As I feel the need to stand on my soap box and get something off my chest this week I apologise in advance for my work-related rant and won’t be at all offended should you wish to click away now…
picture courtesy of Anxiety UK
So, two weeks back into term time and already I have signed a petition to remove the Secretary of State for Education. I don’t add my name to anything lightly but I really do think it’s time for Gove to go. His unrealistic and ever changing demands on teachers is creating an exhausted, de-motivated and de-moralised staffroom; the delivery of our national curriculum with its incessant assessing puts unnecessary pressure on students, creating stressed and apathetic pupils. Do children actually enjoy school these days? Ask a few – I did – and they looked at me as if I’m barmy. As far as many of them are concerned, it’s a place to meet their friends – what goes on in classes is just a damn nuisance.
To maintain league table positions, schools have to chase grades. Targets are imposed on students and it is up to the staff to make sure these targets are met, never mind the anxiety felt by hard working children who aspire to, but sometimes fall short of, their aspirational targets. The government recently implemented performance related pay for teachers. In any other profession or line of work (except perhaps the front line of the health service) I’d say this is more than acceptable – in the corporate world it is probably essential. But teaching? Where we are dealing with the lives and minds of young people? I don’t think so.
Some kids, however hard they work, however much they try, however much guidance they receive from dedicated teachers just aren’t going to reach that magical A-C banding which means that staff, not fulfilling their quota of ‘passes’ will find their pay packets lacking. This system is just crying out to be abused by unscrupulous heads of department who could cream off top students for their own classrooms thus ensuring a constant flow of suitable, remunerative grades.
A-C grades at GCSE (exams taken at age 16) are the keys to moving onto further education and eventually university. Grades convert to points which in turn, convert to cash for funding. It is not unusual nowadays for many top level students to achieve ten A or A* grades at GCSE, which is great for the students and for the school coffers but how does this happen? Are that many students good at everything? In my dim and distant past people generally leant towards either maths/science or English and the arts with only the odd few who were more than competent at everything. What can this possibly mean? Are we breeding a race of super students now who are as good at creative writing and art as they are maths and physics? Who can turn their hands to practical subjects and still be ace at computing and chemistry? No of course we aren’t. Our national curriculum is tailored to ensure that kids jump through hoops with the drained direction of their dedicated teachers.
When they’re not taking exams, pupils are being constantly assessed. I’m sure this has always been the case – just not so obviously to the students as it is now. The students are shown a framework for success criteria and in some cases, the mark scheme, before they even open a book and assessments are churned out in every year group, from ages 11-16, sometimes as close together as one every three weeks in one subject alone. Multiply that by the number of subjects on the timetable and you have one hell of a lot of assessments not to mention BORING BORING BORING.
To what end? Where’s the learning? More importantly, as far as I’m concerned, where’s the fun? It seems to me that we are only teaching them to pass a test, to excel in assessments and that any actual knowledge they may acquire is a happy additional benefit. I wonder if this is all a government ploy to create a generation of analysts… because that’s what they are learning – to analyse, not to create. Short sighted, in my opinion. Eventually, without creators, there will be nothing left to analyse. Rather like when our government got rid of all the manufacturing industries. They really don’t think things through, do they?
During my schooldays which, incidentally, I loved, we were afforded the opportunity (and the time), in English classes, to spend whole lessons discussing books plays and poems around set texts. We were taught to love Shakespeare and poetry before we had to start picking it to bits: we were given a lifelong love of literature which is why I get so exasperated with our older students who think that reading seven novels about an irritating little bespectacled wizard is sufficient recreational reading material for a potential A* student. (I ranted controversially once before about Harry Potter, which you can read here if you’re interested).
My Art lessons were peppered with visits to galleries and History to museums while Geography offered field trips which included wading around in the River Dart and getting lost on an unknown fell in the Lake District. We survived without need for all the health and safety legislation required now to take groups of students anywhere remotely interesting.
(Actually a colleague and I did manage to evade the red tape once and take a group of our students to the theatre. This trip is probably worth a post in its own right, as it turned out).
I know things have moved on substantially since I was at school – of course they have and facilities these days are fantastic. Just what is the point of it all if the learning is secondary to the testing? I wonder if, a few years down the line, our students will remember anything about their schooling or whether their memories will be of one long assessment – and how sad if that is the case.
Hopefully equilibrium will be restored next week but in the meantime, should you feel inclined to sign the Remove Gove from Office petition, you can do so here and if you’d like to read my poem on ‘Free Range Children,’ just click here.
Phew, that feels better…
I LOVE this rant, Jenny. Surely, we must have been fast friends in another lifetime!
I’m proud to say that during my 30 years of teaching h.s. English, literature, speech and creative writing, I survived 5 superintendents (4 brought in new “must do” theories that were a mess), 4 building principals (same problem, but one was also corrupt–he didn’t last long), and 2 department chairmen who had their own personal needs for glory that weren’t at all good for the students. They all did damage, but none lasted as long as they’d hoped because we teachers did speak up and speak out, sometimes at our own peril, and in the end they left…and we stayed.
I survived, thrived, and lived to tell about it. It’s the good teachers doing their best in the classroom that I applaud. And my applause is triple for you, Jenny, and your spirit, and your poem!
I have absolutely no doubt that if we met in some distant staffroom we’d be best friends Marylin. I love that you out lived all those petty minded bureaucrats – good teachers obviously stay the distance.
I do work with many very good teachers who are being ground down by this horrible system of ours. Not what they signed up for.
Thank you for the applause – much appreciated🙂
Totally agree with everything you are saying about Gove and the turning of our schools into factories. I also think that the pressure on schools to reach targets gives them no choice other than to offer students, especially the needy ones, such a high level of “support” that it has created a dependency culture, and a massive shock awaits many of those who leave that controlled environment of school and enter the real world.
It’s almost an hour long, but my friend sent me a link to this lecture
http://www.thersa.org/events/video/archive/sir-ken-robinson, a wonderful vision of what education should be about. Sir Ken values creativity and collaboration so highly, and he describes the way successive governments have marginalised this value to the point of its destruction.
I’ve signed the petition, however sadly I think Gove is just the tip of the iceberg and he has ridden the wave of a movement in education – as shown by the insane idea from the Labour party to have teachers “relicensed” every 5 years. They’ve clearly thrown in the towel and have decided that the only way they can beat the Conservatives is by out-Goving Gove. Aargh! And more aargh!
Out-Goving Gove – I love it! You’re right – the alternative at the moment wouldn’t do us much good either, which prompted my friend over at All Change Please! to ask (tongue in cheek, mind) what UKip’s educational policy is. You can read Tristram’s take on all things educational here – he’s a hoot:
http://tristramshepard.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/licensed-to-meddle/
I’m a huge fan of Sir Ken so I will take some time to watch your video link – thanks for that – and thanks for signing the petition.
I had never heard of Sir Ken before I got this link (the wonders of Facebook!) and it was so amazing to hear someone who had thought out very carefully a whole of philosophy of how education *might actually work*. The frustrating thing is that it is not just pie in the sky. The ideal of a system is actually there if any politician were brave enough to seize it and make a whole new transformation, rather than just bolting more and more restrictive, demoralising edicts onto the structure that already exists.
I’m certainly glad I went to school long ago before all this nonsense started. Admitted some of my teachers were terrible, but I learned an important lesson from them – all the stuff is in the textbook, I don’t need to depend on the teacher – although, a good teacher does make a difference and not all students are good at lone study.
Yes I can remember some terrible teachers – but they were also characters so perhaps not quite as terrible as I once thought. They did however, allow independent learning which is now the phrase of the moment as the powers that be wake up to the fact that children actually need to do things for themselves, rather than having their hands held every step of the way.
Jenny, you are a shining light in the dark days of British education. I totally agree with all you share here, a wonderful and very needed rant if I may say so. I hope it helped!
Also read your poem and HP post, on which I’ve commented.
We used to have such a good education, didn’t we? What on earth has gone so wrong? My schooling experience sounds very much like yours. I will never forget my English Literature teacher, Mrs Anderson. Teachers back then gave us a love of learning which continues throughout life.
Jenny, you keep doing what you are doing. You are making a difference even if you don’t know it, despite all the constraints you face and endless assessments faced by the children. I will definitely sign the petition.
I’m really proud of you🙂 x
Shining light? Bit of a dull glimmer I’d say but yes, ranting definitely helped – especially as so many of you agree with me!
I had a lovely time at school – yes we worked, yes we wrote essays but checking success criteria against a mark sheet? That’s like cheating, as far as I’m concerned. We can be thankful that our own offspring came through the system before it got to this sorry state. If I had an 11 year old now and knowing what I do, I think I’d consider home schooling or seek an alternative form of education.
It really does sound very worrying indeed. As you say, a good job that ours escaped.
And yes, a shining light Jenny, definitely, even if you don’t see it. So glad the rant helped🙂
If ever there was an institution that should be nailed to a wall so that we can get a handle on it, it’s education. People feel that they can “play” with it by instituting “new” teaching practices that have no research to back them up; often these “practices” are recycled and/or of dubious quality and are designed to be money-makers. The powers that be are essentially experimenting on young minds. Teachers are caught in the middle of this crap – they know where the bear sits but are completely ignored.This business of merit pay is ridiculous. Rant on, Jenny!!! I hope you are successful with this.🙂
Thanks, Lynette – I think success is a long way off but I do feel better for the rant and all the wonderful subsequent support. It’s almost comforting to know that the UK is not alone in this and that those at the top are the same everywhere – ie, they excel at massaging the figures to their advantage.
Oh Jenny you have said everything about teaching that I hated, and why I gave up after four (yes only four) years of working 100 hours a week in a totally understaffed IT department, and why it was the worst career move I could have ever made! By the time I wanted to quit I didn’t feel I was doing any teaching at all, just being a glorified babysitter “teaching to test” and even I was bored – of hearing my own voice! If only they (the politicians) would just let the changes settle in before they jump onto another ‘blue sky’ idea which are usually copied from the business world and do not relate to schools. I used to rant too, thank goodness now I don’t need to.
Jude xx
I certainly feel better after this particular rant Jude and am quite overwhelmed by the level of support! It must have been galling to start a new career only to find it falling far short of expectations even though you put all those hours in. My goodness, you did the right thing by quitting when you did. I just feel very sorry for our new young teachers who come in full of enthusiasm and who find after a relatively short time that they are worn out, putting in ridiculous hours while more and more is piled on to them so that pupils ‘succeed.’ It’s not what they signed up for, is it?
No. That’s pretty much what I was experiencing. A lot of the staff had been in the same school for 20 years and willing to put up with the changes because they were close to retiring. Even on my course, 5 students quit before Christmas! (It was a SCITT course so we were pretty much in a school from the beginning). Several young teachers I knew quit after gaining their QT status, and I found one young woman (under 30) and newly made HOD crying in the staff loo only weeks into her promotion. She was so tired! She quit too. I think schools are going to struggle to keep good teachers. The young ones are not prepared to sacrifice everything for the job, which is so unfulfilling nowadays anyway.
I agree! why we don’t copy systems that work and stick by it instead of changing every few months every time new person take the seat every time the wind blowing hard.. don’t they know we live on an island and there will be always strong winds… I don’t go for details as you all did it so good.. Thank goodness I only paint.
Only painting is good, Doron – children could learn a lot if they were left to paint creatively but you’d be appalled at how structured art lessons are these days – thirty kids in a class – and thirty pictures virtually the same. No chance to experiment or think ‘outside the box.’
It is very true and and ashamed it looks like it. Nothing justify this level. I think it is the lack of people with responsibility and experience and everything now a day is done for the sack of doing it in safety and looking after yourself instead of standing for is right or what you believe in. No one is accountable for what they do. Where are we going???
You, Jenny, are the Norma Rae of the British education system! I completely agree. It’s interesting to read that your education system is having many of the same issues as we do in the U.S. In my state, the government recently enacted performance related pay for teachers…bad idea, very bad. Loved your poem!
Yes it is a very bad idea – open to so much miss-handling by the unscrupulous – and where there’s money, there will always be temptation to be less than fair.
Norma Rae? Hmm, I like that idea – thanks Jill – and thanks for reading the poem🙂
Oh my goodness! I say that because I think your rant could easily come from many teachers here in New Zealand. I didn’t realise our education systems were copy cat ones😦
Wow – that’s NZ, the USA and Canada as well as the UK. This is an epidemic!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting – I shall be over to see you for a browse later this week🙂
Epidemic is a good word for it!
I couldn’t agree more. All the government appear to be interested in is our position in global league tables of pupil achievement. This, in itself, isn’t an issue, but having worked in business for many years I’ve seen the unintended consequences of caused by putting in measures that haven’t been thought through. The government seem to want our education to deliver pupils ready for the workplace. I would argue with this as an overriding goal, but even if you believe this to be the right way forward it is failing, and it’s not because there aren’t enough pupils with the right qualifications, it’s that we have produced – and will be focussing even more heavily on producing – pupils that have been spoon-fed how to pass exams at the expense of problem solving, critical thinking and creativity. And the crazy thing is, if we allowed these skills to develop, the pupil’s exam performances may improve too.
In a nutshell there, Dylan, well said. I know that from discussing recruitment issues with friends in the corporate world they are not necessarily aware of what ‘ten GCSE’s A-C’ actually means and they recruit not knowing how lacking in essential skills (including in some cases a basic grasp of the English language) some young people are.
And you are absolutely right – if problem solving, creativity and critical thinking were allowed to flourish naturally, things would most definitely improve. Failure needs to be an integral part of an eventual successful outcome – I was watching a program the other night about building flying machines and the engineer interviewed said that he almost encouraged failure during the creation process as it was the only way to eliminate problems.
Ah, but wasn’t that the reason for the Diplomas? To encourage problem solving, creativity and critical thinking? So much money was pumped into those (with businesses involved from the start so they got the workforce they required) and to what result? I was a part of the Diplomas – well the IT one anyway – and I was appalled at the lack of support for teachers even though it was promised (and I was one of the so-called supporters) along with resources. It was a complete shambles for most schools as they had neither the knowledge for teaching the subject nor the resources to help them teach it and of course it was totally impractical to run alongside the traditional curriculum.
Sadly though, in schools where it was successful – and there were a few – the students loved them! They thrived in being able to think things through for themselves, to come up with new ideas and work as a team with all the inherent problems that involves. Even after I quit teaching I was involved in the IT Diploma for a few years and even taught it for a term, and it was – or could have been – a real breakthrough.
Now Gove wants to introduce ‘coding’ – so I’m guessing more money wasted outsourcing to companies who will ‘train the teacher’ to teach coding. And once again teachers will be on the hot seat come September, expected to meet targets in something they are completely unable to deliver, without resources and without proper support or training. Farcical.
OK my rant over. Just my OH suggested I might like to be one of those trainers (I am a software engineer) – fortunately he was joking!
I either don’t remember the Diplomas, Jude, or our school chose to ignore them but they sound exactly the sort of thing we should be encouraging. As for all this coding nonsense it just beggars belief and is yet another example of Gove placing unattainable targets on our already over stretched teaching staff.
This is very true. For a while I worked in private business a bit parallel to working in schools and it was interesting to see the lack of independent demonstrated by younger employees. Also lack of commitment, which went hand in hand with a heightened expectation of what the employer would do for *them* – the employee who was being paid to supply services! They had got used to expecting things to be done for them at school, you see.
All this was pre-Conservatives and Gove – it’s cultural and has sadly been going on for a while…
I find it amazing that these youngish politicians who know nothing about the subject of the departments they run think they know better than those who have been doing it for 40 years. I wouldn’t appoint him as head of the stationery cupboard.
Lots of emphasis on teaching, no emphasis on how to learn, taking responsibility for learning, just churning out pointless essays which teach students nothing. Many of students I teach who are quite able, cannot do things my least able students of 40 years ago did automatically. And they are not ready for the workplace either, having become highly dependent and unable to work it out for themselves – sometimes by failing first.
I still have the joy of seeing a student “get it”, but fail to understand why they haven’t been taught “it” or learnt “it” several years before. Why as a student would you want to keep doing what you don’t enjoy and which teaches you nothing? Poor souls. I hope they discover the joy of learning later in life.
Your stationery cupboard comment made me laugh out loud.
It is this dependency which has been fostered over however many years that the powers that be are trying to eliminate or at least reduce by introducing ‘learning to learn’ lessons. While the content of these lessons is interesting to an onlooker (like me), and the children do actually seem to enjoy some of the tasks involved, one does have to ask (yet another) question – if each subject area was actually educating rather than guiding the students through a prescribed framework then these sessions wouldn’t be necessary.
But we do what we can given the restricted environment in which we have to do it.
Oh Jenny, I don’t know if you’ll find this comforting, but our public education system (the tax-payer funded system) is in the same state of upheaval here in the U.S. Everything you described above is being implemented here as well – constant assessments, teaching to the tests, pay rises linked to student achievement, etc., all in the name of Education Reform. Teachers have no decision-making power in reform policy, yet they assume the lion’s share of the blame and consequences when students do not show adequate “growth.” Schools are also penalized when they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress, they are put on a watch list, and if the so-called failure continues for a defined length of time, the school is shut down, students are relocated, and staff are terminated. I fail to see how this test-and-punish system is reforming anything. Education has been reduced to the recollection of surface-level facts. Schools with the neediest students are punished further when funding is withdrawn. These methods instill fear in desperate educators who resort to cheating on high-stakes tests, and who can blame them, with their livelihoods on the line?
I could go on about this for days, because I’m an educator. A few years ago I resigned from my job with the best interests of my family in mind. I now work part-time and have had no regrets. What haunts me now is whether to return to the profession when my children are older. My husband begs me to use this opportunity to discover a new career. Given the direction public education is headed, I may just do that.
Well I do take a bit of comfort but certainly no pleasure in the fact that this does seem to be a global issue. The responses here would suggest that even though we are all completely different individuals from all walks of life we are sharing the same dissatisfaction and facing the same problems in the education of our children.
Our schools are also put onto watch lists – if they fail to reach certain targets they are put onto what is termed ‘special measures’ which sounds a very similar process to the one you describe.
The neediest pupils in many cases are not given access to a path where they might actually come out at the other end with something of any worth purely because these so thought of ‘lesser’ qualifications come with no remunerative value for the schools.
Good luck with your career decision – it’s not an easy call.
Judging by the number of comments, you seem to have touched a nerve; said when others have been thinking.
Sadly, what you describe is becoming more and more the case on a global level and, while I do have great respect for standardized testing (I oversaw part of it at the provincial level for two years in the late nineties) I am also aware of its shortcomings. Simply put, well-constructed, standardized tests are one part of the total assessment program, which, in turn is one part of the system. I think, though, that in some jurisdictions the tests are becoming the whole thing.
…and that’s just the start of it, of course. We also have policies on inclusive education and such that need to get carried out too.
You know what I think? It is a good thing that we live in a reasonably affluent, connected society because many of the educational outcomes that our educational (so-called) leaders are taking full credit for (reading and writing, critical thinking, problem solving) are, in fact, happening in spite of that standardized testing regime. Funny–the smug so-called experts are there patting themselves on the back for gains that teachers and parents are going out of their way to get done, despite the barriers being put up by those who should be playing the role of enabler.
Know what, Jenny? Some days it feels good to be retired. While I do miss (most of) the students and (most of) my colleagues, I don’t miss that BS at all🙂
I must say that I am somewhat overwhelmed by the level of and detail in everyone’s responses. However, I’m glad to discover that it is a subject many people have an opinion about and even happier that those opinions seem to coincide with mine!
I’m in no way advocating that there should be no standardised testing – far from it – we need bench marks to spring from and work towards – but these need to be fair and attained by embedded learning not, as Gwen (above) puts it, by the recollection of surface-level facts.
Jacqueline mentions the thrill of teaching a student to ‘get it’ – that light bulb moment when you know they’ve grasped something that then inspires them to further inquiry. I’ve seen that with our own son who has pursued doggedly his interest in history almost at times to the exclusion of everything else. However, he dropped history at sixth form level because the course on offer didn’t come up to expectations.
I guess that in my support role I’m in a fortunate position to be able to observe what goes on and support not only the students in their learning but also the staff who are often stressed and over stretched with their workload. Stressed teachers equal stressed students – not a good combination. I reckon you retired just at the right time.🙂
Jenny, our problems in education in Canada seem to be like a pendulum: too much testing, not enough attention to standards; too much rote learning (and too little creativity and problem solving) to too much problem solving with no basics. So we all seem to agree that the bureaucrats are inflicting pain and extremely poor, ill-considered decisions in jurisdictions around the world. These are people who presumably started out on the same track in education, eager to make a positive difference. Is it that they are dancing to the whims of politicians, who respond to polls to stay in power with no real policies of their own? I no longer have any faith that the people in charge EVER use common sense in making a decision or ever consider the long view. Teachers must feel like they are just holding on for dear life. In Canada, math education has been taken over by “discovery learning”, which would be fine if in the higher grades, and as a discrete part of the curriculum at those levels. Instead we have students who don’t even know how to add and subtract, more less multiply and divide. The curriculum has changed the names of he numerator and denominator so they won’t be so intimidating to the children! These things leave me speechless. In fact, the state of the math curriculum in our province – done with the best of intentions but no understanding of what the obvious consequence would be – is probably even more scandalous to me than my other bugbear, where the provincial government of the only officially bilingual province in Canada took away early French immersion in the name of elitism. The minister at the time, who owes a lot of his own success to having been through that program, had to be sued by a parents’ group in order to get immersion back in place starting in grade 3. Meanwhile, every other province in Canada does offer early immersion. These things leave me beyond speechless.
Jenny, your post is beautifully constructed. You should get it published in as many papers as possible in the UK. Once you’ve done that, please write some pieces for the rest of us and we’ll get them posted for you. This is our kids’ – and grandkids’ – future. It’s also the economic future of our countries. Thank you for your rant. It is needed!!
Jane – I’m blushing at your last paragraph – thank you for those kind words – but you’ve given me food for thought as far as sending similar to the press. We’ll see.
I think your pendulum analogy is spot on. It’s what happens here between our two main political parties neither of which has come up with anything sensible as far as education goes for some time. (Or anything else, as it happens…).
Changing mathematical terms lest they be intimidating is just farcical but sadly, I wasn’t especially shocked – ridiculous measures like this are happening all the time here across all subject areas and it really does leave one speechless.
Being bilingual is elite? Unbelievable. I hope he was sued for a hefty sum by that parent’s group.
Thanks for your interesting reply Jane – it’s good to know you haven’t left the blogosphere entirely – we need your measured responses!🙂
My only real experience of the current education system is that when we need to encourage children to read, it can be incredibly difficult to get classes to come into our libraries, due to lack of time in the curriculum and the health and safety issues of being able to escort them there. It seems such a shame that creative learning is no longer possible – and what good are all the tests when young people can’t afford to go on to higher education, or even if they do, still can’t get a job at the end of it.
Oh don’t get me started on health and safety – that’s a whole other can of worms! How dangerous can it be to visit a library.
Yes, fees for higher education are prohibitive and will probably become more so. And jobs?! What are they? What a gloomy picture we paint and how lucky we are to be where we are and not stuck in the middle of an uninspiring system.
Firstly I loathe PRP. And that isn’t because I had bad rankings, far from it. When we had grades of 1-5, I consistently had band 2 and also achieved band 1 which was normally only for directors.
OK., so I’ve got that out of the way. It is divisive, subjective, and ruled by favouritism, skewed by ridiculous so-called measures of performance.
In fact, front-line health service would be a more sensible way to measure performance eg audits of surgeons with wound infections? There are a lot, believe me. And where is their PRP? They just go up the rankings every year. Which just goes to show how silly it is.
PRP chases money, it is one of the crassest inventions ever, and particularly in the corporate world.
Ten grade As? That was pretty rare when I was at school. And I went to a good academic school. Cue rant about examination standards falling.
I think our schooldays were similar, although I did like learning for the sake of it to pass exams. Well, that was why I went to school wasn’t it?
We did have one sixth form teacher who spent a whole half term teaching us about literature that wasn’t on the syllabus. Bit of a waste of time I thought as we never caught up with that part, but I enjoyed it to hell. We looked at Marlowe, Albee and loads of others who weren’t part of A level. It seriously widened my reading though and I think that is what you are saying.
I remember your HP post – it was before I had read one. I stand by what I said at the time.
But I don’t think analysis is bad per se. I don’t even think people do analyse these days. Creativity and critical thinking sometimes come after analysis and learning. We all get there in the end. But I’m left wondering why education has to change. It was OK when I was young, and when my parents were young. Children learn differently. I was red hot at chemistry but my partner knocks spots off me despite going to a secondary modern or tech school or whatever. But when he went to college for decorating it just sunk in. Teachers, subjects, pupils – measure it? I don’t think so.
I think the bottom line is are today’s kids any more intelligent than me? Or rather than I was at their age.
You’re right in that everyone (or mostly everyone) does get there (or somewhere) in the end. We know that from where we stand right now – it would just be sooo nice if kids didn’t have to experience such stress so early – goodness knows life can be stressful enough at times and school days shouldn’t be racked with it. Some yes – we all have to learn how to cope in certain situations but the weight of expectation is too great given the lack of substance in the current curriculum.
Intelligence? Hmm… how to measure that? Not by a string of A grades that’s for sure. Grades these days denote the ability to follow instructions – to be biddable. Maybe the fact that people aren’t analysing now, as you suggest, is the reason why the next generation are being processed to only analyse. Hopefully things go round in circles and they’ll be allowing them some creative thought in a few years time. We can be optimistic :)
With regard to PRP, back in my publicity days, I’d expect pay to be performance related. Not much point sending out press releases and other stuff if the column inches aren’t measuring up each month – proves the target audience was wrong. Happy to report that my department were pretty successful overall – but that was then. Probably changed beyond all recognition now – if it even still exists in the same format.
Oh my, Jenny, what a mess. Teachers I have spoken with here in the US feel much the same. Most feel like babysitters with little or no discretionary power in their own classroom. The shift to Homeschooling is pretty dramatic too, as those who can are opting out of the public education system in order to provide a better learning environment for their child(ren); supplementing their curriculum with external fee paid tutoring in other educational activities, such as music lessons or gymnastics. Ideally, the parents are adding the social aspect of school into the additional tutoring.
At my age I’ve finally reckoned with the fact that I can’t change the world (I used to think I could), but I can change my own sphere of influence. To that end, I am quickly becoming schooled (interesting choice of word) in Homeschooling as I consider whether or not I should continue homeschooling my own granddaughter once she reaches elementary school age.
Best of luck with your petition drive. I look forward to reading more.
Thank you! Home schooling is definitely an interesting alternative and I think if I was the mother of young children now I might seriously consider it given our current state of affairs here. As long as a certain amount of structure is adhered to and children have the opportunity to socialise with their peers, I can’t see there is much of an argument against it. So – good luck to you if you decide to go ahead – it’ll make for fascinating blog posts and I’m sure your granddaughter will thrive.
If I did not have such a searchable name, I would add a few of my two cents in here now.
You are funny – but a dear friend of mine (we’ve known each other since we were eleven) who is now a deputy head at a large school near the south coast refused to sign the petition in case it put her job in jeopardy. So much for the freedom of speech!
We all were trapped, one way or another! (JK) Now my daughter is thinking of living at home. You get the idea.
Jenny, was curious about this post, I think a suggestion on the subject to follow from your October, 2015 post.
I agree testing and standards is not the best way to rate students or teachers. I think concepts are more meaningful than dates and periods. Even Spelling, once the first rules are taught should be dropped. I had 2 gifted children in math, one in all language arts. All loved science, art, music and sports. Not everyone should be judged or graded in one way. In the 80’s, I made individual contracts with goals in language arts, spelling and current events for 6th graders. The parents liked this method and surprisingly although I did not teach standards yet, they all passed tests and proficiencies. They were enthusiastic about listening after lunch to my reading chapters from classic literature. When I got burned out on middle school I taught 9 years of integrated special needs with typically developing preschoolers, helping prepare them for kindergarten. In the 90’s in Ohio I logged on to the preschool standards for ages 3 years old to 5 years old. This surprised a few of my friends who thought we played. I had an assistant who taught with low pay while I tested on 3 tests x 3 times a year. About 30 minutes for the 3 tests. (Phonics, Alliteration and Picture identification) I was enjoying teaching under a grade 1 – 8 grade, worked on my Master’s in preschool special ed ( “Early Intervention”) and ended up not making the deadline. I felt a sense of relief when they had such a lovely retirement party for me. I worry about my grandchildren and their education. My daughter does “drills” with her 6 and nearly 11 year old. My daughter in law’s after school program she calls “The Homework Club.” Both are really doing their part, one of my biggest gripes were parents who didn’t read to their children nor check their homework. I had a working teacher mother who still read to us or my dad did, while they took turns with 3 of us practicing facts in biology, math or history.
On other subject, happy to hear of your son loving history, Jenny. I really was impressed with your commenter here. A wonderful discussion ensued here. 🙂
Wow Robin, thanks for back reading this one from a while ago. I’m happy to report that Mr Gove is no longer in office but unfortunately his successor (a woman) is not much better. I was really interested to read of your teaching career and how you tackled the basics with the preschoolers. We find that very little emphasis is put on reading in our junior schools: some eleven year olds arrive at senior schools without understanding their basic phonics so therefore have reading ages as low as five. It’s shocking in this day and age and in out affluent area of the U.K. that this is allowed to happen. We are having to go right back to the start with some pupils just to teach them to read because of course if this skill is not mastered then nothing else, what ever subject, is going to make sense. At the moment we are battling to keep our intervention programme going but because of the cuts I alluded to in yesterday’s post, we are in danger of losing this as we are required to babysit behavioural issues that our senior leadership team have no idea how to manage. They don’t seem to compute that a lot of this bad behaviour is borne from lack of ability and that a consistent approach learning basic skills would keep them occupied. Hey ho, we do our best within the limitations imposed!