Layer 323 . . . Italy, Dartington College, Deficit Hawks, Tony Benn, Statistics, the Coalition, Media Cynicism, Gaza and the Flotilla

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Solidarity Needed

Things in Italy are so bad that journalist and researcher Benedetta Brevini felt the need to publish this plea for Europe-wide help:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/may/31/europe-must-protect-italy-freedom-speech

"Unpopular ideas can be silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban," wrote George Orwell in his preface to Animal Farm in 1943. And I thought the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, had a tight enough grip on public opinion without the need for any "official ban".

Berlusconi controls roughly 80% of Italian free-to-air television channels, in a country where just 20% of the population reads newspapers. Did he really need to impose any further constraint on freedom of speech? A draft law that is going to be approved by the parliament in the following weeks will gag the last few, daring news outlets that exert oversight on the government.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/31/deficit-hawks-social-security-wall-street

Why should we listen to deficit hawks?

Calls to cut social security come from economists who want to line Wall Street pockets with money from ordinary workers

by Dean Baker

If the market had been allowed to run its course Goldman, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and many other major banks would have been bankrupt, leaving their shareholders and creditors out of luck and their top executives walking the unemployment lines. There are reasons that this outcome would have been undesirable for the economy as a whole, but there is a big difference between the Tarp blank check and doing nothing. If the politicians and their accomplices in the economics profession had not overwhelmed the public with fear, we could have ensured that the bankers suffered from the crisis that they had themselves created.

With the banks back on their feet, the Wall Street crew and their accomplices in the economics profession are again feeling their oats. They are insisting that we have to put our hopes for economic recovery on the back burner. Instead, we have to focus on deficit reduction. The reason is that we have to soothe financial markets.

The claim is that if we don't act aggressively now to reduce the budget deficit then the "bond vigilantes" will start a run on US debt just as they have recently done with Greece. This is supposed to make us so scared that we will accept large cuts in social security and in other important programmes.

. . . . .

The third reason not to take the deficit hawks argument seriously is simply that it is bad economics. The country needs deficit spending to sustain demand until private demand recovers from the collapse of the housing bubble. This is basic logic – and the prestigious positions of many of the deficit hawks will not allow them to repeal the rules of logic.

The deficit hawks are not concerned about national insolvency; they are not worried about soaring inflation; they are worried about how to take every last penny from ordinary workers and give it to the Wall Street crew. That is what the Tarp was about and this is what the latest crusade to reduce the deficit is all about. Now they want to go after workers' social security because, as Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke said: "That is where the money is." The fact that workers have paid for these benefits doesn't matter at all to the Wall Street crew.

So, if you feel like giving all your money to the Wall Street gang, then you should take the deficit hawks seriously. But, if you think that people who are not Wall Street millionaires have rights too, then get out the pitchforks and send the deficit hawks and their economist accomplices running.

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Letters to my Grandchildren - Tony Benn on Midweek - R4

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-My-Grandchildren-Tony-Benn/dp/0091931266

TB spoke well, as ever, about still being an idealist at the age of 85.

He talked about 2 flames that still burn brightly - Hope, & Anger against injustice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn

As a diarist I have chronicled the time through which I have lived in meticulous detail: but all that is history. What matters now is the future for those who will live through it. The past is the past but there may be lessons to be learned which could help the next generation to avoid mistakes their parents and grandparents made. Certainly at my age I have learned an enormous amount from the study of history - not so much from the political leaders of the time but from those who struggled for justice . . .

Every generation has to fight the same battles as their ancestors had to fight, again and again, for there is no final victory and no final defeat. Two flames have burned from the beginning of time - the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope. If this book serves its purpose it will fan both flames.

http://thecollectivereview.com/dan-jude/interview-tony-benn.html

http://www.tony-benn.net/

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Dartington College of Arts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/01/dartington-college-arts-relocation-falmouth

 A threat to its identity?

Will Dartington College's quirky character survive its move to the metropolis of Falmouth?

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Peter Mortimore used to be a number-cruncher and some sort of  researcher in the last days of the ILEA - as head of its research and statistics department. Figures and data are his big thing.

Educational research 'speaks the truth to power' and ministers must listen if their policies are to be effective

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/01/education-research-sound-policy-base

In this crappy little article in this week's education section he states the bleeding obvious about politicians but fails to draw any decent conclusions about the uselessness of academia in general.

Politicians' speeches are peppered with references to research and evidence-based policy. Less often discussed are the details of who commissioned and paid for the research and whether findings have been subjected to peer-review.

It is timely, therefore, that a report, Instinct or Reason: How Education Policy is Made and How we Might Make it Better, has been produced by the CfBT (Centre for British Teachers) Education Trust. It concludes that, since the 1970s, much education policy has been influenced less by the strength of evidence, than by political ideology, prime ministerial likes and dislikes and the views of political advisers.

Based on interviews with, and the memoirs of, former ministers and meetings with civil servants, thinktank policy wonks, academics, and trade union officials, the report explores both the overt and covert reasons for many of the initiatives and frequent changes of policy in education over the last 40 years.

The authors argue that the media, ideology, particularly the belief in the efficacy of the market, and an increasing awareness of international comparison data – have a disproportionate influence on decisions. They suggest this influence has been considerably more powerful than that of academic researchers, who have often been viewed with suspicion. They make the point that, the longer they have been in power, the more governments feel able to disregard evidence.

Well, Pete me old mate, I think we all have good reasons to pay not much attention to academics. Take a look at your inanely grinning photo at the top of your column, for instance. "Why are politicians suspicious of academics?" It's not just the politicians, matey.

Peter says, "Good policymaking needs a sound research base." I think it needs a lot more than that, unless we're just talking about anticipating birth rates, the need for school places, etc.

The only research worth having in education is what people like those from CLPE, for example, do collaboratively by way of action research with practicing teachers. This has nothing to do with number-crunching and is based on painstaking observation of classroom practice, and an understanding of teaching and learning, the needs of children, and clear objectives for educating all of the intelligences. Academics tend not to know about this stuff, any more than politicians do.

Mortimore has no experience or in-depth understanding whatsoever of the difficulties and challenges of running a good school. Fact.

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Jenni Russell wrote a good column this week:

The coalition deserves better than the media's infantilising cynicism

Instead of clear appraisal, the coalition faces the ritual negativity that is an utterly destructive part of our collective life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/01/coalition-media-cynicism-david-laws

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been mocked for their talk of the new politics. But the media have been remarkably dense about recognising that this politics really is different from the adversarial, two-party system we have grown accustomed to.

This grudging, myopic approach is bad for all of us. It infantilises and depresses us. It means that the new government isn't getting the credit it should for its sense of energy and purpose, and its many good decisions; taking more of the low-paid out of tax, rolling back the database state, cancelling the third runway, and giving us much more information about how public money is spent. Nor, more importantly, is it getting a constructive engagement from its critics on how to make all the tough decisions, on welfare, revenue and cuts.

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David Grossman, an Israeli writer, published this superb column, translated for the Guardian today. It deserves to be read in full by anyone who gives a shit about the violence, the loss of life, and the stalemate in the Middle East.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/01/gaza-flotilla-attack-isral-declined

The Gaza flotilla attack shows how far Israel has declined

No explanation can justify or whitewash the crime that was committed, and no excuse can explain away the stupid actions of the government and the army. Israel did not send its soldiers to kill civilians in cold blood; this is the last thing it wanted. Yet, a small Turkish organisation, fanatical in its religious views and radically hostile to Israel, recruited to its cause several hundred seekers of peace and justice, and managed to lure Israel into a trap, because it knew how Israel would react, knew how Israel is destined and compelled, like a puppet on a string, to react the way it did.

Israel's actions are but the natural continuation of the shameful, ongoing closure of Gaza, which in turn is the perpetuation of the heavy-handed and condescending approach of the Israeli government, which is prepared to embitter the lives of a million and a half innocent people in the Gaza Strip, in order to obtain the release of one imprisoned soldier, precious and beloved though he may be; and this closure is the all-too-natural consequence of a clumsy and calcified policy, which again and again resorts by default to the use of massive and exaggerated force, at every decisive juncture, where wisdom and sensitivity and creative thinking are called for instead.

Somehow, all these calamities – including Monday's deadly events – seem to be part of a larger corruptive process afflicting Israel. One has the sense that a sullied and bloated political system, fearfully aware of the steaming mess produced over the years by its own actions and malfunctions, and despairing of the possibility to undo the endless tangle it has wrought, becomes ever more inflexible in the face of pressing and complicated challenges, losing in the process the qualities that once typified Israel and its leadership – freshness, originality, creativity.

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These pieces, by Amos Oz, an Israeli novelist and founder of the Peace Now movement, and by Lauren Booth, are also worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/02/israel-force-impotent-hamas-idea

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/02/palestinian-territories-gaza
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Layer 282 . . . Witch Hunts, Balls, Ofsted, The Big Debate and The Big Society

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Another excellent column by Jenni Russell this week -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/13/baby-p-case-good-witch-hunt?

The Baby P inquiry shows witch-hunts still thrive

The pressure was on Ed Balls to serve up a head to the howling crowd – and the public checks to ensure calm utterly failed

The version of events we'd been fed – that the chief responsibility for the tragedy could fairly be laid at the door of one highly incompetent and publicly vilified executive, Sharon Shoesmith – turned out to be frighteningly unreliable.

Instead, we read about pressure on Ofsted to produce the results the secretary of state required, endless rewritings of a supposedly independent report until it did exactly that, and the stunning failure of Ofsted to produce any of the evidence of this happening until the court hearings dealing with it had ended. We can't afford to ignore a sequence of events that suggests how easily the government can manipulate information to suit its purposes, and how responsive public servants can be to political and media demands. They can't be relied upon, on this evidence, to be disinterested searchers after truth and solutions when things go wrong. Some simply want to protect themselves from criticism and find someone to blame.

In response to this, and a comment I posted, 1nn1t posted this excellent piece -

   @Oxzen

We can only remain hopeful that one day people who were involved in or are aware of school inspections where there was collusion between Ofsted and local authority officers to condemn and get rid of particular headteachers will have the courage to come forward with the evidence.

Ofsted has from from the beginning. Remember Islington Green:

    Chris Woodhead, a now-discredited former chief inspector of schools for Ofsted, condemned Islington Green as a "failing school" after ignoring the judgement of senior inspectors.

The leader of Ofsted, now and at the time of the Haringey case, is Christine Gilbert

    Divorced from her first husband, she met then councillor and later government minister Tony McNulty when she was Director of Education for the London Borough of Harrow. The couple married in September 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham.

In Yorkshire Ofsted is used by LEAs as an attack dog to drive out heads. The story goes like this:

LEA and Head don't get on.

Ofsted starts programme of snap inspections.

LEA institutes agressive discussions of Osted reports.

More snap inspections - easily failed because, eg "the school Safeguarding Policy Document wasn't provided to the Inspectors within x minutes of their requesting it" or "The school has carried out all necessary CRB checks but the information has been stored separately rather than on "a single central record"." or more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7530212/Top-public-schools-fail-new-inspections.html

More agressive discussions. Heads by now suffering from stress.

Head called to meeting with big cheeses in Town Hall. Cheeses propose to Head that he take early retirement on grounds of sickness with pension enhancement.

Conditions of offer by cheeses:

1 Impending retirement not to be mentioned to staff/pupils/parents.

2 Retirement will take effect from this next mid-term Friday afternoon.

3 The 'retiring' head will sign a gagging contract preventing him disclosing anything of the events, circumstances and terms of his sudden departure.

Some heads have refused such offers. They then receive a series of off-the-record chats and phone calls from senior LEA staff pointing out to them the advantages of accepting the 'retirement offer'.

Why, do you imagine, so few teachers any longer wish to become Head Teachers?

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Back to the Election - and the Big Debate

Tonight's the night - the moment political anoraks have been waiting for - the first of the 'debates' between between Brown, Cameron and Clegg, live on ITV.

The Tories are in big trouble, and I think they know it. What's more there's nothing they can do about it. Their brand is what it is.

The further this election goes on, and the more that voters come to realise that Clegg, Cable, Hughes, Ashdown and co are a decent bunch of people with genuine social democratic and liberal instincts, the more that many of these voters will make up their minds to switch their votes from the despised New Labour to the Lib Dems instead of to the other "major" party, with huge consequences for Tory hopes in the marginal and "winnable" seats.

What's more, as the campaign rolls forward, the Green Party and its very able leadership will attract not only protest voters but also those who like what they see in terms of policies that the Labour party should have but forward but in fact haven't.

Voters are not as stupid and as fickle as politicians often think, and the memory of Thatcher will last for more than a generation or two. During the years of the Thatcher ascendency the Tory party congratulated itself on having such a political colossus as their leader - right up to the point when they and everyone else suddenly realised that she was a true nutter who had exposed Toryism in all its true character by smashing the lingering post-war social-democratic consensus, with terrible consequences for British industry and the majority of the working class electorate. John Major, by winning an election, made matters worse for the long-term good of the Tory party and not better, since it was on his watch that the 'bastards' and the sleazeballs of Torydom were thoroughly exposed.

So mark my words - by the time this election takes place the Lib Dem share of the vote will have gone up by around 5% and the Greens by 3%, with the Tories down by 8% on current projections. What's more, the Lib Dems started the last campaign at around 18% and put on 6 percentage points, whereas this time they're starting from 24%. And this time they have the benefit of being the party of Vince Cable, who was virtually the only politician who foresaw the financial crash, and has become the man most voters would like to have as chancellor.

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On the Today programme one of the presenters reminded us of one of the dictums of Groucho Marx - "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - I have others."

A Hazel Bloody Blears interview was broadcast in which she was asked whether or not it's surprising that people are turned off politics thanks to the expenses scandals, Iraq, etc, - to which she replied, unsurprisingly, in her usual pathetic and useless way, by saying that people feel "excluded" because politicians too often speak in jargon.

So here's someone who's clearly learned a lesson. Her answer to all of this nation's ills is that politicians just have to stop speaking in jargon - and then all will be well again with our political culture.

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Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Marina Hyde's campaign trail has taken her to the launch of the UKIP manifesto:

Kicking off the launch proper, the deputy-leader, David Campbell-Bannerman, promised policies "from animal welfare to pubs" – truly, the full gamut of thinking from Y to Z.

When Farage announced he would be devoting his energies to standing against the speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham, the party's top job was taken over by former Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the sort of patrician dullard you pray not to be seated next to at dinner.

Before long, it was on to Ukip's proposed ban of the burqa and niqab in public "and some private" buildings. How were they going to enforce that?

"We haven't said private buildings," countered Pearson.

Well you have. It's in your manifesto. "Have we?" his lordship wondered of his more junior colleagues. Doubtless he'll get round to reading the 15-page document in good time.

Tag-teaming Pearson was the more seasoned media hand Nigel Farage, who has an enduring line in misplaced confidence. "I don't want to be rude about the other parties – that's not my style," he smiled knowingly, in the manner of a man who fondly imagines he has a style other than "affable berk".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/general-election-ukip-manifesto-launch

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Simon Hoggart, meanwhile, was at the launch of the Tory manifesto:

DIY government? It's scary

The Tories launched their manifesto in Battersea power station, site of the Pink Floyd album cover with the flying pig.

Finally David Cameron introduced the Conservative manifesto, which is a dark blue hardback and looks like a tombstone. The theme is that the next government can save money by getting people to do the work themselves, whether taking planning decisions, holding elected representatives to account, saving local pubs and post offices, appointing the chief constable, checking wasteful public expenditure online or founding new schools.

"It's about we, the people!" said Mr Cameron, with great conviction and terrible grammar. "We're all in this together. Join us, in forming the next government of Britain."

Gosh, life is going to be busy under the Tories. It's lucky their campaign against waste means there will be mass sackings. Otherwise nobody would have the time to do everything the "Big Society" demands of us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-simon-hoggarts-sketch

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Labour, Tories and Lib Dems clash ahead of key TV debate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/14/general-election-tv-debates-row

Gordon Brown has received a boost on the eve of today's televised leaders' debate after more than 50 economists from around the world signed a letter backing his handling of the economy. The letter, from 58 academics, was organised by Labour, and comes as a response to a letter from business leaders criticising Labour's planned increase in national insurance.

The British signatories include the Labour peers Lords Layard and Peston; the crossbench peer Lord Skidelsky, who is the biographer of John Maynard Keynes; and Sir David Hendry, a fellow of Nuffield College Oxford. They are supporters of a Keynesian stimulus for the economy.

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Gordon Brown admits banks needed more regulation

PM says the government should have been tougher on the banks

Gordon Brown has admitted mistakes in regulating the banks, accusing the City of lobbying against greater scrutiny before the financial crisis plunged Britain into recession.

Brown had previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly on the international financial crisis and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.

In an ITV interview due to be broadcast tonight, Brown admits he had been influenced by bankers' lobbying.

"In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' ... And all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.'

"The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/gordon-brown-banking-sector-regulation

WFTYS. We fucking told you so!

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Deborah Orr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/government-govern-affairs-powerful

[Here's] the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.

All Britain wants or needs really, is a government that will persuade the powerful that it is right to behave in a manner that is responsible, humane and generous, and help the people who can't help themselves.

We have had 13 years of a government that thought it could do the latter, without doing the former. Come 6 May, we might just end up with a government that is eager to do neither.

'stonepark' commented with this quotation:

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket,he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."

John (Fire) Lame Deer
Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

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Drunkeness, Violence and Spiritual Intelligence

Also on the Today programme this week was a piece about our culture of drunkeness and violence - and STILL nobody has any answers, other than more crackdowns and "toughness".

How long will it take before people in general and politicians in particular begin to admit that we have to begin at the beginning - with young children in school - helping them to develop emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence, together with a capacity for lovingkindness, a belief in the value of meditation, and a determination to be non-violent?

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Pope in the Poop

The pope should stand trial

Why is anyone surprised when Christopher Hitchens and I call for the prosecution of the pope? There is a clear case to answer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/13/pope-prosecution-dawkins?

Sexual abuse of children is not unique to the Roman Catholic church, and Joseph Ratzinger is not one of those priests who raped altar boys while in a position of dominance and trust. But as so often it is the subsequent cover-ups, even more than the original crimes, that do most to discredit an institution, and here the pope is in real trouble.

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Layer 173 Transforming Education, Facing Facts, and New Labour's Disastrous Policies.

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I'm struggling to keep up with what's been happening in the whacky world of education, what with announcements from the Tories about scrapping KS2 SATs so that Primary children can start enjoying school again, New Labour announcing they're scrapping the national literacy strategy, and everybody seeming to agree that education should be handed back to the professionals to ensure that children receive a relevant and appropriate education. Surely 2009 is becoming the glad new dawn we've been hoping for?

Last week Jenni Russell published an excellent article pointing out how and why more and more children are being forced into private tutoring and coaching for tests, which is creating ever greater inequality – at least in terms of test results. The only way to deal with this is through getting away from the idea that tests tell us anything other than how well children cope with tests. In my view, what's needed are proper systems for assessing and tracking pupil progress through appropriate sets of learning targets. Good schools already do this, whilst recognising that children are all different and progress at different rates.

See Jenni's column at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/20/private-tuition-education .

Out of nursery, into the rat race.

“Private tuition distorts exam results, disadvantages poorer families and obscures the real problems in our schools.

It's the naked competitiveness and target obsession of our education system that has pushed people into tutoring in such large numbers.

Now that pupils are being graded from the age of five, children who might have been allowed to develop at their own pace in the past are being told they're falling behind, and because they're being made to panic by anxious teachers, parents feel they have to respond too.

Parents believe that teachers are trying their best, but fear that staff are worn out and over-burdened by the ceaseless flow of bureaucracy and government initiatives.

First, the prevalence of tutoring means that the government's league tables tell parents very little about the teaching at a school. High scores indicate only one thing with certainty; that this school has a parent body who will give their children whatever support they need to do well in their exams. It isn't an assurance that the school itself will deliver those results.

Secondly, it means that poorer or less knowledgeable parents will fall behind in the competition, because they are unable to afford to do the same thing, or are unaware that it is an option. A fifth of parents from professional backgrounds have had their children tutored, while 5% of working-class parents have done the same. And thirdly, it successfully prevents a national discussion about real failings in the education system, because they are not being publicly recognised.

The question of what's been bought, what's fair, and what deserves reward is at the heart of our anguished debate about our education system. On the one hand, skills and education are undoubtedly good for the individual and for the country. On the other, they are also chips in an increasingly intense competition. Many parents are in a constant and uneasy debate with themselves and one another about the advantages they are buying or forgoing. Parents who condemn private education as securing privilege may think nothing of moving house, tutoring in five subjects, and doing their children's coursework for them.

Tiny differences in exam results can determine lives. When others start raising the stakes by engaging tutors then everyone else feels intense pressure to follow suit.

Schools happily collude in it, because it gets them what they want; better grades without the effort of it.

Only a fundamental reform to the system - less cramming, smaller classes, an education based on less testing and more on learning to think - is going to make any difference to this trend. If I had to make another forecast, it would be this - in five years, the proportion of tutored children is going to be sharply up again.”

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Please read the whole article, and then ask yourself how you feel about having it followed on the Guardian website by three advertisements for personal tutors. You certainly can't fault the Guardian for its business acumen, at least. The ads people obviously believed that Jenni's piece, by drawing attention to private tutors, might add a few more runners to the educational rat race, as do the advertisers themselves, of course.

I guess egalitarians are just voices in the wilderness. Very few Brits, at least, seem to give a damn about social justice or the long-term destructive effects on our children (and teachers) of so-called 'driving up standards'. Nobody wants to consider the fact that time spent on cramming for tests is time lost on developing creativity, imagination and a love of learning for its own sake. Our children are forcefully prevented from following their own learning agendas and discovering the things that matter to them as individuals. Imagine how we'd feel if someone did that to us? There's no stopping this juggernaut, though, is there?

I guess the thing we need to turn our attention to is what more we can do to provide good things and more opportunities for the children whose parents can't afford to, or choose not to, employ personal tutors. I'm now more certain than ever that every school ought to resource an extra hour or two at the end of the day for all the children who wish to to come together in rooms, libraries, etc, equipped with books and with wireless laptops on which they can enthusiastically follow up their own interests with the support of trained adults (possibly volunteer or paid teachers, and paid learning assistants).

'Catch-up' maths and literacy could also be individually and sensitively taught where there is agreement with the child (and his/her parents). During those sessions the children, even at Primary level, can have a lot of fun learning how to edit digital photos and video, how to create slide shows and Powerpoints, how to carry out more efficient web searches, how to copy and paste text from websites, etc, etc.

What parents can do, of course, is to encourage their children to read regularly – the best picture books and literature available. They need to read to their children very regularly from an early age. They need to encourage their children to write regularly, and for their own enjoyment. They also need to act as scribes for children who have things to say (which is all of them) but can't be bothered to struggle with composition. Use digital voice recorders whenever possible. This also implies that parents should talk and discuss everything under the sun with their children, letting them realise that they have individual voices, and thoughts and opinions worth listening to.

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On Friday Jenni had another excellent column in the Guardian:

On education, Labour failed our children.

The government has finally acknowledged that its centralised control of schools doesn't work – but for many, it's too late.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/26/labour-schools-national-strategy?commentpage=3&commentposted=1

There comes a point, it seems, when even the most obstinately blinkered of ministers and departments can no longer avoid the facts. One by one the totems of Labour's disastrous education policies are being dismantled.

Today's Guardian reports that the government is to abandon its national strategies for schools when it announces its white paper on education next week. That means that the much-loathed literacy and numeracy hours in primaries, with their rigid, minute-by-minute dictation of how every teacher must structure and deliver their lesson, will stop being compulsory from 2011. Instead schools will be able to make their own choices about what their children need and how they should teach.

This, coming from a department whose controlling and centralising instincts would have been applauded in a Soviet state, is truly revolutionary. It is a (very) belated recognition that treating children and classrooms as if they were car parts and assembly lines is a strategy that simply doesn't produce skilled, or educated, or motivated pupils.

The strategies don't work at any level other than the most superficial.

Teachers feel helpless when they are in front of classes that aren't grasping the points at the speed the national timetable lays down. There is no flexibility. The national plan compels a teacher to move on, no matter how many children are being left behind. Frantic booster classes at ages seven and 11 teach children the short-term tricks they must know to get them through Sats tests.

Even those who can keep up find the lessons stultifying. Some years ago English teachers in secondaries started reporting that 11-year-old children were arriving saying they hated the subject.

Should we be pleased that the government has finally recognised this truth?
I don't think so. I think the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years.

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Oxzen posted this response:

Good article, Jenni, and I agree with your conclusion - “the appropriate reaction is fury about the wasted years”.

Throughout these years you've been a very consistent voice criticising the government for the policies which they've now belatedly abandoned - although, as Onthespot points out, the national literacy and numeracy strategies were never compulsory, even though most schools and most LAs acted as though they were.

I think it's also fair to point out that the national numeracy strategy was never considered, by most Primary teachers, as particularly bad or inappropriate. It's the English strategy that was a total disaster. Its methodology was never researched or trialled to any significant degree, and never proven superior to the successful approaches researched and promoted by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, amongst other places, as well as respected educationalists like Prof Harold Rosen.

Ofsted's own research (“Yes He Can - Schools Where Boys Write Well”) produced a set of conclusions and recommendations that are totally at odds with the NLS approach. You can read them on Page 9 of the downloadable PDF: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/Ofsted-home/Forms-and-guidance/Browse-all-by/Other/General/Yes-he-can-Schools-where-boys-write-well . I would strongly recommend schools that now wish to reconsider their adherence to the literacy strategy (as all schools should) to start with this document as a focus for their discussions. And don't wait till 2011, for the sake of the pupils.

More than ever we need young people who read widely for pleasure and information, who write capably and enthusiastically for a variety of purposes, including their own self-expression, who love learning for its own sake, who have a thirst for knowledge, who have a well-developed imagination and an ability to work creatively, and who have a well-developed set of life skills and thinking skills whose development has been enhanced and promoted by the study and sharing of great literature.

All of these outcomes of real education have been retarded and often negated by the arrogance and stupidity of politicians of all parties, plus their Whitehall & LA flunkeys, who have willfully and uncritically been flogging the culture of didacticism, target-setting, endless testing, league tables and punitive inspections these many years. Schools must now band together to develop their own best practices, to offer real education, and resolve never to forget the fury they felt for this regime and all that it did to pupils, teachers and schools. Never, ever, let it happen again.
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Layer 99 Coming Up Roses

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The British Comedy Awards 2008 was so dire I need to comment on how bad the whole thing was. The only good things about it were that awards went deservedly to Russell Brand, Harry Hill, the wonderful Geoffrey Perkins, and the Gavin & Stacey team.

The most interesting thing about the entire programme was the fact that the real greats of British comedy for the most part didn’t turn up for the event - including Brand, Hill and Ricky Gervais, who was clearly a very unpopular winner of his category with those who were at the awards. Were their jeers professional jealousy, or do they seriously not ‘get’ Ricky’s humour? Or is it now ‘cool’ to dislike and revile him?

Geoffrey Perkins’ daughter made a lovely, warm and touching acceptance speech for her deceased father’s award. Russell’s taped contribution from Hawaii was very funny.

And those were the highlights. The rest was “a fucking smug display of back-slapping wankery”, as Michael Legge puts it in his blog.

The worst part of it for me was the truly awful Angus Deayton, who, as I blogged on Saturday, was nasty, snide, bitchy, irritating, up his own arse and completely unfunny. I read somewhere that Ross was paid £100,000 for hosting this show. I’d hate to think Deayton got anywhere near that. He deserves nothing for his incompetent and badly-judged performance.

It wasn’t witty, it wasn’t clever, and it wasn’t in any way amusing. Brand and Ross have set the standard for this kind of thing, in that people may hate their narcissistic shtick but at least they (or their writers?) are capable of original wit. Deayton may think he’s ‘edgy’, and perhaps sees ‘edginess’ as a requirement in front of an audience of his edgy ‘peers‘, but run-of-the-mill sarcasm and snidery are not the same as edginess. You’d never see Brand stooping to that kind of thing, for instance, as much as he’s capable of putting the boot into those who truly deserve the boot, like George Bush, obviously.

More About Cars

I love bizarre coincidences. Barely 8 hours after posting comments about the dire Morris Marina yesterday there was a feature on Top Gear on the appalling cars produced by the Eastern Bloc countries, which featured a track race between one of them and our very own Morris Marina, as an example of the rubbish our own car industry was capable of producing.

Will Hutton published some interesting thoughts in yesterday’s Observer about the dire state of the American car industry and what needs to happen world-wide to re-think the kinds of vehicles that are needed in the 21st Century. He concludes,

“Detroit is at a crossroads. Car companies need to rethink their mission from scratch, for their own sake and the world's. The car was a symbol of the 20th century.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/07/car-future-general-motors-bailout

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Also in The Observer

1. Front Page spread: Mugabe Must Be Toppled Now - Archbishop of York

In an extraordinary and passionate outburst, the Archbishop of York is calling for President Robert Mugabe to be toppled from power and face trial for crimes against humanity. Dr John Sentamu, writing in The Observer, said the world must recognise that the time for talks was over and Mugabe should be forced out. 'The time has come for Robert Mugabe to answer for his crimes against humanity, against his countrymen and women and for justice to be done. The winds of change that once brought hope to Zimbabwe and its neighbours have become a hurricane of destruction, with the outbreak of cholera, destitution, starvation and systemic abuse of power by the state,' he says.

'As a country cries out for justice, we can no longer be inactive to their call. Robert Mugabe and his henchmen must now take their rightful place in The Hague and answer for their actions. The time to remove them from power has come.'

Excellent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/06/zimbabwe-robert-mugabe-john-sentamu


2. Pope attacks tax havens for robbing poor. Hard-hitting Vatican report lays blame for the global financial crisis at door of 'offshore centres'.

It is a message sent from on high to the world's financial and political elite. The Roman Catholic Church is calling for the effective closure of secretive tax havens as a 'necessary first step' to restore the global economy to health.

In a policy paper from the Holy See, Pope Benedict pins the blame for the international financial crisis largely on 'offshore centres', many of which, such as the Channel Islands, are British dependencies.

Brilliant.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/07/pope-benedict-vatican-tax-havens-credit-crunch


3. Stay Calm - learning to stay calm while leading with emotion.

The New York Times supplement carries as essay by Kate Zernike in which she considers the importance of emotional intelligence in leaders like Barack Obama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/weekinreview/30zernike.html?_r=1

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One of the things that really stands out in Zernike’s essay is the near-universal confusion between feelings and emotions. For example, she says,

“We want our doctors to be calm, but we want them to show emotion and empathy, as well.”

Actually, we don’t want them to show emotion. We want them to be professional and calmly objective, and empathetic. We want them to show they have feelings, but we do NOT want them to have and to show an emotional response to our problems. Personally I never want to see my doctor showing signs of anxiety or anger or resentment or disgust or any other emotion. Professionalism demands that strong personal reactions and emotions do not intrude into professional relationships.

Neither would I want to see President Obama showing uncontained emotions - certainly not panic or hatred or desire for revenge. We had enough of that with Bush and Cheney.

However, Zernike’s main point is well made - it is possible to become emotionally and spiritually intelligent and to learn how to behave calmly in a crisis. These qualities are not just something we either do or don’t inherit through our genes.

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The Rose Review

Which leads on to today’s news that Sir Jim Rose has published his interim report on the English & Welsh Primary school curriculum, and that it’s overwhelmingly intelligent and enlightened, particularly in its proposals to ensure that a major part of the curriculum centres on developing children’s capacity for social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. It also recommends getting rid of the disintegrated curriculum and organising the curriculum into cross-curricular themes or topics, along the lines of the Scottish ‘curriculum for excellence’. More about this tomorrow, no doubt.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/08/primary-schools-history-curriculum-education

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/08/primary-subjects-theme

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/08/sats-under-review

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/23/primaryschools.teaching

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Children at Risk

Jenni Russell has another excellent column in today’s Guardian - on the subject of social services departments failing to protect vulnerable children. She writes,

One in eight children - 1.5 million - are thought to be growing up in a situation where they may be at risk. Only about 25,000, though, are on the equivalent of the at-risk register.

Worst of all is the effect of government targets. Councils that assess a lot of children quickly score more highly. But there's a correlation between speed and the danger of superficiality. Councils also score worse in performance indicators if there is a rise in the number of children taken into care.

They lose points again if they keep children on the equivalent of the at-risk register for more than two years. All the pressure is to get children off the system and to downgrade their needs.

All of this, of course, in order to achieve government targets, and to placate Ofsted. The whole system is perverse and wicked.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/08/child-protection-social-care

It was reported today that Haringey’s director of children’s services has been dismissed from her post.

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The Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors

reports as follows:

The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published today. As many as 77 per cent feel that formal testing fails to measure their real intelligence, yet the exam results are used to scrutinise them through their academic careers and when applying for jobs.

The study, by the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA), found that for a majority of people (62 per cent) the feeling they most associated with taking an exam was 'butterflies in the stomach'. More extreme reactions to exam situations included headaches, insomnia and vomiting. Just three out of 10 people associated exams with 'a sense of pride', according to the study based on responses from 2,000 adults.

Pupils in England sit an average of 70 formal examinations. According to a recent report from Cambridge University, English primary school children are now subjected to more tests than their international counterparts. Yet, claims the CIEA, 60 per cent of teachers who responded to a separate online poll said they did not think exams were necessarily the best indicators of a pupil's ability and were not reflective of their future success in a job. Amid reports accusing schools of 'teaching to test', the CIEA said the survey pointed to the need for a more well-rounded form of assessment.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/07/schools-a-levels-gcses-education
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Layer 78 Education, Regulation, and the Rights of the Child

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It’s enough to make you despair when you come across pieces of crap in The Guardian like the one its ex-editor Peter Preston had published in the Opinion pages on Monday this week. Thank goodness so many readers took the trouble to lambast him for it in Comment Is Free - the good old Guardian’s brilliant facility for allowing readers to post an instant response on its website. Modern digital technology can be truly wonderful when it’s used imaginatively - in this case creating a community of interactive writers and readers-who-also-write. Oxzen also posted a response.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/commentanddebate-sats-banking-regulation

It’s not the first time Preston has written appalling reactionary nonsense in the Guardian - not by any means. It was this exact week last year, almost to the day, that he wrote a piece called A Molehill of Mange, taking to task the authors of a report into children’s unhappiness with schools and teachers. Preston ludicrously claimed that these poor little ‘blank slates’ had been grafitti-ed and scribbled on by their unscrupulous teachers and thereby made to believe that modern force-feeding teaching methods aimed solely at raising SATs and GCSE scores were making their lives in school tremendously dull, tedious, boring and frustrating. As if millions of kids up and down the country needed to be told that. As if they were actually enjoying school but preferred to claim the opposite. As if they’d been brainwashed by their lazy leftie teachers into believing something that was clearly untrue.

This sad old ignoramus is literally beyond help. I remember last year emailing him some gentle admonishment which patiently and politely explained the errors in his beliefs. Did I get even a brief courteous acknowledgement for my trouble? No. Did he bother to read what I wrote and allow alternative thoughts to enter his closed and fetid mind? It seems highly unlikely. Oh well - no doubt he’s an extremely busy man in his retirement. Wikipedia seems to suggest as much.

Though I have an image in my head of the kind of retired country-dwelling reactionary who hangs out every day in his local saloon bar with a copy of the Mail or the Telegraph open on his table, sounding off his trite, ignorant opinions to anyone within earshot, people who in any case already think the same way as he does because they’ve already read the same sort of nonsense in the same newspapers.

There’s a whole gang of media whores like Preston who think the same way as he does because they have broadly similar backgrounds - grammar or public/private schools followed by Oxford or Cambridge. We’re talking here about people like the lovely Mel P (Melanie Phillips), David Blunkett and Andrew Adonis. All of them journalist/politician/self-publicists. Big mouths in the media. Big egos. Presumably they have their own club somewhere. I’d guess they all wine and dine together regularly, in and out of one another’s lives and homes. Chris Woodhead is one of them, and though I’m not sure he actually made it to Oxbridge as an undergraduate he did lecture at Oxford for a while. Tony Blair is their patron saint - public school and Oxbridge background, naturally.

What they have in common is a penchant for claiming they’re on the side of the masses in their wish to have every working class kid in the country raised above their station in life by cramming them for academic tests and exams, regardless of their aptitudes or preferences (because PP and his ilk know best), enabling them all to gain straight A Stars at A level, and giving them entry to the university of their choice, preferably Oxford or Cambridge, but maybe Imperial College if they have a working class bent for using spanners and welding equipment. After all, the country needs its inventors and scientists.

I have the feeling that Preston’s column this week was written mainly as a response and an admonishment to Jenni Russell, who’s written so many brilliant columns on education in the Guardian and last week was at it again - celebrating the fact that the government has quietly abandoned its apparent determination to keep SATs at KS3.

What Preston and co also hate is the thought that by pandering to (i.e. providing an appropriate and creative education for) the less academically able (i.e. less crammable) kids, our schools might be paying less attention to and actually holding back the vast bulk of middle class kids who naturally want and need to go to university in order to follow the life pattern wished upon them by their affluenza-infected parents, who, of course, will always be mortified if their little darlings score less than three or four A stars.

And this is the system we inflict upon our kids - academic success at any price, even if it makes them extremely unhappy and uptight in its process, and even if it turns them into raving egomaniacs with a snobbish distain for the benighted masses. That’s assuming they do ‘well’ out of the system. Pity the poor fucks who don’t make it, in spite of all the cramming. But as good old Dave Bluntit always says, there’s no excuse for failure, and the failures had better not excuse themselves either. If The Blunk can make it, then anybody can. Provided they have their special needs properly provided for, of course.

Preston’s current article makes a very foolish attempt to draw parallels between the worlds of finance and education. His very simple and very stupid thought (and he really only has one) is that if Guardian readers, including teachers, believe that it’s necessary to have our failing financial system much more tightly regulated then they shouldn’t be rejoicing that the government has decided to get rid of KS3 SATs in our supposedly failing education system.

He bangs on about hundreds of thousands of illiterate kids passing out of our schools as if it was a fact, as if he knows what he’s talking about. He rails on about the fact that so many kids fail to achieve five A - C grades at GCSE as if this so-called benchmark has any real meaning, and as if it’s in any case all the fault of the bloody teachers, as if those kids are now doomed to a life of failure and misery.

Because Pete and his mates can’t conceive of anyone being happy or fulfilled unless they’ve been to Oxbridge, or at least have an honours degree from somewhere. Because the only possible way for working class people to have a decent life is to get a degree and thereby get a highly paid job and a career that will enable them to escape from their appalling inner city and council estate ‘communities’. Isn’t that right, Pete? Mel? Anyone?

And here’s another thought for you Peter, old pal. Maybe - just maybe - those so-called illiterate kids would have left school as avid readers and far more capable writers and learners if their teachers had been allowed and encouraged to foster in them a love of literature and an ability to express themselves in writing, in their own ‘voice’, instead of wasting hours, days, weeks and years cramming them for academic tests and exams using the methodology of the so-called National Literacy Strategy.

The real irony is that it’s far more likely that this generation of kids would have achieved higher scores at GCSE if they had been properly taught by methodology that fosters a love of literature and writing, and a love of learning for its own sake, instead of being force-fed on the methodology of those who maintain a Victorian belief that children are empty vessels ready and waiting to be filled with Imperial gallons of facts, or those like Peter Preston who maintain a belief that children are merely blank slates just waiting to be written on by their teachers.

At heart, of course, these neo-conservatives are just fascists and elitists, and they can’t conceive of any system that isn’t top-down and imposed on the rest of us by the Special Ones like themselves who’ve been to Oxbridge or some other university and therefore have proven superiority of mind and spirit. Some of them may pay lip service to the concept of equality of opportunity, but that’s as far as it goes. There’s no way that common people could actually be their equal.

Some further reading for Peter and friends might be a little known Ofsted publication - ‘Schools Where Boys Write Well’ - little known because it goes against the grain of the disastrous National Literacy Strategy mentality and methodology. It’s even rooted in actual classroom practice, and some might say common sense, which is more than you can say for the untested, untrialled NLS. This booklet actually makes sense, which is more than you can say for Peter and his pals, who get their opinions from ‘data’ and from fellow ignoramuses, since they have no experience of the reality of life in ‘normal’ communities and ‘normal’ schools.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/publications/literacy/765289/

STOP PRESS

News headlines this morning - why are so many more Primary pupils refusing to attend school regularly? Now let’s see . . .

Presumably they’ve been brainwashed by their teachers into believing they really, really dislike school.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/22/comment.comment1 Molehill of Mange. The original classic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/16/sats-schools Jenni Russell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/22/sats-schools From today’s paper - an article by Dr Mary Bousted in response to Peter Preston’s piece.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7039966.stm The original report that inspired Preston’s Molehill of Mange

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/29/homework.ban Article on homework

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563753/Boring-lessons-blamed-for-rise-in-truancy.html Telegraph article from last year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7681666.stm Yesterday’s BBC report on a big increase in the numbers of Primary pupils absent from school. Either more kids are falling sick in some way, in which case we need to ask why they’re less physically and mentally healthy, or they’re more disaffected by school, in which case we definitely need to know why. Either way I blame central Government, local government, the DCFS, Ofsted and their media cheerleaders, as well as the people in schools who sold their souls in order to carry out the orders of their overlords.

PS Oxzen holds no brief at all for all the teachers and senior managers in schools who actually are crap, and there are indeed quite a few of them. However, the majority of these schmucks have been badly trained, brainwashed and bullied for so long it’s hardly fair to blame them entirely for their own inadequacies, or to demand their instant dismissal. Hopefully there will, sooner or later, be a more enlightened regime which can offer retraining of a very high quality, that will enable these people to see the errors of their ways and enable them to become high-functioning, ethically-driven and enlightened professionals who don’t abuse children’s rights to a real education (amongst other things) in the name of raising ‘standards’.

http://www.unicef.org/crc/files/Rights_overview.pdf See Articles 29, 31 and 36 in particular.
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Layer 77 Rapping Bankers, Scrapping SATs.

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The events of the past month or so have been so wild and whacky there’s very little that any blogger can really say that isn’t superfluous and hasn‘t already been said. Wherever you look there’s craziness going on that’s almost beyond satire or even comment - the events speak for themselves. 

There's Gordie Broon as superhero, deftly clearing up the mess he’s made, thanks to his admiration for the City and his determination not to regulate its greed and mad excesses. 

There’s the USA and the UK nationalising the major providers and guarantors of mortgages, and the pillars of the banking system, in a manner advocated all those years ago by Michael Foot and various other socialists. 

There’s John McCain trying to make himself electable by selecting as his vice presidential candidate someone who’s obscure even in her own country, and clearly a dimwit even by backwoods standards. 

How do you satirise any of that? Fortunately Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ (on More Four) and Private Eye are still having a very good go.

Stewart and his team are pretty much unmissable in this run-in to the election, especially in a time of financial and economic chaos and meltdown. Last week, commenting on what the Republicans can now do to improve their electability, he swerved around Obama’s crack about McCain choosing Palin for VP as like ‘putting lipstick on a pig’ and delicately settled for any future actions by McC & Co as being like ‘putting perfume on a turd’.

Stewart replayed the footage of the mad woman in one of McCain’s audiences fulminating about Obama being an Arab. Whereas the casual observer might have thought McCain gained some credit from the incident by telling the batty one that Obama was ‘a decent family man’, the Daily Show skewered him for letting the label ‘Arab’ stand as a something true and self-evidently a bad thing - i.e. no attempt to say a) he’s not ‘an Arab’, and b) even if he were, so what? 

The woman was a barking racist, and all McCain did, whilst backing away from her, was condone her racism by merely pointing out that at least Obama had a family, as if that has anything to do with his character and his ability. Later in the programme one of Stewart’s team, in role as a Republican commentator, said to Stewart with pride in his voice, “The McCain campaign speaks for us - the Ignorant - the people who shouldn’t necessarily speak”. 

Meanwhile, the current issue of Private Eye carries an ‘editorial’ by the former boss of the ‘Royal Bank of Gnome’ (i.e. RBS), which begins, 

“The Royal Bank of Gnome has been taken over as of this morning by the Government. I welcome this development and I am happy to give a reassurance to members of my family that my money is perfectly safe. Despite my sadness at leaving a bank that I have done so much for over the years, I can walk away with the knowledge that I have done everything in my power to safeguard my salary, bonuses and pension scheme. Investors may take comfort in the knowledge that although they have lost all their money, I haven’t.”

The Eye also points out that Sir Fred Goodwin last year received a ‘performance bonus’ of £2,860,000 for his work in manoeuvring the Royal Bank of Scotland group into a position where it needed a £20billion bail-out. 

The Eye carries ‘An Apology’ that’s ‘Exclusive to all Tory Newspapers’:

“In recent years we may have given the mistaken impression that the City was the driving force for growth in the economy, and that the “masters of the universe” and “superwomen” in the City who raked in mega-bonuses for deals which had transformed London into the banking capital of the world were people everyone should be proud of, as the wealth they’ve created has benefited each and every one of us in some way.

We now realise, in the wake of the ongoing credit crisis, that nothing could be further from the truth, and that the City is in fact nothing but a collection of sharp-suited robber barons, crooks, spivs and peroxide blond harpies, all shamelessly feeding at the trough as they scoop up mega-bonuses for dodgy deals which have taken us to the brink of Armageddon, and who are deserving of nothing but stoning or beheading for the misery they’ve wrought. 

We apologise for any confusion caused, and any confusion in the future when we criticise the government’s plan to take a share in the banks, saying that stifling risk-taking in the City will only make us all poorer in the long . . . etc, etc, etc.”

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Our government, meanwhile, didn’t shirk the opportunity to slip in, undercover of the cacophony of a collapsing financial system, and their own collapsing credibility, a decision to quietly scrap KS3 SATs, whilst retaining tests at KS2. Well Hoo-ray. Two bloody cheers. A left turn, or a U-turn? Maybe not as momentous a U-turn as now promising to strictly regulate the money markets as well as put overseers on the banks’ boards of directors, but a major reversal of policy all the same. 

Jenni Russell, as ever, in her Guardian column, neatly hit the nail on the head: 

“These are good times to bury bad policies, and the government is making the most of it. Less than a day after the Home Office dropped 42-day detention came the totally unexpected announcement of the abolition of Sats for 14-year-olds. This was a U-turn of the most remarkable kind. The blind defence of the testing system despite a wall of evidence about its failure has been the defining and depressing characteristic of the schools policy for a decade. And on Tuesday, in a near-empty Commons, the facade finally cracked. A test that skews the education of hundreds of thousands of children every year was suddenly found by schools minister Ed Balls to be "not justified", and "less and less relevant" to children's learning. It is a welcome change of perspective from a minister who has insisted until now that Sats are essential.”

Jenni then went on to say, 

“Every argument against Sats at 14 applies even more strongly to those at 11. They are simplistic and unreliable, they usually ruin year six, and they don't reflect what children understand. Almost every secondary school retests its 11-year-olds. At least a quarter can't do what the Sats claim they can. Yet since primaries' ranking, heads' survival and teachers' pay depend on the results, no junior school can afford to let a true picture of children's achievements emerge.

Every recent report on education has concluded that this system of perverse incentives is demoralising pupils and failing to develop their talents. We know why ministers have clung to it: the fake results have been a fig leaf for policy failures. Now we will find out whether Balls has real political courage.

He stepped out of the bunker this week, but if Balls is to retain any consistency he can't stop mid-stride. The biggest problem in education is the boredom and alienation of children. It's good to be acting to cut the disillusionment of 11-to 14-year-olds, but if he really cares about children rather than statistics, he needs to tackle the primary problem too.”

Oxzen’s comment in Comment Is Free, in case anyone missed it, was 

As ever Jenni Russell has done a great job in skewering New Labour’s ludicrous and harmful education policies, and in highlighting the ridiculous and inconsistent arguments used by Ed Balls for not following his own logic and moving to an effective system of tracking pupil progress at KS2 as well as KS3.

Mr Balls must think educational professionals and parents alike are entirely stupid if he thinks he can get away with saying, effectively, that we must have external and objective tests at the end of Primary school because, well, we have them at the end of Secondary school.

This is a typical politician attempting to fudge the issue and behaving like someone who cares more about covering his own back from attacks from both the Tories and from within Labour than he does about the wellbeing and educational success of children. If Balls sincerely believes what he’s saying then he really is stupid, and if he doesn’t then he’s as cowardly and shifty as his media performances would indicate.

As Jenni Russell says, the testing regime has as harmful an effect on the learning and motivation of pupils at KS2 as it's had on the learning of pupils at KS3, and the tests don’t even give an accurate picture of what pupils know and what they can do. Only evidence-based expert teacher assessment and regular tracking against clear learning targets can do that.

The Year 6 SATs results are more often an indicator of the willingness of individual schools to abandon a broad, rich and balanced curriculum and cram their pupils for tests than they are an indicator of actual pupil progress and ability. As for schools producing pupils who love learning for its own sake, who are creative, confident, imaginative and emotionally intelligent - you must be joking. Schools that focus primarily on cramming and "standards" (i.e. their position in the league tables) normally don't even address these issues.

Recent New Labour murmurings of appreciation and praise for the success of the Finnish system of education don't seem to appreciate that the Finns don't formally test pupils until they are 16. They DO, however, rigorously track their progress throughout their school years, instead of relying on formal tests at the end of each Key Stage.

New Labour were wrong about formal tests for pupils at KS1 and had to recant. They were wrong about holding on to formal tests at KS3 and had to recant. Do we really have to hope the Tories win the next election in order for the right thing to happen at KS2?