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liveinabin1 Great Old One Joined: 19 Oct 2001 Total posts: 2140 Location: insert witty comment here Gender: Female |
 Posted: 17-09-2013 21:26 Post subject: |
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| Kondoru wrote: | | Quote: | | The teachers teach the children life skills like using a knife and fork, tying shoe laces, the names of the birds, flowers and trees. |
I assume Serbian kids don't have parents... |
Many children in schools across the UK who are furnished with a set of parents don't learn the life skills mentioned above at home. |
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| Fluttermoth Mrs Treguard
Great Old One Joined: 05 Feb 2008 Total posts: 398 Location: Cornwall, GB Age: 43 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 18-09-2013 13:02 Post subject: |
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That's very true!
My sister and aunt are both primary school teachers, and they regularly have to deal with children who don't know their own names, are still in nappies, that can't feed themselves etc.
Tragic, really  |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 08-10-2013 13:37 Post subject: |
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It seems that the complaints of universities and employers regarding poor literacy and numeracy skills amongst recent school lavers have been validated by the OECD:
| Quote: | England's young people near bottom of global league table for basic skillsOECD finds 16-24-year-olds have literacy and numeracy levels no better than those of their grandparents' generation
England is the only country in the developed world where the generation approaching retirement is more literate and numerate than the youngest, according to the first skills survey by the OECD.
In a stark assessment of the success and failure of 720 million-strong adult workforce across the wealthier economies, the economic thinktank warns that in England, adults aged 55 to 65 perform better than 16-24-year-olds in both foundation levels of literacy and numeracy. The survey did not include people from Scotland or Wales.
When the results within age groups are compared across participating countries, older adults in England score higher in literacy and numeracy than the average among their peers, while younger adults show some of the lowest scores for their age group.
The survey shows that out of 24 nations, young adults in England (aged 16-24) rank 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy. England is behind Estonia, Australia, Poland and Slovakia in both areas.
This compares unfavourably with the adult population as a whole; English adults (aged 16-65) rank 11th for literacy and 17th for numeracy.
The OECD cautions that the "talent pool of highly skilled adults in England and Northern Ireland is likely to shrink relative to that of other countries".
The findings come as the skills of the next generation take centre stage in British policy debates – with the prime minister last week calling for young people under the age of 25 to be stripped of benefits so that they can "earn or learn" their way through life.
The government blamed the last administration, saying that the young people covered by the survey "were educated almost entirely under the last Labour government – for example, someone aged 18 when they took the OECD tests would have started school aged five in 1998 and finished compulsory education aged 16 in 2009".
In the survey, the first of its kind, 166,000 people in 22 OECD member countries as well as Russia and Cyprus, sat through two hours of intense questioning about their skills and background.
The report, launched on Tuesday in Paris, shows that there appears to be a distinct hollowing out of the workforce across the rich world – with jobs requiring highly-educated workers rising by around a fifth while those needing a medium or low skills base dropping by about 10% each.
England stands out with a handful of nations where social background determines reading skills. Along with Germany, Italy, Poland and the United States, the children of parents with low levels of education in England have "significantly lower proficiency than those whose parents have higher levels of education".
The OECD also warns that when looking at information technology, which it says is key to reshaping the workplace in the developed world, only 42.4% of 16-24-year-olds in England and Northern Ireland are proficient to the extent they can handle unexpected outcomes. This compares with the average of 50.7%.
Even worse is that young adults in England and Northern Ireland scored 21% lower than those in South Korea – the best-performing country. Although the United States has a reputation for being the IT centre of the world, the survey found that its youngsters were the worst for basic technology proficiency – scoring 4.8% below young adult Britons.
"The implication for England and Northern Ireland is that the stock of skills available to them is bound to decline over the next decades unless significant action is taken to improve skills proficiency among young people," said the OECD.
These changes have already had major implications the global labour pool for talent.
Britain used to provide 8% of the best educated workers – but today only providing 4% of the top qualified labour.
By comparison South Korea was not on the map two generations ago. Young South Koreans now make up 6% of the highly skills talent pool.
What is clear is the rise of a very different form of training and education in the far east, designed to rapidly lift their populations out of poverty. Nowhere is this more stark than Japan where high school leavers achieve a higher literacy level than English graduates.
At a fringe meeting attended at the Tory party conference, the skills minister Matt Hancock told delegates that Japan's model of vocational training was something that the "government was looking at very closely. People talk about Germany and its progress in making sure non university graduates are skilled up for the workplace. But the real success is Japan."
Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's deputy director for education and skills, said that Japan is very good at developing skills but its "education system works in silos and productivity growth is so-so. Compare this to the UK and US, where they are no longer good at developing talent but very good at extracting value from the best workers".
"It is a question of which problem do you wish to have? In Japan they need to fix labour markets and make them more responsive to skills. In the UK it is a much harder problem to fix which is creating a training programme."
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http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/08/england-young-people-league-table-basic-skills-oecd |
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| theyithian Keeping the British end up
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Total posts: 11704 Location: Vermilion Sands Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 08-10-2013 14:38 Post subject: |
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The manta: "Education, Education, Education".
Roll of shame:
David Blunket (would-be hardman, must 'win' at all costs),
Estelle Morris (had the self-knowledge and integrity enough to resign),
Charles Clarke (gleeful wrecker - utter ),
Ruth Kelly (no discernable effect, Blairite vapidity),
Alan Johnson (nice chap, no meaningful ability),
Ed Balls (it's all a political knockabout - young people way down the list).
The Labour government failed - spectacularly. These men and women were basically buffeted by the winds of lobbyists, special-interest groups and unions from one ill-thought out and fleeting initiative to another. The result is a wasted decade or more which has produced an ignorant yet bizarrely confident cohort of factory-fodder at a time when - more than ever before - the country needs a competitive skill and knowledge base to attract business to this ever-more-blighted isle. And yet their examination grades are higher than ever before!
Consider the money that has been ladled into education: vast investments in infrastructure, materials, and peronalised-supervision, all of which have yielded nothing more than the dusty post-war chalkboards of yesteryear.
Truly shameful. I bear Michael Gove no ill-will (yet), but even if every one of his new initiatives turns out to be a roaring success (syllabus reform, free schools, English BAC), the effect will be slight. We need a fundamental overhaul of the entire system - preferably conducted by an outsider who can deliver some home-truths without the inevitable political howling. |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 08-10-2013 19:07 Post subject: |
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Education is a racket. Dare to charge a premium for your skills and experience in the market-place and you will be overlooked in favour of cheaper and unqualified options.
One of the worst offenders in this business is the Education game itself.
Recent First Class Degree Graduates are now being sought for Teaching Assistant posts at around £300 weekly. First Class! Well is that meant to inspire them to get a proper teaching qualification for maybe as much as £100 daily rate?
Newly Qualified Teachers will work for this but experienced teachers are told they are pricing themselves out of the market if they negotiate for more.
Truth to tell, many qualifications are worth more to the industry and the awarding bodies than they are likely to be to you.
Not that it is a good time to be out there without qualifications but - increasingly - I feel I am part of a pyramid selling venture.
edit: Expanded and reworded in parts. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-10-2013 09:46 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | We need a fundamental overhaul of the entire system - preferably conducted by an outsider who can deliver some home-truths without the inevitable political howling.
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I've said it before on this thread, but I think what you're proposing is virtually impossible because of the plethora of vested interests associated with education. Any attempt at a serious rethink would involve slaying far too many sacred cows on Left and Righ. I don't think anyone from any party is brave enough to do it. |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5788 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-10-2013 17:07 Post subject: |
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Did I say I thought the Far Eastern systems a Good Thing???
(How can you liken Japanese literacy to English...they are two different writing system...To be literate in Japanese is a far different thing to our simple scrawling) |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 10-10-2013 08:24 Post subject: |
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A good article drawing attention to the way that the talibani freemarket ideologue, Michael Gove, constantly rubbishes, denigrates and generally does down schools, their teachers, governors and local education authorities.
| Quote: | http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/10/school-disaster-movie-win-win-gove
The relentless school disaster movie is win-win for Michael Gove
The deficiency narrative cunningly attached to state education is the Tories at their brightest. But do parents really buy it?
The Guardian, Zoe Williams. 10 October 2013
I nurse a deep respect for the person who says the incredibly unpopular thing at a public meeting, even while I'm hissing at them (that's an overstatement – I would never hiss). At a meeting about free schools in Walthamstow in London on Tuesday, a parent said: "The secondary schools round here are terrible. Everybody moves out, I'm just wondering where I can afford to move to."
This was not the view of the room, and it's not the view of Ofsted either; so it's not, technically, the view of the government, since if it builds the architecture of education around an inspection system it then doesn't trust, that's surely a deficiency far greater than any you could level at a secondary school. "The schools round here are great. I teach at one, I would send my children to any of them. This is just middle-class hysteria," said someone else.
And here the two statements collided, because whatever the schools are really like, there is an overriding perception that they are terrible – and this has come straight from Michael Gove. The secretary of state for education has denigrated schools relentlessly, in word and in deed.
In his telling, local authorities know no standard except bog standard. Pupils consigned to their system will be lucky if they come out literate. Improvements in GCSE grades have no meaning, since they are the result of deflation in quality rather than hard work on the part of the students. School architecture is just more highfalutin liberal claptrap, governors are "local worthies seeking a badge of status and the chance to waffle about faddy issues", the national curriculum is a ball and chain, and teachers are part of a leftwing conspiracy. Indeed, dynamism will only be returned to the education system when schools are allowed to employ people without teaching qualifications, which 47% of free schools have duly done.
It is a vision so paranoid and destructive, so superstitious and vitriolic, that if he said it all in one speech you'd think you were listening to a guy in a sandwich board outside a tube station. The failure narrative is the Conservatives at their most intelligent, and you have to tip your hat to that.
It's incredibly easy to sell progressives the idea that things are terrible. We're utopians. We're looking for equality (we can fight later about how much and how to measure it). Therefore to be told that schools in poor areas perform worse, that poor kids never catch up, that terrible acts of violence happen in schools full of deprived pupils, all dovetails neatly with the principle that deprivation is a bad thing. Then, with a wry "ta-da!", Gove and his Tory innovators unveil their solution. It is schools that fail the poor. How can we, as liberals, stand by and watch a system in which the poor don't prosper? "How about we try making the poor less poor?" seems woolly and distant against the immediacy of "let's tear up this failing system, starting today".
A pleasing side-effect is that the broad expectation has now been created that schools are rubbish. So when people have close contact with schools and find they are actually brilliant, relief and surprise combine to create the impression that, in spite of straitened conditions, the government is doing quite well. Managing expectation is an old MBA trick: they learn it alongside "put profits first" and "drive down wages". If you can successfully persuade people that the situation is dire and experiences will probably be poor, picture their delight when the experience is mediocre.
A BBC survey published today showed this in action; 27% of people thought schools had improved; 48% thought recycling collection had improved; 34% thought parks and public spaces had improved. And all this "despite government cuts", the website proudly announced, as if auditioning for a job as the Twitter-monkey for Conservative central office.
Of course the school results are positive: it would be impossible for schools to be as bad as the portrait has them. Of course you don't notice your public services being cut – the main budgets over which local government has control are adult and children's social care. If the BBC is genuinely interested in how the cuts feel, it needs to ask some people who are genuinely being hit by them. Disabled people, the parents of disabled people, elderly people, the very poor who were previously on council tax benefit. About 25% of local government cuts are falling on 2% of the population, but woo-hoo!, the other 98% of us feel surprisingly OK about it.
Returning briefly to education, the third win of Gove's disaster movie is that if things are that bad, it justifies any solution he can dream up. His core idea is to actively exclude local authorities and sideline teachers – bundle up the people with, collectively, decades of experience in educating children, the better to disregard them. Instead, the business is handed over to local have-a-go heroes who know nothing (but they know what they like).
And here comes the secretary of state's final victory. If the policy succeeds then he's a success; if it fails, if schools are shut down for treating girls like second-class citizens, if schools don't open in time for the start of term, if buildings aren't appropriate and kids spend two years without a playground, then this is yet more grist to his failure mill. "The state cannot cope with the demands of modern education. It is time to bring in the private sector." It's win-win-win-win, for him, and it's lose-lose for everybody else.
Twitter: @zoesqwilliams |
Full links at link
The Tories at their brightest. Says it all really. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-10-2013 12:36 Post subject: |
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Someone with no teaching experience, not fully qualified appointed as head of a Free School; now quits.
| Quote: | Pimlico free school head teacher Annaliese Briggs steps down
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24466928
Annaliese Briggs is studying for her postgraduate certificate in education
A head teacher whose appointment to a new free school was criticised has quit her post weeks after starting.
Pimlico Primary, which opened in September, said Annaliese Briggs, 27, had left the job to "pursue other opportunities in primary education".
Miss Briggs was appointed in April as the head while still studying for her postgraduate certificate in education.
Labour councillors in Westminster said governors may be regretting appointing someone with "no teaching experience".
The primary school opened at the site of Pimlico Academy in Lupus Street, central London, with 60 pupils and aims to have 420 pupils by 2019.
Pimlico Primary is sponsored by Future Academies, a charity founded by Lord Nash and his wife Caroline.
Governor role
A statement from Pimlico Primary said: "Having successfully set up Pimlico Primary, Annaliese Briggs has decided to leave Future Academies to pursue other opportunities in primary education.
Continue reading the main story
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Start Quote
The Pimlico academy governors might now consider that this is a decision they now regret”
Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg
"A new principal of Pimlico Primary has been appointed. Coming from within the group, our new principal is already known to the pupils and families of Pimlico Primary, and brings over 10 years' experience in both early years and leadership.
"We are delighted that Annaliese will continue to support Pimlico Primary as it grows by becoming a governor."
Miss Briggs is completing a school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) course in Wandsworth and will qualify with a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE).
She previously said she has classroom experience from teaching primary school children in supplementary schools and had been chosen to lead the school for her curriculum expertise.
Reacting to the news that Miss Briggs has stepped down, leader of the Labour group at Westminster Council Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg said: "Being the head of an inner-London school is a tough job which can sometimes be very stressful.
"By appointing someone with no teaching experience or experience in running a school, the Pimlico academy governors might now consider that this is a decision they now regret.
"I hope that Ms Briggs' commitment to education is undiminished and wish her well in her future career."
The Department for Education said it was a matter for the school. |
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| theyithian Keeping the British end up
Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Total posts: 11704 Location: Vermilion Sands Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 10-10-2013 15:08 Post subject: |
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| Pietro_Mercurios wrote: | | A good article drawing attention to the way that the talibani freemarket ideologue, Michael Gove, constantly rubbishes, denigrates and generally does down schools, their teachers, governors and local education authorities. |
No, that's a dumb article that ignores the OECD data that proves the current British education system is a failure. This isn't about a Tory media narrative, it's about the fact that we're producing young people who are quatifiably less literate and numerate than in the past, despite having spent a colossal amount of money trying to achieve the opposite.
The OECD data may well be politically handy for Michael Gove, but that doesn't make them any less true. |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 10-10-2013 15:33 Post subject: |
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| theyithian wrote: | | Pietro_Mercurios wrote: | | A good article drawing attention to the way that the talibani freemarket ideologue, Michael Gove, constantly rubbishes, denigrates and generally does down schools, their teachers, governors and local education authorities. |
No, that's a dumb article that ignores the OECD data that proves the current British education system is a failure. This isn't about a Tory media narrative, it's about the fact that we're producing young people who are quatifiably less literate and numerate than in the past, despite having spent a colossal amount of money trying to achieve the opposite.
The OECD data may well be politically handy for Michael Gove, but that doesn't make them any less true. |
What the OECD data seem to prove is that the more inequality there is in a society, the more the attainment of basic skills amongst the general population suffers as a result.
| Quote: | http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/08/oecd-adult-literacy-numeracy-uk-poverty-inequality
OECD literacy leagues: poverty and inequality blamed for England's results
Problem may lie in lack of encouragement and opportunity for people to study once they have left school
The Guardian, Richard Adams, education editor. 8 October 2013
A failure to sustain education post 16 and the deep-rooted problems of poverty and social inequality have been blamed for England's poor showing in the OECD survey of adult skills.
The results of the OECD survey, which put England close to the bottom in literacy and numeracy among 16-24 year olds among developed nations, comes despite – or perhaps in part owing to – decades of permanent revolution aimed at improving the education system.
But the problem, say those who study the subject, may not just lie in England's schools but in the lack of encouragement and opportunity for people who are falling behind to study once they have left.
The OECD found not just low levels of achievement in numeracy and literacy tests among the population as a whole, but strikingly poor results among the 16 to 24-year-old age group.
According to the survey, England's young adults performed on a par with their 55-65 year-old counterparts in literacy and numeracy – in contrast to the other countries in the survey, who saw young adults outperform their older brethren in one or both categories.
Professor Chris Husbands, director of the Institute of Education, said that while Britain had high flyers as skilled and educated as its international peers, it was the country's failure to improve those on the bottom rungs of educational achievement that saw it lag behind the likes of Finland and Japan.
"It's the classic problem that this country has not solved over 150 years: how do you educate the masses?" Husbands said.
"We have never – culturally, politically – thought about what we want our education system to be like for all our children. That, for me, is the big historic failure. We have to get it right and time is running out."
Those countries that appeared well above England and Northern Ireland on the international league tables – such as Finland and Singapore – have developed more successful structures for post-16 education that go beyond Britain's patchwork of vocational qualifications for those who don't stay on to do A-levels and then potentially go to university.
A recent report by Ofsted on access and achievement in English schools found that 16-year-olds who failed to achieve proficiency in literacy and numeracy had only a one-in-seven chance of doing so by the age of 18.
"It's not that our education system is failing right across the board, it's that we are not very good at the compensatory provision between 16 and 19," Husbands said.
With a third of employers in the UK not offering any training to their staff, the result is that young adults in employment are unable to catch up or maintain their skills through workplace training.
"These results show that we have neglected enabling young people to continue with a core of general education, which is what they would get in many other European countries," said Lorna Unwin, professor of vocational education at the University of London.
Rules introduced by Labour but which came into effect in September mean that young people must either stay on at school or be in training or apprenticeships until the age of 18.
Alison Wolf, the King's College London professor who recently wrote a review of vocational education for the Department of Education, said: "The obvious point to make is that, until this year, we have been pretty much unique in the world in allowing our young people to give up maths and English at age 16, at a time when every other developed country has been increasing its general education requirements for 16-19 year olds.
"The results are what you might expect given this – and I'm therefore very pleased indeed that the government adopted my recommendation that everyone without maths or English GCSE grades at A*-C should continue with those subjects. I hope it will be the first stage of a more general emphasis on maintaining and improving those general and critical skills."
In the Netherlands, which showed outstanding results for numeracy, pupils are divided as young as 12 into academic and vocational education, with 60% of students going into vocational schools that continue to provide a general education.
But Unwin pointed out that the proportion of low-skilled jobs in the UK was partly responsible for the poor level of vocational education.
"We shouldn't separate education from what's happening in the labour market," Unwin said. "If people don't get the opportunity to practise their skills, we know from research that skills deteriorate. That goes for numeracy, literacy as well as any other types of skills."
For all the talk of reform in the education system, it may be that existing levels of disadvantage mean that there are limits to what schools alone can achieve in improving reading, writing and counting.
A report published on Tuesday by Save The Children found that children from low-income families are falling behind at school by the age of seven, with most unlikely to go on and achieve good GCSE grades in maths and English.
That suggests a social problem with deeper roots, as revealed by the latest results from the government's phonics check – gauging reading skills among five and six-year-olds at state primary schools – which showed that 180,000 children in England failed to meet the DfE's standard.
"It's not a problem of the last five years. It's not a problem of the last 15 years. It's not a problem of the coalition government. It's not a problem of New Labour. It's not a problem of the Thatcher government. It's a problem of consistent and persistent failure over 30 years to address skill development at the lower end of the attainment range," said Husbands.
If there was a positive note it was that the last time the OECD conducted similar research – its 1996 international adult literacy survey – the results for England and Northern Ireland were worse. This time, Northern Ireland in particular improved significantly.
The survey showed an even weaker performance from the US, which ranked bottom for numeracy for 16 to 24-year-olds, and in the lower half of the tables overall, below England and Northern Ireland. Where the US once boasted 42% of the world's highest-skilled adults, according to the OECD, it now has just 28%.
But having skills is a different matter from making them economically viable. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's special advisor on education, pointed out: "While the US and England have a limited skills base, they are extracting good value from it. The reverse is true for Japan, where rigid labour-market arrangements prevent many high-skilled individuals, most notably women, from reaping the rewards that should accrue to them." |
Gove's buggering about with the education system is doing nothing to help. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 11-10-2013 10:54 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | What the OECD data seem to prove is that the more inequality there is in a society, the more the attainment of basic skills amongst the general population suffers as a result.
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Inequality is certainly a huge factor but there are others that are equally important. Neither of the major parties wishes to address the big issues. Labour dealt with it by dumbing down the curriculum, relying on continuous assessment (ie - get your parents/teachers to do it for you) and over-extending access to higher education. The Coalition has dealt with it by making university unaffordable for most of the population and chasing various gimmicks like free schools. I think that Gove has done some good things - like trying to restore some sort of rigour to exams) - but the insane level of bile directed at him shows how difficult it is to upset vested interests in this area. |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 11-10-2013 11:39 Post subject: |
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| Quake42 wrote: | | ... I think that Gove has done some good things - like trying to restore some sort of rigour to exams) - but the insane level of bile directed at him shows how difficult it is to upset vested interests in this area. |
LOL  |
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| Eve11 Grey Joined: 07 May 2012 Total posts: 20 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 11-10-2013 14:51 Post subject: |
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| Quake42 wrote: | | Quote: | What the OECD data seem to prove is that the more inequality there is in a society, the more the attainment of basic skills amongst the general population suffers as a result.
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Inequality is certainly a huge factor but there are others that are equally important. Neither of the major parties wishes to address the big issues. Labour dealt with it by dumbing down the curriculum, relying on continuous assessment (ie - get your parents/teachers to do it for you) and over-extending access to higher education. The Coalition has dealt with it by making university unaffordable for most of the population and chasing various gimmicks like free schools. I think that Gove has done some good things - like trying to restore some sort of rigour to exams) - but the insane level of bile directed at him shows how difficult it is to upset vested interests in this area. |
I agree with a lot of this, but the one thing that comes coming up so often it needs to go in the Urban Legend thread is that the left/Labour were responsible for introducing continuous assessment.
GCSEs and the accompanyng coursework, along with the race-to-the-bottom competitive examination boards, were delivered back in the 1980s under Thatcher - I should know, I was in school and remember it well. Introduced by the right NOT the left. Both my English GCSEs were 100% coursework marked by our teacher for example. And he was such an incompetent, misogynistic, doddery old fool that thank god an invigilator intervened and remarked all our classes work or we would have had all the boys 2As and all the girls B/Cs (I was personally marked up from 2Cs to 2As).
ALL our GCSEs except science, maths and french were mainly or 100% coursework, and it was a f*cking mess. My view, all politicians need to keep the hell out of it unless there's an overriding reason to intervene.
The irony is I now have a child facing doing the new style GCSEs, and messed up as the old system was, returning to exam-only is not the answer in trying to get the best reflection of a student's ability. It measures ONE style of intelligence only, the ability to memorise facts. It's catastrophic for dyslexics in particular, and the added burden of 5% of grades in most academic subjects being given for grammar and spelling means anyone who needs access arrangements for whatever reason can only get a top grade of 95% before they've even started. Talk about adding barriers.
It sounds nice on paper and soundbites but shows no understanding whatever of reality and the complexity of human minds and learning styles. Coursework properly executed is a much more accurate way of measuring ability across the board.
And then you get the the issue of WHY coursework was so badly handled, and the nightmare and pressures of league tables forcing schools into desperate measures to improve results artificialy and by whatever means available.
But I don't want to be here all day, so I'm leaving that one
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-10-2013 09:51 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I agree with a lot of this, but the one thing that comes coming up so often it needs to go in the Urban Legend thread is that the left/Labour were responsible for introducing continuous assessment.
GCSEs and the accompanyng coursework, along with the race-to-the-bottom competitive examination boards, were delivered back in the 1980s under Thatcher - I should know, I was in school and remember it well. Introduced by the right NOT the left. Both my English GCSEs were 100% coursework marked by our teacher for example. |
That surprises me; I was part of either the second or third cohort to do GCSEs and although there was a fair bit of coursework in English Language and Art, and a small amount in History, pretty much everything else was examined in the old fashioned way. Different exam boards maybe?
I don't put everything down to the last administration and agree the rot started way before 1997 - the conversion of polytechnics to universities in the early 90s was a very bad thing IMO - the dumbing down of the curriculum and the shift to module-based assessment certainly gained pace in the 2000s. The module based assessment has received surprisingly little attention but has been a significant factor in grade inflation, as students can resit modules repeatedly until they get the grade they are looking for. |
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