Layer 336 . . . The Politics of Education, Graduates, Sweat, Debt, and Disillusionment

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Oh well, it's back to keeping up with politics, beginning with the politics of education.

Peter Preston, loud-mouthed supporter of SATs and league tables, and scourge of trendy lefty teachers, as he imagines them, is suddenly concerned about children and students actually enjoying life. Why? Well wouldn't you know it - he's been awarded an honorary degree (why?) and he wants us to know about it. Being at a graduation ceremony has caused him to focus on real students and their experiences of the education system.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/university-not-just-exam-slog

University: learning to enjoy life

Witnessing the hope of a graduation day, I remember that education is about more than sweat and debt

He remembers!!! At last!!

Actually this piece is only concerned with university students, and I suppose it's too much to expect him to think laterally to what also goes on in schools, and whether pupils enjoy their lives within them. To do that he'd need to actually go into a school, having been awarded an honorary GCSE or maybe an honorary Level 4 in English.

So what does he have to say about learning and enjoying life?

University isn't a mere staging post to a well-paid job . . . Nor is it just an investment in Britain's future, so we can compete with Beijing by 2020. It isn't wholly a practical slog, either, a skill box of computer or engineering skills. University is an experience, often a life-changing one. You leave school a spotty child, and three years later, you're sort of grown up. You have friends you'll probably never lose. You've looked after yourself. You've sweated through exams. If you're lucky, you've learned how to think – the best boon of the lot.

Yes Pete, old duck, IF YOU'RE LUCKY. Because even at undergraduate level there's still no priority given to learning how to think. What we have is still a grim determination to force young people to swallow a curriculum, memorise its content, and regurgitate it in exams.

In fact, this happens even at postgraduate level! A friend's very bright son decided to bale out of his Masters course as soon as he realised that there was still no scope for self-directed learning and research, and it was still a bloody boring exam treadmill.

Pete goes on:

When did we begin to forget such things?

When did YOU forget, you old bastard? Some of us have been saying this stuff forever. Beginning with primary schooling.

He goes on to blame education ministers for making "degree courses seem like tests for national survival."

This is the man who talks about Primary tests and league tables as though they're essentials to national survival!

And there's more. He concludes:

Is school, and then college or university, there as an obstacle race, a slog of tests and hurdles? Is it just a rehearsal for 50 years of frustration, sweat, debt, disillusion and staffroom tears?

The danger is making education seem unutterably grim. The hope – see that beaming [graduation] queue of something achieved – is that happiness has a part to play. For learning in this crunched, short life means learning to enjoy yourself, too.

Thanks to people like Peter Preston, Melanie Philips, Chris Woodhead and their politician friends, schools and universities HAVE become unutterably grim results factories where pupil and student wellbeing, as well as their social, emotional and spiritual intelligences, have been increasingly neglected and marginalised - in the rush to "drive up standards".

Learning to enjoy yourself? How can you enjoy yourself when you're racking up debt doing stuff day in and day out that's basically cramming for exams, with little or no opportunities for self-directed creative experience?

What a fucking idiot.

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There's more evidence of the university system being useless and actually harmful to young people's life chances reported in the education section of the Guardian this week.

Should universities teach students how to find a job?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/27/graduate-job-crisis

Sarfraz Manzoor has been following the fortunes of six young people who graduated last year. How well do they feel that university prepared them for today's economic realities?

The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation.

That was, at least, the dire prediction, but what was the reality? I have spent the last year documenting the post-graduation lives of six students who are among the class of 2009. The six studied at the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University, and agreed to keep audio diaries throughout their year in which they recorded their hopes for the coming year as well as their reaction to the reality.

By the end of the year, the six students were scattered around the world and were far more cynical about the value of a university education than they had been on graduating.

For a start off it's interesting that none of the six was interested in using knowledge gained from their degrees - they all wanted to pursue careers in areas like sales, journalism and the media - careers that had nothing to do with the subjects they'd been studying. Given the likelihood that they'd originally chosen those subjects for their interest and enjoyment, what does that say about the universities making them somehow utterly tedious and uninspiring?

Page and Ali both left the country to seek work in Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, while Del Core found the soul-crushing business of being rejected hard to take. "I've looked for jobs in newspapers, at the job centre, on the internet, and by word of mouth," she says. "I've had several interviews, some of which I got to the second stage, but I never got past that. It has been quite disheartening – some positions I applied for were more the dream job than a means to an end, and I was very upset when I didn't get those. I was in tears."

Having spent time with the graduates, I was struck by how much they seemed to have believed, at least at the start, that they were entitled to a well-paid and fulfilling job simply because they had been to university. "When you look at the people who are going to university," explains Professor Kate Purcell, of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, "they have been encouraged to think that education has given them employability skills, so as well as learning about history or English or business studies they are also learning problem solving, developing communication skills, so they are pretty confident about themselves."

This confidence is not necessarily well founded.

A lot of people go to university for the sake of it because they think it is the right thing to do. So that makes lots of graduates. Universities are still selling the idea to people that if they go to university they are guaranteed a great job at the end of it, and that is just not the case any more.

The increasing number of graduates entering the job market has meant that employers are often insisting that prospective employees pass psychometric tests as a way of selecting candidates, and it has also led to claims that too many young people are being herded into university.

"When I think about a university course, I think of something that teaches people a skill so that they are qualified to do a certain job," says Gerrard. "But, in reality, after my degree I don't feel qualified for anything – degrees don't indicate someone's common sense or people skills, and I don't think you can get through many interviews without a little of both."

Just a little? It's pathetic really - these young graduates aren't even properly aware of what they're lacking. Common sense? What's that? People skills? Such as?

What's more, it's not their fault. They've been told since Primary school that high attainment is all that matters - and too late they find it isn't. What's more, they don't really know what does matter. And they're not the only ones. Politicians and university bosses don't know either. Their assumption is always that a first class honours or a 2.1 degree will get you anywhere in life. Beyond that, they haven't a clue. Well - that's what got them a meal ticket to their high status, was it not?

And it's no wonder that employers put more trust in 'psychometric tests' than university attainment in subjects whose facts and figures they won't be using anyway. The poor bloody students think that having a degree tells people they're "bright". Actually it doesn't. It's just as likely to say they're a dull swat, a boring little library-goer, a self-regarding 'academically able' nonentity with little experience of life, proper work, or real people. Possibly a dull conformist who's unable to think for themselves, unable to think creatively and imaginatively, unable to work well in a team, or communicate effectively, or write well, or show any empathy, intuition or instinctual intelligence. Common sense indeed.

The New Learning Revolution is about developing all of these intelligences and skills. How come the people who run education in this country don't realise that yet? How many more generations of our young people will go through our education system deprived of the sorts of learning that are taken for granted in countries much smarter than ours?

What's more, they're deprived of their human right to enjoy learning for its own sake, and to be free of undue pressure and stress within the education system.

This country used to be known for its creative and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Not only have other countries overtaken us, we've actually been going backwards for the past 20 odd years.
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Layer 294 . . . Heads, Tests, Preston, Maitreya, Zen, Bodhisattvas and Low Points In Human Existence

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I don't know whether to draw attention to this or not, but Peter Preston is back in the Guardian today with another pile of crap about schools, headteachers and SATs. Depressing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/02/teachers-sats-test-boycott-union?

What can one say that hasn't already been said? Thank goodness for CIF and all the Below The Line contributors. But why on earth does the Guardian continue to give this man space for his ludicrous views? If he's so desperate to have them published he ought to take them to the Daily Mail, which is where they belong, along with those of Melanie Phillips & Co. Which reminds me - she seems to have gone quiet lately . . .

Oh no she hasn't. Or if she's piped down a bit, she's still churning out her stuff in plenty of places. If you really want to know where - http://www.melaniephillips.com/

See also:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/10/layer-206-more-damned-targets.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/10/layer-78-education-regulation-and.html

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The Maitreya

This Maitreya thing is really quite interesting. I found this today on Wikipedia:

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

Maitreya is a bodhisattva who in the Buddhist tradition is to appear on Earth, achieve complete enlightenment, and teach the pure dharma. According to scriptures, Maitreya will be a successor of the historic Śākyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The prophecy of the arrival of Maitreya is found in the canonical literature of all Buddhist sects (Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayāna), and is accepted by most Buddhists as a statement about an event that will take place when Dharma will be forgotten on Earth.

One mention of the prophecy of Maitreya is in the Sanskrit  text, the Maitreyavyākaraṇa  (The Prophecy of Maitreya). It implies that he is a teacher of meditative trance sadhana and states that gods, men, and other beings:

    "will lose their doubts, and the torrents of their cravings will be cut off: free from all misery they will manage to cross the ocean of becoming; and, as a result of Maitreya's teachings, they will lead a holy life. No longer will they regard anything as their own, they will have no possession, no gold or silver, no home, no relatives! But they will lead the holy life of chastity under Maitreya's guidance. They will have torn the net of the passions, they will manage to enter into trances, and theirs will be an abundance of joy and happiness, for they will lead a holy life under Maitreya's guidance." (Trans. in Conze 1959:241)

This all sounds like standard mainstream Buddhism, which, to a Zennist, is . . . a little simplistic.

By the way - this guy is huge!

In Theravada Buddhism, a bodhisattva is one who is striving for full enlightenment (Arahantship in Pali), whereas in Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is one who has already reached a very advanced state of grace or enlightenment but holds back from entering nirvana so that he may help others.

Maitreya's coming is characterized by a number of physical events. The oceans are predicted to decrease in size, allowing Maitreya to traverse them freely. The event will also allow the unveiling of the "true" dharma to the people, in turn allowing the construction of a new world. The coming also signifies the end of the middle time in which humans currently reside (characterized as a low point of human existence between the Gautama Buddha and Maitreya.)

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The Election

A low point of human existence? It certainly will be if Cameron & Co are in Downing Street by the end of this week. Or at least a low point in the sad recent history of this country - downhill all the way from Thatcher and then on through the eras of Major, Blair and Brown. If people can't see by now that neo-conservative ideology and neo-liberal economics have created the financial disasters, and they still want to elect sons of Thatch such as Cameron, Osborne and Gove, then we really are at a very low point.

The good news, however, is that the polls are still showing that solid support for the Tories is around the levels that Michael Howard achieved - the low 30%s. This is no more than their core vote - i.e. there will always be this nucleus of reactionary and self-serving opinion, come what may. In any normal distribution there will always be a hard core of about one third who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and those who are already well off. The opposite third will tend to put the good of society as a whole above their own (financial and material) self interest. The middle third will always have a vague belief in 'fairness'.

Had New Labour done the right thing at some point during the past decade we'd already have a political system that would, through proportional representation, guarantee government by the more enlightened two thirds, keeping in check the one third who are basically either dupes and idiots or fat cats and would-be fat cats.

I used to think you couldn't really blame the wealthy for wanting to protect their own interests against those who'd like to have a more equal society, but since the publication of The Spirit Level even they should be able to see that the haves as well as the don't haves actually gain from greater equality. That's to say - they'd see if only they were looking. Enlightenment and clear vision, however, are not on their agenda.
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Layer 217 Chomsky, Hutton, Hyde, Toynbee and One To Avoid.

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A couple of friends have recently said they often read the magazine The Week as a good way to keep up with what's happening in the world. I agree - it's well edited and it gives a clear digest of current events, interesting topics and the best media reports.

In the spirit of The Week here's a mention of some recent pieces in the papers, beginning at the genius end of what's being said:

'US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia'

Noam Chomsky is the west's most prominent critic of US imperialism, yet he is rarely interviewed in the mainstream media. Seumas Milne meets him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/07/noam-chomsky-us-foreign-policy

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar. A philosopher of language and political campaigner of towering academic reputation, who as good as invented modern linguistics, he is entertained by presidents, addresses the UN general assembly and commands a mass international audience. When he spoke in London last week, thousands of young people battled for tickets to attend his lectures, followed live on the internet across the globe . . .

Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.

Like the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke out against western-backed wars until his death at the age of 97, Chomsky has lent his academic prestige to a relentless campaign against his own country's barbarities abroad – though in contrast to the aristocratic Russell, Chomsky is the child of working class Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms. Not surprisingly, he has been repaid with either denunciation or, far more typically, silence.

Chomsky supported Obama's election campaign in swing states, but regards his presidency as representing little more than a "shift back towards the centre" and a striking foreign policy continuity with George Bush's second administration. "The first Bush administration was way off the spectrum, America's prestige sank to a historic low and the people who run the country didn't like that." But he is surprised so many people abroad, especially in the third world, are disappointed at how little Obama has changed. "His campaign rhetoric, hope and change, was entirely vacuous. There was no principled criticism of the Iraq war: he called it a strategic blunder.

The veteran activist has described the US invasion of Afghanistan as "one of the most immoral acts in modern history", which united the jihadist movement around al-Qaida, sharply increased the level of terrorism and was "perfectly irrational – unless the security of the population is not the main priority". Which, of course, Chomsky believes, it is not.

He argues that since government officials first formulated plans for a "grand area" strategy for US global domination in the early 1940s, successive administrations have been guided by a "godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated. It's a major feature of state policy." "Successful defiance" has to be punished, even where it damages business interests, as in the economic blockade of Cuba – in case "the contagion spreads".

He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal – which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road American liberals who don't appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.

But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He's a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade ("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America – it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America"). He also believes there are now constraints on imperial power which didn't exist in the past: "They couldn't get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did," in the 1960s. He even has some qualified hopes for the internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.

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Will Hutton

Discarded mobiles, wire-taps and Mr Bigs. Welcome to Wall Street

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/will-hutton-wall-street-corruption

Imagine The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko's Wall Street all rolled into one. You don't have to: the FBI has just broken one of the largest-ever insider dealing rings in Wall Street. It wire-tapped its way into a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones. A network including staff of New York law firms, hedge funds and share-trading companies, with links extending to top Plcs, investment banks and consultancies has been revealed. Five people have pleaded guilty, while others maintain their innocence.

The reputation of the financial markets is already at rock bottom. The crash, the bailouts and the extravagant bonuses have convinced ordinary Americans as much as us ordinary Brits that morality and fair play are not values much  found in the financial markets. And now there is this.

In 1720, the London stock exchange was a minor casino that represented a fraction of Britain's GDP.  Now, the value of the assets traded outstrips world GDP many, many times. The financial markets and their values have become the most dominant economic force on the planet. They give capitalism its culture. If London and New York financiers are part of a casino that is crooked, only fools and the naive continue to play by the rules.

Financial services now constitute a kind of tax on the real economy as well as distorting its priorities; short-termism and the search for impossibly high returns are rife. The culture, of which systematic insider trading is part, is having a growing impact on business ethics.

Most people in the financial markets start with a working moral compass, but retaining it becomes ever harder. Capitalism had its origins in a Protestant commitment to saving and investment, along with the Enlightenment commitment to truth. Great companies still have a strain of moral purpose; they seek to do something great from which they make profits. Today's financial markets mock such sentiments. Their destructiveness and awesome power goes well beyond the credit crunch. This culture of amorality reaches everywhere . . .

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Marina Hyde

Sit back and await the joy of Simon the singing canary

With its top-class cast and horribly fascinating location there could scarcely be any more to love about the Mann saga

In the supermarket yesterday, I wondered how many enforced bathroom visits Mark Thatcher had rushed to make since hearing the news that the organiser of the failed Equatorial Guinea coup in 2004 had been pardoned – he's out, and he's still singing like an amphetamine-charged canary! – and I almost had to sit down in the canned goods aisle at the gorgeousness of it all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/06/await-joy-simon-singing-canary

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Polly Toynbee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/brown-tax-convert-hard-believe

Brown, a tax convert? Hard to believe, but let's hope so

A Tobin transaction tax would be a bold, sensible, social democratic move – so it's a shock to hear the prime minister backing it

After the crash Brown needed a public reckoning, a time to say: "The world has changed and so have I. Like other leaders and most economists in the boom years I got things wrong. I should have regulated more, not less. Our new industrial policy acknowledges that I relied too much on the financial sector. When the facts change, I change my mind. As everyone should, I learn from experience, and now I see what must be done. Not only was the whole economy unbalanced by the dominance of finance, but the rewards were too unfairly shared in the boom years; we must ensure the pain of these hard times is born by the broadest shoulders."

Without some explanation of his intellectual journey, any change of direction will be seen as the frantic opportunism of a drowning man. Proposing a Tobin tax just doesn't fit the Gordon Brown story. As chancellor he did not conduct a progressive tax policy. He eased tax for the richest, while taxing the middle more.

Brown thought it enough to use the proceeds of tax for progressive purposes, without redistributing tax itself. As a result Britain became less equal, and income and wealth were shared less fairly. Instead of shifting attitudes to appreciate the social value of tax, he colluded with an anti-tax ideology that calls all tax a burden.

That is why his sudden espousal of the Tobin tax looks unconvincing. It doesn't belong in his back story – unless he redefines that story as a journey of rediscovery of lost social democratic tax ideas. Then he might take people with him: because his Tobin tax should be a roof-raising, banker-bashing, debt-defying, public-service-saving, rabble-rouser of a political winner.

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And here's One To Avoid . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/football-education-childhood-school

The touchline timeline

Just as in my childhood, winning or losing together remains a basic lesson on the great field of life

It's Peter Preston, of course, who writes in a lazy little column this week about watching his grandson play football, and has some useless thoughts on . . . nothing really. It's writing for writing's sake. It's what he does. The only explanation for the continuation of his regular column in the Guardian must be that it was part of his retirement package from his editorship of the paper, and essential to maintaining his self-esteem and ego – that his thoughts are still read and appreciated. Well they're not. At least not by anyone with half a brain.

“Here I am, back on the touchline again.

That's one of my grandsons in the centre of the defence . . .

The world of the touchline is frozen in time – and your heart bleeds a little as you sample it again.

Ahhhh . . .Still the bleeding heart liberal, then?

The real fields of dreams have no stands, no roaring crowds – just a few dozen kids, with dads and mums doing their stuff . . . somehow showing they care.

And Peter really cares! So Pete – What is point? (I really miss the Paul Whitehouse character in Down The Line.) We're back on one of Pete's old favourites, of course - smack the teacher. All teachers. Cos they're all the same really, are they not? The regular common or garden State school variety of teacher, that is.

Earnest teachers – invoking the policies of two decades ago that saw school playing fields sold off to supermarkets and competitive games shunned because they involved losing as well as winning – will wince over even a trickle of testosterone. Some 72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork, 81% will never play anything against another school. Yoga and juggling are much in individual vogue.

Well we all know how useless yoga is! Never catch Pete and his pals doing any bloody yoga. Or their grandchildren, if he's got any say in it.

But the central pitch of existence still teaches many useful things. It shows you in a trice who's good and who never can be better than mediocre.

Does it? Once a crap footballer, always a crap footballer? Here's a man who always thinks in absolutes – you're either 'good' or 'bad', or 'never better than mediocre'. At anything, presumably.

Does it hurt, though, to know early on that you're an also-ran, that you'll never have the X factor that brings riches and renown in train?

No, not really, because that isn't the true point whenever little lads trot out to show what they can do; because being part of something is a quite different feeling; because winning or losing together, whatever teacher says, is one of the basic lessons for those on the great field of life – and for those strung out, shouting, clapping, cheering, above all involved, along its eternal touchlines.

Where to start with this bullshit? They're not 'trotting out' to 'show what they can do'. They're on the pitch to enjoy a game of football. Ideally they don't need to show anyone anything. Not even their grumpy old grandparents, or their over-ambitious parents.

Here's a man who perhaps wasn't able to amass what most people in his circle would call riches, but who was always chasing 'renown'. So clearly he had to have some kind of X factor to become a successful journalist and an editor of a newspaper, and so clearly Pete can't be considered an 'also-ran'. Whereas in reality he's just a pathetic has-been, except maybe in the kind of social circles where grumpy old men are the norm, and flailing around with reactionary and badly-informed opinions gets you some sort of status and 'renown'.

As a young teacher I used to spend at least one weekday after-school session per week and every Saturday morning coaching the school football team and taking them to matches. Brother J and I did it together, and he was always hugely enthusiastic, come rain or shine. In the summer we did cricket.

Preston doesn't realise – why would he? - that all over the country there are still lots of teachers who do these things, in spite of the fact that the demands on teachers are now massive in terms of preparation, marking, assessment,  record keeping, staff meetings, on the job training, curriculum leadership, professional reading & correspondence, and assorted meetings with colleagues, parents, etc. And how could anyone even suggest that teachers should feel obliged to involve themselves in sports (or any other extra-curricular activity such as drama, music and singing) when they're already working in the evenings and weekends at keeping up with their regular workloads? Work-life balance is a joke when you're just doing your regular job as a teacher.

What a lot of schools do nowadays, and what my old school still does, is employ specialist coaches to work with children on various sports – football, basketball, netball, tennis, cricket, volleyball, etc. Of course Preston knows nothing about any of this. “Wince over even a trickle of testosterone” indeed.

The man's a total ignoramus. Testosterone Pete. Not least because he's still stuck with the myth that because a few misguided teachers in a few places did make some waves about not liking competitive games, and argued the case for involving more children in collaborative rather than competitive games, that this somehow represented all teachers.

And it certainly wasn't the teachers that sold off school sports grounds. Of course you can't expect Fleet Street Pete to know any of this. He's the original Private Eye Lunchtime O'Booze, or one of them. At least that's what he shounds like these days. He's shurely got to go. Bleating into his cups about his childhood polio and his land of lost content.

In a way I feel bad about being so critical of someone who's so pitiful, but what the hell – he started it! He shouldn't talk such shit about subjects he knows nothing about. He should show some more respect  to teachers and to people who do more for kids than he's ever done. And it's not like he's going to read this blog anyway.

The truth is that if  “72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork” then it's because of people like P Preston esq, who have beaten on about “the standards agenda” and raising test scores to the exclusion of practically all else. These days there are probably more kids in after-school “booster classes” learning how to perform tricks for academic tests than kids doing after-school sports, thanks to the fear of ruthless reactionaries like Preston and his gang who see life only in terms of successes, failures and also-rans; who think that getting to Oxbridge etc is the be-all and end-all, who think there's “no excuse for failure”.

And then they bleat on about the benefits of learning about collaboration and not getting “regular chances at teamwork”. That's right Mr Preston – make education and the learning process as individualistic and competitive as you possibly can and then rue the fact that kids don't develop social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, which is precisely what this “teamwork” amounts to.

Thank goodness there are some good teachers who see the benefits of allowing their pupils to actually learn collaboratively and don't rely on competitive team sports to develop these other vital intelligences. Roll on the day when we all realise that the gaining and expanding of human knowledge is best done as a collaborative effort, and one in which everyone can and should participate, whether or not we are intellectually gifted and academically  talented.
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Layer 210 . . . Education, Equality, Transformation and Alexander

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There were two columns in the Guardian yesterday that were worth reading on the subject of education.

Firstly, in the Response column, Warwick Mansell, author of “Education by Numbers: the Tyranny of Testing”, wrote a piece under the heading,

Targets are not the way to make schools accountable
Sats tests cause pupils great harm and the information they provide is often of little use

Peter Preston, in discussing the Cambridge primary review, repeated misconceptions which regularly feature in the debate about whether the current system of holding schools – and other public services – to account is working effectively (In praise of targets, 19 October).

First, he said that "around a fifth of all children moving on to secondary education at 11 remain fundamentally illiterate". In 2009, 20% did indeed fail to reach the government's "expected" level – level 4 – in English tests. But most of those achieved level 3, which has been defined, for reading, by the people who set the tests, as "pupils read a range of texts fluently and accurately". Level 4 was originally set at what the average pupil would achieve.

Second, Preston suggested that parents would be worse off if they "didn't know exactly what was going on" through the Sats tests. But this overlooks whether the information provided by the Sats is actually of much use. A report by Ofsted last year said schools could boost their pupils' performance in the maths tests without building underlying problem-solving ability, partly because the tests do not assess it well.

The English tests have been criticised for a mechanistic mark scheme which can overlook and marginalise imaginative writing. And the science tests were abandoned last year following widespread complaints from scientists that they sidelined practical science work.

More fundamentally, most of the difference between schools' Sats results is the product of pupils' backgrounds, while the artificial quality of the results generated after months of teaching to the test is reflected in many secondary schools' decisions to re-test pupils when they receive them.

Third, he implied that those – such as the authors of the primary review – who criticise this system simply want a return to the past and to do away with accountability. But the review was clear that it was not a question of whether there should be accountability, but of which type.

The targets/league tables/high-stakes testing system is widely disliked by teachers. But it is also letting pupils down. And while the "cerebral leader writers on the Times" may like it, other intelligent, disinterested people – including scientific and mathematical organisations and exam boards – have serious reservations about it: the government's was the only one of 52 submissions to a parliamentary investigation two years ago which backed it.

Read the rest of this piece here -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/23/cambridge-review-sats-targets

The quality of some of the comments on CiF after the article is enough to make anyone despair, but thankfully Warwick Mansell came back at them with this:

It's not the fact that children are tested, but the tests-plus-accountability system: the league tables, targets, Ofsted inspections, performance pay system which rests on the tests and says that the be-all-and-end-all for a school is its test scores.

Some schools clearly do resist this pressure, but for others it can and does lead to a narrowing of the curriculum so that non-tested subjects are marginalised, a narrowing of the school experience in the tested subjects towards months of revision/test practice in the run-up to the tests - official survey data suggests the typical school spends 10 hours a week on test preparation in the four month run-up to the KS2 tests - and a reminder to all children that they are being judged only in terms of test performance over a few days.

Here is some evidence on the downsides, taken from my website www.educationbynumbers.org

I'm not a parent myself, but I would say the best way that people can react to this system is not to obsess about the test levels, and the league table scores.

The evidence below is a set of selected quotations from evidence submissions given by various organisations to the 2007 Children, Schools and Families investigation into testing.
- Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education: The continual testing and practising for tests has resulted in a narrow and impoverished mathematics curriculum, and poor quality teaching of that curriculum.
- Institute of Educational Assessors: We may be churning out individuals who can pass tests and who can achieve good results to a given, known test but who cannot necessarily apply their knowledge and skills to other situations, hence the concern from employers about skill levels among young people.
- The Royal Society: It is clear that aspects of our current assessment system are holding back students and teachers performance and creativity, contributing to a declining popularity in the physical sciences and mathematics and inadequate recruitment and retention of specialist teachers in these subjects.
- Hampshire County Council: The assessment regime has become enormously burdensome for schools. National Curriculum (NC) tests have now expanded out of all proportion to their usefulness. It also calls for a more humane system.
- General Teaching Council: Tests are used for too many purposes and this compromises their reliability and validity. The tests can depress pupils motivation and increase anxiety. They do not adequately serve the interests of parents or pupils and they lead to a narrowed curriculum and encourage ‘teaching to the test.
- Institute of Physics: We believe that current assessment arrangements are promoting too narrow a range of skills and understanding, principally there is too great an emphasis on testing students ability to recall facts. This leads to a situation where there is insufficient teaching for understanding or creativity, with accompanying negative effects on students motivation and enjoyment.
- Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment: We believe the current testing system is limited in measurement of childrens performance across the National Curriculum programmes of study.
- Campaign for Science and Engineering: We do not doubt that students appear to work harder at school than those of ten or fifteen years ago, but too much of this extra effort appears to have been devoted to the narrow and unremitting demands of national tests.
- The Wellcome Trust: Primary teachers felt that national tests had a negative effect on childrens enjoyment of science, because of the increasing tendency to ‘teach to the test. An over-emphasis on curriculum content and pressure to prepare for national tests were felt to reduce opportunities for investigative work and lead to science frequently being taught as a collection of facts.
- Institute for Public Policy Research: The current national tests do not provide highly reliable or valid measures at the level of the individual pupil...The current assessment and accountability framework can impact on valuable elements of assessment such as assessment for learning. This can happen through narrow and shallow learning, questions-spotting and risk-averse teaching.
- Association of School and College Leaders: Assessment in Britain requires a radical review. In England, young people take externally set and marked examinations at the ages of 7, 11, 14, 16, 17 and 18. The system is at breaking point as more and more examinations have been added to an already over-examined system.
- Mathematical Association: Coaching for the test, now occupying inflated teaching time and effort in almost all schools for which we have information at each Key Stage, is not constructive: short term ‘teaching how to is no substitute for longterm teaching of understanding and relationship within and beyond mathematics part of a broad and balanced curriculum.

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Meanwhile, on the Leaders page (Comment & Debate), Lynsey Hanley, author of “Estates: An Intimate  History”, wrote this piece -

Equality, not education, is the key to individual transformation

Political parties fail to understand or address the root causes of the country's failing education system

Reading the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments on the "extraordinarily anxious and in many ways oppressive climate in education at every level" that has been created in the 20 years or so since the imposition of the national curriculum, made me wonder yet again about the wisdom of the competing parties' plans for education: whether Labour's lowering of the starting age and expansion of the academies programme, or Tory proposals for parents to open their own state-funded "free schools". Politicians on both sides talk of education as the key to individual and social transformation – as Michael Gove put in his conference speech, "the opportunity to choose [one's] own destiny" – but none properly address the link between education and social segregation.

It comes down to economics: what you're worth, in other words. Those who are valued the least think the least of themselves and others. Those who are valued the most think well of themselves and award themselves, as they are rewarded, with education and mobility to attractive, affluent areas largely untroubled by the difficulties experienced by people in poorer ones.

This week, figures released by the University and College Union have shown the extent to which Britain is polarised by access to education, money, safe surroundings or their lack. Dividing the data available on qualifications by parliamentary constituency allows you to see the vast discrepancies between areas. In Bootle, for instance, you're far more likely to have no GCSEs than to have a degree, whereas in much of the south-east the opposite holds true. Areas are becoming less like each other, and less easily averaged out, over time.

Schools without banding and lotteries for places – though these practices are becoming more common – become microcosms of the area in which they operate. Successful schools are those where staff and students feel as though they can take charge of the raw materials of life and shape something good out of it; the less successful are those which struggle to find evidence that such a thing is possible. As an adult, the difference between being seen and unseen often comes down to how well you're able to articulate what the matter is.

The affluent and highly educated concentrate themselves in areas such as Sheffield Hallam and Richmond, gathering so much power that they can afford to pretend that power is irrelevant; poor and low-educated communities are so stymied by the imbalance that they come to believe they have no power.

Attempts made by the mainstream British political parties to interpret the needs of the "white working class" – and, as is the government's current strategy, to throw money at the symptoms of malaise rather than to address the causes – is a classic example of how social stratification leads to the warping and splitting of common values. A deep lack of entitlement and confidence felt by working-class people, structured in large part by a combination of powerlessness, poverty and snobbery directed towards them by those who are better off, ought not to be confused with the entitlement to "Britishness" that's often invoked by the same individuals.

Starting school at four, or attending a spanking new academy with no social mix, won't alter this relationship between perception and experience because neither proposal has equality, the healer of divisions both real and imagined, as its driving motivation.

Read the rest of it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/22/schools-reform-equality-failure

I'd be interested to know what readers think of the comments on CiF about these two articles. Forget about MoveAnyMountain though – it's understood that MAM is a raving long-winded neanderthal.

oxzen@yahoo.co.uk

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In today's paper have a look at this -

Ed Balls accused of 'lashing out wildly' at primary school review findings
• Head of review says Labour does not listen
• Growing anger among teachers at response

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/24/primary-schools-edballs

It's by Polly Curtis, the education editor.

The man behind a major inquiry into primary education today accuses Ed Balls and his ministers of "lashing out wildly" and dismissing his review findings without properly reading it.

Robin Alexander, head of the Cambridge review of primary schools, said the Labour government refused to "listen, engage and learn" from independent advice in its "micro-managed" system.

Writing for the Guardian's Comment is Free website, he sets out how the government's response to the review betrayed the fact that ministers had not properly read it, setting out inaccuracies in how both they and their Conservative shadows described it.

Alexander's intervention comes amid growing anger in schools and teacher groups about the government's dismissal of the review. It also comes after a tumultuous week in which Balls was accused of being a "bit of a bully" by Barry Sheerman, the chair of the Commons committee for children, schools and families, after he appointed Maggie Atkinson to the role of children's commissioner. He also faced heavy criticism at the national children and adult services conference in Harrogate.

The Cambridge review, the biggest inquiry into primary education in 40 years, was published last week after a three-year process which produced 31 interim reports, 28 surveys and thousands of submissions.

In a 600-word document it concluded that schools are in "good heart … highly valued by children and parents and in general doing a good job," but condemned the centralisation of the system under Labour and how the curriculum had shrunk to a narrow focus on the 3Rs.
t suggested schools should replace formal teaching with play-based learning until a child turns six and that national curriculum tests – Sats – should be replaced with improved end-of-primary tests.

The Cambridge review received support from every teaching union, agency and school support group but the government – led by the schools minister, Vernon Coaker – accused the review of being "out of date" and failing to acknowledge programmes that were under way to review testing, special educational needs and maths teaching.

Today, Alexander writes that after the government "instantly dismissed" the inquiry, "the review's email in-boxes [were] overflowing with messages not just about the findings that the press focused on – starting age, testing, centralisation – but with expressions of spluttering outrage shading into quiet despair at last week's statement."

"Nobody expects ministers to have the time to read every massive report that lands on their desks, not overnight anyway," he concludes. "But serious questions must now be asked about the advice on which the government's response was based, the advisers who provided the minister with such a hopeless script, and the wisdom of approaching a general election as the government which refuses to listen, engage and learn."

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said it had received a letter from Alexander about the issues raised in the article and would respond in due course.

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Robin Alexander's piece is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/24/cambridge-review-primary-education

The government's instant dismissal of the final report of the Cambridge Primary Review has become as a big a story as the report itself. The review's email inboxes are overflowing with messages not just about the findings that the press focused on – starting age, testing, centralisation – but also with expressions of spluttering outrage shading into quiet despair at last week's statement from schools minister Vernon Coaker.

Coaker said that by virtue of having started three years ago, the report was out-of-date. What a strange and desperate ploy. One would have thought that this testifies to its depth and thoroughness, especially as when pressed this week by the select committee to explain, Ed Balls wrongly claimed that the report had ignored the Williams maths inquiry (mentioned on pages 38, 46, 49, 433 and 436), the "expert group" on assessment (seven mentions) and the Lamb special educational needs review (the report argues for an SEN review with a broader and different remit).

That was not all the minister got wrong. Like many others, he (and, in this matter, the Conservatives) misrepresented as a bid to raise the school starting age our proposal that the government's early years foundation stage should be extended to age six, thus confusing curriculum (which is what the EYFS is about) with organisational structure. Although we said that, in light of international evidence, the starting age needs to be discussed, that was as far as we went. Get the early years curriculum right, we argued, and school starting age is no longer an issue.

Hopefully this will be another nail in the coffin of the sinister Ed Balls and the execrable New Labour hierarchy.
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Layer 206 . . . More Damned Targets

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Peter Preston, ex-editor of the Guardian, wrote another loathsome column in the paper on Monday, headed In Praise of Targets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/18/targets-work-topdown-cameron?

The sheer ignorance expressed in this article is beyond belief, and beyond a joke. Every time 'Presto' writes one of these reactionary columns he gets a deluge of correspondence explaining why and how the targets culture messes up education, health, etc, - but does he pay any attention? Of course not. Why on earth would he pay attention to the views of those who advocate a wholly different approach which focuses on the needs of children, sick people, etc, rather than the needs of politicians & their pals to "show results"?

The reason he should pay some attention and show some respect to professional opinion (eg the Primary Review) is that the least we should expect of Guardian writers is the ability to consider & to present both sides of an argument, with a reasoned refutation of one side if they disagree with it. Preston clearly hasn't read the Cambridge Review with an unprejudiced eye, and clearly hasn't understood it. Just like the tabloid writers he's maintaining that the Review says children shouldn't start school till aged 6, whereas Alexander & co have said no such thing. Why on earth would "working mums" be unhappy with the report, as he suggests, when no-one's advocated closing down early years classes or reducing the length of the school day?

It's not a question of "putting teachers back in charge of what's taught". It's about putting professional educators back in positions of responsibility for policy and practice (rather than politicians and professional bureaucrats) and determining through reasoned argument & developing practice which approaches produce properly educated young people and which ones do not - as happens in the countries at the top of the international performance comparisons. In countries like Finland there is continuing debate & challenge within the profession, not top-down political dictat & arbitrary targets that measure only what is measurable, with no proper assessment of children's progress towards being positive, self-motivated & independent learners who enjoy learning, literature & literacy.

Government targets, in this respect, do not "work", as Preston continues to maintain. They have the opposite effect, if anything, although most teachers do their best to retain their pupils' enjoyment of and interest in learning, within what has become a soviet-style factory system of performance quotas & targets, used as a basis for "performance management".

Mr Preston really has to stop dismissing pupils who "only" achieve a high Level 3 (3A) at age 11 as "fundamentally illiterate". He clearly has no idea what a high Level 3 consists of, and no idea how much progress has been made by many children with learning difficulties and other disadvantages when they are able to score a Level 3 in English and maths in a formal timed test. Most adults are for the most part "only" operating at Level 4 in their daily reading and writing, and the supposedly failing and illiterate children (according to Peter Preston) who have reached Level 3 in English by the end of Primary school have almost achieved that level. If they don't then go on and reach Levels 4 and 5 at secondary school it can only be because insufficent support and inadequate focus on literacy is on offer there.

The "force of a centrally imposed quasi-market economy" has NOT "transformed the situation", and neither has centrally-dictated methodology & pedagogy, if what we mean by "transformed" is "turned more children into better learners, more capable thinkers, more imaginative and more motivated seekers of knowledge, etc". The only thing that's improved under the last two governments is teachers' competence in teaching to the tests. Enough.

The Guardian should send 'Presto' packing in the same direction as Melanie Phillips, and tell him that as of now his views should be repeated ad nauseam where they belong, thereby freeing up space in the Guardian for more enlightened opinion. It's outrageous that Preston should be given space in the Guardian to smear those of us who agree with the Primary Review's authors as people who are motivated by "dogma and professional self-interest". These are Stalinist smear tactics. If anyone's dogmatic in this argument it's Preston & his ilk. For goodness' sake, even the Conservatives have become enlightened to the point of pledging to scrap both government-set targets and the micro-management of pedagogy & the curriculum in schools.

As for Mr Preston's conclusion that we should "make knowledge your target, and value those who can tell you on the frontline of information" - here's final evidence that he has no understanding of the issues and still believes that improved test and exam scores, obtained by whatever means, including paid cramming, are the same thing as a high standard of education that develops all of a child's intelligences, aptitudes and abilities, including their creativity and imagination.

The schools that are failing their pupils are mainly those that are abusing them by treating them as mere instruments in the achievement of production targets, thereby depriving them of a real education. Preston clearly knows nothing about the sorts of achievement that can't be measured by timed pen & paper tests, and neither does he care.
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