How does P4C link to Ofsted’s English Curriculum Research Review?

Whenever I deliver training which focuses on – or even references  – Ofsted outcomes, I am always keen to stress the fact that we don’t plan, teach or assess for Ofsted; we do it to enable the children and young people we work with to thrive in the world, now and in the future.

Having acknowledged this, there is no denying that schools’ priorities are shaped, and even adjusted, to ensure that they are graded at least ‘good’ at inspection.

With this in mind, it can be useful for the SAPERE community to be familiar with the ways in which P4C supports Ofsted outcomes. There is a longer piece of work to be done looking at how P4C links to the Ofsted judgements in Personal Development, Behaviour and Attitudes and Leadership and Management, as well as safeguarding, but for the purposes of this exercise, I will be looking at the Spoken Language sections within the English Curriculum Research Review.

The review identifies that “the benefits of spoken language extend beyond just success at school. Becoming an articulate, effective communicator forms the basis of democratic engagement within wider society.” Indeed, P4C very much facilitates the rehearsal of presenting ideas, considering alternatives and grappling with new hypotheses as a means of improving how we think about and interact with the world around us. This is democracy in its truest sense, in which citizens are valued and have agency to affect their communities. Even on a more superficial level, voting is a key part of P4C when selecting the question, or even choosing a stimulus. Having one’s voice heard and one’s views taken into consideration is key to feeling able and empowered to engage democratically at any level. This ‘being heard’ within a trusted community helps a child’s self-esteem grow. Being responded to, even being disagreed with, shows a child that their viewpoint was listened to and valued.

The review goes on to state: “but talk in classrooms is cognitive and cultural and well as social.” Certainly, through the process of using dialogic interactions as part of a community, children begin to formulate and test ideas thus developing their reasoning skills in P4C. Through the effective challenge of a skilled facilitator, children identify weaknesses and inconsistencies in logic and judgement, enabling them to internalise and improve these skills for themselves.

Opportunities to observe and interact with planned, structured, purposeful dialogue through P4C support children’s cognitive abilities, increase self-esteem and improve their spoken language through practising sentence construction and using a range of vocabulary.

The role of the facilitator is key within P4C in ensuring rigour, working towards a satisfactory response to a philosophical question and safeguarding the collaborative nature of the community. This is provided through active listening and targeted questioning, and it is reflected in the statement from the review that “the teacher has an important role in modelling competence as a speaker and listener, contributing significantly to developing pupils’ spoken language.”

A usual feature of P4C is a set of ground rules which enable all pupils to contribute, without any individual dominating, as well as pointers about active listening, appropriate language and effective turn-taking. This is recommended as a strategy within the review. Where it does differ from P4C is that the review states that teachers should provide the rules, but it is more in keeping with the spirit of P4C to negotiate them with the whole community.

The review identifies 4 aspects of spoken language in which progress can be measured:

• physical (vocal control and body language, such as making eye contact and speaking loudly and clearly)
• linguistic (knowledge of vocabulary and grammatical constructions, and use of rhetorical devices)
• cognitive (knowledge of content, organisation of ideas, and tailoring talk to a specific purpose, such as to persuade or inform). This will include pupils learning about ‘exploratory talk’ (to explore new ideas and come to new understandings) and ‘presentational talk’ (to share their thinking with others). Pupils should learn how to pose questions, and use talk to narrate, explain, speculate, imagine, hypothesise, explore, include, discuss, argue, reason and justify
• social and emotional (considering the needs of different listeners, responding appropriately to others and developing the confidence to share ideas with different audiences)

I believe that I have demonstrated that each of these are both explicitly and implicitly addressed through the regular practice of P4C.

I can certainly get onboard with the idea that “opportunities for pupils of all ages to develop their proficiency should be planned carefully, both in English lessons and across other subjects.” This can be incorporated into the school curriculum through a progressive, planned P4C approach which uses cycles of enquiry to practise critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking within whole-enquiries as well as focused concept activities and skill-development activities.

I return to my opening comments that we don’t do P4C, or any other aspect of learning, in order to satisfy Ofsted. However, I think that it is fair to say that it does make our jobs easier when there is crossover between the two.

Quotes directly from the report are in italics.

Julie McCann, SAPERE trainer, School Improvement Liverpool