Monday, November 01, 2010

 

The Brain Dead Chimps Guide to Better GCSE Results

Kenny Frederick, the headteacher of George Green's School in Tower Hamlets, writes a column in the Times Educational Supplement, once upon a time she was the kind of headteacher I would have wanted to work for – lots of innovative projects, a school at the heart of the local community and imaginative methods to engage children in learning.

Last year the hammer blow came, the school failed its Ofsted inspection. Social deprivation? Imaginative teaching? Community involvement? Ofsted aren't interested in any of that, they worship only one God – test results. Like any bully they prey on the weak and vulnerable, the great majority of schools that fail inspections are in areas of extreme poverty.

In the film 'Plague of the Zombies' cheerful, outgoing people suddenly acquire a glazed, distant stare; with an Ofsted failure headteachers lock themselves away in a dark room and are transformed into spreadsheet obsessives, they start spouting words like 'targets', 'assessment' and they don't have children any more, they are renamed with labels like 'borderline C/D'.

In Kenny Frederick's latest article she relates how trips, visits, any 'unexpected learning opportunities' and staff training has been cancelled due to pressure from controlled assessments for GCSEs. Near the end is a stunning paragraph -

'Our school has set itself a target of a 10 per cent increase next year in the proportion of getting five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths. We need to achieve such high targets because we must reach national averages – other wise we can never be judged by Ofsted as anything other than satisfactory'.

So Ofsted have now become the supreme arbiter of the value and worth of the school. Where did the mania about being more than 'satisfactory' come from? America, where else? In a recent survey 48 out of the 50 states claimed that their test results were 'above average'.

So how exactly do you 'boost' GCSE results?

Career advancement note: I really must resign as a teacher and become one of those PowerPoint enabled, inspirational 'consultants' who can charge thousands of pounds for spouting the trite and obvious to hostages packed into stuffy hotel rooms.

Sadly the education press is full of demon headteachers who have 'turned their school around' by 'boosting results'. It isn't education, it isn't learning, it isn't teaching, it isn't inspiring, it isn't difficult – even a brain dead chimp could 'boost results'.


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# posted by Mr Read @ 5:39 am 1 comments

Sunday, May 16, 2010

 

SATS Boycott


Peter Preston in 'The Guardian'

Peter Preston attacks the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) boycott of the SATs tests for 11 year-olds (School heads put to the test 4/5/10). He castigates those ‘who anger easily, blow their tops’. As for being ‘fist waving and rowdy’ I can’t think of a more inappropriate description, natural rebels they aren’t, they don’t go around spraying graffiti, listening to garage music, wearing studs in their noses, spiking their hair with gel and spitting in the street. Yet within local communities who do people value and trust? Politicians, businessmen/women, or journalists? The headteacher of the local primary school would come close to the top of any list.

So what has stirred them into action? Is this not a cause for concern when people who have worked for decades educating children are threatening industrial action for the first time in decades? They have a strongly held belief that testing children and publishing results in league tables is wrong.

Just how useful are the dreaded league tables? Well let’s put it this way at the top you will find schools in neat villages and the leafy suburbs. Yet, despite the Herculean efforts of their teachers, languishing at the bottom will be the schools in ‘challenging’ areas, with high numbers of special education needs (SEN) children and Free School Meals. The connection between educational achievement and poverty is well established, however, they will be branded as ‘failing’. Ofsted will merely confirm the results of the tests.

Where has that tunnel vision of targets, targets, targets led us? Stafford Hospital ticked every box, exceeded every target and won the exalted status of foundation hospital. The reality was that patients were left to die, unattended, in draughty corridors. So fixated were the staff on fulfilling targets.

The reality of testing in schools is that teachers use every ruse to reach their target. The standard one is to concentrate on the borderline group in the class. Let me give a concrete example. The teacher arrived in September looked at the Year 6 class – 15 children of middle or higher ability (no problem there they’d easily achieve the magic Level 4) 5 SEN children, with no real hope of a Level 4 and 5 children on the Level 3 and 4 borderlines. Potential SATs score 60%, result special measures and misery. Do not pass ‘Go’, please pick up your P45.

The solution? The teacher spent every morning during the maths and literacy hours working with the borderline group, then there were the ‘Booster Classes’ in the afternoon, the parents were summoned in to school, and there was after school one-to-one tuition. The SEN children were consigned to work with the unqualified teaching assistant, the rest of the class were left to their own devices. All of the borderline children achieved Level 4, SATs score rises to 80%, the teacher is hailed as a genius and the headteacher breathes a huge sigh of relief, career still intact. Testing corrupts everything and everyone and it spreads like a cancer around the blood stream.

Over the past decade a consensus for changes in the testing regime has emerged supported by teachers, headteachers, Royal Societies, academics and authors. Wales and Northern Ireland have abandoned SATs and only the government remains to defend the indefensible.

There is a noble tradition of civil disobedience in the face of tyranny or oppression, we teach about it in schools. The NAHT members are taking action on a matter of principle, they have been threatened with legal action, loss of pay, a threat to their careers and that Ofsted inspectors will demand to see test results. Are they not walking the same path as Gandhi or Martin Luther King? Instead they are branded as moaning minnies who shouldn’t complain and just get on with testing 11 year-olds to destruction,

The government’s reply is always ‘standards’ and Peter Preston sites falling standards in Scotland and Wales. Why the fall in standards? Because teachers aren’t teaching to test, spending all their time between January and May on revision, and mock tests. It is true that the more tests children do the more proficient they become, at the same time schools jettison art, music and PE. A diet of gruel eventually leads to malnutrition.

As for the children who won’t be tested being ‘victims’? The fact is that testing reinforces failure, I’ve heard children leaving primary school waving their test results in the air, ‘I’m thick, I’m a Level 3’. More able children become bored and disaffected with the stodgy, unchallenging curriculum. Others succumb to stress faced with these high stakes tests – don’t worry children it’s only the headteacher’s job that’s at stake, no pressure.

Finally Peter Preston gives the impression that the National Union of Teachers’ (NUT) General Secretary, Christine Blower is in favour of hearty, bone-crunching games of rugby as an alternative to SATs tests. The truth is that Ms Blower did suggest a whole list of academic, cultural and sporting activities, a sort of festival of the mind and body, as an alternative to that grim week of testing. As a sop to middle England she might have included rugby. The less salubrious papers indulge in outright falsification, disinformation and misrepresentation in an attempt to belittle their opponents. I had hoped that as an ex-editor of ‘The Guardian’ Peter Preston would have exhibited higher journalistic standards.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 1:46 pm 2 comments

Monday, April 06, 2009

 
SATs Boycott

The joint call for a boycott by the largest teachers’ union (National Union of Teachers) and the main headteachers organisation (National Association of Headteachers) represents the most credible threat to the Key Stage 2 tests.

Almost every educational organisation and academic, across the political spectrum, has called for changes, if not outright abolition, of testing and league tables. Reports, enquiries and research papers must be straining every shelf in the misnamed Department for Children Schools and Families.

Last year Unicef reported on international comparisons of children’s welfare. Out of the twenty-one wealthiest industrialised countries the UK came bottom. Other studies have shown how children’s self-esteem is now linked to their academic ability. Scotland has never used SATs testing at 11 and Wales abandoned them in 2005. After last year’s marking fiasco the Key Stage 3 SATs in England were scrapped.

And yet, and yet, reasoned argument has failed, the government still clings on to Key Stage 2 SATs. There’s been so many letters written, calling for abolition that if quills were still in use every available bird would be denuded of feathers. The government’s response is always ‘standards’, this, despite the fact that when the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) remarked a sample of Key Stage 2 SATs papers, 22% of the English grades were incorrect.

So there it is, unpopular tests that are unfair and completely inaccurate.

The boycott call by the NUT and NAHT is a reprise of the NUT’s campaign in 2003. However, the problem then was, what did they mean by a ‘boycott’, who would be responsible for it, what would the action comprise of? Already there is the danger that it will be mired in legal technicalities, Phil Revell, chief executive of the National Governors’ Association has warned headteachers that any boycott might lead to disciplinary action.

A boycott could lean heavily on headteachers and the Year 6 teachers, who are usually members of senior management. The campaign should involve all members of staff in primary schools; personally I’d like to see a strike on one or more days during the SATs week. That way it would be a collective decision by all teachers to boycott testing, it wouldn’t isolate a few members of staff.

80% of primary heads are members of the NAHT. I’m sure there are older heads who can remember times, if not the Elysian Fields or a millenarian golden age, when children weren’t tested to destruction and phoney league tables weren’t used to judge schools. As retirement beckons there’s many who will be saying ‘sod it, let’s scrap the tests’. As for younger heads? They will be graduates of the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) this is the course that ensures schools are run by cloned, dull, conformist, automatons.

Local authorities employ teams of School Improvement Officers who constantly ‘monitor’ schools, any ‘under-performing’ heads are liable to get the Alan Sugar treatment. So just how many of them will be willing to participate in a SATs boycott and commit career suicide?

To its credit the NUT has led the campaign to abolish SATs. The only reason the ballot failed in 2003 was that the turn out was only 34%. It is though one thing to pass a conference resolution and another thing to get the members to participate. Most primary schools don’t have a union representative and many of the union branches are moribund. Before last year’s strike I visited some of our local schools, in some the reps had done a good job and the school was closed, in another the union posters were on the staffroom notice board but this was because a diligent school secretary opened the post and made sure they were displayed. In others I rang the intercom and asked to speak to the union rep, ‘we don’t have one’, could I speak to any union member, it was about the strike. After a few minutes the door would open slightly, enough to reveal one eye, a reluctant hand would appear, grasp the leaflets, hand and eye would retreat, door closed.

The National Association of Schoolteachers (NAS) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) have, a year before it is muted, condemned the boycott call. This must take the proverbial, stale, mouldy staffroom biscuit. As part of the government’s ‘social partnership’ the two unions have signed agreements that replaced Management Allowances (MAs) with Teaching and Learning Responsibilities (TLRs) thereby reducing the pay of thousands of teachers; introduced performance management criteria that allow maverick heads to use our old friend test results to limit teachers movement up the pay scales; allowed teaching assistants to replace teachers in front of the class and when the government wanted to change teachers’ pensions in 2004, every union was calling for strike action, apart from the NAS, only a rare conference revolt brought them into line.

Just to look at TLRs in more detail, the old Management Allowances gave extra money to teachers involved in things like pastoral care, the new TLRs only provided extra cash for work involved with increased test scores. In about 100 schools where the union(s) were strong there was strike action by the NUT and or the NAS. ‘Look we are a union! We organise strikes!’ Well, even the state controlled unions in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia organised the odd strike, if they hadn’t they would have lost all credibility. The NAS signed the national agreement that replaced MAs with TLRs, despite the rearguard action in few schools, that did in the main win concessions, nationally, according to the School Teachers’ Review Body, 30,000 teachers lost pay. The NUT as usual talked a good fight, but refused to organise national action.

The NUT/NAHT SATs boycott is a ray of hope. One of the NAHT leaders described the SATs tests as, ‘child abuse’. I don’t believe that was hyperbole. Thousands of children leave primary school as ‘Level 3’s’ saying ‘I’m thick’.

We also need to get the support of parents. What about an alternative vision for Year 6?

¡ Learn a foreign language
¡ Improve the link with secondary schools for Year 7
¡ Write a short story
¡ Learn to play a musical instrument
¡ Go on an adventure holiday
¡ Put on a play
¡ Undertake a community project

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# posted by Mr Read @ 3:14 pm 0 comments

Thursday, March 26, 2009

 
The End of SATs?

There’s a report in today’s newspapers that the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) are both calling for a boycott of Key Stage 2 SATs in 2010. Is the day of liberation coming?

There’s a growing realisation that SATs tests are completely unreliable. The Qualifications and Curriculum authority (QCA) carried out a review of Key Stage 3 marking and found that 44% of grades in English writing were wrong, in reading up to a third were faulty and in science one in six.

The test results are used by Ofsted as an infallible guide to the quality of education in a particular school, Professor John MacBeath found that Ofsted inspection gradings directly correlated with exam results in 98% of primaries and 96% of secondaries.

The key stage 1, 2 and 3 tests cost £50 million in 2008, that’s enough to pay the salaries of 2,500 teachers.

So is it time to hang out the bunting? Both the NUT and the NAHT will come under pressure to retreat from a boycott. If there is a ballot I’m not confident that the NAHT will be able to deliver a majority vote. The NUT ballotted its primary school members in 2003, but whilst 86% supported a SATs boycott the turnout was only 34%. The other teacher ‘unions’ NAS and ATL have already waved the white flag and indicated that they would not join the boycott.

Amongst parents there is however a growing recognition of how useless the tests are, the NAHT carried out a survey of 10,000 parents, 85% thought that the present system of testing should be abolished and 71% wanted to see an end to league tables.

After the marking fiasco with the American company ETS the government were forced into a u-turn and the Key Stage 3 tests were abandoned.

It will be interesting to see how some Year 6 teachers cope, some of them will be like the long term prisoners who after they are released find it difficult to adapt to ‘life outside’. In Wales even though SATs were scrapped a majority of schools still used them for assessment. Doubtless Ofsted will still want to see test results.

Still, let’s dream dreams. If enough schools organised a boycott the national figures and league tables would be worthless and redundant. Hallelujah! A new day will dawn!

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:51 pm 0 comments
 
Rose Review, 'I see no testing'

Freeing up the primary curriculum? The Rose Review prescribes more rote learning, chanting times tables, dates from history and phonics. The spin doctors were dusting their magic over the plans because to give it a good media spin they included using Twitter, Wikipedia and spellcheckers.

The main problem in primary schools is the inordinate amount of time spent drilling children in English, Maths and Science. Why? Because that’s what children will be tested in, the results of which will be recorded in league tables, the place the school occupies will then decide if it fails its Ofsted inspection and in turn the career prospects of the headteacher.

The terms of reference of the Rose Review of the curriculum specifically excluded the testing culture and that fatal emphasis on ‘the basics’. Sir Jim had to ignore the elephant in the living room, the dinosaur blocking the dining room, the Komodo Dragons cluttering the kitchen or more accurately that enormous Blue Whale wedged in the bathroom blocking every ray of sunlight. So he failed to take into account testing, league tables and the grim Ofsted inspections; their baleful influence has all but stripped any element of creativity, imagination or joy from the primary curriculum.

The Rose Review is the Hutton Enquiry Mark II – limit the terms of reference and install a ‘safe pair of hands’ who won’t ask any awkward questions. Me thinks the bold Sir Jim has laboured and brought forth a veritable mouse.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:52 am 0 comments

Friday, March 20, 2009

 
The rot of targets

We’re all familiar in education with the way that targets have completely distorted children’s learning, particularly during the testing years. Children lose all individuality and are converted into a ‘safe level 4’ or ‘borderline’. A marking review of SATs papers for 14 year olds by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) found that 44% of grades awarded in English writing tests were wrong. In reading up to a third and in science one in six.

Confirmation that the rot of targets has infected all public services was confirmed with the Stafford hospital scandal. In the pursuit of foundation status the hospital ignored patient care. One of the main targets they tried to achieve was patients moved out of Accident and Emergency within four hours. Patients were transported to a ghost ward, purely to massage the figures. It’s estimated that hundreds of patients died due to lack of care.

What is worrying is that no one within the hospital blew the whistle, it was only when an unofficial patients’ group began to protest that an inquiry was launched. Hospitals used to be checked by Community Health Councils, they were abolished and replaced by completely toothless and ineffectual patients’ groups.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the horrendous crimes of rapist John Worboys led to a wider examination of how the police assess rape. In some London boroughs inexperienced police constables were given the job of reviewing cases. In many instances it wasn’t reported as a crime but as an ‘incident’. More experienced officers were working on massaging the car crime figures. Why? Because that was the most important target.

The furore over the Baby P case highlighted how social workers rather than spending time working with vulnerable children are hunched over a computer inputting data to satisfy the culture of targets.

Targets are a symptom of the way that New Labour want to micro manage everything, as though a minister in Whitehall can pull a lever and everyone will move to order. It doesn’t work.

In the wake of the Stafford scandal the government reassured everyone that most hospitals were putting patient care first. How do they know this? Er… because they are reaching their targets.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:04 am 2 comments

Friday, February 06, 2009

 
Testing, testing… is the government listening?

The National Association of Head Teachers’ surveyed over 10,000 parents on the issue of national tests, 85% thought that the current system should be abolished and 71% wanted to see an end to league tables of schools. A recent report by the Children’s Society noted that schools contributed to problems of low self-esteem by introducing too much testing. “There is a clear danger that education becomes less stimulating when the main incentive is to learn things because they will be tested, and when the fear of failure is a major consideration.”

The continual mantra from the government is ‘standards’. However, almost every academic report or survey has shown the the rise in ‘standards’ is a result of ‘teaching to test’ and the high stakes nature of the tests (principally the link to Ofsted inspections).

There is another way. In the 1970s and 1980s sample cohort testing was used to monitor standards. 1.5% of children were tested and as questions could be repeated, a clear pattern of attainment and children’s understanding could be marked out.

Not that testing is ever fool proof, it mainly measures the lowest academic functions, GCSE exams are an exercise in mnemonics (memory) not intelligence. If you have a photographic memory you may be an excellent quiz player, it doesn’t mean you are creative or intelligent.

With the news that Carol Vorderman is leading the Conservative think-tank on maths teaching, we get the newspaper headlines about ‘success’ amongst pupils in Japan and Korea. That’s fine if you want young children to work for hours after school in exam cramming factories. On some occasions they can’t leave until they have passed a test. So in Japan there is the phenomenon of the hikikomori, where adolescents (mainly boys) lock themselves in their bedrooms for years on end.

Will the government listen to Head Teachers? I wouldn’t bet on it.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 5:52 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

 
Jacking up the results

This is a story about two education ‘leaders’. A few years ago my friend taught at a Catholic primary school in Knowsley, it was as they euphemistically call it ‘challenging’. The economic and social profile of the area was bleak, high unemployment, family breakdown, alcohol abuse and drug taking. There were very high numbers of children on the special needs register.

The school survived and thrived due to the dedication of the staff and the headteacher who was much loved by the teachers, pupils and parents. However there was one thing that his Christian conscience wouldn’t allow him to do and that was pressure vulnerable 11 year-olds to pass exams purely to please the suits from the Local Authority.

Predictably the SATs results were terrible. A Local Authority brown nose ran the Infant School, so 7 year-olds were drilled to pass tests. They arrived in Year 3 with totally unrealistic National Curriculum Levels, but it heaped the pressure on because the ‘value-added’ scores in the Juniors were dire.

There was unremitting pressure on the school, Improvement Officers grilled the head and consultants came in and rubbished the Literacy and Numeracy planning. Eventually a senior education bod came in and asked in incredulous tones why the head had been in the same job for twenty years. Well, he’d just devoted his life to the school. That was the final straw, he took early retirement.

A succession of ‘super-heads’ came in, jacked up the results, staff left in droves, the ‘super-heads’ moved on, onwards and upwards.

In Knowsley it wasn’t only the SATs scores that ‘improved’ GCSE results rocketed up. In 1999 only 23% of students gained 5 GCSE passes at A-C level. After a critical Ofsted report, Steve Munby was parachuted in as Chief Education Officer.

By 2005 the pass rate had shot up to 43%. The ‘Guardian’ wrote that it was all down to the ‘mild-mannered but dynamic’ Mr Munby. So how did he do it? Ruthless pressure on heads to get results and the use of GNVQs to boost test results, one pass counted as four GCSEs.

In 2005 Munby left to become the Chief Executive of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). A few months later the GCSE tables were reconfigured to include passes at English and Maths, Knowsley plummeted to the bottom of the table.

The latest figures for 2007 make interesting reading, the bottom five local authorities for passes at GCSE were-

Bristol 31.8%

Barnsley 31.2%

Sandwell 29.8%

Hull 29.7%

Knowsley 26.4%

Of course we can’t judge Steve Munby by results, because he has moved on. That’s the way it works in education, jack up the results by whatever means necessary, move on up the career ladder and leave someone else to pick up the pieces.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:55 pm 1 comments

Monday, October 29, 2007

 
The Testing Lottery

New research by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) shows just how much national school tests are a lottery. They found that children born in August did far worse than those born in September.

At present primary school children start in the term after their fifth birthday so those born later miss out on whole terms.

Of today’s eight, nine and ten year olds, 80% of girls born in September reached Level 2 or better at the age of seven. But only 47% of those born in August reached the magic Level 2.

The gap narrows with older children. At 11 64% of September born children reached Level 4 or better, compared with 48% of August babies.

At age 11, August born girls are 25% more likely to be assessed as special education needs (SEN) and for boys a 14% greater likelihood.

The effect was the same regardless of class, race or region.

More and more evidence and research piles up to show how worthless and unreliable testing is. Not only that it has completely distorted the school curriculum. The only people in denial? Step forward the Department for Children Schools and Families.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:17 pm 0 comments

Thursday, October 18, 2007

 
Test the foetus?

Falling standards? First create your moral panic – by whatever means necessary. There was a great example of that this week with the news that our latest group of failures are the under fives (no honestly). Forty per cent are struggling to write their own name and only 58 per cent of five-year-olds were reaching a “good level of development” in writing. One in three children (35 per cent) did not reach a good level of development in linking sounds and letters, for example through recognising and saying words such as “red” and “dog” or “pen”.

Once again our results obsesesd system has opened itself for ridicule. In most European countries formal education doesn’t start until the age of seven. Many children don’t develop fine motor skills until that age, they aren’t ready to write. Couldn’t the authors of the report have written in large capital letters at the start ‘STARTING FORMAL EDUCATION TOO EARLY ARRESTS CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT’?

What next give the foetus a range of tests, interrogate the sperm? Let’s not go there. As Ted Wragg was fond of saying, ‘When it comes to education irony is dead’.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:40 am 0 comments

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

 
Stressed Out?

The Primary Review has been the most comprehensive pieces of research about the impact of testing on primary school children and the opinions of teachers, parents and governors.

They held 87 sessions in 9 different locations and interviewed 757 witnesses - they included 197 pupils, 72 teachers, 64 non-teaching staff, 74 parents, 60 headteachers and 83 community representatives.

Some of the themes were; the wider world; what makes for a good school; good teachers and testing. As it was an academic study it was replete with caveats, qualifications and even evasion. But on one central issue that of testing it was fairly unequivocal – it’s not popular.

Children commented on testing –

SATs were ‘scary’, made them nervous and anxious, and put them under pressure. But equally:
• ‘tests tell teachers, and us, how we are doing’
• ‘parents want them’
• ‘children should be tested to show that they have done well and have been listening’
• ‘tests help children know what they have learned’
• ‘we need SATs to find our potential, and gaps in our understanding.’

Yet they understand that the stakes may be high:
• ‘it’s important to do well for secondary school’
• ‘tests get us into private schools’ (sounding 2, in an affluent area where many parents preferred private secondary schooling for their children)
• ‘high grades give you confidence.’

And, from ex-primary pupils in the selective secondary school:
• ‘Tests concentrate on the high flyers. The rest are written off before they get to the SATs. The teachers are not available to help the rest of us.’

Teachers were-

Unanimous that SATs:

• put children and teachers under intolerable pressure;
• are highly stressful;
• constrain the curriculum, especially in respect of the arts and humanities;
• subvert the goal of learning for its own sake;
• undermine children’s self esteem;
• run counter to schools’ stated commitments to a full and rounded education;
• turn the final year of primary schooling into to the wrong kind of educational culmination – a year of cramming and testing;
• disadvantage those children whose parents cannot afford to pay for private SAT coaching.

Parents were –

at least as hostile towards SATs as other groups. They deplored the ‘pressure’ of SATs, especially in Key Stage 2. Some claimed that too much emphasis on tested achievement in a narrow range of competences leads to a ‘mental shutdown’ and can put children off education altogether. Others, referring specifically to younger children or those with special needs, believed that they may be neither ready nor emotionally prepared for such demands. Some even noted a relationship between SATs, league tables, house prices and hence the social character of whole communities. In such circumstances, as one parent commented, ‘SATs only benefit estate agents.’ What parents really needed to know was (i) whether their children were progressing satisfactorily, (ii) what problems they were encountering, (iii) whether they were happy.

Yet there was a certain ambivalence here, because parents also recognised that SATs were a passport to success. Nowhere was this more marked than in Sounding 2, in an affluent south London suburb, where the session palpably changed gear when parents ceased deploring the pressure to which their children were subject and acknowledged that they were partly responsible, not least in paying for regular private coaching to maximise their children’s chances of achieving Level 5 in the KS2 SATs, which in turn would lead to success in the entry examination for independent secondary schools.

Primary Review director Professor Robin Alexander said that young children faced a range of pressures.

"What people wanted to talk about was the stress of government tests, then life outside school, road safety, physical dangers, the sense young children are having to grow up too soon."

The most predictable quote came from the mis-named Department for Children, Schools and Families,

“The government does not share the view that children are over-tested. Tests help parents and teachers monitor the progress of children and ensure they get the help they need."

I don’t hold out any hope that the Primary Review will change the mind of the government, the House of Commons Select Committee on Education asked for evidence on testing and 51 organisations wanted change, the only one that didn’t was the DCSF.

It’s teachers have the power to stop testing – if they did but realise it.

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# posted by Mr Read @ 6:42 pm 0 comments

Monday, September 24, 2007

 
51 to 1

Any sane person might believe that if every organisation, quango or expert was giving the same advice the government would listen. Think again. Asked to give evidence on testing in schools to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, there were 51 submissions asking for change. Among them were-

¡ Scientific and maths organisations like the Royal Society

· The five teachers’ unions

¡ The General Teaching Council

¡ The OCR exam board

Even Ofsted called for change but also had the temerity this week to blame truancy on ‘boring lessons’, nothing to do with the testing culture of course, just useless teachers. Reminded me of Doctor Frankenstein refusing to take responsibility for the monster he had created.

Naturally the Select Committee are taking their time, the submissions were made in July but sometime in November they will get round to reviewing them. Now I know that teachers get a lot of stick for the amount of holidays we get, but when it comes to MPs you really are talking about most of the summer and autumn. Naturally they need time for their consultancies, directorships and appearances on Celebrity Big Brother. How is one to manage on the paltry wages?

Predictably, the one organisation to support testing was the Department for Children, Schools and Families, “The benefits of a national system of assessment have been immense.”

I don’t see the testing system changing any time soon. When does this government ever listen? The exceptions? The great ‘Fuel Tax Revolt’ – which was part popular uprising, Poujadist protest and reactionary insurrection (some of the leaders later stood as BNP candidates). Faced with this groundswell, the government swiftly made concessions, fearing that the contagion would spread. This week with queues growing exponentially outside branches of Northern Rock we had the bail out of the building societies, although the government was able to pose as the ‘friend’ of the small investor. Shame this wasn’t extended to the thousands of pensioners who lost everything when their bosses raided the company pension fund.

Who could scrap testing? Teachers. The NUT balloted primary school members in 2003 and 86% were prepared to take strike action, but the turnout was only 34% and ‘union rules’ stipulated that it had to be 50%. There was a very effective ‘Anti-SATs Campaign’ that went into hibernation after the result. Now is the time to re-ballot.

The DCSF have pointed to trials of new tests, which pupils will take twice a year as an alternative. Don’t be fooled they are worse than SATs, they are just SATs writ large for every year in Key Stage 2 and pupils are expected to move up two sub levels each year i.e., 3C to 3A. This would inevitably be used in Performance Management and to inform Payment by Results.

This sounds to me like another sham ‘consultation’. The one organisation that didn’t feature was ‘The Daily Mail’ and of course Rupert Murdoch – between them they inform every decision made by this government.

Read Warwick Mansell ‘Education by Numbers’

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# posted by Mr Read @ 7:34 pm 1 comments

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

 
Gruel and more gruel

There’s no doubt that Gordon Brown had a ‘good summer’, there he was battling against the floods, edging away from George Bush and scrapping the plans to build casinos. Possibly it was just being ABTB (Anyone But Tony Blair). He raced into an opinion poll lead and received glowing plaudits and eulogies from the press.

For me it was another example of spin over substance. Hadn’t Gordon Brown been at the heart of government for the last ten years? Was the spat with Tony Blair about policies or power? In reality the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, privatisation continues apace, pay in the public sector is restrained and there is full support for academy schools. More of the same with a different face?

Headteachers arrived back at their desks to find a letter from the new schools minister Ed Balls. It started with a patronising tone congratulating them on results, then came the section that… well… was treating them like naughty school children, they had to go ‘back to basics’ and strive might and main to reach government targets. The fingerprints of an ambitious young politician, eager to ‘sort education’, were all over the document.

The latest ‘panic’ is over writing results for 7-year olds, a fall of 1% since 2006. This is partly due to the fact that the tests had become low key – expect that to change. The task of distinguishing whether a child is 2C or 1A is Byzantine in its complexity. Also most European countries don’t start any formal education until children reach 7 years of age.

When I was training I read some of Piaget’s work, most of it was fairly incomprehensible but one thing I did learn was the concept of ‘readiness to learn’, for young children that can vary dramatically. Boys in particular are often late developers, they need to develop verbal skills, listen to stories and develop fine motor skills. Shoe horning them into formal learning with tests that tell them they are failures can actually set them back.

Ed Balls hectoring letter was a total disgrace. There wasn’t much of a reaction from headteachers maybe they are too demoralised to respond. There are of course historical parallels. That grim utilitarian Chadwick was the architect of the 1834 Poor Law that criminalized poverty and imprisoned the poor in the hated workhouses. The diet was at subsistence level just above starvation. The Overseers of the Poor were constantly directed by missives from the Poor Law Commissioners on how to further restrict the diet to ‘the basics’.

So here we have Ed Balls’ prescribed diet for education ‘gruel and more gruel’. Welcome back, the exam factories have reopened!

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Saturday, July 07, 2007

 
The GTC – the mouse that roared?

The General Teaching Council were holding one of their consultation meetings on their plans to end high-stakes testing. As it was in Liverpool, I decided to mosey along.

It wasn’t an auspicious start, there were plenty of ‘suits’ from the GTC looking around nervously at the sparsely attended venue. Eavesdropping on some of the conversations there appeared to be a preponderance of Heads of Department, ASTs and head teachers, and not many ‘ordinary teachers’. Eventually the audience swelled to around thirty.

Two boffins from the London Institute of Education made short presentations putting the standard case against testing. Their alternative to high-stakes testing was cohort sampling. From 1978 to 1988 the DfES had an Assessment Performance Unit, every year they tested 10,000 students (1.5% of the school population). The tests gave an accurate indication of whether ‘standards’ were rising; as different schools were tested they were able to use the same questions every year.

One teacher was from one of the 500 schools undertaking a two-year pilot of ‘Single Level Progress Tests’. This has been hailed as the alternative to SATs testing. Don’t get excited – it’s far worse! Pupils from Year 3 through to Year 9 take two tests every year, when they are deemed to be ‘ready’. Schools are rewarded with progression premiums for boosting the number of pupils that gain two levels in a year, i.e., 3C to 3A. In this teacher’s school successful pupils received certificates, those who didn’t reach the required level got the equivalent of an Ofsted ‘notice to improve’.

The attack by the GTC on high-stakes testing follows on from the Institute of Physics who described them as, “blunt instruments that have a number of undesired consequences.” The Institute of Educational Examiners, which represents 3,500 examiners, believes that all external exams before the age of 18 should be phased out. The Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, has described the present system as not “fit for purpose” and believes that testing is stifling creativity. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority have also called for an end to the present testing regime.

What effect will the GTC have? For a start they have almost zero credibility with teachers – something the government will be aware of. Their main aim is to ‘persuade’ the government with a softly-softly campaign. Will the government listen? If you look at the appointments to Gordon Brown’s new National Council for Education Excellence, the prospects aren’t wonderful. Among them was Damon Buffini from the private equity sector, where the executives pay less tax than their cleaning ladies and Terry Leahy the boss of Tesco who earns 574 times more than his shop floor workers -could he help children with equations? British industry doesn’t have a great track record in training its own workers; the Leitch Review found that the lack of investment in skills, particularly in manual workers, had cost the economy more than £4.8 billion.

The plain truth is that the ‘Daily Mail’ sets government policy. If the GTC does speak out too loudly they can always abolish it. Teachers out on the streets demonstrating with placards ‘Save the GTC’? It isn’t going to happen.

The great and the good have all spoken out against high-stakes testing that just leaves the people who could abolish it in one fell swoop – teachers. There was an excellent unofficial Anti-SATs campaign that moved the NUT into calling a ballot in 2003 to boycott testing, 86% of those who voted wanted to take action, however, the turnout was only 34% and the union rules stipulated a 50% turn out. If we are honest everyone took their eye off the ball and the campaign folded. Surely the time is right to call for another ballot of Key Stage 2, and this time to include Key Stage 3, on boycotting tests?

I don’t hold out much hope of the NAS joining in, they are busy proving themselves the goody-two-shoes of the Rewards and Incentives Group. A moot point is, ‘what incentives?’ Apart from PPA for primary teachers, on the debit column there’s been – Performance Management, Payment by Results, Management Allowances replaced by Teaching and Learning Responsibility payments and teaching assistants taking classes. Even though a testing boycott would save half of the NAHT’s membership from an incipient nervous breakdown, the prospects don’t look great there either.

The GTC meeting finished with an address from the new Chief Executive (and former Ofsted Assistant Divisional Manager) Keith Bartley. He looked like one of those accidental figures that are thrust into the limelight. After he released the statement opposing testing he did fifteen media interviews. He posed some elliptical questions about ‘accountability’, he didn’t exactly make a stirring call for teachers to rise up and loosen their chains, Martin Luther King it wasn’t. Less ‘I Have a Dream’ more ‘Here’s Some Interesting Statistics’.

One thing is clear, high-stakes testing has become education’s equivalent of the Iraq War. Almost all the experts (including those who initially supported it) are in opposition, the Weapons of Mass Destruction have never materialised, the troops on the ground and even the generals know it’s a lost cause, the cost has escalated exponentially and as the casualties pile up public opinion is hostile. The only people in denial? The government.

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Monday, July 02, 2007

 
‘Education by Numbers’ by Warwick Mansell

The tipping point for Warwick Mansell, the moment when he asked himself the question, ‘Is it me, or is this not absolutely outrageous?’ came in mid-November 2005 at a £200 per head seminar for French GCSE teachers, organised by one of the examining boards. Over the course of five hours, teachers were given a demonstration of how to cheat their way through coursework, to ‘script’ oral exams and advised not to teach much grammar (there are only a few marks for it). Throughout the day there were references to ‘grim kids’, this from a senior examiner.

‘Education by Numbers’ is a detailed and meticulous demolition job on the ‘exam industry’, which has blighted education in England – schools currently spend £610 million a year on them. The most dispiriting sight in bookshops are the shelves groaning with the revision booklets, as though knowledge can be distilled into that one volume.

Where has high stakes testing led us? Imagine you are an eleven year-old girl called Michelle and you are taking your exams in Maths, English and Science, on your results depend the future of your teacher, headteacher, local authority chief education officer, directors of the various national strategies and ultimately the Education Secretary. No pressure there then!

Chapter by chapter Mansell examines the grisly evidence-

· The narrowing of the curriculum – according to a study by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in 2003 primary schools were spending on average over ten hours a week from Christmas to May cramming children to pass tests in English, Maths and Science (equivalent to almost half of curriculum time).
· Frequent testing reinforces failure for lower ability children, as the London Institute of Education noted, it gave them ‘constant evidence of their low achievement.’
· Grade inflation – a study by David Jesson found that 1 in 6, equivalent to 100,000 children, had higher-level results at Key Stage 2 tests than their teachers believed they deserved.
· Concentration on ‘borderline’ children - close to Level 4 at Key Stage 2 or Grade C at GCSE. Mansell believes there is a good case to answer under Human Rights legislation for other children who don’t receive the same intensive support.
¡ Use of GNVQs (worth four GCSEs) to inflate results, no one can answer the question why a GNVQ is worth four times more.
· The sheer predictability of tests with the same type of basic questions reoccurring and exam boards colluding with schools to ease pupils’ route to success.
· The scandal of ‘coursework’ where students are spoon-fed information by teachers desperate to keep their department’s scores up to scratch.
¡ Reliability of results as test scores vary widely between certain exam boards.

Mansell details how it isn’t just the teacher unions that want a change to high-stakes testing, the QCA want modifications, even Ofsted, and the GTC (which has spent years proving there is death after life) has belatedly added its voice to the call for an end to league tables. When he asks the Department for Education what independent evidence there is that ‘standards have risen’ they can’t supply it, they are reduced to the tautology that ‘standards have risen because results have improved and the rise in results show that standards are improving.’

In one chapter Mansell interviews Blairite ideologue Julian Le Grand who advances the notion of ‘producer capture’ to justify accountability and that public servants can be divided into ‘knaves’ and ‘knights’. This chapter is at the end of the book and is a significant weakness. What under pinned the high stakes testing regime that emerged from the 1980s and 1990s?

In this era the myth of ‘falling standards’, the ‘failure’ of comprehensives, professional incompetence and lack of ‘basic skills’ was used to undermine public confidence in education. In its place the proponents of ‘school effectiveness’ promised a technical fix with value for money and ‘accountability’. In education there was the creation of a market with parental ‘choice’, Local Management of Schools, privatisation and the destruction of Local Education Authorities. The audit culture erected common standards (the National Curriculum) targets, performance indicators and gradings for schools. Teachers were now functionaries judged solely by common results and de-skilled and deprofessionalised. The final part of the jigsaw was the creation of Ofsted, with its notion of a ‘zero defect’ guarantee, taken from ‘Total Quality Control’ in private enterprise.

The 1980s and the 1990s ushered in the decline of welfarism and social justice. Both Blair and Clinton extended and widened the attack on public education, the trite slogans ‘Zero tolerance of failure’ and ‘Poverty is not an excuse’ became the campaign catchphrases. Everything was reduced to simple measurable ‘outputs’ that could be mapped on a graph – just read Michael Barber’s account of his time in the Department for Education.

The evidence shows that the Emperor is not just stark naked, he has no moral credibility and has been exposed as a liar, cheat and fraud. Faced with this conclusion Mansell retreats somewhat calling for longer Ofsted inspections and for the retention of the dire National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies for Key Stage 3. The book doesn’t explore how teachers could stop testing, there is no mention of the NUT ballot in 2003 when 86% voted for a boycott, but the turnout was only 34% and it had to be over 50% before action could be sanctioned by the union.

Despite the theoretical limitations ‘Education by Numbers’ chips away brick by brick at the tottering edifice that is high-stakes testing and brings it crashing to the ground. There is an old cliché in education book reviews that ‘every teacher should read this book’. Every teacher should read this book and ask himself or herself the question – How the hell did we let it happen?

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

 
Savaged by a Chihuahua

There’s been a tendency to write off the General Teaching Council as a useless, bureaucratic, toothless, irrelevant organisation that is intent on proving that there is death after life. Amazingly they have arisen from their coffin to attack the testing psychosis that afflicts education and have called for testing for under-16s to be abandoned in favour of sampling a small representative group to measure attainment and progress.

Even super-smoothy Education Secretary Alan Johnson was thrown when he was informed of the GTC’s proposal, he looked as though he’d been bitten on the ankle by a particularly vicious Chihuahua (the former postie had won the backing of the Union of Communication Workers in his bid to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in an acrimonious debate at their recent conference the delegates voted overwhelmingly to censure the executive and to withdraw support, citing his position on Post Office closures and employment tribunals, one delegate said, ‘we’d get more support off a lamp post’ – intriguingly the details of the debate has been expunged from the UCW web site).

Johnson came out with the traditional robotic reply about needing testing to ‘raise standards’. How have standards risen? Teaching to test, making tests easier and tests always score higher than teacher assessment.

Such is the pressure that the government may consider revising SATs tests in Year 6, but beware! From September 484 schools in 10 local authorities will spend two years trialling “progression tests”. Children will take the tests twice in the year in an attempt to move up one curriculum level in English and Maths.

Targets will be set for the number of pupils expected to move up two levels a Key Stage, with extra funding in the form of “progression premiums” for those schools that achieve this.

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Thursday, May 24, 2007

 
Desiccated Calculating Machines

The DfES have been holding ‘Standards Conferences’ to dole out the targets for SATs tests to stressed out primary head teachers, the message at our one was, ‘we know you’re working hard, but basically you’re crap’.

“Good progress” is now deemed to be two full levels per Key Stage, so one level from Year 2 to Year 4 and another from Year 4 to Year 6. 100% of children at Level 2C or above at Key Stage 1 are expected to reach Level 4 at the end of Key Stage 2 and 45% of those at W or Level 1 will also be expected to reach Level 4.

The latest wheeze is to use ‘tracking’ through regular testing to pressure teachers. That is one reason why there needs to be caution about just scrapping Key Stage 2 tests, the DfES are mooting putting in more tests, not less. Naturally all of these ‘expectations’ will be monitored by Ofsted and will be another stick to beat schools with.

All this just shows what a farce and stunt the ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’ documents were. As long as you have high stakes tests schools will go down the route of basic skills teaching in the core subjects.

We really do have the triumph of the desiccated calculating machines, the robots from the DfES who view children as so many figures on a spreadsheet or co-ordinates on a graph. Where do they find these people?

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

 
The Heart of Darkness

This week is a journey into the Heart of Darkness. Testing, that rancid, malignant, cancerous tumour that spews forth its toxins into the bloodstream; that evil Tower of Babel that casts its dark shadow over us all; that insidious pollutant that seeps into every pore. Testing, SATs and their evil spawn the league tables have been the enemy of creativity, distorted learning, choked initiative, and drained our energy. We all feel their presence lurking behind us like malevolent phantoms.

Whither Year 6? What used to be the best year in primary schools has become a drudge. Children on the cusp of adolescence just before Kevinitus sets in and they become as communicative as Beagle 2; it used to be a pleasure to teach them. Now Year 6 is the poisoned chalice, all volunteers take a step backwards.

Year 6 is a year of revision, tests, tests and more tests. Children live that year in the shadow of the exams in May. Parents worry about the levels of stress - manifested by their children’s behaviour. For teachers it’s the Labour of Sisyphus, dragging the boulder up to the top of the hill only to watch it slide down the slope when the school year begins again in September. The league tables are a public auto-da-fe as schools are pressured from all quarters. Crude comparisons are made between different schools - like organising a race between a Formula One racing car and a battered Ford Escort, then berating the losing driver for their failure to compete.

In school Year 6 seem to go into some kind of purdah, reduced to invisibility, it’s as though they’ve been stolen by the Gobblers and temporarily inhabit a parallel universe. In many schools extra curricula activities are suspended and a cultural Dark Age descends on pupils. Most pupils hate and detest the exam week, a time of stress, fear and loathing - welcome to the new millennium.

At the end of the tests teachers, ‘hit the wall’. It’s that long haul until July, that feeling of running on empty. And then they say, be creative, innovate – like telling someone to be a celebrity cook in a famine zone.

We really need a renaissance for Year 6. In the true meaning of the Chinese proverb, ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom’. I’m not saying it’s going to be a spontaneous uprising like that moment when the pupils tear up the turgid text books in that schmaltzy Robin Williams film ‘Dead Poets’ Society’, but the fact is we need an end to the testing and league tables regime.

We need to give parents an alternative vision of what Year 6 could be like. Children should get the chance to-

¡ Learn a foreign language
¡ Improve the link with secondary schools for Year 7
¡ Write a short story
¡ Learn to play a musical instrument
¡ Go on an adventure holiday
¡ Put on a play
¡ Undertake a community project

Teachers, heads, advisors and ministerial careers are made or broken by fulfilling the targets. But if ever there was a time to shout, “The Emperor has no clothes,” this is it. In primary schools it is well documented how testing has led to teachers teaching to test; Year 6 becoming an unremitting grind of endless revision; the narrowing of the curriculum and the orchestration and manipulation of exams where every ruse and strategy is used to make the target.

There’s the hierarchy of pressure – bigger fleas on smaller fleas. It starts with Government who put pressure on the LEAs, in turn they squeeze the headteachers, then the thumbscrews come out for the teachers who in turn cajole, chivvy and browbeat the children.

Testing has entered the school’s lexicon, as SATs time approaches children become a secure Level 4, or he’s a borderline 3 / 4, or she’ll only make a 3. Schools place impossible burdens on children as revision begins earlier and earlier, art, music, history is jettisoned and that final misnomer “booster classes” after school and at weekends.

To reach the target you teach to test months before, force-feeding them gruel and more gruel. Remembering that the key group to work on is the borderline group, special needs – forget them they’ll never get there, the brighter ones, they’re already there, let them get on with it. No spend the teaching time coaching that fraction of the class that will be the difference between success and abject failure. If you fall short there’s always that guaranteed sure-fire alternative – CHEATING. A few figures changed, those stray decimal points, that empty answer box. There are many cases where teachers or headteachers have succumbed to the temptation and altered the odd answer or even systematically cheated.

The government constantly claim that standards have improved and quote the “remarkable” rise in the national teat scores for 11-year olds during the late 1990s (between 1995 and 2000 the percentage of pupils awarded Level 4 or above rose from 48% to 75% in English and from 44% to 72% in maths). A study by the independent Statistics Commission cited other factors including the incentive for teachers to “teach to test”, which could be expected to lead to an initial rise in test results “even if it does nothing to raise standards”.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority backed the findings of the largest study into national test standards, carried out by Alf Massey of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations syndicate. It found that the pass mark for English was set five marks too low both in 1999 and 2000 because the standard of the reading test fell. The QCA concluded, “The Massey report confirmed that standards have risen, but not necessarily to the extent suggested by the test scores”.

We’re no longer pedagogues, the curriculum is out of our control, teachers’ autonomy has been destroyed, we’re now mere instructors, slaves to the machine. Worse than that tests, targets and league tables have made us into the equivalent of the cynical doping cheats in sport, our only justification that, “Everyone else does it”. In sport a victory is accompanied by a knowing smile, it’s become the same in education. Cheating is so prevalent that even the honest are tarnished.

We encourage children to be open and honest, not to fear failure, we praise success and where necessary make constructive criticism. Worst of all is false praise. That’s why I can’t celebrate or cheer falsity, results that have no semblance to reality or to children’s real ability. But still, rejoice! Get out the banners, summon the press the target has been achieved! The parents are delighted, the heads relieved and the LEA advisors are ecstatic – their career ladder intact.

Last year one of our teachers attended a training course, during the dinner break the test results were coming out in the schools. Heads furtively reached for mobile phones and then calculators, fevered groups developed working out percentages, and it was a scene resembling Wall Street at its worst. Is this what education has been reduced to?

There is another way… In 2003 the Times Educational Supplement carried a report on Caol Primary in Fort William, it had been the local ‘dump school’ that took the children no one else wanted. How did they turn it round? Did they grind the children down with endless tests in order to boost phoney league table placings? Did they overload teachers with tons of useless planning? No, they used art.

In 1992 Rob Fairley, a local artist started working at the school, he created Room 13. The concept behind Room 13 was to give pupils a level of freedom - artistic, practical and intellectual. Pupils have taken responsibility for their own learning and for the running of their arts studio, to the extent of writing out cheques, making funding applications and attending meetings with potential sponsors.

Older pupils can go at any time during the day to work or to discuss things with Rob Fairley. The only condition is that they are up to date with their classwork. Part of the Room 13 approach is giving pupils the intellectual skills they need to fulfil their potential in years to come. So as well as creating their own artwork, they carry out research projects based on a list of eminent scientists, artists and writers.

The TES report noted, “Discussions on everything from philosophy to share prices take the place of still lifes and life drawing. Within the space of five minutes, conversation might veer from contraception to Renaissance gilding, to the trigonometry of a goal in Rangers' last game.” In Room 13 the ideas come first, the means of expressing them follow. To illustrate a lesson on how our eyes work and the way our brain can sometimes tell lies, Rob Fairley once blacked out the windows, transformed Room 13 into a giant pinhole camera and turned the familiar landscape into a huge inverted image on the wall opposite.

Some teachers have become institutionalised, they can no longer think of schools without testing. They have become the prison warders of the system. How the hell did we get here? Over ten years of SATs testing, the torture of the phoney league tables. After years of inactivity the NUT did conduct a ballot for a SATs boycott but the turnout was only 20%, so under ‘union rules’ action was deemed to be ‘unconstitutional’.

Here’s my idea – the first Monday of SATs primary teachers (everyone not just Year 6 teachers) refuse to come into work. Remember every revolt in history begins with people saying that simple word, ‘No’. Let’s do it for the sake of our children. Any one care to join me?

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

 
Misery Week

Next week is the most miserable one in the English school calendar. Welcome to SATs week (somehow National Curriculum Tests doesn’t have the same ring to it).

You can tell what’s impending from the taught, nervous faces of the Heads, Year 6 teachers and the SEN children who know they won’t get the magic ‘Level 4’ – ‘I’m thick sir, I’m a Level 3’.

Professor Alan Smithers has spoken out recently and labelled some schools, ‘exam factories’. He also said, “scores are not the product of education in the way that cars, barrels of oil and tins of baked beans are for their industries; schools are there to benefit the children in them. It is an approach that has led the government to value only what can be measured.”

The DfES produced their usual Dalek-like response, “They are a non-negotiable part of school reform. They provide valuable objective evidence in the core subjects, helping inform further improvements to teaching and learning. This is an important part of our drive to raise standards in the basics even further in primary schools.”

Is there any point in voting for a party that consistently tail-ends the Daily Mail on practically every policy?

I’m writing a longer piece on SATs next week. How to stop SATs? I’ve got an idea…

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Monday, April 02, 2007

 
Child Cruelty?

There’s an interesting debate in the TES Primary Staffroom about SATs revision at Easter. “Pilko” has posted to say that her daughter was given a three-inch high pile of worksheets. The letter from the school explained that this was “voluntary”, should “allay anxiety about SATs” and would only take 60 minutes a day. To compound it all they asked for a £2 “donation”. Our intrepid correspondent fired off a letter of complaint, much to their annoyance. I think I might have been tempted to suggest which orifice they could place their three inches of worksheets – rolled up of course.

Other contributors reported that sad, no-life-outside-of-teaching, automatons were volunteering to take Saturday morning or Easter holiday revision classes.

My immediate reaction is, “what the hell are we doing to our children?” Or see the Unicef report for more details – the unhappiest children in the western world.

‘The Independent’ quoted Mary Bousted the leader of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (normally the most somnambulant of unions) on SATs,

“The consequences are catastrophic. They lead to a period of exhaustion, not only for the teacher, but also for the pupils who are route-marched through to level 4. We know that real learning does not take place in boot camp year six classes.”

Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has also argued that the national end-of-year tests should be replaced by testing of a sample of pupils. Professor David Hargreaves, a member of a Government appointed inquiry team, has criticised ministers for neglecting one of its recommendations - that there should be a top-level investigation reporting by September into what forms of assessment and testing are needed. He accused them of “wilful blindness” in desperately supporting “a discredited system”.

Some of the posts in the TES Staffroom were more concerned about children having fun and learning outside the classroom. They also felt that grinding their children down with test papers was not the way to forge a lasting relationship i.e., “do you remember when you slaved over those test papers?” versus “remember the fun we had on holiday?”

Why should teachers oppose SATs testing?

¡ High stakes testing are stressful for children and adults
¡ Constant testing can reinforce failure
¡ The curriculum becomes narrowed down to English, Maths and Science
· Children don’t actually learn anything new
¡ Only a narrow range of abilities are tested
¡ Teachers teach to test
¡ Teacher assessment is more accurate, tests lead to grade inflation

For children with special education needs the testing week is horrendous and for more able children they are usually bored out of their skulls. Is it any wonder we have one of the worst rates in Europe for children staying in education after 16?

How do you “raise standards”? Even a brain-dead chimp could do it. All you do is focus on the borderline group. In the average class of 30 children you might have – five SEN, five borderline Level 3 to 4, fifteen Level 4 and five at Level 5. If your borderline group don’t perform your pass rate is 66% - result P45 and misery, if they all do well your pass rate goes up to 83% - result the LEA, Ofsted and the DfES are happy, your career path is intact. No prizes for guessing which group get all the attention in Year 6.

I’m sorry but three-inch thick “voluntary” SATs revision worksheets belong in the lower echelons of child cruelty. Oh ye latter-day Gradgrinds hang your heads in shame. Year 6 teachers should print out this quote and display it in a prominent position, “The only way for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.”

Here’s my alternative Easter holiday plan for Year 6 – with curriculum links

1) Switch off the television and read them a good story – English
2) Visit a museum – Geography/ History/ Science
3) Go for a walk in the countryside and look at the birds, trees and plants. Paint a picture afterwards – Geography/ Science/ Art
4) Visit relatives, talk about times gone by – History
5) Play board games – Maths
6) Cook something with them – Technology
7) Sing some songs – Music
8) Talk with them – Speaking and Listening
9) Invite their friends round – PSHE
10) Help them to dream dreams

Naturally you will be required to fill in assessment forms on all of these activities, provide a Level Descriptor and set clear targets for improvement which must be displayed in their bedroom. Ofsted may also arrive to undertake a ‘light touch’ inspection. Gotcha! Just a belated April Fool… on the other hand.

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