British pre-school scheme fails

Start out with wrong assumptions (e.g. that "privilege" is responsible for educational success) and you will not get the results you expect. The Grammar (selective) schools showed how to help bright children from poor families but that offends against the "equality" religion. It is however sad that such a large and expensive series of programs did absolutely NO good at all. It shows how important it is to get your basic assumptions right

A 3 billion pound series of policies designed to boost the achievements of pre-school children has had no effect on the development levels of those entering primary school, a study suggests. Although there have been big changes in early years education, children's vocabulary and their ability to count and to recognise letters, shapes and rhymes are no different now than they were six years ago.

The results of the study from the University of Durham will come as a huge blow to the Government after a string of initiatives that have cost more than 3 billion since 2001 and that include the early childhood curriculum, the Sure Start programme, free nursery education for all three-year-olds and the Every Child Matters initiative. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made much of the drive to improve pre-school education, which was promoted heavily in Labour's last general election manifesto.

The findings follow the results of an assessment of the Sure Start programme in 2005, which also found no overall improvement in the areas targeted by the scheme. Sure Start, which was influenced by the Head Start programme in the US, is targeted at children aged up to 5 and their families in deprived areas. It is intended to offer a range of early years services, including health advice, childcare, parenting classes and training to help mothers into work.

Christine Merrell, of the University of Durham's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre and co-author of the study, said that she had no idea why the investment of so much public money had produced so few results. "One would have expected that the major government programmes would have resulted in some measurable changes in our sample of almost 35,000 children. It is possible, however, that it is just still too early to measure the effects of these programmes, particularly those of the Children Act and Every Child Matters, which were only introduced in the past few years," she said.

Dr Merrell and her team studied 6,000 children a year aged 4 and 5 at 124 primary schools. The children were asked to complete a 15-minute series of fun activities on a computer and were not aware that they were being tested. The tests were designed to measure the children's vocabulary acquisition and whether they could recognise rhyming words and repeat certain sounds. The children were also tested on their ability to count and to recognise shapes, letters and words.

No clear progress was detected on these measures among the 35,000 children from a range of backgrounds who were studied over the course of the six-year study, to be presented today at the biennial European Association for Learning and Instruction conference in Budapest. Dr Merrell admitted that the study was limited because it failed to identify which children, if any, had been subject to contact with Sure Start or any other of the Government's recent pre-school initiatives. However, given that 35,000 children in 124 schools were assessed, she said it was likely that many had taken part in the initiatives. She said that the research highlighted the importance of subjecting education policies to continuous scientific monitoring to see if they were working before introducing them nationally. "Even then, high-quality data needs to be used to track the impact of the evolving intervention. Only then can the Government really measure what does and doesn't work in education," she said.

The research used the Centre's performance indicators in primary schools (Pips) assessment to measure the cognitive development of the children. The Pips baseline assessment is one of a range of assessments that enable schools to monitor children's progress. Pips is used by more than 3,000 primary schools in Britain, 800 schools in Australia and others worldwide including New Zealand, the Netherlands and South Africa.

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Pressure on Australian PhDs to meet grade

STUDENTS may have to defend their PhD theses orally and examiner panels could be audited for quality under reforms being considered by elite universities. The ideas floated by Group of Eight executive director Mike Gallagher come amid claims that the once respected qualification lacks relevance, suffers from dubious quality and gives candidates false hope of employment. These claims have dominated a lively debate on the HES website after Curtin University of Technology academic Richard Nile declared the PhD "a dinosaur from a previous age of elite education" in an HES online article.

Mr Gallagher told the HES that the PhD had undergone so much change it was high time for a fundamental review. "There are a lot of PhDs going into universities that don't have much of a performance record in research, and that's a worry," he said. "I don't know what level of confidence there is in the community any more." The Go8, not expecting much help on standards from politicians or the Australian Universities Quality Agency, was carrying out its own fact-finding survey.

Yesterday, federal Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop said it was the responsibility of universities to work with industry to give graduates the skills they needed and to "focus on the quality of their programs, including their PhD programs, to ensure the sector is able to compete internationally for students and academics". "It is up to individuals to decide whether a particular qualification has relevance for their career prospects, whether in the private sector or academia," she said.

AUQA executive director David Woodhouse said: "Just like the Go8, we are concerned about standards." Although AUQA looked at processes for enrolling, supervising and examining research students, the agency had not yet carried out "a sample check" on the standing of overseas examiners. This might be done during a 2008 second-cycle audit. But as yet no institution had suggested the relevant audit theme of research training, despite the advent of the research quality framework.

Mr Gallagher said it was possible the Go8 would audit examiners to make sure they represented centres of strength in the fields examined. This would underpin quality and include an element of public accountability. "If your PhD examiner panels are made up of people from second-rank institutions in that field (under examination), then that will be known," he said. "There's (also) a lot of discussion of panels reverting to the viva voce, (which would mean) you have to demonstrate that you can actually defend your propositions."

As part of a broad review of the PhD, the Australian National University was looking at a logistically manageable viva, according to pro vice-chancellor Mandy Thomas. Professor Thomas said it would not be feasible to fly in all the international examiners. (ANU had about 500 PhD completions a year.) A few months before they submit, candidates might defend their work before a panel of supervisors and experts in the field. But if this practice were adopted it would be as an "internal quality measure" and not part of the examination.

Nigel Palmer, president of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations, said: "Students are always going to be cautious about anything that looks like a viva. "Particularly towards the end of their candidature, PhDs are close to exhaustion. It's a very daunting proposition to come out and give a stunning presentation. Also, (a viva) disadvantages international students." Mr Palmer said a key issue was the unrealistically tight time frame for PhDs imposed by the federal research training scheme and scholarships. "The pressure of shorter completion times has had an impact on quality," he said. "The message from supervisors is: forget this being your life work, forget this being an original contribution to the field, it's just got to be good enough to get you across the line and ... in time."

Mr Gallagher also criticised the research training scheme: "The Government's timing of 3 1/2 years is at least one year tooshort." Professor Thomas said it was possible completion times might get longer as the university put more emphasis on skills. "We're boosting professional training within the PhDs; that is useful for people who will become academics as well as for those who will leave the university and join industry or government," she said. This training might involve dissemination of research results, commercialisation, journal editing or conference organisation.

Within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia had very short completion times; the longer PhDs of the US were thought to be one reason for a decline in domestic candidates. It was possible that the duration of PhDs in Australia and the US would converge. Mr Gallagher said Australia's leading universities were struggling to find domestic PhDs in essential fields such as mathematics. He was not a critic of trends such as the professional, work-focused PhD; it was a matter of striking a balance between depth and breadth and re-establishing the relevance of the qualification. "You hear reports where people say: 'I didn't disclose in my job application that I have a PhD.' In the labour market it's seen as a nerdy thing to have," he said.

Even if the thesis were given less weight by examiners to make room for more coursework, the essential nature of the PhD had to be preserved. "I think the capacity to undertake original research and to demonstrate that you are in command of your field, that you can critically evaluate the literature, that you can construct a hypothesis and defend it, the discipline of it, in the old academic sense, is fundamental," Mr Gallagher said.

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