TRIANGLE to Mixed-Ability Grouping - a Case Study PHILIP SAWYERS Learning a Musical Instrument: Who Has a Choice?
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ISSN 0963-8253 Volume 41 SHEILA DAINTON Think Again, Mr Blunkett Number 2 DEREK GILLARD Kings'Manor School: Summer 1999 an experiment in privatisation? COLIN RICHARDS Standards, Progress and Improvement: towards an appraisal of the OFSTED Inspection system DAVID HALPIN Socialising the Third Way': the contribution of Anthony Giddens and the significance of his analysis for education CLYDE CHITTY AND RICHARD PRING What Future for the National Curriculum in the Next Millennium? PAUL FRANCIS Beyond the Woodhead Myth MIKE OLLERTON The Irresistible Rise of the UK National Curriculum: the phoenix rising from the ashes of the Berlin Wall SUZANNE JESSEL High Parental Demand and Academic Performance in a Separate School: some possible contributory factors CHRIS SEARLE, DAVID CLINCH AND COLIN PRESCOD BLAIR PEACH LIVES! A Conference on Antiracist Education Reports and commentary NAIMA BROWNE Don't Bite the Bullet in the Early Years! FRANC KAMINSKI Semi-independent Learning: an approach TRIANGLE to mixed-ability grouping - a case study PHILIP SAWYERS Learning a Musical Instrument: who has a choice? BRYAN CUNNINGHAM Improving Schools, Improving Colleges Contents EDITORS CLYDE CHITTY, Goldsmiths College, University of London (also Book Reviews Editor) VOLUME 41 NUMBER 2 1999 ANNABELLE DIXON, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge Editorial. Has Anything Changed? 41 SHEILA DAINTON. Think Again, Mr Blunkett 43 DEREK GILLARD. Kings' Manor School: an experiment in privatisation? 47 EDITORIAL BOARD COLIN RICHARDS. Standards, Progress and MICHAEL ARMSTRONG, Harwell County Primary Improvement: towards an appraisal of the School, Oxfordshire (Chairperson) OFSTED Inspection system 51 MARY JANE DRUMMOND, School of Education, DAVID HALPIN. Socialising the 'Third Way': the University of Cambridge contribution of Anthony Giddens and the LEE ENRIGHT, Westhaven Junior School, Weymouth, significance of his analysis for education 53 Dorset CLYDE CHITTY and RICHARD PRING. DEREK GILLARD, Educational Consultant, Oxford What Future for the National Curriculum ANDY GREEN, Post-16 Education Centre, Institute of in the Next Millennium? 59 Education, University of London PAUL FRANCIS. Beyond the Woodhead Myth 61 BRENDA HANSON, Crofton School, Lewisham, London MIKE OLLERTON. The Irresistible Rise of ROGER OSBORN-KING, Triangle Journals Ltd the UK National Curriculum: the phoenix rising from the ashes of the Berlin Wall 63 JENNY THEWLIS, Educational Consultant, London SUZANNE JESSEL. High Parental Demand and Academic Performance in a Separate School: HONORARY EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS some possible contributory factors 65 Roger Seckington, Brian Simon, Nanette Whitbread BLAIR PEACH LIVES! A Conference on Antiracist Education Reports and commentary by CHRIS SEARLE, DAVID CLINCH and COLIN PRESCOD 69 NAIMA BROWNE. Don't Bite the Bullet in the Early Years! 74 FRANC KAMINSKI. Semi-independent Learning: Editorial correspondence, including typescript articles an approach to mixed-ability grouping - (1500-2000 words), contributions to discussion a case study 78 (800 words maximum), and books for review, should be PHILIP SAWYERS. Learning a Musical addressed to Professor Clyde Chitty, 19 Beaconsfield Instrument: who has a choice? 83 Road, Bickley, Bromley, Kent BR1 2BL, United BRYAN CUNNINGHAM. Improving Schools, Kingdom. Telephone: 0181-464 4962. Please send two Improving Colleges 87 copies and enclose a stamped addressed envelope. SUBSCRIPTION RATES (Volume 41, Nos 1-3, 1999), post free Individuals, £17.00 (US$28.00) Schools, £20.00 (US$30.00) Libraries, £32.00 (US$55.00) This journal is published three times a year, in Spring, Business correspondence, including orders and Summer and Autumn. Those three issues constitute one remittances relating to subscriptions and back orders, volume. ISSN 0963-8253 should be addressed to the publishers: Triangle Journals Ltd, PO Box 65, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 0YG, © Copyright in articles published in FORUM is vested in the author United Kingdom of each article. However, FORUM does require that authors [email protected] acknowledge the original source of publication in any subsequent www.triangle.co.uk re-publication of the article. Typeset in Times New Roman by Triangle Journals Ltd Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Cambridge University Press © PSW (Educational) Publications Ltd, 1999 Has Anything Changed? On that exhilarating night in May 1997 when New Labour Teachers - Meeting the Challenge of Change to introduce won a landslide election victory over the Tories, it really performance-related pay for teachers (discussed in this did seem to many people that we would soon be at the number by Sheila Dainton of the ATL) were hardly point where everything had changed. In fact, of course, calculated to convince students and teachers that New nothing has changed - at least not for the better - and Labour was anxious to take account of their interests. nowhere is this more true than in the field of education. Then again, the pre-publicity for a recent set of policy Immediately following this Editorial we are proud to initiatives directed at inner-city education was an excellent reprint a powerful Guardian cartoon by the brilliant Steve example of how to cause maximum confusion while, at Bell showing the hapless Education Secretary mouthing the same time, continuing the Tory policy of alienating the slogan: 'Read My Lips! - Loads More Selection'. We teachers in inner-city comprehensive schools. A front-page are told that David Blunkett has the main education story in The Sunday Times of 21 March announced that newspaper items read to him every morning; and one 'an elite 10 per cent of pupils at comprehensives' were to imagines that this particular gem will have sent him be 'creamed off and given special tuition in an attempt by incandescent with rage. Tony Blair to stem the exodus of middle-class children to Yet, as Roy Hattersley has often pointed out, there is a private schools'. At least 100,000 children would benefit sense in which the Education Secretary is a genuine object initially from the Scheme which would, predicted The of pity. If he ever devised a plan to promote comprehensive Sunday Times, 'sound the death knell for mixed-ability state education without independent or selective enclaves teaching in comprehensive schools'. It wasn't too clear - and one admits it may be a difficult scenario to imagine how the new arrangements would operate, but it seemed - it would doubtless be vetoed by the tight group of trusted likely that the 'elite pupils' in the biggest cities, including advisers who enjoy easy access to Tony Blair. There is London, Birmingham and Manchester, would be singled evidence to suggest that in the area of educational out for extra attention and tuition, sometimes after school policy-making, Andrew Adonis, Michael Barber, Chris or at weekends and sometimes at nearby specialist schools. Woodhead and, before his fall from grace, Peter Mandelson, Somewhat predictably, this initiative was seen by many have wielded more power and influence than have David headteachers and union leaders as signalling yet another Blunkett, Estelle Morris or Baroness Blackstone. After all, vote of no confidence in inner-city schools. In the words much of the educational thinking outlined in the 1997 White of John Dunford, General Secretary of the Secondary Heads Paper Excellence in Schools was foreshadowed in the 1996 Association: 'this is not modernising the comprehensive book The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver?, system; it is undermining it'. And according to Nigel de co-authored by Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, and in Gruchy, General Secretary of the National Association of the 1996 book The Learning Game, written by Michael Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, 'if this Barber. hare-brained scheme is designed to reassure the middle Quite apart from the mess over selection policy, it seems classes, it will not succeed. Desperate middle-class parents clear that so many of New Labour's educational 'mistakes' can usually afford extra tuition for their children. Their over the past two years were deadly 'own-goals' and could real concern is social. They don't want their own children so easily have been avoided. mixing with rough youngsters'. The phasing of the 1998 pay settlement - inexplicable Finally, the Tory obsession with market forces and during a teacher supply crisis - was a crass decision which privatisation seems to have acquired a new and unexpected lost much teacher goodwill. prominence on the New Labour education agenda. The more It was surely a grave misjudgment for the former Minister obvious examples here are the privatising possibilities of State Stephen Byers to 'name' the 18 'worst performing implicit within the Education Action Zones Project; the schools' shortly after taking office. And it was equally decision to allow a private sector takeover of a state foolish of Tony Blair to announce on the BBC television secondary school in Guildford, Surrey; and the naming of 'Breakfast with Frost' programme before the 1997 General ten consortiums that will take the lead in privatising state Election that Chris Woodhead would enjoy his full support education in areas where the local authority is found to be as Chief Inspector of Schools in the event of a Labour failing to provide an adequate service for the pupils in its victory. Such ill-conceived pronouncements conveyed a schools. clear message to teachers that New Labour would not attempt to change the balance between pressure and