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10.4324 9781315189222 Previewpdf
10.4324 9781315189222 Previewpdf
Acknowledgements ix
Thank you to all the teachers we interviewed for this book. Although
most of you appear as pseudonyms in the text, we are personally
very grateful to each of you for sharing your experiences with us.
Your honesty and frankness has added insight and helped humanise
the cold, hard research.
Thanks to reviewers of earlier book drafts, whose comments have
improved the final version: Caroline Barlow, Keven Bartle, Ian
Bauckham, Simon Burgess, Cat Carter, Leora Cruddas, Harry
Fletcher-Wood, Matthew Hood, Rebecca Lynch, Peps McCrea, Laura
McInerney, Alison Peacock and Stephen Tierney. Particular thanks
go to the three anonymous reviewers for your detailed and helpful
feedback. Any errors remain those of the authors.
CHAPTER ONE
The teacher gap
Other metrics tell a similar story. Each year around 17 per cent
of pupils leave school functionally illiterate4, twelve years of com-
pulsory education having got them almost nowhere. The gap in
attainment between pupils who just make it into the top quarter of
richest families (the 75th percentile), and those who just make into
the third quarter of richest families (the 25th percentile) has remained
high and broadly stable since the 1950s.5 Standards have proven
stubbornly resistant to change and inequalities have not closed.
This is not for lack of trying. Ministers have implemented any
number of measures to try and improve failing schools. Kenneth
Baker’s Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced school choice for
parents, which proponents hoped would put pressure on weaker
schools to improve. In the nineties, leagues tables and Ofsted inspec-
tions were introduced to increase the pressure further still. New
Labour initiatives such as Beacon Schools, the London Challenge and
Specialist Leaders of Education sought to help weaker schools learn
from others. Reductions in class sizes gave teachers more time with
each pupil and armies of teaching assistants were drafted in to support
the work of teachers in the classroom. These policies necessitated an
increase in spending during the Labour government from 4.5 per cent
of GDP when they took power, to 6.2 per cent of GDP when they
lost it.6 Labour also unleashed a tidal wave of capital investment in
the form of the Building Schools for the Future programme, totalling
£55bn over thirteen years.7 A panoply of new types of schools have
also been introduced: specialist schools, academy schools, free schools,
studio schools. The Coalition government gave schools £2.5bn extra
to help support their poorest pupils. And yet, Professor Coe, himself
a former teacher, was forced to conclude that standards have not risen.
To be clear, good things have happened and some notable bright spots
have emerged. Overall, however, students are no better off.
How can so much money and effort have achieved so little? The
answer to this apparently baffling question is remarkably simple.
Policymakers have been looking in the wrong place.
Ministers are largely judged by their announcements: the white
papers, parliamentary statements and press releases by which they
communicate their reform plans. The general public, of course,
consume these announcements in shortened clips on the evening
THE TEACHER GAP 3