Any ideas on how best to deal with difficult, stubborn and cynical member of a department? This question was posted on a TES forum and gave me pause for thought, mainly because I knew it was how I was seen by certain managers at my own workplace. This is the result of that thinking....
I have been called all of those things (and worse), which told me more about the person saying it than it did about me. How to deal with people like me?
Well ……..In my own case I am heartily sick of people spouting edubabble at me, it mostly contradicts the edubabble previously spouted at me and merely serves to damage the standing in my eyes of the babbler. Don’t pretend babble is anything other than that.
Never, ever, ever use the phrase ‘playing the game’ in my earshot, I will explode, messily.
Don’t try to bully me or push me around, I have had it lots, it just irritates me and every now and again I bite back.
Don’t pretend that the latest government initiative is 'really useful' when you make me sit through yet another pointless training session watching video clips of unnaturally small classes of well behaved, bright, motivated children.
I am very sick of people telling me to do pointless, unproductive, wasteful, stupid things because it looks good.
Be prepared to admit that it’s really a lot of recycled tosh but we have to do it because the DFCS/LA says so, that is at least honest.
I am additionally sick of managers without skill, vision, understanding or other leadership qualities, who are always desperate to cover up their incompetence, ignorance and personal failings.
On the positive side: engage with me, debate with me, have a clear idea of people’s roles and functions, be prepared to convince me rather than just tell me and if it comes down to a judgment call, I will be the first to say ‘It’s your call’ and respect your decision. Know, accept and even admit to your own limitations.
Above all: listen to what I have to say without trying to dismiss me with words like stubborn and cynical. It’s a poor substitute for discussion.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Learning Platforms - what ARE they for?
Anyone who thinks a Learning Platform/MLE/VLE will bring a new era of secure, guaranteed access or high speed connectivity for all please first take a look at the National Health Record and appointment booking system, the junior doctors' job application scheme, the Probation Service, MOD pay, the Court Service, in fact almost anything EDS or Crapita have touched in a decade, then we can chat some more. To see how well online tools and services work in education and the value for money they offer, check out e-learning credits / Curriculum Online, the Learning Schools
Programme, the BECTA Self-review Matrix, then Framework, then revised SRF and perhaps to round it off the Interactive Planning Tool and the New Primary Curriculum website - I could go on but the point is surely made?
We have no guarantee that an LP will work faultlessly for all of our pupils or all of our staff, all of the time - if what I have seen of the LGFL and Kaleidos in action is anything to go by we must limit our expectations.
More information for and involvement of parents has been touted as a driving force but I have seen no real evidence of an upswelling of demand for SIMS data 24 hours a day and at weekends – parents can get any of it easily already and rarely do.
I do see yet another brilliant opportunity for media and digital infrastructure companies to hoover up gigantic amounts of public money, which could be much better spent elsewhere in education, with little proven benefit to our pupils.
My real fear actually lies with where this tosh is all heading:
personalised learning, which smacks to me of depersonalised teaching. All work and resources will eventually have to fit into the requirements of the LP – SCORM compliance will feature ever more for sure.
remote access, which conjures up a nightmarish vision of huge 'classrooms' full of computers, patrolled by heavily armed HLTAs keeping order amongst battery rows of kids hunched over screens, with 1 teacher per cluster of schools 'managing' the system, uploading 'content', either from home or an office, possibly outsourced to a subcontractor on another continent. No need for teachers, all the marking being done electronically. Just think of the 'savings'! Just think of the IT contracts! The necessary 'super' classrooms are already going into new build schools.
anytime access - while we still have teachers they will of course be able to work from home in the evenings and at weekends: being able to report ICT faults/repairs, set or collect in work when ill, on leave or otherwise engaged – the first is actually being promoted in my area as an advantage!
inspections - once the Safeguarding the Child agenda has frayed a little at the edges we can be certain that 'effective use of the school's learning platform' will become a criterion in the OFSTED attack dogs' menu of things to brand schools as failures with.
increased workload - sometime in the next 2 or 3 years my SMT will wake up to the fact that we have an LP, which will have languished on remote servers gathering cyberdust for a while, and pressure to use it and fill it up with stuff will doubtless mount. That deathly phrase used in headteacher briefings and staff meetings: 'OFSTED will be looking for ….' is certain to guarantee that.
For the immediate future I can't see the point for our primary school. Only 70% of our children currently have access to the internet at home but of course more public money is to be poured into the Home Access programme to rectify this and thereby enable the LP policy – more easy profits for the providers of the underpowered and overpriced packages on offer. Homework is not a major plank of our Teaching and Learning, so that will have to change, again to justify the existence of the LP. Forums and wikis will be of little use to most 3-8 year olds, so schools will be busy buying many £s worth of LP content: the education publishers have already geared themselves up for it as a brief perusal of subject coordinator junk mail will prove – the sounds of a thousand hoovers and cash registers ring in my ears! I have yet to witness the universe in which young people will curl up with their new home access computer and choose to spend an hour at the weekend or in the evening on the school's Learning Platform - how could social networking sites, instant messaging, music and film clips or downloads, gaming or image browsing possibly compete with the exciting world on offer there?
Learning Platforms do provide useful educational tools, no argument there, but they are all available for free already. Schools and teachers wanting to use those tools do so. Their function as a resource bank can easily be provided, again for free or very cheaply, via third parties or via a school's own website. Electronic calendars and notice boards can be made available on most school networks. The only feature which is difficult to provide by other means is the access to school data for parents- was it just a quirk of fate that moodlers had so much trouble getting Crapita to cooperate over SIMS? I'm sure it was and that their motives are pure - but then, as argued, I see little call or use for that access, interestingly the only part of the LP agenda which schools are required to provide.
No-one has as yet inspired me with anything but dread in the face of another government inspired, unwanted, unnecessary, ear-bleedingly expensive 'e-solution' which will drain the human, physical and financial resources of schools whilst dragging T+L down by actually undermining the quality of both and distracting teachers from their proper focus on them.
Programme, the BECTA Self-review Matrix, then Framework, then revised SRF and perhaps to round it off the Interactive Planning Tool and the New Primary Curriculum website - I could go on but the point is surely made?
We have no guarantee that an LP will work faultlessly for all of our pupils or all of our staff, all of the time - if what I have seen of the LGFL and Kaleidos in action is anything to go by we must limit our expectations.
More information for and involvement of parents has been touted as a driving force but I have seen no real evidence of an upswelling of demand for SIMS data 24 hours a day and at weekends – parents can get any of it easily already and rarely do.
I do see yet another brilliant opportunity for media and digital infrastructure companies to hoover up gigantic amounts of public money, which could be much better spent elsewhere in education, with little proven benefit to our pupils.
My real fear actually lies with where this tosh is all heading:
personalised learning, which smacks to me of depersonalised teaching. All work and resources will eventually have to fit into the requirements of the LP – SCORM compliance will feature ever more for sure.
remote access, which conjures up a nightmarish vision of huge 'classrooms' full of computers, patrolled by heavily armed HLTAs keeping order amongst battery rows of kids hunched over screens, with 1 teacher per cluster of schools 'managing' the system, uploading 'content', either from home or an office, possibly outsourced to a subcontractor on another continent. No need for teachers, all the marking being done electronically. Just think of the 'savings'! Just think of the IT contracts! The necessary 'super' classrooms are already going into new build schools.
anytime access - while we still have teachers they will of course be able to work from home in the evenings and at weekends: being able to report ICT faults/repairs, set or collect in work when ill, on leave or otherwise engaged – the first is actually being promoted in my area as an advantage!
inspections - once the Safeguarding the Child agenda has frayed a little at the edges we can be certain that 'effective use of the school's learning platform' will become a criterion in the OFSTED attack dogs' menu of things to brand schools as failures with.
increased workload - sometime in the next 2 or 3 years my SMT will wake up to the fact that we have an LP, which will have languished on remote servers gathering cyberdust for a while, and pressure to use it and fill it up with stuff will doubtless mount. That deathly phrase used in headteacher briefings and staff meetings: 'OFSTED will be looking for ….' is certain to guarantee that.
For the immediate future I can't see the point for our primary school. Only 70% of our children currently have access to the internet at home but of course more public money is to be poured into the Home Access programme to rectify this and thereby enable the LP policy – more easy profits for the providers of the underpowered and overpriced packages on offer. Homework is not a major plank of our Teaching and Learning, so that will have to change, again to justify the existence of the LP. Forums and wikis will be of little use to most 3-8 year olds, so schools will be busy buying many £s worth of LP content: the education publishers have already geared themselves up for it as a brief perusal of subject coordinator junk mail will prove – the sounds of a thousand hoovers and cash registers ring in my ears! I have yet to witness the universe in which young people will curl up with their new home access computer and choose to spend an hour at the weekend or in the evening on the school's Learning Platform - how could social networking sites, instant messaging, music and film clips or downloads, gaming or image browsing possibly compete with the exciting world on offer there?
Learning Platforms do provide useful educational tools, no argument there, but they are all available for free already. Schools and teachers wanting to use those tools do so. Their function as a resource bank can easily be provided, again for free or very cheaply, via third parties or via a school's own website. Electronic calendars and notice boards can be made available on most school networks. The only feature which is difficult to provide by other means is the access to school data for parents- was it just a quirk of fate that moodlers had so much trouble getting Crapita to cooperate over SIMS? I'm sure it was and that their motives are pure - but then, as argued, I see little call or use for that access, interestingly the only part of the LP agenda which schools are required to provide.
No-one has as yet inspired me with anything but dread in the face of another government inspired, unwanted, unnecessary, ear-bleedingly expensive 'e-solution' which will drain the human, physical and financial resources of schools whilst dragging T+L down by actually undermining the quality of both and distracting teachers from their proper focus on them.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Selection and Choice
When I went through the 11+ at my fair-sized junior school in a fairly rough part of town I was one of only a handful to pass and be offered a council funded place at a private grammar school. I fitted in well and had a ‘successful’ secondary education which I only came to question in later years: another story. It dawned on me in later years how arbitrary the 11+ had been, especially as my older brother, cleverer and with a better memory than me, but rubbish at sport, had ‘failed’ the test and gone to a local comprehensive where he was desperately unhappy, leaving with no qualifications at all.
What we did to get through the 11+ in the 1950’s and 60's is pretty much the same as kids do now for SATs, except the 11+ was supposed to be a test of IQ, a fixed amount of intelligence that had something to do with your educability, whatever that is/was/might be. We practised answering 11+ type questions for most of the penultimate year at school – a practice no doubt designed to ensure that we improved our IQs. The point was to sort, separate, segregate, to find the magic 10% fit for an academic education.
By the mid-60’s everyone in education knew how flawed the 11+ was, but even more importantly sociology was highlighting how divisive separate schools were: segregation by money, by postcode, by religion, by some artificial notion of ‘academic ability’ all were being revealed as damaging to individuals and society. Only those with a vested interest in maintaining their own positions of power or privilege wanted these discredited structures to survive, although naturally enough they were the kind of people who had the power actually to do so: the church, the moneyed, the irretrievably middle-class. Even Special Education was eventually drawn into the reforming circle.
Where are we now? the eradication of grammar schools was never completed, private schools enjoy the same tax privileges via charity status they have always enjoyed, the sector is growing, city technology colleges, beacon schools, specialist schools, religious schools all on sale to any screwball with enough money and desire to buy access to a few hundred young minds. The government has been prattling on about choice in education when all people really want is a decent school down the road, realising that, as with health, the noise and fury surrounding ‘choice’ is just that. The altruism of those putting their money into PFI schemes should be tested: under no circumstance should control of the curriculum or entry be vested in the school, it should lie with the local authority, let's see how many benefactors want to 'give something back' under those circumstances.
While most parents will put up with what their local primary school has to offer, they will move house, lie, cheat and steal, even commit heresy, to get their children into a ‘good’ secondary, because they are desperate to avoid their offspring being ‘contaminated’ – yes, I have heard the word used. Parents want the best for their children, that’s natural isn't it? Certainly. Good for us as a society? hmmm, it’s natural to drive at whatever speed and on whichever side of the road you feel comfortable with at the time, it’s natural to urinate and defecate wherever you happen to be, whenever you feel the need….. The concept of choice is an illusion and not much of an idea to begin with, selection even more so.
What we did to get through the 11+ in the 1950’s and 60's is pretty much the same as kids do now for SATs, except the 11+ was supposed to be a test of IQ, a fixed amount of intelligence that had something to do with your educability, whatever that is/was/might be. We practised answering 11+ type questions for most of the penultimate year at school – a practice no doubt designed to ensure that we improved our IQs. The point was to sort, separate, segregate, to find the magic 10% fit for an academic education.
By the mid-60’s everyone in education knew how flawed the 11+ was, but even more importantly sociology was highlighting how divisive separate schools were: segregation by money, by postcode, by religion, by some artificial notion of ‘academic ability’ all were being revealed as damaging to individuals and society. Only those with a vested interest in maintaining their own positions of power or privilege wanted these discredited structures to survive, although naturally enough they were the kind of people who had the power actually to do so: the church, the moneyed, the irretrievably middle-class. Even Special Education was eventually drawn into the reforming circle.
Where are we now? the eradication of grammar schools was never completed, private schools enjoy the same tax privileges via charity status they have always enjoyed, the sector is growing, city technology colleges, beacon schools, specialist schools, religious schools all on sale to any screwball with enough money and desire to buy access to a few hundred young minds. The government has been prattling on about choice in education when all people really want is a decent school down the road, realising that, as with health, the noise and fury surrounding ‘choice’ is just that. The altruism of those putting their money into PFI schemes should be tested: under no circumstance should control of the curriculum or entry be vested in the school, it should lie with the local authority, let's see how many benefactors want to 'give something back' under those circumstances.
While most parents will put up with what their local primary school has to offer, they will move house, lie, cheat and steal, even commit heresy, to get their children into a ‘good’ secondary, because they are desperate to avoid their offspring being ‘contaminated’ – yes, I have heard the word used. Parents want the best for their children, that’s natural isn't it? Certainly. Good for us as a society? hmmm, it’s natural to drive at whatever speed and on whichever side of the road you feel comfortable with at the time, it’s natural to urinate and defecate wherever you happen to be, whenever you feel the need….. The concept of choice is an illusion and not much of an idea to begin with, selection even more so.
Saturday, 28 July 2007
Rupi – In memoriam, gloriam
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We had our Rupi killed today because her future held no future for her, her dog-life was over, there was only pain, deterioration, a joyless struggle to exist in prospect. I would have administered the injection myself if the kindly, obviously sympathetic, vet had not been there to do it for us.Losing a friend or a member of your family hurts like nothing else, a pet like Rupi becomes both.
This is to honour her memory.
Rupi waskind, gentle, loving, patient, wise, playful, enthusiastic, giving, appreciative, rarely smelly, powerful, strong, full of heart, as fast as the wind, impressively muscular, lithe, trusting, heart-rendingly vulnerable, sensitive, curious, a little clumsy, empathic, protective, caring, quiet, well-mannered (to her own and other species, especially human), brave on behalf of others, brave in the face of pain, unconfident, eager to learn, tolerant, beautiful beyond the dreams of marketing executives.
Her suffering was short, her life full of meaning, she will be missed so very much.
They say all greyhounds have been touched by angels, I commend this one to them.
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Getting the Question Wrong
Ask a Stupid Question, get a Stupid Answer, strange how that childhood comeback has come back in the form of: ask the wrong question and you will always get the wrong answer.
For example ask: ”What's the best way of delivering 90% of someone's educational experience online?" and you will eventually get 'A Virtual Learning Environment, everyone needs one', as the answer.
But ask: "What's the best way of delivering a high quality education?", and you will get an answer involving well-motivated, well-trained and well-resourced teachers with smaller and smaller groups of students.
As a result of this particular misconceived question, millions of pounds, hundreds of thousands of people hours and multiple Gigajoules of mental energy are going to be wasted forcing every school in the country to adopt a VLE.
Another example of a wrong answer because the question was wrong would be ‘OFSTED’, by asking, “How can we force schools to change?”, as opposed to, “What do schools need to assist the change we will be working hard to convince them is necessary?”
Can you think of the questions that should have been asked when we got these answers?
SATs, National Curriculum , Curriculum 2000, PFI, Building Schools for the Future, BECTA Self Review Framework, TLRs, PPA, Threshold, ASTs, Chartered London Teacher Status, Local Management of Schools, Capita, National Literacy Strategy, The Primary Framework, The Interactive Planning Tool, DiDa and on and on and on…..
For example ask: ”What's the best way of delivering 90% of someone's educational experience online?" and you will eventually get 'A Virtual Learning Environment, everyone needs one', as the answer.
But ask: "What's the best way of delivering a high quality education?", and you will get an answer involving well-motivated, well-trained and well-resourced teachers with smaller and smaller groups of students.
As a result of this particular misconceived question, millions of pounds, hundreds of thousands of people hours and multiple Gigajoules of mental energy are going to be wasted forcing every school in the country to adopt a VLE.
Another example of a wrong answer because the question was wrong would be ‘OFSTED’, by asking, “How can we force schools to change?”, as opposed to, “What do schools need to assist the change we will be working hard to convince them is necessary?”
Can you think of the questions that should have been asked when we got these answers?
SATs, National Curriculum , Curriculum 2000, PFI, Building Schools for the Future, BECTA Self Review Framework, TLRs, PPA, Threshold, ASTs, Chartered London Teacher Status, Local Management of Schools, Capita, National Literacy Strategy, The Primary Framework, The Interactive Planning Tool, DiDa and on and on and on…..
The Pendulum Swings
Education swings like a pendulum do….
There was a time when segregation and separation were seen as a bad thing, comprehensive schools were intended to right that wrong, now a plethora of special interest schools are positively encouraged, in the name of ‘choice’. The educational pendulum whooshes past…
When the Primary Literacy Strategy was introduced at the end of the 90’s the mantra was handed down about the way literacy HAD to be taught with group carousels, strict timings, rigid adherence to the word/sentence/text level work regime (all with dodgy new interpretations and redefinitions of English syntax) a return to the lesson based approach ditched in the 60’s … Whoosh….
The whole or real book movement had swept away much of the grammar focussed learning which had held reading back for so long (ancient whoosh....). KS2 texts for the most part were now to be studied in extracts, giving rise to a surge, a frenzy of publishing in the educational book market, with whole school sets of courses designed to meet the needs of the literacy hour. Upon inspection of a few of these I was amazed to see a rigid, repeated structure, under various grammatical and text type labels: a passage of text from some worthy literary or other source, comprehension questions, exercises on spelling and grammar loosely based on a feature of the text passage, some ideas for writing or other activities – jaw-dropping, take away the colour illustrations and photos and these were the very same books my junior school was using in the 1950’s! Whoosh….
The Janet and John type reading scheme books so sneered at for 20 years are now reappearing as part of an expensive RML revolution. Whoosh….
Extended writing disappeared with the Literacy strategy but it was quickly noticed that the Strategy made no mention of writing anything longer than a few sentences. Big Writing suddenly appears, like a new idea, Whoosh….
Trying to follow the handwriting pendulum is liable to cause you a seizure: necessary? useful? redundant? gives sense of pride? stifles creativity? pen? pencil? which colour? do we correct it in all work? Whoosh….
Does marking, including grammar and spelling undermine the confidence of the writer or provide instant feedback? Whoosh…. or should that one be the rapid boing-boing of a pin ball machine?
Milk….no milk…..milk… Whoosh….
Should children explore the world through a series of exploratory exercises in a structured but open environment, using their natural curiosity and instinctive wisdom or be led by the nose to a variety of knowledge troughs, forced to slurp up whatever has been deemed of value by a higher power? Whoosh….
Rote learning of times tables, pages of sums, endless focus on abstract mathematical skills were widely replaced by topic based maths in the 80’s, maths had to be integrated with other learning to make it meaningful to the learner…Whoosh…., then re-whoosh…. the Numeracy strategy puts all of that back on the menu, reinforced with medium and short term (unit) plans, actually backed up by resources, that looks pretty settled ……… Oh, no, everybody duck!! re-re-whoosh…. the strategy is being over-prescriptive, teachers are slavishly following the plans, afraid to adapt them for their own classes (where on earth could silly teachers have got the idea that they would be in trouble if they didn’t do what the government told them to do, in the order they were told, at exactly the time they were told?).
Discrete lessons, integrated curricula, topic based learning ….. back and forth the pendulum swings, each parabola spawning a new generation of experts, people who have developed an in-vogue teaching style, system or philosophy in their school and are employed to spread it around.
Perhaps the image of the pendulum is not as potent as that of a deranged snake coiled around itself, poked by many masters wishing to prod it in different directions, for different reasons. The snake writhes and wriggles, driven by the increasing demands made of it. It hisses and occasionally strikes but to little effect. None of the tormentors and especially not the snake have a clue what the outcome will be.
There was a time when segregation and separation were seen as a bad thing, comprehensive schools were intended to right that wrong, now a plethora of special interest schools are positively encouraged, in the name of ‘choice’. The educational pendulum whooshes past…
When the Primary Literacy Strategy was introduced at the end of the 90’s the mantra was handed down about the way literacy HAD to be taught with group carousels, strict timings, rigid adherence to the word/sentence/text level work regime (all with dodgy new interpretations and redefinitions of English syntax) a return to the lesson based approach ditched in the 60’s … Whoosh….
The whole or real book movement had swept away much of the grammar focussed learning which had held reading back for so long (ancient whoosh....). KS2 texts for the most part were now to be studied in extracts, giving rise to a surge, a frenzy of publishing in the educational book market, with whole school sets of courses designed to meet the needs of the literacy hour. Upon inspection of a few of these I was amazed to see a rigid, repeated structure, under various grammatical and text type labels: a passage of text from some worthy literary or other source, comprehension questions, exercises on spelling and grammar loosely based on a feature of the text passage, some ideas for writing or other activities – jaw-dropping, take away the colour illustrations and photos and these were the very same books my junior school was using in the 1950’s! Whoosh….
The Janet and John type reading scheme books so sneered at for 20 years are now reappearing as part of an expensive RML revolution. Whoosh….
Extended writing disappeared with the Literacy strategy but it was quickly noticed that the Strategy made no mention of writing anything longer than a few sentences. Big Writing suddenly appears, like a new idea, Whoosh….
Trying to follow the handwriting pendulum is liable to cause you a seizure: necessary? useful? redundant? gives sense of pride? stifles creativity? pen? pencil? which colour? do we correct it in all work? Whoosh….
Does marking, including grammar and spelling undermine the confidence of the writer or provide instant feedback? Whoosh…. or should that one be the rapid boing-boing of a pin ball machine?
Milk….no milk…..milk… Whoosh….
Should children explore the world through a series of exploratory exercises in a structured but open environment, using their natural curiosity and instinctive wisdom or be led by the nose to a variety of knowledge troughs, forced to slurp up whatever has been deemed of value by a higher power? Whoosh….
Rote learning of times tables, pages of sums, endless focus on abstract mathematical skills were widely replaced by topic based maths in the 80’s, maths had to be integrated with other learning to make it meaningful to the learner…Whoosh…., then re-whoosh…. the Numeracy strategy puts all of that back on the menu, reinforced with medium and short term (unit) plans, actually backed up by resources, that looks pretty settled ……… Oh, no, everybody duck!! re-re-whoosh…. the strategy is being over-prescriptive, teachers are slavishly following the plans, afraid to adapt them for their own classes (where on earth could silly teachers have got the idea that they would be in trouble if they didn’t do what the government told them to do, in the order they were told, at exactly the time they were told?).
Discrete lessons, integrated curricula, topic based learning ….. back and forth the pendulum swings, each parabola spawning a new generation of experts, people who have developed an in-vogue teaching style, system or philosophy in their school and are employed to spread it around.
Perhaps the image of the pendulum is not as potent as that of a deranged snake coiled around itself, poked by many masters wishing to prod it in different directions, for different reasons. The snake writhes and wriggles, driven by the increasing demands made of it. It hisses and occasionally strikes but to little effect. None of the tormentors and especially not the snake have a clue what the outcome will be.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Assessment 1 Measure for Ever
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.
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.
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