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If your GCSE English results are good, congratulations!

But if they could be improved or raised further, you may want to review some

aspects of teaching and learning in the light of recent research. There is

widespread relief that this year’s GCSE English grades have generally been

maintained compared with last year’s despite the greater demands of the new

specifications and this is a tribute to the hard work of teachers and their

students. But it hasn’t been widely publicised that, when the new GCSEs have

settled in uncontroversially through Ofqual’s policy of ‘comparable outcomes’,

their demand will gradually be raised further, monitored by the new National

Reference Tests in English and Maths. This follows from Governments’ long-

term policy of raising GCSEs’ demand to match the standards of higher-

achieving educational systems and raising attainment by students who

currently leave school with poor qualifications or none, see The Importance of

Teaching White Paper (2010)

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/f

ile/175429/CM-7980.pdf

Ofqual’s ‘comparable outcomes’ policy prevents students from being

disadvantaged by the introduction of more demanding examinations by

awarding similar proportions of grades as previously. But this policy reflects

previous standards – it doesn’t raise them. The Coalition Government’s

commitment to raising standards in England to those of the highest-attaining

educational systems and raising attainment by the less able remains current

Government policy and is tacitly supported by Labour. It is a response to

England’s low productivity and had led to such developments as the pupil

premium, Ofsted’s focus on ‘closing the gap’, the introduction of Progress 8 as

schools’ main accountability indicator and the investment of £110 million in

research into more effective teaching and learning through the Education

Endowment Foundation.

This rise in standards obviously can’t be achieved by continuing current

standards. This is shown by a recent paper by the Education Policy Institute –

English Education: World Class? https://epi.org.uk/wp-

content/uploads/2017/08/English-education-world-class.pdf – which shows

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that half of pupils in England should be scoring 50 points or higher across their

Attainment 8 subjects to match the most successful countries, but only 40 per

cent are doing so at present. And there are huge variations: in London 45 per

cent of pupils achieve the world class benchmark while fewer than a third

achieve it in other parts of the country.

There is also a risk that attainment will appear to rise owing to teachers’ and

students’ greater familiarity with the new exams – the well-established

‘sawtooth effect’

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/f

ile/549686/an-investigation-into-the-sawtooth-effect-in-gcse-as-and-a-level-

assessments.pdf Again, the new National Reference Tests will ensure the

necessary allowance is made for this.

Forward-looking schools will need to be aware that Governments of whatever

political party will continue to require GCSE standards to be raised and require

schools to do better with their moderately and less able students. UK workers’

relatively low productivity will continue to make this necessary. We hope the

following will help schools to prepare for future developments.

Where to start

If you don’t know it, a good place to start is Professor Robert Coe’s clear and

helpful paper Improving Education: A triumph of hope over experience

http://www.cem.org/attachments/publications/ImprovingEducation2013.pdf

He shows how standards in England’s schools haven’t risen for 25 years and

how this has been hidden by GCSE grade inflation which has led to Ofqual

taking control of the Exam Boards’ marking and awarding. But more important

he shows why standards haven’t risen. Basically it’s because SLTs have often

required teachers to focus on aspects of teaching that don’t raise attainment

and assessed teaching on surface features, not quality of learning. This isn’t

their fault, of course – everyone wants their students to do better. But why

has this happened? Coe is too polite to say, but it’s the result of poor political

decisions over many years.

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Robert Coe is a leading member of a group of researchers promoting evidence-

based education. In what follows, the illustrations are from his paper.

Failed policies on teaching and learning

The Labour Government elected in 1997 was committed to raising educational

standards (”Education, education, education”) and set about this by creating

the National Strategies, initially in English and Maths. Advised by consultants

employed by the DoE, a formulaic teacher-led model of lesson delivery was

developed with learning objectives, a starter activity, episodes often evidenced

immediately with some writing, and a plenary. In English, simplistic techniques

like Point-Evidence-Explanation were encouraged. This model was rolled out

nationally by a private company, Capita, which employed consultants in every

local authority. The aim was to bypass local authorities and HMI to create a

national model of lesson delivery.

At the same time Ofsted pressured schools to assess students more and more

frequently to track their progress against predicted National Curriculum levels

and, in secondary schools, predicted GCSE grades. This was to fulfil the

expectation that every student should make progress in every lesson. In some

schools this led to every piece of students’ work being assessed against

National Curriculum sublevels or, from 2002, the assessment focusses

underpinning the National Curriculum tests or, from 2008, Assessing Pupil

Progress (APP) criteria, with inevitable pressure on teachers to teach-to-the-

criteria or, at worst, inflate outcomes to show ‘progress’.

The problem was that neither of these policies was based on any research, as

the outcomes of international education surveys eventually showed. The

consultants employed by the DoE and HMI assumed these policies would

raise attainment because they looked sensible. But they didn’t. The three

international surveys of educational attainment – PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS –

showed England’s attainment as flatlining year after year.

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However, this lack of improvement was disguised by GCSE results which

showed a year by year increase of A – C grades (subsequently A* – C) from

29.9 per cent in 1988 when GCSE began to 81.1 per cent in 2012, a rise not

remotely paralleled anywhere else in the world.

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By 2008 the Government accepted that the mismatch between the

international surveys and the GCSE results was unsustainable. In April 2008 it

created Ofqual to commission research on the reliability of the Key Stage 2

tests, GCSE and A Level. This was eventually published in 2012 as a 903-page

book, Ofqual’s Reliability Compendium. The evidence of grade inflation by the

Exam Boards to maintain their market share was clear and Ofqual was given

statutory powers to monitor and control the awarding of GCSE and A Level

grades, beginning in April 2010.

In 2008 the Government also announced the immediate end of the Key

Stage 3 National Curriculum tests and the end of the National Strategies when

Capita’s contract expired in March 2011. Ofsted quietly withdrew its

expectation that every student should be seen to make progress in every

lesson, but little else happened until the Coalition initiated a review of the

National Curriculum in November 2010. This found over-assessment of pupils’

work against National Curriculum sub-levels so widespread, frequent and

pointless that it recommended a new National Curriculum without levels - The

Framework for the National Curriculum

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/f

ile/175439/NCR-Expert_Panel_Report.pdf This was implemented, but many

schools have found ways of continuing frequent assessment of students’ work

against the new National Curriculum though there is no evidence it raises

attainment.

Government silence and its consequences

The problem for schools is that Government has never informed them that

the two failed policies – the National Strategies and frequent assessment of

progress towards target grades – are discredited because they failed to raise

attainment and should be discontinued. For Labour, the reason was evidently

embarrassment at admitting that the millions spent on the National Strategies

were wasted. For the Coalition and Conservative Governments, giving schools

guidance on teaching, learning and assessment conflicts with the policy of

devolving these wholly to schools – schools are to manage these matters

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themselves with final assessments as national tests in Year 6 or GCSE and A

Level monitored by Ofqual to ensure reliability and consistency.

Unfortunately for secondary schools, this silence about teaching and learning

has accompanied the most radical set of reforms in the history of school

examinations in Britain. As mentioned, these support the cross-party policy of

raising attainment in England’s schools to that of more successful countries

and, in particular, raising the attainment of moderately and less able students

who currently leave school with poor qualifications or none – see The

Importance of Teaching White Paper (2010).

All aspects of GCSE have been reformed so that they are now:

• more demanding in examination (end-of-course only), content and

assessment (more challenging questions)

• graded differently with 9 grades (9 – 1) instead of 8 (A* - G)

• consistent in standard between Exam Boards (Ofqual)

• referenced to national standards over time by national reference tests

in English and Mathematics

• equitable so that all grades count towards Attainment 8 and Progress 8

• the lead measure of school accountability through Progress 8

• focussed on effective teaching e.g. by requiring Ofsted to report on how

schools are closing the gap for disadvantaged pupils and by funding

research into effective teaching methods, chiefly through the Education

Endowment Foundation.

The changes are well-intentioned, but schools have been left to work out the

best way of responding to these unprecedented demands by themselves – it’s

hard to imagine any other country treating its schools in this way. The last

advice on teaching and learning from Government was in the 2000s - through

the National Strategies and a more assertive Ofsted inspection model

expecting every student to show progress in every lesson and frequent

assessment against target grades, both now discontinued as ineffective. But,

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as mentioned, Government has never informed schools that these policies are

discredited and withdrawn, so many SLTs understandably require their staff

to continue with them, assuming they are still valid. This has two

consequences which reduce effective teaching and learning in many schools.

First, teachers are required to spend time on teaching approaches and

assessments which don’t increase good quality learning and distract them from

approaches that do. This contributes to excessive workload, tiredness and

high staff turnover. The DfE recognised this in February 2015 with its

Workload Challenge and by March 2016 commissioned three reports on

reducing the demands of marking, planning and data management -

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-teachers-

workload/reducing-teachers-workload Surprisingly the DfE hasn’t taken the

opportunity to state clearly and repeatedly that the National Strategies

teaching model and frequent assessment against target grades should be

discontinued as ineffective. Unsurprisingly most schools have ignored the

workload recommendations - https://www.tes.com/news/school-

news/breaking-news/dfe-plans-reduce-teacher-workload-ignored-80-cent-

schools

Second, unless they are in a local authority or MAT with a good adviser on

teaching and learning, schools may turn to bodies like PiXL and Thinking

Schools International which promote a ‘tips and tricks’ approach to raising

attainment, recommending approaches which look attractive but for which

there is no research evidence that they significantly improve learning. Others

obtain advice informally (and more cheaply) through TeachMeets, online

forums and the latter pages of the TES. None of this works except at the

margins.

So how do we raise attainment?

The vital importance of research is shown by the Education Endowment

Foundation which is funded by Government to commission research on raising

attainment in schools. The research is rigorous, with random controlled trials

and results evaluated independently of the researchers. Most projects show

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little or no impact, with a few showing sufficient promise to warrant further

research. But the EEF has also commissioned researchers at the University of

Durham, including Robert Coe, to summarise the international research on 34

possible ways of raising attainment in schools, relating their effectiveness to

their cost. This is published as a Teaching and Learning Toolkit to encourage an

evidence-based approach to raising attainment

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-

toolkit

Here is Robert Coe’s visual summary of the Toolkit.

It will be seen that the most effective approaches all relate to practical aspects

of teaching: feedback, metacognition, peer-tutoring, collaboration (i.e.

groupwork) and, in secondary schools, well-designed homework. These

approaches also feature high in John Hattie’s work on Visible Learning for

Teachers (2012). There is strong overlap with Dialogic Teaching developed by

Robin Alexander and Neil Mercer which the EEF has recently confirmed as a

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potentially powerful way of improving learning at Key Stage 2 -

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/our-work/projects/dialogic-

teaching/ - and with the promotion of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. There

have also been effective adaptations of the CA model. One of the most

remarkable related to teaching a large-enrolment freshman Physics course at

the University of British Columbia which achieved an effect size of 2.5, one of

the largest increases ever recorded in a standardised trial – see The University

of British Columbia experiment [pdf]. Taken together, the research evidence is

robust, repeated and incontrovertible.

What makes great GCSE English teaching?

It is worth recalling that the new GCSE specifications explicitly require the

teaching of reasoning skills applied to texts. In English Language, most marks

for Reading are awarded for analysis, evaluation and comparison of unseen

texts. In English Literature marks are awarded for analysis of studied texts and

development of informed personal responses to aspects of them as required

by the examination questions and for comparison of unseen poems. These

reasoning skills operate on the basis of texts, studied and unseen, so that

students require a rich cultural awareness of how English has been used for

various purposes, chiefly in the 19th to 21st centuries but also by Shakespeare.

These changes have been introduced because such demands are common in

other, more educationally successful countries.

The new demands are considerable. For success, students must be able to

respond swiftly, confidently and in depth, in timed examinations, to a range of

unseen texts and searching questions about studied texts. And, for Progress 8,

these skills must be taught across the whole ability range. Clearly they can’t be

taught quickly – they need to be built up over time with regular practice.

How can these skills be taught most successfully? As Coe points out, the first

stage is to focus teaching on requiring students to think: “Learning happens

when people have to think hard.” But this may not be students’ top priority.

There is research evidence that some prefer to finish quickly or get an answer

with the least effort or avoid the teacher making demands on them. Every

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teacher is aware of students who engage with learning as little as possible or

don’t work to their full ability much of the time. How can a teacher ensure

that all the students in the class are thinking hard at several points, perhaps

many points, in the lesson so that they will definitely be learning?

Second, how can the teacher be sure to incorporate the features that the EEF

Toolkit show raise attainment most: effective feedback, metacognition, peer-

tutoring and collaboration leading to well-designed homework? (Incidentally

this is why most textbooks are of limited value except for providing useful

texts. They are designed to be used by students working alone as well as in

schools and so provide little opportunity for feedback, metacognition, etc.

These have to be led by a teacher in conversation with the class.)

Third, lessons that encourage thinking and provide a structure for effective

feedback, metacognition, etc, also need to use a range of rich authentic texts

using fiction, non-fiction and poetry from appropriate periods. This builds up

students’ cultural capital.

Finally, designing lessons which engage students in thinking hard about

demanding texts and provide effective feedback, metacognition, etc, is difficult

and takes some expertise. Teachers can’t learn this from a single input. There

needs to be a CPD programme which provides modelling of lessons over

several sessions with observations and support until teachers are confident in

the new approach. This is also recommended by the DFE’s Standard for

teachers’ professional development (June 2016) -

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/f

ile/537031/160712_-_PD_Expert_Group_Guidance.pdf

Cognitive acceleration

The programme which best fulfils all these requirements is Adey and Shayer’s

Cognitive Acceleration (CA), devised at King’s College London for Science in the

70s and 80s and for English since 2009. Based on work by Vygotsky and Piaget,

the programme provides structured challenge by which students develop their

capacity for thinking by working out the best solution to problems through

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group discussion, facilitated by the teacher with effective feedback and a clear

focus on metacognition.

There are similarities with Philosophy for Children and Feuerstein’s

Instrumental Enrichment, but CA is distinctive in providing a suite of lessons

explicitly designed to develop higher-order thinking in relation to school

subjects. The lessons are designed to be used fortnightly, 15 per year, over

two years in KS3 and in Year 10. (There are also separate suites of lessons for

primary schools.)

Formal trials of CA in Science Education (CASE) were conducted throughout the

1980s and 1990s. In every case the average gain compared with matched non-

CASE students was between 1 and 2 National Curriculum levels and between 1

and 2 GCSE grades. There were significant long-term effects, up to three years

after a two-year intervention, and transfer effects into Mathematics and

English from an intervention in Science, suggesting that CASE increased general

reasoning powers, not only those relating to Science – see Adey and Shayer

The Effects of Cognitive Acceleration – and speculation about causes of these

effects https://www.letsthinkinenglish.org/wp-

content/uploads/2012/06/TheEffectsofCognitiveAcceleration.pdf

A central feature of this success was that Adey, Shayer and their co-workers

ensured that the teachers understood the CA pedagogy and supported them

until they delivered it effectively. This influenced the teachers’ approach to

teaching so that they adapted their teaching in CA-related ways, further raising

students’ attainment. (With Let’s Think in English we find teachers soon start

developing their own LTE-style lessons.)

A particularly important feature of CA is its ability to raise the attainment of

lower ability and EAL students – see e.g. Really raising standards in GCSE

English, Appendix 5

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/education/research/Research-

Centres/crestem/Research/Current-Projects/CogAcc/files/Really-raising-

standards-in-GCSE-English-full-version.pdf This is why many schools are using

pupil premium money to fund CA/Let’s Think in English, though it helps all

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students. (A crucial feature of Progress 8 is that raising students’ attainment

from grade 2 to 3 is as valuable as raising it from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9.)

During the 1990s and early 2000s, CASE was highly successful in English schools

and CA programmes were developed in Mathematics (CAME), Technology and

the Arts (Drama, Music and Visual Art) and in Science and Mathematics for

primary schools, all with similar effect sizes. However, from 2000 CA was

gradually squeezed out of schools’ teaching programmes by pressures of the

National Strategies and Ofsted’s requirement of frequent assessment for

tracking purposes. Interest in CASE has gradually revived in recent years and a

CA programme for English has been developed on exactly the same principles

since 2009. This is now used by some 350 schools in England and in Jersey,

Switzerland, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Interest in CASE has also developed abroad, with formal trials in ten countries

see McCormack 2013 https://www.letsthinkinenglish.org/wp-

content/uploads/2012/06/LTIS_efficacy.pdf It has become particularly well-

established in Australia where there is continuing and growing interest – see

Oliver and Grenville (2016) Bringing CASE in from the cold: the teaching and

learning of thinking https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11165-015-

9489-3

Against this background, the Let’s Think in English programme provides:

• 30 fully trialled, high interest KS3 lessons and 20 KS4 lessons, using high-

quality authentic texts, with more being added termly

• a year’s in-school training and support

• particularly effective support for lower ability and EAL students

• a structured basis for teaching the reasoning skills and confidence

required for success in the new GCSE English specifications

• a basis, where necessary, for persuading SLTs to allow English

Departments to move on from National Strategies-based pedagogy and

unnecessary repeated assessments to a structured programme of

proven effectiveness in raising attainment

• a total package costing less than three pupil premiums.

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For further information, see www.letsthinkinenglish.org For other CA and CA-

related programmes, see www.letsthink.org.uk (Science and Maths) and

http://iccams-maths.org/ (Maths).

4th September 2017

Any comments or enquiries to laurie.smith@kcl.ac.uk