Rewards - something for nothing?

This news story was floating about on social media today, a story about a middle school that held a "mufti day" only for those who had reached their accelerated reading targets. Click here to see the full story from the Telegraph.

This got me thinking about the expectations of students about to sit their GCSEs and A Levels. The Easter holidays have just begun but many secondary teachers will spend some time in school delivering revision sessions, or in the case of many of their charges, "desperation" classes for those who didn't listen in class first/second/third time around and can't be bothered or don't have the discipline to revise independently.

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day who described this telephone conversation with a parent about their underachieving child in an option subject (names have obviously been changed):
Teacher: I was just ringing to say that Alice is currently on about a C grade but is very capable of getting an A grade if she puts in a bit of effort and knuckles down for the remaining 5 weeks or so at school.
Ms Smith: "Knuckling down" isn't really Alice's I'm afraidt.
Teacher: It really wouldn't be that arduous, in fact I can tell her specifically what she needs to improve upon.
Ms Smith: I really can't see her doing it, but it's great that she's capable of getting the A grade. Is there any way she could get the A grade without putting in the work?
Teacher: Not really I'm afraid, but I was thinking that if you had a quick word that might give her some encouragement.
Ms Smith: It won't work so I probably won't, but I look forward to her A grade in August.
Teacher: *Sigh*

I'm not embellishing this conversation; it actually happened. It's not untypical in the school I work in either. Something for nothing is almost expected. The entire culture of holiday and after-school revision sessions is a toxic one that encourages this "something for nothing" attitude; one no longer has to bother to listen in lessons as you will get numerous other opportunities to be taught what you've missed. After all, teachers have to do all they can to get their classes through 4 levels of progress or whatever ministers and their quangos decide is acceptable nowadays. Ofsted's and the DfE's obsession with data/exam results is the root cause.

And who can blame the students exclusively? At home students receive rewards for nothing. An obvious example immediately springs to mind: a student who has had to leave one school due to his behaviour and is lucky to still be at his current one received but a brand new vehicle for his birthday, despite being woefully below target in every subject on his timetable. So what chance have we, as a school, got? None is the short answer.

Deadlines are not deadlines and students know that if they wait long enough a teacher will essentially be forced to write coursework for them, having been pressurised by a nervous SLT who fear a visitation if the following summer's results are below par. No wonder employers think that schools don't produce young people ready for the workplace (as this story from January 2014 highlights). I'd have to agree that they don't, but aren't allowed to, despite what ministers say.

So when a headteacher tries to highlight the fact that if you work hard you get rewarded, like the workplace, loads of people moan and pick out that those who miss out, for whatever reason, have their self-esteem damaged. You can't win.

How will those children, future members of the workforce no less, how will their self-esteem be when they can't get a job that feeds their excessive lifestyle that they see in the media because they didn't work hard? Where do you draw the line? They have to learn the lesson at some point.

The Chinese Are Coming To Save Us! Or Are They?

In a desperate bid to make British children better at maths the DfE, via Liz Truss, have decided to jet in 60 Chinese mathematics teachers to run maths classes in 30 "maths hubs", whatever they are. The story from the BBC website is here: click me!

I can see numerous business leaders and politicians breathing a huge sigh of relief that we will finally have a numerate generation ready for employment and a set of Pisa results that can be boasted about around the world. On second thoughts, business leaders aren't that stupid and surely can't believe that these 60 visitors from the East will make any difference whatsoever; politicians, however, are stupid enough to believe that this will work despite being told otherwise by various people (read the comments on the BBC article).

So why won't it work? Why the negativity?

I shall answer the second question first, as it's quick and simple:
This is just the latest in a long running campaign to denigrate the current teaching profession in the UK. For a while now ministers from the DfE have stated in various speeches to anyone who will listen that we need top graduates in teaching, and mathematics is one of those subjects where there are relatively few top graduates working as teachers. This because mathematics top graduates are like rocking horse poo (rare, if you're unsure) and get snapped up on big wages, that schools can't really afford to compete with, by industry. And anyway, would a top graduate really be the best person to get algebra across to a stroppy bunch of teenagers? Probably not, as the aforesaid top graduate won't be able to understand why these teenagers struggle to see the point of "letters in maffs". All the government are currently doing is ensuring that no-one will really want to become a maths teacher and the crisis will build in schools from what is already a critical state.

So now we move onto why flying in 60 maths teachers from Shanghai is frivolous at best:
What ministers fail to realise is that the results from certain provinces in China aren't truly representative; statistics are doctored to show them in their best light, something that politicians, particularly those from the DfE are well practiced in. What ministers, and clearly Ms Truss also fail to acknowledge, is that the learning culture of Chinese students is completely different to that of UK students. I'm not saying that UK students shouldn't be like their Chinese contemporaries, but the fact is that they aren't and are highly unlikely to change due to a guest speaker from Shanghai. The consequences of not doing well in maths in China is poverty and starvation; the consequences in Britain is the entitlement to endless benefits which allow you to have much of what you desire without any personal outlay. The incentive to succeed in maths is just not there in the UK. So no matter what these Chinese teachers, very good they may well be, if the horse doesn't want to drink, forcing its head under water will be pointless and will likely end up in a four-lettered tirade towards the guest. Until attitudes towards mathematics change in the UK, the DfE may as well save on the air fares.

This is yet another example of pigheadedness from a DfE minister designed to fool the public into believing that they actually care about anyone but themselves in the run up to a general election. Fortunately, I think that the general public have been under-estimated by ministers and they can see through their smoke and mirrors; at least I hope they can.

Performance Related Pay - Smoke and Mirrors

We got an email recently telling us that we had to complete our Performance Management so that they can be approved by the wise and worldly at the top of the food chain. It's the usual fayre:

1. Grade related - 100% have to meet their given target.
2. Department related - how can to assist the department's move forward?
3. Professional development related - something you need to work one.
4. To do with TLR payment, if you receive one.

Now I have no problem with any of these types of target in essence - every teacher has to do them and in my experience, they are the same school in, school out. The only difference this year is that a teacher's success in achieving those targets will form the basis of the judgement upon whether they should receive a pay rise or not.

So as a result, I have a problem with one of them - the most important one as far as Ofsted, league tables and ultimately job security are concerned: target 1. The targets at our school were described by Ofsted as being extremely challenging, but teachers are expected to drag, in some cases kicking and screaming, all their charges up to those grades.

Just to explain how targets are generated, for those who don't know: in short, by various computer programmes that analyse the children's previous exam results, what they eat, and various other stuff and come up with a number of targets along the lines of:

• Target 1 - the child would get this in their sleep.
• Target 2 - what the child would get if they progress at the "normal" rate.
• Target 3 - what a child would get if absolutely everything went right, luck was on their side and the examiner inexplicably awarded you an extra 20%. Ok so not the last bit, but in order for the child to achieve this target, something special needs to happen and the child makes well above average progress.

Guess which one we use...

As a motivator, the message "your targets are almost impossible, but you still have to achieve them" is not a great one. Perhaps that's why schools are haemorrhaging staff - just a thought.

So after a rant about targets being "achievable", 100% being unreasonable when Ofsted didn't expect the wholeschool to get 100% and that some of my class don't even turn up to school, I was told exactly how I should word my targets in order to achieve without achieving them. As long as I tick a set of, frankly meaningless, boxes, it makes absolutely no difference what grades my classes get, in theory of course, because if my class' results were that bad I would fail, but as long as I get close-ish, I'll be fine.

My next thought was that this makes the entire process pointless, which hasn't changed, and I doubt ever will. The entire process is about your ability to word your targets and manipulate data in such a way that you can con your way to a tick in each box.

Of course, if you manage to word your targets correctly, you then lay yourself at the mercy of the whim of your headteacher and whether there's enough money in the pot for the school to afford your pay rise.

The brave new education world - it's rubbish.

Teachers and Students: Inversely Proportional

Teachers, teaching and perhaps more specifically, Michael Gove, have been in the news a lot in recent months and years. It is now the summer holidays (hooray!), although few teachers can afford to go away due to the considerate travel companies increasing prices dramatically during this period (boo!). But this is also the lead up to the publication of exam results and therefore those all important league table positions for each educational establishment.

The pressure on schools, and therefore teachers to get results has become enormous, with pay linked to performance through the UPS (Upper Pay Spine) scheme in schools, where if the head's particularly under the pump regarding the finances, all they have to do is set targets too high and then refuse to allow pay progression for staff based upon failure to reach targets. It happens people, and is doing so more and more in the current economic climate. Some teachers have given up even applying for progression (it doesn't happen automatically, you have to ask nicely) because they know that it will be turned down on results/financial grounds.

The result of increased pressure to get results from their classes has meant that most teaching staff have upped their game considerably in the last 20 years or so through better planning and more hours being put in to aid and individualise the learning of every pupil in their class. Websites such as the TES (www.tes.co.uk) exist where people share resources that worked for them, meaning that teachers have a wealth of information out there and most use it to the best of their ability in a desperate bid to squeeze the best results out of their charges.

The only problem with this, and don't get me wrong, the upping of teaching standards is a great thing, is that students have now realised that they don't have to make much effort at all to get a "pass" or C grade in whatever subject they are doing because the teacher will put the effort in for them. It's sometimes known as "spoon-feeding" and is the main reason why the business sector are moaning constantly about the quality of student being passed through the education system.

Now I'm not saying that we should return to the days of teachers arriving in class, handing out the text books and writing a page number on the board, but there almost needs to be an element of this to force the young people in schools to become more independent. The problem is that in order for independence to be instilled in pupils, the every school will be forced to take a hit on their results for a year. In order to keep the playing field level, every school and every teacher will have to embrace this new policy (and all teachers should welcome it with open arms!), but this will never happen. The thing is that when given some independence the students will generally try to learn. I know of a teacher who so hacked off will a particularly lazy and chatty class just upped sticks and went to the staffroom to make themselves a cup of tea. Upon their return one of the kids who's actually been listening was at the board explaining to those who hadn't in absolute silence. It's sad that a teacher has to resort to that before the students can be bothered to put in some effort at times.

Due to government meddling therefore, the school system is partly redundant because the children haven't been allowed to fend for themselves, meaning that exams have to be dumbed down in order for the students to be able to have a go at them and government targets on the number of people gaining "quality" qualifications can be met to be shouted about during the next election campaign. Due to the exam system not really testing the children, they are not prepared for the outside world or the workplace and employers moan about teachers not preparing students for the workplace.

No-one can win here purely because of interferring politicians and their made up targets, which is why I would encourage people to avoid the teaching profession unless you are into S&M, for teachers are the current whipping boys/girls for MPs. Where's Guy Fawkes when you need him?

High Youth Unemployment

I found this article on how the lack of decent qualifications leads to youth unemployment: BBC Article

People are getting thousands of pounds in grants from the grants from the government for this stuff you know. The report, by Research by Centre for Cities (what a ridiculous name, by the way) suggests that areas where a (relatively) high number of students get a C grade or above in English and Maths have a lower percentage of youngsters aged between 18 and 24 unemployed. Thank you Sherlock.

The report suggests that government policy over previous years has led too many youngsters down the path of meaningless qualifications in order to boost league table positions, as until recently English and Maths didn't need to be included in the 5 A* to C used to calculate league table position. That's big of them, to blame the policy-makers.

The report mainly appears to blame schools, and ultimately teachers for this failure of many youngster to be equiped for the workplace however. I personally think there may be other factors:

1. The fact that there are league tables in the first place mean that schools are almost encouraged to push students down the path that will give them maximum chance of gaining as many C grades or equivalent, no matter what those qualifications mean or are in. Due to government policy allowing parents to choose schools for their offspring, the market is very competitive and a good or bad league table position could possibly be the difference between a school surviving financially or not.
2. Student apathy towards learning. The amount of times a student has told me "I don't need maths to do what I want to do" or asked "When am I going to use this in real life?". Many students now either don't care or will attempt to do just enough to get a C grade, which invariably means that they won't do enough. The standard reply of "You will use this to get a decent qualification, which will hopefully lead to a decent job" doesn't seem to wash any more, which is a shame, because it's true.
3. Schools have little or no power to actually discipline children due to woolly legal issues - no-one really know what teachers are allowed and not allowed to do. I'm not calling for a return to the days of canings in assembly, but being allowed to keep a child behind to actually complete some useful or worthwhile work is no longer available to a teacher. We need to give 24 hours notice, and generally the parents of those who need to stay behind won't allow their little darlings to do so.
4. That leads me onto the next issue - parents/family. In my 10+ years of teaching there has been  a marked change in the attitude of parents/carers whereupon all the mistakes made by their offspring must be the fault of someone else, usually the school in some way, shape or form. They will promise to employ their child when they leave school, and probably do so for a while until they realise that due to that promise of work, little Johnny failed to get any qualifications that will allow him to perform the job given to him at a reasonable standard. Statistics show that 80% of young people employed by their family are sacked within 12 months. Enough said.
5. The national curriculumn doesn't prepare young people for the world of work. I have some sympathy for those who ask when they are going to use simultaneous equations in real life. They clearly aren't (in my 10+ years I've struggled to find a use for the things outside of the classroom), so that topic should be pushed to the higher end, for those who may want to go onto do A Level maths. The government has made a start but there is still a long way to go, and the pressure to get as many C grades as possible (we're back to league tables) mean that most students can't use anything they've learnt in context anyway, and are unwilling to try.

And I haven't even mentioned Ofsted. But as usual teachers are at fault, not the lazy youth, unsupportive parents, unhelpful curriculum or government policy.

And they wonder why teachers are striking - it's not just about the pensions you know, the pension thing is just the glace cherry on a disgruntled cake!

The Lost Generation

There have been a few headlines this week regarding over a million unemployed 18 to 24 year olds for the first time ever in Britain. This is extremely unhealthy for the country's future, but is it a big surpirse and who is to blame?

Personally I believe that the various governments of the past 20 or so years are to blame, including the current effort, despite their promises to get these young people into work as soon as possible.

Essentially the problem, in my mind, boils down to the apparent importance of league tables and the resultant importance upon getting as many students as possible up to a C grade at GCSE in as many subjects as possible. This has led to the following:

1. In order to make standards appear to rise, the standard for a C grade (and most other grades) has dropped. It is still very difficult to get the top grades at GCSE, but to get a C grade is now far easier than it ever has been, despite what those in Whitehall say. 
2. Children aren't allowed to fail, because the consequences for a school are huge: reduction in budget and reduction in those wishing to attend that school all amount to a dying establishment. As a collegaue of mine said, it's like asking a an army general to go to war and return with no casualties - it will never happen, but due to education policy over the past 20 years, it actually nearly has happened in teaching. Every child, of any intellect, can gain 5 A* to C grades if they want to, and let's be honest, even if they don't, schools will attempt to do it for them (BTECs, come on down!).

As a result of the points above, the age group that is facing increasing unemployment don't actually know how to succeed because tbey've never had to lift a finger in order to do so up until now, so theefore don't know how to when it comes to the crunch, i.e. when they enter the workplace.

Unless children are allowed to fail in school, schools will never prepare children for real life. Unfortunately government pressure upon schools through agencies such as Ofsted mean that generations will continue to be lost until things like league tables and the mis-guided desire to allow everyone in school to succeed, whether they deserve to or not, will mean that young people won't have the desire to do their best (because they won't have learnt it) and achieve what they want to. Can you really blame the students? Why try outside of school when you never had to try in it? And can you blame schools for wanting to maintain their funding so that they can offer a quality education to all its students?

Another colleague of mine, having taught for around 20 years, said that in their time the standard of teaching has got so much better, but that has been counter-balanced by the plummet in the standard of student.

League Tables Are Rigged!

Would you Adam and Eve it? The government have just realised that school league tables are rigged by schools "banking" C grades for students and making the less academic students take BTEC courses because they are worth up to 4 C grades each.

Now if you work in a school the fact that students take BTECs to boost a school's C grades will not be news to you, nor will the fact that loads of students take an early GCSE in some subjects to get a C grade and then the main focus of that school is to concentrate on those who get a D grade and push them up to C. But to those in Whitehall it is news, presumably because they are so far removed from day-to-day school life that it's taken them this long to catch up.

So what's the problem? And what are the government going to do about it?

According to the various articles I've read, the league tables aren't a proper representation of how schools are performing. Had the government bothered to ask teachers (this does seem to be a common theme) they would have found this out a while ago. League tables are all about gaining 5 A* to C grades at GCSE, and now must include English and Maths, whereas before it didn't matter what subjects they were. League tables have been sold to the public as the definitive guide to how well students from certain schools do, so the public don't really know any better (unless they know a teacher of course).

The proposal is to make 1 BTEC (that takes a lot of work, and is mainly coursework assessed) equivalent to 1 GCSE (which doesn't take as much work, although is more academic). 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs was too much, but 1 to 1 is too little. And funnily enough all those state schools that were failing (in Ofsted's eyes), were rebranded academies and are now doing really well according to their 5 A* to C count, will suffer hugely. The only thing that makes academies appear to be improving so hugely is the fact that 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs. The government can't really win this one to be honest - damned if they do, damned if they don't.

As far as making students sit early entries to "bank" a C and therefore focus attention on those who didn't make it first time around, do you really blame schools? The pressure to gain as many many C+ grades is huge and can make or break a school, so any potential advantage to be had by entering students early must be taken, with both hands.

As far as essentially ignoring those who achieve a C grade is concerned, well that's clearly not right, but schools are in a results business. If you don't get the results, you lose customers because parents can now choose which school to send their child too to a certain extent - another well-thought-out government policy. A school that isn't full has to endure budget cuts, which then leads to staff redundancies and ultimately to the school being unable to offer a holistic curriculum because it can't be staffed.

The prime minister has also stated that some schools coast and don't move their students on enough. He says that the league tables should reflect the "value added" to the students' knowledge. Well hooray! Finally they may be getting the message, but little will change in actual fact. As I've said in recent posts, some parts of the country have a hugely selective (grammar school) system meaning that they cream off the most academic in that area and therefore will end end at the top of those wonderful league tables.

Ultimately, whatever happens the league table system is flawed. Just get rid of them so the public aren't fooled by the propaganda.

The only way to assess whether a school is any good is to go into the school and see if the children are enjoying learning. If they are, they will probably reach their potential.

You don't need a league table to tell you that.

The Top 100 State Secondary Schools

The Sunday Times this week has four lists:

• The Top 100 Independent Secondary Schools.
• The Top 100 Prep Schools (Independent Primary Schools to you and me).
• The Top 100 State Primary Schools.
• The Top 100 State Secondary Schools.

There will be parents across the land scouring the list to see if a school near to where they live is featured, particularly in the state sector. The trouble is that the state lists ought to come with a "health warning".

What do I mean by that?
It means that the table is not really showing what most people will expect it to show, and that is a true comparison of all state schools around the country.

The secondary list is not a level playing field, and just a quick glance at the names of the schools will tell you that. The word "comprehensive" doesn't feature at all, but the word "grammar" features in well over half the list; interestingly the word "academy", the flagship of recent governements only appears once, and not until number 89. This means that most, if not all the schools in that top 100 are heavily selective of the children who join their ranks through the 11+ exams. They are essentially independent schools without the fees, where the 11+ exam replaces the common entrance (the exams children sit to qualify for independent school).

Many state secondary secondary schools don't have the "luxury" of selection, they are known as "comprehensive schools", doing exactly what they say on the tin by offering a comprehensive education for the whole community. Grammar schools don't exist in many parts of the country, so schools in those areas don't feature in the list at all, unsurprisingly. I teach in one of the many areas that doesn't have the grammar system, and to be honest I'm not totally against the system, but that's another post altogether, which now the seed has been planted, will happen fairly shortly.

All that tables like these do is demoralise those who don't work in the schools featured in the lists. They make you feel inadequate even though you have little or no hope of actually competing. The teaching profession is already plumbing a morale trough with the pensions debate and various other policy issues and biased articles like this only deepen the gloom.

Why can't the media and politicains/education agencies actually tell the truth about school?. A more accurate league table would be one that shows what is known as "value added" data, i.e. schools that improve a child's grades the most during their time at the school. This would allow all secondary schools to have a chance to appear on the list rather than just the privileged few.

But that would make sense of course.

School league tables - what do they mean?

Every August teachers up and down the land flick through the newspaper searching for the school league tables, which is based upon the average points score of a student in their exams. If you are unaware, each examined subject has a number of points assigned to it based upon what grade a student achieves. Maths and English get more points as they are perceived as being more important. Schools are then placed in order from the highest average points scoring schools to the lowest.

In my view this is totally unfair – different schools have different intakes and it is therefore extremely hard to directly compare them. You wouldn’t expect a school set in an area of high unemployment to perform the same as a school set in a leafy, middle class suburb. Attitudes towards education can be wildly different in different neighbourhoods based upon upbringing and prospects.

I can see how they could be useful to compare schools that should be of a similar standard, for example private schools. If you are going to fork out thousands of pounds on your child’s education, you need to ensure that your money is being spent wisely, and that the school has a good track record with other students’ grades.

However, the league tables are just a stick with which to bash a school, whether it be the senior staff of the teaching staff being bashed. Within a town the results have some benefit. In the town I teach there are a number of secondary schools and we are all going to have a similar academic standard of intake. As a parent I can therefore see some use in the league tables when choosing which secondary school to apply for.

Countrywide however the practise is of little or no use. The same schools appear at the top each year, and they are selective with regards academic ability, so of course they are going to get a high average points score when all their students have been chosen for their academic ability. They don’t have students who don’t achieve high grades.

League tables are also constantly being manipulated by schools. There are courses that are supposedly equivalent to 4 GCSEs that entail exclusively coursework. These are historically “easier” for students who might not achieve a C grade in GCSEs to achieve a “Pass” in one of these. You can’t blame the schools, they are just utilising a loophole in the system, but the moral of the story is: “Don’t believe everything you read in the league tables”.

The problem for schools is that people do believe everything they read in the league tables, so schools are forced to send students down academic paths that will get them the highest grades rather than an academic path that they might enjoy and eventually take further, onto further education or university.

League tables force schools to focus purely on results and ignore the enjoyable side of education, which in the long run means that people are scarred by their school experience rather than enthused by it. The knock-on effect to future generations’ attitude towards education could be irreversible as they are pressured into covering a curriculum and not getting their teeth into the subject to develop a passion for it.