Writing about the pupil premium in today’s Financial Times, David Laws says that the coalition government should ensure that schools are ‘free to experiment’ in how the money is used. However, if they do not use the money in ways that ‘improve pupil performance’, they might be required to ‘use tried and tested pedagogical techniques.’

This is very similar to the line put forward by the Schools Minister Nick Gibb when he was asked during the debate on the 2010 Academies Bill how he reconciled his belief in synthetic phonics to his desire to give schools freedom to tailor the curriculum to the needs of students:

“We believe that schools should use best practice and we will not countenance schools that use methods that do not result in young people being able to read early in their school careers……There might well be other methods that … could be even more effective than systematic synthetic phonics. I would like to see what they are, but we cannot rule out teachers being innovative and using such methods, if that results in children learning to read sooner and more effectively.”

I wonder if ministers and would-be ministers recognise how constrained is the vision of freedom they are putting forward, and how unlikely it is to lead to the growth in the sort of innovative practice that will deliver the longed-for improvement in results.

You can see how they end up in this conceptual pickle. In reality, everyone knows you cannot have experimentation without failure. However, contemplating that the government might channel money to schools so that they can do things which do not result in a performance boost is clearly difficult. So schools are free to experiment as long as the experiment is successful and quick. If it is not, then they must go back to the ‘tried and tested’ or ‘’best practice’.

But if ministers already know what works, independently of the situation in which it is applied, then surely there is no need for experimentation in the first place.  If you want schools to take risks trying out new ideas, then you have to accept that some will stumble, and you have to communicate that this is okay.

Ultimately, the only way out is for ministers to set up an accountability system that takes an interest in why schools do the things they do and says that, if they can justify what they have done and say what they have learned from it, then the fact that it was not successful is unfortunate, but not something that will be used to judge them.

Have you noticed that the educational vocabulary used by the Coalition Government has shifted the locus of control away from students towards the adults in a school?

For instance, over the summer holidays ‘behaviour’ became ‘discipline’ – thereby moving the locus of control from the students to the adults in charge. We were beginning to expect that children and young people would be responsible for themselves, for their own behaviour and its consequences. Now it seems that adults have to impose ‘discipline’ on children and young people, presumably keeping them in order and making sure they behave. This is an interesting change of tack, particularly as all the research shows coercion to be of little use, especially for adolescents. Choice and reward, positive relationships and good regard have been shown over and over again to be more productive approaches, so I find myself wondering what form ‘discipline’ will take and whether or not it will lead us back to a more punitive set of attitudes and approaches in schools.

Similarly, there has been a change from  ‘teaching and learning’ to a focus on ‘teaching’ alone. The new nomenclature is to be found in the revised Ofsted Inspection framework where a school used to be inspected for the quality of teaching and learning. Now inspectors are looking for the quality of teaching alone. Surely the effect is likely to be similar to the one I predict around behaviour. We used to expect students to own their own learning, to be internally motivated and active in their acquisition of knowledge. If the focus changes to ‘teaching’, there is a commensurate shift to the transmission of knowledge and a focus on the teacher as its purveyor.  I fear that if we take our eye of the ball of learning, we will return to the days of ‘teacher as expert’ and a more dependent classroom culture and lose the vibrant energised co-creation of understanding that has become so much more frequently found in the classrooms of the land.

I find it rather ironic that a government that espouses ‘freedom’ and a release from centralised control should  also use words that move the control out of the hands of the ‘free’ and into these of the ‘in charge’ So I ask myself how ‘free’ the ‘freedom’ actually is?

Has anyone else out there noticed other changes in vocabulary that may indicate a shift in locus of control?

Am I the only one who felt perplexed on hearing David Cameron’s speech at the Party Conference by the verb he used to describe the relationship between citizens and schools he envisages in the Big Society? When it comes to most opportunities for civic engagement, he wants people to ‘join up’ or ‘sign up’. When it comes to their interest in schools, he wants them to ‘demand’ something better.

I have spent a bit of time since I heard the speech trying to understand the thinking that went into the use of such a word. (It seems I’m not the only one – see Teacher Talks blog on the same topic.)

Of whom, for a start, I am meant to be making this demand? Should I be approaching parents in the playground and insisting that they use their entrepreneurial zeal to set up a ‘free’ school? Should I be organizing letter writing campaigns to Michael Gove and maybe an occasional weekend picket outside his constituency office? There’s no point going to the local authority, of course, since a lot of their say in these matters has been removed.

What about all the other things I might do to make schools better places? Getting myself appointed a governor? Acting as class rep? Volunteering to help children improve their reading? Organising enrichment activities for them? Leading sporting activities? Raising money for additional resources through the parent-teachers association. Trying to divert local press from bad news stories about the place. And indeed, if I am a middle-class parent whose kids are bright, actually sending them to the school in the first place?

When you think of all these forms of engagement, the word ‘demand’ feels seriously over the top. It assumes that I am angry, and am right to be angry. It also assumes that ‘demanding’ is the best way of making the system better. I really don’t agree, and would be surprised if David Cameron did if he actually sat down and thought about it.

It turns out that it’s not the first time Cameron used the verb. Back in November last year, he asked ‘How do we get parents to come forward and demand new schools in their area?’ But that only makes it more perplexing. Why should parents want ‘new’ schools rather than that the schools they have got become better, or different?

Ultimately, what worries me about all of this is that, behind the cover of the call for parents and citizens to get more engaged, is a proposed extension of the permanent revolution in education. And behind the repeated assertions by schools minister Nick Gibb that the conservative party ‘trusts’ teachers, is a desire that we should be permanently dissatisfied to the point of rage, never-endingly demanding that others make things better, never actually getting down there and seeing what we can do ourselves.