Interview
Interview
Peer's assessments
Lord Sutherland was appointed chair of the CIEA earlier this year. He tells Stephanie Sparrow what members can expect
A named coat peg and shared desk await Stewart Sutherland when he attends the House of Lords.
"A similar arrangement to my primary school in Aberdeen," jokes this independent peer who was appointed as Lord Sutherland of Houndwood in 2001.
His busy role there has led to lots of high-profile media appearances, particularly in the past year. For example he spoke out over the summer about preparations for a Swine Flu epidemic (in his role as chair of the select committee on science and technology) and he is involved in the Apprentices, Children and Skills Bill (which will formally set up Ofqual as an independent organisation). As a vociferous champion for the elderly he is keenly following progress on the Green Paper for Social Care.
Lord Sutherland is eagerly sought out by the media to share views that are well- researched and balanced, but also show common sense and compassion. "I like
to say my piece," he admits with typical
self-deprecation.
"There's a lot of nonsense and hypocrisy in public life and that gets my goat a bit, " he says. "And that's true of care of the elderly, that's true of education and its true of science, where headlines in the paper about every tiny advance lead you to assume that your lives are going to change radically tomorrow."
As delegates to this year's CIEA conference will have noticed, Lord Sutherland has a wry humour. On the subject of media reporting progress in science, he adds: "I just read [newspaper] reports on what's healthy in terms of what I like, and I'm pleased to see that black coffee is good for keeping off Alzheimers."
All his work makes headlines, but perhaps has been eclipsed by his role in the eponymous Sutherland Inquiry. Along with a "superb team of four," Lord Sutherland was remitted to produce an independent inquiry for Ofqual and the Secretary of State, into the 2008 delivery of National Curriculum Tests, whose results for 1.2 million pupils had been delayed.
The impact of the Inquiry, and its key recommendation that the delivery process for National Curriculum Tests should be modernised and improved, has been well-documented. Other issues, such as what could replace the abolished Key Stage 3 tests, are still being debated nationwide, particularly as many schools still requested the papers for this year's students (there was an 85 per cent uptake).
Lord Sutherland can see the irony, in that an unpopular test has been requested by schools after its abolition, but also the benefits of schools wanting to monitor national standards. "Schools are asking for the papers because they see them as a benchmark, and they want that aspect of them, not the whole thing," he says.
At the time of this interview the jury was out on appropriate testing for Key Stage 2 pupils, particularly since shadow schools secretary Michael Gove had suggested pupils should be tested at the beginning of Year 7 instead. Lord Sutherland was weighing up the advantages of testing pupils at the end of primary school or at the beginning of secondary school. He thought that the latter could be "road-tested".
"One of the advantages is that it would take the pressure off in the final year of primary school. [Teachers] wouldn't be teaching to the test because that would be wasting their time - because the tests would have to be taken seven or eight weeks after the children have left
their school."
But he is also wary of labelling primary schools as places that do teach to the test.
"Good teachers don't do it. A lot of people talk as if that's the only thing schools do. I don't believe it, otherwise they wouldn't have time for school plays and weeks away."
No matter what form the national curriculum tests eventually take, the public debate around them supports the notion that assessment will be seen as a professional activity, and that it will fulfil its obligations to those who have sat whatever form of test. The public mood matches Lord Sutherland's honest and quite poignant comments in the introduction to his Inquiry: "It is undoubtedly the case that pupils were let down," he wrote at the time.
Such high-profile activity may seem like a world away from that primary school in Aberdeen, but Lord Sutherland can see a progression: he was set an example of good teaching and assesment in those early days and has carried that vision through his career, including his time as chief inspector of schools for England, when he unveiled Ofsted, as part of the Education Act
in 1992.
"I got my chances thanks to a superb primary school. The north end of Aberdeen was not the social centre of the world, and this primary school opened the doors for me," he reflects. The experience set
a benchmark which has stayed with
him today.
"They taught well, and they cared, and they made sure that whatever was coming down the road towards you you could appreciate and make the most of. I owe so much to education, those kinds of standards in education and the capacity to evaluate and help the pupils."
The young Stewart Sutherland went on to pass the 11-plus, or as it was known in Aberdeen, "the control" (he smiles at how tough and high-stakes that sounds). He went on to win a bursary and to attend the prestigious Robert Gordon's College.
The next eye-opener was when, as a university student, he did a short stint as a supply teacher. It was a "revelation" which helped him to realise what was wrong with the system then, and what good teaching can look like.
"I taught at a junior-secondary school - comprehensive schools weren't invented then - and it wasn't a secondary modern. The kids varied from failing, to getting into the academic school stream to the edge of Special Educational Needs," he says.
"When I got there, I was the fifth teacher that term - the last one had lasted a day and a half."
The job description was uninspiring to say the least. "I was told that my job was to keep them quiet for the next seven weeks," he says. "It was an interesting experience , and it showed me how hard teachers work, but it also showed me how badly planned education was."
The materials available were also unsuitable as they were pitched at the wrong level, which left SEN children to work with a maths book aimed at high achievers in the subject. This still riles him today.
Luckily this novice teacher had some inventive ideas up his sleeve for making maths memorable.
"In order to teach them about volumes, we decided to find the volume of the room we were in, so they were stood on each other's shoulders, reaching up to the top." The children enjoyed this and got a clearer picture of what volume was, but, of course, he doesn't recommend the approach. "It's the kind of thing they will always remember, but you'd be sacked for that now under health and safety rules."
Such experiences have come to mind again during the launch of Ofsted and the work of the CIEA, both of which look at the rights of the learner, an area for which Lord Sutherland mounts a strong defence.
"When Ofsted was set up, what we were really talking about was the entitlement of children to be taught in a whole range of areas, not just what the teacher happened to be interested in. I go back now to my experiences as a child and what a decent primary school did for me, and I'm still passionate about that. Every child in Britain should have that chance."
He still recalls, during the Ofsted years, closing a failing primary school, after a lengthy decision-making process. Its local community was shocked because "no one had ever assembled the evidence of low attainment and low expectation", he says.
"Not only was there no aspiration [in the local community] and that's a very separate and important question, there was just no expectation; and as long as you kept quiet and went home happy at the end of the day, everybody thought it was a good education. That was terrible."
All of which leads to the value of assessment and his delight in being asked to chair the CIEA, which, along with headteacher Graham Soles and Professors Eva Baker and Alison Woolf, he helped shape in 2006. He was made a Companion during the annual conference in 2008.
"What I like about the CIEA, and what has brought me in more and more since being one of the four original members, is their commitment to standards and to the assessment of standards and pupils,"
he says.
He has been concerned that teacher training does not devote a lot of time to these areas. "Putting in professionally the abilities you need to be a good teacher, which is to assess and understand whether someone needs a level of support or clarification, seems to me to be one of
the much more neglected elements
of teaching."
The role of assessment has been misunderstood, he thinks. "The moment you mention words like 'assessment' and 'standards,' folks assume that what you are doing is wanting to judge people and put them in boxes."
He is keen to see assessment recognised as an integral part of teaching.
"You can't teach if you don't assess," he says. "That's the strapline, and I'm sure that all professional teachers would agree with that. I see the Institute as being a very positive step in helping with that."
With this in mind, he is delighted that the CIEA is working to move assessment up the agenda in teacher training, and that the role of the Chartered Educational Assessor (who can support teachers) is gaining momentum - particularly since the Expert Group on Assessment and children's secretary Ed Balls have publicly backed the idea of all schools having access to an assessment expert.
Lord Sutherland urged CIEA members to ride this wave of support when he addressed the annual conference this May. He smiles now at the rallying call he gave.
"I said 'its time to cash in the chips'," he says. "What I meant was that the government has shown interest, and opposition parties are interested too, but we have got to keep pressing them that this is not an optional extra. We have reached the stage now where this is a real educational contribution, and it should show in schools and how teachers are trained."
He is also keen to see the benefits of online marking being explored. Firstly because it brings the advantage of a record of every script, which means they can be traced if mislaid, and secondly because the approach can help with quality assurance, an important subject area for CIEA members.
"The sophistication of online marking is that you can pick up deviations more quickly," he says. "If someone is marking 100 scripts over two or three days they
get tired. The software actually pulls this up, on top of which the senior marker
can look at every eighth script or tenth script just to check that standards are
not slipping or being altered marginally script-by-script."
The technology is powerful but Lord Sutherland is enthusiastic about it because it could help do justice to the learner, and their efforts. Interest in its application is part of his commitment to rightful "entitlement", whether that is for a child's education or care for someone in the last stages of their life, even if he modestly couches this
in humour.
"Yes, my interests are like Shakespeare's seven ages of man", he says, "from the cradle to the grave but miss out the bit
in the middle."
Assessment to take note of
Is there common ground between school assessment and music exams?
It is an area which Lord Sutherland would like to explore.
"I chair the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music," he explains, and adds with obvious pride, "that's an interesting exercise in assessment, it really is."
He is proud of the professionalism and expertise of examiners who often travel to different cities to assess sounds, which are, after all, unseen, and so, in a sense intangible.
"By ear, in a single city, they have to assess the grade of [someone playing] a particular instrument. Gosh that's hard," he says. "And seeing assessment of that kind is fascinating."
Lord Sutherland points out the preparation and skill involved. "It is clear and agreed what constitutes a pass,
fail or a distinction, and they train examiners to the
eyeballs in that," he says.
"They have a very rigorous training system and they do it across the world and they calibrate the results. They keep a recording of these external exams, and bring in external groups to look at them if there are appeals."
Lord Sutherland says that he has not "drawn any conclusions yet" but maybe the CIEA and ABRSM could share their thoughts.
"The ABRSM has a very rigorous system and their whole business and raison d'etre depends on assessing accurately and well. That's how they make their living. I'll bring them both together," he says.
CV
Age: 68
Education:
Woodside School and Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen; University of Aberdeen (MA philosophy); University of Cambridge (MA philosophy of religion)
Other qualifications:
10 honorary degrees from American and European Universities. Honorary fellowships from King's College London; Corpus Christi Cambridge and University College of North Wales. Elected Fellow of the British Academy.
Other professional interests:
Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology; Chair of the ABRSM; Chair of the English Community Care Association; President of Alzheimer Scotland - Action on Dementia; former member of the Higher Education Funding Council for England; Provost at Gresham College; President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Member of the board of Courtauld Institute of Art
Career:
2009 - Chair of the CIEA
2006-08: Pro-chancellor, University of London
2002-08: Provost, Gresham College, London
1994-2002: Principal and vice-chancellor, University of Edinburgh
1992-94: Chief inspector of schools for England
1990-94: Vice-chancellor, University of London
1985-90: Principal, King's College London;
1981-85: Vice-principal, King's College London
1977-85: Professor of history and philosophy of religion, King's College London
1968-76: Lecturer/reader, University of Stirling
1965-68: Assistant lecturer, University College of North Wales