Sir Chris Woodhead Blog: Is innovation in our schools really the answer?
Labour’s spokesman on education, Tristram Hunt, believes that the demand for extra school places should be ‘a golden moment’ to open more ‘innovative’ schools.
There is no doubt that we need more school places, but why has Hunt and pretty well every other politician nailed their colours to the mast of ‘innovation’? Do they really believe that the wonders of modern technology are going to solve the endemic problems of state education?
Perhaps they do. Plenty of people in the world of education are making their reputations and their fortunes by promulgating precisely this idea. They argue that experiments with the timing of the school day, the rebranding of schools as academies, and initiatives based on the latest discoveries of neuroscience will have a fundamental and positive impact on the education our children receive.
The truth is that none of the above is a silver bullet. There is only one way to improve a failing or a mediocre school. The pursuit of innovative solutions is at best a distraction. At worst, as, for example, when schools spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on whiteboards, laptops, iPads, whatever is deemed to be the next must have piece of technology to clutter up the classroom, it wastes money that could be spent on something worthwhile.
If our children are to fulfil their potential, schools need stronger leadership and better teaching. This proposition is too obvious, too simple and, sadly, too difficult to implement to gain political traction.
But it is true. The evidence from inspections confirms what common sense suggests. If a school does not have a headteacher with a strong vision and with the personality to convince staff and parents alike to buy in to their ideas, then that school is not going to prosper. The good Head will praise and reward their best teachers whilst, conversely, removing the teachers who cannot or will not improve.
Children who are taught by teachers who have real knowledge of their subjects, who have high expectations of their pupils, and who are experts in the craft of the classroom will make real progress. Children who do not have the good fortune to be taught by such teachers will languish.
A new secretary of state for education wants to make his or her name. Hunt says he wants to be the first secretary of state who steps back and listens to teachers. To a greater or lesser extent, they all say this, and Hunt has, of course, his own ideas. He wants, for example, educationalists from Finland and Singapore to set up schools in Ilfracombe and Lowestoft. He wants experts from far flung lands to innovate their way to success.
Like his predecessors, he does not seem to realise that it is the hard grind of the day to day, operational delivery that is the only thing that can make the difference.
Professor Sir Chris Woodhead was formerly Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools from 1994 until 2000. He is author of Class Wars and A Desolation of Learning. His areas of expertise are education and leadership, accountability and the drive to raise standards; his research interest currently is the involvement of the private sector in raising educational standards. He retired at the end of 2013 from the chairmanship of Cognita, the international schools company he established in 2004.