THE 4RS COMMISSION
The Liberal Democrats
have set up a new commission to look at primary education issues - and are
asking for your views.
The party has always had strong and popular polices on education. A penny on income tax for education was a Lib Dem cry in the dark before the other two parties accepted that our schools needed enormous new investment.
And as demonstrated by our more recent backing of Mike Tomlinson’s proposal to radically change the secondary curriculum to bring vocational courses into the mainstream – we look to the future and don’t shy away from difficult decisions and promoting ideas that are on the cutting edge.
In primary education we have championed smaller class sizes, especially for the very young, giving each pupil the chance of more time one-on-one with their teacher. Our calls for less testing and more time for teaching resonated with parents and teachers alike and ‘controversial’ calls for SATS to be scrapped at 7 and 11 have now been accepted as common sense by the government.
But we can't simply take satisfaction for having won some arguments – we must continue to press on. That is why Sarah Teather, the party's Shadow Secretary of State for Education, is setting up an education commission. We've asked some independent thinkers, not previously associated with the Lib Dems, to do some big thinking for us on primary education.
An example of the type of thing this commission is going to flag up is what gives it its name. Because everyone knows the term Reading, Writing and Arithmetic that’s often all we end up talking about in education. But there's a key element that is overlooked in that trio: speaking and listening skills. Or the 4th R “aRticulation”. The evidence and the research is out there:
- The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s Annual Report on English 2004-5 said that “at key stages 1-3 there is still little evidence that speaking and listening is being taught explicitly or securely assessed”.
- The Education Select Committee’s paper, Teaching Children to Read last year said: “children need to talk and to experience a rich diet of spoken language, in order to think and learn. Reading, writing and number may be the acknowledged curriculum ‘basics’, but talk is ‘arguably the true foundation of learning’”.
- Sue Palmer, author of a booklet “Time to Talk” produced for the Basic Skills Agency warns: "In 10 years as a travelling literacy specialist, I've talked to tens of thousands of primary teachers around the UK -and all over the country they've told me the same thing: children's speaking and listening skills seem to be deteriorating year on year. Infant teachers are especially alarmed at the levels of language of each new intake and at the difficulties children have in settling down in class to listen.”
Too many children aren’t arriving at school with the vocabulary and the ability to speak in sentences that allows them to pick up where the government’s literacy strategy begins – we’re missing a step. Giving young children the language skills they need to express themselves helps them learn, improves behaviour and imbues them with confidence.
This is just one area we are going to explore. The commission will take evidence from a wide range of experts in the field of primary education – including children’s authors, educational programme makers, academics, child-carers and young people themselves.
We also welcome input from parents, teachers, young people which is why we are also launching a accompanying website where we hope people will log on and tell us what they think is the is the key issue that needs to be addressed in primary education today.
Who is on the commission?
Dr Bethan Marshall (chair): literacy expert from King's College
Dr Mike Askew: numeracy expert from King's College
Floella Benjamin: TV presenter and long time worker for children and education charities
Dr John Howson: visiting professor at Oxford Brookes and expert in teacher recruitment
Cllr James Kempton: Lib Dem Leader of Islington Council and LGA spokesperson on Young People
Sal Jarvis: a former primary school teacher and now lecturer on teacher training
Timescale
We hope it will be a free thinking and wide ranging body and will come up with lots of ideas, producing a final report in Spring 2007 that will summarize its findings and outline the ideas they believe should be taken forward.
Our schedule of forthcoming meetings is: assessment (28th September), oracy (21st November 2006) and entitlement, creativity and play (11th December 2006). So if you have any comments on these particular areas, please do submit them before the dates given.
