The fundamental unaddressed issue of education

Okay… This is a more sweeping title than I usually allow myself, but I think it’s justified this once.

So, what is this fundamental unaddressed issue? Well, it takes a little explaining. As all foundation stage and key stage one teachers are acutely aware, children arrive at school with a vast range of experiences and abilities. There is an overwhelming difference between a child who has just turned four and a child who is about to turn five. (There are a variety of other reasons why differences in pupils’ experiences and abilities might exist. I have selected age difference merely for illustrative purposes.) Attention spans, inhibitory control and social skills between these children vary to a bewildering degree. The first two years of education are spent desperately trying to get all children ready to learn, and teachers of the youngest children do a remarkable job… which brings us to Year 2 where I currently reside. At this stage, most children are just about ready to learn some academic content. And the fundamental unaddressed issue arises.

Let me give an illustrative example: the class is supposed to already be able to count up to and down from 100, according to the national curriculum objectives for Year 1, and around 2/3 of the average class can. This 2/3 is, on average, older and from more supportive family backgrounds, but not always; sometimes they’re just lucky in particular ways. The other 1/3 of the class, however, are completely lost. This 1/3 are on average younger and from less supportive family backgrounds, but not always; sometimes they’re just unlucky in particular ways.

The teacher can see that the 1/3 are likely to struggle. Their number formation is iffy, naming numbers above 20 is inconsistent at best, etc. All of the mathematics learning from the Year 1 part of the national curriculum is either dysfluent or entirely missing for the 1/3.

But the 2/3 are ready to learn at a Year 2 level. They have practised number formation and counting at home, and, in fact, they knew much of the Year 2 curriculum before the year even began.

Of course, the split between the 1/3 and the 2/3 is actually more of a spectrum across the class, but this artificial split is indicative of a crucial dividing line between those who – in the time that is available – will be able to just about keep up with the pace of learning and those who will not, due to gaps that already exist in their knowledge compared to their peers. With the Year 2 SATs in the back of the teacher’s mind, they dive into the teaching of two-digit place value.

After a couple of weeks the divide between the 2/3 and the 1/3 is apparent. The 2/3 understand everything. Much of the learning for them is mere practice and consolidation. But the 1/3 are still lost. The previous gaps in basic counting and number formation have impeded their attempts to learn place value, and they need much more time on this. Unable to tolerate holding the rest of the class back, the teacher sets up an intervention group – 40 minutes per week with a TA during assemblies and art/music lessons – and hopes that the kids will catch up…

But they almost certainly won’t. This is the fundamental unaddressed issue of education, and – speaking as someone who has worked as an intervention teacher with every age group from A-Level down to foundation stage – its effects amplify as a child in the 1/3 moves through school.  

This is the status quo. Now, the easy answer to this – and one that regular readers of my blogs are probably expecting me to give – is some idealistic advocacy of a mastery approach in which the teacher doesn’t move on so readily and provides deepening tasks that stretch the 2/3 while the 1/3 catch up. However, this isn’t that simple for two reasons:

1. The 1/3 are a long way behind. Catching up is a process that will take several weeks of teaching, at least, and probably require a much slower pace for the remainder of the year.

2. The vast majority of teachers, including relatively experienced ones like me, do not have the subject-specific knowledge to create these deepening tasks that genuinely stretch the understanding of the 2/3 while giving the teacher the time to catch up the 1/3.

Currently, from my experience, what happens in the majority of schools – though I’m sure that many will wish to pretend otherwise – is that this problem is ignored. The teacher moves on with the curriculum and the 1/3 are effectively written off. Interventions, overly scaffolded tasks and lots of adult support for the 1/3 help salve consciences, but make no mistake: the moment the curriculum moves on, most of the 1/3 have had their education utterly undermined, in most cases for no reason beyond the child’s poor fortune at being born in August or being from a family that didn’t teach them to count before they arrived at school. And for those kids who just happen to learn a little slower for other reasons, the message is clear: ‘This system isn’t designed for people like you.’

This fundamental unaddressed issue plays out across all subjects through gaps in letter formation, phonics, etc, but it is particularly pronounced in significantly hierarchical subjects like mathematics. Some of the 1/3 do catch up, thankfully. Perhaps they are August-born children from supportive homes who just need a little more maturity and lot of help from someone at home. But this is not the case for the majority of the 1/3. For them, education will be an increasingly demotivating process of watching the gaps between them and their peers grow and grow.

This isn’t an attack on my fellow key stage one teachers who obviously are as talented and conscientious as the rest of the profession. Like all teachers, we operate within a system, and where problems arise, they are due to this system and the incentives that define it.

There is no simple solution to this. The alternative to moving on with the curriculum is to accept that – for the long-term benefit of the entire class – the learning of the bottom 1/3 must be prioritised for a considerable period of time, perhaps forever. Just imagine the uproar from the parents of the top 2/3 if this were an explicit policy of a school.

Remember: the higher the numbers of disadvantaged pupils, the slower the curriculum would likely need to move. This itself would disadvantage the ‘brightest’ children in schools with higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. And don’t forget Year 2 SATs; the curriculum must be covered ready for these!

And this brings me to a blog by @Solomon_teach. He advocates a smaller curriculum across the entirety of a child’s education as a way to address the effects of the fundamental unaddressed issue. I agree with the sentiment, but I only partly agree with the suggested solution. Yes, the curriculum is too large in key stage one. However, I strongly suspect that there is plenty of time to teach the entire curriculum – as it stands – in key stage two and beyond if the gaps that exist between the 2/3 and the 1/3 are addressed when they first arise in key stage one as a matter of priority.

The current slow pace of learning in key stage two and beyond is dictated by the gaps that exist between the 2/3 and the 1/3 and the near impossibility of addressing them once they have become too large. (Teaching the rounding of numbers, for example, to children who have a weak understanding of place value does indeed take a long time. With genuine understanding of place value, however, children grasp it rapidly.) The accumulation of the gaps between the 2/3 and the 1/3 slows the pace for everyone. We can teach the entire curriculum to almost everyone, but not without some difficult choices in key stage one.

What the prioritisation of the 1/3 in key stage one would look like in practice is up for debate. I imagine that many schools across the country have already recognised the fundamental unaddressed issue and have taken some radical steps in an attempt to address it. I imagine that these schools aim to get everyone to a similar standard by the end of Year 2 or even Year 3 so that all can learn at a good pace thereafter. (The brilliant @mattswain36 has discussed the idea of using timetable slots of ‘keep up time’ to – among other things – give teachers time to consistently address the gaps between the 2/3 and 1/3 in key stage one; this ‘keep up time’ then remains as a buffer for any child who needs a little more time with a new concept, facilitating a mastery approach to teaching.)

Sadly, I don’t see the majority of the profession accepting my view of this fundamental unaddressed issue any time soon. It’s much easier to pretend the issue isn’t there. Many will argue that I have presented a false choice between prioritising the 1/3 in key stage one – allowing them to catch up – and moving at a pace that suits the 2/3. However, in my experience, attempts to compromise between these two choices always drift inexorably towards the status quo, and once again the 1/3 are left behind.

In short, I am convinced that prioritising the learning of the bottom 1/3 in key stage one benefits every child in a school in the long term. It might not solve the fundamental unaddressed issue of education, but I strongly suspect it would be a step in the right direction.

Perhaps I’m wrong about this. Perhaps I’m seeing a problem that isn’t really there. But