Originally posted @ 5:57 pm, Sun 16th Aug 2009
A level results due this week; GCSEs next. That can only mean one thing - time to celebrate the progress of our young people? Nope! An attack on the standards of modern day exams - oh yes!
Yep, it's started.
And the latest interesting one is that there are easy subjects and hard ones. Maths and physics are said to be the hard ones and media studies is easy. Nice! I got A in maths and B in physics (right on), but as you can guess form the quality of my prose (sorry - from - I try, I really do), C for English Literature (does anyone else find that Shakespeare only scans if you read it in a Brummie accent - try it - "What news on the Rialto?").
I never even thought of media studies as a soft option.
But I guess what they might be saying (but if they were, not very well) is that there's more perceived value in training more mathematicians and physicists, and as a holder of a physics degree, I agree. Indeed, the Gov't has already offered extra incentives for these subjects at degree level.
But surely there are other reasons for more people passing exams than the standards have been lowered? How about -
- nearly increasing expenditure on education threefold, including more teachers and support staff;
- a better understanding of the science of education, including effective use of data on pupils' progress and predictions of attainment;
- higher expectations of children from all social backgrounds, especially by parents and carers;
- a significant series of changes in the inspection regime on schools, with the current focus on a self-assessment system whereby you inspect at length those schools that don't assess themselves accurately, particularly on the quality of leadership, management, teaching and learning;
- a much more ambitious culture amongst students (certainly compared to my outlook in the seventies);
- better facilities, including IT (or as teachers call it, ICT, which can allow more time to focus on what matters);
So loads of reasons to explain improvement, much of which I have witnessed as a Chair of Governors of a secondary school for the last 12 years. So why the scepticism?
Reform continues as the value of some of the exams at some of the key stages is reviewed and a report card for schools is proposed. And I personally would like a better presentation of the value added by schools - plotting results against indices of deprivation, so as to allow all those interested to make an assessment of which schools have to explain a variation against the norm - sharing the practice of the best, helping improvement in the worst.
The Tories have called for more focus on the average points score by pupils, so that extra help is more evenly spread. Twist here, beyond their enthusiasm for the opportunities that they think cuts in education spending will bring, is that attainment to certain levels, such as 5 good GCSEs with maths and English, have the potential to be life changing.
I met parents at a recent street stall in Swadlincote and we discussed their concerns over how to choose a secondary school. There is of course no substitute for walking around the school and meeting the staff - something that I find headteachers welcome. Assessing the campus, the facilities and the proximity to home. But beyond that, understanding what self-assessments and Ofsted reports say about the quality of leadership, management, teaching and learning. This tells you far more than league tables.
League tables in the end will lead to the demise of my current school at the end of this month. Despite being as high as in the top 11% for value-added in recent years, the reputation of the raw results was too much to overcome and the school size was becoming too small to be viable. In September, the school merges with one that is in the top 5% in value-added terms to form an academy, and a new opportunity arrives for some of the most deserving children in the East Midlands. The site will host in September nearly treble the number of year 7's as last year's (140 c.f. 60).
In the last 12 years, the children at my school have gone from less than one in 10 getting 5 good GCSEs (from memory, 9%) to a fraction short of half (fingers crossed for this year's results). helping the children most who needed most help. Had the money and education reforms come 18 years earlier, perhaps 700-800 pupils would have moved on from my school with much better prospects in life. (Wouldn't that have been a much better use of North Sea oil?)
Finally, the Observer reports that "A survey of 144 party candidates in the 220 most winnable seats by ConservativeHome website had shown Cameron's new cohort in government would be solidly, and fairly traditionally, rightwing. Only 9% believed that as MPs they should send their children to a state school." The ranks of millionaires on the Tory front bench tells us the Tories are for the few and not the many.
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