qt

[craner]

I doubt it will, ever -- Tory plans are based on the econonmics and freedom of schools, but they can't destruct or deconstruct the OFTSED or PGCE base. The philosophy and practice and programmes of training and, crucially, the "free market" exam boards (the HELL of AQA literature specs, for example) are too fundamental and entwined and entrenched in schools and assessment and, in fact, the Tory's started off the whole thing with the National Curriculum. But it's become a nightmare. And it has ruined subjects, especially, I think, English.

Lesson plans are proscribed now - starter, first activity, main activity, plenary. Plenary is obviously important, but the whole "starter" mania is, in my opinion, seriously misguided.

The QTS standards are absurd. But it's a structure so powerful, it's impossible to dismantle.

I don't know how it is in private schools, but as far as I know, they are slaves to exam boards and OFSTED so have the same shit enforced on them.

That's the thing about Gove's plans: more freedom for schools, setting up schools, choosing schools, but they still have to teach AQA's "multi cultural poetry" unit and they still get OFSTED'd and still do shitty starter activities that kids hold in contempt or get bored and weary with, so what's the difference?

It's a maze of malice and madness.

 

[vimothy]

It's the audit culture, innit. Learning is a side effect of the real task of churning out grades. At least, that's how it looks from the side lines.

 

[craner]

Seriously, the idea of demoting marks for mistakes is so alien to current assessment as to be laughable...like Roswell. So children who can't spell or write get Grade Bs for...vaguely making a relevant point. It's fucking depressing...not just marking this shit, but being instructed how to mark it UP.

The flipside of "consequences" is "credits". I've seen teachers teaching bottom set anarchic classes giving "credits" to pupils just for giving an answer in any vague relation to the topic. It "boosts" them, right, in theory; in reality, it's a piss-take, they fall about laughing. "Miss, credit please!" The whole system is totally devalued. It's a mess. It's making things worse, far worse.

 

[craner]

Not just laughable...but "damaging".

 

[mixed_biscuits]

It's fucking depressing...not just marking this shit, but being instructed how to mark it UP. The whole system is totally devalued. It's a mess. It's making things worse, far worse.

Our first lecture on teaching English on the Cambridge PGCE course was a lesson in empathising with the 'victims' of marking down. The lecturer displayed a short essay that had been corrected in red ink and pleaded, How would you feel if you had spent all this time only to...etc.

The irony is that if one were to follow the lecturer's guidelines, no student would ever be in the position to understand that very same lecturer's long-winded academic essays on their own disenfranchisement. Such actions, supposedly taken in the service of working class empowerment, have an utterly counter-productive outcome.

There are PRIMARY school children in private schools who do not make grammatical or spelling errors. Why? Because the bar is set high and they rise to the challenge.

And because the bar is always high and involves difficult work that requires attention, then that is what they have to pay in class - attention. If learning is made too easy in the name of accessibility, then everyone coasts and academic work is demeaned.

 

[craner]

Yep, I've been in schools that mark in green ink - because red is too "aggressive"!

I am not joking. First Placement.

 

[vimothy]

Policy makers have basically orientated the system towards producing statistics. Teaching and learning is not the real goal. This seems true at all levels of the education system, even HE (though to a lesser extent perhaps).

 

[vimothy]

And since the tail is wagging the dog in terms of assessment, none of the statistics produced actually mean anything. People running degree programmes can't rely on grades--they don't know if an A grade student is actually good at the subject or if they just picked the easiest modules and retook them until they got top marks.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Yep, I've been in schools that mark in green ink - because red is too "aggressive"!

I am not joking. First Placement.

It's a joke because the colour green just comes to signify everything that red did.

In any case, there is sense to making being wrong unpleasant - things are easier to remember if accompanied by strong emotional reactions. This is why it's best to replace informal revision exercises by short formal tests + accompanying trouble-shooting.

 

[craner]

It's not just policy makers, though, it's a sick symbiosis of policy makers and educational academic theorists...and the latter provide a lot of material for the former. Have more power in fact. It's a weird match of left-ish academics/teachers-with-MAs and right-ish government agencies, all making things worse for everyone.

 

[craner]

I'm off to bed, anyway. Got 'Of Mice and Men' powerpoints for 9N tomorrow. The joy!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

And since the tail is wagging the dog in terms of assessment, none of the statistics produced actually mean anything. People running degree programmes can't rely on grades--they don't know if an A grade student is actually good at the subject or if they just picked the easiest modules and retook them until they got top marks.

Testing should be organised by those about to receive the testees: A-levels should be set by universities (it is in their interests that the data they get is meaningful and that students are ready for advanced study), primary school SATs carried out in the second week of Year 7 (crammed skills do not survive the school holidays, properly embedded skills do).

 

[vimothy]

Absolutely. I worked for someone a couple of years ago who interviewed all the main players for an ed research project--all the school effectiveness school improvement types and the politicians who loved em. Other than that it's just been these maths projects, so I've probably got quite a skewed view, but I can't help but conclude that the whole thing is dysfunctional in institutional terms. It's like the Wire. What you think should be happening, isn't happening. That thing happens by chance. Instead, you get this whole game of assessment and of stats production.

 

[vimothy]

Testing should be organised by those about to receive the testees: A-levels should be set by universities (it is in their interests that the data they get is meaningful and that students are ready for advanced study), primary school SATs carried out in the second week of Year 7 (crammed skills do not survive the school holidays, properly embedded skills do).

Sounds sensible to me. The unis should definitely be more involved in A level curriculum and assessment development.

 

[don_quixote]

i mark in green















my red pen is broken

 

[matt b]

To Craner, M_B and anyone else with teaching experience here: how long do you think it'll take before things start to swing back, with regard to teaching practices in this country? I mean, surely it's pretty obvious to just about everyone - teachers, parents, kids, education policy experts, whoever - that some pretty major ideological cock-ups have been made in the last couple of decades. And how much of a genuine break from the New Labour paradigm would there be with a Tory govt?

The New Labour policies were a continuation of Tory (Thatcher) ones on the whole. Now that teaching and results have become politicised, it will be difficult to make any major changes as the media would have a field day if success rates went down.

The biggest driver of change is OFSTED (see their recent focus on Every Child Matters and 'canvessing student voice')- their obsession with integrating ICT into lessons has seen the installation of shite electronic whiteboards everywhere. We now have moveable traditional whiteboards in most classrooms, that we wheel in front of the £2k white elaphant to write on.

I think Oliver and Mixed Biscuits are over egging the case, mind- you still have a lot of freedom in lessons as long as your results are good.

EDit: Would anyone mind if I moved this whole derail onto the teaching thread?

 

[matt b]

Testing should be organised by those about to receive the testees: A-levels should be set by universities (it is in their interests that the data they get is meaningful and that students are ready for advanced study), primary school SATs carried out in the second week of Year 7 (crammed skills do not survive the school holidays, properly embedded skills do).

That makes the assumption that A levels only exist to sift and sort for universities, which they don't. Also I doubt you would get any consensus from the universities as they are looking for many different things.

 

[matt b]

Our first lecture on teaching English on the Cambridge PGCE course was a lesson in empathising with the 'victims' of marking down. The lecturer displayed a short essay that had been corrected in red ink and pleaded, How would you feel if you had spent all this time only to...etc.

The irony is that if one were to follow the lecturer's guidelines, no student would ever be in the position to understand that very same lecturer's long-winded academic essays on their own disenfranchisement. Such actions, supposedly taken in the service of working class empowerment, have an utterly counter-productive outcome.

There are PRIMARY school children in private schools who do not make grammatical or spelling errors. Why? Because the bar is set high and they rise to the challenge.

And because the bar is always high and involves difficult work that requires attention, then that is what they have to pay in class - attention. If learning is made too easy in the name of accessibility, then everyone coasts and academic work is demeaned.

Not demoting marks for mistakes is a non-issue, on the whole- theystill only get marks for right stuff. Admittedly it has a negative affect on student's ability to construct arguments and write essays, but they have to do that at A level (where there is no marking down of mistakes) and they learn how to in the end.

The advantage private schools have is a) small class numbers b) more resources c) no national curriculum, which are far more important than any percieved dumbing down.

The only social class issue here, is that relating to how the education system as a whole benefits the wealthy.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The advantage private schools have is a) small class numbers b) more resources c) no national curriculum, which are far more important than any percieved dumbing down.

Private schools tend to follow the NC and also (primary, at least) take SATs (to display on their website/advert to 'prove' that they are better than the state alternatives/private competitors). If they were to deviate too far from the state default, then it would make parents nervous.

(I think that the NC is, in principle, a good idea - there needs to be agreement as to what is to be taught, in order to facilitate continuity. Otherwise, those children who are shuttled around from school to school risk having a highly incoherent education.)

You can have as many resources as you want (private schools, often restricted to ageing premises with a small footprint, can be surprisingly badly resourced), but if the will isn't there to push the students to the limit, then under-performance will result. And the will comes about because teachers are under special pressure from all sides - from the clued-up parents who closely monitor their children's progress; from a headteacher keen to bag scholarships; from children who are pushed to worry about their own performance - to raise their game. And 'gamed' results don't count: they may come out with Level 5s but if they can't do long division or explain the concepts they have been taught (the parents will check!) then the school has failed.

From my experience, you can't compromise in private schools: the smallest detail has to be perfect, from the school newsletter to the Christmas panto. Some of the state school plays I have seen would have private school parents storming the head's office, so undemanding were they on both actors and audience.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the pushy parent cohort were forced into the state system. Maybe state school parents should be taught how to be pushier.

 

[vimothy]

That makes the assumption that A levels only exist to sift and sort for universities, which they don't. Also I doubt you would get any consensus from the universities as they are looking for many different things.

A levels are the main route into HE. The universities are the most significant user of A levels.

It is true that the universities are all looking for different things. But the veil of non-commincation between HE and college that exists at present is not helpful. I don't know about the other subjects, but the fact that most universities administer their own maths A level to students as soon as they get there tells you something is not right.