Incredibly, schools are to now be judged according to their different ethnic compositions. The government's education watchdog, Ofsted, has implemented a new grading system whereby schools are judged on a ‘contextual value-added’ (CVA) measure. CVA takes into account not just levels of improvement, but social background – including ethnicity.
The Dfes' performance-potential by ethnicity rankings, mean that a school with a white working class majority, for example, will not be expected to progress as quickly as one with an Asian majority. For an education system which relentlessly champions a diversity-embracing agenda of equal opportunities, the move is astounding. The Dfes would, however, argue that recognising contributing factors to differing performance is in line with, not against, such an agenda. But it is very difficult to not see the inclusion of an ‘ethnicity-effect’ measure as merely shackling potential with spurious assertions on ascribed status. And this can only be wholly at odds with equality of opportunity.
The Institute for Education’s Professor David Gillborn, has been hotly defending this controversial move. He argues that previous ‘colour blind’ approaches, which denied differing performance between ethnic groups, were simply failing ethnic minority pupils. Head teachers on the other hand, have retaliated by arguing that the move will lead to lower expectations for some ethnic groups, and unfairly inflated ones for others. But qualms about a system of what is essentially race-labelling aside, the consistent reliability of the calculations is highly doubtful. Whilst there may be patterns in performance between Bangladeshis, for example, there may be marked differences between Bangladeshis emigrated from rural and urban areas - or between white working class pupils from Birmingham and those from Barnet. In fact the white pupil from Barnet may have more in common, performance-wise, with the urban Bangladeshi. So whilst there may be patterns, there may be differences. But the real issue is what is the point in trying to classify pupils into one set or another? How is this actually contributing to their learning? Or, is learning no longer the aim of the game? It would seem not, and it all comes back to the key flaw in education policy: the attempt to standardise schools to the point of homogeny.
Value added (VA) measures came into play in the first place, because government control over input and output was making all schools function identically, regardless of the requirements of their pupils. VA measures were introduced to address the issue of different intake, as a more democratic measure which rewarded progress, not only absolute achievement. However the effect of VA to learning has not been anymore beneficial to the school with a deprived intake, than the raw measure. Research by Professor Stephen Gorard at the University of York shows that adverse socio-economic background is as likely to negatively affect VA scores as it is absolute scores. Yet the assumption that it is within the powers of all schools to increase their VA scores, whatever their circumstances, has meant a distortion of schools’ goals as they are forced to focus myopically on test results. Real learning has become a casualty of this focus, leading to merely more disadvantage.
The bottom line is that the government desperately needs to stop quantifying, contextualising, and justifying underachievement and return to that forgotten goal: learning.