Teaching | ukwatch.net

Another Education is Possible

JamieSW — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:33:13 +0000

The testing regime in schools is breaking down. Before the summer break SATs papers were lost or badly marked; pupils were absenting themselves from the tests and head teachers were demanding an end to these wasteful and useless exams. One parent from Sunderland, truck driver Stuart McAnaney, has two sons: James, 11, and nine year old Matthew, at St Anne’s RC Primary School. He said, “I think it is absolutely disgraceful that this has happened. When James was sitting his SATs he was in a terrible state because he was so stressed. I think they should be scrapped altogether.”

From this month a new secondary curriculum has been introduced which encourages schools to put the creativity and fun back into learning. Some in government seem to have recognised that the teaching by numbers approach to learning doesn’t work for all children.

However, the pressure of league tables will force many school management teams to play only lip service to the new rhetoric. Teachers will be forced to continue teaching for the tests as accountability mechanisms such as performance management and lesson observations are used to enforce compliance.

This tension between creativity and the current testing regime can be exploited. Staff at Filton High School, South Gloucestershire, have begun to offer a glimpse of another type of school where learning is more engaging and relevant. We have started to develop a collective approach to curriculum design that engages pupils by dealing with relevant social justice issues and offers them a real audience for their ideas.

Since 2005 both teaching and non-teaching staff have formed a curriculum group called Alternative Futures. We wanted pupils to begin to act in a more critical way. Meeting after school, between 15 and 35 staff regularly attend and plan two-week themed cross-curricular learning projects around current issues. All departments have been represented. Laura Storey, an English teacher and South Gloucestershire NUT equal opportunities officer, says, “The cross-curricular nature of the fortnight enables our students to see the links between their lessons in a way that makes their learning both fun and relevant. Perhaps as important, it also enables teachers to work collectively. Many staff feel that we are beginning finally to control the content of the curriculum.”

Radical thinking

Notwithstanding the new changes in the secondary curriculum, as it stands the school curriculum is geared towards preparing young people for career paths and to promote “an efficient and flexible labour market”. What radical teachers have to ask themselves is, how can we promote radical thinking in our pupils?

With the rise in anti-immigrant racism and the success of the British National Party (BNP), this year staff decided to tackle the issue of cultural diversity, identity and racism. The school has increasing numbers of parents from Portugal and Eastern Europe. Bristol itself is a major centre of Polish migration. The council has estimated that between 15,000 and possibly 25,000 Polish workers have found employment in the city in the last two years. In last year’s council elections the BNP stood in a neighbouring ward to the school on an anti-migrant ticket and, with little canvassing, got 400 votes.

Therefore in the maths department they created a resource called “The Human Race – the Migrant Species”. This allowed pupils to examine the history of migration not just of peoples throughout time but of how mathematical concepts travel from one culture to another and become assimilated into our thinking.

They then went on to ask the pupils to examine two statements: “Too many immigrants are coming into this country” and “Our country cannot afford to help immigrants”.

Pupils were then able to use data to help them critically examine contentious issues based upon facts and not preconceived notions.

As Year 9 pupil Louis said, “I always thought that there were lots of immigrants coming to this country, but I see that was wrong.” Pupils were able to calculate that the difference immigrants make to our population is 0.03 percent. But unless we are able to develop critical faculties within our young people they will always be at the mercy of the misinformation deliberately fed to them by the political right who own the media.

This work was complemented by the science department who worked on deconstructing the concept of “race” as a non-scientific term by exploring the idea of genetic variation.

The English department took an empathetic approach to migration. Using photographs taken by photographer Guy Smallman, pupils explored the journey of a Polish migrant who is shown to be living in appalling conditions in a wood outside a small English town. Information about how immigration benefits society and the reasons why people change country was fed into groups who then began to try to create the “story” of the man in the photographs.

The next stage was to give the groups information about shortages of workers in key areas in Bristol such as hospitals and schools. The pupils began to come up with solutions to staff shortages, as well as identifying any barriers that a migrant might have to taking up employment. Finally they had to write an autobiography as if they were the man in the photograph.

As with the other examples from last year’s project, an attempt has been made to embed learning in real, often controversial, issues. However, as this is a type of “offline” simulated reproduction of reality, a bridge is being built between everyday issues and more abstract concepts such as justice or equality.

This process allows pupils an opportunity to reflect and offers them the option of repositioning themselves to work out their own values and beliefs. During this year’s project on racism one Year 9 pupil, Tasha, commented, “I liked learning about other people. I didn’t like Polish people before – they’re foreign. But now I know they’re not trying to take over. I like the work we’ve done in English because writing about someone’s life makes you realise how hard life is for immigrants. They don’t just get everything they want, like benefits and a house, like we think they do.”

To make projects more real we move out of the four walls of the classroom and bring in people involved in the struggles we are exploring, to talk and work with students. Last year the school looked at climate change and had an expert witnesses’ day. One of these was Elaine Graham Leigh who represented the Campaign Against Climate Change.

Learning also takes place offsite. During the Climate Change project in 2007 Year 9 pupils were offered a choice of trips: to learn how to measure a community’s carbon footprint; to work with community artists to make fashion items out of “rubbish”; to cook in Bristol’s top organic restaurant.

This year pupils went out and asked questions of the public about living in a multicultural society, and some of the responses shocked the students.

We also decided to work with Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR). Martin Smith and Weyman Bennett led workshops on music and migration. On the last day LMHR put on a concert for all the school’s pupils with Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and Bashy.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has been very supportive. This year acting general secretary Christine Blower attended the last day of the project. She told staff that she was working with LMHR to see how a website could be developed so that anti-racist teaching resources such as our own could be shared across schools.

Since the late 1970s education unions have been squeezed out of education policy development and shoe-horned in to concerning themselves with pay and conditions issues. Nevertheless, the successful ballot over the NUT’s political fund earlier in the year showed that many teachers believe that the union has to engage with broader political issues such as racism and fascism.

This concern with broader political issues is reflected during the themed learning projects. There is a real buzz among a wider layer of staff about social justice issues. Twenty five staff turned up to an after school meeting of the Alternative Futures group to hear Martin Smith talk about racism and migration. The discussion focused on how to expose the BNP and the relationship between multiculturalism and anti-racism. During the Climate Change project in 2007 discussion took place about individual and social responses to increasing levels of carbon dioxide.

Anna Brooman, who is in her second year of teaching, was a key organiser of this year’s event: “As a new teacher, working on these projects has opened my eyes to the wider political agenda behind education and has also led me to get involved in my union. Earlier this year I represented the school NUT group at the lobby of parliament. I also spoke about our work at the Education for Liberation conference in London in June. It has been a fast and very enjoyable learning curve.”

Outside of the school we have begun to tap into new networks such as the Global Education Network which is exploring ways of introducing “global” issues into the curriculum. We were able to explain how our model of curriculum change offers a coherent method to enable this. We have been invited to lead a session at the Climate Change and Development conference for educators in October. Not surprisingly, other schools are signing up to the Alternative Futures vision of education.

The “common sense” of government approaches to teaching and learning then is in contradiction with what many teachers feel they should be doing. One London teacher put this well. “In my school I have to train staff in how to prepare a lesson for Ofsted. After I have done this I then suggest what they could do on a daily basis. Needless to say, the two are not the same.” Alternative Futures is situated within this political contradiction.

There are also plans for a radical education conference on Alternative Futures next year sponsored by several university education departments. Educators are beginning to want concrete solutions to the present ideological and political crisis in education. The practical initiatives we have outlined begin to pose questions about the struggle for control within the system and offer a glimpse of a different kind of education based on the needs and interests of teachers and students.

Making Money From Education

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:10:02 +0000

The American education company Kaplan has announced plans to open a profit seeking university in the UK. Although only a small beginning, this opens the way to a profit-driven higher education system. The first move was the government’s, who recently relaxed laws on who can award degrees. They are in effect trying to open up the concept of a degree to market speculation and commodification.

Kaplan is already prominent in the US, and they are not altogether alien to these shores either, having joint ventures with Nottingham Trent and Sheffield universities. It also owns the Dublin Business School. Kaplan generates revenues of over $1 billion per year, so it clearly knows how to squeeze a buck or two out of our public education system.

Those leading a campaign against the possibility of a profit driven university are likely to be the Coalition of Modern Universities, which represents about 30 ‘new’ universities in England. They have already criticised the government’s relaxing of laws on the awarding of degrees, because the changes could rob universities of vital funds and would unsurprisingly create an even more class-divided, elitist university system. A senior figure within the CMU said: “There has been absolutely no consultation on principle, mechanics or implications for sustainability.”

The group prides itself on being the biggest player in attracting students from poorer backgrounds to higher education. However, whatever the motivations and creation processes of the new laws, the introduction of profit-driven universities will open up the British higher education system to becoming more like American system, the most elitist and expensive in the world.

SAT scores

That the potential university will aim itself at the more wealthy customers is confirmed by its running of the SAT system for entry into such institutions. “The conventional wisdom is that the [SAT] test is just another leg up for rich kids who can shell out $1,000 for a test prep course. To some, the likes of Kaplan and Princeton Review have turned good SAT scores into a commodity, another saleable ticket into America’s Ivy League aristocracy,” says Kerry Howley, an American teacher. Once such a university comes into being over here, as is no doubt the government’s intentions, it would be in direct competition with public, established universities.

The law of the market would then be applied with ever greater force on our higher education system, and will inevitably erode what remains of its public character. In the light of this, the government’s plans to remove the cap on fees, allowing universities to charge as much as they like, are clearly a part of a larger plan. But it is not wise, even from a long-term capitalist perspective, to open up university education to speculation when this has recently proved to be so volatile as to threaten the entire world economy. Do we want the same logic that has lead to the food crisis and driven millions more into starvation, to also be applied to the way we learn? No way!

SATs school tests criticised by official report

tim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:20:51 +0000

In May, millions of school children throughout England undertook their Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in English, mathematics and science.

The statutory tests are widely considered to be flawed and almost universally reviled by teachers and children alike.

Numerous educationalists are critical of the Labour government’s fixation with increased testing, which is distorting the curriculum and having a detrimental effect on the long-term education of children.

The recent Report by the House of Commons, Children, Schools and Families Committee—Testing and Assessment (Session 2007-2008) paints a disturbing picture of the climate generated by testing and target-setting in schools.

The report declares its commitment to “a system of national testing,” but then draws attention to a number of studies conducted in recent years, including one by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) published in 2003, that found “the use of test results for the purpose of school accountability had damaging effects on teachers and pupils alike. Teachers felt that the effect was to narrow the curriculum and distort the education experience of pupils.”

It adds that “excessive time, workload and stress for children [are] not justified by the accuracy of the test results on individuals.”

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) considered that Key Stage tests provide only “one source” of performance data for both students and teachers, and that it is “hazardous” to draw too many conclusions from this data alone. They argue that “A teacher’s professional knowledge of the pupil is vital—statistics are no substitute for professional judgment.”

The Association of Colleges stated that performance tables composed from examination results data do not adequately reflect the actual work of a school and that the emphasis on performance tables risks shifting the focus of schools from the individual need of the pupil towards performance table results.

“The fact that the results of these tests are used for so many purposes, with high-stakes attached to the outcomes, creates tensions in the system leading to undesirable consequences, including distortion of the education experience of many children,” the report acknowledges.

“In addition, the data derived from the testing system do not necessarily provide an accurate or complete picture of the performance of schools and teachers, yet they are relied upon by the Government, the QCA and Ofsted [the examinations board and the school inspectors body] to make important decisions affecting the education system in general and individual schools, teachers and pupils in particular.”

The City and Guilds awarding body is quoted as saying that “there is considerable obligation on the designer of tests or assessments to make them as efficient and meaningful as possible. Assessment opportunities should be seen as rare events during which the assessment tool must be finely tuned, accurate and incisive. To conduct a test that is inaccurate, excessive, unreliable or inappropriate is unpardonable.”

The present Key Stage tests fail on all these counts.

The National Curriculum in England is divided into four Key Stages, or areas of learning, for school children (Key Stage 1, 5-7-year-olds; Key Stage 2, 7-11-year-olds; Key Stage 3, 11-14-year-olds; and Key Stage 4, 14-16-year-olds). The government’s stated intention is to improve the average achievement across a school at the end of each.

Schools are given targets based on ensuring that children meet the expected levels for their age in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science. Key Stage tests are used to generate data on pupil performance, which is then collated and used, in the words of the report, to “measure trends across time, across schools, and by almost every conceivable characteristic of the pupils.”

The results for each school are aggregated into “performance tables,” which encourage comparison (and ultimately competition) between schools.

Government claims challenged

The report’s authors say that witnesses to its study have challenged the government’s assertions that its agenda of tests, targets and performance tables have helped “drive up standards.”

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) states that there is little evidence that performance tables have contributed to raising standards of attainment. The report also contends that “a growing number of international studies show that other comparable education systems, including those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, have reached and maintained high educational standards without use of the performance tables.”

The NUT drew attention to the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information study (2004), which concluded that repeated testing and examination de-motivated pupils and reduced their learning potential, as well as having a detrimental effect on educational outcomes. Evidence showed that teachers adapt their teaching style to train pupils to pass tests, even when pupils do not have an understanding of higher-order thinking skills that tests are intended to measure and that National Curriculum tests lower the self-esteem of unconfident and low-achieving pupils.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), noting the government’s assertions of improving standards, questioned “whether this means that our pupils are learning more and better.” It referred to research at Durham University suggesting that pupils who reach the projected Level 4 at Key Stage 2 do not retain what they have learned over a period of six months to a year.

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) considers that the aggregation of individual test scores creates a high-stakes testing system that it says will inevitably create a false picture of “progress.” It argues that the government has produced no evidence to support the assertion that targets and performance tables have driven up standards, a contention that “has taken on the aspect of a dogma.”

Results are now used to inform school decisions about performance-related pay, to inform Ofsted decisions about whether schools should be given “light or heavy touch inspections” and, combined with targets, to inform judgments about the advisability of educational initiatives.

The government is criticised for putting in place “accountability structures” that are strongly based on pupil performance in national tests. The distorting effect of these changes places competitive stress on schools and worsens the educational opportunities for most children: “Test results are not the output of education, but a proxy for the education taking place every day in classrooms across the country.”

One of the most destructive effects of this approach is “teaching to the test,” whereby the curriculum is narrowed to those areas likely to be the subject of examination. The report notes, “The Association of Colleges stated that, whilst a pupil may have the necessary grades to progress to the next level, if that learning is shallow, focussed only on passing the test, they may not have a full grasp of the necessary concepts or sufficient intellectual rigour to deal with the demands of the next level. They conclude that ‘This raising of false expectations resulting in a sense of inadequacy may well account for the high drop out rate at 17.’ ”

By narrowing the taught curriculum to what is tested, it is also possible for schools to inflate test scores without actually improving the underlying education of children taking the tests.

The reports’ authors also take issue with the official language of “success” and “failure,” saying that it highlighted a problem with the “standards agenda which the Government’s reasoning does not address.”

The NAHT states that children learn at different rates and in different ways. Schools should focus on assisting children to reach the goals appropriate for them as individuals.

The authors conclude their study by endorsing “the Government’s view that much can and should be done to assist children who struggle to meet expected standards,” But they express concern “that the Government’s target-based system may actually be contributing to the problems of some children.”

Tested to Destruction

Coinciding with the release of the report, the BBC screened an episode of its Panorama documentary series titled “Tested to Destruction,” which highlighted the disturbing effects of increased testing on the education of primary school children in England.

It explained that the SATs regime has only illustrated the underlying social and economic inequality in England today. The better results are achieved in schools in the more prosperous suburbs, and children who live in areas of deprivation tend to achieve lower marks.

Panorama interviewed pupils at the Phoenix Primary school in Liverpool, and invited some of them to draw pictures based on their thoughts and feelings about tests. This produced some very dark and negative images, epitomised in one child’s “SATs Monster.”

Professor Wynne Harlen of Bristol University said that the tests were a “way of telling you that you are less worthwhile,” and that children’s confidence and self-esteem are constantly under threat with every practice test they take. Moreover, “the nearer to SATs the more education was narrowed down to maths, English and science.”

By way of rebuttal, School’s Minister Jim Knight made the claim on the programme that children “don’t even notice” they are taking SATs.

While the other subjects were sidelined in the SATs’ year group, the programme posed the question whether concentration nevertheless led to an improvement in core subjects tested. Specialists insist that the opposite is true. Professor Margaret Brown said that because teachers were teaching to the tests, this was to the detriment of learning. Whole areas of maths, for example, are ignored as education is reduced to practising solving short test questions.

Chief Inspector of Schools Christine Gilbert recently announced that one in five 11-year-olds leaves Primary school unable to read, write and add up, and that overall standards had stalled. According to Professor Brown, “the government have pointed to rises in the test results. Teachers are good at coaching children to the test and it’s got to a ceiling.”

Rather than admitting the failure of government education policies, Gilbert outlined a more punitive inspection regimen beginning in September 2009. Snap inspections are to be introduced with no notice to schools and parents. Evidence of “bored” children can also trigger an inspection. Schools judged either “satisfactory” or “inadequate” will be inspected within a three-year cycle, while those performing better will be inspected every six years.

The SATs exist alongside a whole raft of exams that children in England have to take, including tests at seven, 14, 16 and 18 if they stay on at school. In response to the unpopularity of SATs, the government is piloting a supposedly more “child-friendly” single-level test, to be taken when the teacher deems a pupil is ready. Teachers on the programme said these revisions would be for the worse, as the worry caused by the tests would be ever-present and not just in the run-up to SATs.

Barry Sherman MP, chairman of the Commons Select Committee, said that there was a broad range of evidence showing that SATs were de-motivating and spoiling children’s enjoyment of education. “Testing” he said, “is ever present in schools. The success of a child, teacher and school is linked to testing, testing, testing.”