panel at a school inset day and was prompted by the staff having addressed the same thing for their school.

The possible answers are legion...more professional development opportunities to fuel the intellectual curiosity of teachers... new school buildings with the sort of facilities enjoyed by Eton and Harrow…ICT systems that never break down... a residential centre for every secondary school and a group of five partner primaries. But the killer proviso which accompanied the question was that the wished-for change shouldn’t cost anything. (I guess we shall all have to get used to that in the austere years ahead?)

Because I had read Annette Lareau’s ‘Unequal Childhoods’ I had no doubt about my answer. ‘Unequal Childhoods’ is an extraordinary study of 12 childhoods in America. Six are from well-off ambitious families and six from poor families. The former are ferried from one supplementary enriching experience to another, while the latter enjoy the friendships of the streets.

Lareau balances the pros and cons of both approaches – and they each have their upsides and downsides – but she lays bare one extraordinary and much neglected piece of research evidence. It is that the so-called ‘attainment gap’ increases from July to September but remains the same between September and July. In other words schools are remarkable in maintaining the relative positions of the achievers and non-achievers and that it’s what happens outside school, especially in the long summer holiday, that makes the difference. Well-off parents make sure the period is stimulating while the children of the poor and challenged families are left to do their own thing. So often that means their tenuous hold on a basic skill slips disastrously backwards.

So my answer to the question was simple. Make transition better especially at the primary secondary interface. Have an induction week, not simply a social couple of days, at the end of July. Make sure primary children bring with them the best bit of written work and fix it in their English folder/exercise book as the ‘personal best’ from which they will make progress.Identify those most at risk of not acquiring the language that gives access to a successful secondary experience and make sure they have both a bespoke summer learning experience and access to somewhere they can carry it out.

But why stop there? If that can and should happen for Year 6/7 transition why shouldn’t it translate into starting the year for everyone in the last week of July? Transition from one set of teachers to the next would be more secure for all pupils and there would be a better start for everyone in September. It probably wouldn’t make much difference to those pupils who are doing well but it just might change life’s chances for some of those who are ‘learning to fail’.

Of course it’s too late for you this year but how about making a resolution to do it next July? It just might change life’s chances for some youngsters. And that, after all, is why you are engaged in school leadership.

Professor Tim Brighouse was London Schools Commissioner and Education Officer in Oxfordshire and Birmingham local authorities. He was knighted for his services to school improvement earlier this year.