The year in education: 2008

This was the year of not only huge changes to the curriculum but also the first teachers’ strike for 21 years and exams chaos that claimed the scalp of more than one education chief.

The year started off badly as the results of the first round of the Making Good Progress pilot of single-level tests (that ministers eventually want to take the place of Sats) were delayed after they showed “unexpected patterns“.

Concerns about the handling of the Sats tests by new company ETS Europe at that stage were mere whispers about problems with the new firm’s online training systems and grumbling about the £156m five-year contract the company had won. But the whispers grew to howls of discontent by the summer when the extent of the mishandling surfaced and schools complained about missing papers and nightmarish technical glitches, while markers reported a chaotic system that wasn’t working.

It took until August and much public outcry for ETS to lose its contract. After the new school year started, papers were still missing.

In October, the schools secretary, Ed Balls, announced sweeping changes that included the abolition of the KS3 Sats for 14-year-olds and new report cards for schools. The shambles eventually led – after the Sutherland inquiry reported back - to the abolition of the National Assessment Agency, the body within the Qualification and Curriculum Authority that awarded and handled the contract.

Both NAA’s chief executive, David Gee, and the chief executive of the QCA, Ken Boston (who had resigned after reading the report) were suspended.

Meanwhile during the exam chaos, teaching unions and the education select committee called for a more fundamental reform of the testing regime.

In May, the committee’s report attacked teaching to the test - an argument backed by the government’s adviser, Sir Jim Rose .His review of the primary curriculum, published in December, advised scrapping traditional lessons in geography, history and science in favour of six areas of understanding.

The new head of the Independent Schools Council, Chris Parry, was also forced to resign in June after the upset sparked by his comments in the Guardian over state school pupils being “unteachable”.

Pupils from poorer backgrounds seemed to be falling behind this year, with poor white boys doing badly in GCSEs and less affluent pupils more generally not doing as well in A-levels.

In March, Balls announced his strategy to improve schools where fewer than 30% of pupils get five A* to C grade GCSES, including English and maths, leading to a furore over schools being cursed by the label of failing. Ministers initially stumped up £200m for the 638 schools in the National Challenge scheme but as the details of it were revealed, it emerged that they would face closure or being turned into an academy if they didn’t improve. By June the figure was doubled to £400m but schools complained of being reduced to turmoil by the stigma attached to being a national challenge school.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, faced heckling for his comment that class sizes of 70 would be acceptable. Large class sizes, alongside an unacceptably low 2.45% pay offer, led to the one-day walk out – threatened in January - by members of the National Union of Teachers that closed nearly half of schools in the spring. It was seen as a fitting memorial to NUS’ former general secretary, Steve Sinnott, who died of a heart attack in April.

School admissions systems garnered a fair amount of political attention throughout the year. Ministers announced a crackdown on state schools covertly selecting pupils after one in six schools were found to have breached the rules. The clampdown ended in a brawl with opposition MPs, however, who suggested that Balls was carrying out a witch hunt of faith schools. This was not good news for parents who had already found out fewer of them were getting their first choice of school for their children. While schools could no longer ask for donations from parents, they could ask them to sign up to the schools’ ethos under new admissions arrangements announced in June.

This was also the year of new qualifications. Revised GCSEs and A-levels were introduced in September along with the long-awaited diploma, though far fewer pupils took up that option than ministers originally planned. The Diplomas were dealt a blow during the summer when business leaders told the government there was no appetite for the new qualifications and private schools also shunned them. Ministers revised their estimates first in April, then again in May for the sake of “safeguarding quality”. The reality was half again - only 12,000 students began in September.

It was also another record year for GCSE and A-level results that led to huge numbers applying through Clearing to get university places. Yet pupils’ intellectual abilities were still deemed to have dropped over the last three decades by researchers.

Balls pushed on with the government’s academies programme early in the year before losing its key proponent, Lord Andrew Adonis, after the September reshuffle. This raised fears that the programme would be diluted. Ministers have insisted it will not, and continued to promote it even after a Sutton Trust report suggested exclusions were higher in them than other schools.

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