Gary Monro’s blog

From the BBC:

Parents and teachers are to get clearer guidance on helping pupils with their coursework, in a bid to curb cheating.

…some parents draft work, some teachers help so much it results in “cloning”, and downloading essays from the internet “cannot be controlled”.

With the way the government and exam boards behave with respect to education and exam marking I think it’s a bit rich for anybody to finger-point at teachers and parents who help the pupils produce better quality work. We more or less know the system is being tweaked in order to meet government targets so why would teachers, parents and so on resist the urge to help out a bit with coursework?

The problem with this, of course, is that in cases where a pupil’s coursework really the result of parental assistance, teacher guidance and downloaded essays from the internet the result can, potentially, be a large and unrealistic swing in their exam result:

Coursework is marked internally within schools, while exam boards call in samples of the work for external checks, known as “moderation”.

At GCSE level, it varies from 20% of the overall qualification in double science, maths and religious studies, to 60% in art and design and design and technology.

At A-level it can be from nothing to 30%, or 60% in the case of art and design.

In some cases so much was given in the form of writing frames, templates and checklists the report said it amounted to “coursework cloning” with little original work.

Coursework actually started with the Conservatives in 1988 when GCSEs were first introduced but its value is not universally accepted, it seems:

Teachers varied in the value they put on coursework.

Almost all the history teachers surveyed felt it was an important, integral part of the course.

In contrast, 66% of maths teachers indicated it was sometimes problematic.

Science teachers regarded coursework as “jumping through hoops” to maximise marks and “a poor educational tool”.

In reality the skills taught by doing coursework - projects and the suchlike - are not essential skills and, where needed in later life, can be more readily picked up if a person already has a decent grasp of the underlying information required. For as long as ministers, exam boards, teachers, pupils and parents are looking for ways to buck the system we can be reasonably sure the system cannot be trusted. Labour’s command from the centre and obsession with setting - and then meeting - targets has moved us away from learning and towards fulfilling political aims. Once again, the poorer children bear the brunt of this manipulation.

I have got to stop doing this…

Had a chit-chat in one of my posts’ comments’ sections with Frank from Rearranging the Deckchairs blog.

I challenged him to list some problems with a voucher system. I said I’d link to his post if he did. So he did. And so I have. You can read it here.

Blair still affects choice whilst keeping a tight grip on actual control. From the Daily Telegraph:

Every secondary school is expected to become an independent, self-governing academy within five years, Tony Blair said yesterday.

Parents would be given power to change the curriculum, replace failing heads and start new schools, he promised. Anticipating today’s education White Paper - “a pivotal moment in the life of this Government” - he outlined radical plans to “complete the reform” of state education in England that Labour started when it came to power eight years ago.

Councils will be stripped of their responsibility for schools; businesses, churches, City livery companies and wealthy individuals will be allowed to take over schools; independent schools will be encouraged to accept state cash and join the state sector; and there is to be a new emphasis on grouping pupils by ability and offering advanced classes to the brightest.

(My emphasis).

Blair will allow schools to run their own budgets but he will not allow them to raise their own money. So ‘their own budgets’ actually aren’t. They’re whatever the government of the day deigns to give them.

And, frankly, I do not believe for one moment most of these claims of new freedom for our schools. I anticipate that for each of these freedoms granted there will be limits, parameters and that the LEA - which will still have a role - will be able to veto those independent decisions made by schools but which the left simply don’t like.

There are signs that Blair’s desperate attempts to secure some sort of positive education legacy - a Guardian/ICM poll shows that just 29% of respondents said schools had improved since 1997 - are forcing common sense - of a sort - to exert itself in his thinking. From The Guardian:

In a swipe at past Labour policies, he said local authority efforts to create equity had resulted in “deadening uniformity”, with child-centred learning and a rigid adherence to mixed-ability teaching too often failing to meet basic standards.

This actually sounds promising - until one realises that this is part of his vision of “self-governing independent state schools” - surely the oxymoron of the century. If it’s state-owned it is simply the beneficiary of devolved power - not independence - and devolved power can be given and it can be taken away. Schools will not be able to raise their own money and they will not have control over their hiring and firing processes.

The only way for the poorest children to achieve world-class education is for world-class education to be the norm. Currently, with half of primary school leavers failing the three Rs - and Ofsted still lamenting that the more effective traditional, synthetic phonics reading method is still ignored in favour of fashionable ‘whole language’ teaching - world-class education is nowhere in sight. Wealthier parents already achieve the best education for their children either by paying directly for it or by buying the more expensive houses within good schools’ catchment areas (and so paying a premium for their children’s education via their mortgage payments). Poorer children get what’s left.

Learning and advancement are not helped or hindered only within schools but since schools are the prime institutions involved in formal education I would suggest we allow them all the freedom they can handle in educating our children.

We really ought to remove the state from schooling and give parents a voucher that a school can redeem for the approx £5,200 per pupil that state education costs. Let schools compete for the vouchers by offering to parents what parents want. And allow schools to raise additional money by charging additional fees or by other means.

Let business agencies (the CBI for example), charities (The Literary Trust, for example), churches and other interested parties contribute to the setting of school educational aims and aspirations. But allow schools the final say in devising their own targets - and let them decide how best to meet them. Let schools determine who they hire to achieve their targets - and how much they pay them.

The government can arrange the provision of a separate set of examinations designed to test the brightest pupils, stretching them to discover who the outstanding children are and giving them the special guidance they need. And recognise that not all pupils will be academically inclined so allow schools to devise vocational programmes for these children.

More than anything else, schools should not be seen as isolated educators but part of a larger, fluid project in developing our children in all the varied ways that a person can be developed with local businesses and institutions being utilised to give them experience and exposure to the realities of life. A society that expects the school system to produce the very best - whatever the very best happens to be - and allows teaching professionals to devise ways of getting there will raise standards for all.

On a slightly lighter note:

It emerged last night that a complete print run of 5,000 copies of the White Paper had to be pulped over the weekend because of spelling mistakes and drafting errors. A revised version will be ready for consideration this morning, a spokesman for the Department for Education said.

Labour’s city academy schools aren’t finding much favour with head teachers:

Only 6% of headteachers support Tony Blair’s controversial plans to build more city academy schools, according to an EducationGuardian/ICM poll.

The findings come after the prime minister brushed aside criticism of the £5bn academy programme yesterday, insisting “parent power” would fuel its expansion.

It found that 57% of headteachers in England believe the government listens to few of their needs, while 27% say the government does not listen at all.

The poll also shows that only 6% of headteachers support academies, with 43% opposed and 40% unsure.

What teachers want and what the government wants are at odds with each other:

The government’s plans to hand greater power to parents in the running of schools - likely to be outlined in a schools white paper later in the autumn - also receive a lukewarm response. Just 1% of headteachers are interested in parents having greater involvement in the management of schools.

However, there is overwhelming support for parents exerting a greater influence at home. Many headteachers are keen to see parents enforcing discipline at home (42%) and ensuring attendance at school (35%), but these figures leap to more than 60% in favour of parents teaching moral values and social skills at home.

Oh, well - they’re just teachers so what do they know? But what does Blair see as being the point of the academies?

“The purpose is very simple: fairness and opportunity for all. Public services exist so that those who cannot afford to buy good healthcare or schooling are not at a disadvantage.”

AKA social engineering. Why no mention of a school’s real function - learning to read and write?

Oops - that might be because they actually aren’t doing so well at that bit…

Here we go again…

Nearly 98% of students taking the GCSE exam passed. I tell you, that 2% that didn’t must feel pretty stupid…

But pupils have been criticised for opting for so-called easier courses, and employers lashed out saying standards were still slipping leaving students lacking basic skills.

The Institute of Directors said many children left school without basic reading and writing skills.

“The starting point for employers recruiting staff is surely to have access to candidates with basic literacy and numeracy skills. We are not there yet,” said Richard Wilson, Head of Business Policy at the IoD.

Want to know one of the reasons why our youth are becoming less educated? Lack of aspiration.

No, not amongst the youth, silly. Amongst the incompetents who run our country:

Jacqui Smith, minister for schools, said the Government was working with employers to ensure “functional” English and Maths were studied in GCSEs.

Functional? That’s what we aspire to? Just ‘functional’? So if you aim for ‘functional’ - which is in itself a tragically low standard - and then fall short what do you get? How about ‘Neanderthal’?

And the incompetents who want to run our country:

Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said GCSEs were “failing” and should now be replaced.

That’s right, mess a thing up and then throw it away. What will you replace it with? If the underlying attitudes in education are that we must aim for equality of outcome what use is just replacing it? The phrase, “Same s**t, different bucket”, springs to mind…

The students themselves are getting irritated by the low quality of their exams:

Students at Magdalen College independent school (MCS) in Oxford joined their deputy headmaster Richard Cairns in speaking out at their frustration at the “patronising” exams which often award full-marks even if errors are made.

And the attack on working class aspirations was made clear by MCS’s deputy headmaster Richard Cairns:

“It is effectively left to individual schools to provide the extra intellectual stimulation that bright teenagers demand but some schools are better placed than others to offer this extra dimension.

“Some very clever boys and girls from academically deprived backgrounds are doubtless missing out. There is, in my view, a stronger case than ever for the state to support scholars at leading independent schools, selected on the basis of academic ability and genuine financial need.”

For as long as we are governed by a party whose ambitions are not the improvement of the British people but the furthering of their leftist ideological obsessions there is no hope in sight. When a 23 year old Guardian journalist can obtain an A grade in his AS level sociology degree after just two weeks of studying and nearly everybody who takes this nation’s main exams - the GCSE and the A-level - passes them we know we are hurtling in the wrong direction.

For those of us with children in education the private sector seems to be the only place to go. Ironic it would be indeed if our anti-elitist rulers were the main cause of an expansion in private education…

The psychopaths that make up the Blair government certainly know how to tear a country apart. Here’s the recipe:

1. Take something good, something that works but which links the present to a past you despise and hate.

2. Either let it fall into disuse or disrepute or, better still, be instrumental in its decline.

3. When the deed is done and said institution/tradition/habit is thoroughly discredited become its saviour.

4. Recreate it but in the image of your own depraved fantasies.

5. Throughout, use keywords (reform, improve, modernise) that, to the untrained eye, have positive and inspiring connotations.

6. Repeat as often as necessary until the past has been obliterated.

Targets include: the family, country (ie white, Anglo-Saxon) culture, the countryside itself, education, pride in our nation and so on…

In keeping with the above recipe for ’success’ Estelle Morris - another of Labour’s failed quota-women - suggests we abolish the A-level exam.

As I mentioned the other day, the A-level - once the gold standard of British education (only the top 5% took this exam - hence the disdain with which our Marxist government treats this elitist test) - is already so easy that almost everybody who takes the exam passes it anyway. So it’s already more or less abolished as a meaningful exam. In fact, the government’s record on education is now so awful they’ve nearly abolished the entire idea of learning as a means to improving the lot of yourself and your family.

“The 14-19 exam system is now ripe for modernisation, ripe for renewal. I think Ruth has the opportunity to be remembered as the Secretary of State for Education who actually had the courage to grasp that and move ahead.”

Such words… Who could resist?

Unfortunately, few actually do resist and that’s why these people have been getting away with the dismantling of the Great Britain - and England particularly - for the last 8 years. But ‘renewal’ and ‘modernisation’ are words that hide a multitude of evils, not least of all the removal of all means of independence and self-improvement and the simultaneous relegation of the UK’s lower classes into gibbering serfs of the ruling elite.

This freefall in educational standards hurts the most vulnerable, those least able to resist the demolition of the idea of the pursuit of knowledge. The aspiring middle classes can always find a way around the appalling lack of standards our children are subjected to - although they too are pulled down by the general degradation of our educational philosophy.

But the working classes have a much tougher time. Robbed of decent schools, uninspired at times by poor parenting and locked into a totalitarian educational system by a government machine which bans them from spending their own tax money on their own children’s education - ‘wise’ government spends it for them - they face a bleak future.

Labour’s project to create an inept, dependent and needy voting class for themselves continues unabated.

“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” (From Alice in Wonderland)

The UK’s gold-standard exam is now so easy that almost everybody who takes it passes.

The degradation of the A-level exam is now so complete that the more astute teenager realises that the standard two or three that my generation went for is simply not enough to distinguish them from the crowd.

To distinguish themselves from the mass of candidates, many brighter pupils now take six or seven A-levels. In private, education ministers have expressed concern that the system is forcing the most able teenagers to take on an absurd workload in order to prove their excellence.

The greatest improvements in exam scores are in the so-called ‘fake’ subjects:

In some subjects, such as media studies, the proportion of sixth-formers recording passes has risen even further, to more than 98 per cent, according to a senior education official.

Ruth Kelly promised in February to make the A-level harder - an admission surely that they had become too easy. So these results will require some A-level grade wiggling to get out of.

Now that’s a task they won’t fail…

It is more or less common knowledge amongst the British public that school standards are in free-fall. As a result of their insane fantasy to put 50% of British children through the university system this Labour government has undetaken a frenzy of educational dumbing down in order to meet that target. The failings of the system are legion - I had a bit of a rant about this here.

The level of bureaucratic control exhibited by Big Brother this government of ours has also become a matter of concern to those of us that are, well, concerned about such things. You can never get bored with criticising government interference and control freakery because there’s always something more to keep you awake.

The latest is this: the government has done away with hand-written student reports and has replaced them with a computer package. Perhaps not such a heinious crime but they have also decided what comments are available ot the teacher when making his/her assessment. So instead of reading the personally considered thoughts of the assessing teacher the parent reads the cut-and-paste remarks of a government-inspired computer package.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “A report should be a direct communication from teacher to parent and any weakening of that is going to spoil the effect of comments that can make pupils and parents take notice.

“This cut-and-paste idea is a very backward step. Parents and children should get the teachers to change their ways. If they use computerised phrases, it will stop them from making their typical pithy comments.”

The excuses for this kind of thing are, as usual, as ridiculous as the change itself:

Daryl King, of Simple Logic, the company behind Report Assist, said: “If you have 30 reports to do, it is hard to write original stuff if 20 of them are on the same level. We offer 12,000-plus possibilities.”

He added that Report Assist “also removes worries about spelling and grammar“.

A National Union of Teachers spokeswoman said: “Think about how many reports teachers have to write. This is about efficiency. It also helps parents who struggle with teachers’ handwriting.”

Simple Logic - how well that name mirrors its representative’s remark - miss the point; just because 20 students perform at the same standard does not mean the 20 comments will be the same. A clever student performing at average will require different comments to a student with learning difficulties who also performs at average. Each has achieved entirely differently. Only the teacher’s own thoughts can express the reality of these situations.

And as for removing ‘worries about spelling and grammar’… Well, these are teachers, aren’t they? Is it being uncharitable to expect them to know how to write in proper English?

And the NUT - another aptly named outfit - might consider that a teaching workforce freed of government shackles and ‘initiatives’ would be more than able to write their reports - as they have done for decades - and that its energies might be better focussed on getting the state out of our education.

Ah. But that requires faith in the teaching profession to be able to do a good job without government fatwas every three minutes. Only some of us have such faith…

“Education, education, education..” - Tony Blair

So good he named it thrice…

If you throw enough money at something, you can make it support your social engineering aims. Or can you? While, in the May election campaign, our politicians tried to out-spend each other in an orgy of profligacy the real results of all this increased spending are staring us in the face - and it appears things are coming apart at the seams:

Ruth Lea, Institute of Directors:

We congratulate students for their success and hard work but, from an employer’s point of view, the A-level now is not the A-level of 20 years ago.

Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools:

We cannot have a situation where young people are kept for longer and longer at school, and at greater and greater public expense, but who end up in fact knowing no more than people in the past did who left school younger.

He said that if everyone passed an examination it was not fulfilling its prime function of discriminating between them.

Yes, well, if you use a word like ‘discriminating’ within 3 miles of a liberal/leftist you’re asking for trouble Mr Woodhead.

New Labour wants equality of outcome - no matter how low the standards have to drop to achieve that. This means, amongst many other things, that some A level students - with decent grade passes - now enter university without the required knowledge to even begin their chosen degree.

Universities now have to offer remedial courses to bring the student up to the level that, 10 years ago, he would have naturally reached by virtue of having attained the A level.

Annis Garfield, examiner:

I am the examiner, referred to by John Clare in his Any Questions? column who has been told that 26 per cent of the candidates must be awarded a grade A (80 marks out of 100) and that the average candidate is to be given a C (60 out of 100) - no matter how undeserving their answers may be.

This, I have been told by my chief examiner, who accused me of being too mean with my marks, is the predetermined result. He has instructed me to mark more leniently - in other words, to lower my standards.

Read the whole article here - it would make you laugh if it weren’t so serious. By the way, she was fired for speaking to the press.

After years of denying A-levels were getting easier New Labour has to face the facts. In February this year Ruth Kelly says I’ll make GCSEs and A-levels harder. She confessed:

Children are not being stretched and challenged in the way I would like them to be.

David Bell, head of Ofsted: The failure rate of England’s further education colleges is a national disgrace. He added:

If you happen to be a 16 year old looking for a second chance, having not done very well at school, tough luck. If at first you don’t succeed, you don’t succeed.

And this, from December, is damning:

The United Kingdom has slipped significantly down the world education league, particularly in maths, a report said yesterday.

In the second round of tests conducted by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) involving more than 250,000 15-year-olds in 41 countries, it dropped in three years from fourth in science to 11th, from seventh in reading to 11th and from eighth in maths to 18th.

But what really shows the government up for the lies it has been telling us about ‘rising standards’ is this:

The UK’s declining performance in reading, which contrasts sharply with rising scores in national tests, is particularly embarrassing for the Government because the standard of Pisa’s tests is held constant. Questions are repeated from year to year, whereas the comparability of national tests is questionable.

Since the first Pisa round, the UK’s reading score has dropped from 523 to 507.

So a standard, unchanging test shows our performance declining, the government’s scoring system shows it’s rising. One has a vested interest in showing the true state of play while the other has a vested interest in showing year on year improvement. I think we can draw our own conclusions.

Finally, you might think that the Labour-dominated ‘Commons Education and Skills Select Committee’ could deliver Mr Blair some cheering news:

From January this year:

THE Government is wrong to claim that billions of pounds in extra funding for schools has produced better examination results, the powerful committee of MPs said yesterday.

The Labour-dominated committee chastised Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, for saying that “the sustained high investment in education since 1997 has resulted in a measurable improvement in standards

They went further. From The Times, ‘Schools still cannot teach pupils to read by age of 11′:

“Even if government figures are taken at face value, at age 11 around 20 per cent of children still do not achieve the success in reading (and writing) expected of their age. This figure is unacceptably high,” it said.

It all makes for very depressing reading - especially if you, like me, have a child just entering the comprehensive school system.

Anyway, no use in moping. I’m not doing much this afternoon - I think I’ll get myself an A-level…

(Note: this post, in a slightly altered form, appeared in my previous blog, A Very British Insurgency - which is now closed)

The Daily Telegraph reports that politics students at Bristol are being ‘over-taught’ so their workload needs drastically reducing. So the number of lectures the students must attend is being slashed by a whopping 66%.

From three lectures per week to one.

The poor lovies should be able to cope with that. But if they’re still trembling with fear then there’s more good news on the way: first year exams are going to be phased out too.

And - if that were not enough - Bristol University has promised that a higher proportion of students will be awarded a first class degree. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but the only way you can promise more first class degrees is by messing with the exam marks or the pass mark. Either way, the idea stinks.

When you consider that the entry requirements to this degree will be relaxed if a person has “suffered from educational disadvantages” it seems to be that obtaining a politics degree at Bristol Uni is a cinch. Could I study for one during my lunchtimes perhaps?