[Education For Tomorrow: No 102, 2009]

Proposals for the long term — not just the next general election

 Well, Robin Alexander must have got something right. Within hours of the publication of Children, their World, their Education — the final report and recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review, it had been dismissed out of hand by the Government and damned with faint praise by the Tories.

Based on more than 4,000 research sources, 1,000 written submissions, 28 surveys, 31 interim reports and 237 meetings with teachers, parents, pupils and others, the publication of its findings and recommendations was so feared by Government that Ed Balls, Schools’ Secretary, launched his own report, also called the Primary Review, and chaired by Jim Rose. Just what scared them was made clear in the brief: ‘Your review is [to be} focussed on the curriculum and is not considering changes to the current assessment and testing regime’. So Jim came up with a rosy view of the effect Government initiatives were having on primary schools and published it a couple of months earlier.

Given that background, there’s no surprise that the press sensationalised the Alexander Review, reducing the 75 recommendations to two: raising the age at which children start formal education and scrapping SATs. In his interim report Alexander hoped that the final review ‘would be carried out and reported on without sensationalist discourse’. ‘Dream on, Robin!’ commented Jo Shadwell, in EfT 95 (‘The Primary Review: an interim report from the trenches’) — alas, an all too accurate prediction.

Teacher unions responded with dismay to the knee-jerk response of government and press; the ATL warning that ‘Primary education must not become a battlefield in the forthcoming election — children and their learning will be the first casualties’. Chris Keates for the NASUWT commented that ‘The report appears to be being hijacked by those who seek constantly to denigrate the achievements of state education and wish to present a picture of a broken education system.’ For the NUT, Christine Blower responded that, ‘It is absolutely extraordinary that the Government has decided to ignore the Cambridge Review recommendations. Any government worth its salt, particularly in front of an impending general election, would have embraced this immensely rich report as a source of policy ideas.’

Recommendations
This is indeed an immensely rich report and to attempt to summarise its recommendations is to risk belittling it. It is forthright, evidenced based and comprehensive.

Trenchant in many of its criticisms, it suggests that the centralised apparatus of targets, testing, performance tables, national strategies and inspection has distorted children’s primary schooling for questionable returns. It found the prevailing concept of standards ‘restricted, restrictive and misleading.’

It notes that England remains ‘a country of massive inequality, and “the persistent long tail” of underachievement, in which Britain compares unfavourably with many other countries, maps closely onto gross disparities in income, health, housing, risk and well-being.”’ It considers that reducing these gaps must remain a priority for social and economic policy generally, not just for education.

The report condemns the imposition of a ‘state theory of learning’. ‘Forget the idea that children’s development advances in fixed stages. Forget right-brain versus left-brain functions. Forget all those learning “styles”. Our understanding of children’s cognitive development and learning has grown hugely in recent years . . .’

It opposes ‘the English insistence on the earliest possible start to formal schooling, against the grain of international evidence and practice,’ which it considers educationally counterproductive. It suggests that the Early Years Foundation Stage should be renamed and extended to age six, and early years provision should be strengthened in its quality and staffing ‘so that children are properly prepared — socially, linguistically and experientially — for formal learning’.

The Cambridge Primary Review raises issues that go well beyond the confines of the primary school — ending poverty and political interference by central government in professional matters, restoring local accountability and wider democracy. These are reforms that need discussion and promotion but their implementation will have to be campaigned for as the implications are of revolutionary proportions.

The 42-page summary can be downloaded at www.primaryreview.org.uk, where details of the full report and conferences can also be found.

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