Department For Education And Skills Research Articles

Changes to educational policy and management in Wales: facing the “cuts” and new strategic challenges

Like the rest of the United Kingdom, Wales is facing a new challenge from the implementation of the Coalition Government’s cuts. The Welsh Assembly Government [WAG, renamed Welsh Government (WG), in May 2011] budget was reduced by £1.8billion over the next four years. WAG responded by introducing its own revised austerity budget which reduced spending on Education by 8%. At the same time, the performance of Welsh Education has been under severe strain as a result of a series of new challenges. These include the consequences of Welsh pupils’ performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the failure to meet government targets projected in The Learning Country, funding disparities, the findings of the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report for Wales, the state of literacy in Wales, the re-organisations within the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills [DCELLS, renamed Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in May 2011], the Thomas Review Report and the announcement of the Minister’s new twenty-point plan which will guide policy for the next four years. This paper will first put Welsh educational policy into context before considering each of these issues in turn and finally, projecting forward to the future.

Foundation degrees

Foundation Degrees (FDs) were launched in 2000 by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). One of the key reasons for their introduction was a belief that this new work-based higher education (HE) qualification could help meet employer demand for people with higher technician/associate professional-level skills. According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)'s 'Foundation Degree Prospectus' (2000) there was a shortage of people with these intermediate-level skills, and forecasts at the time indicated that there would be an increasing demand for such skills. This paper examines the extent to which FDs have been able to widen participation, meet employer needs and provide a means for students to progress to higher-level courses. It focuses on the experience of full-time students who usually complete their FD in two years and are able to 'top-up' their FD to gain an honours degree with a further period of study, usually one year. The paper draws upon two studies by the author: (1) an on-going study referred to as the 'transition study'; and (2) a study into the approach to educational decision-making adopted by students choosing to study for a FD, referred to as the 'decision-making study'.

Evaluating the impact of Rtime: An intervention for schools that aims to develop relationships, raise enjoyment and reduce bullying

Developing social and emotional well-being amongst children and young people is part of national educational policy (e.g. Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2004; Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS), 2008). A relatively recent intervention known as ‘Rtime’ (Sampson, 2004) appears to be able to improve relationships in school and at the same impact upon reducing bullying behaviours and raising enjoyment. Rtime is a 15-minute, weekly, structured relationship programme where children work in random pairs on a co-operative activity, incorporating time to greet and thank each other. The aim of this study was to research whether Rtime really did have the effects on children that it claimed. The study took place in 21 educational settings within a city in the south-west of England with 149 school-aged participants from Foundation to Key Stage 3 from both mainstream and specialist educational settings. The participants completed a questionnaire that investigated the above themes. Overall, the statistical analysis of the questionnaire responses suggested that Rtime had made a significant positive impact on children’s development of relationships and friendships and contributed to some changes in the children’s perceptions of bullying and enjoyment at school. Teachers reported that Rtime had made an impact on collaborative working, manners and general social skills. It is concluded that Rtime is a valuable programme that promotes significant positive changes in classrooms and schools consistent with national initiatives.

Management of School Attendance in the UK

Prior to 1997, managing school attendance was the sole responsibility of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Since devolution, responsibility for school attendance has resided with each of the four UK-wide administrations. These are the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) in England; the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED); the Northern Irish Department for Education (NIDE); and in Wales, the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS). Since then, each of the four administrations has begun to develop different policy directions over the management of education in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Within each of the four countries, different management approaches to school attendance has evolved between 1997 and 2007. The focus of this article is on describing these four different approaches until 2007, the present position post 2007, while attempting to compare, contrast and evaluate some of the potential outcomes of these strategies. It also seems increasingly likely that the future educational policy directions of the four national governments will continue to diverge, possibly leading to new legislation which will mean that policies on school attendance will differ significantly in the years ahead.

Supporting the middle tier to engage with school-based networks: Change strategies for influencing and cohering

Networking and collaboration in educational settings have become increasingly important in terms of supporting innovation and policy developments in many educational systems. However, to date, the role and action of the middle tier remains an under-researched area, especially in the United Kingdom. This paper draws on findings from a study of district level (local authorities (LAs)) capacity to broker and facilitate school-based networks within a context of complex multiple agendas. The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Innovations Unit and the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) involved 19 LAs over a two-year period. The authors worked as second order action researchers supporting local authority staff develop a range of strategies to broker and facilitate school-to-school networks. This paper draws on Habermassian notions of a critical theorem to describe the construction and use of a new theoretical framework outlining the strategies adopted by the middle tier officers within the project.

Progression and assessment in foreign languages at Key Stage 2

The teaching of primary languages has been increasing steadily, in response to the future entitlement for all Key Stage 2 (KS2) pupils aged 7–11 to learn a foreign language by 2010. However, there remain concerns about progression both within KS2 and through to secondary school and about how learners' progress is assessed. This paper presents findings on the issues of progression and assessment taken from case studies which formed part of a project funded by the then Department for Education and Skills (DfES), now the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). This project set out to evaluate 19 local authority (LA) Pathfinders in England that were piloting the introduction of foreign language learning at KS2 between 2003 and 2005. Findings revealed that there was inconsistency between schools, even within each LA Pathfinder, in the use of schemes of work and that assessment was generally underdeveloped in the majority of the Pathfinders. In order to set these findings in context, this paper examines the issues of progression and assessment in foreign language learning in England. Finally, it investigates the challenges English primary schools face in terms of progression and assessment in the light of the new entitlement and discusses implications for the future. Managing progression, both within KS2 and through to secondary school at KS3 (ages 11–14), is one of the key factors in determining the overall success of starting languages in primary school.

Not choosing nursing: Work experience and career choice of high academic achieving school leavers

Work experience has been a feature of the secondary school curriculum in the United Kingdom for a number of years. Usually requested by the pupil, it aims to provide opportunities for school pupils to enhance their knowledge and understanding of an occupation. The main benefits are claimed to be that it can help pupils develop an insight into the skills and attitudes required for an occupation and an awareness of career opportunities. However the quality and choice of placements are considered to be of great importance in this process and in influencing career choice [Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2002a. Work Experience: A Guide for Employers. Department for Education and Skills, London]. As university departments of nursing experience a decline in the number of school pupils entering student nurse education programmes, and with the competition for school leavers becoming even greater, it is important to consider whether school pupils have access to appropriate work placements in nursing and what influence their experience has on pursuing nursing as a career choice. This paper is based on interview data from 20 high academic achieving fifth and sixth year school pupils in Scotland, paradigmatic cases from a larger survey sample (n=1062), who had considered nursing as a possible career choice within their career preference cluster, but then later disregarded nursing and decided to pursue medicine or another health care profession. This was partly reported by Neilson and Lauder [Neilson, G.R., Lauder, W., 2008. What do high academic achieving school pupils really think about a career in nursing: analysis of the narrative from paradigmatic case interviews. Nurse Education Today 28(6), 680-690] which examined what high academic achieving school pupils really thought about a career in nursing. However, the data was particularly striking in revealing the poor quality of nursing work experience for the pupils, and also their proposal that there was a need for work experience which was more representative of the reality of nursing. Participants reported that proper work experience in nursing could make it more attractive as a career choice but that there were difficulties and barriers in obtaining an appropriate work experience in nursing. These included unhelpful attitudes of teachers towards work experience in nursing in general and the placements themselves which were typically in a nursing home or a care home. They felt that departments of nursing within universities should have an input into organising more realistic work placements and that their involvement could foster greater interest amongst pupils in nursing as a career.

An evaluation of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme: promoting positive behaviour, effective learning and well‐being in primary school children

The Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme (SEAL), designed to develop children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills in the primary school, was part of the Primary Behaviour and Attendance Pilot funded by the then Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and piloted in 25 Local Authorities in the UK. The data collected in the evaluation of the pilot programme included pre‐ and post‐intervention questionnaires for Key Stage (KS)1 and KS2 children in 172 schools, questionnaires for teachers, teaching assistants and head teachers in 29 schools and interviews with school staff and pupils in 13 schools. Of the school staff, 90% agreed that the programme had been at least relatively successful overall. All responding headteachers, 87% of teachers and 96% of non‐teaching staff agreed that the programme promoted the emotional well‐being of children, while 82% of teachers agreed that it increased pupils’ ability to control emotions such as anger. Only 48% of teachers agreed that it reduced bullying, although this rose to 74% of non‐teaching staff—suggesting that there was a greater impact on playground as opposed to classroom behaviour in this respect. The interview data indicated that the programme had increased staff understanding of the social and emotional aspects of learning and helped them to better understand their pupils, which changed their behaviour, enhanced their confidence in their interactions with pupils, and led them to approach behaviour incidents in a more thoughtful way. Analysis of the responses to the children’s questionnaires revealed a range of complex relationships between age, gender, questionnaire responses made prior to the pilot, and school factors which made conclusive interpretation of the data problematic.

Identity, well‐being and effectiveness: the emotional contexts of teaching

This paper draws on findings from a four‐year longitudinal research project, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), which investigated Variations in Teachers’ Work, Lives and Effectiveness (VITAE). Drawing on data gathered from 300 teachers working in 100 primary and secondary schools in England, the research identified associations between commitment and effectiveness (perceived and in terms of pupil attainment) and found that there were more, and less, effective teachers in each of six professional life phases. It found that teachers in each of these phases experienced a number of different scenarios that challenged their abilities to sustain their commitment (i.e. remain resilient). This paper discusses how these impact, positively and negatively, on teachers’ capacities for sustaining their initial commitment and associations between identity, well‐being and effectiveness. It finds that teacher identities are neither intrinsically stable nor intrinsically fragmented, but that they can be more, or less, stable and more or less fragmented at different times and in different ways according to the influence of the interaction of a number of personal, professional and situated factors. The extent to which teachers are able to and are supported in managing the scenarios they experience will determine their sense of effectiveness.

An Alternative Model of Continuing Professional Development for Teachers: Giving Teachers Time

The paper reports on the outcomes of a Department of Culture, Museums and Sport (DCMS) funded project which provided resources for three groups of teachers in different subjects and age phases to have some time where they were freed from their teaching responsibilities, and also given time to meet together with other teachers to share ideas. The idea underpinning the project was to explore a model of continuing professional development for teachers which was different in approach to recent Department for Education and Skills (DfES) ‘strategy’ and training based approaches.The three groups of teachers (primary science, secondary history and secondary science) met together with curriculum tutors from the local School of Education to explore ideas about how to develop innovative approaches in aspects of their subject teaching. In addition to funding four days of supply cover for the teachers involved to meet, the teachers were also given at least two days of supply cover during the course of the project to develop their ideas. Towards the end of both academic years, the groups met again to share their ideas. The paper describes the outcomes of the project and the teachers’ perceptions of the process issues and problems involved in pedagogical innovation. The paper also considers some of the broader issues arising from the project, in terms of how to make the most effective use of teachers’ time, in an era when there are many competing demands on this finite resource.

Here’s what you must think about nuclear power: grappling with the spiritual ground of children’s judgement inside and outside Steiner Waldorf education

The author has previously argued against ‘early closure’ – the tendency to close down children’s curiosity through an over‐zealous approach to issues‐based education. Indoctrination might be a result but ‘burn‐out,’ a potentially permanent attitude change that sets in before puberty, is more likely. This article is based on the author’s recent work on a project on Steiner Schools in England, funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), and is an examination of the apparent paradox of authority in the Steiner schools. There is a particular view that the teacher is the authority who mediates the world to 7–14‐year‐old pupils. However, the ultimate goal of Steiner education is freedom and autonomy. In Steiner’s words ‘our highest endeavour must be to develop free human beings who are able to impart freedom and direction to their lives.’ The DfES research has suggested that pupils subjected to teacher authority in the Steiner tradition do so develop and that the spiritual dimension is significant. This requires further research. This article suggests that the preservation of childhood through a spiritually based developmental approach, true to Steiner’s ideal of integrating the scientific, the artistic and the religious, may be worthy of attention.

A Lacanian Reading of the Study of Big Brother in the English Curriculum

This article presents a Lacanian analysis of the legitimising event represented by the circulation of materials from the English DfES (Department for Education and Skills), a ministerial government office, to teachers of English in schools to use as a means to facilitate the study of the television show Big Brother. The attempt, through Media in English, to ‘pin down’ the meaning of ‘reality’ television presents for analysis here the identity crisis of English—the tension between what it is and how it recognises itself—its ideal ego and its ego‐ideal.

Sustainability and teacher education

Sustainability is now a key concept in both government policy and wider global concerns. Issues of climate change and global warming can no longer be ignored in teacher education programmes in the post‐compulsory education and training sector. Government policy‐makers, notably the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Learning Skills Council (LSC) and the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) are all looking to educators to take the lead. This article proposes that sustainability needs to be embedded in a notion of professionalism that has a professional values framework at its heart. This framework should underpin all teacher education programmes and energise professional practice. A college in the south‐west of England is used as an example of how post‐16 institutions can embed sustainability, not only in teacher education programmes but the whole ethos of the college.

Interventions and interrogations: an analysis of recent policy imperatives and their rationales in the case of home education

During the last 2 years, Britain's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has commissioned several pieces of research into various aspects of home education. These items of research have served to illustrate several of the most pressing local authority concerns with regard to the educational outcomes, socialisation and welfare of children educated in this manner. As a result, in part, of the publication of these commissioned studies, and because of the perceived anomalous regulatory situation regarding such educational practice when compared with state and private education provision (which is subject to significant levels of legislation), a full public consultation into legislation concerned with the regulation of home education has been widely anticipated. Instead, the government has recently launched a consultation on elective home education guidelines. This article seeks to explore the need for, and implications of guidelines, further regulation and legislation for the home-educating community, in the light of increasing levels of national and international research into the educational attainment, welfare and impact of legislation on education other than at school.

SEN inclusion and pupil achievement in English schools

This paper presents and discusses the key findings from a study funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) that explored the relationship between achievement and inclusion in mainstream schools in England. Overall the results indicate that, although there is a small statistical relationship between inclusion and academic achievement, this is unlikely to impact on a school's overall performance. This is partly because of the large degree of variation among schools, suggesting that there are other factors within a school's make up rather than its degree of inclusivity which impact on the average achievements of its pupils. This was confirmed by the findings from a number of case study visits. The overall conclusion from the study is that mainstream schools need not be concerned about the potentially negative impact on the overall academic achievements of their pupils through including pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in their schools.

Exploring variations in teachers' work, lives and their effects on pupils: key findings and implications from a longitudinal mixed‐method study

This article outlines the research design of a large‐scale, longitudinal research study in England intended to describe and explore variations in teachers' work, lives and their effects on pupils' educational outcomes. The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and incorporated into the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) as an ‘Associate Project’, used an innovative mixed‐methods research design to create case studies of 300 teachers in Years 2, 6 and 9. The research was conducted over three consecutive academic years and collected a wide range of data through interviews, questionnaire surveys of teachers' and pupils' views and assessment data on pupils' attainments in English and mathematics. The text summarises the main findings from the research in relation to four interconnected themes of the study: Professional Life Phases; Professional Identity; Relative Effectiveness; and Resilience and Commitment. The influence of school context, in terms of level of social disadvantage of pupil intake, is also investigated. Key findings and their implications for policy and practice are highlighted.

Classifying Pupils by Where They Live: How Well Does This Predict Variations in Their GCSE Results?

This paper summarises key findings resulting from the appending of the neighbourhood classification system Mosaic to the records of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) within the National Pupil Database (NPD) of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The most significant of these findings is that, other than the performance of the pupil at an earlier Key Stage test, the type of neighbourhood in which a pupil lives is a more reliable predictor of a pupil's GCSE performance than any other information held about that pupil on the PLASC database. Analysis then shows the extent to which the performance of pupils from any particular type of neighbourhood is also incrementally affected by the neighbourhoods from which the other pupils in the school they attend are drawn. It finds that whilst a pupil's exam performance is affected primarily by the social background of people he or she may encounter at home, the social background of fellow school pupils is of only marginally lower significance. These findings suggest that so long as pupils' GCSE performances are so strongly affected by the type of neighbourhood in which they live, a school's league position bears only indirect relationship to the quality of school management and teaching. A better measurement of the latter would be a league table system which took into account the geodemographic profile of each school's pupil intake. The paper concludes with discussion of the relevance of these findings to the sociology of education, to the debate on consumer choice in public services, to the general appropriateness of adjusting public-sector performance metrics to take into account the social mix of service users and to parental strategies in the educational sector in particular.

Teachers' Perceptions of Personalised Learning

This paper explores personalised learning, which is a ‘new’ teaching and learning style in the Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners launched by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) for England in 2004. The research was based on semi-structured interviews with 13 teachers mainly in charge of Key Stage 3 at two 11–18 comprehensive schools in North East England, combined with consideration of their published documents and those of further schools that have been used by the DfES as exemplars of personalised learning in operation. Personalised learning seems to be the collection of ideal old and new approaches used to promote the creation of ideal classes and schools. Because definitions of personalised learning can be ambiguous, a number of schools and teachers in England have been struggling to understand and make effective use of the new style. Moreover, some teachers appear to be confused between personalised learning and other styles and approaches to school and class organisation. There...

System leadership: mapping the landscape

System leaders are those headteachers who are willing to shoulder system-wide roles in order to support the improvement of other schools as well as their own. As such, system leadership is a new and emerging practice that embraces a variety of responsibilities that are developing either locally or within discrete national networks or programmes that, when taken together, have the potential to contribute to system transformation. Because this is an emerging practice, there has been no attempt to date to document how system leadership is being enacted and is evolving across the English education system. This article elaborates the concept of system leadership and illustrates its potential power as a catalyst for systemic reform in three ways. First, it not only provides an initial conceptualisation of system leadership based on the contemporary literature and recent policy announcements but also raises a series of concerns about the way the concept is being interpreted. Second, by drawing on responses provided by local authorities, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), a range of national agencies and professional associations as well local and national networks of headteachers and teachers, it maps the system leadership landscape in England current in 2006 by proposing a taxonomy of roles that system leaders are currently assuming. Third, and based on these analyses and research with leading headteachers, it locates system leadership within the literature on systems theory and leadership, proposes a potential model for system leadership and explores the tensions involved in developing the concept further.

Performance management—motivating and developing good teachers? The experiences of teachers in a small special school

In 1998, when Teachers—meeting the challenge of change was published by the English Department for Education and Skills (DfES), one of the most fundamental reforms of the teaching profession was initiated—performance management. In 2005, all schools became subject to ‘Light Touch Validation’ of their performance management policy and procedures. At this significant time, this investigation seeks to explore the views and experiences of teachers in the first-named author's own school, which is a small special school. The author critically investigates the premise of performance management as promoted by the DfES and notes that the emerging literature on the topic focuses strongly on ‘mainstream’ schools where many of the research investigations have proved to be sceptical about the initiative. In contrast, through a survey and documentary analysis the author investigates the views and experiences of teachers in her own school and discovers a largely positive view and experience of performance management.