The Children We Leave Behind – Read the Synopsis

By Geoff Master

Efforts to improve performance and reduce achievement gaps in schools generally entail getting teachers and school leaders to change what they do—for example, to use more effective teaching methods and resources, to set higher expectations of all children, to better differentiate teaching to address individual needs, and to make more effective use of school data.

The Children We Leave Behind explores a different strategy. It begins by recognising that schools work within external structures over which they have limited control. These structures (referred to as the “machinery” of schooling) include the school curriculum, standardised tests and examinations, and requirements for assessing and reporting student learning. The Children We Leave Behind reveals how this machinery progressively sorts students and leaves many behind, resulting in large numbers performing well below the expectations for their year level.

The book’s conclusion is that improved performances and reduced achievement gaps depend on transforming how learning at school is organised and success is defined. The author identifies and discusses four features of the current machinery that function as obstacles to many children’s learning and so require reform.

A curriculum that assumes students in the same year of school are about equally ready for the same learning

Most curricula are designed with the intention that teachers will teach the same content to all students at the same time for the same amount of time. Some curricula tightly specify what and when teachers should teach and every student should learn.

The Children We Leave Behind presents evidence (Chapter 3) of vast differences in students’ levels of attainment and learning needs within each year of school. In learning areas for which quality data are available, the least advanced students are six or more years of learning behind the most advanced. A curriculum that expects teachers to teach the same content to everybody inevitably results in some students being taught what they are not yet ready to learn and others being taught what they already know.

A redesigned curriculum would better support teachers to establish where students are in their long-term progress in an area of learning so that they can target their teaching to individuals’ readiness and learning needs. Rather than holding all students to the same learning expectations, a redesigned curriculum would support teachers to “teach at the right level” for individuals, thereby ensuring that every student is appropriately stretched and challenged and learning is optimised.

The requirement that students advance from one curriculum to the next based on time rather than mastery

Learning at school is heavily time-based. Students move from one topic to the next and from one curriculum to the next, not because they have mastered what they have been taught, but because the allotted time has elapsed.

The Children We Leave Behind observes that when children are required to advance before they are ready, they often lack the prerequisite knowledge for the next stage of learning. Some struggle and slip further behind as each year’s curriculum becomes increasingly beyond their reach. As a result, some students complete primary school lacking the reading skills they were expected to master much earlier in their schooling. By 15 years of age, one in four is unable to demonstrate the standards of reading and mathematics expected of 12-year-olds. These students have effectively been sorted out and left behind by a time-driven curriculum that has moved on.

A redesigned curriculum would adopt a more flexible approach to time. Rather than giving all students the same time to learn, the curriculum ideally would allow individuals the time they require, and advancement to the next stage of learning would be based not on elapsed time but on demonstrated mastery.

The definition of success as performance against year-level expectations

Success at school is defined and evaluated with reference to the expectations of the year-level curriculum. Students who demonstrate most of what the year-level curriculum specifies are considered to have learnt successfully; those who do not are considered less successful.

The Children We Leave Behind observes that some students start each school year well ahead of others and on track to receive high grades, while others commence well behind and on track to receive low grades. Although they do not begin on the same starting line, all students are judged against the same finish line (the year-level curriculum expectations), placing less advanced students at a significant disadvantage. 

A redesigned assessment system would evaluate an individual’s learning not simply in terms of age/year level expectations but as the progress they make over the course of a year, irrespective of their starting point.

The use of percentages and A to E grades to communicate learning success

How well students perform on the curriculum for their year level is commonly conveyed in percentages, marks, and/or letter grades. Students sometimes receive the same or similar letter grade in a subject year after year.

The Children We Leave Behind illustrates why A to E grades are an inadequate basis for communicating a child’s progress across the years of school. A student who receives the same grade year after year could be forgiven for thinking that they are making no progress and that their ability to learn is fixed—for example, that they are inherently an “A-student” or irretrievably a “D-student”.

A redesigned reporting system would communicate instead the stage an individual had reached in their long-term learning of a subject, what they were ready to learn next, and what progress they made from one assessment to the next.

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The Children We Leave Behind concludes that the negative impact of these four features of the current machinery of schooling, particularly on less advanced students, demands transformational change in how learning at school is organised and student success is defined, evaluated, and reported. At the heart of the proposed transformation is the concept of long-term progress (or growth) in an area of learning, with the curriculum for the area providing a “roadmap” along which all students progress but not necessarily in lockstep. Assessment and reporting then become the processes of establishing, understanding, and communicating where individuals are on this learning roadmap and the progress they make over time.

The Children We Leave Behind

Internationally recognised education adviser Geoff Masters AO challenges what most of us take for granted about learning at school and lifts the lid on vast differences in students’ performances and needs within each grade. Readers are invited to consider an alternative way of organising learning – one that is focused on meeting individual learners where they are and that is built on an understanding of learning as long-term growth. Masters makes a case for reforming school learning systems to better target individuals’ differing needs, to give all students the time they require to learn, and to build every student’s confidence in their capacity for success.

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