Delivering Shared Education

1. Delivering Shared Education Vani Borooah and Colin Knox Knowledge Exchange Seminar 1st November 2012

2. Challenges for Education • ‘Pattern of provision that is both unsustainable educationally or financially’. • 85,000 spare places or the equivalent of 150 excess schools • Public spending cuts

3. Further challenges • ETI Chief Inspector’s Report: two (of three) themes: achieving value and transforming communities. • Achieving value: FSM pupils – ‘low level of achievement and the widening gap in outcomes are unacceptable’ • Improving the quality of leadership and management across all sectors

4. Further challenges • Transforming communities: closing the achievement gap – ‘all schools need to work as united community…to improve standards and outcomes for all learners.’ • ‘More cohesive planning and closer collaboration are required to serve the best interests of the learners..’ • We have a hugely segregated system

8. In summary • There are 3 key challenges facing education system: • Education outcomes are too variable • Significant access and performance inequalities • High level of segregation

9. Proposals for change • ‘Ensure that every learner fulfils his/her potential at each stage of development’ • Viability audits to identify stress: • Quality of educational experience • Enrolment trends • Financial standing of schools.

10. Proposals for change • Viability audits used to develop strategic plans leading to network of viable and sustainable schools. • Drive up educational standards and address social needs • Promote principles of equality of opportunity and good relations throughout the process. • Consistent with DE policies

11. Progress to date • Guidance from DE to ELBs: ‘realistic, innovative and creative solutions’ – where are they? • Evidence from draft area plans does not suggest serious commitment so far.

12. Underpinning assumptions • Factors driving reform agenda: • Excess demand (85,000 empty desks) • Need to save money • Trend towards larger schools • Is the current premise of education reform flawed?

13. Big Schools are “Cost-Saving” and “Educationally Beneficial” There are 85,000 “empty desks in NI’s educational system Two Red Herrings

14. Three Neglected Issues • Why are schools Struggling financially? • 88% of schools were either not in any budgetary difficulty not in any serious budgetary difficulty. • So, essentially 25 schools out of 217 post-primary schools were in financial difficulty. • The unasked question is: Is it structural or is lack of training and competence in financial management? • Why do FSM pupils not get access to grammar schools? They constitute 17% of post-primary pupils but only 7% of grammar school enrolment • Why are Protestant grammars worse than Catholic grammars at enrolling FSM pupils? 4.2% versus 9.9% of enrolment were FSM

15. Another Neglected Issue Why is there so much inequality in performance between secondary schools? If two secondary schools were chosen at random, the difference between their respective proportions of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C grades, including English and Mathematics, in their GCSE examinations 18 points. If two grammar schools were chosen at random, the difference between their respective proportions of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C grades, including English and Mathematics, in their GCSE examinations 6 points

16. Table 1: Distribution of FSM and SEN pupils by type of School Source: Borooah, V.K. and Knox, C. (2012) Educational Performance and Post-Primary Schools in Northern Ireland. University of Ulster. Table 2: Average Educational Performance of Schools by Type of School, 2010 Source: Borooah, V.K. and Knox, C. (2012) Educational Performance and Post-Primary Schools in Northern Ireland. University of Ulster.

17. Two More Neglected Issues 5. Why do some schools have such poor attendance? There are schools where over 40% of pupils are “poor attenders”. What effect does poor attendance have on school educational performance? What does it say about leadership in schools? The quality of teaching and education provided? 6. How to raise school performance in terms of the proportion of GCSE passes at A*-C grades including English and Mathematics? Although this features large in educational policy aspiration, there is no strategy to deal with it. In this seminar we will propose a solution.

18. Large Schools will Save Money? They will not reduce the Department’s budget significantly. Considering primary and post-primary school closures in their entirety, if all schools with enrolments below the threshold number of pupils were to be closed, the Department of Education would cut the Northern Ireland Aggregate Schools Budget by 3.1% (£35 million out of a budget of £1.126 billion) but simultaneously displace nearly 50,000 school pupils. This is because under AWPU, money follows the pupil. The saving in school closures will come from: Premises Factor, Small Schools Factor, the Principals' Release Factor, and the Foundation Schools Factor. The additional travel costs and opportunity costs of time on pupils will be large. Our study for Fermanagh showed that they would swallow up most of the budgetary saving made by the WELB in closing schools that were “too small”. And there are community costs!!

19. Large Schools Confer Educational Benefits Large Schools are neither necessary nor sufficient for a good educational performance Good Small Schools: St. Paul’s College in Kilrea/Coleraine (NEELB) with 317 pupils: 98% of its pupils obtained 5+ GCSEs at A*-C grades and 58% of its pupils obtained 5+ GCSEs at A*-C grades (including E&M). Rathfriland High School in Newry (SELB) with 296 pupils: 96% of its pupils obtained 5+ GCSEs at A*-C grades and 54% of its pupils obtained 5+ GCSEs at A*-C grades (including E&M). Newtownhamilton High School in Newry (167 pupils) St. Mary’s College near Ballymena (278 pupils) Saintfield High School in Saintfield (369 pupils)

20. Poorly-Performing Large Schools St. Brigid’s College in Londonderry with 687 pupils, St. Patrick’s College in Belfast with 785 pupils, Monkstown Community College in Newtownabbey with 710 pupils, Newtownbreda High School in Belfast with 682 pupils, and Dunclug College in Ballymena with 639 pupils

21. What Affects School Educational Performance? Grammar school status: Largest effect on school performance was made by grammar school status. School size: the size of sixth form mattered significantly for performance at all levels (GSCEs and A levels) in both grammar and secondary schools. SEN and FSM pupils: Presence of SEN pupils has no effect on educational performance. BUT the presence of FSM pupils adversely affecting GCSE performance of secondary schools, and affected the A level performance of both secondary and grammar schools. Maintained Vs Controlled Schools: performance of maintained secondary and grammar schools was significantly better than controlled secondary and grammar schools. Absenteeism has a much larger, and more significant, effect on school performance than school size – yet, as an issue, it is almost entirely neglected in NI’s education debate. Absenteeism lower in Maintained than in Controlled Schools

22. 85,000 Empty Desks? First, the robustness of the methodology for calculating the “approved intake” for schools is open to question. Second, pupils in receipt of a statement of special educational needs and pupils admitted on appeal by the independent Appeals Tribunals, or by direction of the independent Exceptional Circumstances Body are excluded from the enrolment numbers Third the overfill in oversubscribed schools is set to zero. So, if one corrects for this, instead of 85,000 empty desks we estimate that there are 63,000 empty desks – a 25% reduction.

23. Questions? • Can institutional response via area planning raise education standards? • Exclusion of key criteria in area planning which are core to school improvements? • Support the implementation of DE’s policies? • ALCs – do they raise education standards – what is the evidence? • Promote equality of opportunity and good relations?

24. What else should be considered? • ‘Realistic, innovative and creative solutions’ may be considered and may include options that increase sharing in education and infrastructure in line with Departmental commitments in PfG’ • ‘Light touch’ on shared education to date • This should change

25. What is shared education? • Shared Education refers to schools from different sectors working together in a sustained process ranging from two or more schools making shared use of specialist facilities, through to coordinated timetabling, and pupils taking classes across a network of schools.

26. What is shared education? Shared education means the organisation and delivery of education so that it: • meets the needs of, and provides for the education together of, learners from all Section 75 categories and socio-economic status; • involves schools and other education providers of differing ownership, sectoral identity and ethos, management type or governance arrangements; and • delivers educational benefits to learners, promotes the efficient and effective use of resources, and promotes equality of opportunity, good relations, equality of identity, respect for diversity and community cohesion.

27. Origins of shared education • Curricular initiatives • Contact schemes • Integrated schools

28. Collaboration and sharing • Collaborative networks of schools • Rationale for collaboration and sharing according to Bain (2006) – 3 factors: • Educational case • Societal case (body of research work by Hughes et al) • Economic case

29. External Intervention • Move schools from a model of competition and isolation to one of collaboration centred on the needs of the learner within a collaborative network. • Atlantic Philanthropies and International Fund for Ireland (risk takers)

30. How does it work?

31. How does it work? • Delivering shared education • Supporting teacher development to deliver shared education • Ensuring organisational learning and inter-community collaboration amongst partner schools

32. Examples • Enhanced Qualifications Framework • Rural Primary Schools • Shared Teacher Initiative

33. Political Support • Party Manifestos • Peter Robinson statement • Minister’s recent statement • Shared education part of the reform lexicon

34. Alignment with DE policies • DE Strategic Objective on performance • Programme for Government Commitments • CRED • CSI (OFMDFM)

35. Proposals: from the margins to mainstream • Shared education peer learning: • more effective schools paired with less effective schools to help them to improve, • where leadership has been strong and supportive of networking, • where the number of schools involved is limited, • external support

36. Proposals: from the margins to mainstream Constituent elements: • Generating positive relationships • Focusing on teaching and learning • Understanding, leading and managing changes • Committing to continuous professional development • Building community • Drawing on external support.

37. Conclusions • Two-tier system emerging from area plans: • large single identity (‘we’re all right’) mainly grammar schools • the remainder: scramble to close, rationalise and amalgamate. • First group can become peer learners • Second group explore shared education options • Move away from ‘one-size-fits all solution’

38. Conclusions • Opportunities to embed shared education: Salisbury; area plans; MAG and ESA bill. • Shared education offers the following opportunities: • To improve education outcomes • To address access and performance inequalities • To improve good relations