2 issues with education

Rant time.
I have a lot of issues with teaching, Ofsted, Gove etc.  Here are just two of the more major ones.

Number One.

Back in the day, teaching was very different from how it is now.  The teacher would stand at the front and either dictate or write on a blackboard.  The class would copy the notes down in silence, then learn them by heart and regurgitate them in an exam.  Memory was rewarded.  It was flawed, but there was a kind of logic to it.  The idea was to move knowledge from the teacher's head into that of the pupils, and the test assessed how well the pupils had absorbed the knowledge.

These days, teaching is almost unrecognisable.  There are discussions, role plays, projects, posters, experiments, games.  There is coursework (for now).  It's a more difficult way of teaching, but it's a more effective way of teaching.  Understanding, rather than memory, is the key.  There are still tests, but there is also coursework - project-style assignments completed over a few weeks, with access to notes, books, the internet, and teacher guidance.  The sort of thing that might be required in an actual job.  This reminds me of a tweet I saw a few months ago:

"Today at work I memorised huge quantities of facts and then regurgitated them with pen & paper over 3 hours. #Saidnoone #courseworkmatters"

Exams used to be focused on the task of 'spew-everything-you-know-about-this-topic-onto-your-exam-paper'.  Interestingly, most university courses seem to operate this style of exam.  The assessment style of recent years includes exams, but exams that go at least some way to assessing understanding as well as knowledge.  It also includes coursework, which assesses understanding of a topic and also skills such as communication and time-management.  This is a better method of assessment, and is also more suited to the more modern, interactive, learner-centered teaching style.

TANGENT: I originally wrote the above paragraph as one hideously complicated sentence.  I thought I'd keep it in here in case you want to read it and marvel at it's sub-clauses:
The assessment style of recent years, which includes exams - but exams that go at least some way to assessing understanding as well as knowledge, rather than the older-style (and, interestingly, university-style) exams focused on the task of 'spew-everything-you-know-about-this-topic-onto-your-exam-paper' - but also coursework, which assesses understanding of a topic and also skills such as communication and time-management...is a better one, and is also more suited to the more modern, interactive, learner-centered teaching style.

But my main point is not that things are better today than they used to be.  My main point is about whether the assessment is suited to the teaching.  In yesteryear, the assessment ('spewing') kind of matched the teaching (dictation).  Then both changed, and the assessment, with the inclusion of coursework, matched the interactive teaching.  And the plan for the future?  Make teaching more and more interactive, fun, learner-centred, insert-jargon-here, but move assessment back to the traditional method of learning and regurgitating facts.  These two styles do not match.  Traditional teaching and traditional exams, while flawed, do match each other in their flawedness.  Modern teaching and modern exams also kind of match.  Making the teaching more modern and the exams more traditional makes no sense.  This is not about which method is better, it's that the future proposals surrounding assessment of pupils in this country, before they are mad, over-demanding, out-of-touch, are simply illogical.


Number Two

I recently saw a news article about how nurses and midwives will face three-yearly checks, basically to make sure they're doing a good job.  Doctors have a similar system.  Okay, fair enough.  But this got me thinking about doctors and nurses would be assessed.  Observations?  Interviews?  Maybe they should be assessed on whether the patient they are caring for lives or dies.  Yes, that would be good.  If the patient lives, the doctor is a good doctor.  If the patient dies, the doctor is clearly not up to scratch and should at least be monitored closely, and possibly removed from his or her job.

Clearly madness.  A doctor should not be judged by whether the patient lives or dies, because such things are only partly in the doctors control.  Some patients, no matter what treatment they are given, are sadly going to die sooner or later.  In fact, we all die eventually.

What does this have to do with teaching?  Let me explain from the perspective of my school.  But first, some context.  When teachers and schools are inspected or observed - by Ofsted, or the local authority, or just other teachers, they are graded on a scale: 1 (outstanding), 2 (good), 3 (used to be 'satisfactory' but is now 'requires improvement'), and 4 (inadequate).  A lesson can be judged as any of these four levels, and the school as a whole can also be given a level.

Last year in my school, all teachers were observed as part of performance management, and also in other contexts.  78% of lessons were judged as good or outstanding.  Not bad.  So, you'd think that the school as a whole would probably be good or outstanding, yes?  No.  Because, if the exam results are level 3, nothing else can be graded above a three.  So a school could be observed by Ofsted, who might grade every single lesson and teacher, and every other aspect of the school, as outstanding, but if their results 'require improvement', then the school will get a level 3.  And how are the results levelled?  In absolute terms.  Not compared to pupils' levels upon entry to the school, not in terms of progress, but simply by the number of pupils who get the 'magic' 5A*-C grades, including English and Maths.

So, regardless of who the pupils are, what their skills were when they arrived from primary school, what special needs or disabilities they have, how academic they are...they, their teachers and their school are judged on how many grades they get.  It's the equivalent of judging a doctor solely on whether the patient lives or dies.  Schools are judged by something over which they have limited control.  Teachers can make a difference to the grades that a pupil achieves, but probably not as much difference as parents can make, and certainly not as much difference as the pupil themselves can make.  It is, again, illogical, to judge teachers and schools by something over which they have such limited control.

End of rant.  For now.

Kids these days

Last week I went on a two-day school trip to London.  We went on a sightseeing tour, saw Wicked, and went to the Warner Bros studios.  A few things on this trip highlighted to me how different the kids were to what I was like at their age.  Few if any of these things were new to me, but realising or remembering them all in a short space of time was interesting.

1. Within about 20 minutes of leaving on the Thursday morning, before we even got to Darlington, some of the kids were asking 'are we nearly there yet?'  There weren't joking.  They actually thought that, after 20 minutes of driving, we were probably nearly at London.  They had no idea how far away London is.  When, at one point, we said we were near Leeds, hardly any kids had heard of the place.
2. Because we were going to the Warner Bros studios, we had a Harry Potter quiz on the way down.  I wrote it (obviously), and based the questions on the books (even more obviously).  That meant that some of the questions couldn't be answered if you'd only seen the films.  Almost all the kids had seen at least some of the films.  Hardly any had read any of the books.  I was actually shocked at how many of these pretty big Potter fans hadn't read any of the books.  When we asked why, they simply said 'I don't read'.  Like, ever.  Reading was just not something they did.  Over the course of the whole trip, I saw just one child (out of 55) reading a book.
3. Most of the kids took spending money in the region of £150-200.  For a two-day, one-night trip.  At their age I would probably have taken £20.  Wow.
4. We spent an hour or so walking round London, seeing some of the sights.  Many of the kids really struggled to deal with so much walking.  An hour.  At a relatively slow place, with a fair few pauses.  They were just not used to walking anywhere.
5. One kid lost his phone.  His reaction?  He looked for it in his bag, and his hotel room, and then shrugged and said 'It's ok, I'll get an iPhone for Christmas'.  The culture of disposability.
6. At the Harry Potter studios, most of the kids had their phones or cameras out to take photos.  Fair enough.  But some of them did this to such an extent that they barely even looked at the exhibits.  They were using their phones instead of their eyes.  They could have just stayed at home, given me a camera, and got me to email them the photos when I got back, and they'd have had pretty much the same experience.  Ok, that's a slight exaggeration, but they did seem to be sacrificing the moment itself for the sake of recording the moment.
7. Having said all this, it was very sweet to see their reactions when we got back to school on the Friday night.  It was as if they'd been away for a month, they were so delighted to be home.  Of course, for many of them, it was the longest time they'd been away from home.

As I said, I knew all this stuff.  But seeing it all in a short space of time really brought it home to me how much the childhoods of these kids were different to mine.  Something to ponder.

Year 8 residential

This last week I have been away for a week with 36 Year 8s from school. We went to an outdoor pursuits centre in Northumberland and spent a few days doing all the usual stuff - climbing, abseiling, zipwires, teambuilding games, archery, high ropes etc.

There was also a lot of time for the kids to chill out, chat, and just build their friendships. It was nothing less than awesome to watch this happening, because at the start of the week there were clear friendship groups (that I already knew about as I teach all but three of these kids), but by the last couple of days you wouldn't know it - all of them were mixing together. And this was without our coaxing or encouraging, and without putting them in specific groups - it just happened as they spent time together, living, eating, and playing together.
I've noticed before humans' innate ability to just get on with each other when thrown together, and it was exhibited wonderfully here.

Personally, I loved having the chance to get to know these kids on a more real level than would be possible in one hour a week. It reminded me why I first thought that teaching would be a good idea - I just love getting to know teenagers. It's my instinct to gravitate towards them rather than the adults, so I spent very little free time in the staff lounge, but spent most of it playing pool or table football with the kids, or just sitting and chilling with them.

In fact, the exclusivity with which the staff were treated really bugged me - things like getting a tablecloth on our table, getting larger portions, and getting orange juice at breakfast rather than squash. It was as though the centre (which, by the way, was generally very good) expected us to be very separate from the kids. Now of course, in a way we are - we are responsible for them and sometimes have to make it clear who is boss. But to give us special treatment would just have given them the message that they were less important, which is ludicrous - after all, the week was about their personal and social development! This really, really got to me!

Other than that, it was a great, if tiring week, and another reminder of how much more interesting, fun and inspiring I find teenagers than adults (no offense to anyone over 18!). Before this week, all but maybe a couple of these kids were just pupils that I teach; now many of them are amazing young people who I want to invest in massively.

Give the kids more credit

There was a good article in the Metro today. Essentially it questioned the way we downplay academic achievements at GCSE and A level every year, because ‘the exams are getting easier’. We (society) give the youth of today all sorts of grief for 99% of the time, and when they do work hard and apply themselves for once, we don’t give them any credit. Is it any wonder that youth culture, and with it culture in general, is spiralling downwards?
It is true that the exams are easier than they were, but teaching is also better, and the emphasis is changing from knowledge to skills, which are harder to examine. It’s not as simple as easier exams, and we should remember to give teenagers credit for the work they do.
Truth.