Some of us remember how IT, as it then was, got treated when the topic based, more creative curriculum was the order of the day: generally it was subsumed or ignored. This was kind of built into the system and fitted in well with the reality in schools. Most primary schools had only a handful of computers and fewer staff able or willing to use them. Many remained boxed in store rooms having been bought in by the LEA. They were shared out on a rota basis in the best organised schools. When the National curriculum was published and teaching IT became a requirement it was a guaranteed certainty that no school had enough equipment or expertise to deliver even part of it. The NC continued slowly to emerge chrysalis-like (ie not looking like anything involved in its conception) with a separate IT curriculum and a bewildering array of cross curricular links ‘embedded’ in the various other subjects; bewildering because the same objective could appear in different subjects accorded different levels of attainment. Data handling was a case in point, with the same skills and content appearing in History, Geography, DT, Science and Mathematics in addition to IT.
The first NC was so bloated it was impossible to fit into any school’s curriculum and it made sense to try and incorporate identical or similar objectives into cross-curricular schemes of work. Then came the onslaught of discrete subject teaching virtually required by the new inspection frameworks wielded by OfSTED. This was however partially contradicted with IT, soon to be re-branded ICT, because each subject area had IT requirements built in. The attempt by the QCA itself to include ICT into its schemes of work for other subjects can make quite funny reading. A typical example: “D+T Sandwich Snacks: create a database to store information from a survey of children’s favourite fillings”; as if any teacher in their right mind would take a couple of hours from an already overstuffed timetable to design a database, teach their children to enter data and use search and graphing tools to achieve the same as they would get by asking for a show of hands and knocking up a chart in Excel or a graphing app. As to whether most teachers would have the skills or interest in doing such a thing? the question requires no answer. Curriculum 2000 made none of this any better.
The new Primary Frameworks have proved even more impenetrable. It was trumpeted that ICT would be embedded at every stage in the new Literacy framework, what a joke! The vast majority of ICT references are to presentation skills (typing up to you and me), although typing skills are included up to Y3 – my enquiry from our Literacy coordinator as to when they intended to introduce typing practice into literacy lessons has not been answered and I’m not holding my breath. Realistically, I don’t really know where the time would come from. Other ‘embedding’ of ICT involved the exciting ‘multi-modal’ texts in Y1: sound files and graphics, taking digital photographs (well targeted ICT skills at work here, especially given that our nursery children are already doing this!) and of course reading ‘on screen’. Numeracy is even worse, the main use of ICT appears to be for teaching, relying heavily on the good old ITPs, some of which were coded in Latin.
The New Primary curriculum is of course only a spectre but if what must be one of the worst websites in a short education online history is anything to go by (and it may well not be) the further embedding of ICT and raising to the level of a ‘core’ subject – much trumpeted but not actually included anywhere I have come across yet - could prove to be illusory. All the areas of learning have an ICT Across the Curriculum link and Cross Curricular Learning tab with the rather bland children to develop and apply their literacy, numeracy and ICT skills statement in their Programme of Learning but that covers a multitude of omissions.
Typically teachers feel comfortable with word processing but nothing much beyond clipart, backgrounds, fonts and styles, few teach the use of tables, drawing tools, mail merge, forms etc. Whenever I see ‘Internet research’ on planning I shudder – it’s the modern day equivalent of the lazy ‘project work’ of yore and the more complex skills of advanced searching, checking plausibility or reliability, even downloading and filetype conversion tend to be neglected . PowerPoint is popular but it is used like a more flashy word processor and many features languish unused, unconsidered. Many teachers are happy to let their children loose on paint applications using basic tools but vector graphics is another matter. I have yet to meet a non-ICT enthusiast who uses spreadsheets for anything but producing flashy graphs. Most control and sensing software and hardware are regarded with trepidation. Databases? I don’t really need to go there.
Left to cross curricular integration in the curriculum, the majority of primary pupils would rarely progress beyond a low level of ICT attainment. The use of digital still or video cameras looks like an advance but will children be learning much more than the 5 year old in the Windows’ ads? will they be manipulating their photographs, editing their videos? or just dumping them into PowerPoint or Photostory and WM with an unedited soundtrack?
As ICT funding dries up over the next few years there may well be moves from deep within the bowels of LAs to silently shrink it. My own LA ICT team are very good generally but in the end they will toe the line and probably implement or manage the downgrading, rather than leading any opposition to it.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Skin deep
Beauty is aphoristically in the eye of the beholder, I would also contend that the same is true for modern educational progress and achievement. Both of these seem to be as much related to the agenda, self-interest or ambition of the observer as any real attribute of the observed, indeed the latter can be something of a superfluous embarrassment in the process.
There are those whose role is to police, supervise and support our work: inspectors, advisers, an army of consultants, many (not all) are well intentioned, skilled, of huge relevant experience but they do not necessarily serve us or their own public agenda well with their misinterpretations, cover-ups and lack of courage.
During my long career in teaching I have come across many examples of waste, tokenism, hypocrisy, complacency, pretension, outright lies and the (possibly deliberate) use of jargon or organisational complexity to cover up confusion and meaningless drivel:
• SAT results so twisted as to be meaningless even for those for whom they are intended –I hasten to add that this group does not include parents, pupils or ultimately their teachers
• the new Primary Frameworks and their accursed website - why are all government websites so utterly, utterly useless, even the ones such as BECTA (RIP) driven by ICT professionals?
• PFI projects, where the true costs and limitations are never talked about or reported upon because these processes are usually driven by people with a vested interest in a positive outcome
• the non-admission of failure in the numerous additional and incredibly expensive interventions used in the last decade in a desperate attempt to appear to raise standards: appear, can you mean this? well, yes. Actual raising of standards is never the reality, it’s all about the graph, as long as it rises, all is well.
• I have commented elsewhere on schools covering up and exaggerating the true nature of their pupils’ achievement and the confusion this can cause. It is positively harmful for the pupils, the schools they move on to, their new teachers who can experience self-doubt when confronted with a mis-assessed pupil, their peers, the pupils who miss out while their teachers sort out the ensuing mess.
This list is hardly exhaustive, some of the memories are probably so appalling that I have blocked them out.
I have contributed to a number of TES debates on a variety of linked issues, one called, appropriately enough “VLEs, the Emperors New Clothes?” The metaphor of the emperor’s clothes sums up my feeling that education is dogged by forces which are only interested in what things look like, not what they actually are. Educators are then bullied into making their efforts fit the ‘vision’.
Achievement in education has become truly skin deep and the casual visitor to schools eg inspectors, like the queen, must think that the whole world smells of new paint.
There are those whose role is to police, supervise and support our work: inspectors, advisers, an army of consultants, many (not all) are well intentioned, skilled, of huge relevant experience but they do not necessarily serve us or their own public agenda well with their misinterpretations, cover-ups and lack of courage.
During my long career in teaching I have come across many examples of waste, tokenism, hypocrisy, complacency, pretension, outright lies and the (possibly deliberate) use of jargon or organisational complexity to cover up confusion and meaningless drivel:
• SAT results so twisted as to be meaningless even for those for whom they are intended –I hasten to add that this group does not include parents, pupils or ultimately their teachers
• the new Primary Frameworks and their accursed website - why are all government websites so utterly, utterly useless, even the ones such as BECTA (RIP) driven by ICT professionals?
• PFI projects, where the true costs and limitations are never talked about or reported upon because these processes are usually driven by people with a vested interest in a positive outcome
• the non-admission of failure in the numerous additional and incredibly expensive interventions used in the last decade in a desperate attempt to appear to raise standards: appear, can you mean this? well, yes. Actual raising of standards is never the reality, it’s all about the graph, as long as it rises, all is well.
• I have commented elsewhere on schools covering up and exaggerating the true nature of their pupils’ achievement and the confusion this can cause. It is positively harmful for the pupils, the schools they move on to, their new teachers who can experience self-doubt when confronted with a mis-assessed pupil, their peers, the pupils who miss out while their teachers sort out the ensuing mess.
This list is hardly exhaustive, some of the memories are probably so appalling that I have blocked them out.
I have contributed to a number of TES debates on a variety of linked issues, one called, appropriately enough “VLEs, the Emperors New Clothes?” The metaphor of the emperor’s clothes sums up my feeling that education is dogged by forces which are only interested in what things look like, not what they actually are. Educators are then bullied into making their efforts fit the ‘vision’.
Achievement in education has become truly skin deep and the casual visitor to schools eg inspectors, like the queen, must think that the whole world smells of new paint.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
What Have I Got Against PPA in Primary Schools?
(please note, this is a work in progress)
From the outset PPA in primary schools has been beset by issues of accountability, cancellation, postponement, calculation, and entitlement. It has become a focal point for tension and an additional thing for some of us to keep one’s eye upon – as if we didn’t have enough of those. These are all distractions from our business, the education of our children. In some schools it becomes an ongoing sore point – check the TES forums for confirmation of this.
Even more significant to me than this waste of time is the wedge PPA drives between the class teacher and their pupils: that all-day-every-day relationship is vital in so many ways and deliberately taking teachers away from their primary pupils is very damaging, NQTs end up with 20% of their contact spent elsewhere, ASTs with up to 30%. If the school organises management time during the school day that can also eat into the time teachers spend with their children. Most assessment systems are useless for determining individual or even group needs but the close relationship between the primary teacher and their class gives the teacher a unique, daily insight into the capabilities, achievement and needs of all their pupils. Most primary teachers have a good overview of their pupils precisely because they spend so much time with them, working in many different contexts, accessing so many different learning styles.
For some pupils a change of teacher, even on a predictable basis, can be very stressful and/or a great opportunity to explore the boundaries of the school’s behaviour management system.
The quality of work done by cover teachers can be very variable, especially when they have not planned the majority of the work themselves. If they do plan the work themselves they are not likely to be aware of links, weaknesses, points to emphasise, which might have come to light in other lessons conducted by the class teacher. No amount of careful planning and thorough evaluation of previous individual lessons can help the incoming teacher take as much advantage of learning opportunities as the class teacher.
In many primaries PPA involves the class teacher relinquishing part of the curriculum to either another regular teacher or even a random supply teacher. This can easily break the natural links and development opportunities which emerge during the delivery of any kind of joined-up curriculum. I can testify to this having been a specialist PPA cover teacher: if I am away, few of the teachers I provide cover for even attempt to teach the lessons I have planned, which disrupts the flow of the part of the curriculum I am charged with delivering. I work very hard at being aware of what classes in my school are doing on a weekly basis but am keenly aware of how impossible that is to do satisfactorily. The class teachers don’t bother keeping up with what I am doing because they are not responsible for that part of the curriculum and ignore it pretty much. Not teaching particular parts of the curriculum deskills class teachers, leaving them liable to poor performance or a steep learning curve in an area of little confidence when there is a change of personnel, in the case of absence or when they change school.
PPA was basically introduced as a sop by a government dead set against raising teachers’ pay in the light of their crippling workload and they would only discuss any Pay and Conditions issue with a group of unions mostly representing the interests of secondary teachers who wanted a more robust system to protect their non-contact time - quite rightly so, I have worked in the secondary sector and appreciate many of the issues surrounding impromptu cover, but the ‘rarely cover’ regulations should eventually deal with most of those.
What is really needed in our primary schools is a real effort to tackle the issues of workload and pay which have remained essentially unresolved in the last 20 years….. PPA is hardly the answer.
From the outset PPA in primary schools has been beset by issues of accountability, cancellation, postponement, calculation, and entitlement. It has become a focal point for tension and an additional thing for some of us to keep one’s eye upon – as if we didn’t have enough of those. These are all distractions from our business, the education of our children. In some schools it becomes an ongoing sore point – check the TES forums for confirmation of this.
Even more significant to me than this waste of time is the wedge PPA drives between the class teacher and their pupils: that all-day-every-day relationship is vital in so many ways and deliberately taking teachers away from their primary pupils is very damaging, NQTs end up with 20% of their contact spent elsewhere, ASTs with up to 30%. If the school organises management time during the school day that can also eat into the time teachers spend with their children. Most assessment systems are useless for determining individual or even group needs but the close relationship between the primary teacher and their class gives the teacher a unique, daily insight into the capabilities, achievement and needs of all their pupils. Most primary teachers have a good overview of their pupils precisely because they spend so much time with them, working in many different contexts, accessing so many different learning styles.
For some pupils a change of teacher, even on a predictable basis, can be very stressful and/or a great opportunity to explore the boundaries of the school’s behaviour management system.
The quality of work done by cover teachers can be very variable, especially when they have not planned the majority of the work themselves. If they do plan the work themselves they are not likely to be aware of links, weaknesses, points to emphasise, which might have come to light in other lessons conducted by the class teacher. No amount of careful planning and thorough evaluation of previous individual lessons can help the incoming teacher take as much advantage of learning opportunities as the class teacher.
In many primaries PPA involves the class teacher relinquishing part of the curriculum to either another regular teacher or even a random supply teacher. This can easily break the natural links and development opportunities which emerge during the delivery of any kind of joined-up curriculum. I can testify to this having been a specialist PPA cover teacher: if I am away, few of the teachers I provide cover for even attempt to teach the lessons I have planned, which disrupts the flow of the part of the curriculum I am charged with delivering. I work very hard at being aware of what classes in my school are doing on a weekly basis but am keenly aware of how impossible that is to do satisfactorily. The class teachers don’t bother keeping up with what I am doing because they are not responsible for that part of the curriculum and ignore it pretty much. Not teaching particular parts of the curriculum deskills class teachers, leaving them liable to poor performance or a steep learning curve in an area of little confidence when there is a change of personnel, in the case of absence or when they change school.
PPA was basically introduced as a sop by a government dead set against raising teachers’ pay in the light of their crippling workload and they would only discuss any Pay and Conditions issue with a group of unions mostly representing the interests of secondary teachers who wanted a more robust system to protect their non-contact time - quite rightly so, I have worked in the secondary sector and appreciate many of the issues surrounding impromptu cover, but the ‘rarely cover’ regulations should eventually deal with most of those.
What is really needed in our primary schools is a real effort to tackle the issues of workload and pay which have remained essentially unresolved in the last 20 years….. PPA is hardly the answer.
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