Essential Skills Conference Presentation (Belfast, NI, 2017)
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Presentation on context for changes in GCSE English Language and Maths (Northern Ireland), including exploring teaching and learning changes required.
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Essential Skills Conference Presentation (Belfast, NI, 2017)
- 1. Chief Executive, CCEA Justin Edwards @JustinEducation Building the right qualifications. Setting the context for new approaches in Literacy and Numeracy (New GCSE English Language and Mathematics with Functional Assessment)
- 5. • Improving Outcomes Through Essential
- 6. Over the next 25 years… Largest number of jobs at high risk in retail (2.1 million) followed by transportation and storage (around 1.5 million) and health and social care (1.3 million)
- 7. ‘The UK’s economic success will depend on political, business, education and public leaders to anticipate the skills requirement to make sure the right education and training is available to meet the new job requirements.’ (Deloitte)
- 10. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 A* A B C D E U %ofEntry GCE Physics Grade Outcome Physics GCE Grade Outcomes (With / Without GCSE Further Maths) Further Maths GCSE No Further Maths GCSE
- 11. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 A* A B C D E U %ofEntry Biology GCE Grade Outcomes Biology GCE Grade Outcomes (With / Without GCSE Further Maths) Further Maths GCSE No Further Maths GCSE
- 12. At least 5 GCSEs A*-C Inc. English and maths Boys 7318 63.3% Girls 8075 72.2% Total 15393 67.7% (+1.7%p) Data Source: DE School Leavers Survey 2015-2016
- 13. GMT51 Question 3 (2015): Shape, Space and Measure What % of children achieved 3 marks (Max)? What % of children achieved 0 marks (Min)?
- 14. Answer…. 16% 6% 7% Q3 Performance 0 1 2 3 n = 7109
- 15. Grade Outcomes in GCSE Mathematics (NI comparison to KS3 data) -100 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 LearnerNumbers Grade Outcomes 8 7 6 5 4 3 Key Stage 3 Level C B A A* D A* B C E B A C A G D C F
- 16. Seeds of Functional Maths ‘It must be a fundamental requirement that the education system in Northern Ireland aspires to equip all young people with good literacy and numeracy skills. ‘GCSE… should be the measure of functional numeracy skills that employers demand.’
- 17. Compensatory vs Competency • GCSE is a compensatory model. As a result a Grade C does not necessarily equate to competence. GCSE can, however, discriminate across all abilities. • Essential Skills assessment deems you competent if you pass. But competency does not discriminate across a range of abilities.
- 18. New GCSE English Language & GCSE Mathematics GCSE Graded Outcomes Functional Endorsement (Level 1 & Level 2) Tiered Assessment Functional Core
- 19. Fail Forwards A learning experience is one of those things that say, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.” Douglas Adams Author
- 20. Changing the test is not enough… ‘The time has come to introduce innovative instructional methods in order to enhance mathematics education and students’ ability to solve CUN [complex] tasks. Metacognitive pedagogies can play a key role in this. These pedagogies explicitly train students to “think about their thinking” during learning. They can be used to improve not just academic achievement (content knowledge and understanding, the ability to handle unfamiliar problems etc.) but also affective outcomes such as reduced anxiety or improved motivation. This strong relationship between metacognition and schooling outcomes has implications for the education community and policy makers.’
- 21. Initial Assessment, but what are we assessing and with what purpose? …privileged poor students felt the same level of comfort when it came to approaching faculty. …doubly disadvantaged kids not only feel too intimidated to speak up, especially to those in authority, but they believe that the way to success is simply to put your head down
- 22. Non-Cognitive Skills ‘Meta-Cognitive Skills’ • Application – the ability to stick with tasks and see things through. • Self-direction – the ability to see life as under control and to effectively shape its future, as well as the ability to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses accurately and being able to recognise one’s responsibility towards others; • Self-control – the ability to monitor and regulate emotions appropriately; and • Empathy – the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes and understand their needs and views.
- 23. Maths Anxiety…. • I cringe when I have to go to numeracy class. • I am afraid to ask questions in numeracy class. • I am always worried about being called to answer a question in numeracy class. • I understand numeracy now, but I worry that it's going to get really difficult soon. • I tend to zone out in numeracy class. • I fear numeracy tests more than any other kind. • I don't know how to study for numeracy tests. • It's clear to me in numeracy class, but when I go home it's like I was never there. • I'm afraid I won't be able to keep up with the rest of the class.
- 27. ‘Physicians sell patients on a remedy. Lawyers sell juries on a verdict. Teachers? Teachers sell students the value of paying attention.’
- 28. Thank you for listening.
Editor's Notes
- Colleagues, thank you for the invite to talk to you again, at what seems to be an annual discussion on what we can do about literacy and numeracy outcomes. I am truly honoured to be invited back. Before I start sharing some thoughts that I have, I wanted to congratulate all involved in the pilot to date. I know a huge amount of energy and commitment has gone in to collaborative working so far. Collaboration, within our own education system, must be welcomed. It will deliver better results for all involved and is, in my humble opinion, good investment. == We, us, the people in this room have a problem. Unless we crack how to get literacy and numeracy levels to rise in our society, we will not have enough skilled people to fulfil the jobs of tomorrow. Over the course of the next 30 mins I would like to explore my thoughts on what we are teaching, how we can do it differently and why we need to change.
- The opening video, by the world economic forum, answers very eloquently the question ‘why do we need to change?’ But this video could easily be mistaken as a promotional piece for digital skill. I think that it is in fact a promotion for literacy and numeracy. The world, it would seem, is going through enormous change. Society is changing about us and we, as educators, will be required to respond. I believe that one of the major factors of change is that automation is fundamentally changing work and society. Some have called this change the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ or the ‘Digital Revolution’. The changes, brought about by this ‘revolution’, will have profound effects on the services we provide as educators. The more I read about this revolution, the more I believe there is an urgency for us, as educators, to make sure people have the skills and are ready to cope. To understand what the Fourth Revolution is doing, we need to look at the industrial revolution.
- Between 1760 and 1840 the world underwent workplace change due to the introduction of machine production methods, chemical manufacturing and iron production. Humanity learned how to harness and use large power sources and as a result, almost every aspect of life changed in some way. As this picture shows, it learned to build rather large ships and Belfast, where we are today, was very much a hub of this change. The industrial revolution resulted in the emergence of the capitalist economy, factories, population increases and spawned new forms of education, including Further Education Colleges. Belfast Met, actually spawned out of this change.
- By the 1890s, we had created qualifications as a consequence of the change. Qualifications were designed to recognise the knowledge, understanding and skills that a person had, so that they could acquire employment and move between employers. Qualifications made the workforce transportable, exchangeable and fluid. The workforce could adapt to new opportunities, even if industry could not. The Digital Revolution is on such a scale that it requires us to rethink the purposes on which these qualifications and education programmes were originally designed. It requires us to think about new skills and new learning concepts.
- The Digital Revolution will change and already is changing the fundamentals of the societal constructs created in during the industrial revolution. We no longer need people in some jobs, because the computers do the work for us. This shift in work availability and the consequences have been well documented by the World Economic Forum, The Royal Society of Science and The Royal Society of Arts. Automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence will, over the next 25 years, radically change the employment opportunities and society in which we work. It is changing already the availability of lower skills jobs in manufacturing and threatens the disruption of mainstay low skill incomes sources, such as taxi driving. In 2016, the UK arm of Deloitte produced a report, simply called ‘Transformers’, which predicted how industry will change over the next few years. This report estimates how many jobs are at risk across the UK, due to the effects of automation. This report says that 2.1m Retail jobs are at risk, 1.5m job in transportation and storage are and risk and even 1.3 million jobs are at risk in health and social care. The report also states that all industries will be affected by automation, but in different ways. The key findings are All industry sectors have roles that are at high risk and new roles that are likely to be created as a result of automation; The transport, storage, health and social care, wholesale and retail sectors have the highest proportion of jobs at risk; That technology will create new jobs, that are higher paid, but will remove lower paid, lower skilled jobs; and That the UK’s economic success will depend on political, business, education and public leaders to anticipate the skills requirement to make sure the right education and training is available to meet the new jobs requirements. In the same way that education was an imperative during the industrial revolution, it would seem that almost 120 years later we find ourselves back, in the same position, with the responsibility of getting through the digital revolution.
- The report finishes with…. ‘The UK’s economic success will depend on political, business, education and public leaders to anticipate the skills requirement to make sure the right education and training is available to meet the new job requirements.’ This is not the only report that see skills and education change as the fundamental on which we, as an economy, will survive. In 2014, the Royal Society vision for science and mathematics stated ‘There is both urgency and opportunity for Governments to act now. Employers report that the skills and numbers of students leaving education do not fully match their needs.’ ‘
- According to the World Economic Forum, the top 10 skills required for this Digital Revolution are: Complex Problem Solving Critical Thinking Creativity People Management Coordination with Others Emotional Intelligence Judgement and Decision Making Service Orientation Negotiation Cognitive Flexibility
- I would argue that all ten of these cannot be developed or achieved without a fundamental and contextual understand of literacy and Numeracy at Level 2. I would go on to argue that Numeracy skills at level three are required to be successful in the fourth industrial revolution. Numeracy skills are central to coping with the Digital Revolution. Over the last 20 years, research has already told us that Mathematics, in all its forms and sub-domains, is a subject unique in term of its economic returns. Between 1999 and 2008 a number of research reports looked at the labour market evidence and concluded that someone with a Level 3 qualifications in mathematics was likely to earn between 7 and 10% more by the age of 33. The (Times Education Supplement (TES), 2016) reported, in March 2016, a paper within the British Education Research Journal that Level 3 mathematics gave a salary premium of 11% after considering all other factors. Numeracy skills also have an impact across a range of subject areas. In 2015 we analysed the relationship between those doing further maths and science outcomes and…
- We found an expected relationship between Maths and Physics, but we also found that…
- This relationship extended through the sciences.
- But we have a problem, because in 2016 the proportion of those gaining an A*-C in GCSE Mathematics fell by 1.7% points to 64.9%. So, we need projects to find out how to change this. We must improve numeracy outcomes and any project that enhances numeracy skills of our young people is critically important. However, we must give very careful thought as to how this might be achieved. Changing assessment arrangements must be done with the utmost care. I know this perhaps more than most. But we must change them, because as they currently stand they are not encouraging the teaching of the right skills.
- To demonstrate this point, consider this graph. Is shows the relationship between Key Stage 3 outcomes and GCSE grade profiles. Each line follows a cohort of learning post Key Stage 3. The
- This is how the test is changing, but changing the test does not in itself change the learning or teaching. That is a conscious choice that must be made by the teacher and the learner. So, what if we started an initial assessment of the systemic barriers to learning?
- A recent article by Tony Jack (Harvard Education, 2017). ‘Poor, but Privileged’ argues that Colleges, Universities and Society in general tend to treat all low-income students the same. Tony’s research has identified that there are actually two groups of low-income students, those who have been able to access higher quality education and those who do not. He concludes that those accessing the higher quality education come culturally prepared for high levels of education and can govern the rules of college life. I would argue that when considering an extension of your project, one should really be thinking about the pedagogy and approach between those who are close to achievement of the Grade C and those who are not. I would also argue that we need to think differently about learners who are currently operating between a Grade D and Grade G in GCSE Mathematics. Initial diagnostic of their numeracy skills is not enough to differentiate how we support them. We need to look at non-cognitive skills and build programmes that also support those skills in a differentiated manner. There is a growing background of research into non-cognitive skills and the impact their improvement has on academic and employment outcomes. The 2015 All Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility report ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto’ (http://bit.ly/2rpYMzK), summarises the research well and builds on the interesting 2011 Demos Report called the ‘Character Inquiry’ (http://bit.ly/2rd72np). Most of the research into non-cognitive points to four key non-cognitive skills, which actually improve academic and employment outcomes. These are:
- Application – the ability to stick with tasks and see things through. Self-direction – the ability to see one’s life as under one’ control and to effectively shape its future, as well as the ability to understand one’s strengths and weaknesses accurately and being able to recognise one’s responsibility towards others; Self-control – the ability to monitor and regulate one’s emotions appropriately; and Empathy – the ability to put oneself in other people’s shoes and be sensitive to their needs and views. Whilst there is no one non-cognitive skills that acts to deliver maximum benefit, when combined with each other as inter-related skills they do have a noticeable impact. In-fact the link between non-cognitive skills goes further. Poor development of these skills have a link to truancy, anti-social behaviour, vandalism, illegal drug use and general crime. Strongest opportunities to develop these skills are in early years, but opportunities do exist throughout later life. They can actually be cultivated in post-primary school age children and diminished as they enter the age where they can transition to College.
- Colleagues, thank you for the invite to talk to you again, at what seems to be an annual discussion on what we can do about literacy and numeracy outcomes. I am truly honoured to be invited back. Before I start sharing some thoughts that I have, I wanted to congratulate all involved in the pilot to date. I know a huge amount of energy and commitment has gone in to collaborative working so far. Collaboration, within our own education system, must be welcomed. It will deliver better results for all involved and is, in my humble opinion, good investment. == We, us, the people in this room have a problem. Unless we crack how to get literacy and numeracy levels to rise in our society, we will not have enough skilled people to fulfil the jobs of tomorrow. Over the course of the next 30 mins I would like to explore my thoughts on what we are teaching, how we can do it differently and why we need to change.