We need rescuing from the A-Level charade

Former schools inspector Chris Woodhead attacks exam system

I had restrained myself from once again commenting on the lamentable rise in the A level success rates this year, they inexorably continue to show remarkable success from teachers and students and continue to prove to be a fairly useless yardstick for universities and prospective employers. They are becoming meaningless as more and more students attain the A grade, this year 25% of them did so, how on earth can higher education establishments choose the very best when the trend is for everyone to succeed?

The former Chief Inspector for Schools, Chris Woodhead comes to the same conclusions in article in today’s Sunday Times;

” The pass rate has improved each year for 25 years. This year 3% of candidates failed; 25% achieved an A grade. Top universities are now setting their own admissions tests. They have no alternative. Every candidate has three or four A grades so A-level results are useless. They are suspect, too, for research conducted over a number of years by Robert Coe of the University of Durham suggests that candidates of similar intellectual ability achieve higher grades today than they would have done in the past. A candidate who gained an A grade today, for example, would have been awarded a B in 1996 and a C in 1988.”

” Ministers and their officials have a standard defence against the accusation that the A-level examination has become easier. They argue that because the examination has changed so radically in terms of syllabuses and the nature of the assessment, it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons. This is nonsense. The whole point is that the examination has been changed. It is the nature of these changes that explains the loss of intellectual rigour.”

We have passed the stage where someone needs to take this bull by the horns and many universities are now conducting their own entrance examinations to help them determine just who are the brightest pupils. There should be no need for this, the A level examination should be able to tell them who the top achievers are.

Woodhead proposes turning the clocks back and rescuing the examination system from politicians who like nothing better than to crow about improved results for electoral advantage;

” What is to be done? The first and most fundamental need is to rescue public examinations from politicians, irrespective of party, who inevitably succumb to the temptation to dumb down examinations to secure apparent improvements in standards and therefore, hopefully, electoral advantage. Top universities should be invited to collaborate with the highest achieving state and independent schools to create a new A-level system with sufficient intellectual rigour to challenge and identify the most able. This new examination should be independent of ministers and their officials. It will be an examination that can be failed, and many will fail. In other words, a real examination.”

Examinations which produce a failure rate of only 3% are a farce and a charade, the growing trend to produce a broader band of A rate passes makes a complete mockery of education, we need to return to real challenges which value real success and help prospective employers and universities choose the best possible candidates. Otherwise we will continue to find graduates applying for jobs who are not equipped with the most basic skills (yes I have dealt with applications from those who cannot even spell or string a few words together to form a comprehensible sentence.)

“It seems very clear that even in the Upper Sixth, these youngsters have not mastered basic spelling and punctuation or the ability to express themselves clearly,” said Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education.”

From a report in The Sunday Telegraph.

So, the kids can’t read, write, or add up!

Time to move the goalposts then

Official figures revealing news that four out of ten primary school pupils cannot read, write, or do simple maths should come as no surprise. Neither should we be startled that simple punctuation is something that many of them don’t understand or use. We ought to worry, of course, that they are about to go up to the “big school” without the necessary skills to benefit from the millions of extra pounds thrown at them by a Labour government that promised “education, education, education!” We ought to worry about how they will face adulthood and employment situations (heavens above, just read some of the comments appended to many blogs these days.)

We should worry further that Education Minister Lord Adonis (what a misnomer) should claim that these are the “best ever” set of results for state schools.

So, some of the yardsticks are to be dumbed down lowered (instead of raised) - what a pathetic indictment of a failed regime.

Bring back discipline in schools

Cameron to revoke rights of appeal over excluded children.

David Cameron’s Conservatives have announced proposals to restore discipline in schools which involve revoking the rights of parents to appeal against the decision to exclude children, and give head teachers greater independence.

It’s all very common sense sort of popular thinking but will it be enough to keep the press off his back this summer? I suppose not.

Of course many of you would probably like to turn the clock back and go even further in instilling discipline in schools. I was quite used to being caned I readily admit, but it must have done some good because I never got into a fight after leaving full time education and have never been arrested or spoken to by a policeman since then (other than to exchange friendly banter at The Stadium of Light). The do gooders who prophesied that corporal punishment would irreparably damage children would probably repeat the same parables now, but we all know that today’s teenagers are probably more likely to hang someone over a viaduct and stamp on their hands and murder them than the generation before who were accustomed to far stricter regimes at school.

Oh well, dream on, those good old days of the past will never return, at least not whilst we are fully grown up members of the EU, who wouldn’t allow us to pass new laws that brought heavy discipline upon our poor children!

Shall we have another referendum Mr. Cameron?

Mayor’s Bronze medal

Joy for school children

Just read a nice story on South Tyneside Council’s website, about the awarding of bronze level Mayoral Awards to school children at Biddick Hall Juniors, Temple Park Juniors and Albert Elliott Primary Schools in South Shields. Congratulations!

The Mayor said:

“I am so pleased to be meeting these youngsters to congratulate them on their awards. I know how hard they have worked for them.

“They have voluntarily given up one lunch hour a week since September to work towards the Mayor’s Award when they could have been playing with their friends. Instead, they were able to take part in interesting and enjoyable activities, increasing their personal skills as a result.

“They also put together funding applications, planned projects, performed a service to the community and carried out a four-hour expedition. There was a lot to do but they played their parts admirably and I hope that now they will consider continuing up to the Gold Level of the Mayor’s Awards and on to the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme.”

They are the fine words from the council’s Press Office, yet they still don’t tell us exactly what the children did.

• What were the interesting and enjoyable activities?
• What did the fundraising application involve, what was it for?
• What exactly did they do for the community?
• What type of expedition was it?

I get the feeling that the story is a little……………………………incomplete.

Perhaps it might surprise the Press Office that some of us are actually interested and might want to encourage our own children to take part in such schemes, but what can I tell “Junior” and “Missy” based on this information?

Competitive sports in schools

“Sporty” Brown’s new campaign

I am struck by Gordon Brown’s new initiatives to renew sporting rivalries in and between schools, it’s something I’ve banged the drum about on the odd occasion, he wants to introduce a national school sports week to, championed by Dame Kelly Holmes. Brown said;

“We need to put school sport back where it belongs, playing a central role in the school day. I was lucky enough to have primary and secondary schools that had sport at the centre of their ethos. I want every child to have that opportunity to take part.”

I have regaled stories in this blog of the days when I played football at school, as well as rugby and my useless attempts to play cricket, apart from being fun it encouraged fitness, team work, leadership skills, and a sense of individual achievement. we had competitive leagues within my own school and enjoyed annual “house” competitions and annual competitive matches against the “old boys” and also against the “masters”, additionally we fielded teams against other schools in local leagues for football, rugby, cricket, hockey and athletics. Those days are sadly long behind us and the competitive “edge” has been removed from an awful lot of schools, and now we worry about the obesity of our children and the lack of competitiveness in business, it can hardly come as a surprise after the destructive meddling of those who declared that ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ were damaging concepts for children.

Brown’s proposed £100m investment over the next five years is pitifully small, but if we manage to win some of it in South Tyneside perhaps we can start with some small schoolyard schemes that involve competition on a small scale, let’s face it he isn’t exactly making a mountain of cash available. Perhaps we can have a five-a-side football championship, a netball championship, or even some small trophies that each school can use to reward house champions in various competitions. I’m sure that our good councillors in South Tyneside can work with the educational establishment to formulate some exciting and imaginative ideas.

It is something that we must do in schools, it is an essential element for driving competitiveness in the big wide world once we leave education, and it is a feature of school life which should never have been allowed to wither away.

A level standards to rise

Score for top grades moved to 90%

At last, somebody has seen some sense and decided that our brightest students need to be challenged and stretched just that little bit further. They will now have to achieve more than 90% success at A level if they wish to attain a top grade result. At least higher educational establishmemnts and prospective employers will no that the new A* grade actually means something!

But John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

“I regret the introduction of A* since it has the potential to make a grade A second best.”

Of course it means second best, that’s the whole point of it, to sort the wheat from the chaff! 

Honeymoon over

Nick Robinson asserts that “Grammargate” is a turning point

On his return to the daily grind, Nick Robinson, the BBC’s  political editor asserts that the honeymoon is well and truly over for David Cameron after the long running internicine warfare over the grammar schools issue. He is perfectly correct, of course, in pointing out that the issue has been a presentational disaster, and herein lies much of David Cameron’s problems, however, I believe that the honeymoon ended a long time ago when it was decided to introduce the felt tipped pen child’s drawing of the tree to represent the new “green” Conservative Party.

It was from this point on that grassroots members recognised that Team Cameron was to be more about presentation a la New Labour, and less about radical right of centre alternatives. The traditional body of the party, the roots, the trunk and the branches were to be starved of the water and fertiliser needed to produce new growth, whilst the new green leaves would be glued on as decoration!

The treatment meated out to Graham Brady by the Cameroony aides briefing to the press in a conspiratorial manner which led to his resignation, was nothing short of foul play, all because he wished to espouse current policy without the flannel decoration of “modernising”.

The Conservative Party profited greatly at the local government elections as a result of this government’s reliance on spin and bluster, (of which we are all heartily sick and tired of),  but until they start producing imaginative, radical, appealing policies on education, defence, crime, health, and taxation, they will fail to convince the electorate as we look for an alternative government!

Brady keeps the pot boiling

Food for thought for Cameron

Sacked Conservative front bencher Graham Brady (o.k. so he resigned) today keeps the pressure on party leader David Cameron with a stinging rebuke in the News of the World.

“Instead of telling working-class families to put up with the schools they’re given, we should be angry so many children are being let down. This is not just an internal Tory row. By undermining grammar schools, Shadow Education Secretary David Willetts has set off a row with millions of ordinary working families. People are frustrated by a political establishment that talks about choice but won’t let them choose a grammar school.

Now, in the face of gathering dissent over Mr Cameron’s original plan to build no more grammars, Central Office has changed its stance again.

The message now is that, because selection works, areas with grammar schools already can have MORE—but if you haven’t got one then tough!

This shows how badly thought-out the policy was in the first place. There is an easy solution. First, accept it’s absurd to claim grammar schools stop kids from poor families getting on in life. Second, make it clear that a Conservative government will listen. We don’t need to promise “a grammar school in every town” but we should make it clear that if people want one we won’t stand in their way.

At the end of a hectic week, I’m reminded of these words of movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: “I don’t want to be surrounded by yes-men. I want people who’ll tell me the truth — even if it costs them their job.”

The Conservative Party under Cameron’s leadership is becoming more and more of a marketing tool to replicated the ascent of Nu-Labour, whilst die hard principles and policies are pushed to the back of the mind, by bringing the party closer to the centre he is diminishing choice and offering no real alternatives to Gordon Brown’s ambitions. This whole issue of grammar schools has caused a needless debate within the party and can only serve to distract, the existing grammar schools are doing just fine, support them and encourage them, there is no need to run around calling people “delusional” just because they support the view that selective education gives greater opportunity to all, regardless of their backgrounds.

We had excellent grammar schools in South Shields which had outstanding academic achievements, I’d love to see selection return here (but there is more chance of meeting the Pope’s wife), we didn’t regard grammar school pupils as toffs or middle class did we? I recall many lads from around the riverside who joined me at the grammar school, and I certainly don’t recall parents running about with huge sums of money to buy additional tuition to ensure their lads passed the 11 plus.

I say, if people in any part of the UK want to have grammar schools and selection, and they have elected councillors who support such a policy, then the government of the day ought not to stand in the way of parents wishes.

Brady resigns

Tory MP resigns front bench post over grammar schools issue.

After being severely reprimanded by the Whips Office, Graham Brady (pictured) the MP for Altrincham and Sale, and Shadow European Minister has decided to fall on his own sword, as reported yesterday evening by Iain Dale.

It is a rare event these days to find a politician resigning on a point of principle so we need to tip our hats to Mr. Brady, who sees the Tory party’s comments about education as undermining the four grammar schools in his constituency by claiming that they impede social mobility. In his letter to party leader David Cameron he went on;

“Like all Members of Parliament who have grammar schools in their constituencies, I must now help to provide the evidence that those schools need to defend themselves. That is why I have felt duty-bound to continue my practice of obtaining and publishing facts which demonstrate that selective local education authorities perform better than comprehensive ones.”

“Faced with a choice between a frontbench position that I have loved and doing what I believe to be right for my constituents and for many hundreds of thousands of families who are ill-served by state education in this country, there is, in conscience, only one decision open to me.”

His position was made untenable by anonymous and unprincipled persons within the party hierarchy who briefed to the press over the past couple of days about his impending sacking in a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, so much for Mr. Cameron encouraging open and honest debate within the “new” Conservative Party.

He can carry on calling supporters of grammar schools “inverse class warriors” and “deluded” but they are not allowed the freedom to put their side of the argument, sounds more like Nu-Labour every day!

Grammar school debate on Guardian’s News Blog

They read here too?

The argument rages on, and the Guardian’s News Blog has picked it up too, seems like even they enjoy visiting the Corner Shop!

Oddly not a single click has come from the direction of The Grauniad today, but at least Paul Owen has enjoyed himself with Dizzy.