Gove's 'progressive betrayal' seems to be a private school phenomenon
My research using the Pisa data found that state school pupils report more 'traditional' teaching than in private schools, says Laura McInerney
Email
Inconveniently for the government’s narrative, British school pupils reported doing many more 'traditional' activities than 'progressive' ones. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
The misconceptions of people who have never stepped into a state school are often quite alarming. "Were lots of people at your school pregnant?" I remember once being asked at university. "I expect it was very difficult to learn over the noise," said another, as if people who don't pay for schooling inevitably have foghorns for voices. The points were ridiculous and easily shrugged off. But silly statements about school life from the government are harder to ignore.
In a recent speech, Liz Truss, schools minister, seethed about the fact that England's relatively low use of textbooks compared with other countries is in part due to progressivist "child-centred learning", a practice that led, at her school, to "anti-colouring books" – without any blocks in which to colour. (Does this sound like "paper" to anyone else?)
Likewise, the education secretary, Michael Gove, gave a speech entitledThe Progressive Betrayal in which he argued that such ideas had addled a generation; that restoring rigour was a priority, in particular, more memorisation of facts and "disciplined" learning – which seems to mean being silent and facing the front.
If it were true that "progressive" thinking had taken over, it would be problematic. But how many Sats or GCSE or A-level teachers will tell you their class aren't memorising anything? And is it not possible that the reason why students might be asked to talk, or work in a group, or complete a task that isn't sitting and memorising, is because they are at school for six hours a day and there might be a benefit in varying the types of tasks? If my rhetoric does not convince you, perhaps the data will.
A couple of weeks ago, the release of Pisa results caused some political handwringing. The tests, taken by 15-year-olds across 65 countries,ranked British students 23rd for reading, 26th for maths, and 20th for science. What almost everyone failed to mention is that as well as having their skills tested, students also completed a detailed survey about their schooling. This was very revealing.
Inconveniently for the government's narrative, when answering questions about the types of activities they do in class, British students report doing many more "traditional" activities than "progressive" ones. Compared with high-performing nations such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland and Estonia, British students are more likely to learn materials by heart and have clear learning goals set for them by the teacher in each lesson. Half of British students reported that their teacher tells them what to do in every lesson, compared to just a quarter of students in Hong Kong and Finland. This sounds a lot like the "teacher-centred" approach that Liz Truss would have us believe was banished during the 1960s.
Could this be because British students tend to over-report and say they have done activities when they haven't? If so, we would expect them to report high levels of non-traditional activities, too. But they don't. Only 6% of British students said they work in groups in every lesson and only 8% said the teacher commonly allows students a say in the planning of the lesson (two activities often considered "progressive"). Both figures were lower than the OECD averages for these activities, and a lot lower than Singaporean students experienced, even though Singapore is often praised by Michael Gove.
The data also contradicts the idea that teachers carry the "soft bigotry of low expectations" – an incantation repeated more than once by the education secretary. Nearly half of British students strongly agreed with the statement that their teacher encouraged them to work hard. Only a quarter of Hong Kong students and less than one in five Korean students felt the same.
An even more inconvenient truth emerges about private schools. Commonly heralded as the last bastion of "traditional" schooling, my own research using the 2009 Pisa data found that while state school pupils reported more traditional teaching, private school students reported higher rates of being asked to express opinions in class, completing group work, and having their teacher relate learning to their lives. So if there is a hotbed of progressivism in Britain, it probably isn't the state schools.
One can only wonder how they manage to learn over the noise.
• Laura McInerney taught in London for six years and is now a Fulbright scholar