What is assessment for? whom does it benefit? what can we reasonably expect from our assessments? if only these questions were always asked….
Assessment as certification has been with us for a very long time, enabling employers and academic institutions to have a rough guide to an applicant’s skills or potential and giving applicants a set of transparent targets to aim for. Success has never been guaranteed by those certified attainments however, interviews always follow as a way of cross-checking that an applicant is suited to a post or course, an implicit acknowledgement that certificates are not in and of themselves a reliable guide to someone’s abilities or suitability for anything.
It has always been apparent that our methods of mass testing have been inadequate, the results unreliable: the law had to be changed to allow pupils at secondary modern schools to take GCE examinations in their school as it became apparent that so many of them were already gaining GCE ‘O’ levels after they had been specifically selected at 11 to go to schools where they would not do such a thing because they were unable to do such a thing. It was later realised that by age 14 as many as 20% of the pupils in grammar and secondary modern schools were in the ‘wrong’ school, because their God-given, unalterable and above all measurable IQs had mysteriously altered. The key lies in the word: measure, to assign a numerical value to - even if it is expressed in various combinations of alphanumerics. People talking about education often refer to assessment when they actually mean measurement. The former involves an awareness of the person being assessed, the latter involves generating a number or something easily converted to one.
The SATs system has evolved with even more strangled logic than the poor old GCEs, which were actually designed by universities to progressively weed out candidates for university education. Employers simply highjacked them for their own purposes, as they were the only indicator of educability widely available. Almost by accident, the earliest Key Stage 1 SATs (when the T was for Task, as I recall), made a fairly good fist of assessing what children could do but they were so labour intensive, time consuming and hence expensive that they were quickly abandoned. SATs were never intended to do anything for children anyway, assessment was not what the government of the day or any since was actually after. They needed to be seen to be doing something about raising standards, they needed a measurement system for schools and teachers. This would then allow for all the trappings of the target culture, particularly annual tests enabling league tables, which, coupled with the less explicit excesses of the educational inquisition which OFSTED became, would ‘drive up’ standards. The language said it all – there was an assumption that teachers did not really want to improve standards, they had to be driven. Standards were identified, targets set. Failing teachers, schools and Local Authorities could be identified through the power of the graph, the cold certainty of the numbers rather than the wordy, subjective view of old fashioned inspectors.
The ’97 change of government only made things worse because they were prepared to put money into all of this, so, along with smaller class sizes, a massive influx of technology, a boom in TAs etc they also brought in endless costly initiatives aimed at ‘driving up standards’, coupled with the expansion and entrenchment of a massively expensive and completely useless ‘assessment’ system. Teaching, pupil progress, the value for money of an LA were now all redefined so that they could be measured and the expenditure justified.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Assessment 2 What are the results?
Does it really matter what assessment/measuring has become, as long as we get on with the teaching? Well, yes, it does, because it permeates the nature, purpose, outcomes and effects of our education system.
Teaching to the test has become the norm in Years 5 and 6: when decisions have to be made on what to teach, how to deploy staff, the emphasis that will be put on anything, the most powerful consideration is always the impact on SAT levels. This is hardly surprising. Judgments on primary schools’ effectiveness are principally made on the basis of their SAT results, so schools naturally force those results to look as good as possible by forcing their teachers to do the same. Pupils and staff are bullied, a climate of fear is created in schools and LAs, there are endless (apocryphal?) stories of cheating, the entire curriculum and allocation of human resources in the year leading up to the test is skewed to get the results. Children not likely to look good in the results are effectively abandoned, expensive interventions are forced on borderline children to squeeze them into the sausage skin of a level 4 at KS2.
Pupils and their parents are consistently lied to about the importance of the tests the children will face. Half an hour spent browsing the educational shelves in WHSmiths gives an insight into how publishers push their expensive aids, often using the word ‘pass’ in relation to SATs: the fear spreads to parents. Families at my school can’t afford private tuition but I would bet my pension that there are large numbers of tutors at work in this country helping to prepare children for SATs.
What do we do with the SAT levels generated at such financial and human expense?
KS2 SAT levels are only used as a rough guide to anything by secondaries because they know how unreliable they are. I dread to think how many KS3 children at a new school have been placed in entirely inappropriate courses, groups or settings because of inflated SAT results. At a school I know, a secondary phoned up to check that they had just welcomed the correct child who had a SAT level 5 in English, but was working at a real level of low 3, the child even had some indications of dyslexia! As to variations between feeder schools for secondaries, the sky's the limit! Teacher insecurity, management’s craven attitude to OFSTED, league tables, coaching and the look good culture make KS2 SAT results unreliable for determining any new Y7's level of attainment, particularly in the tested subjects. The practice of extrapolating capability in order to create teaching groups in other subjects is doubly misleading.
End of KS1 SAT levels do not carry over to KS2 within the same primary school: a child with Level 3 at KS1 SAT would not be viewed as such by a year 5 or 6 teacher and would definitely look very alien to a KS3 colleague.
Schools are caught between a rock and hard place: they want their KS1 SATs to look good but then it appears that Years 3 and 4 are years of poor progress (the so-called ‘dip’), some children even go backwards! I was once asked to reconsider my targets for my year 4 class, because they didn’t show enough progression from their KS1 SAT results, I refused but the head changed them anyway.
Education has been distorted and redefined to suit a system of measurement which allows bureaucrats to fit children, teachers and schools into a spreadsheet and measure them to 2 decimal places. I for one am truly sick of it.
Teaching to the test has become the norm in Years 5 and 6: when decisions have to be made on what to teach, how to deploy staff, the emphasis that will be put on anything, the most powerful consideration is always the impact on SAT levels. This is hardly surprising. Judgments on primary schools’ effectiveness are principally made on the basis of their SAT results, so schools naturally force those results to look as good as possible by forcing their teachers to do the same. Pupils and staff are bullied, a climate of fear is created in schools and LAs, there are endless (apocryphal?) stories of cheating, the entire curriculum and allocation of human resources in the year leading up to the test is skewed to get the results. Children not likely to look good in the results are effectively abandoned, expensive interventions are forced on borderline children to squeeze them into the sausage skin of a level 4 at KS2.
Pupils and their parents are consistently lied to about the importance of the tests the children will face. Half an hour spent browsing the educational shelves in WHSmiths gives an insight into how publishers push their expensive aids, often using the word ‘pass’ in relation to SATs: the fear spreads to parents. Families at my school can’t afford private tuition but I would bet my pension that there are large numbers of tutors at work in this country helping to prepare children for SATs.
What do we do with the SAT levels generated at such financial and human expense?
KS2 SAT levels are only used as a rough guide to anything by secondaries because they know how unreliable they are. I dread to think how many KS3 children at a new school have been placed in entirely inappropriate courses, groups or settings because of inflated SAT results. At a school I know, a secondary phoned up to check that they had just welcomed the correct child who had a SAT level 5 in English, but was working at a real level of low 3, the child even had some indications of dyslexia! As to variations between feeder schools for secondaries, the sky's the limit! Teacher insecurity, management’s craven attitude to OFSTED, league tables, coaching and the look good culture make KS2 SAT results unreliable for determining any new Y7's level of attainment, particularly in the tested subjects. The practice of extrapolating capability in order to create teaching groups in other subjects is doubly misleading.
End of KS1 SAT levels do not carry over to KS2 within the same primary school: a child with Level 3 at KS1 SAT would not be viewed as such by a year 5 or 6 teacher and would definitely look very alien to a KS3 colleague.
Schools are caught between a rock and hard place: they want their KS1 SATs to look good but then it appears that Years 3 and 4 are years of poor progress (the so-called ‘dip’), some children even go backwards! I was once asked to reconsider my targets for my year 4 class, because they didn’t show enough progression from their KS1 SAT results, I refused but the head changed them anyway.
Education has been distorted and redefined to suit a system of measurement which allows bureaucrats to fit children, teachers and schools into a spreadsheet and measure them to 2 decimal places. I for one am truly sick of it.
Wednesday, 6 June 2007
Core Confusion
This irritant started for me in 2000: we were heading out of special measures and had endured LEA advisers crawling all over us for a couple of years. I was interviewed by a particularly unpleasant adviser who stated that the most recent report had deemed standards in ICT to be below national expectations. I hesitated for a moment but fairly confident that it had contained no such judgment retorted that it had not . She said it did. I said it didn’t…this continued for a bit. When I asked her to quote the relevant section she read out “Standards in the core subjects do not meet national expectations”. “Ah,” said I, with a small smile of satisfaction,” that’s where your problem comes from, ICT is a foundation subject!”. “No, it’s a core subject” replied she, “No, it’s foundation”, “No……..” this also continued for a bit. The interview eventually ground to a halt, after I had pointed out that as ICT Coordinator I would have thought someone would have told me.
I immediately went to check my copy of the National Curriculum 2000 and there, sure enough, was the proof, page 16. ‘Stupid woman’ thought I and gave the matter little more heed. Until a few months later, when I had the same discussion with an OFSTED inspector, a very experienced ex-HMI who commanded a great deal of respect in me but who said the same thing. She was however unable to tell me when it had been changed or by whom. It seemed it was one of those ‘givens’ everyone knew of but no-one knew why.
Outraged that the government had been tinkering with my curriculum area without telling me, I e-mailed OFSTED, BECTA (I think), the DFES, NC online and the QCA asking when and how the status of ICT had been changed. Reply came there none, despite re-sending all the mails. When my head told me it was a core subject I was finally certain it couldn’t possibly be.
A stand-up ding-dong with our LEA adviser followed a few weeks later when we met over a different matter and I raised the subject. He agreed that he couldn’t actually quote me chapter and verse on when or how the change was made but he was sure it had. He got back to me a week later trying to ‘explain the confusion’ (not his confusion, of course) but I had actually worked it out a while before.
The confusion had arisen because of the introduction of the Literacy Strategy in the late 90's. OFSTED announced that during the first year of its introduction, when schools would be struggling to embed the new way of teaching literacy, their teams would exercise greater flexibility (now called a lighter or softer touch) in their inspections of the Foundation subjects but would maintain full rigour for the Core subjects and ICT. Somehow these then remained inextricably linked in the minds of many highly paid people. In the ensuing years references to the core subjects and ICT just dropped the last 2 words and were understood to include ICT. When the lead inspector at our last OFSTED referred to ICT as “extended core” I nearly burst out laughing, my head looked daggers at me, I nearly burst out laughing all over again but the moment passed.
Whenever I have challenged an assertion that ICT is a core subject over the last 5 years I have run into brick walls of incredulity and misplaced certainty. What I find truly horrifying is that I, an ordinary primary classroom teacher, have had to correct people who train and inspect teachers and are paid twice as much as me for it!
One place where you would have thought I might find some respite or support is the TES staffroom forums but….. no. I found the same entrenched error, hotly defended, robustly, even arrogantly, asserted, and often backed up by references to irrelevant documents, websites or wrong advice. Here are a few:
ICT is now a core subject and subject as a result to SATS testing (although of course, SATS will shortly be abolished) and so if the school wants to keep its scores up, it will need to have the ICT result in there.
It's a core subject, it just hasn't got an examined SAT. You will see in your schools PANDA that it is reported alongside English, Maths and Science. That's my understanding anyway.
Call it what you want but ICT is a core subject, this has been confirmed to me by the se area Strategist.
English, Maths and science are core subjects. This means they are an necessary part of the curriculum. They are assessed, with results reported.
Page 8 of "Secondary National Strategy for school improvement 2005–06" (Ref: 1651-2005 DCL-EN) states:"Middle leaders in schools have a powerful influence on classroom practice and are gatekeepers to change and development. They are well placed to ensure that teachers draw on and use the Strategy to address the learning needs of their pupils. Termly development meetings for subject leaders in the core subjects (English, mathematics, science and ICT), and behaviour and attendance leaders, will provide a forum for local work, updating on national developments and sharing good practice.
It already is a core subject at both key stage 3 and key stage 4 - it is just that in some schools SMT appear not to know or do not want to know!
ICT is core at KS3 in our school but not at KS4
I asked this question of my LEA advisor and this seems to clarify the point rather well:At KS3 ICT is a core subject from 2008 when the test starts. At present most schools treat it as core because there are separate targets for ICT at the end of the KS as there are for Eng, Maths and Science.
I immediately went to check my copy of the National Curriculum 2000 and there, sure enough, was the proof, page 16. ‘Stupid woman’ thought I and gave the matter little more heed. Until a few months later, when I had the same discussion with an OFSTED inspector, a very experienced ex-HMI who commanded a great deal of respect in me but who said the same thing. She was however unable to tell me when it had been changed or by whom. It seemed it was one of those ‘givens’ everyone knew of but no-one knew why.
Outraged that the government had been tinkering with my curriculum area without telling me, I e-mailed OFSTED, BECTA (I think), the DFES, NC online and the QCA asking when and how the status of ICT had been changed. Reply came there none, despite re-sending all the mails. When my head told me it was a core subject I was finally certain it couldn’t possibly be.
A stand-up ding-dong with our LEA adviser followed a few weeks later when we met over a different matter and I raised the subject. He agreed that he couldn’t actually quote me chapter and verse on when or how the change was made but he was sure it had. He got back to me a week later trying to ‘explain the confusion’ (not his confusion, of course) but I had actually worked it out a while before.
The confusion had arisen because of the introduction of the Literacy Strategy in the late 90's. OFSTED announced that during the first year of its introduction, when schools would be struggling to embed the new way of teaching literacy, their teams would exercise greater flexibility (now called a lighter or softer touch) in their inspections of the Foundation subjects but would maintain full rigour for the Core subjects and ICT. Somehow these then remained inextricably linked in the minds of many highly paid people. In the ensuing years references to the core subjects and ICT just dropped the last 2 words and were understood to include ICT. When the lead inspector at our last OFSTED referred to ICT as “extended core” I nearly burst out laughing, my head looked daggers at me, I nearly burst out laughing all over again but the moment passed.
Whenever I have challenged an assertion that ICT is a core subject over the last 5 years I have run into brick walls of incredulity and misplaced certainty. What I find truly horrifying is that I, an ordinary primary classroom teacher, have had to correct people who train and inspect teachers and are paid twice as much as me for it!
One place where you would have thought I might find some respite or support is the TES staffroom forums but….. no. I found the same entrenched error, hotly defended, robustly, even arrogantly, asserted, and often backed up by references to irrelevant documents, websites or wrong advice. Here are a few:
ICT is now a core subject and subject as a result to SATS testing (although of course, SATS will shortly be abolished) and so if the school wants to keep its scores up, it will need to have the ICT result in there.
It's a core subject, it just hasn't got an examined SAT. You will see in your schools PANDA that it is reported alongside English, Maths and Science. That's my understanding anyway.
Call it what you want but ICT is a core subject, this has been confirmed to me by the se area Strategist.
English, Maths and science are core subjects. This means they are an necessary part of the curriculum. They are assessed, with results reported.
Page 8 of "Secondary National Strategy for school improvement 2005–06" (Ref: 1651-2005 DCL-EN) states:"Middle leaders in schools have a powerful influence on classroom practice and are gatekeepers to change and development. They are well placed to ensure that teachers draw on and use the Strategy to address the learning needs of their pupils. Termly development meetings for subject leaders in the core subjects (English, mathematics, science and ICT), and behaviour and attendance leaders, will provide a forum for local work, updating on national developments and sharing good practice.
It already is a core subject at both key stage 3 and key stage 4 - it is just that in some schools SMT appear not to know or do not want to know!
ICT is core at KS3 in our school but not at KS4
I asked this question of my LEA advisor and this seems to clarify the point rather well:At KS3 ICT is a core subject from 2008 when the test starts. At present most schools treat it as core because there are separate targets for ICT at the end of the KS as there are for Eng, Maths and Science.
It has been a Core Subject for about 3 - 4 years.
ICTs status as a core subject has also been confirmed by our LEA ICT advisors
This fits in with our OFSTED (Feb 2006). When the lead inspector asked to meet with the subject leaders of the core subjects, he included ICT in that.
The definitions of core and foundation were first published in the early days of the National Curriculum then repeated in Curriculum 2000.
ICT was then, and is still, a foundation subject:
http://www.nc.uk.net/nc_resources/html/ks1and2.shtml.
http://www.nc.uk.net/nc_resources/html/ks3and4.shtml
It will take an act of parliament or the use of a statutory instrument to change it. Many schools may treat ICT as a core subject in their timetabling and staff structure (TLR payments for coordinating ICT in some schools are the same as for core subjects for instance) but this does not affect its status as a National Curriculum subject.
I tried one more time to get an answer from the DFES (after at least 6 years!), this time asking only what the status of ICT is. The reply:
Dear ……
Thank you for your email of 15 February asking for clarification of whether ICT is a foundation subject or a core subject.
I can confirm that ICT is a foundation subject and statutory throughout all key stages of the National Curriculum.
Once again thank you for writing.
Regards
…….. Public Communications Unit
Case closed. On the question of whether it should be made a core subject however .......
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
Little Dogs and Little Fleas
It is alarming how bullying has become deeply embedded in our education system. The target culture promotes bullying in many ways. As targets are passed down the bully’s railway, they are translated into new, smaller targets. Targets are set by those above you and are aimed at what you do to the people below you.
Government formulates policy and targets then proceeds to bully Local Authorities into implementing them, using financial pressure and their own dedicated attack dogs from OfSTED.
The LAs then bully heads into implementing the policy or targets using administrative or personal pressure. Heads know which side their bread is buttered when it comes to funding opportunities and career advancement, as well as lovely invites to conferences in far-away places. They also know that LAs can get rid of any head they take a dislike to: a really good audit, in depth interviews with staff, a nod to the attack dogs can unleash an Armageddon onto a head which only the strongest could withstand.
Heads naturally bully staff as they are the galley slaves, the ones who actually do the work of generating the statistics by which the policies’ and targets’ success will be judged. Teachers are regularly given unrealistic targets and additional workload which serve no useful purpose for the children we are meant to educate, they contribute only to the façade of a school being successful or value for money. The spectre of OFSTED is again very useful in enforcing compliance without question.
The staff have to bully the children, they have no choice, except perhaps to resign. We bully our pupils into fitting moulds, raising achievement in areas which are not in their interest nor interest them. They are fed half-lies about how important their SATs results are, we know full well that they only reflect on the school and, in particularly badly-managed establishments, the teacher; bullies always lie.
And at the bottom of the pile? Well, children have always been quite likely to bully each other, the lowliest victim beats himself up.
Government formulates policy and targets then proceeds to bully Local Authorities into implementing them, using financial pressure and their own dedicated attack dogs from OfSTED.
The LAs then bully heads into implementing the policy or targets using administrative or personal pressure. Heads know which side their bread is buttered when it comes to funding opportunities and career advancement, as well as lovely invites to conferences in far-away places. They also know that LAs can get rid of any head they take a dislike to: a really good audit, in depth interviews with staff, a nod to the attack dogs can unleash an Armageddon onto a head which only the strongest could withstand.
Heads naturally bully staff as they are the galley slaves, the ones who actually do the work of generating the statistics by which the policies’ and targets’ success will be judged. Teachers are regularly given unrealistic targets and additional workload which serve no useful purpose for the children we are meant to educate, they contribute only to the façade of a school being successful or value for money. The spectre of OFSTED is again very useful in enforcing compliance without question.
The staff have to bully the children, they have no choice, except perhaps to resign. We bully our pupils into fitting moulds, raising achievement in areas which are not in their interest nor interest them. They are fed half-lies about how important their SATs results are, we know full well that they only reflect on the school and, in particularly badly-managed establishments, the teacher; bullies always lie.
And at the bottom of the pile? Well, children have always been quite likely to bully each other, the lowliest victim beats himself up.
Monday, 4 June 2007
Being Well
A few years ago a school I know got involved in a project to improve the 'wellbeing' of staff. It was announced, with some fanfare, that they would participate in a project devised by a consultancy which involved identifying key areas for improvement and developing an action plan with the school. There were testimonials from other Local Authorities as to the efficacy of this initiative. 2 colleagues were trained, 2 staff meetings given over to passing on the fruits of that training, all leading to the entire staff having to complete an online, supposedly anonymous, questionnaire with questions about how they felt about and within the school, with a large section on management. By lying about such things as age, sex, number of years experience etc anonymity was indeed preserved. The completed questionnaires were then analysed by the company which had sold this tosh to the LA – I have no doubt that their motives were pure.
When the analysis came back, accompanied by a couple of suits to explain it to SMT, the results were truly awful, despite being couched in the most sickeningly positive consultant-speak. Management were shocked to discover the low esteem in which they were held, the lack of team spirit and respect for decision makers, the almost universal sense of unfairness, abandonment and thinly disguised chaos. Communication with and between staff was highlighted as a major problem area. The result? after hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds worth of teacher time? the school ended up with a foil covered shoe box, marked ‘suggestions’ in the staff room. It was removed after a week because of the vicious and anatomically threatening nature of the suggestions inserted into it. The shiny new policy, sweated over for minutes by a time-server on SMT, the action plan and indeed the whole project were quietly forgotten about, never mentioned again.
Moral: Ask the wrong questions and you will always get the wrong answers, create the wrong ethos and all your outcomes will be wrong, even if they look right in light of the targets you are working to.
When the analysis came back, accompanied by a couple of suits to explain it to SMT, the results were truly awful, despite being couched in the most sickeningly positive consultant-speak. Management were shocked to discover the low esteem in which they were held, the lack of team spirit and respect for decision makers, the almost universal sense of unfairness, abandonment and thinly disguised chaos. Communication with and between staff was highlighted as a major problem area. The result? after hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds worth of teacher time? the school ended up with a foil covered shoe box, marked ‘suggestions’ in the staff room. It was removed after a week because of the vicious and anatomically threatening nature of the suggestions inserted into it. The shiny new policy, sweated over for minutes by a time-server on SMT, the action plan and indeed the whole project were quietly forgotten about, never mentioned again.
Moral: Ask the wrong questions and you will always get the wrong answers, create the wrong ethos and all your outcomes will be wrong, even if they look right in light of the targets you are working to.
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