Sep 26 2007
Raising exam standards - how about another “Independent” Regulator?
With no sense of irony or timing Ed Balls pops up today to announce an independent Regulator to assure high quality exam standards, modelled on the ever popular and successful independent Bank of England.
Is that the same independent Bank of England who today makes
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Err John….Sounds like you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Now forgive me if I am wrong but exams at Eleven years of age sounds like the Eleven plus exam that I sat many years ago. You say the purpose of this exam is to check that pupils are ready for secondary school…..so it’s selection based on ability then just like the Eleven plus exam I sat many years ago.
I believe the old grammer school and secondary modern system worked well, but then again I am a traditional Conservative with traditional common sense views.
As regards exam results, I agree that they no longer reflect true ability etc. A recent television program took a group of mathematic A* grade pupils and got them to sit the maths paper for the Eleven plus from the 1960s and out of the dozen pupils only One or Two passed and yet the government tell us that standards are improving. When I use the local bus services around Wokingham, teenagers get on and seem unable to add up the total of Two Sixty Five pence fares.
My other biggest fear about education other than the dumbing down of the curriculum, is the politicising of the curriculum, my grand daughter is being brainwashed into PC views and I am especially concerned about the teaching of British history.
I myself taught her mental arithmatic and times tables as these were not taught by her school. I used a system called cash for questions where I paid for correct answers and she lost money for wrong answers, I must admit I fiddled it so that it would not cost me a fortune but it worked, her maths has improved.
Reply: I am glad cash for questions worked for your grandaughter - it is not such a good idea for MPs! The idea that children should reach a standard before moving on to a grammar or comprehensive secondary school seems to me to be a sensible one. It is neither fair on the children sent onto a secondary school who are not equipped to pursue the course, nor to the others in the same class who are. That is why the Conservatives are proposing summer remedial teaching for those who do not make the minimum standard required, and if necessary resitting the last year at primary.
What we should suggest is multiple boards (again), with Universities able to rank them how they please (but to publish those opinions). Schools could chose which boards and exams to take.
In short a free market where those interested in verifying educational achievement and potential can be reassured of the quality of information they receive.
As you say - this will be another job for the boys and girls exercise, with real control being from the government. Its an expensive fig leaf designed to deceive the English people.
( By the way how much of what Gordon Brown talks about has no bearing on his own constituents ? ).
Reply: Yes, healthy competition is a good idea. Much of what Brown seeks to impose on England does not become policy in Scotland. That’s why he keeps mentioning the word “British”. It is Britain which this government’s devolution policies have done much to undermine, leading many English people to feel the Union is unfair.
My three children are tested every year, the youngest age 11 has just moved up from Junior school to High School the High School won’t use the KS2 SATS results, so he has had two more days of exams this week, three weeks after starting back at school.
Its not the exams that are the problem, it is the fact that nothing is done with the information once received. Surely with any unexpected poor result the test paper should be checked by the class teacher and the parents then given the area of weakness so that additional work can be undertaken.
I can see a vast saving in expense to do away with external testing/marking but as a parent I want to know the truth of the standard of education achieved, by a marker without relationship with my children, but and its a big BUT I want their test papers back and I want to know what my children couldn’t answer.
Reply: Yes of course testing should inform future work and elad to remedial teaching where necessary. The problem today is too much emphasis is placed on too many external tests for the sake of the school in the league table. We need internal tests to supplement marking homework and supervising class work as a check on hown children are progressing, but we need fewer summer terms given over to revision, external exams and winding down.
John,
I agree it is unfair on all to send a pupil to a school if they are not up to the standard to benefit from the said school. However, the problem I can forsee in the “Re-sitting” the final year of primary school is two fold.
1) Often problem pupils will not attend school anyway so it is even less likely they would attend if they were in a “Punishment” type situation with younger kids. Punishment is what these pupils are likely to see it as.
2) The human rights/PC brigade will talk about it being demeaning for the held back pupil. I think they may have a case.
There was nothing wrong with the Grammer school/Technical school/Secondary modern system, so why did we need to fix it?
Comprehensive education works well for the average kid but is bad for the gifted and the not so gifted. The teacher has to teach at the level all pupils in a class can understand and so by definition, that has to be at the pace or level of the least able.
What will improve education is a return to more selection and streaming, also a return to stronger discipline in the classroom.
More qualified teachers instead of teaching assistants, the latter I see as teaching on the cheap in a similar way cheap options have been brought into the police with PCOs, The prison service (auxilaries), Nursing (health care assistants) and trafic wardens with local council wardens.
People do care about the education of their children in this country, you just need to look at the lengths some people will go in order to get their child into the best school, even paying over the top for a house in the school’s catchment area if necessary.
Reply: I agree we need streaming and setting, and that is Conservative policy. We also need to try to get more pupils to concentrate before going to Secondary School as too many arrive ill prepared.
This new regulator will be powerless and is just another attempt at grabbing a Labour headline during conference season. These proposals will solve nothing as the exam boards still have all the power.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/glossing-over-the-truth-about-exams/
John, (if I may be so familiar…?)
Making a child repeat a year should be a measure of last resort. I repeated a year early in my secondary education (largely due to several months missed schooling resulting from a fairly serious illness), and it was not an experience I would want to inflict on others.
I have two teachers in my close family. It is clear they are over-burdened with completely pointless paperwork imposed by the current administration. Free of that bureaucratic drain on their resources, they would have more time to actually teach, they would have time to ensure that children don’t slip so far behind that repeating a year becomes necessary. Combine that with streaming and more effective disciplinary measures to control the small disruptive minority, and the problem would largely be solved.
Reply: I hope you are right about how to solve the problem. That is I am pleased to say Conservative policy - cut the paperwork, leave teachers freer to teach, set and stream and improve discipline, improve teaching English by more comprehensive use of phonics. However, if there are still children at 11 whose English and maths is so poor they will struggle at Secondary School, surely they should be required to do a summer course to get up to speed, and if that fails as well there should be the option of staying down. I understand the feelings that could engender. It is for that reason it would act as an incentive to get it right first time round, or doing the summer course. The alternative of pretending the child can manage a secondary school course when they do not have enough control of the basics can be more disruptive, both for them and for the other children they go to school with.
The reason I can understand how children feel when they cannot keep up is because I was allowed to skip a year at primary school, which in the end was great news. Unfortunately the maths teacher when I went up forgot that there were things that all the others had learned in the year I had missed that I needed to know to manage that year’s course. I had a miserable time thinking I should be able to crack the maths problems, and getting frustrated with getting things wrong and not understanding why. It was only sopme time later when I plucked up courage to say I couldn’t understand it that they realised I had missed out on all the units we were working in (the old fashioned pounds, hundredweights, rods, chains etc)which meant I couldn’t make the sums add up because I did not know the conversion ratios between the different units.
Yes, of course, I agree that it would be completely wrong to let those who do not have the necessary foundations move into secondary education.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that any problems need to be picked-up quickly, and immediately remedied. I agree that part of the solution might be to have summer ‘catch-up’ schools for those who have slipped a bit too far behind their classmates.
However, I still think the key issue is to catch the stragglers early and do something about the problem straight away, rather than leaving it until the end of the academic year or until the point at which they are due to change schools.
If teachers are less burdened with paperwork, class discipline is good and maybe teacher/pupil ratios are a bit more favourable, then they should be able to identify any stragglers straight away and target additional help in-class to get over the problem.
Even though they are teaching ‘whole class’ much of the time, there needs to be sufficient time in the curriculum for them to nip these problems in the bud - maybe by gathering the stragglers into a small group and giving them a bit of extra help while the rest of the class is getting on practicing what they have just been taught.
Reply: I agree it’s better to catch it early, but there will be cases where this does not happen.