[xmca] Education research exists, so why isn't it used in policymaking? | Education | The Guardian

[Shirley Franklin <s.franklin@dsl.pipex.com>]

A useful article. It would make a change if governmental policy-makers  
understood the relationship between poverty/class and school  
achievement. Culture and its impact, what shapes it, and how it  
impacts on kids and learning is not on their agenda.
We need to be teaching teachers about it.
Shirley

From today's Guardian

m
Education research exists, so why isn't it used in policymaking?
An EPPSE study, following the life trajectories of 3,000 children,  
could really teach policymakers something, says Fiona Millar
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Fiona Millar
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 May 2012 19.45 BST	
Article history

The EPPSE study, initiated by the Major government, is following the  
life trajectories of 3,000 children. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/ 
Getty Images
Earlier this year, the House of Lords published a long and detailed  
report on the outwardly rather dry topic of government chief  
scientific advisers. This 100-page report was based on almost 400  
pages of evidence and made some important recommendations about how  
scientific evidence should be acted upon in public policymaking.
I only came across it after being alerted to the submission from  
Oxford University's Professor Pam Sammons, who used the government's  
free schools as an example of how policies are not always based on  
robust evidence. She suggested that a more in-depth look at the  
research would have shown the impact of Swedish free schools and  
American charters on standards and narrowing the gap is not as  
clearcut as the 2010 white paper, The Importance of Teaching,  
suggests, and that such policy initiatives should be piloted before  
being rolled out.
This is not to suggest that the Department for Education doesn't do  
research. Indeed the department's website boasts proudly that £24.7m  
was spent between 2010 and 2011. And even if the results are  
cherrypicked, or ignored, it is a valuable resource. One of its most  
significant projects is the EPPSE (Effective Pre-school, Primary &  
Secondary Education) study, which I have dipped into repeatedly in the  
last 10 years. This study, initiated by the Major government, started  
the painstaking task of following the life trajectories of 3,000  
children in the first year of the Blair government and has been  
producing detailed reports ever since. A running theme has been the  
factors in and out of school that help to reduce inequality. One of  
its latest papers, Performing Against the Odds, goes to the heart of  
the debate about social mobility by looking at why it is that some  
children from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed against the odds.
All the EPPSE papers are clear about the impact of good teaching,  
relationships between pupils and teachers and why schools matter. In  
this report, extra help for children who are falling behind appears  
critical. But they are equally clear that schools alone can't  
compensate for the inequalities in society. High-quality early-years  
provision, self-esteem, communities, social networks, peer group and  
enrichment opportunities form a complex web of "risky" and  
"protective" factors for children.
But the home and parenting may trump the rest in determining whether  
children thrive. Encouraging, consistent parents and a stimulating  
home-learning environment help children to develop self-esteem,  
aspiration and resilience and this is by no means totally down to  
family income. The researchers talk of visiting homes where the  
heating was off, where light bulbs and tea bags were a luxury, but  
where expectation and belief in the children was high.
So why do we never hear about this any more? In the last few years of  
the Labour government , parenting was a high-profile and controversial  
subject. I took part in many debates about whether the state should  
intervene in the private family domain; whether parenting support  
should be a default model for the most disadvantaged children or a  
universal offer to acknowledge that wealth doesn't necessarily equal a  
supportive home and whether dawn-to-dusk childcare would turn children  
into delinquent yobs.
But derided as they were, initiatives like the Blair "baby Asbo",  
children's centres and parenting-support advisers were a recognition  
that intervening and offering support to vulnerable families (even  
before birth) might help to improve outcomes for their children.  
Whether you agreed with them or not, it was important that these  
issues were being debated publicly.
Many schools continue to invest in enrichment, extended services and  
parenting support, but with difficulty, given the funding situation.  
But the overly simplistic narrative that synthetic phonics, a focus on  
five academic GCSEs, rigid discipline and doffing your cap at the  
teacher will give every working-class child the chance to go to  
Oxbridge is pulling in the other direction. If only it were that  
simple. The conclusion of the House of Lords report was that  
government scientific advisers needed to have status, be independent,  
challenging and be able to introduce evidence at every stage of the  
policy process. I would endorse all of that and suggest that for the  
DfE the findings in this study would be a very good place to start.

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