Middle schools the way to deliver a world-class education

The news that the ‘fresh’ review of secondary education is finally under way (Guernsey Press, 30 June) was very welcome, but the published terms of reference are a great disappointment, hinting at an outcome which will be anything but fresh, whatever its findings. This review resulted from mass dissatisfaction with the direction the CfESC was taking with its plans, yet it seems these are destined to be compared only with tired, old ideas which have, for the most part, already been rejected by this States and its predecessors. Where is the fresh thinking? Where are the new ideas which could have been thrown into the mix?

As long as the debate remains within the same old constraints, we are doomed either to end up with an education system that is outdated before it even begins, or with one for which the majority of the public has little appetite. Having now paused the transformation of our system of education, it would have been good to have seen some broader thinking going into the review, at least to demonstrate that the CfESC had listened to the concerns of the public.

As Deputy Fallaize and his committee know all too well, whilst many were united in their opposition to the one-school, two-colleges model, there is little consensus within our population as to how an alternative should look. People clearly feel strongly about school size, despite the clear message that class sizes would have been smaller if anything. They also had concerns about traffic congestion and pupils ‘getting lost in the system’; they felt that following the UK in moving towards fewer, larger secondary schools was not ‘The Guernsey Way’. To get a majority behind a workable model now will, surely, take a fresh approach.

The current committee seems to feel that the review now under way encompasses all possible solutions, and that there simply is no model that can deliver without compromise. I beg to differ. I am one of the tiny number of teachers who has supported their favoured model throughout the past few years, and I passionately believe that pupils should sit their GCSEs at the same schools in which most (hopefully in higher numbers than do so at present) will continue into post-compulsory education. However, I can’t help but be reminded of a question I asked of all the current States’ members back in 2017, which never got much of an answer then, but I still think might lead to a solution for which there could now be more appetite: why do our children have to move from their first school to their last at the age of 11, right in the middle of their formative tween years?

Over the past three years, the ‘Curriculum for Guernsey’, which spans the later years of primary school and the first Key Stage of secondary school, has been successfully embedded. This took a vast amount of time and effort by staff from the Education Department as well as teachers from both phases, and clearly defines what we want to achieve within this age range, which spans transition to secondary school. By implementing this new curriculum, Guernsey has quite rightly moved further away from the constraints of the National Curriculum. Why, then, do we feel compelled to continue to divide the National Curriculum Key Stages so rigidly? Why do we have to stick with a two-tier model, with each tier being split into two phases, just because that’s what the UK state sector does? (Key Stages 1 and 2 at primary level, often still known as infants and juniors, which are further divided into lower and upper juniors, and Key Stages 3 and 4 (GCSE) in the compulsory secondary phase.)

When the previous Education Committee embarked on its journey of secondary education reform, there was much talk of the need to look beyond the UK, to the most successful systems in the world, notably Finland and Singapore, if I remember correctly. That was a few years ago now, and the goalposts have moved forward, while we are still going backwards. The headline on 30 June was a paraphrased quote from Deputy Fallaize: ‘We are open-minded on best secondary model’. I can’t help but wonder if that means simply the best of the bad bunch that have already been dragged through the States and the Press for far too many years.

The largest and arguably most successful education systems throughout the world are, predominantly, three-tier systems, with a middle school or ‘junior high’ between primary or elementary, and what we call ‘secondary’ or ‘high’ school. The UK independent sector is also largely and very successfully wedded to the three-tier model. The UK public sector supported the middle school system back when counties and local authorities all took their own approaches to education, so there was little standardisation in terms of the ages at which transitions between tiers were made. When I started teaching in Dorset in 2004, there were five different transition systems operating within a 10-mile radius (four of which were three-tier with middle schools between primary and ‘high’). Property prices there vary wildly, partly as a result of this, with those where children moved to high school latest being favoured. The UK has gradually shifted towards a two-tier system for the sake of homogeneity and cost-saving; neither of these apply to us as we are separate and face different financial pressures and constraints, such as space in our education estate.

The communities which have managed to hold onto the three-tier system the longest are invariably those arguably most similar to ours, and have amongst the highest achieving schools in the country. The three-tier system works for a number of reasons. Transition from primary to secondary school is a huge change for children. The three-tier system softens the blow by spreading this change over the whole of the middle tier, gradually shifting from an integrated (primary-style) curriculum to a more subject-orientated (secondary-style) one.

Our two-tier system forces children into secondary school before many have hit puberty. They are physically small and emotionally ill-equipped for rubbing shoulders with pupils in their upper teens, and are easily led. Through the autumn term, teachers can almost watch the new Year 7 intake change in front of our eyes, as they fall under the influence of older pupils. Many go off the rails in the first two years of high school and find it hard ever to get back on track. This is likely to improve with the end of selection, with increasing numbers of positive role models amongst our older high school pupils, but it still presents a concern for many parents in the comprehensive system.

Even in the modern world, Guernsey pupils experience childhood differently from their peers elsewhere. Our children are sheltered and innocent at primary school, but by the time they finish high school many tend to have a strong sense of entitlement coupled with a weak work ethic. They tend to feel either that it will be easy for them to find work, in finance for example, or that it will be impossible. Neither mindset places great value on education, or the qualifications it can deliver.

Part of the problem is that there is little synergy between the ideals of a strong Key Stage 3, where children develop most of the skills and knowledge they need to become effective adults in our society, which our new curriculum is beginning to deliver so well, and the aims of the upper end of the secondary phase, where pupils need to achieve the best qualifications they can in order to progress on to their first steps into adulthood. The whole secondary phase is so distorted by the pressure of GCSEs that the delivery of the Key Stage 3 curriculum will always play second fiddle, as long as it is taught in the same schools and by the same staff.

Moving to a three-tier system would be a huge change, so why consider it? As well as being better for Guernsey children, it would solve many of the challenges we currently face in shaping the future of education in Guernsey, without drastic change to our current education estate. Our pupils could move at age nine or 10 from their local primary to one of two or three middle or ‘junior high’ schools, to continue their happy childhoods whilst focusing on the tenets of our new curriculum and preparing properly for the next phase. At age 13 they would be ready, physically, emotionally and academically, to move on to the right school for them to continue their chosen educational pathway.

Our current system divides high school pupils between academic and vocational pathways at the end of Key Stage 3 anyway (but not through selection by examination), and these pathways could easily be offered in two different buildings for pupils to complete their compulsory education and achieve the qualifications they need to flourish beyond school. These buildings would not need to be oversized; they would have far fewer children than the ‘two-colleges’ model because they would house fewer year groups. The academic pathway could be delivered in the school with the sixth form centre attached, bringing all the advantages of an 11-18 school to a 13-18 setting, and the vocational pathway could be linked with the College of FE to create a 13-19+ vocational college performing most of the roles of the current College of FE alongside bespoke GCSE/functional skills/BTEC packages. Entry to each would be by guided choice, not by selection or postcode. With the reduced age range across each phase of a three-tier system, we already have buildings that are roughly the right size. Having fewer year groups in each primary school would mean the pupils in Reception and Years 1 to 4 could be taught using our smaller primary schools, with two-form entry as standard, freeing up the largest current primary and/or smaller secondary school sites to become the middle schools.

Staffing might seem daunting, with most teachers being qualified and experienced in teaching either primary children across the curriculum or one subject in the secondary phase. However, the reality is that many secondary teachers are increasingly being asked to teach outside of their specialism anyway, and most prefer either the upper (teen) age range, where they can specialise more, or lower (tween) age range, where they can have a broader role in supporting pupils as they develop and learn the core curriculum. Both primary and secondary teachers are qualified to teach in the middle school system.

In parts of the UK, this system has long provided just the sort of loophole we love here in Guernsey, allowing teachers to transit from primary to secondary teaching or vice versa, and the international school system and UK independent prep schools manage very well to get staff to work across the normal primary/secondary divide. Our pool of candidates is not just the UK public sector, although many in that system have middle school experience and would see working here as a welcome opportunity to return to that way of working. In the upper phase, true subject specialists can deliver what they really want to, teaching just GCSEs and A-levels, or their vocational equivalents, to those students who are on the right pathway for them and can therefore be more effectively motivated and managed.

With our current system so outdated and desperately in need of change, and so much uncertainty in the future anyway, there has never been a better time to consider making an even bigger, far better change. Covid-19 has changed how we think about everything. Our new crop of politicians must think even further outside the box that is the current UK education system, and give our amazing children the schools that will work best for them. Let’s deliver in Guernsey what works so well in the UK private sector and the rest of the world: send pupils to middle schools to grow through their tween years, to learn in a comfortable, nurturing but challenging environment, before they then go on to tackle their qualifications as young adults, rather than feeding them into the GCSE sausage factory six weeks after they leave primary school, never to grow up properly until they have already left education behind.

Thanks to the pandemic, education is no longer the only election issue on our minds as we head towards October. Anyone who is standing is urged to give this some serious thought, rather than taking the easy path and believing that we just need to take the UK system and ‘Guernseyfy’ it into smaller schools. Please do something braver and cleverer than that, and give our children the world-class education system they deserve, and have for so long been denied.

NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD.