Six years ago, my wife and I learned our then one-year-old daughter Bessie had been born with a rare genetic condition called Williams Syndrome – it’s fascinating and you should look it up.
It means with some very distinctive and charming personality features, Bessie lives with a life-long learning disability.
This is not something gone wrong.
It is not a problem.
It is who she is and we would have her no other way because were she changed she would not be her.
Seeing things this way changed my life, transforming the way I see my work.
Transforming the way I see my life.
In a way that feels very real to me it was a miracle that took me back to a journey when without really knowing, I had lost my way.
I was made to confront the fact education is not structurally set up in the best interests of those who find learning most difficult – those most likely to be identified with Special Educational Needs and those most likely to end up either informally or formally excluded from it.
In a context of worsening behaviour, rising suspensions and exclusions, and increased absenteeism and school refusal there is much debate around how schools can be more inclusive.
It is good we are talking about this, but it is also hard.
Today I’d like to talk about how schools with Christian values, and particularly Church of England schools might approach these challenges.
Before beginning it feels important to point out I do not believe these challenges are brand new ones – instead they are the result of an intensification of forces that have always existed in education.
I think schools have always often been hostile environments for children who find learning hard because they are expressions and mechanisms of a worldly meritocracy that values people for their supposedly individual achievements.
Society – underpinned by the meritocratic value system – honours the people who achieve most in obvious, familiar ways – those who make important scientific discoveries, produce beautiful art, build profitable companies, make big political decisions or – like you do – manage networks of many schools.
These people, people like you and me – life’s winners – are rewarded through prestige, large salaries and even national honours.
While only the most arrogant and least self-aware of these would claim their success down to only them, meritocratic framing requires us believe the successful deserve to be personally rewarded and we should view them as role models we can all learn from and perhaps – if we work hard enough – even emulate.
This is always something of a conceit.
Successful people are not successful because of their own rugged individualism.
Some were born into affluent families and benefited from an excellent education that propelled them into strategic entry level jobs obtained though good networks or even straight-up nepotism.
Others were lucky enough to be born with minds that learn easily and with good health, which meant they could focus their attention on their careers free of distraction.
I – of course – am an expression of the rule and no exception.
Here I am getting to feel all important by talking to lots of very important people in central London.
Is this because I am Very Clever and Worthy and Better Than Others?
No.
I had the good fortune to be born into a supportive and loving family and have – touch wood – so far enjoyed good health and a stable marriage.
I have the advantage of being financially secure enough to take risks with my work many others could not, which is why I am here now and able to do what I do.
I have had a lot of help and benefit from a support system that allows me time and space to pursue thoughts and interests others seem to want to hear about – for example, I wrote the first draft of this talk while my wife took our two children to the zoo.
About now she will be returning from the school run, which was bound to be even more stressful than usual because it is School Photo Day.
Could I be here if it was not for my advantages and privileges?
What would I have done this if I were a single parent?
Would I have the time?
Could I be here?
How many important voices are silent because those with them don’t have the advantages that allow them to be speak?
The point here is very few if any of us really “deserve” what happens to us, good or bad, but for society to give life meaning we tell stories of constructed correlations and patterns that downplay or leave out luck.
We like to think deserving people deserve their success and happiness because it is reassuring. It makes life make sense.
Believing people get what they deserve is comforting, providing a sense of order and security.
Schools are often this is microcosm – very often they most affirm and value those who find things easiest, and here the effects of meritocratic values are magnified, because perhaps the most important aim of most schools is that their pupils achieve good grades, constructing those who don’t for whatever reason as failures.
Even where individual leaders are uncomfortable with this – and many are – what they can do is limited because their own most important success metrics – things like SATs results and Attainment and Progress 8 – are oriented towards children achieving academic success.
Should we then abandon meritocracy as our underpinning value system?
Probably not.
None of the problems with it mean we should turn our backs on meritocracy altogether in the hope whatever we might dream up to replace it will be better.
I’m pretty sure despite meritocracy being mostly fiction, in the absence of a better framework we probably are better off with it than we would be with other underpinning structures that have been tried in the past.
Before meritocracy rose to dominance in the 1700s and 1800s, the value systems of many societies were unashamedly organised around inherited power and wealth with associated rigid hierarchies designed to keep everyone In Their Place.
A diverting historical illustration of this can be found in how remarkable it was Oliver Cromwell promoted some officers in his New Model Army based on their ability rather than their social position, an idea that at the time was considered rather subversive and even dangerous.
Hereditary status and privilege were no better than what we have now and would do great harm if we tried to reintroduce them, especially now the world is more secular than it was with religion less able to offer the traditional counter-narrative that regardless of rank all would be judged as equals by God after death.
Anyone curious about this might like to be look up the traditional medieval church painting of the Three Living and the Three dead, which was a stark and salutary reminder to those at the apex of the old feudal system about how little this would mean when their time came.
Tom Holland’s book Dominion is good on this too – about why Christianity was initially so repellent to the Roman Empire. Holland – who has recently been on his own journey back to faith – argues the Christian placing of all on spiritually equal footing threatened the very fabric of the predator society they had created.
But I digress.
The point is fictional or not, society is meritocratically constructed and in this world school leaders would be shirking important responsibilities if they stopped paying attention to academic success metrics because of philosophical objections.
Whether it is morally right, or morally wrong, better grades open more doors and give children more choice and control. Both practically and morally it isn’t wrong to focus on improving these, especially for those who have few other advantages.
This is why I have such a problem with famous successful people who have benefited from their formal traditional educations advocating wholesale root-and-branch revolution. It’s marked how often the people who do this come from great privilege and how rarely successful people coming from great disadvantage argue for an end to exam grades and qualifications.
In most contexts children benefit from a school paying close attention to their academic performance and schools that do not do this let children down.
We all know this.
But schools focused too much on only the academic performance of their pupils – those that lean too far into meritocratic values – leave space for the humiliation and degradation of many children.
We can talk as much as we like about how all GCSE grades are passes but the world constructs those who achieve lower than a 4 as failures because we’ve called a 4 a “pass” and a 5 a “strong pass.”
Similarly at primary children who don’t achieve the “expected” standard have by association not met systemic expectations and so have failed – at only eleven – to get to where the world says they should have got and are judged as less than classmates who have met or exceeded them.
This is antithetical to Christian values, to the values of those of other faiths and to many of those of no faith at all.
While Christians have evidence from the Bible for their beliefs in the inherent equality of all, most non-Christians will take no issue with the underpinning meaning of the following from the Bible.
Gensis 1:26 says that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Later the Book of Proverbs – Chapter 22 verse 2 says “Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.”
This means that all humans – all children – are sacred, holy and of equal inherent value regardless of what they do or don’t achieve.
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul doesn’t mean the differences between people aren’t real and aren’t important – instead, he is emphasising the inherent equality of all humans before God.
All are of value – each individual important personally to God. Each is loved, and the fulfilment of Christian values must mean valuing all.
While the world may say some people are of more value than others, Jesus certainly does not.
How can this tension – the tension between worldly meritocracy and what God says about people – be resolved by Christian schools?
How can they value each of their pupils – particularly those often identified with SEND who are most vulnerable to humiliation and exclusion – while existing within a paradigm that ascribes more value to those able to achieve most?
For some and for me once the answer is beguilingly simple – if we remove the barriers to learning that hold back those who struggle we can create a level field and create equality of opportunity. This – in my view – is the driver of a lot of “additional and different” practice, which relies on the assumption anyone is capable of anything,
But this doesn’t work because while we don’t like to confront it head on there are many children who for lots of different reasons find learning harder than others whatever we do.
Like the poor in Matthew 26:11, those who find learning harder will always be with us,
How do we help these children? How do we value them in a world that doesn’t?
This is a question the Church of England has already spent time wrestling with.
The Flourishing Schools document acknowledges the need to value all children and wisely concludes unless schools do this it is impossible for them to flourish.
It says:
“Flourishing can only happen when each and every child is treated with dignity. For they are all unique and inherent worth.. Therefore, they are to be loved unconditionally, enabled ambitiously, supported compassionately and championed relentlessly.”
How might this inspiring vision be realised?
Perhaps the answer is not in trying to resolve the tension between the meritocratic world and God, but instead in balancing them.
In Mark 12 the Pharisees set Jesus a trap by asking whether Jews should pay tax to Ceasar or not.
This appears to put Jesus in something of a bind. If He says they should pay taxes he places God below the Roman Emperor, but if He says they should not he is encouraging civil disobedience and places Himself and those following his direction at great risk for no benefit.
So, Jesus borrow a denarius coin and asks whose head is on it.
After getting a reply – Caesars – he responds by saying “Render to Ceasar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
This might offer schools a way forward.
Perhaps the instrumentalist outcomes of education – exam grades and associated success metrics – are equivalent of taxes to Ceasar – inevitabilities we cannot avoid and must pay close attention to whether we want to or not.
Like taxes, exam grades and the associated success metrics are here to stay, part of the world we all live in.
Whatever we do as schools they will always be there.
Individual children and young people who achieve top grades will always be celebrated by society through personal validation, more opportunities and more prestigious and often more comfortable lives.
Schools with pupils who achieve great exam results will always appear on the top of league tables, and those that don’t will be shamed, because this is Ceasar’s world, and his share will take care of itself.
So, what of God’s share?
What of the inherent value of all people -of all children?
What should schools do so those who find learning harder are as valued and meaningfully included as those who find it easy?
Here the Bible does not offer an easy outs or platitudes– it does not say those who begin with less are just automatically blessed and approved of by God. The Parable of the Talents in Matthew and Luke makes it clear as much is as expected from those who begin with little as is from those who are blessed with more. Here the servant who starts with the least but hides it away is the servant who is rebuked when the master returns.
Everyone is expected to contribute.
Our challenge is finding ways in which all can be included – ways in which all children in all schools can belong, share and contribute.
How, practically, can this be achieved?
The first and perhaps easiest step was one Tom Rees and I explored in our Five Principles Paper published last year.
The third of these principles was “success in all its forms.”
By this we meant schools should not only celebrate and affirm children for meritocratic instrumentalist achievements like exam grades and going on to prestigious universities, but also for other less measurable qualities like kindness, enthusiasm, commitment and service to others.
I think lots of school try to do this but too often their efforts end up as a sort of bless ‘em wooden spoons – consolations for those who can’t win in the zero-sum competition of the meritocratic real world.
This is not mainly the fault of schools.
As expressions of the society of which they are part emphasising the aspects of life that aren’t often instrumentally rewarded can seem naïve and unworldly, and it is sensible to worry this might lead to a general lowering of ambition and the inability to pay Ceasar his taxes.
As understandable as this is, it is still unfortunate because the results damage us all and might well be significant reason some of the most important roles in society are so low status and low paid; cleaners; carers; labourers; delivery drivers.
All these roles and many others are essential to us all, and it is troubling the lessons about them we learned during the pandemic have been so quickly forgotten.
Perhaps schools could do something meaningful about this by meaningfully recognising and celebrating the qualities of community and service.
Perhaps school reports should place just as much emphasis on how children contribute to their communities and their positive characteristics as they do on their test scores and grades.
Perhaps prize-giving ceremonies should centre these things too, honouring children for more than just academic, sporting or musical achievements.
Personally, I know how powerful this can be – my elder daughter Bessie has Williams Syndrome and an associated general learning disability and is near the bottom of the class in reading, writing and numeracy.
Despite this her school reports are a joy to read, because as well as being honest about where she is and what she needs to work on, they also include descriptions of a boundless enthusiasm that lifts all around her, what she is like as a friend and honours her for the many clubs and extra-curricular activities she takes part in.
Not very long ago her teacher emailed me on a Friday evening to tell me how Bessie had told the class that while she knew she wasn’t perfect, she was perfect for her family, and what an important lesson that had been for her classmates.
More of this for more children because it isn’t just children who find learning harder who deserve to be valued for more than what they achieve academically.
Indeed, it’s worth pointing out what a burden young people for whom learning is easy can find their own advantages if they feel this is all they are valued for.
Not very long ago I worked closely with a young woman who had spent years feeling crushed by the high data-driven targets that had been applied to her because she got high KS2 SAT sores. She said these meant nothing she did in school, nothing she learned or found interesting was really of value if she wasn’t going to finish with Grade 9s in everything.
This had depressed her, made her anxious, stunted her learning and wasted a lot of her time.
Only when released from the weight could she focus properly on her studies and find any joy in her work.
A focus on the other aspects of life is then, I believe, an important thing schools can do to be more inclusive to more children – to make it possible for more to feel belonging.
This is a good point to examine the risks and opportunities afforded by the recent changes announced by Ofsted, which will mean a “report card” of different indicators replacing an overall judgement.
This is a real opportunity because this really could lead to better incentives for schools to consider a wider range of ways in which children can flourish, but it is also a threat because less clarity might mean even greater focus on academic outcomes that will remain publicly available through examination results and associated league tables and judgements on attainment and progress that place a school on a scale from well below average to well above it.
We should not push for inspection or other accountability measures to lose interest in the academic work of those who find learning harder, because valuing these children for only their non-academic achievements is exclusionary and limiting too.
Doing this would further reinforce meritocracy because it assigns more potential and value to those who learn easily and have other qualities, constructing those who don’t find learning easy as being less complete.
Here it’s also useful to look at the oft-quoted John 10:10, which says that Jesus came so we all “may have life, and have it to the full.”
Life to the full does not mean us giving those who find academic work hard a pass out from it and just allowing them to do other things, because this would be to accept a limited life and would rob them of the wonderful gifts of academic work.
It isn’t just Christians who see this trap.
If we were to say that academic study isn’t important for some children, we would also be failing in our obligation to pass to children a cultural inheritance which is theirs by birthright, and we would almost certainly widen the existing divisions between those born with economic advantage and those born without.
Doing so is unchristian and anti-equity – something expressed well, albeit in some language we would not use today, by Robert Tressel in the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists when he wrote:
“Every little child that is born into the world, no matter whether he is clever or dull, whether he is physically perfect or lame, or blind; no matter how much he may excel or fall short of his fellows in other respects, in one thing at least he is their equal – he is one of the heirs of all the ages that have gone before.”
Christian or not, being truly inclusive must mean finding ways to include even those who struggle most in meaningful academic work.
For this I’d like our guide to be the Christian philosopher Simone Weil, who wrote a paper in 1951 called “The Right Use of School Studies with a View to a Love of God.”
Weil’s thesis is the purpose of school studies should be to increase capacity for prayer.
Without further explanation, I know this would be an extremely provocative curriculum intent for even the most confidently Christian school to adopt so please bear with me for a moment.
While Weil says “prayer,” the phrase “the state of prayer” fits just as well, and by this Weil means a state of perfect attention to something bigger than oneself.
Weil argues school studies – whether literature, mathematics, history, geography, science or whatever, are a good way of achieving this state when those studying them honestly and humbly submit themselves to their activities and exercises with the aim of learning to pay attention and not for external validation.
Weil goes as far as saying those who pursue their studies with the aim of achieving top grades for their own sake will not be able to study properly because this would distract them from innate wisdom found in their subjects.
She says:
“Students must work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examinations, to win schools successes; without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes, applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of that attention which is the substance of prayer.”
This is very hard to do.
When learning something new most of us are constantly on the look-out for shortcuts that get us to an answer quickly without a full and complete understanding – we often feel wired to look for ways to cheat the test. I have a hunch this is why recent technological attempts to gamify learning don’t work as well as we’d like them to. For about three years I diligently subjected myself to fifteen minutes a day of DuoLingo German only to find at the end while I’d accrued thousands of points and risen up many of its league tables, I still wasn’t really that much better at German. The problem, I think, was I became so fixated on keeping my streaks and getting silly meaningless awards that I lost sight of what the point of it really was.
The prouder we are, the harder we find to prevent our egos intruding on what we study, especially if we are learning about something we already have feel strongly about.
As a religious person I am always aware of this when I read arguments written by atheists dismissing God – even when the argument is coherent and logically organised, I find myself internally interrupting, arguing and disagreeing even before I’ve finished reading – arrogantly inserting myself in the work and by so doing risking misunderstanding and mischaracterisation.
The problem here is caused by us seeing learning as the means to an often-selfish end – a weapon with which to win the meritocratic fight through high grades, or armour to protect ourselves from the perspectives and opinions of those we do not approve of or dislike.
Weil argues this is fundamentally wrong – even unchristian. Instead, she says, we should be seeking to truly understand and know, and that the harder and more challenging the study the better because this allows more opportunity to learn to be better at properly paying attention.
She says:
“It does not even matter much whether we succeed in finding the solution or understanding the proof, although it is important to try really hard to do so.”
For those of our children who find learning harder this is brilliant news because it gives them equal status to their friends who find it easier.
By making the aim to pay attention and to really learn and understand rather than being at the top of the class we make the endeavour of learning one all can take part in on an equal footing, which feels like an expression of true inclusion. This realisation has changed my teaching practice – for example I am now very clear about how much I disapprove of those in my classes competing over scores in tests because this is exclusionary to those who improve but don’t finish top. I am not naïve – I know they do this anyway when I’m not around but I think it important those who struggle most see their history teacher is on their side in this – that while those around them might think the point is the highest score I do not.
Valuing the work – the process – means that those who find learning hardest – those most often identified with SEND – have the opportunity to be just as blessed as those who find learning a breeze.
A teacher, school or even a MAT adopting Weil’s approach could not just tag this on – it’s a whole philosophy and would mean orientating recognition and honour towards humble, diligent effort and away from those who rise to the top because they just find it easy to fly there.
It might also mean changing the way schools try to improve academic standards – a shift away from systems designed to track and drive progress through numbers and grades and a refocusing on the substance of learning itself – assessment designed to identify what children know and adaptive planning that takes children from where they are to the next step on the ladder – an assessment-teaching cycle that aims not to boost grades but to make it easier for children to pay proper attention to what they are learning.
This might on the face of it seem daunting and even scary – many of those who run schools have become so accustomed to things like progress against target grades and numerical data input that a world without them seems unimaginable.
The good news for those considering a realignment is that much accepted practice to chase grades and drive progress is – bluntly – nonsense anyway.
For example, target grades at an individual level are invalid making common intervention cycles based on these meaningless.
Saying things like “aim for a 4”, or “get them to a 6” is usually just plain silly because grades are so abstract – children get the grades they do by learning more and doing more so a focus on the substance of learning might well result in better outcomes too, even for those who find learning easiest.
I heard a good practical example of this quite recently from a maths teacher at a highly selective school depressed by the number of Grade 9 Maths GCSE students he saw who struggled to transition to “A” Level.
The reason – he felt – was that many of these were clever enough to memorise formula and equations they did not really understand and while this was enough to get them the very highest grades at the lower qualification it made taking the step up extremely challenging because they had little understanding of the underpinning principles and structures the new content built upon.
Some – I suspect the humbler and wiser – were able to accept and realign, but those who had internalised the meritocratic idea the point was to finish top found it much harder.
As difficult as it might be to do, truly inclusive schools should not focus directly on grades.
Instead, they should focus on the process of learning because getting better at this is an appropriate ambition for everyone from a child with a learning disability to one who aspires to study at Oxford.
I think this is the most beautiful way to see inclusion I’ve come across.
It is now old-pat Growth Mindset freed of the unhelpful and dishonest rhetoric that led to people saying things like “if you work hard can become anything you like,” which further humiliated those for who this was not true.
People like my daughter.
A school built around Weil might instead say, “no, you won’t all be the best in the world at this but all of you can, by carefully and diligently completing the work we set for you, learn more and it’s in doing that work – in paying proper attention – that you win our respect and admiration.”
It’s comforting to me that perhaps – perhaps -such an inclusionary educational philosophy might place children like Bessie on at least a level playing field.
And the good news is so far, he school – A proudly Church of England primary with a Catholic Provision – has succeeded in this. Bessie continues to delight herself with what she learns.
She doesn’t find reading as easy as many others, but each day she gets a bit better, and she loves to pore over books.
She loves learning.
It delights her.
Just last week she came home unable to stop talking about Everest, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary and was delighted to be able to take in a prayer flag to show her friends that her mummy picked up on a work trip to Nepal where she was working on helping local communities find innovative solutions to their local problems.
Bess won’t achieve top grades when the examination cycle rolls round to her. She may never sit exams. We don’t know. Whether she does or not will depend on what is best for her.
Knowing this frees us from what ultimately is a distractor from what learning should be about anyway – it allows us to see the point is Everest, Norgay and Hilary not the grade she gets on a report she might one day write about it.
It allows us to see that what matters is whether what she learns helps her, enriches her, fills her with wonder, awe and optimism, equips her to flourish and thrive.
How strange it seems when we first learned about who she was we cried because we thought it was bad news.
Isn’t this what we want for all children?
What a gift she has given us – one her academically very able but more nervous younger sister is already benefiting from too because it has made her parents better parents.
Bessie has led me to a place where I understand her goals to be the right goals for all of us.
Not to aim for the highest marks but instead to try to learn to pay attention so it is possible to really learn – about mountaineers and dinosaurs, about Samuel Pepys cheese and most importantly of all, of how much God loves her the way she is.
Her school is exceptional, and I know what they do is not easy but could it be something we might aim for?
I really hope so.
Ben Newmark 