So, it’s that time of the year once again. Time for Christmas decorations and carol concerts. Time for the RE department to show Christmas Simpsons episodes every lesson, claiming some tenuous curricular link. Time for kids to bounce into your classrooms demanding quizzes (or low-stakes cultural capital tests if you prefer) and Haribo with menaces. And of course, it is time for the annual Christmas blog.

In my previous Christmas blogs (HERE) and (HERE) I tried to put together a few thoughts (or tortured metaphors) to help us all reflect on the year that was. However, I got the sneaking suspicion that many people read these Christmas blogs with little thought for their long term curricular impact, or how this knowledge might be retained for further use. (And did you SLANT whilst reading and follow them with your ruler? Thought not!)

This year therefore, I have decided to summarise the year in the form of a knowledge organiser. This means you can test yourself on the professional cultural capital of 2017, until you know it by heart. This will also allow you to more effectively address the end of year essay question. Don’t forget, that in order to attain the full 18 marks, you will need to cover all sides of the argument, whether it makes sense or not, and refer to the provenance of the author (who is a raging prog, or despicable trad, depending who you ask). If you are lucky, I might even make you some structure strips to help. Essays will be due on 26th December. No excuses.

Note: A copy of the knowledge organiser can be purchased directly in pdf format for £2.99 via the author's website: knowledgeisall.com , or will probably be ripped off on TES resources next week for £23.99.

This weekend, the West London Free School organised a history teachers’ conference which looked at the importance of knowledge in the curriculum. Although I was unable to attend, I followed the debates and keynotes closely on Twitter. One of the central ideas which came out of the conference was the importance of substantive knowledge and the potential role of the textbook in acting as a backbone (and even progression model) for a knowledge-rich curriculum. (*)

Textbook publishers have not been slow to catch onto this idea that the textbook might be making a return to the classroom and have started putting out flyers for books (old and new) described as being “knowledge rich” or “content driven”. In addition to this, these books are often sold as promoting the development of long-term memory, hooking into the other significant trend of neuro-science-driven pedagogy. (**)

One of the most important jobs any head of department does is selecting the resources for the department, especially when these may act as the progression model. I have therefore written this series of blogs as a way for departments to think critically about this decision making process and have tried to produce a list of key questions I used to ask when purchasing resources as as head of department. Hopefully this will act as a useful guide for other history departments.

To illustrate my selection methods, I am going to apply my criteria to the newly released ‘Knowing History’ series from Collins. The main reason I want to focus on these books is that they seem to be generating a lot of buzz (in the Carr sense?) in the history community at the moment; especially as a possible solution to teaching a knowledge-rich history curriculum. Another reason for my focus on the series is that the publishers have targeted them at a wide audience with a very competitive price £7.99 (take note other publishers). As many schools are likely to get these on a deal, a school could kit out a whole year group for say £1000. It is therefore plausible that these might end up being widely bought, especially in schools where there is concern to meet the new demands of subject knowledge but where subject specialists are few and far between (a really big issue still!). Finally, the author, Robert Peal has been very vocal in damning other textbooks and recommending his own, so I feel that his series makes a good test case for my selection criteria. (***) In essence, I am asking whether or not Peal’s books meet my criteria for teaching a knowledge-rich and disciplinary rigorous curriculum.

The following is a list of the key topics and questions I intend to cover in each blog. These will be updated and linked as I write them. EDIT: I would like to note that not all textbooks will hit all of these criteria perfectly (in fact I doubt many will - my own certainly doesn't) and that every textbook will have its shortcomings. However, using criteria such as these might allow departments to make more informed choices about which sacrifices they want to make.
​

1. Knowing What History? How well is the core narrative developed, and are there any particular narrative oversights?  
2. Knowing Whose History? Are students being introduced to the idea that they are being shown a narrative rather than the narrative?
3. Knowing Which History? What range and depth of knowledge is developed by the books and is this sufficient?
4. Knowing and Remembering History?  How do the textbooks help students to consolidate their knowledge to promote durable learning?
5. Knowing Disciplinary History? Do the textbooks provide a suitable progression model and how do they use content to develop disciplinary understanding?

 
(*) Proponents of knowledge-heavy curricula have often cited the idea of the textbook as the key to driving such a change – see for example Oates’ review of textbooks or Christodoulou’s work on AfL. I tend to be in agreement with the idea that the textbook can act as a progression model, but this needs careful writing.

(**) I am certainly not challenging the importance of understanding neuro-scientific research in education. Indeed, my Leeds Trinity students will be able to tell you that we have focused heavily on research by Howards-Jones, Willingham, Dweck, Brown, Roediger and the like in our first few weeks of ITT.

(***) I would like to clarify before I begin, that I have just written my first textbook and understand how difficult and time consuming a process this is. I also know how publishers can put demands on textbooks which run counter to an author’s intentions. In this case however, I imagine that Peal has probably had a large hand in determining the editorial direction. Collins advertises the series with the strapline: “Encourage a thirst for knowledge in your KS3 History students with high-quality, content-rich lessons that lay the groundwork for the new History GCSE” and endorsements such as “Knowing History has been designed to build historical thinking from the bottom-up and it does this with supreme confidence, taking the number one spot on my winner’s podium of history resources with ease.” As such, I think testing these claims is a worthwhile enterprise as part of my wider blog on resource selection. It should also be noted that Peal himself has never been backward in his critiques so I hope he takes this in the spirit it is intended, namely encouraging robust scrutiny of resources. 

In my last blog, I spent some time explaining why I think we still have a long way to go in teaching students how to engage fully with historical interpretations, and not simply dismissing views on the grounds of an historian’s motive. Today I want to deal with a second key aspect of helping children to become better critical readers both in history, and more broadly, namely historical truth.

Putting truth back into history
I fear we spend too little time talking about historical truth in schools. This is because the idea of historical truth has become immensely unpopular. Post-modernists like Jenkins have argued that history has no objective truth, and that to pretend otherwise is a dangerous fallacy. Indeed, Jenkins (1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2009) suggests that all history writing is a battle for different groups to construct their own histories in their own self-interest. Taking this to its extreme, he even made the case for the removal of the study of history altogether (Jenkins, 1999, 2009). To my mind, this rejection of the possibility of historical truth is a dangerous stance to take, now more than ever, and one which prevents our students from being properly critical of different truth-claims.

On Friday, the defence secretary. Michael Fallon said that NATO needed to do more to tackle the “false reality” being propagated by Russia. He argued that Russia’s production of “Fake News” was destabilising western democracy and undermining electoral processes. Claims like these are nothing new. For the last six months, the US has been awash with claims of “Fake News” being put out by both the Republicans and Democrats, and a simple search for the #FakeNews hashtag reveals some terrifying results. I find it striking that a country which was born of the declaration that some truths are self-evident, should find itself at the forefront of a post-truth version of politics.

All of this is very disturbing, not least because if we are in a post-truth world, there is a very real question about whether knowledge is important any more (I would argue that it is more so than ever - more on this soon). Naturally there has been much soul searching and even more hand wringing about how we approach the issue of truth having been downgraded in our political discourse. In some cases, people are drawing historical parallels and suggesting that we learn the warnings of the 1930s; to be on guard against malicious propaganda; to disbelieve the information coming out of the (insert the group you disagree with here) camp; and so on. 

​History lessons and the post-truth discourse
Followers of the Schools History Project will know that one of the founding principles of the movement was to help students see the relevance of history to their lives, and give them some of the tools to help understand it (Schools History Project, n.d.).  Over the last few months, I have seen numerous exhortations in the history teaching community for educators to warn pupils of the dangers of misinformation, and encourage them to be on guard against malign interpretations. Although well intentioned, I think this use of history misses the point of our discipline somewhat. In fact, I wonder if such an approach, namely using history to make pupils sceptical of information, has actually contributed to the post-truth problem.

I'm afraid today's blog, a bit like yesterday's is a bit of a rant. More to the point, it is a response to yet another partially researched claim, namely that Grammar Schools (Schools for Everyone TM?) are more effective than their comprehensive counterparts. Indeed, the Telegraph ran an article a few days ago stating that this was a ringing endorsement for May's flagship education policy. Here I wanted to unpick some of the claims being made about Grammar Schools, and ask that we take a moment to be cautious before endorsing a systemic change based on limited evidence. I am fairly sure I have my calculations right here, however please let me know if you think I have made a mistake.

The Progress 8 Issue
The claim that Grammar Schools outperform state Comprehensives does have some basis in evidence. This can be seen in the latest GCSE statistics published by the DfE. The Telegraph explains that...

here's been a lot going around on Twitter recently about reducing the marking load of teachers. Much of this is to be applauded. I have seen some really nice ideas for dealing with feedback more effectively from Ben Newmark, Toby French, Tom Bennett, even the Michaela bods. However, I have a major worry: school marking policies won't actually change!

In the current educational climate, school approaches, and especially those relating to marking and feedback, are driven by a few key factors:

1. A desire to achieve Progress 8 success*
2. Advice and guidance offered by "expert" or "Outstanding" schools
3. A need to comply with the expectations (and perceived expectations) of the inspection regime
4. The need for middle managers to carve out a purpose for themselves**

So here's the rub. If schools want to achieve the first aim, the following drivers are often counter productive. 

* I am not going to discuss the reductive nature of the first educational goal, though that in itself plays a major part here too. Nor will I be dealing with the impact of a narrowly target driven system which means that some schools are in the habit of changing their policies more frequently than I change my socks. Indeed, some schools I have worked in have been so malleable in their policy approaches to teaching that they have become almost invertebrate. In the course of five years in one school we shifted from a focus on Kagan groups and peer marking, to flipped classroom, to next-step marking, to triple marking, to digital marking, to purple pens of progress, without ever stopping to think about the impact of any of these approaches.

** I could write a whole blog on the rise of the purple pen as a gateway pass to Deputy Head status, but I think I might leave that for another day

Bad Advice and Poor Models
As people have been pointing out all week - good feedback does not mean detailed written marking on every child's work. Yet, if we look at some of the "Outstanding" schools and "Teaching Schools" which have been set up as beacons of excellence, we see such policies being advocated. This "Outstanding" Teaching School for instance says:

• "Teachers will provide varied and effective feedback and development points for students to help them realise their potential by making them active partners in their own learning. Time must be given in lessons to allow students to respond to feedback and improve their work"
• "Milestone-marking: a minimum of one formally assessed piece of work per half term and one major assignment per term, usually directly linked to the reporting system, to be marked in detail (in relation to clearly defined and explained learning objectives/success criteria for that piece of work) with a detailed constructive comment. Allocate time when planning lessons, for pupils to read your detailed comments for this type of marking and to ask questions about it; or to write their own response to your comments. There should be evidence of marking and feedback as seen during learning walks and formal lesson observations. It is an expectation that Faculty and programme leaders will ensure that this is the case."

This school has not been formally inspected since 2007 so it seems somewhat remiss of the DfE to allow it to advise other schools to follow such policies. (see http://www.harrogategrammar.co.uk/content/uploads/2015/04/Learning-21.01.15.pdf and http://www.harrogategrammar.co.uk/content/uploads/2014/02/Policy_AssessmentRecordingReporting23.01.13.pdf)

Another "Outstanding" school has a marking policy which demands extended written feedback in a rainbow of colours: http://www.rossettschool.co.uk/parents/policies/marking/ (last inspected in 2010)

These two examples are far from the only ones, nor are they the worst cases. Countless others come out of the wordwork in conversations with teachers up and down the country - sadly not all put their marking policies online. The big worry is that these "Outstanding" schools (many of whom have not be inspected in nearly a decade) shape the approaches taken by "Good", "RI" and "Inadequate" schools in significant ways as they strive to model the "excellent practice" of their "betters".

The Ofsted Factor
But the problem doesn't stop there. In every school I have been to, there has always been someone with the job to read Ofsted inspection reports and pull out and apply key approaches deemed necessary to attain the elusive "Outstanding" grade. Yesterday I suggested that Ofsted, through their reports, has been key in encouraging schools to implement poor marking practices. When I mentioned this, I was promptly slapped down by Ofsted's Sean Harford.

There has been something naggingly familiar about the grammar school debate which has been raging on Twitter recently. True I have heard many of the arguments before in educational discussions, but this was something more. It only struck me when I began editing a chapter of my upcoming book on C19th America.

​I have copied a page of the book for you below. In many ways I feel it encapsulates exactly the same lines of argument that we see currently, simply replace "slavery" for "educational inequality" and "slaves" for "low SES children" and you are away. I think this reveals not only the lines of debate, but also, with hindsight, some of the main faults in each.

​Worryingly I look ahead to how this debate was resolved and the long term failure of such a solution...

NOTE: I have updated this blog in light of some of the comments below. Items in bold are updates.

I have found myself pondering more and more on these verses from Matthew over recent months. To all intents and purposes, I feel like the world around me has become one of stark binaries. Friend or foe? Believer or unbeliever? Leave or remain? Corbynite or a Blairite? Pro-grammar or pro-comprehensive? Neo-trad or progressive? Child-centred or discipline focused? The list goes on and the arguments are endless and largely fruitless. ​It turns out that I am not the only one to have noticed this. As I was writing this blog, Ed Podesta posted an excellent piece on the same issue. I fear this will be much less eloquent, however I would like to add my own thoughts as one of the people who finds these sharp divisions both troubling and counter-productive.

This blog was prompted by two recent events. In the first instance, I posted a letter sent to a friend’s Finnish parents. The letter demanded they leave these shores and stop “polluting the air”. Within seconds, my timeline was filled with tweets acclaiming or decrying such actions. Those on the left of the debate were soon demanding various forms of corporal punishment for the offender and implying that all Leave voters shared such sentiments. Meanwhile, those on the right called me a liar and demanded I prove the verity of the letter, or dismissed it as irrelevant. I took the post down. 

So with very little fanfare, the grade descriptors for the new GCSE grades 9-1 were released on Friday. Those schools who have opted to use these as a progression model, assessment system and general replacement for both NC Levels and GCSE grades must be delighted that they can finally start implementing their systems.
​
In this blog I want to take a look at how these grade descriptors can be utilised from Years 7-11 to provide a clear and coherent flight path for pupils in history. 

Using the grade descriptors to create a flight path

Many schools for instance have opted for the following basic flight path:

As such, the grade descriptors will help to define what this path might look like for pupils in lessons. They could be used as part of the reporting process, discussed with parents and form targets for written feedback….

So buried in amongst the tax tweaks, smoke and mirrors of today's budget announcement is a major statement from the government about the future of education in England. George Osbourne (yes the Chancellor, not the Secretary of State for Education) has announced that all schools will need to have left Local Authority control and have become academies between 2020 and 2022. There are many reasons to be wary of such a change, but I really want to focus in on one of those here: the loss of the National Curriculum.

As academies have the freedom to set their own currciulum and are not bound by the nationally agreed document, the movement of all schools to become academies means an end to over two decades of government-set curriculum. "Good!" you may cry. But actually I am not sure it is all that good. Like it or not, the National Curriculum has done an awful lot of good to British education, as well as the more widely publicised negative impacts. The reason it does some good is mainly down to the fact that it balances out other pressures which the government puts on educations, notably the drive to produce ever improving exam results (but not have more people passing).

You may remember that between 2010 and 2014 there was an enourmous fuss made as Michael Gove and the education people (or otherise - you decide) in Whitehall attempted to re-work and re-write the various statutory frameworks for study. History of course was famously controversial, with a list of content which initial looked like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Nigel Farage on a bender at the Premier Inn with David Starkey and Nial Ferguson. Yet the thing which was always striking about these reforms, was that the academies Gove created did not have to follow this curriculum at all. Why then go to all that trouble if some schools could just ignore the results? Indeed, some schools who became academies were also some of the worst for teaching a narrow, C20th heavy history curriculum. With academy status they had no need to change. Indeed, they were even permitted to continue using National Curriculum Levels if they so chose (and many did!). But at the moment, this is intertia, already there are some major and worrying changes to the curriculua of academies which are setting a potential future trend for English education. The National Curriculum was far from perfect, but it did (and currently does) enshrines a number of principles which may risk being lost if academies continue to be allowed to plough their own curricular furrows. For the purposes of brevity I just want to deal with two of these.

Initial Teacher Training, some of the most successful and important History PGCE courses were not likely to be viable to run from 2016. Meanwhile, school based training still had a bank of reserved places, despite struggling to fill these in many cases in the past. Now, I have no inherent opposition to schools providing ITT, if it is done well, however I would argue that much of this has been driven by an ideological desire to break up university control of Initial Teacher Training. Just like the unfortunate Despenser, university education departments have been accused of formenting strife, being disloyal to the cause of traditional education, and ignoring the practicalities of training classroom teachers. What is bitterly ironic is that many of the places which are facing the prospect of being forced to shut their doors, are at the forefront of the fight against the dumbing down of education, exam driven practice and pandering to Ofsted’s latest whims. The stage has been set for the final execution of university based ITT, for it to be divided up for academy chains and private education companies to fight over. Much like the execution of Despenser, the process has been long and painful.

For a brief moment, I genuinely thought that I might get through this week without reading anything too upsetting about education in the news. A few days ago, Mr Gove seemed to switch his attention to private schools, attacking them as 'islands of privilege'. Whilst yesterday the Secretary of State for Education was forced to back down on his plans to reform school teachers pay and conditions. The STRB enacted a full sweep of humiliating defeats against Mr Gove's plans to change everything from the school day to forced extra-curricular activities. 

Of course, this couldn't last too long. This morning I awoke to news which nearly had me choking on my cornflakes. The exams regulator Ofqual has apparently decided that the fact so many schools are sending exam scripts for re-marking is because we are all busy manipulating our A*-C pass rate. To quote the review paper specifically, Ofqual stated that “A high volume of enquiries about results are, we believe, motivated by a speculative attempt to improve results...” 

The AndAllThat.co.uk teacher blog is moving from WordPress onto the main website. From now on you will find non-topic related content here. 

You can still access the archives from the WordPress site by visiting http://andallthatweb.wordpress.com . I will endeavour to transfer the content over the next few months.

Mr F

Feeling generally frustrated by the resurrection of the skills vs knowledge debate which, as far as I am concerned, was buried decades ago. Surely we all accept that a balance is needed here and that subject concepts and interpersonal skills can be developed alongside engaging subject knowledge …where are all these teachers who still throw chalk at children for failing to recite the bible? Of course, these people raise good issues about community engagement, independence and resilience… but their contempt for the profession is profound. Never the less, there seems to be good money in telling teachers that they are forcing a Victorian education system on a group of disengaged, working class kids who need reengaging through group work and technology. I am also deeply offended that any challenge to the “innovative” approaches is said to be an elitist response… As I see it, there are a number of major issues with the approach outlined above.

Schools are increasingly expected to reduce inequality in society in the face of increasing economic divisions. We are told that we must engage a generation of students who have become disengaged from a Victorian education system. This language is being peddled by the Innovation Unit amongst others. There is a worrying trend to see technologies as a solution to “self education” 
We need to recognise that schools alone cannot close this socio-economic divide, it is a matter for the whole of society but needs direct action from government. However recognising this does not mean accepting the status quo and being happy…far from it, it demands more radical change. 
Reducing education to a purely “skills-based” curriculum in an attempt to prepare students for a global job market is completely misguided. It is a blunt tool to enact social change and to engage students in the wrong ways. Whilst state schools reduce their subject specialisms to give their students “transferable skills for the economy”, private, public and independent schools continue to offer their students a rich curriculum diet and access to the best jobs and universities. The economic divide remains. 
The only way in which the socio-economic divide can be overcome is through a society-wide reformation of the neo-liberal precepts on which our society is based. Using schools to do this is attempting to plaster over the ever widening cracks. Our priority should be in supporting those most in need and creating a society which is more equitable. Of course, this will be unpopular amongst the most powerful, and potentially very expensive. 
We must preserve the idea that education should be available for all children and adults to develop their human potential – it is not about trying to battle market forces. This is not the same as an elitist agenda. A key part of any schooling is democratic education. If we want to add value to students lives, let us first think carefully about what values we want to add. 
We must recognise that in many cases, taking away subject expertise from education under the guise of equality is a cynical cost cutting exercise. Taking away this expertise is cheating our poorest students out of the chance of engaging in immersive subject experiences. It limits any true passion in learning. To pretend that this is in their best interests is unforgivable. 
It is not subject irrelevance which leads to children becoming demotivated in their studies, it is the slow realisation that their life is most likely mapped out for them thanks to their upbringing. In many cases the barriers to education just become more extreme as children get older. Subjects only regain their relevance when these barriers are removed. When this is the case, students will be able to study subjects for their own sake and in doing so will engage in the humanising processes of education. This is the real challenge of the C21st.

I have to say that writing about examinations does not rank amongst my favourite pass times, yet as the GCSE fiasco has emerged, I have found myself constantly asking, who is really surprised? Every teacher surely has felt the pain of results day when you have no idea if your results are your doing, their doing or the doing of an examinations committee…. Accountability? You must be joking. I sat and longingly read the details of the Queensland examinations system which puts schools at the centre…I took the quote from the opening page of the document:“It cannot be over-emphasised that the mode of assessment dictates the nature of the educational experience and the quality of the relationship between teacher and pupils. Assessment is not something separate ??? a tool ??? by which education may be evaluated; it acts upon the educational system so as to shape it in accordance with what the assessment demands. You cannot have, at one and the same time, education for personal growth and a totally impersonal system of assessment. Assessment should be a bond between teachers and taught, not something which threatens and antagonises.
To humanise assessment, then, we have to make of schooling a more co- operative enterprise between teachers and pupils, and an opportunity to develop the whole range of human competencies, leading up to informative profiles. This should be the pattern of things for the immediate future; it is the way to shed the dreary, and often unjust, grading techniques of traditional education.Hemming (1980, p. 113???14)”

…and then I wrote this:

So Niall Fergusson is releasing another “historical” book. The full 
interview is linked below but a few points which caught my attention:

“Civilization sets out to answer a question that Ferguson identifies 
as the “most interesting” facing historians of the modern era: “Why, 
beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of 
the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?” In 
other words, the book attempts to explain the roots of something ??? 
western power ??? that has long fascinated its author. ” Do we think 
this is a valid focus of history? What type of approach is being taken 
here? Does History tread a dangerous line when it becomes about 
explaining ascendancy?

Fergusson also discusses how he has tried to make the book accessible 
to 17 year olds like his own son

“Civilization, too, starts from the premise that western dominance has 
been a good thing. In order to explain how it came about, Ferguson 
deploys an unexpectedly cutting-edge metaphor. The west’s ascendancy, 
he argues, is based on six attributes that he labels its “killer 
apps”: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the 
work ethic” Do we find this accessible or patronising?

The article then goes on to cover Fergusson’s views on topics such as 
the rise of the USA

“I think it’s hard to make the case, which implicitly the left makes, 
that somehow the world would have been better off if the Europeans had 
stayed home. It certainly doesn’t work for north America, that’s for 
sure. I mean, I’m sure the Apache and the Navajo had all sorts of 
admirable traits. In the absence of literacy we don’t know what they 
were because they didn’t write them down. We do know they killed a 
hell of a lot of bison. But had they been left to their own devices, I 
don’t think we’d have anything remotely resembling the civilisation 
we’ve had in north America.” So how is he interpreting the American 
West here? Would anyone agree with him? Who might take particular 
issue with this sort of statement?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/niall-ferguson-interview-civiliza…