Posted without comment.It's a Monday morning in Weston-super-Mare and a year 8 class at Worle Community school are doing a drama lesson. In charge is Nancy Powell-Brace, 55, who has been working here for 22 years.
It's the second time I've met her. She reminds me of the teachers who always got the best out of me and my friends when life was all double geography and regular tedium: she has an innate sense of fun and an instinctive bond with her students, but also makes it plain – via the odd well-timed "Shhh!", chiefly – that there have to be limits. The week before I visit her, she was a contestant on Come Dine With Me (she came second, with food and entertainment inspired by The Sound Of Music).
This morning's class of 27 13-year-olds has an hour of drama once a fortnight. Today, they're tackling a morality tale about bullying called The Terrible Fate Of Humpty Dumpty. Watching what happens is a reminder of the magic a good teacher can work. The highlight is an exercise in which seven of the class take on the role of bullies accused of having something to do with Humpty's death – and are sent outside to improvise a fake alibi. Three are then cross-examined by their peers, and it's a hoot; but it's also about teamwork, performance, public speaking and more, and Powell-Brace manages to both critique and encourage them.
Unfortunately, this academic year will be her last. Now that the government has raised teachers' retirement age, she could carry on for at least 10 years, but she wants out. Drama is being sidelined, she says, and teaching is falling into a cold fog of targets, endless new "strategies" and the idea that someone's education is reducible to a set of results.
Fifteen years ago, Powell-Brace would put on annual productions, with a cast of over 100 and the help of 30 other staff: The Wizard Of Oz, Guys And Dolls, The Boyfriend. "Big productions," she says. "The school was renowned for its drama."
Now students in year 11 (fifth form, in old money) can't devote time to such activities in case it disrupts exam preparation; funding has dried up; and the hall is endlessly used for the exams taken in the run-up to GCSEs. In any case, the government sees drama as a "soft" subject, best pushed to the margins of the curriculum.
"I saw something on TV last night, about the rise in stress in 16- to 24-year-olds," she says, "and I think being so driven by results is part of it. We have strategies at school that encourage the kids to want to do better. And of course you want them to do better. But they shouldn't feel that, if they don't, they've failed." The same exacting logic, she says, applies to teachers, too: "You feel you're being judged all the time, not trusted to get on with the job you've been trained to do."
Time was, 60 kids would be studying GCSE drama at any one time. Now, it's half that. Yet drama, she says, can instill fundamental life skills. "It teaches people how to cooperate, to listen, to put aside their differences and compromise." The increasingly mechanistic model of education in England may "turn out people well qualified on paper for a job, but they won't be able to hold down the job, because they won't know how to deal with people and the world they've been thrown into."
So, come July, she'll be off. "Teaching's been my life." She wells up. "I've loved it and got so much from it. But I don't want to be here any more."
If you have kids and they're at state schools, you may be at least vaguely aware of the morale crisis gripping the profession. The primary teacher you meet each morning might seem harried and in need of a break; the secondary school staff you see at parents' evenings may be worn out. A recent survey by the Department for Education (DfE) found that, on average, teachers reported working over 50 hours a week – primary staff just shy of 60. A majority of teachers said they spent some or most of their time on "unnecessary or bureaucratic" tasks, and 45% said this aspect of their work had increased. Both 2012 and 2013 saw regional strikes by the two biggest teaching unions, over pay, pensions and workload, and the National Union of Teachers has called a national strike on 26 March.
In January 2013, more than half of the teachers who responded to a YouGov survey for the NUT said their morale was low or very low, and 77% agreed the government was having a negative impact on education. And last December, the other big teaching union, the NASUWT, revealed that over half its 230,000 membership had considered quitting their jobs in the previous 12 months. Even the government's own figures say that 40% of new teachers quit within their first five years. And there is a palpable sense of fear hanging over the profession: contrary to the myth that far too many of them are gobby militants, it takes me a month's worth of calls to find teachers who will talk to me on the record; the remainder are happy to explain their predicament, but insist on being anonymous.
As a lot of teachers see it, they are the focus of bitter hostility from ministers and educational high-ups, and the victims of an increasingly oppressive machine. Schools are swamping their pupils and staff in data and targets, leaving no room for the kind of human values that were once at the centre of what teachers did. These aspects of education, teachers say, also distort their priorities, so filling in spreadsheets sometimes takes precedence over actually teaching kids.
For over 20 years there has been angry argument about how much formal testing goes on in English schools, and the tyranny of official rankings. After around three years at primary school, children are the subject of mandatory "teacher assessments", and at 11 they sit watershed tests known as Sats. Whether schools are seen as successful is partly down to their place in the league tables that rank their results: GCSEs and A-levels in secondary schools and sixth-form colleges; Sats in primaries.History teacher, 28, east London: "If I don't take work home in the evening, I feel guilty, and if I don't work at weekends, I worry that I haven't done anything for two days. In the holidays, there's a lot of marking and planning, and revision sessions. I'm 28 and don't have any children or extra responsibilities, but I'm worried about the future: this is my career, it's what I want to do, but how will I do it with a family?"
Much of the way state education now works is traceable to the last government, and a succession of Labour education secretaries who left teachers punch-drunk. But Michael Gove, secretary of state for education since 2010, is in a different league, and is using the machinery bequeathed to him to drive through a real revolution and defeat an educational "establishment" he calls "the blob".
Like most politicians, Gove paints his plans in primary colours, but close up, what he's doing is so mind-bogglingly complicated that many teachers – let alone parents – have difficulty keeping up. The national curriculum has been rewritten, to ensure that five-year-olds can do fractions, nine-year-olds know about relative clauses and 11-year-olds are taught poetry by rote. Gove is set on doing away with levels (the grades children are currently given) and has made noises about the drawbacks of incessant testing. But he has also enthused about "regular, demanding, rigorous examinations" and in certain cases there are actually plans for more tests: new compulsory assessments for four- and five-year-olds are coming, and last month Gove suggested all state-educated 13-year-olds should sit the Common Entrance exams used by private schools. Meanwhile, there is speculation that children will effectively be given a pass or fail at the end of each school year – and, among teachers, a fatalistic belief that, whatever its drawbacks, the current mountain of targets and tests will remain because schools have got so used to it.
There are plans for drastic changes to GCSEs: starting with English language, English literature and maths, coursework will be done away with, results will be decided by a single summer exam, and grades will be numbers rather than letters. Gove is pushing for more schools to become academies, which can employ unqualified staff (as can the government's 174 new "free schools"). And his next big move is the introduction, from September, of performance-related pay, a change that has only increased teachers' dismay.
There is another significant player in this story: Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills), which has been in existence for 21 years. It is Ofsted that decides whether a school is "outstanding", "good", "requires improvement" or is "inadequate", and whose inspectors pay close attention to the data that teachers now spend endless hours compiling.Newly-qualified primary schoolteacher, east London: "I work in quite a deprived area, and our data's in the danger zone, so there's lots of pressure. I do getting on for 60 hours a week. On new teacher's pay, that's around minimum wage. Four people I trained with have already left teaching. Once this year's out of the way, I plan to set up music tutoring and switch to supply work: if I continue on this road it'll kill my love of teaching."
The state of Ofsted's relations with Gove became headline news when he sacked its chair, Baroness Morgan. But up until recently Ofsted and its chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, one-time head of the renowned Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, have tended to be in step with the government. Before he began the job in January 2012, Wilshaw looked back on his time as a head and said: "If anyone says to you that staff morale is at an all-time low, you will know you are doing something right." In May 2012, he added: "Teachers do not know what stress is." His pronouncements are music to the ears of large swaths of the press who paint teachers as lazy, leftwing reprobates, who habitually go on strike and snooze their way through long summer holidays (which Gove, inevitably, wants rid of).
Talk to teachers about their work and Ofsted comes up within minutes. Inspectors visit schools at least once every three years and pass judgment on everything they do. Teachers are assessed on the basis of short observations and often prepare for inspections with an almost neurotic devotion (staying up all night is not uncommon). Woe betide any school given an overall 4, which denotes "inadequate" and can easily mean the arrival of "special measures" – which, if a school is still run by a local authority, usually means swift conversion into an academy, with all the disruption that entails. Passage into this dread category can be swift and unexpected, and though Ofsted denies it, there are widespread claims that inspections are being manipulated so as to ensure more schools become academies.
"There's an atmosphere of oppression," Powell-Brace says. "People think Ofsted is punitive rather than supportive. At my school, people believe they're being held to ransom." Ofsted inspectors last paid Worle Community a visit two years ago, identified "areas for development" and said they would soon be back to see how things were going. They have yet to show up. "So every week for the past 18 months, every member of staff has gone into school on edge, thinking, 'Is it going to be this week?' It's a huge thing, Ofsted coming in. You can't imagine the pressure it puts on people."
English teacher Sarah Cumberlidge English teacher Sarah Cumberlidge: ‘Children don’t achieve in straight lines. Puberty happens. Some, especially the brighter ones, are struggling.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Sarah Cumberlidge is 30 and teaches at a secondary school an hour's commute from her home in Sheffield, which means getting up for work at 5.30 every morning. When she did her A-levels, her English literature teacher would occasionally get the class to teach each other, and he thought she stood out: "He was like, 'You're a natural. You should be a teacher.'" After graduating in English, she spent two years working for H&M, but realised she was "getting nowhere" and studied for a postgraduate certificate in education, or PGCE.
She has had her current job for six years. "I'm passionate about literature, and getting to share that with kids is brilliant. I've taught Of Mice And Men, like, 25 million times, but every time the kids come out with new stuff I've never thought of. That's wonderful." There is a sadness in what she says, related to government plans to make the study of English literature at GCSE optional, and she says finding the space thoroughly to teach her students about plays, poetry and novels can be a struggle. "The hardest thing," she says, "is that I never feel what I'm doing is good enough. No matter how hard I work, my to-do list is never cleared. You can never be outstanding all the time. They just give us impossible targets."
And who are "they"? "Ofsted, I suppose." Her school had its last inspection just before Christmas 2013. "Everyone was like, 'Shit!' Everyone freaks out; everyone's terrified. So much was resting on it: we knew if we got 'requires improvement', it would be hideous. We were scared for our jobs."
What she has to do day-to-day, she says, is reducible to the so-called "flight paths" that map students' projected progress through school. "They're straight lines that say what they should be achieving. But children don't achieve in a straight line. Puberty happens, and all sorts. But there's constant pressure. We put in data for each child every term, and if they are not on target, we have to justify why. You're not allowed to say, 'This kid's naughty' or, 'This kid doesn't listen.' You've got to say all the things you put in place to make sure that child is achieving. And that's constant."English and special needs teacher, 42, central London; founder of teacherroar.blogspot.com: "People feel their professionalism's been taken away because it's all about getting kids to pass tests. Passing a test is not necessarily learning: it's a snapshot of one day. We're not equipping kids with critical thinking. With years 10 and 11, we're just endlessly redoing exam papers. I became an English teacher because I love literature and want to inspire kids. But we're just drilling them."
What does this regime do to the kids? "It's heartbreaking, sometimes. You get kids to do a controlled assessment in English: they do a really good piece in exam conditions, and you know it's a true reflection of their ability. They've worked hard on it and they're proud of it. But because it doesn't represent four levels' progress, they have to redo it. I'm having to say to a kid who's got a C or a B they're pleased with, 'That's not good enough. You've got to do it again.' It's horrible.
"They're under massive pressure and some of them are just switching off: they think, 'Oh, sod it, then – I just won't try.' And some, especially the brighter ones, you can see them struggling. Especially when you get to year 11. There are quite a number of kids now who can't go to the hall for exams because they have panic attacks. I don't remember that happening when I was at school. It's the able girls who seem to suffer the worst."
The school's last internal observation, she says, rated her teaching as outstanding. But she wants to quit. "I feel like I can't live up to what they want," she says, meaning the government. "And anyway, I've got no work-life balance."
It is easy to assume that the crisis in teaching has really only kicked in under this government. In fact, ever-increasing hours, the dominance of targets, the snowballing power of Ofsted and the great academies drive are things that took root in the Blair and Brown years, and there are plenty of ex-teachers who quit when Labour was in power.History teacher, 28, east London: "I'd say 20% of what I do does not benefit the students. It's just proving I've done this and that; that I know what level they're at and have set them all these targets. I have to do it, but it's pointless: a lot of it will sit in a file and no one will look at it. But everything is just in case. Just in case the inspectors turn up."
One is Theresa Devlin, who was a teacher until April 2010. She lives in Brentwood, Essex and now works as a full-time foster carer, as well as looking after four of her own kids. She went into teaching at 37 – "I was a TA and I'd watch teachers and think, I can do better than that" – and worked at Dorothy Barley junior school in Dagenham, the outer London borough where she grew up.
It was not the easiest job, given Dagenham was becoming the capital's cheapest housing market and its social problems were multiplying. "Parents would come in, no appointment," she says. "They'd eff and blind at you, all sorts. With one teacher, the parent came in with the child there, and said, 'See him? You ain't gotta take no notice of him, cos he talks out of his arse.'" When it came to dysfunctional families, she was at the sharp end: for an extra £1,500 a year, she was in charge of safeguarding: "a massive responsibility" that, among other things, involved referring cases of child abuse and neglect to social services.
A year after Devlin started work, Ofsted put the school in special measures, and the fine details of her job were suddenly dictated by the borough council, via the school's management (aka senior leadership team). She was handed lesson plans from above, and instructed to stick to them.
"They actually said, 'Now do this, now say that.' The basis of it was being told exactly what to do. There was a geography lesson I wanted to teach, on 'Connecting yourself to the world'. I got told off, because I contacted someone in America who had the same name as me, and I got my whole class to write to her. We took photos out of the window, sent emails, and she replied. I thought it was great: she was in New York and we were in Dagenham. But I was told it wasn't appropriate because it wasn't what was on the lesson plan.
"The kids were bored. You'd say, 'What do you think of what we're doing?' And they'd say, 'It's boring.' And if you've got a bored kid, that's when the behaviour problems escalate. And they were really bored. The lessons were so stale. There was no fun. It was just about improving on things in the Ofsted report. Nothing else seemed to matter."
What really got to Devlin, though, was the fact that her workload was extending into the distance. "When I first started teaching, I'd work through the week, till 10, 11, 12 o'clock, and weekends were for my kids. Then I started working on Sunday afternoons. Then it was all day Sunday, then part of Saturday as well, you know? And holidays – even in the summer, you'd spend half of it preparing."
The snapping point came when she was called to do jury service, on an attempted murder case. "I had a lunch hour," she says, still marvelling at the idea. "And it was like being normal. And the day I finished jury service, I went into work and they got a phone call saying, 'Ofsted are coming in again.' And it was, 'That's it. I've had enough.'"
Her old school is now seemingly on the way to being converted into an academy, to be sponsored by a private-sector educational organisation called REAch2. At the last count, all 36 of its staff were opposed to the plan. But, as similar cases prove, such things do not tend to count for very much.
I meet Phil Brett just before the start of a new term. Since last year, the 51-year-old has been a year 5 teacher at a primary school in Haringey. Between 2002 and 2012, he did a similar job at Downhills primary in Tottenham, a school that eventually became a byword for what the government is doing to education, and the subject of a huge news story.History teacher, 40, Lancashire: "In 2010, we were rated 'good' by Ofsted. Results dipped in 2011-12 and we got hit by an inspection. It felt as if they were waiting to get us. And they gave us a 4, 'inadequate', just before the next set of results came in – they'd gone back up, and are predicted to go up again. But we were hit by an Academy Order, and they've chosen a sponsor – before their consultation starts! It seems a set-up."
Downhills, he says, was a typical inner-London primary, with "a whole diversity of races, religions, backgrounds – although predominantly working class or below." The school's ethos amounted to "trying to do the best for these children… reading, writing and maths, obviously, but we were also in a music scheme, where every child in year 4 could take home a violin or cello to learn. And there was an emphasis on art – not at the expense of reading, writing and maths, but… a rounded education, so they wanted to learn, so they weren't just statistics on a league table, commodities. And the staff were together on that, with the parents and children."
In January 2011, Downhills was inspected by Ofsted and given "notice to improve". Changes were made to the way some subjects were taught, and that September another inspection found the school was making "reasonable progress".
And then something unexpected happened. In December 2011, it was announced that the DfE intended to close Downhills and open an academy. Parents led a huge campaign to oppose the plans, supported by teachers and the local Labour MP. But in January 2012, Gove ordered another visit from Ofsted – the secretary of state can do this, though it's very unusual – and a team led by the same inspector who had said Downhills was improving said it was simply "failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education".
The school was put in special measures. After that, changes happened quickly: the DfE sacked the entire board of governors, the head resigned and the way was cleared for a takeover by the Harris academies chain, founded by Philip Harris, Tory peer and founder of retail chain Carpetright.
"There were tears in the staffroom," Brett says. "We'd been playing one game, and new rules had been brought in. There was a general feeling that it was a stitch-up, that no matter what we did, Gove wanted us turned into an academy. It was playing politics with children's education."
Brett worked for one term at the school that replaced Downhills, the Harris Primary Academy Philip Lane. "They're very keen on corporate image. The main meeting of a big day we had was the selling of private health insurance. Apparently you get up to three operations a year. For me, it was like, 'I don't want to be part of this.' If I'd wanted to join the corporate world, I would have done it."
He has the same complaints and concerns as just about all the teachers I meet: the onward march of the academies programme, ever-changing "strategies", the mountain of paperwork, the sense that teaching the whole child is being reduced to pushing up sets of dry numbers – and an overwhelming feeling that teachers work in the face of tremendous hostility from politicians. "I'm going to sound sappy now," he says. "I'm proud to be a primary schoolteacher. I think it's a great job, and teaching in somewhere like Tottenham, you think there's a point to your job. I won't say we always skip into the staffroom, but you don't join up thinking, 'Wow – you get 13 weeks' holiday and the pay's all right.' You join because you want to make a difference, because it's important, to teach children. And that keeps you there, despite government policy. But shouldn't it be because of government policy?"
All the teachers I meet return time and again to one key argument: that though some of their concerns are about the profession, in the end they are also about the kids they teach. Everyone has anecdotes they say shine light on the contorting effect all those targets and assessments are having on children, and on how the cold, mechanistic teaching methods are beginning to be reflected in the way children don't just work, but think.
Sarah Cumberlidge remembers a taster day her school put on for kids in their last year of primary: "Little year 6s, who came in to do a lesson and try a few things. And afterwards, they said, 'But Miss, what was the learning objective?' I was horrified."Long-serving teacher who now works at a new academy in eastern England: "After my last school became an academy, pretty much all the staff left. Some amazing teachers went. The new ones are Tiggers, all style and no substance. My new school's an academy, too, and there's a culture of fear. Certain people have been… disposed of. If you create scapegoats, people keep their heads down, don't they? No one says a thing, for fear of going in some sort of black book."
Back at Worle Community school, I talk to three of Nancy Powell-Brace's GCSE drama students. They knock back the idea that it's a "soft" subject: quite apart from all the theory they have to learn, they say it teaches them to be assertive, and supportive, and to empathise. "You have to act out other people's emotions," says Asha Sutton, 14.
How do they feel about the rest of the stuff they have to do at school? "It depends what subject it is, whether they're drilling it into you," says Lucy Jenkins, 15. What subjects does that happen in? "English, maths and science," they say in unison.
"There are just lots of tests," Lucy says. "'You must get to this level, or you'll have to retake it.' You know what you're capable of doing, but sometimes they expect more than your best."
And what does that do to you? "I lose concentration and I mess all of my work up."
"Sometimes, you snap at people," says Yasmin Robinson, 14. "Teenagers go through all these changes anyway, and you've got the stress of that, plus the stress of meeting all these targets."
One Worle student knows only too well the effect this can have. Off the record, she says: "Last year, I was at home for a week because I had a breakdown at school. Because of all my subjects, the expectations and the stress. There were tests coming up, and a mock exam in science that would decide whether I do my exam this year or next.
"You need fun," she says. "It shouldn't be just about the core subjects. You have to have something that's your passion." Then a borderline heresy. "That you enjoy, you know?"
• This article was edited on 14 March 2014. The original said Theresa Devlin worked at Dorothy Barley infant school in Dagenham, when in fact she worked at Dorothy Barley junior school, a quite different school entirely. This has been corrected.
Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
The Guardian
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
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-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
- Broomstick
- Emperor's Hand
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
As I see it, there is a drive to make all children above average. And it can't be done. By definition most children do fall into the average range and you can't change that. So either you water down the top grades, or you set impossible goals and wonder why kids have panic attacks and/or give up.
It's the corporate and free market model brought to education.
Sad, really - because some things are not suited to the free market/unbridled competition.
It's the corporate and free market model brought to education.
Sad, really - because some things are not suited to the free market/unbridled competition.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
- Zixinus
- Emperor's Hand
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Now, now, don't be ridiculous.
Sad, really - because some things are not suited to the free market/unbridled competition.
After all, God, erm I mean the Invisible Hand of the Market will always sort it out. And how can you call yourself American without faith in self-serving ecom.. I mean, capitalism?
Credo!
Chat with me on Skype if you want to talk about writing, ideas or if you want a test-reader! PM for address.
Chat with me on Skype if you want to talk about writing, ideas or if you want a test-reader! PM for address.
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
This article is about the English school system, not the American one. If you're going to be super smug, try being right.Zixinus wrote:Now, now, don't be ridiculous.
Sad, really - because some things are not suited to the free market/unbridled competition.
After all, God, erm I mean the Invisible Hand of the Market will always sort it out. And how can you call yourself American without faith in self-serving ecom.. I mean, capitalism?
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Actually, given the way we're going with this dumbshit academy/'free school' business, he's got a point.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
- Eternal_Freedom
- Castellan
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
This article explains exactly why I decided to be an accountant rather than a science teacher. Don't get me wrong, I love science, and I absolutely love teaching it to people of any age. But I did one week's work experience in a school and it was a fucking nightmare. Everything was plans and targets and objectives. I was standing in the staffroom and it looked some General's office, covered in big A3 sheets and "future maps" for students, whatever the hell they were. And all the staff had this haunted look in their eyes. So I thought "fuck this, I have enough trouble coping with things, I simply can't do the job in these conditions."
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Broomstick has a point, he's just +1 America bashing.Zaune wrote:Actually, given the way we're going with this dumbshit academy/'free school' business, he's got a point.
-
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Well, you could raise the standard implied by 'average' by teaching the kids better. This is very much a possibility; there are "good" and "bad" ways to teach with differing levels of effectiveness.Broomstick wrote:As I see it, there is a drive to make all children above average. And it can't be done. By definition most children do fall into the average range and you can't change that. So either you water down the top grades, or you set impossible goals and wonder why kids have panic attacks and/or give up.
It's the corporate and free market model brought to education.
Sad, really - because some things are not suited to the free market/unbridled competition.
The problem is that to develop better methods, methods which will actually work across a diverse student body, you need large numbers of teachers who have enough initiative and flexibility that they can experiment and do things that are unconventional.
An atmosphere of terror and regular purges of 'low-performing' teachers (including those who had bad luck, whose school districts are full of kids raised by wolves, or who tried something new and had it not work out) is... not conducive to this.
If anyone's seen Stand and Deliver, it occurs to me that it'd be damn near impossible for a reborn Jaime Escalante to do that stuff now. Not because he'd be a worse teacher, but because his high school's laserlike focus on preparing kids for a much dumber-level Big Honking Standardized Assessment would snuff out any attempt on his part to offer more advanced courses. The principal would just order him to 'stop wasting time' on that and concentrate on remedial tutoring for the kids who've failed the BHSA five times in a row and are cruising to flunk it again next month.
Insisting on a 100% pass rate, or as near to it as possible, just guarantees that teachers spend even more of their energy working on the lowest marginally educable student. Very little is left over for average or above average students. Since these are the students actually getting into colleges and so on... I suspect that's part of the reason colleges complain that high school students are unprepared. The A, B, and C students are learning less than they did fifteen years ago, because the teachers are too busy working with the D and E students.
And while this is speaking mainly of the American experience, I doubt there's any practical difference between that and the schools in Britain, if the article Zaune posted is to be believed.
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
That's pretty much spot-on Simon. In my experience (of a home counties grammar school, granted), only the very high-fliers and the very low achievers got much support. Those of us cruising along on "average" or "above average," where essentially ignored, despite being a) the majority, and b) it would have been possible for us to be "high fliers" if we had similar support.
Bizarrely, the reverse is true in PE/Sports lessons, the very good students got all the support and attention, because they'd be playing for school teams and thus gained the school recognition. Those of us who weren't very good (for whatever reason) were at best ignored and at worst angrily told that we should just "try harder." Which is difficult to do when playing (for example) rugby, a game where throwing, catching and running are essential components and the student (like myself) has a physical disability which makes it difficult to succeed.
Bizarrely, the reverse is true in PE/Sports lessons, the very good students got all the support and attention, because they'd be playing for school teams and thus gained the school recognition. Those of us who weren't very good (for whatever reason) were at best ignored and at worst angrily told that we should just "try harder." Which is difficult to do when playing (for example) rugby, a game where throwing, catching and running are essential components and the student (like myself) has a physical disability which makes it difficult to succeed.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Well, I guess the D and E students have the most to lose. For one thing, those A, B and C students probably have more actively involved and interested parents who can pick up some of the slack. For another, anyone who doesn't make at least a C-grade is kind of screwed in the labour market; we have machines to dig ditches or shovel iron ore into blast furnaces and we don't have a handy war to use them up as expendable light infantry.Simon_Jester wrote:Insisting on a 100% pass rate, or as near to it as possible, just guarantees that teachers spend even more of their energy working on the lowest marginally educable student. Very little is left over for average or above average students. Since these are the students actually getting into colleges and so on... I suspect that's part of the reason colleges complain that high school students are unprepared. The A, B, and C students are learning less than they did fifteen years ago, because the teachers are too busy working with the D and E students.
Of course, the higher-achieving students have the same problem these days.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
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-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
They're also arguably the ones that benefit the least in absolute terms from increased teacher attention - I think that one problem is some kind of refusal to admit that teacher attention is a finite resource like the chalk budget and choices must be made to use it effectively; not doing so leads to just tackling "problems" in order of urgency and obviously the barely literate students are always the most urgent problem (this even in school systems that aren't slaves to standardized testing).Zaune wrote:Well, I guess the D and E students have the most to lose.
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
One of the main problems I have seen is a refusal to accept that not all students can reach the "accepted average" in school. Some children/teenagers are not academically minded but can do well elsewhere (this was especially evident in my yeargroup, the number of people who left after GCSE's was considerable. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of those who left had been those who were not very capable academically but where very good in sports teams.
There is also the sad fact that, well, some children just aren't smart enough to reach the aforementioned accepted average. Since it's an average, there will always be pupils on the lower end of the bell curve that simple do not have the intelligence to reach the minimum standard. But we aren't allowed to say that they failed because they weren't clever enough, so any students not making the grade is clearly the fault of poor teaching.
There is also the sad fact that, well, some children just aren't smart enough to reach the aforementioned accepted average. Since it's an average, there will always be pupils on the lower end of the bell curve that simple do not have the intelligence to reach the minimum standard. But we aren't allowed to say that they failed because they weren't clever enough, so any students not making the grade is clearly the fault of poor teaching.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
- Broomstick
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
It's also not uncommon for someone to excel in language/reading/writing/etc. OR in math and science, but not both. Expectations that a "bright" student will perform equally well across all subjects are likewise doomed as very few people are that sort of brilliant.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
- Eternal_Freedom
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Very true. I excelled in science and maths and did above average in others, but I really really struggled in (for instance) art, music and foreign languages (although that last one may have had something to do with my believe that speaking English and being mathematically capable were sufficient for what I wanted to do in life).
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
-
- Emperor's Hand
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
The problem is, the people with the greatest job security are those with high education in technical fields. Much of our prosperity as a civilization hinges on our ability to produce highly educated specialists, and a large, reasonably well-informed and aware citizenry.Zaune wrote:Well, I guess the D and E students have the most to lose. For one thing, those A, B and C students probably have more actively involved and interested parents who can pick up some of the slack. For another, anyone who doesn't make at least a C-grade is kind of screwed in the labour market; we have machines to dig ditches or shovel iron ore into blast furnaces and we don't have a handy war to use them up as expendable light infantry.Simon_Jester wrote:Insisting on a 100% pass rate, or as near to it as possible, just guarantees that teachers spend even more of their energy working on the lowest marginally educable student. Very little is left over for average or above average students. Since these are the students actually getting into colleges and so on... I suspect that's part of the reason colleges complain that high school students are unprepared. The A, B, and C students are learning less than they did fifteen years ago, because the teachers are too busy working with the D and E students.
Of course, the higher-achieving students have the same problem these days.
BUT... to actually get this, we need to make damn sure that 10-20% of the population is very well educated, and that another... 50-70% is pretty well educated. Concentrating all our energy on the residual 20-30% at the bottom may sound noble, but if it imperils our ability to produce the technicians and large informed voter base we NEED, it's going to hurt us in the long run. If it means we have to lower our standards, such that the actual concrete value of a high school diploma in terms of "this is how much you know" drops significantly... it really may not be worth it.
Sure, in theory we could ensure that D and E-grade students do a bit better and get that diploma. But if the price is moving the goalposts to ensure that they do get the diploma, despite not really being all that much smarter or better educated than they would be anyway, despite not really valuing their own educations that much...
Well, it's just not worth sacrificing much of the A-B-C students' quality of education to achieve that, IMO. We NEED the upper 75% of the population to be productive and effective; our civilization cannot persist and progress without that. We do NOT need to force-grow bottom 25% to show marginal gains if the cost of that is sacrificing the ability of the upper 75% to produce.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, here's something my brother linked me to. I can't independently verify any of this, but the guy's bio leads me to believe he's a reliable witness at least.
Michael Rosen's blog
Michael Rosen's blog
Bolding mine.Further to the question of 'hey Gove, where have the title deeds of our state schools gone?' there is a post on the Guardian comment is free site, in response to the story about Gove's criticism of Etonians in the cabinet.
I offer it with no comment. People better informed than me can judge whether it's on the button or not...
Start:
"Since Gove took over - schools all over England failing, free schools being shut down, academy companies being stripped of control of schools
Absolute CHAOS - so why did Gove deliberately create such chaos
Each time a school becomes an academy the council must hand over the title deeds for the school if it has them (avg value £5m per school)
As over 2,000 schools have been forced to become academies that is £10 billion (min) state assets Michael Gove has demanded the title deeds be handed to him
I wrote an FOI request to Michael Gove's department and asked him where are the title deeds to England's schools
After 3 months he still refused to answer - I had to involve the information commissioner who wrote and demanded they answer within 10 days
And now we find out why Michael Gove did not want to answer
the reply I got
The department of Education has absolutely no record of any of the title deeds for the school - not in paper format or electronic format
Now as councils held title deeds for state assets safely for decades - and Michael Gove used the Academies Bill to force councils to hand them to him - the Secretary of State For Education -
Where are all the title deeds for the schools Mr Gove
At the end they told me to write to a company the Tory Party Treasurer is on the board of - and ask the private company if they know what Michael Gove has done with the title deeds for state assets
Any good magician will tell you - create a distraction - to get away with the trick
And the trick here is - Michael Gove transferring £10 billion of state assets to private companies - where no payment was received for the state assets - and taxpayers forced to pay over £50,000,000 in legal fees alone to fund the trick
Thatcher sold state assets - Michael Gove gives them away - and some of the companies he gave them away to - just happen to have very prominent Tory party members on the boards - with us even paying all legal fees
Now I live in Scotland - but if it was my school that became an academy I would be writing to Michael Gove right now - and speaking to my councillors right now and demanding to know where are the title deeds for my school - because these schools are state assets (or they were until Michael Gove disposed of the title deeds with absolutely not a thing on record in the Dof E)
that's what you call magic
Now the reality is Michael Gove has set up Southern Cross For Education - where
Academy companies have the title deeds for schools - they can sell them - and then sign extortionate leases to rent them (and the money goes offshore to the Cayman Islands as "excess funds")
Now Gove changed the law to say Academy's don't have to publish their accounts publicly - unlike every other charity in the country
And Gove changed the law to say No Academy trustee can be held liable for any losses
And Gove is currently trying to change the Academies bill to say instead of the title deeds going to " the proprietor of the school" - to "someone associated with the school"
Now does that mean the Tory Party Treasurer, instead of putting your school's title deeds in Ark Schools name - he can instead put your school's title deeds in the Tory Party Treasurer's name
Now if that is not "cronyism" of the most absolutely shocking sort - I don't know what is
Serious investigations need to be asked as to how Michael Gove can have "lost" the title deeds for £10 billion of state assets without a trace - after councils kept them safe for decades!"
End
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Like my writing? Tip me on Patreon
I Have A Blog
- Ahriman238
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
^Well, you could raise the standard implied by 'average' by teaching the kids better. This is very much a possibility; there are "good" and "bad" ways to teach with differing levels of effectiveness.
The problem is that to develop better methods, methods which will actually work across a diverse student body, you need large numbers of teachers who have enough initiative and flexibility that they can experiment and do things that are unconventional.
An atmosphere of terror and regular purges of 'low-performing' teachers (including those who had bad luck, whose school districts are full of kids raised by wolves, or who tried something new and had it not work out) is... not conducive to this.
If anyone's seen Stand and Deliver, it occurs to me that it'd be damn near impossible for a reborn Jaime Escalante to do that stuff now. Not because he'd be a worse teacher, but because his high school's laserlike focus on preparing kids for a much dumber-level Big Honking Standardized Assessment would snuff out any attempt on his part to offer more advanced courses. The principal would just order him to 'stop wasting time' on that and concentrate on remedial tutoring for the kids who've failed the BHSA five times in a row and are cruising to flunk it again next month.
Insisting on a 100% pass rate, or as near to it as possible, just guarantees that teachers spend even more of their energy working on the lowest marginally educable student. Very little is left over for average or above average students. Since these are the students actually getting into colleges and so on... I suspect that's part of the reason colleges complain that high school students are unprepared. The A, B, and C students are learning less than they did fifteen years ago, because the teachers are too busy working with the D and E students.
And while this is speaking mainly of the American experience, I doubt there's any practical difference between that and the schools in Britain, if the article Zaune posted is to be believed.
This.
Actual education tends to get lost in the swarm of targets, objectives, goals and buzz-talk. Half of which seems to come straight from Hallmark movies where kids are "saved" the first time they get a teacher that really cares. Teachers may have a high burnout rate, but nobody, and I do mean nobody, got into this job without caring for the kids.
The newest craze here in New England is "full inclusion" where we whisk SPED and ELL kids into the general classroom the moment it looks like they might someday be ready for it. The idea is that there's a dedicated SPED/ELL teacher co-teaching with the regular instructor and scaffolding for their kids. We adopted it this year and so far it's been an unholy mess. We already have lots of problems with mainstreaming kids before they're ready, because we figure learning to function in a group/society is important enough to risk spiking their academics, this is so much worse. And half the time the two teachers are totally unable to work together, so the class just grinds to a messy halt.
And I really hate to raise the issue of pay, because it will sound self-interested, but I work in MA: nationwide highest scoring, highest standards for teachers, only state to routinely reject national standardized tests because our tests are harder. And #8 in teacher salaries. A rant there for another day. I therefore presume that my experiences reflect the upper end of the US bell-curve for teacher pay, and this is a problem because at least a third of the teachers I know have to work a second job to make ends meet. Those who don't usually A.) live in tiny apartments on the cheap side of town, often with a roomate B.) have a major source of income through a spouse C.) are 30 years-old but still live with their parents or D.) have been teaching for 20 years or more and finally make a living wage through the magic of tenure. All of us have Masters degrees, except the few who are working on Masters degrees, because that's the state standard. My understanding is that nationwide 66+% of teachers hold down a second job, which really eats into your time for planning and grading, and drains you personally. I know half a dozen people who went into education, loved teaching, but had to take a second job and eventually ditch teaching for another, more profitable one.
Throwing more money at people to teach won't solve all, most, and maybe not even many of our problems. But it will do wonders for retaining our best people, and attracting new talent which is always a problem, particularly with STEM specialists who know they can make it big in the private sector.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
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Re: Teachers: Life Inside The Exam Factory
Yes.
Also, the crude reality with any serious attempt we make to replace teachers:
Who are you going to replace them with? Beginning teachers are relatively ineffective, which in turn means that 'good' teachers are almost always experienced. And it's not like we have millions of experienced teachers waiting in the wings to replace the people we deem incompetent, even if we kick them out.
Kicking them out and hiring new ones is appealing... but it means the new recruits enter the system in a witch-hunt, disruptive atmosphere that makes them far more likely to burn out or simply quit within a couple of years. Turnover is not your friend here.
Also, the crude reality with any serious attempt we make to replace teachers:
Who are you going to replace them with? Beginning teachers are relatively ineffective, which in turn means that 'good' teachers are almost always experienced. And it's not like we have millions of experienced teachers waiting in the wings to replace the people we deem incompetent, even if we kick them out.
Kicking them out and hiring new ones is appealing... but it means the new recruits enter the system in a witch-hunt, disruptive atmosphere that makes them far more likely to burn out or simply quit within a couple of years. Turnover is not your friend here.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov