Changes In Examinations

Michael Gove is leaving no stone unturned as he attempts to take Britain's education system back 50 years. I hear nasty rumours of a return of coursework to mathematics, which really will be a backwards step in my view. Maths coursework was the closest a maths teacher ever got to dentistry, and despite it giving the lower ability a chance to get a higher grade because they weren't great at exams, the ressurrection of maths coursework will do no-one any favours other than the students who essentially copy their work.

Those who would like to see coursework return will say that it will be controlled assessment, meaning that students won't be allowed to take their work away and will have a set amount of time to complete the task. What they don't tell you is that the students spend hours trying to remember what their teacher has told them to write and the topic of the controlled assessment is no surprise at all as it is known well in advance by both teacher and students. With the pressure to get results with all students (even those who don't deserve them) the temptation to dictate the answer to a class must be great.

The marking and "moderation" of coursework is a time consuming waste of time compared to what the teacher could be doing with the time in the form of planning and preparation. It takes hours and is essentially a case of trying to justify the highest grade possible, even though most bits of coursework are total rubbish due to the lack of any relevance to anyone's potential work-life.

Anyway, enough of coursework - hopefully Gove will be caught in an uncompromising position, doing something he shouldn't before he gets too far with his changes. The problem is that the guy seems so devoid of any concept of reality that he won't realise that he should resign. He currently doesn't realise that he's loathed by everyone in education, so I don't hold out much hope.

There are whisperings of four subjects being made tougher: English Literature, Maths, History and Geography. This seems reasonable as long as the fact that the exams are getting trickier and so therefore the percentage of passes will go down is taken into account when teachers are being thrashed by senior management in August/September following the publication of results and league tables.

I can foresee what is likely to happen though, as this sort of policy/idea comes around everyfew years: the exam gets tougher for a year or two until the opposition party claim that the worse marks show a drop in standards due to government policy, and exams get easier to show that standards have, in fact, risen. In the meantime, teachers will get it in the neck.

What really winds me up is that 99% of government education policy is geared towards one of these things:

1. Winning your vote.
2. Making their political opponents look silly.
3. Trying to move up the political food chain.

The other 1% is for the benefit of the young people of Britain.

Is Ofsted Capable Of Doing Its Job?

Ofsted was designed to offer an objective view of the performance and provision that a school provides, free of politics and just going on the evidence acquired by the inspectors. But is the inspectorate still capable of doing this?

All those in and around education realise that Ofsted is necessary to stop schools and teachers being allowed to drift along without fear of reproach. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that schools and their staff would drift into laziness if Ofsted were disbanded, as you will rarely find a teacher who isn't prepared to improve their practise when the need arises, but there will always be a few who take full advantage. Ofsted in itself was originally set up as a positive thing, there to offer support to teachers and make constructive suggestions to improve performance.

The problem is that Ofsted's remit has changed considerably over its 20 year life. Ofsted now wields far more power than it originally was afforded and essentially has the power to make or break a school, teacher or even Secretary of State for Education. As a result the chief inspector is now appointed by the Secretary of State and therefore will almost certainly be sympathic to government policy. Ofsted has therefore become a political machine, in existence to ensure that that national education policy is imposed and government targets achieved, whether they are good for education or not.

As a result of the increased power attributed to Ofsted their judgements are keenly felt by individual schools and teachers. When inspections first occured they lasted for around a week so that the inspectors could get a proper feel for the school; whole lessons would be observed and various meetings set up with different members of staff as they gathered evidence for their judgement. They now last a couple of days and rely heavily upon comparisons to similar schools using data, the school's own self-evaluaton and something called the Fisher Family Trust. Lesson observations no longer last a whole lesson as the norm, although occasionally do, but an inspector will be in a classroom for 20 minutes or so in which time the teacher has to attempt to tick as many boxes as possible.

Ofsted has always worked on a four point scale of "Outstanding", "Good", "Satisfactory" and "Inadequate", or words to that effect. A school's overall judgement is heavily publicised and can have a effect on applications and enrolments of staff and students respectively. Since 2009 Ofsted shouldn't have been allowed by law to use this scale due to something called the Hampton Review, but they still continue to use it, backed by the government who know full well that the quango aren't supposed to use it but choose to ignore the fact, mainly because the gradings are used to show how well a particular policy has worked in an election manifesto.

Also as a result of the increased power of Ofsted, lesson observations whether conducted internally or by the inspectorate are no longer about support and aiding a teacher to improve their teaching but all about what grade has been achieved, which is anything but an exact science. Observers often have a pre-conceived idea of what they want to see, and unless they see those things will mark a teacher down. There is no concrete descrpition of what gives lessons certain grades, teachers and senior staff are left with little idea of how to improve. The new wording for an "outstanding" lesson contains the phrase "rapid and sustained progress of all pupils", but no-one, even Ofsted, can explain what "rapid and sustained progress" actually is or looks like. Judgements are therefore based upon the whim of the observer. It leaves teachers and sometimes schools with the feeling that they can't really win whatever they do and the judgement was made before the lesson/inspection actually begun.

The really worrying thing though is that the new Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw and his boss, Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove seem intent on demoralising the profession with their new policies. Wilshaw has been quoted as saying "They tell me that moral in the profession is at an all time low, which must mean that we are doing something right". They say that they want to improve education in the UK but a demoralised workforce is incapable of doing this, whereas a supported, positive and motivated workforce would be.

They don't help themselves with comments like "all schools need to be above average" - not only is this a mathematical impossibility but also as schools improve, the average will rise, meaning that the bottom 50% will still be the bottom 50%, no matter what results they get. Unless all students in every school get A* grades in every subject they take, there will always be a percentage of schools in special measures, and that can't be right can it? Is that really what Ofsted was sey up to do?

The answer is clearly "No", which brings me back to my original question of "Is Ofsted capable of doing its job?"

The answer is "No".