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  On the other side of the Atlantic, Edward hasn’t got to Level 4 by the end of primary school, despite extra input from teaching assistants. But his secondary schooling experience will be quite different. His secondary school might look at the level he achieved in his end of primary school exams, see that he has achieved a Level 3, and on his first day at his new school, put him in a lower set in a class with other students who are at Level 3. These children will most likely be given easier tasks, rather than extra support to complete the same tasks as their peers. They will cover less content, putting them at a further disadvantage when it comes to exams. And they often will be set lower targets, sometimes visibly marking them out from their friends who managed to score a Level 4 at age 11. A lot less is expected of Edward.

  This isn’t the fault of identifying students’ ‘levels’ per se, but of using them to project what students are capable of. In one school I used to teach at, the students were given ‘target grades’ which were based on their level at the end of primary school, and had to stick these on the front of their exercise books. The first lesson of the school year, when the students come back, perhaps thinking they might make a fresh start, children are given a grade to stick on their brand new book before they’ve even written anything in it. Some students were given ‘As’, some ‘Cs’; I even had one girl whose ‘aspirational’ target grade was to achieve a D in science. Think of the messaging that’s giving to these teenagers – if you try really hard, you could achieve a grade that you’ve been told in assemblies isn’t good enough to help you find fulfilling employment.

  Bizarrely, this practice stems from attempts to make the education system in England fairer. Schools in England are judged on their exam results. If their exam results aren’t good enough, the school is publicly branded as ‘inadequate’, and often taken over by new management. The school principal is at risk of losing her job, which as you can imagine, generates a large amount of stress and fear in schools that are at risk of failing, as all but the best principals pass on that stress and fear to the staff. Given that schools are in different settings and have different intakes (some might have students coming in at Level 6, others with many at Level 3), a ‘progress’ measure was introduced, whereby ‘good enough’ included having your students make certain amount of progress rather than needing to reach some absolute level. Hence the target grades, which are based on students’ previous performance.

  While the intentions behind target grades are good – to make ‘floor standards’ fairer to schools with a more challenging intake – there are all sorts of reasons why they are unhelpful. They lead to lower aspirations for students who begin at a lower starting point, and when shared with students, contribute to the fixed mindset idea that intelligence is something you either have or you don’t. Even when shared only with teachers, they affect teachers’ expectations of students, which as we saw in the Japan chapter, can have a negative impact on students’ prospects. There is no strong evidence that setting goals is helpful at all,204 and that’s when the goals are set by the individual pursuing them, let alone when the goals are imposed by others. So how does Canada get around this tricky issue of holding schools accountable, when they have differing intakes?

  Answerability and Responsibility, or Liability and Culpability?

  What does accountability actually mean, and why is it necessary? While pondering upon the former question, I right-clicked on ‘accountability’ in my Word document to look at its synonyms, and four alternatives came up: ‘answerability’, ‘responsibility’, ‘liability’ and ‘culpability’. This is rather handy, as they can help me neatly explain the difference between school accountability in England and the United States, and school accountability in Finland, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Shanghai.

  In all the countries that I’ve been to on this trip, school accountability has meant ‘answerability’ and ‘responsibility’; each head teacher or principal is held responsible for the running of their school, and has to be able to answer for him or herself in explaining why they do what they do to their local educational body. If they don’t fulfil their responsibilities, or they can’t provide good reasons or answers for why results are dropping or why parents are complaining, then they might well lose their job. But if results are dropping and they demonstrate that they are aware of it, that they are investigating the causes and that they are putting into place new programmes or training to help address it, then they have nothing to fear. More likely, they will be offered support from experts or other schools in making these changes.

  In England and the United States, school accountability too often means ‘culpability’ and ‘liability’. As I described earlier, if a school in England falls below a ‘floor target’ in terms of results, or if the inspectorate looks around the school and deems it to be ‘inadequate’ or ‘requiring improvement’, then the government’s response is to look for someone to blame. At the moment, schools in such circumstances have their management changed, and the head teacher is often let go. In some states in US schools are actually fined for getting poor results. The approach is to punish those who run the struggling school, rather than to look into potential causes and solutions, or offer the schools much-needed support.

  Canada takes a different approach. They most definitely hold schools accountable – you’ll remember that many provinces brought back provincial tests in the 1980s in response to the claim that they didn’t – but these test results are used in quite a different way to the way they’re used south of the border. I had an extended roundtable discussion (with pizza) in Ontario with six amazing educators who work at different levels in the provincial education system. One of the teachers described the EQAO (the province’s standardised tests) as a snapshot. ‘It’s a dipstick. I don’t think anyone feels threatened by it any more. Any more.’ She made a face. ‘If you had Grade 3 when EQAO came in you died. But people know what it is. It took a while to get to this point, but people now realise that it’s not something that reflects on your practice.’

  School principals don’t hold individual teachers to account for their class results, as ‘it’s not one person’s responsibility, right? The Grade 6 results are the responsibility of teachers in Grades 4, 5 and 6, so that’s us as a collective, not each person as an individual teacher.’ Instead the results are used formatively, to help the staff as a whole reflect on the school’s strengths and weaknesses. ‘Standardised testing is not our driver, but it is our driver in a way. We did not do well in Grade 6 this past year and we wanted to know why. So we looked to see where the gaps were, for example, in fractions. What do we need to do as teachers to reduce those gaps?’

  It’s not just up to the individual schools to improve themselves; in Canada, no school is an island. At the roundtable discussion, I met Lucy, a school superintendent responsible for a family of 18 schools, educating 15,000 students. I was curious about the role of superintendents, so I asked Lucy (in front of the principals and deputies that she works with), ‘What would happen if you weren’t there?’ She replied, ‘There would be no one monitoring the schools, and they would be a lot happier!’ at which point, everyone laughed.

  This wasn’t a forced laugh, like a ‘ha ha, my boss made a joke’ laugh; these educators all seemed really comfortable in one another’s company, and when we’d initially arrived there had been hugs and exclamations about how good it was to see Deirdre – their former superintendent who had kindly organised the meeting. Similarly in British Columbia, superintendents and principals appeared to have a fairly informal relationship. For example: I heard one principal say to his superintendent, ‘If you’ve got news for me about a shop [technology] teacher I’m gonna kiss your feet and bring you presents.’ Now, I’m sure he wasn’t speaking literally, but this is not the kind of relationship you’d expect if superintendents were seen as inspectors who were there to pass judgement on whether the principal was doing his job. Canadian schools aren’t formally inspected, although the superintendent role in Britis
h Columbia grew out of the ‘Inspector of Schools’ role when the Schools Inspectorate Branch was dismantled in 1958.205

  As the current superintendent of the school I visited outside Toronto, Lucy is the representative of a school board (of which there are 72 in Ontario), and it is her job to ensure that schools are following provincial policies, and have those tough conversations with school principals where necessary. Most of her role, though, is more about supporting schools to continually improve, and to learn from one another. She and other superintendents are constantly in schools, talking to principals, watching lessons and observing students. This has quite a different feel to it from a school inspection, because it is regular and informal, and the consequences of them seeing a need for improvement are that they speak with the principal and vice-principal about next steps, and might suggest that they go and visit another school in the family who is dealing well with a similar problem, rather than publically shaming them or cutting their funding.

  But what if the school board and superintendents are failing themselves? This is the kind of question that someone with a ‘culpability’ or ‘liability’ mindset might ask. Well, they usually aren’t failing, because there is thorough training and careful succession planning. Superintendents who are selected for the role are ex-principals who themselves have a successful record in school improvement. Before that, teachers only get to be principals if they’ve been through a training and selection process run by the board, and have shown that they have been effective as a vice-principal (those at the school board level make a point of developing leadership capacity at all levels of the system). But, in the unusual instance that a school board isn’t doing well, as shown by their data, here is what happens (in the words of a superintendent): ‘If the board does badly, the ministry would call them in and ask why. The board then has to develop a plan for how to move schools forward. What pieces could we put into place? They’d then put in place those strategies with lots of support, and see what happened the following year, and ask, “is there an improvement?” But it’s gradual, no one expects a school to change by 40 per cent in one year. What we do want to show, though, is that we’re on a continuous improvement path.’

  Chapter 16: Beyond Knowledge

  He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all. Sir William Osler, Canadian physician

  Remember Bob, the moustachioed principal? His first point about intelligence – that there are other important traits required for the workplace – is not one that rests on science, but one that rests on common sense. While tests of general cognitive ability are good predictors of overall job performance, very few HR managers would employ someone based on the results of these tests alone.206 Many jobs require people to work well as part of a team, to present their ideas clearly and confidently, and inspire confidence when leading others to achieve their vision for an organisation. Traits that are often referred to as 21st-century competencies for 21st-century jobs (but that were also required in many jobs before the 21st century) include critical thinking, creativity and effective communication skills.

  What’s more, students don’t only go to school to get jobs. Many would argue that various other traits should be developed by schools to get the children ready to be citizens of whatever country they find themselves in. What these desired traits are depends very much on the culture, and on the views of those in charge. In Japan, for example, students are taught, alongside other characteristics, to get along with others in a group, to follow the rules, to be polite and helpful, and not to be a bother to other people. The four major goals for Canadian education are ‘generally defined’ as: ‘cultivation of mind; vocational preparation; moral development; and individual development’207– and in Ontario, the mission statement reads: ‘Ontario is committed to the success and well-being of every student and child. Learners in the province’s education system will develop the knowledge, skills and characteristics that will lead them to become personally successful, economically productive and actively engaged citizens.’

  Of course what governments intend and what they are able to make happen are two entirely different things, but I did see a focus on non-academic skills amongst the teachers I met – alongside more structural features of the system – to an extent that I didn’t experience in the other four systems I spent time in.

  Other Important Skills

  During my drive to school with Marilyn one foggy morning she was telling me about her new Grade 2 class, and dropped in, ‘What’s a shame, though, is that they’re quite weak in leadership skills, we’ll need to work on that.’ I was surprised – these children were only seven, and she was talking about leadership.

  We pulled up outside the red-brick, one-storey building, and I popped in at reception to get a visitor’s badge. I followed Marilyn through the colourful corridors to her classroom, and busied myself looking at the impressive displays while she prepared for the day. Sure enough, as soon as the children had hung up their coats, she was creating opportunities in her classroom for these little children to practise leading others. There was a routine they went through every morning, where they would look at the weather and put an appropriate picture on the weather chart, and do the same with the date. Children took it in turns to lead the class in this activity, and say, ‘today it is…’ for the others on the mat to complete ‘Wednesday!’. ‘Yesterday it was… ’ ‘Tuesday!’ ‘Tomorrow it will be… ’ etc. Then they would instruct the class to go back to their desks to begin the day’s lesson.

  Leadership was a focus at high school too, to the extent that it was an elective subject that students could take, which counted towards their credits for graduation. On the day I went in, they were split into different groups, each working on the organisation of a different event; some were organising a BBQ for the local homeless population, others were organising a school dance (Halloween themed), and others working out the profit made from a previous event they’d sold tickets to. They’d delegate within their groups, they’d do budgeting, they’d speak with relevant people, they’d make posters, they’d follow up; the kind of skills that even some adults I know are lacking.

  Martin, who ran the leadership course, set them their tasks and then let them get on with it, so was free to have a chat with me on the green sofa in the corner of the room. ‘I had this kid come in, in the ninth grade last year, and she was a real quiet type. Not very confident, she cried when we went on a leadership residential one time because she was homesick. I’ve really seen her confidence grow this year as she’s been involved in organising various events, and she’s now taking charge in some groups and leading other less confident kids.’

  Apart from a leadership focus, British Columbia has social responsibility performance standards. This doesn’t mean that ‘social responsibility’ is a standalone lesson, rather, these skills and attitudes are supposed to be developed and encouraged through other lessons and activities. I was listening back to a group interview I’d recorded with a group of middle schoolers, and right at the end, just before I switched the tape off, it picked up the teacher saying, ‘Thank you for actively listening to each other and showing respect for each other’s opinions’ – bringing the children’s attention to the skills they were practising. Things like, ‘Solving problems in peaceful ways’ and ‘Valuing diversity and defending human rights’ are part of the curriculum for all children, and teachers assess how well each child is meeting these objectives.

  The difference in approach of the Canadians to these non-academic skills compared to the other countries I visited was not just in the amount they were mentioned, but also in the fact that there was more of an attempt to assess them in Canada. Other things that I saw assessed were presentation skills – when students were feeding back the results of their independent research into the causes of the First World War to the class – and creativity, which was included in a marking metric for how students presented their understand
ing of Marxist theory.

  Just to clarify, I am not pointing out these features of the Canadian system to suggest that they in any way lead to high PISA results – there is more to education than this. Nor am I suggesting that the way the teachers I observed were going about teaching and assessing these non-academic skills is the best way of doing it – I’m afraid that has not been my focus in this book. I do think it is important, though, that these conversations and attempts are happening, and are not getting swallowed up in the quest for higher test scores. It is a sad but unavoidable truth in most developed systems (though Finland seems to be an exception) that unless desired outcomes are measured in some way, they are not prioritised by governments. There are logical reasons for this (I hesitate to use the word ‘good’): that when taxpayers’ money is spent on public education, they have a right to see that their money is being used effectively. But when important things are left out, we either need to move away from such an audited system, or embrace the attempt to measure these skills so that they don’t get sidelined.

  Problem-Solving and Discovery Learning

  So far the qualities I’ve discussed – leadership, organisation, presentation skills, valuing diversity – have been non-academic skills and traits. Of course, you can do a presentation about academic things, but you could also present on the time milk came out of your nose, and it would still require the confidence to stand in front of people, some sort of organisation to what you are saying and a clear, measured delivery. There are other skills, though, that are more closely related to academic subjects, but that go beyond knowledge and understanding of subject content; skills that are highly prized by employers and politicians, and have been floated as playing a major role in explaining differences in economic growth between countries: critical thinking and problem-solving skills.