They’re most of them Marxists, you know – Michael Gove’s views of education

March 28, 2013 by

Robin Richardson 

Image©Steve Punter

Many education officers and advisers in local authorities are Marxists. So are many teacher trainers in universities. That is why more and more schools must be removed from local authority control, and why teacher training must be increasingly taken out of the hands of universities. Also, the teacher unions are more interested in the rights of shop stewards than in the rights of children. That is why their influence in the education system must be curtailed. These people – local authority advisers and officers, university lecturers, union officials – do not want to see a rise in educational standards. On the contrary, they are enemies of promise, implacably opposed to excellence, revering jargon and Marxism. Read more of this post

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Poverty as the over-riding reason for low attainment of school pupils

March 3, 2013 by

Carl Parsons 

©Image Psd`s Photostream

Here we go again. Blame schools and now local authorities for low attainment in education and particularly for the gap in attainment between children from affluent families and those from poor families. It should be easy to mount convincing arguments about poverty, simply low family income, as the root cause of low achievement in schools. People need to understand that we are talking statistical probabilities, not certainties, that children from poor homes will do less well in school exams. The fact that these arguments have not been successful and we witness a trend against welfare means that schools are expected to provide the solution to low educational attainment. Schools are expected to narrow the gap, no, now it is close the gap, in performance between the affluent and the deprived. Consequently schools are blamed when the gap remains, beaten up by the much heralded, but tiny number of, examples that have achieved high attainment from pupils growing up in disadvantaged circumstances.

Underachievement in education of pupils from poor families is an injustice, a tragedy, a scandal, a moral disgrace, a political absurdity. Such neighbourhoods, and the schools there which struggle to educate poor children, are allowed to persist through a collusion of those who want to blame poor people and the vested interest of the middle classes (squeezed middle?) frightened of losing resources. Read more of this post

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GCSE Crisis- Britain’s Youth Deserve Better

August 31, 2012 by

Anthony Parker 

Image © Kewima

In Gehenna they sacrificed their children to appease ancient gods,
By fire to reverse their fortunes by miraculous odds.
Condemned,
Millions on the dole queue stuck in the mire,
Amidst the doom the only light is that of the funeral pyre.
Cuts here and there, cuts everwhere to put the books in order, yet the young lead to Gehenna, lambs to the slaughter.
A price worth paying for fantasy growth to be higher,
in Gehenna they sacrificed their youth upon an open fire.
No hope, forget Jerusalem built upon this green and pleasant land,
In Gehenna they took the youth by the hand and fed them to the fire!

I start this post with one of my poems ‘Gehenna’, a story of blow after blow being laid upon the young. However this is no fantasy dystopia, this is modern Britain, a place where even qualifications don’t seem to help, if you’re lucky to be awarded them that is.

Nearly a week after the GSCE results were released, the row over the results is intensifying as head teachers are pressing for this summer’s English GCSEs to be regraded amid a row over grade boundaries, with the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) estimating that more than 10,000 teenagers in England and Wales received worse results than merited.

The results – in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – show a fall in the proportion of GCSEs awarded an A*-C grade across all subjects for the first time since the exams were introduced 24 years ago, however the results for the English GCSE caused particular alarm. Teachers have stated that they believe pupils had been marked too harshly and too few had achieved an expected C grade. But more shockingly, some have said that pupils who would have got a C if they had sat their GCSE in January, only got a D in June  for exactly the same work,  which has prompted accusations of grade boundaries being deliberately raised to satisfy Mr Gove’s avowed aim to make exams tougher.  Read more of this post

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The State of School Dinners

July 15, 2012 by 2 Comments

Osmi Anannya 

Image © USDAgov

Jamie Oliver has renewed his series of attacks on Michael Gove, after the Education Secretary appointed Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, the dynamic twosome from the healthy fast-food chain, Leon, to examine school dinners in Britain. Oliver, who has been relentlessly campaigning for bringing about healthier alternatives in school meals for many years now, toxically remarked that another expensive review of the situation is really not required and more should be invested in getting involved in the matter and bringing about a positive change. Oliver has also criticised Gove’s decision to not include academies and free schools in the legal requirement framework, which states that school meals must adhere to certain basic nutritional standards, because he trusts the professionals in such institutions to act in the best interest of the pupils.

It seems an odd decision to pick the men from Leon to carry out the examination, even though they do admirably have a good record of producing healthy, tasty food with a commercial perspective, because so do many other restaurateurs around the country. The co-founders of Leon are to chart up an “action plan” to ensure improvements in the standards of school food, as well as determine, more broadly, what role food plays in school life, in an attempt to make more nutritious and tasty food available to school children.

Labour set minimum nutritional standards for school food in England in 2008 – 2009 and spent millions of pounds transforming menus to include healthier options, following Jamie’s School Dinners (2005) show on television. The show had revealed how unhealthy much of the school food in England was. In fact, a survey carried out by the School Food Trust, just a few days before Gove’s recent decision regarding the situation, found that only about 22.5 % of schools provided pupils with the standard requirement of at least one portion of fruit and vegetables a day. Around a half of secondary schools, the survey also found, served up pizza and starchy food, cooked mostly in unhealthy oils.

Michael Gove’s intentions to re-examine the situation is perhaps commendable in the sense that getting a different point of view about the situation will help to deliver a better plan than simply listening to everything that Jamie Oliver has to say about the issue. The point remains though, that in order to improve standards in school food, Gove should not delay the work to be undertaken to deal with the crisis.

In the UK, around 27% of children are overweight, which at the present moment is the highest in Europe. The Government’s Foresight report suggests that this is expected to get worse with 40% of Britons expected to be obese by 2025. An obesity epidemic seems to be just looming over the horizon for Britain, and appropriate measures should really be taken to curb the situation before it becomes truly problematic. Apart from the health problems-aspect, an obesity epidemic also has an adverse effect on the emotional make-up of children.  Read more of this post

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Tests don’t hold all the answers

April 23, 2012 by

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.

Read more of this post

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Would you trust Michael Gove with your child?

April 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

Image

Image © Regional Cabinet

Mathew Hulbert

Other than national security and health, there is nothing more important than the education of our people.

It is the area of policy with which I care most about.

Why?

Because, at its best, a good education can open up a whole world of opportunities.

It can be the great leveller.

It can enable young people who, in terms of their background, have not had many chances or opportunities to shine and show that they are just as capable of great achievements as those born with rather more privilege, sometimes even more so.

That was the laudable aim of comprehensive education, when it was created under the excellent leadership of Shirley Williams (then Labour Secretary of State for Education, now, of course, a leading Liberal Democrat Peer).

So, why is this Government seemingly in favour of turning this all on its head?

Can that possibly be a good thing?

Is the future of our education system now only in the hands of the right-wing ideologue Michael Gove?

And where is the Lib Dem influence in it all?

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Books: Not Flashy, but Cheap and Important

January 3, 2012 by

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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An Unfair Road to a Level Playing Field

November 28, 2011 by

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?

  Read more of this post

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