Tests don’t hold all the answers

April 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Daniel Mann

Image © Mackius

A-levels, GCSEs, GCEs, Highers, Standard Grades, 11-plus, and SATs. Comprehensives, key stages, and grammars. Sixth form, primary, secondary, and reception. What does it all mean, what is the point, and most importantly, why do several acronyms and how one performs on them determine the course of one’s life?

Each of the acronyms above represent either a standardized test itself, or something that is determined by standardized test. A-levels are often the sole factor where one goes to university, GCSEs the sole factor in determining if and where one goes to sixth form, and in several places, one test an the early age of eleven years old determines the outcome of two more standardized tests by determining the quality of education that one receives.

Ostensibly, the purpose of standardized testing is to determine what educational stream a child should be put into, as well as determining how successful he or she is likely to be. The issue that arises here is one of educational diversity. No two people are exactly alike and, as such, no two people learn in the same way. Some are excellent in a testing situation while others perform better in a practical assessment than an exam. Education and testing is an issue which the Labour Party has historically been indecisive on, having overseen the implementation of the Tripartite System – whose sole determinant was the 11 plus to making plans to eliminate state grammar schools.

In opposition, it is incumbent upon the Labour Party to set out a clear, concise and workable education manifesto, especially having seen the effects of such Coalition-driven legislation such as the Academies Bill. The answer is not to do away with standardized testing in its entirety, but it is not practical nor is it fair to put an emphasis on testing above all else and also to attempt to stream children at the age of 11 as is done in several local authorities with, in many cases, no chance for reassessment at a later age.

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Filed under Children and families, Conservatives, Education, Labour, Lib Dems Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest Blog: Teach PPE in schools

March 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

Nikhil Venkatesh 

What do Danny Alexander, Ed Balls, David Cameron, Yvette Cooper, William Hauge, both Milibands, Aung San Suu Kyi, Bill Clinton, Toby Young, Stephen Hester and Rupert Murdoch have in common? Two things: they are all very important people, with more than their fair share of influence over the rest of us; and they all studied* for a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).
The subjects that make up the PPE course are vital for an understanding of the world (and of how to change it), and should be available to all. Our country’s ruling class, as this BBC article notes, is made up of PPE graduates. However, in Britain at least, these subjects are restricted to a select few who have the means, fortune and intelligence to get onto the famous course at Oxford*. My view is that Britain would have a far more open, informed and democratic society if PPE subjects were taught in state schools.

Philosophy (for a far better article on the teaching of philosophy click here)

Quoted by Julian Baggini in The Philosophers’ Magazine, senior fellow in the public understanding of philosophy, Angela Hobbs, made the case for teaching children philosophy. She says a knowledge of philosophy creates ‘a bright, inquisitive teenager’ – and surely having an ability to ask and understand questions such as ‘What is good?’ ‘What is happiness?’ and ‘What exists?’ makes for a more rounded person. The philosophical method, ‘the ability to construct and analyse an argument,’ Hobbs says, is something that ‘you’re going to need whatever you go on to do after you leave school.’
If philosophy teaches one thing, it’s to question accepted truths. A country of philosophy scholars would never let a politician get away with saying that he has all the answers; it would always ask ‘How do you know? What do you mean?’. A philosopher can see through a media image, can analyse and criticise any argument, and can understand the plight of others. A philosopher wouldn’t be surprised that our ruling class of PPE graduates has conspired to stop us learning these skills. Read more of this post

Filed under Children and families, Conservatives, Democracy, Economy, Education, Labour, Lib Dems, Media, Parties Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Is the holocaust still relevant in today’s climate?

January 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

Louisa Pawsey

Image © Matt Brown

Holocaust Memorial Day brings with it the knowledge that there are still people who remember suffering at the hands of the Nazis. It also brings pain to people whose families will never be complete because there is someone or multiple someones missing from the dinner table.  But for the rest of us exactly how important is the 27th of January? Just another day in the calendar?  Another day for you to live your life?  Have you even noticed that Holocaust Memorial Day is now printed in every diary and on every calendar? Is anyone interested?

As a military historian, I should be shouting from the rooftops about the importance and relevance of Holocaust Memorial Day – but I just can’t.  In fact, the more I study, the more I realise how little people care and how little relevance the holocaust has to anybody that wasn’t affected or involved.  Of course it’s not just the holocaust that has this effect, every year the amount of people wearing a poppy in November has seemed to dwindle and it is fashionable to protest against the armed forces.  As a historian, the first thing you learn is that the further back in history you go, the less interest people have and there will come a time when all the Holocaust survivors will have disappeared.  Read more of this post

Filed under Culture, Education Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest Blog: Why we disagree: but where to go from here?

January 21, 2012 by Leave a comment

Cameron Dron

Our class had a very interesting set of lectures the week before last. Given by Heiko Roehl from the German Development Agency (the GIZ), we were introduced to a number of knowledge and organizational learning concepts. It touched upon a lot of the things that I have been thinking about recently, like the nature of truth, why it is that people – even intelligent ones – can disagree so vehemently about such a wide range of issues and how it is that we as individuals can come to make more of an effort towards understanding each other.

Something that really crystallized all of this rather well was a wee diagram explaining a concept called ‘Relevance Systems’. This theory or way of thinking about individual beliefs and knowledge can help us to understand why and how it is that we can come to have such radically different views of the world. This struck me powerfully because I have been trying for a while to get a better idea of why it is that people disagree about climate change. This helped me to understand the why a bit better, but I’m still not sure if it helps to form any solutions. Time will tell. Read more of this post

Filed under Education, Green, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Abstinence and abortion

January 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

Georgia Lewis

Image © Juliette Culver

Nadine Dorries’ bizarre abstinence-education for girls bill gets its second reading today. Prochoice people across the UK will be holding their breath and hoping that commonsense prevails and it is howled down as soundly as her proposal to prevent the likes of Marie Stopes and BPAS providing pre-abortion counselling was last year.

The timing is superbly tragic – in the same week, the Lancet published a study demonstrating that the number of unsafe abortions is rising around the world and the steady decline on abortion rates of the 1990s has stalled. It doesn’t take a genius analyst of statistics or sociology to figure out that abstinence-only education doesn’t work when it comes to preventing unplanned pregnancy – and to only subject girls to this absurd, outdated, discredited form of sex education is only going to cause an increase in the abortions Ms Dorries hates so much. Read more of this post

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Books: Not Flashy, but Cheap and Important

January 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

Jevon Whitby

Image © Horia Varlan

Last month’s announcement by the National Literacy Trust that ‘1 in 3 children does not own a book’ was a headline with a true capacity to shock. In many minds, including my own, it surely conjured harrowing images of impoverished homes with children unable to learn basic reading skills because of a lack of practice material and of a grim future for a new’ illiterate-British’ underclass.

Should we be sceptical about such figures? The report clearly demonstrates that of children with books of their own, 55% exceed the expected reading levels. On the other hand, there is certainly room for doubt: Almost 80% of children who agreed with the statement ‘I have never been to a library’ still achieve the expected minimum standard.

Yet surely these figures should still be appalling to anyone who treasures reading. Is ‘acceptable’ the standard an educational system should be aiming for? A cynic could claim that this says more about the ‘expected level’ than the children who, without ever having entered a library, achieve it. The recently introduced reading ‘MOT’ for 6 year-olds includes test words such as ‘Cat’, ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad,’ yet only schools in which 60% or more children fail to read them qualify for Michael Gove’s specialist government literacy ‘intervention.’ Well-intentioned policy, but hardly an ambitious minimum standard. Read more of this post

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Tuition Fees: Human Rights and Wrongs

December 16, 2011 by Leave a comment

Laurel

Image © Monika Ciapala

A few weeks ago the Foreign Secretary William Hague, in a speech at the Foreign Office, declared: “As a government we understand how important it is that we not only uphold our values and international law, but that we are seen to do so.”

This may have come as a surprise to those who are acquainted with the UN International Covenant on Economic Cultural and Social Rights. The Covenant, signed by the UK, states in Article 13 that: “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education.”

The UK Government appeared puzzled by this and, in a submission to the UN Committee in 2007, wondered:

whether this paragraph is intended to mean equal access to higher education by: (i) the progressive introduction of free higher education, OR (ii) the progressive introduction of free education up until the point at which higher education commences. The Government’s position on financial provision for higher education students would conflict with interpretation (i) because the Government does not provide free higher education. However, higher education is equally accessible to all in the UK on the basis that fees are not charged at the outset but paid by means of loans at a later stage in the student’s life. If interpretation (i) is correct, the Government believes other State parties (such as Australia and New Zealand) would also have problems with the implementation of Article 13(2)(c). Read more of this post

Filed under Conservatives, Democracy, Education, Lib Dems, Tax and spend Tagged with , , , ,

An Unfair Road to a Level Playing Field

November 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Tom Mottorshead

Image © conservativeparty

With the second national demonstration against higher education cuts earlier this month, and the campaigning engines of the countries student union’s are in full flow, the issue du jour is, in the words of a recently published author: ‘Education, Education, Education’. Now, the question that comes to my mind when hearing about the slashes to the higher education budget that some argue will impede equality of opportunity in higher education, is why we do not pay equal attention to how people from disadvantaged backgrounds are still unable to access the relatively level playing field that is University. Is the question of the quality of pre-university education not more important than those associated with University tuition, and if we care so much about equal opportunity, why are we not in moral outrage about the state of secondary education?

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Winter of Discontent: “We were meant to start at 5 but we’ve just been outside having coffee and cigarettes since then.” The Free Hetherington: An Epitaph

November 24, 2011 by 1 Comment

Bean Reoch

Image © Francis McKee

After staring at a blank document for what feels, now, like hours, I can only come to one conclusion about the Hetherington Occupation: it was like nothing else I have ever experienced.

Officially, the Free Hetherington (as it became known) was a student occupation of a disused university building, protesting the savage cuts being made to academia and resources at the University of Glasgow. It was a bloody thorn in the side of the Principal Vito-Antonio Muscatelli and his Senior Management Group (SMG) for seven glorious months. It was an occupation with real demands; a social space; a hive of activism, of academia; a stage for a chiaroscuro of events and meetings; and sadly also a target for abuse. The former Postgraduate Research Club was reopened by a group of anti-cuts activists on 1st February 2011 and, by the time I became involved in late March, it had grown into something quite spectacular. From there it continued to grow – and despite its end on 31st August 2011 the ripples it made can still be seen on the loch of activism in Glasgow today. Read more of this post

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Why the left shouldn’t defend Cuba

November 23, 2011 by 5 Comments

 Peter Bolton

Heroes of the Left? Image © a-birdie

Since the 1959 communist revolution in Cuba, several left-wing commentators have spoken favorably about the Castro regime. In the world of entertainment, for instance, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and Michael Moore have all made gestures of praise toward the island’s political leadership. Moore’s 2007 film Sicko showered praise onto the Cuban healthcare system while both Penn and Stone have commended the Castro regime and visited the island to meet with Communist Party officials, in Stone’s case to research for a documentary film.

Details of Cuba’s authoritarianism have come back into the public consciousness recently following news reports about the decision by Raul Castro to liberalize the island’s property laws. The move might be taken by some to be evidence of the regime’s reform-minded tendencies but though the policy changes are to be welcomed, reading the details about the plight of the Cuban people shows how misguided it is to defend Cuba as a bastion and exemplar of left-wing ideas.

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