DfE ‘quality assurance’ consultation sparks concerns

The Department for Education (DfE) is in consultation with education publishers with a view to introducing a quality assurance or kitemark scheme which would rate teaching resources going into UK schools, The Bookseller can reveal.

Publishers have said they are "very worried" by the initiative, which some consider could be "deeply damaging" to the industry as well as having "incredibly dangerous" implications for state control of education. While some sources say the consultation is still at a very early stage, others believe the DfE is determined to introduce the scheme—and is likely to announce it before the end of the year.

The measure comes as the DfE promotes the use of textbooks in schools, a measure widely welcomed by the trade.

The proposed quality assurance scheme follows a DfE-commissioned report published in July, Use and Perceptions of Curriculum Support Resources in Schools, which found that teachers were overwhelmed by the number of teaching resources available, and thought recommendations from other educators would help them make choices. The report noted: "Senior leaders and teachers in both primary and secondary schools commonly suggested that this [situation] could be improved by a quality assurance process. In particular, respondents felt that resources should be developed or reviewed by experts currently in the education system. Many suggested that teachers would be best placed to do this, because they understand what works in the classroom, and how to implement and tailor resources to meet the varied needs of pupils."

The measure the DfE is thought to favour in response to this report would see education resources going before an assessment panel, which would rate them gold, silver or bronze, in a scheme supported in some form by money from the £7.7m Curriculum Fund announced in January by the then education secretary Justine Greening.

Hit or miss
The move has echoes of the DfE’s Teaching for Mastery programme, which offers funding to support the spread of the East Asian method of teaching maths, with primary schools able to claim up to £2,000 of "match funding" (whereby the government matches the amount the school spends, up to £2,000) to buy textbooks approved by a three-strong "expert" panel. Controversially, only one textbook, from Maths–No Problem!, was approved by the panel appointed to the scheme in its first year in 2017, while textbooks submitted by Oxford University Press, Pearson, Scholastic and Collins Learning were all rejected. This year one Pearson textbook, Power Maths Key Stage 1, was also approved for the scheme.

Publishers are now warning that introducing a wider kitemark scheme could have a "devastating" effect on the education publishing industry, with schools inevitably focusing their purchasing on the few top-rated resources on the market.

"It creates a scenario where [the DfE-appointed panel] can pick one or two bodies of content and say, ‘Those are the ones schools will buy’. It massively distorts the market and makes it impossible for the current wide range of content to be out there," warned one publisher, who preferred to speak anonymously. "It will be devastating—though if you are one of the few winners, you do nicely. There will be damage to UK industry revenue, and then damage to the export revenue. In business terms, it’s a major disaster."

The step would also result in a massive reduction in choice and opportunity, as well as hampering innovation, publishers argue, with companies unwilling to invest in products that could be rejected by a small selection panel without good grounds. There are also wider concerns about education and democracy: "Educationally, the state is taking control by the back door of content it considers acceptable in the classroom. Having two or three people in each subject area controlling what schools can and can’t do is very dangerous," noted one publisher.

A matter of timing
Hodder Education m.d. Lis Tribe focused on the practical aspect. "It’s very difficult to welcome it with open arms because of the problems we can foresee," she said. "I am not concerned that our materials won’t meet quality assurance, but it is a massive logistical task for the government to take on and will impact on publishing schedules. Already teachers say materials don’t come quickly enough when there is curriculum change. Adding what will inevitably be a layer of bureaucracy means I can’t see us ever getting materials out in time for September in a year of curriculum change. Then you also get the problem: are you going to quality assure stuff that is already in the market, which students are happily using? You are asking publishers and schools to reinvest, and that’s quite problematic."

Tribe said she preferred the idea of quality assurance at a simpler level, that of the publisher itself, showing that everything produced by Hodder Education goes through rigorous testing. "It’s much less of a logistical nightmare."

Rod Theodorou (above), content and business strategy director at OUP, highlighted the threat to plurality and choice in a government-run quality assurance scheme, and noted: "When a separate external body decides what is and isn’t good, there’s a risk that it deprofessionalises teachers." He also queried the government’s record in getting involved in kitemarking activities, given the industry’s experience with the Maths Mastery panel. "Who on earth knows how to run an effective quality assurance process? We don’t think the Department for Education understands educational publishing," he said. "Who is the expert qualified to judge? Nobody agrees. There is a risk that the DfE will only support experts who are following a narrow, prescribed view [of education processes]. So is that quality, or is it government-endorsed pedagogy?"

Theodorou suspects the DfE is working "on a false premise". He said: "It’s great they want to stimulate the use of textbooks, but teachers know how to judge the quality of resources. That’s not the problem. The problem is funding: they can’t afford them. Teachers trust other teachers and use social media to talk about the schemes they like and don’t like. I don’t think teachers need government to tell them what is best.

"I think they’ve done a bit of research—do teachers find choosing resources difficult?— and included all resources, including internet resources. Teachers said they found them bewildering. If a different question were asked: ‘If you want to buy an educational textbook, do you know where to go, and do you know how to choose good resources?’, the answer would have been, ‘Of course we do.’"

A fine balance
Collins m.d. Colin Hughes echoed the criticisms raised by the other publishers. "Obviously we strongly support ministers’ aim of reversing the trend among teachers against textbook use," he said. "Too many teachers have been wrongly taught that they should create all their own resources from scratch, which makes no sense at all. We know that good textbooks enhance standards, create consistent teaching approaches and reduce the time burdens on teachers. So the government’s move is very welcome on that front.

"To that end, we are also open to looking at quality assurance for textbook schemes. But we have serious concerns which we hope that the DfE will address. The risk, what we fear, is setting up a narrowly prescriptive state-approval scheme. It’s counter to the culture of schooling, bad for innovation, bad for our very successful export business, and all the international evidence says that, so far from enhancing quality, it would stymie creativity and open the Pandora’s box of undue political interference in how teachers teach."

Emma House, deputy m.d. at the Publishers Association, said: "High-quality published resources are known to raise standards in classrooms and reduce teachers’ workload and we welcome any government policy to encourage their use. Quality assurance [QA] can be helpful in assisting teachers when procuring resources, but any QA scheme needs to be carefully thought-through and implemented so as to avoid any unintended consequences, such as narrowing or even taking away choice for teachers, and limiting investment in creativity and in new products."

In response to a detailed request for comment on publisher concerns, a DfE spokesperson said: "Published curriculum resources, such as textbooks, play an important role in supporting teachers and pupils in the classroom. We have been speaking with publishers on how best to inform teachers about what high-quality resources are available across the curriculum." The spokesperson added: "High-quality textbooks are a central feature of the Maths Mastery approach. We run an annual independent panel process to enable publishers to submit textbooks for feedback and approval."