Standards Not Tiers

A System Fit For The Future

To fully understand the current proposals that are being made, one needs to know the history of the 3-tier system, appreciate its shortcomings and comprehend the effect on up to 6 generations of school children if the alternative move to 2-tiers is brought about.  The new proposals are designed to avoid wholesale change and are the least disruptive changes that can be made without fully reorganising. They realign our current system to work better with the key stage testing regime and enable each tier to survive with minimal school closures.

The current middle school system was introduced in 1973 to provide a more child centred approach to transfer between primary and secondary schools. It was recognised that boys in particular did not respond well to transfer at age 11 and therefore a system that transferred at age 9 and again at 13 was considered less traumatic. There have been many studies in this respect. Year 7 / age 11,  is widely recognised as a particularly difficult year in many secondary schools, being a combination of the onset of puberty and the beginning of a new school environment - a place that 11 year old have to co-exist with older teenagers, who are sometimes a poor role model for highly impressionable 11 year old boys. Girls fair better but the effect is believed to be similar. Our old campaign website has links to information on this.

The 3-Tier system worked well for the Isle of Wight and standards were significantly better than average until the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 and particularly in 1995 with the introduction of Key Stage Testing.

The Key Stages coincided with the age of transfer in 2-Tier authorities, age 11. This did not fit the 3-Tier model of transfer at age 9 and 13.

Central Government did not provide strong guidance to 3-Tier Authorities in 1995 when we believe that a change to a 2 Tier system could have been appropriate or at the very least collaborative or federated structures should then have been employed to address the issues that the splitting of Key Stage 2 and 3 were causing.

In any event schools on the Isle of Wight failed to recognise or adequately deal with the problems that this mis-match caused. Weak leadership from the LEA, meant that no serious or meaningful action was taken until 2004 when an ofsted inspection of the LEA judged its leadership to be weak and uninspiring. After more than 10 years of poor results, the then ruling LibDem Independent coalition decided to pursue a course of re-organisation which would have meant the closure of all 17 middle schools and we now understand, 16 small primary schools that would have been unable to expand sufficiently to take the additional cohorts of years 5 and 6. High school closures may also have resulted as a consequence of rationalisation. Recent reorganisation in Northamptonshire proves that the most likely outcome is a high level of school closures and massive disruption to our childrens' education. Effectively the current generation have to be sacrificed for the possible benefit of the next generation.

Standards Not Tiers opposed these proposals and found political support from Labour and Conservative politicians. The story of the campaign can be read on the old campaign website.

We had hoped that the council's proposals (released to parents in the "which was forward" document, that we helped to create) would allow the Isle of Wight to keep its 3-Tier structure, keep schools closures to a minimum and maintain the community based learning approach that characterises the 3-tier approach and raise standards by addressing the issues that successive consultative reports have identified as being present in the system.

Sadly we think that the latest proposals (published in the County Press 9/11/07) which contain only a limited set of options and do not allow for 3-tier retention without the move of year 9 to middle schools, will either force a 2-tier solution on the Island or make us an experimental system that has not been proved. In fact we believe that there is now significant evidence to show that option 1 could seriously damage our GCSE results. Furthermore, the statements made by the Nuffield Review of 14-19 education suggests to us that we should not be offering our children as guinea pigs for a system that has not yet been committed to by central government.

The Governments new 14 – 19 agenda that was made law through the 2005 Education Act.  So far though the new diploma's that would be introduced here under the new plans, do not have the status of the GCSE's that they are set to replace. The Nuffield Review fears that the new 14-19 diplomas will be middle of the road, second class neighbours to the current GCSEs.

Whilst we welcome progressive thinking and for a time we felt that this was the way to go, it is clear to us now that even the architects of the new 14-19 agenda, have deep reservations about it's application.