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The Uncertain Future of Middle Schools

By Alan Peters,

24 Jan 2020

Back in 2009, Bedfordshire Borough Council’s website announced the closure of its middle schools.

The method it employed to do so – we might call this ‘opaque’, for want of a better word, of which there are many – gives a clear answer to the question regarding the future of middle schools. It is a limited one.

And the reason for that is money.

In announcing the closures, the council certainly clouded the truth.

‘A momentous decision,’ announced Mr David Sawyer, who was at the time the county’s portfolio holder for Children’s services.

‘For too long our education system, which is out of step with the National Curriculum…has failed the young people of this borough.’ Quite why a middle school could not follow the national curriculum is a question he fails to address.

The county admits that parents overwhelmingly wanted to keep the three-tier system – as indeed any sensible parent with experience of it would – but countered this by arguing that Headteachers wanted the change.

Unsurprisingly, those in charge of Upper Schools and Lower Schools would, since they would each gain two entire year groups, with all the extra funding and power that implies.

Not to mention their cut of the £300 million Bedfordshire had allocated for coping with the necessary changes to infrastructure.

Those who were heads of middle schools, and would see their jobs disappear, were less effusive in their support. A number of other examples of ‘opaqueness’ were also present in the council’s statement, most notably the comment that the two-tier system was ‘the system found in the rest of the country.’ That might be news to the staff, students and parents at any of the more than a hundred middle schools which continue to provide excellent opportunity, or the nearly half a million nine to thirteen-year olds they serve (and there were more back in 2009). Middle schools make sense.

One of the biggest problems faced by primary school leaders is how to challenge and allow proper emotional development of eleven-year olds, while they also have four-year olds under their care.

Most manage by effectively dividing the school – separate breaks, separate lunch times.

Always, on a small site, a far from ideal solution. It is tough on teachers as well; educating a reception class is a very different skill to teaching a Year 6 group.

Yet primary teachers are lumped together, as though their skills are equally applicable across the entire age range.

Expecting enough of our eldest primary pupils while not demanding our four-year olds behave as though they are eight is a serious problem to overcome. The same is true at the other end.

Why not allow thirteen-year olds to stay as children for as long as possible? Why does a young adolescent need to be thrown into the peer pressures provided by their sixteen-year-old mates? Many teachers will argue that Years 8 and 9 are the toughest to teach.

The problem shrinks with middle schools – the Year 8s are the top of the school, with all that implies, while the Year 9s have the challenges of coping with being little again – nothing is better designed to keep them on the straight and narrow. Benefits apply to Year 5 – the age most middle schools begin; this is the ideal time to start introducing subject specialist teachers.

How amazing that these lucky students will have access to proper science labs, specialist music teachers, a wide range of subjects taught by experts.

All things which are lotteries for the typical primary school based ten-year-old and can often only be guaranteed if a parent is able to fork out £20000 for a place at an independent prep school (the best of which also run to thirteen).

And surely it is better for sixteen, seventeen- and eighteen-year olds to avoid the hassle of pre-teens running around their feet? But Middle Schools cost.

Three schools are needed where two would otherwise suffice.

And for cash strapped local authorities and profit conscious academy chains that is the driving factor.

Not any educational benefit to students.

These days, the majority of middle schools are found in the North East, where they are under threat, some parts of the West country and spots in the Midlands.

The odd one lingers on in Windsor and Suffolk.

In the past, they thrived in the East Midlands, parts of London, Yorkshire, East Anglia and the West Midlands. They began to proliferate in the 1970s but by the 1980s, under the stringent financial controls of Thatcher, the experiment was cut short.

Those counties which had already turned to the three-tier system kept hold of it, but for a Government that was intent on selling school land to private builders, the thought of making any kind of large-scale investment into the education infrastructure was anathema.

It is very hard to assess the educational benefit or otherwise of any particular system.

In 2015 a cross party group of MPs reported that there was no evidence that academies or free schools were raising standards, nor lowering them.

There is no evidence that grammar schools raise the level of achievement for either their students, or for those that that fail to gain entry.

(There might be some data, though, which suggests the opposite!) The same applies to middle schools.

The North East, which has middle schools, tends to perform less well at GCSEs than London, which does not.

Yet the gap is not large.

However, when factors such as poverty are taken into account, the picture becomes extremely muddied. Further, the South East and South, both of which have middle school counties, are among the highest performing regions (behind only London) but they are also the richest.

The West Midlands, which has middle schools, outperforms the East Midlands, which does not. But it is safe to conclude that in terms of pure educational results at worst Middle Schools neither raise nor lower standards, at best, they lead to a better outcome for students.

In the far more important field of well-being, common sense suggests that having a three-tier system is beneficial to students’ happiness. But they cost a lot.

And that is why their future prospects are distinctly uncertain. A footnote: in July 2010, the Bedfordshire on Sunday website led with the headline: ‘Two Tier Education Scrapped’.

At the time of writing, the Borough continues to operate the three-tier system, along with the rest of county and a significant part of the remainder of the country.



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