Achievement and Under -achievement: A sorry tail?

1. Achievement and Under -achievement: A sorry tail? Professor Martyn Rouse m.rouse@abdn.ac.uk

2. The long tail of underachievement: Some key questions • Why is there concern about underachievement? • Who underachieves or gets excluded? • Why does it happen? • What are the consequences? • Why focus on achievement AND inclusion? • What is being done to close the achievement gap and to increase participation?

3. Why achievement and inclusion? The broader context • International comparisons of participation and achievement for different groups of children • PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) • TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) • PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study)

4. Why achievement and inclusion? The broader context • The role of schooling in achieving public and private human, economic and social development goals: • Social cohesion and inclusion • Security and safety • Prosperity • Subjective well-being • In the context of: • International competitiveness • Globalisation and migration • New patterns of employment

5. Why achievement and inclusion? • Many countries have groups of children who are excluded and/or underachieve • This leads to long term economic and social consequences for all of us • The economic and social returns from education are complex….but: • There are clear links between poor educational outcomes, poverty and additional support needs • Tackling underachievement and exclusion is the right thing to do, it makes sound economic and social sense • This is an international movement

6. Who underachieves or is not included? • In UK it’s associated with ASN/SEN (especially behaviour), class, poverty, ethnicity, language, gender, mobility and ‘looked after children’ • See: • ‘More choices,more chances’ • Quality and Equity of Schooling in Scotland (OECD 2007) • Others international studies (PISA, PIRLS) • UNICEF study, Children’s well-being in rich countries.

7. Where do we stand? • The highest achieving pupils in the UK compare with the best in the world • Scotland does better than England ….BUT • The UK has one of the longest tails of underachievement in the developed world • Scotland has high levels of disengagement from education post 15 • The UK is at the bottom of international comparisons of ‘children’s well-being’

8. How serious is underachievement?

9. Gap between average pupils and low achievers S4: trend over ten years

10. But how do we compare?

11. Mean student achievement in best and worst classrooms across countries

12. What are the causes? • An emphasis on sorting, sifting and predicting • School structures • Streaming, banding and setting • Inequalities within and between schools • Who gets the ‘best’ teachers? • Who gets the ‘best’ students? • High poverty students/ low achieving pupils are more likely to get less experienced/less well qualified teachers • Resource inequality leads to an ‘opportunity gap’

13. Causes: continued • Competing policy initiatives • How are schools judged? • Whose achievement is valued? • How is achievement assessed, recorded and reported? • What kinds of achievement are valued? • School cultures and reward systems • High and low status work • Attitudes, beliefs and stigma • “Us and them” ……..worthy and unworthy children • But where do these notions come from? • Embedded beliefs about social class? • Reinforced by the media? • The need to classify, categorise and pathologise? • Beliefs about human differences?

14. The real culprit?

15. Some consequences of ‘bell curve thinking’ • Focus on the measurable • Reification • Unwarranted status because of its elegant mathematics • Makes it difficult to demonstrate learning • Comparisons with inappropriate populations • Leads to beliefs about ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ people • Deterministic thinking about learning • Limits expectations • Associated with the notion of prediction and POTENTIAL

16. Consequences: continued • Intergenerational low aspirations • When translated into school level expectations • The achievement gap leads to an educational debt across generations for certain groups • Think of the ways in which the annual trade gap leads to the national debt across the years • Used to justify streaming, tracking, ‘leveling’ and FAILURE • Leads to negative social, emotional and behavioural outcomes

17. Disciplinary climate: gap between best and worst mathematics classrooms

18. Why confusion about assessment? • Lack of clarity about the purposes and nature (especially ASN) • Beliefs about the predictive power of testing • No shared meanings for concepts of…….ability, aptitude, attainment, achievement, standards, and potential • Lack of understanding about the differences between formative, summative and ipsative assessment • AND between norm-referenced and criterion referenced assessment

19. When the rules change….

20. It’s not all bad news: what’s been achieved with achievement and inclusion? • Real progress in some schools, BUT problems remain • Inclusion does NOT necessarily have a negative impact on the achievement of others • Some schools are inclusive AND high achieving • Getting it right for children who find learning difficult, brings benefits for all • Schools which add the greatest ’value’ often serve the most disadvantaged communities

21. What are they doing? • Recruiting and retaining good teachers • Reviewing and clarifying roles • Investing in support for teachers as well as students • Believing that all children can learn • Defining achievement broadly • Recognising that learning takes place outside school • Connecting with the community • Getting involved in collaborative research • Providing meaningful alternatives • Using the curriculum flexibly to keep pupils connected

22. What are they doing? • Connecting pupils and families to the school • Creative arts • Extra curricular activities • Peer tutoring • Homework clubs • Learning mentors • Community outreach • Quality vocational education • Raising aspirations and expectations • Redefining additional support…the current definition: ‘provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children……’

23. Redefining additional support • Enhancing what is ‘generally available’ by using the principles of universal design • Dealing with difference from the outset • Recognising that inclusion is not a denial of difference • Not waiting for ‘failure’ before intervening • Developing inclusive pedagogy and systems of assessment that recognise progress • Focusing on learning, teaching and participation • Developing skills for working with other adults • Classroom assistants • Voluntary sector • Parents

24. A framework for participation • Participation and access (being there) • Participation and diversity (recognition and acceptance) • Participation and collaboration (learning and working together) • Participation and achievement (recognising and celebrating progress) Adapted from: Black-Hawkins, K., Florian, L. & Rouse,M. (2007) Achievement and Inclusion in Schools. London: Routledge

25. So…where do we go from here?