Layer 353 . . . The Tyranny of Testing, League Tables, Bullshit Reforms, Free Schools, Charter Schools, Faith Schools, A Classroom Experiment and Back to Crap

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Border Conflict

Warwick Mansell is the author of Education by Numbers: the Tyranny of Testing

This is a well-worn topic, but still deserves attention. Mansell wrote a good article for this week's Guardian Education lead story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/21/schools-gcse-results-league-tables

Schools focusing attention on middle-ability pupils to boost results

The practice of focusing extra attention on 'C/D borderline' pupils in order to improve a school's GCSE results may be widespread. But at what cost?

The words come easily to the teacher as he describes what happened at the school where he was working last year. "Appalling", "unbelievable" and "ruthless" are among those he chooses to sum up measures the comprehensive, in London, put in place in a bid to raise its GCSE results.

And yet he is merely describing a practice – taken in this case to the extreme – that appears to have been tacitly encouraged in many schools for years.

The practice is for schools – sometimes acting on the advice of government agencies and consultants – to focus extra resources, time and attention on groups of middle-ability pupils whose achievements are most likely to help them rise up the league tables, impress inspectors, hit improvement targets and, in some cases, avoid closure.

In the process, higher- and lower-ability youngsters can receive less support because their results are less likely to affect the school's published scores, it is widely claimed.

This extra emphasis given to middle-ability students who are believed to be on the cusp of achieving five A*-Cs at GCSE, including English and maths – the threshold measure around which league tables centre – has been criticised by all three major parties.

Of course the same can be said of what goes on in Primary schools in order to "raise attainment" - the same sort of appalling, unbelievable and ruthless game-playing.

Anxieties about this appear to be confirmed in emails between staff members.

An email sent by a teacher in October said: "The lower set, difficult behaviour, pupils ... have very little intention of learning independently so they are running riot instead. Today there was a big fight ... I think it needs to be brought to the head's attention that it is not possible to include the [pupils with English as an additional language] in this group. I am sorry to say they are simply frightened."

The teacher says: "These students were provided with individual support and group lessons in order for them to achieve a grade C in English or maths. In English support lessons, the students were being told what to write in their [coursework] essays."

The teacher says: "The situation created an appalling atmosphere within the school. The senior management were not concerned about those who were not on the [intervention] list, and even if they were on the list, they were only targeting a grade C even if that student needed to obtain a grade B for sixth-form college."

Anastasia de Waal, director of family and education at the thinktank Civitas, has investigated results-boosting tactics in other secondary schools.

She says: "How have we got into this crazy situation where school improvement strategies can actually end up damaging students' education? It all becomes a statistical exercise, with the kids' needs becoming utterly redundant in this equation."

DAMAGING students' education? How about completely fucking up the entire education system to the point where hardly any of our pupils' developmental needs are being met and most pupils either hate school or feel completely bored and alienated by it? How about - we've created thousands of factory schools which focus on results and league tables and ignore real education?

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Bullshit Reforms

Meanwhile, in the same publication, Mike Baker published a good 'Opinion' column:

UK and American school reforms: who is copying whom?

The US and the UK are copying each other's school reforms, but they focus too heavily on measuring achievement

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/20/school-reforms-usa-uk

American schools are changing. And there are fascinating parallels with the reforms taking place in England.

For the US is going through the same navel-gazing crises familiar this side of the Atlantic: concern that the nation's educational performance is falling behind other countries, and growing frustration that successive school reforms have failed to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor.

The trend in US education policy is towards "school choice". This is about increasing school autonomy and injecting market forces into a monolithic system in which schools were run by the states and districts, and almost every child attended their nearest elementary or high school.

There are now more than 5,000 charter schools, serving 1.5 million pupils, which lie outside the traditional school districts.

Charter schools are new schools, initiated by parents, teachers or other groups, funded by the taxpayer, free to pupils, but autonomous from the traditional school authorities.

There have been numerous studies on the impact of charter schools and, to put it simply, they provide no definitive proof that they have raised standards overall. This is not very encouraging for the "free schools" here. Will we, in 20 years' time, still be looking for evidence that they have made a difference?

These reforms have tended to focus on structural reform, or on assessment and monitoring, but not on the core of what happens in the classroom: the curriculum and teaching methods.

Attention is now focused on President Obama's Race to the Top programme. This involves a massive $4.3bn (£2.7bn) fund being distributed to individual states in return for competitive bids to improve educational performance. To get the money, states have to prove their plans will meet four aims: developing tough academic standards or targets for what pupils should achieve, building data systems that measure pupil progress, improving the professional development and evaluation of teachers, and turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

While the focus on teacher quality is new and encouraging, the emphasis is still very much on setting targets, and measuring achievement, rather than on curriculum innovation. It seems the UK and the US are copying each other's school reforms, each pushing market-based reforms, backed by targets and carrot-and-stick data gathering, but not fundamentally changing what happens in the classroom.

www.mikebakereducation.co.uk

It's interesting that the coalition is stressing its interest in Scandinavian 'free schools' and downplaying its interest in American 'Charter' schools, even though they're virtually the same concept. Obviously no sane politician these days wants to associate themselves overtly with American and neo-conservative ideas - for very obvious tactical and electoral reasons.

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A rather unchristian school admissions policy?

Four years as a governor in a church school converted Sharon Wright into a radical opponent of faith schools

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/20/faith-schools-governor

When I learned that almost half of the first 16 free schools given the thumbs-up by the education secretary, Michael Gove, were faith schools, my heart sank. Because, after serving four years as a committed church school governor, I personally couldn't feel more powerfully opposed to faith schools.

It wasn't always like that, obviously. When my church appointed me as a governor of our south-west London Church of England junior school, it had an inclusive admissions policy. Being "paired" with the community infant school next door meant the kids usually just swapped uniform and toddled round into year 3. We had nothing to do with all that "tactical worship" and church selection nonsense, so I never felt touched by it.

Very quickly, I found myself in a tiny faction fighting to bin draft policies that put worshippers in plum position. Battle lines were drawn and, according to the chair, I was on the wrong side – I was "anti-church", in fact.

I was pretty stung. I wasn't anti-church, I was anti church admissions policy that enshrined religious discrimination and encouraged stupid church-attendance games to get into the school. Games that, strangely, middle-class, Sats-loving parents tended to win by finding Jesus at an opportune moment.

In desperation, at one meeting I quoted the view of Jonathan Bartley of the Christian thinktank Ekklesia that giving ourselves admission privileges in the public system was "unchristian". Seldom has a silence been so stony. It seemed raising that whole "love thy neighbour" thing as an obvious pointer just embarrassed everyone and showed me up for not really getting it. "It" being mysterious things such as church school "ethos" and "distinctiveness".

The crunch came, though, not over admissions, but over children with special educational needs. Increasingly, I felt that the attitude of some people at the school towards challenging children was anything but Christian. We were due an Ofsted inspection and I listened to grumbling that "disruptive" behaviour could earn the school an automatic downgrade from inspectors. When, in fact, it was how behaviour (often stemming from SEN) was managed that would be judged, and that was what we should be worried about improving.

I boiled with rage. I felt that some people were concerned with not how we were failing these children, but how they were failing us. When one mum of a misunderstood SEN child said: "I thought it was supposed to be a Christian school?" I could only share her despair.

It shouldn't be unreasonable to expect a Christian school to go the extra mile to help the neediest kids.

Wasn't it blindingly obvious how unfair and socially divisive it was to be allowed to reserve priority places for your own churchgoers? And weren't troubled children the most in need of Christian love?

Now, I think having a system of state-funded faith schools is actually immoral. We should surely object to how it legitimises discrimination, segregates our children, often fails to embrace the vulnerable with compassion and empowers tiny religious quangos to rule over publicly funded education.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain chairs the Accord Coalition, which unites religious and secular groups worried about the social impact of faith schools:

"I have this fear that in 30 years' time, we will have built up a generation that is not at ease with itself and that has been brought up in a very divisive way," he warns. "We will rue the day we divided the children."

So, as communities draw away from each other and our society fragments, we can only fear what endorsing the power of faith schools is really teaching our children.

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Dylan Wiliam's The Classroom Experiment is on BBC Two, 27 and 28 Sept at 1900 BST

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00txzwp

[Gareth Malone's Extraordinary School for Boys started on BBC Two on Thursday 9 Sept, 2100 BST]

Dylan Wiliam and Gareth Malone are two people who care passionately about children, about good teaching, and about generating enthusiasm for learning.

Anything they are involved in is worth paying attention to.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11090044

The Big Debate - Where Next for Primary Assessment? -

http://www.teachers.tv/videos/where-next-for-primary-assessment

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Back to Crap

Amy Winehouse, a skinny singer who has the worst tatoos in the world, big hair, drug abuse issues and mental health issues, made a name for herself by imitating jazz/soul singers and writing her own songs.

Amy Winehouse and producer Mark Ronson have been "discussing" their individual contributions to her work.

First, Ronson appeared on Later ... with Jools Holland on Friday, and downplayed Winehouse's contributions her own hit album, Back to Black, which he produced: "Amy Winehouse would come to me with just a song and an acoustic guitar, and then kind of you dream up the rhythm arrangement and track around it and you help arrange all sorts of things," Ronson said. Winehouse, who caught wind of Ronson's remarks, then lashed out at the producer on Twitter, writing: "Ronson you're dead to me; one album I write an you take half the credit- make a career out of it? Don't think so BRUV."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/208407

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/20/amy-winehouse-mark-ronson-twitter

Of course what Winehouse should have been complaining about is the thoroughly abysmal production job done on her work by young Ronson. That album is almost unlistenable - in fact it IS unlistenable - on account of the horrible production - nasty, repetitive instrumentation, rhythms, drum machines, loops, etc; tinny sound quality and sheer dullness. Awful computer music. And awful Winehouse vocals. As for the lyrics - couldn't even get that far. They tried to make me listen, but I said no, no, no.

Who gives a damn about these silly, worthless people?
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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 114 Miliband and the School Bully, the Dracula Tendency, Results Factories, and Evil Spawn.

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So our youthful-looking Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has finally had the nerve to say publicly that Bush’s idea of a “War on Ter’r” is a load of nonsense, extremely unhelpful, counterproductive, etc, and he’s pleased that Obama is going to close Guantanamo Bay. It’s a bit like a child who’s heard that the playground bully has been expelled from the school, who then turns round and starts telling everyone he never really liked George and didn’t really want to be his mate and his henchman when he was going round beating everybody up. He knew it was a bad thing to do. In fact he now wants to talk to everybody and be their friend.

Well maybe it’s true that NuLabour hasn’t actually used the phrase “War on Terror” since 2006, as has been reported on TV and in the press, but it’s a bit late in the day to come out and draw attention to the fact that it was an imbecilic concept, and an excuse for bullying on a global scale. And it’s a bit late in the day to start saying we need to have a proper dialogue with those who take issue with the Shock Doctrine, or those who oppose the voodoo economics known as globalisation, those who reject neo-colonialism, etc.

Yes, of course it’s better late than never to make these statements, but Miliband must surely see that he, and NuLabour Mark II, just look stupid and pathetic, like they’re clinging to the coat tails of, and going along with, whoever’s the current big beast in the jungle.

Obama had the courage to say from the very start that the idea of a War on Terror was wrong-headed, and that invading Iraq was just plain wrong, for a variety of reasons. That took real courage and integrity - speaking truth to power, especially when the vast majority of Americans just went along with their government’s propaganda and their thirst for instant revenge for the Twin Towers. Such a pity that the Blair/Brown axis and NuLabour couldn’t manage it.

And neither could Miliband, at the time it was happening. Having been a close aid to Blair in Downing Street for so many years, and obviously politically very ambitious, he calculated that his political career was best served by deferring to his master and keeping schtum. And now he thinks the time is right to admit that it was a stupid concept and a useless policy. After all, George has already come out and said it was a mistake!

He’s been a silly boy, young David.. He was flattered by Blair’s patronage, and the nepotism he enjoyed, as Blair and then Brown gave him one promotion after another and facilitated his meteoric rise within the government. He should have been more patient, had the courage of his convictions, trusted in his innate ability to give him success in his political career in the long run, and he should have shown that he had the integrity and courage to speak truth to power, because now he can never achieve the stature of an Obama. Never, ever.

He ought to have realised that showing your integrity by speaking the truth will always be a requirement for anyone who aspires to be a true statesman, rather than a party apparatchik. He should have understood that in the long run you forfeit the trust and the support of the people if you even once participate as a member of the dominant mob, the gang of the playground bully, and fail to show that your conscience is your sole master.

He was no conscientious objector. He has the blood and the ruined lives of thousands of innocent people on his hands. Probably hundreds of thousands. And there’s no going back from that. He’s probably a very nice man. But he was a political prat.

Only 4 more days to Obama’s inauguration.

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The Dracula Tendency

The Guardian’s science correspondent reports that Victorian novels helped us to evolve into nicer people, according to scientists:

“Their research suggests that classic British novels from the 19th century not only reflect the values of Victorian society, they also shaped them. Archetypal novels from the period extolled the virtues of an egalitarian society and pitted cooperation and affability against individuals' hunger for power and dominance. For example in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooke turns her back on wealth to help the poor, while Bram Stoker's nocturnal menace, Count Dracula, comes to represent the worst excesses of aristocratic dominance.

They found that leading characters fell into groups that mirrored the cooperative nature of a hunter-gatherer society, where individual urges for power and wealth were suppressed for the good of the community.

The effect of such moralistic literature was to uphold and instil a sense of fairness and altruism in society at large, the researchers claim in the journal Evolutionary Psychology. "By enforcing these norms, humans succeed in controlling 'free riders' or 'cheaters' and they thus make it possible for genuinely altruistic genes to survive within a social group," they write.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/14/victorian-novels-evolution-altruism

In this context I suppose David Miliband could be seen as a sort of miniature and somewhat youthful Heathcliffe, or even a non-charismatic Mr Darcy - a conflicted character, admired by some, but struggling to cope with both good and bad traits.

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Results Factories

Meanwhile NuLabour’s mismanagement of education grinds remorselessly onward. Polly Curtis, the Guardian’s education editor, reports that schools have been accused of ‘hot housing’ to get results. Tell us something we didn’t already know, dear Polly.

Apparently figures released yesterday reveal a leap in the numbers of pupils who took their exams early in November, thereby allowing a resit for any failures - “a tactic that is being encouraged increasingly across the country by heads desperate to rise in the league tables.”

"Some pupils have taken the same GCSE exam up to three times in the space of a year, the Guardian has learned.

Teachers' leaders have blamed the government's pressure on headteachers to improve results and move up the school league tables for the increased focus on exams that was putting children under stress and detracting from the depth of their learning.

Last year the government announced that any schools where fewer than 30% of pupils achieved at least five good GCSEs - including in English and maths - faced closure unless there were improvements within three years.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said: "League tables have got all out of proportion and schools will now do all they can to improve their place. Early entry is one way they are doing it. Other ways include focusing on the pupils on the C-D border. We're in danger of producing a set of statistics that no longer accurately reflect pupils' progression but the work the schools can do to improve their scores."

Perry Beeches school in Birmingham has adopted early entry for its entire GCSE group, with nearly all of its pupils sitting their English exams a year early and maths six months early. The pupils were allowed to retake, or sit a harder paper to improve their result.

Liam Nolan, the school's head, said: "We are an exam factory, I have no issue with that. However, this is about the students. They've got to pass these exams to give themselves every opportunity in life."

John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: "Retakes are bad for kids. There's a poisonous combination of parental pressure and league-table pressure to get as high a score as possible. There are kids who are ready to take their exams early but it should be on the basis of their readiness rather than part of a process to get the results.

"What it does is focus on the examination results rather than the use of English and maths across the curriculum - it's for the sake of the exam itself ... examination result-driven decisions to hot-house kids into taking an exam early are damaging."

A DCSF spokesperson said, “We are not aware of widespread issues with students being unduly pushed to take GCSEs early”.

Well now that you ARE aware of it - what ARE you going to do about it, you bastards?

We know what they’ll do about it. Nothing. They don’t give a shit about the wellbeing of pupils What they’re continuing to do is bully and threaten schools with closure if they don’t meet their government-set targets. So why shouldn’t the schools feel comfortable with being branded as results factories? That’s all they are. At least that headteacher had the integrity to admit it, even if he is a total tosser for engaging with the very idea.

Yesterday Ed Balls repeated what his illustrious macho predecessor Blunkett said all those years ago - poverty is no excuse for failure, and failure to reach the government’s targets will result in the closure of schools and the sacking of their staff. Fucking Stalinist. His lapdog Jim Knight, our schools’ minister, predictably yapped on about “the excuses culture”.

I can’t wait to see these arseholes disappear into well-deserved obscurity. There can’t be any excuses now for failure to promote the real interests and the wellbeing of pupils. Hot housing and a failure to understand how to run a decent education system cannot be excused. They’ve had 11 years to learn from the likes of Finland and Denmark how to promote real education and the professionalism of teachers. They’ve learned nothing at all, the dullards. All we have is more Blunkettism, and Stalinist demands to meet production targets. These people are evil spawn of the devil, and no mistake.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/15/schools-tables-exams
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/15/secondaryschools-schooltables
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/16/ed-balls-academies-exam-results
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More Evil Spawn

Talking of which, we learned yesterday that Israel’s armed forces managed to blow up and destroy the one place in Gaza they really didn’t want to hit - a relief warehouse within the United Nations compound in which there was a huge store of humanitarian supplies - mainly food and medicine. There also happened to be 200 refugees within the compound. An Israeli spokesman admitted this was a mistake, but said something along the lines of, “Oh well, these things happen. Our soldiers are under a lot of pressure, you know.”

Actually, they said it was a “grave mistake”. Pity it’s not their own graves they’re talking about. This is actually the only thing the Israeli hard-liners care about - having to dig the graves of their own soldiers. Nothing else impacts on their attitude or their tactics. The recent attack on Lebanon proved this, when heavy casualties caused by well-armed militias forced their withdrawal.

The United Nations are said to be furious about this latest incident. It’s going to be interesting to see what action they take, because some sort of action is surely now inevitable. They’ve already passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire, and Israel’s taken no notice of it, as we knew would happen. So what happens next?
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Layer 47 Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Blinkers, Bullshit and Blindfolds.

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Back home from the peace and quiet of Somerset. The noise levels here at home today are quite intolerable. This has been happening for the past 3 weeks, thanks to the water mains being relaid up and down the street, but today it’s worse than ever. There’s nowhere in the house I can go to get away from the racket that’s being created by pneumatic drills, cement mixer lorries, men shouting, drilling, etc. It’s incredible.

Of course the minute I write all this down they’ve decided to down tools and have a tea break, and there’s blissful silence, at least for a few minutes. To be fair this particular team seem to spend as much time off the job as on it. Which at least partly explains why the works have gone on for so long.

Right now there’s not even the sound of children over in the school playground because it’s half term. Summer half term. There are no major roads where I live, so for the next few minutes I’ll be able to enjoy blissful, peaceful silence.

I’m desperate to have my quiet street back again permanently. Throughout the six months prior to these water mains works commencing I had to cope with noise coming from directly across the street, where the school was being rebuilt and enlarged. The sound of lorries and vans arriving from very early morning, from earth-moving machines, diggers, cement mixers, dumper trucks, drilling, hammering, sawing - all of it was sheer noise pollution. Enough to drive someone like me, who values and loves silence, totally crazy.

I suppose I should be less egocentric and give a thought to the poor sods who have to operate the angle grinders and pneumatic drills, and show some concern for their health - their lungs breathing in the dust, their ears being battered day after day by the grinding and drilling they’re doing.

Summer half term, and the weather continues dull, overcast, cold, windy and raining. At least down in Somerset, where the weather was even worse, it was peaceful and quiet!

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The War on Teenage Terror.

There’s yet more chatter on the radio about knife crime, and what we can possibly do about it. People yakking and blathering on about the shocking frequency of knife attacks and murders, and the need for teenagers to have positive role models, and adults who are consistent in what they say and do. So might that be consistent in their stupidity and cluelessness, just like the pundits?

Police Commissioner Blair says we need to talk about it more. Someone else says that knee jerk reactions may get some kids off the streets and locked away, but won’t solve the problem. And, errr . . . . that’s about it. Clueless.

This level of national discourse is appalling and shameful. Because all that people in power really want to do is tinker with the issues, apply sticking plaster to these running sores, and keep things pretty much as they are. The idea of a revolution, at least in consciousness, is very far from their minds. That’s the last thing they want - to have to think very differently about how we operate as a society.

At the moment they are incapable of thinking about and talking about what’s happening in terms of our national low levels of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence. They don’t even understand the concept of emotional intelligence, or emotional literacy as some prefer to call it. There’s no way they are familiar with the work of Goleman, for instance, let alone have any capacity to think about what an attempt to tackle these intelligences might mean in terms of the school system and indeed our national ‘culture’.

And yet a radical shift in our thinking and our ways of doing things is the only appropriate remedy for the trends that we see accelerating. It’s only a serious attempt to address the long term issues from the very roots of the problems that can possibly make any difference. Containment and punishment is not a solution or a policy that has any hope of success. And is this shift happening? Or likely to happen? Ha!

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The Standards and Testing Debate.

Estelle Morris, whom I wrote some very positive things about last week, had a column in the Education Guardian this week, which was pure bullshit. Idiotic, useless waffle of the very first order. I regret having to say such things, because it provides yet more ammunition for the political opposition, but then I AM opposed to everything this wretched government has done and is doing to the education system.

Morris’s column was headed ‘Genuine Engagement on this Testing Issue’, and it was anything but that. A good friend had cautioned me last week about being so fulsome in my praise of Morris, when after all she had consistently supported the government’s SATs agenda, and still does. Well here she is, writing and saying the most absurd nonsense.

She begins her piece by saying, “It is very difficult to have a sensible debate about testing”, and then goes on to prove her point by making idiotic assertions that have absolutely no validity. Here’s what she says:

“There was a time when the dividing lines in the testing debate were quite simply whether we should test children or not. That battle has been fought and won. Tests are an integral part of school life.”

Well, Baroness, you ought to know that the rest of the world doesn’t see it this way. Scotland, for example, has never seen it this way. Wales has just abandoned testing. Are these people all stupid? Or do they perhaps have some legitimate claim to having a correct point of view? And if so, then in what sense has the battle been fought and won?

Here’s the good, decent and caring Baroness, still a parliamentarian, still a Labour party member, seeing the world entirely in terms of the narrow debate within England. And yet she must surely realise there are still thousands of intelligent voices in this country, an increasing number in fact, who completely disagree with SATs and summative testing as means of describing and assessing children’s progress and achievement.

What she really means, of course, is that the debate within PARLIAMENT has been fought and won, and that’s all that really matters. She’s into realpolitic. She sees the world in terms of pure political power, and sure enough our politicians are overwhelmingly in favour of SATs and therefore there’s no point in debating testing any longer. There’s nothing like enough opposition to testing within the main political parties and within parliament, so we might just as well forget it and move on.

This is how politicians operate. New Labour has never been about principle and taking a stand, or showing leadership towards some legitimate ideological goals. It's only ever been about narrow political calculation and appeasing the floating voters. The realities of power, yes indeed!

They had a landslide in 1997, and also in the following election, and a massive mandate for radical change towards the type of society we ought to be, and they didn’t know what to do with it. There are no philosophers within New Labour, only ambitious technocrats and power brokers. People who consider themselves effective and efficient managers.

But I digress. Back to Estelle, bless her.

“Teachers use the (test) data to raise the standards further.”
And then she selectively quotes from the estimable Mick Brookes, gen sec of NAHT, to back up her assertions, which is a typically New Labourish thing to do, and leaves a very nasty taste.

“Data”, Estelle? What fucking data? Data that tells us how well children cope with tests, which effectively tells us nothing about anything important. What teachers actually make good use of is not tests but formative assessment (continuous assessment) which steers their teaching from day to day according to how well children are learning from day to day, week to week. Responding to end of Key Stage data helps no child whatsoever! This is nonsense!

Perhaps Estelle should pay more attention to the likes of Melanie Phillips, after all. Tests are there to measure the performance of schools - and that’s it, as dear Mel P will gladly tell you. But they don’t even do that effectively. And what if they did? What if they really did tell us how well schools are processing children through tests? Is that what we really want to know - what we really care about?

All good teachers and all good schools have systems for tracking children’s progress that rely not a jot on summative testing. They assess them in relation to clear targets for learning, in terms of outcomes in learning skills, concepts and knowledge. This is how progress is really assessed - continuously. If you really want to assess and rank how well schools are doing, then you ought to start by finding out whether or not they have good systems for formative assessment and tracking progress against agreed learning targets and outcomes.

We even know which skills, concepts and knowledge they ought to develop in emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence, and we know when children lack them, and no tests can give us this crucial information. Or any crucial information about children’s creativity, imagination and enthusiasm for learning. But then this government, and seemingly Baroness Morris, care not a jot for these things, and they don’t think parents do either.

But they’ll carry on wringing their hands about the crazy, angry kids on the streets and their culture of knives, gangs and guns. And they’ll carry on wondering what to do about these fallen children of the underclasses. And occasionally they may give a thought as to why our children in general are the most miserable in Europe, if not the world.

But will they ever do anything about it? Will they fuck.

Towards the end of her article Estelle tells us that it’s basically the decision of head teachers if their schools choose to restrict and narrow the curriculum and concentrate on teaching to the tests. She comes to the astonishing conclusion that if parents don’t want their children’s experience of school to be limited, restricted and impoverished, then they should speak up and say so.

And this is the most outrageous thing for her to have said. Having spent years battering it into the heads of parents (and teachers) that good test results are all that matters, and it’s through SATs tests that schools will be judged, for Morris to now turn round and say that maybe education should be about something wider and more important and maybe parents should speak up about this, and if they did then “I’m sure the schools - and the government - would respond” - this is pure evil. This is abdication of responsibility and refusal to take a moral as well as a principled stand on crucial issues.

This is someone who knows or at least suspects that children’s rights and well-being are being violated every day in most schools in this country, and that teachers and head teachers, in tough areas particularly (though not exclusively), are being driven to despair and beyond by government policy and the Ofsted regime, and she has the nerve to tentatively suggest that the decision to do something about it might rest with parents - that if they feel strongly enough about it then they have the power to change it!

She’s sure the government would respond? Yes - if there were to be a mass protest by parents on behalf of their poor bloody kids. But don’t expect the government to change anything for the better on behalf of the kids and their hard-working teachers just because it’s the RIGHT thing to do! Clearly that could never happen! Even if they understood what’s right for children and what ought to be happening in schools. Which they clearly do not.

It’s also ridiculous to imagine that this government will disown the policies it’s been pursuing for so many years, or expect them to recant all the reactionary nonsense it’s been purveying. That would be one massive U-turn too many. Which is why the way forward is in fact for this government to be given the bullet. In the hope that a Parliament with no overall majority might actually make a fresh start on looking at key issues anew, and having to argue and debate properly the issues that really matter.

I truly look forward to the day, which I’m convinced will arrive, when we emerge from our delusion and our collective madness and say what the fuck have we been doing to our kids all these years? And who’s to blame, apart from ourselves?

Who led us into this nonsense? Why were those children treated so badly? Why did they miss out on so much? Why were their childhoods so boring and impoverished? Why were they crammed and homeworked to within an inch of their lives? Why did they not come to love learning for its own sake? Why was their creativity and imagination so under-nourished? Why was their mental and emotional health so damaged? Why didn’t they learn to manage their emotions, and develop a sense of awe and wonder, and learn to value life itself? Why were their spirits so downcast and defeated before they even got going?

Step forward all those who really had a chance to change things from 1997 onwards. Step forward Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Miliband, Balls, and the rest of you. Yes, even you wee Jim Knight, and you Estelle. You were our ‘leaders’. On with the blindfolds.

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