PSYCHOLOGISTS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
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Blog

Visioning a new education system: reduce exam tyranny and empower teachers and pupils

4/4/2019

1 Comment

 
Ofsted is changing the way it conducts inspections. Drawing on the views of students, we take the opportunity to think about how the education system could go from coercive to nourishing
Picture
Christopher Bagley

In a previous blog, Psychologists for Social Change (PSC)
responded to the announcement that the education regulator, Ofsted, are to update the framework they use to inspect schools in England. Having looked at the changes that Ofsted are proposing and finding them extremely narrow, the purpose of this article is to go further and envision an alternative future for the education system. It is based on PSC’s joint submission to the public consultation on Ofsted's proposals changes.


When thinking about change in a democratic society, it is only right to begin by asking the people that will be directly affected. To this end, we spent time with States of Mind, a social enterprise that gives young people a platform to discuss issues related to education and mental health. Since January, States of Mind has conducted focus groups with 80 young people to elicit their views about the impact of Ofsted’s inspection framework on their education. Those involved were very keen to share their views:

“We feel that our voices and experiences are constantly overlooked and neglected... we believe that it is our right to tell the true story of how the current system is failing us.”

The students have written a powerful letter to the head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, communicating their deep concerns about the system’s negative impact on students. They also put forward psychological healthy ways of doing things differently. We draw on some of their ideas for this article. We also heard from parents and mined our own experience as teachers and educational psychologists.

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Visioning a new education system: Ofsted must give control to teachers & young people

16/1/2019

6 Comments

 
Why the proposed changes to the Ofsted inspection framework won’t deliver and what we need to do to really benefit our children and young people
Picture
Christopher Bagley

​In December 2017, the UK Government released a Green Paper entitled
Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision. In response, Psychologists for Social Change wrote an open letter, signed by 1400 psychologists, teachers, social workers, students and counsellors, as well as young people with lived experience of mental health issues and their parents.


In it, we urged the government to “take a genuinely preventative approach” to mental ill-health, by acknowledging and addressing the wider social factors known to be linked to distress, as well as bringing an end to the austerity policies that have exacerbated these. You can read our review of the finalised proposals, published this summer, here. In short, we believe they fall desperately short of addressing the underlying barriers to long-term improvements to our collective mental health.
​

We also called on the government to review the toll that accountability measures like exams and ‘teaching to the test’ are creating, which, according to the National Education Union, are a great source of emotional distress for teachers and pupils alike. Currently, Ofsted holds teachers and schools accountable for the academic results of young people. Every child is expected to achieve a pre-defined, government set ‘standard’. Anything else is viewed as failure for the school, regardless of a young person’s needs or the pupil demographics of the area. This leads to teachers spending hours assessing students, tracking and logging data. Workload stress is having an increasingly detrimental impact on the mental health and job satisfaction of teachers. Schools can struggle to retain teachers.

In short, things are bad before we’ve even considered the impact on students. For them, the focus on results means an inflexible curriculum, with limited opportunity for creativity and a narrow conception of what intelligence and achievement means. For those who struggle to make progress, constant messages about not achieving ‘expected progress’ can be catastrophic to their mental health.  

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    PSC is a network of people interested in applying psychology to generate social and political action. You don't have to be a member of PSC to contribute to the blog

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  • Home
  • About
  • Groups
    • England >
      • North East >
        • Sheffield
        • Leeds
      • North West >
        • North East
        • A North West Just Recovery following coronavirus
        • Manchester- PSPO letter
      • Midlands >
        • Midlands
        • Leicester
      • South East >
        • East Anglia
        • Hertfordshire
        • London
        • Oxford
        • Suffolk
        • Surrey
        • Sussex
      • South West >
        • Bristol and Bath
        • South West
    • Ireland
    • Northern Ireland
    • Jersey
    • Scotland
    • Wales - Cymru >
      • Elections 2021
      • Building Resilience and Community Wellbeing
      • Social and Political Causes of Poor Mental Health
      • Responding to Austerity and Mental Health in Wales - Accessible Document
    • Start a New Group
  • Blog
  • Position statements
    • UK >
      • Response to Panorama: Undercover Hospital Abuse Scandal
      • Esther McVey: PSC and RITB response
    • Cymru / Wales >
      • Connecting the Dots Report
      • Chemical Imbalance Myth
      • Review of use of dx PD
      • UK Inhumane Removal Plans
      • WG LGBT+actionplan
      • Ty Coryton
      • Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities: The Report
      • ECT Review
      • Black Lives Matter
      • COVID 19 and Internet Access
      • Save the T4CYP Programme
      • Support the Mind over matter Report
      • UN Report on Extreme Poverty in the UK Letter
    • England >
      • Psychologists for Social Change support the moratorium on school exclusions in England
      • Racism is Not Entertainment
      • Letter to Jeremy Hunt
      • UK Government Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision
      • Exam Crisis
    • Ireland >
      • End Direct Provision
    • Northern Ireland
    • Scotland
  • Campaigns
    • Structural racism demands a structural response
    • Embed anti-racism in the NHS
    • COVID-19 >
      • Mutual Aid
      • COVID and mental health
    • PSC Manifesto 2019
    • Visioning a new education system
    • New Savoy Conference Statement
    • Formulating Policy >
      • Origins of Happiness? PSC response
      • Basic Income: Psychological Impact Assessment
    • Preaching to the Non-Converted
    • Psychologists Against Austerity >
      • Austerity Briefing Paper
      • Everyday Austerity
    • Private Health Watch
  • Join our mailing list