The principal goal of education in schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept everything they are offered.

Jean Piaget

Why do schools do what they do? If the case we are making for a different kind of school is so compelling, how come many more schools are not going down this route? The answer is that, although there is much rhetoric in England to the effect that schools have been given greater freedom, in reality, they have not.

In the following chart we have tried to give you a pictorial view of some of the forces which we believe influence what children in the UK learn today at school. We have identified how we view each of the seven different forces (parents/families, prominent and ordinary individuals, employers, charities, professional bodies, government) and their alignment with the arguments we have made in the book so far.

Perhaps surprisingly, the employers align most closely with our views (as we saw in Chapter 5) and the government the least (although we acknowledge that, in this regard, Scotland and Northern Ireland are more in agreement than England and Wales).

Various prominent individuals (some of whom we have met earlier), third sector groups (often charities) and professional bodies are leading the way. You might expect parents and families to be of the same mind. Surely they want the kinds of things that we are arguing for? The answer, we believe, is that they do. But they are cowed into going along with the status quo in the very understandable belief that there is not enough time to change things while their child is at school, so the best they can do is swallow their misgivings and go along with it. Even the excellent websites Mumsnet and Netmums have surprisingly little (yet!) to say about how parents can challenge the status quo. Mumsnet has thoughtful, supporting information about choosing schools and Netmums is full of great ideas for family learning, but neither grasps the mettle of our question:

What do you do if you are not happy with the way your child is being affected by school?

It was to provide an alternative vision that we decided to write this book, and in this chapter we suggest ways in which parents and teachers can take practical action.

But before you read on, we’d like you to stop and think for a moment about your own school days. Put aside for a moment any thoughts about how much you did or did not enjoy them (although that’s clearly important) and reflect instead on how much they prepared you for whatever you are doing now.

You could do this as a private thought experiment in your own head, or if you feel more sociable you could try it out with your spouse, partner or a friend. Decide whether you are mainly recalling your primary school or thinking of when you were older.

You may turn over your paper now (sorry if this brings back unhappy memories of classroom tests!). If nothing else we hope that these questions may have got you in the mood to think about schools today. In fact, here are two more questions to bring our list up to a round 10.

9. If you have a child or grandchild at school now, what do you like about your child’s school and what would you like to change?

10. Thinking about schools more generally (especially if you were not able to answer question 9 as you’re not a parent), from what you know about schools today, what do you like and what would you like to change?

For the purpose of this chapter, we are going to assume that you are a teacher, parent, grandparent or, at the very least, someone who is actively concerned in more than just a general way about the state of schools. We appreciate that if your concerns centre in particular on your own child’s school, then you may feel conflicted. At worst, you might be afraid that if you start making waves at school it might disadvantage your child because the teachers will somehow be cross with you. Or worse still, you might imagine the teachers somehow taking it out on the parent (or child) who dares to challenge the school. We empathise. But we also want to encourage you to be bold.

Provided you start from the premise that you’d simply like to make your child’s school even better in any way that you can, you are likely to be welcomed. Teachers are human and just walking in with your ten ways to fix this school may not be received in the way you intended. How you do what you do is going to be important. But unless teachers, parents and concerned adults do take action (along with employers, charities and others) we can’t see how things are going to change in schools. In all of our experience – between us we have worked with thousands of schools – we have never found a school which was not delighted to meet with a parent who genuinely wanted to help. So how do you help?

There are three levels at which you might choose to act. The first one we explored in the previous chapter: working on your own ‘domestic curriculum’ at home. The second involves starting a conversation with your local school about how they might be even more effective at helping your child get ready for life. And the third involves tackling politicians and the wider bureaucracy of schools.

Before you talk to your local school, you might find this formula useful in planning your campaign.

D x V x F > R

It was dreamt up by a man called David Gleicher, who was trying to explain the three different elements which need to be in place if you are trying to overcome resistance to change. Here’s what each letter means:

D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now
V = Vision of what is possible
F = First concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision
R = Resistance to change

If we were to try to summarise Gleicher’s formula in words it might go like this: to overcome people’s innate resistance to doing things differently you have to do three things. First, you have to explain really clearly what the problem is (if it ain’t broke, why fix it?). Second, you have to make a pitch for a very different way of doing things, to get your listener to imagine a different scenario. And third, very quickly after you have done the big picture thing, you have to come down to earth and make two or three really practical suggestions as to how ordinary, fair-minded people could put your ideas into practice.

Let’s assume for a moment that your local school is resistant to change. Take a moment to try this out in your own head or with a partner/spouse or fellow parent. Think of a school you know. What’s wrong with it? Can you put your finger on your dissatisfaction? (I don’t like the way … I really wish they wouldn’t … It makes no sense in the modern world to spend time on … etc.) Don’t worry if your language is emotional. That’s why this is just a thought experiment or rehearsal at this stage!

Then have a go at describing your ideal school. (Imagine a school where … What I’d really like all children to learn is … In my view schools need to be different in these ways …) And, depending on what you have come up with, think of three or four simple and practical things you could suggest to bring about the kinds of changes you have in mind. Now you’re good to go!

Helping your local school to change

Essentially, you need to shift the conversation away from the things that schools often want to talk about (subjects, attendance, uniform, tests, exams, options, etc.) towards the seven Cs, the development of your child’s character, real-world learning and all the things which engage you as a parent. It will be helpful if, early on, you stress your commitment to the conventional indicators of school success, such as high grades in all subjects. (What parent or family member does not want the best possible grades for their child in whatever educational system they find themselves?) But at the same time you may like to say something like, “Naturally I want the best possible results for X, but I care passionately about how s/he gets the results. I also want him/her to develop …” (add in the sorts of characteristics you want to see your child develop). Once you have started to have these different conversations, various opportunities will present themselves to you. You might be asked to:

● Share your ideas with other parents.

● Share your ideas with teachers.

● Talk to the head teacher or his/her senior staff.

● Talk to a class or assembly.

● Join a working group to develop thinking for the school.

● Become a parent rep promoting parental engagement.

● Run an after-school club.

● Help on a school trip.

● Contribute to a class project.

● Join the governing body as a parent-governor.

Of course, the school may be threatened by what you are saying and ask you to do none of the above, in which case you will need to be more persistent!

There are two useful ways of thinking about dealing with schools that may help you. The first is to think of the life stages of a child at school and all of the key transition points these offer you (choosing a nursery, starting at primary, moving on to secondary, choosing a college or university). At each of these new beginnings, you and your child have a one-off chance to ask some probing questions and, because the people you are talking to are likely to want to be a school of choice, they are likely to be at their most receptive.

Questions you might like to ask include:

● How does the school encourage children to develop a growth mindset? (See page 92 for more on this.)

● How does the school reward the efforts of its pupils?

● How does the school develop (choose any one of the seven Cs)?

● As well as the subjects on the national curriculum, which you will be teaching my son/daughter, what else will s/he be learning?

● What habits of mind are you trying to develop in children/young people at this school?

● What do you want children to be able to do when they leave your school?

● How do you involve parents at the school?

● How is the school preparing children for the real world?

Once in a school, you can use the rhythms of the school day/week/year (drop-offs and pick-ups, school concerts/plays/trips, parent–teacher meetings, PTA meetings) to ask about the kinds of things we have been thinking through. Every meeting with a teacher is a chance to ask about how your child is progressing as a person and as a learner, as well as finding out their attainment grades.

Parent–teacher meetings

For most parents, a parent–teacher meeting to discuss your child’s progress will offer you an immediate opportunity to shift the conversation towards your child’s happiness and emerging character, rather than merely listening to descriptions of her progress, typically in terms of attainment and effort. You could turn a “Ruby has only made a small amount of progress in her maths this term” into “I’ve noticed that Ruby seems to be much less interested in maths this term. Do you have any idea why this might be?” Or if the teacher is keen to talk about the test score or level of Ruby’s achievement, but you notice that Ruby has been given a good grade for her effort, you might choose to ‘ignore’ the teacher’s test grade and instead tell him or her how pleased you are to see that Ruby is trying hard in her maths.

In general terms, it is easier to shift the conversation on to a broader agenda if you start by noticing effort first and attainment second. If you can show you are interested in how your child goes about her learning, you are likely to have much more informative conversations with her teacher. And when you feel confident enough with some of the ideas in this book, you can start to suggest ways in which you might personally be prepared to help and support the school.

Get into the lobby and use your voice

The last of our three areas assumes that you are wearing your concerned citizen hat. It requires you to use the skills and tactics of a lobbyist. We start with some traditional methods and then suggest a few which are more recent. Remember, education (along with health, the economy and, from time to time depending on what is going on in the world, immigration) is something which voters always say they care about and which, therefore, politicians pay attention to. Before you lobby anyone you will need to work out what you want to say. If you have read the book up to this point and if you have tried the thought experiments, especially the ones at the beginning of this chapter, you will already be limbered up.

Tactics which are generally effective include:

None of these suggestions are mutually exclusive. Using a blend of them you could write to your MP, your local councillor, your local paper or a national paper.

If you want to be more targeted, you could write to the secretary of state for education or a minister responsible for an aspect of education (a quick google of ‘Department for Education’ will get you names and contact information). Or you could share your thoughts with the person who runs any one of the nine public bodies connected with education in England (currently Ofqual, Ofsted, Education Funding Agency, National College for Teaching and Leadership, Standards and Testing Agency, Office of the Children’s Commissioner, School Teachers’ Review Body, Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, and the Office of the Schools Adjudicator). Again, a quick web search will find you the contact details for these bodies. (There is no point in us including current details as one of the features of English educational decision-making is that names and roles keep changing.)

From this list you may only have heard of Ofsted. This is because (a) it’s the most powerful, (b) it has a powerful press agency to share its views, (c) it makes a real difference to the lives of teachers and pupils, both for good and ill, and (d) the individuals who become Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools tend to be people of strong opinions who like these to be heard widely. Unfortunately, some of the incumbents in the recent past have preferred proclaiming to thinking.

In the great scheme of things one letter is unlikely to change anything. But, increasingly, public bodies are required to analyse the correspondence they receive and publish information about customer/voter opinions (see also the details on Freedom of Information Requests below). So it may not be a complete waste of time.

If you prefer to talk to people rather than write, then you could start with your family and friends. The questions at the start of this chapter might help you to break the ice (I’ve been thinking about schools today, and remembering my own school days, and find myself wondering … Are you happy with your child’s school? As an employer, how well do you think schools are doing these days?). This kind of lobbying is much gentler and more like a conversation. It can take place almost anywhere – over supper, in the park, at work, on a bus.

If you wanted to be more formal you could seek a meeting with some influential people. You might like to start with your local councillor, though remember that, in most parts of England, the councillor may not have direct powers over education. Nevertheless, he or she can pass views on to officers who do have responsibility.

And it is always informative to talk directly to young people about their experience of school. Once they are sure you are not going to nag them about their grades or their homework, or deliver the familiar little homily about how much their grades matter, they may be quite forthcoming. Almost always their views are perceptive, accurate and fair-minded, and will inform and enrich your own.

Two other options are also available. The first is a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. The Freedom of Information Act (2000) gives you the right to access recorded information held by public sector organisations of the kind we listed earlier. Anyone can request information – there are no restrictions on your age, nationality or where you live. An organisation can refuse your request if the information is sensitive or the costs are too high, but most see it as their duty to answer such requests. Obvious targets for this kind of request at the national level are the Department for Education and Ofsted. Here are some examples of information which has recently been asked for and supplied:

In each of these examples it is easy to see what the questioner is trying to get at. Questions asking about amounts of money spent or numbers of times something has happened work well. Or they can be framed as a more general request for information.

In terms of the arguments in this book you might like to ask about:

● The number of schools teaching resilience.

● The number of schools teaching thinking.

● Information about real-world learning.

● Information about 21st century habits of mind.

● Amount of time parents spend helping schools.

● Average cost of a child’s education between 5 and 19.

To get a meaningful answer you might have to be more precise than we have been. But the point of an FOI request is not simply to get an answer but also to get a line of questioning onto the national agenda as the answers are published on various government websites.

The second specific lobbying option is an e-petition. According to the government’s e-petition website, “e-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government and Parliament in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in the House of Commons.”2

At the time of writing, a petition to ‘Reverse ban on holidays during school term time’ is on the front page of the site. In a reasonable attempt to send a message about the importance of attending school, a ban on taking holidays in term time was introduced. But it has had various unintended consequences. Parents with very sick children have been prosecuted, as have parents wanting to take their family to spend time with a dying relative. The ban also poses a question that is close to the argument of this book: what is it about school that is so sacrosanct that a well-planned trip of a lifetime might not actually be full of more real learning than a few days of school? Could it be that the ban is more about our current obsession with Ofsted, as ‘unauthorised absences’ count against a school in its Ofsted report? Or are schools so geared to the taking of tests and examinations that they cannot think of a creative way to enable a pupil to carry on learning while on a holiday? Bill took his older son on an extended trip to Tasmania during one January term and the powerful learning experiences are still with his family more than a decade on. What teacher can honestly say that this would be true of a month of attending their lessons?

E-petitions cover many subjects. Here’s another educational one currently struggling to get enough supporters: ‘Much needed change to the rules in school with regards to head lice and nits’. It’s tempting to make light of it, but any parent whose child has got nits from her school for the third time in a week will have considerable sympathy with the need for tougher enforcement of nit-free heads on children! (Interestingly the term ‘nit-wit’ comes from this unfortunate consequence of putting children together in a schoolroom!) If you go to www.educatingruby.org you can find out more about e-petitions relevant to our attempt to create popular groundswell to rethink schools. We will be suggesting an e-petition every half term until we create enough of a groundswell to change schools.

Using the web and social media

One of the simplest ways of finding out more and joining the debate about schools and education is to start to find your way around the growing number of educational blog sites. Many are written by thoughtful teachers or parents. Some are clearly mad. Many seem to believe that the answer to everything is technology. Most are deeply opinionated (aren’t we all?). The best combine evidence, analysis of issues and description of promising practices in the way that we have attempted to do in this book. A good way of starting out here is to use one of the many ‘intermediary sites’ which signpost education blogs. You can do this by searching for ‘best education blogs’, for example. Ten years ago one enterprising company with great prescience even set up an annual award for the best education blog.3 And you can vary your search technique to narrow the field as you wish – for example, ‘most worthwhile education blogs’ or ‘UK education blogs’. On the website which accompanies this book (www.educatingruby.org) we have linked to bloggers who seem to us to be thoughtfully exploring the kinds of issues with which we are grappling.

Online videos are a useful source of ideas and a good way of entering into the debate. Set Google’s search capability to ‘Google Videos’ and you can find much stimulating material, often through the medium of YouTube and increasingly using the TED talks format (powerful talks of less than 18 minutes’ duration).4 In the last few years, TED talks about education have been increasingly popular, with Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate talk, ‘Changing education paradigms’, challenging the educational status quo and arguing for the power of the arts, being viewed well over 13 million times.5 Other thoughtful recent contributors include Sugata Mitra on how children’s learning can be hindered by adults and enabled by the web and Jamie Oliver on the need for a food revolution in schools.

The web is full of both useful and distracting websites about the topics we are exploring in this book. Take any of our seven Cs for example – confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment, craftsmanship – and play about with combinations of search strategies such as, ‘how to develop confident children’, ‘how schools can develop children’s curiosity’, ‘creative activities for parents and children’, ‘how to develop craftsmanship in children’. One of our favourite examples is ‘Austin’s Butterfly’, which we have already mentioned. Turn on a few pages and we have included some more suggestions like this to get you started.

We shouldn’t forget the ubiquitous Wikipedia in equipping you to enter the debate. While you will naturally need to apply appropriate caution to its claims, it is a prime example of collaborative learning in action. There is a growing educational movement which is at your fingertips via a search engine, starting simply with searches such as, ‘educational wikis’, ‘educational wikis for parents’ and progressing in whatever direction you want.

There are various existing campaigns and grass-roots movements which may offer you encouragement and stimulate your thinking. These include:

● www.savechildhood.net – Save Childhood ‘aims to identify and highlight those areas of most concern, to protect children from inappropriate developmental and cultural pressures and to fight for their natural developmental rights’.

● www.toomuchtoosoon.org – Too Much Too Soon believe that “children in England are starting formal learning too early, that the value of their creative and expressive play is being undermined, and that they are subject to developmentally inappropriate pressures that are damaging to their long-term health and wellbeing”.

● www.unicef.org.uk – The work of UNICEF UK is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which sets out the rights of every child, no matter who they are or where they live, to grow up safe, happy and healthy.6

● http://en.unesco.org – UNESCO regularly contributes to research and practical action to promote well-being in children and young people.7

These are just four examples. There are many more from which you might derive good ideas.

Running in parallel with the web are the various social media options. Probably the most relevant here is Twitter. There are people who tweet about policy, research and classroom practice. Tweets can, of course, be utterly banal, but increasingly thoughtful tweeters are using them as a means of signposting more substantive resources on the web. The discipline of the 140 characters allowed in a tweet can also be a useful clarifying and focusing device! On this book’s website – www.educatingruby.org – we have a Twitter feed (something that we have only very lately started) as well as links to those we think are contributing to the education debate we want to see. As with everything we have been suggesting in the last few pages, searching for ‘best education tweeters’ and so on will narrow the field.

If your exploration of blogs, websites, videos and wikis begins to become overwhelming, one simple self-protection strategy is to set up a Google Alert with a small number of key words in it. It will then prompt you by email when a chosen blogger has made a new post or something new has appeared on a particular topic. If you want to further screen out content then try Google Scholar which will take you to sites which start from a research context.

The simplest thing you can do is to join the debate on www.educatingruby.org. In doing so we can begin to see how many of us share a common view of what needs to change in schools. At a practical level you can also find out which other parents, grandparents and concerned citizens are active in your local area and join forces.

Finale

Let us finish by reminding you why your voice and your participation are so important. The changes that need to happen involve encouraging, connecting and celebrating the initiatives of the kind we illustrated in Chapter 5. There are many, but they are still in the minority. If we are to reach the tipping point that is needed, they have to scale up faster. In terms of Gleicher’s formula, we have to help people to articulate their dissatisfactions with the status quo, to be able to imagine a better future and to understand the small, practical steps that can help any school make progress firmly in the right direction. All of these are vital because resistance is still high in many places. Change takes energy, so people need reassurance and encouragement – and a bit of pressure – to put in the effort it takes. We need to keep reassuring everyone that the results go up, not down, if you do start to shift the school’s culture.

If change is to happen faster, though, we need not just brave school leaders but a change in the political weather. General elections are a competitive event that come round every four or so years. They are like the World Cup, but with only a small number of teams. Politicians’ lives are geared around these events, and the worst thing that can happen is to lose. The very worst thing that can happen for any individual politician is to do something that contributes to their side losing. This means that, for much of this five-year cycle, politicians are obliged to play defensively, at the same time as creating the impression of doing all kinds of things that are eye-catching and important. They have to look busy and decisive, while at the same time doing nothing that might upset the Daily Mail or the Murdoch press. This all means that they cannot engage with anything that is subtle, complicated, hard to sell or long term. In other words, they are condemned, by the very nature of short-term, cyclical, competitive, two or three party politics, to fail to do what is necessary – especially as far as education is concerned. Politicians are bound to do too little, too late. It’s a miserable position to be in, and they deserve our sympathy.

Unless. Unless the mood of the populace changes, and they begin to fear that they will lose substantial numbers of votes if they don’t do what is required. Only the real fear of losing is strong enough to force them to overcome their natural caution. Only when it looked like the No Campaign might lose the Scottish referendum was the Westminster bubble galvanised into action. Only when UKIP threaten to drain substantial numbers of voters from the Conservative Party does the leadership respond – first by bullying and then, if that doesn’t work, by shifting policies to try to attract those perfidious voters back.

At the moment, the best chance of getting our educational movement heading in the right direction is for all of us to get off our backsides, stirring up our friends and relations, asking awkward questions of our MPs, signing online petitions, fighting for places on the governing bodies of our local schools and all the rest of it.

It’s not about party politics; it’s about how to get people in power to do the right thing. It’s about being able to speak confidently about our dissatisfactions: the amount of time wasting and real damage that too many schools still inflict on bright young minds. It’s about being able to talk passionately about the need, and the practicality, of focusing more intently and explicitly on the development of 21st century character strengths. It’s about sharing as widely and loudly as we can the stories of deep success that we come across – not just crowing about A level results. If we can do that, policies will begin to change, the political wind will begin to fill the sails of change and teachers will feel support for finally being able to teach in the way that made them want to do the job in the first place. They will be truly able – as our friend Art Costa has put it – to prepare young people not just for a life of tests, but for the tests of life. And that will make millions of young people, and their families, very happy.

1 See http://www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=foi-releases&topics%5B%5D=all&departments%5B%5D=department-for-education&world_locations%5B%5D=all&direction=before&date=2012-11-01.

2 See http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/.

3 See http://edublogawards.com/.

4 See www.ted.com/.

5 See http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson
_changing_education_paradigms.

6 See, for example, UNICEF, Child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview. Report card 11 (2013). Available at: http://www.unicef.org.uk/Images/Campaigns/Report%20card%20briefing2b.pdf.

7 See, for example, Asher Ben-Arieh, Measuring and monitoring the well-being of young children around the world. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007. Strong foundations: early childhood care and education. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001474/147444e.pdf.