That Education Secretary? He’s not on the Level you know.

Posted Thursday 27th June 2013

You know how it is when you have a constant pain, a toothache perhaps, and it hurts so much you don't notice that your arm has fallen off? Well we’re all so intoxicated by the daily flatulence from the DfE that we sort of overlooked yet another bad smell. Maybe this one is a bit more like an itch that is so, so thrilling to scratch even though you end up bloody and sore.  When I spoke with 12 primary heads about this week’s latest noxious news they all giggled. Because, Education Secretary Gove, your thinking is so messed up  we now have to laugh.

At the moment, children are assessed on an 8 point scale starting at Level 1 and generally hitting levels 6 and 7 by age 14. In a well taught school students know what level they are at and what they need to do to get to the next level. There are level descriptors on walls showing what knowledge, skills and understanding are assessed at each level and we praise their effort and ambition and applaud attainment of the next level.

Gove is doing away with assessment, at levels 1-8 because, “Parents don't understand them.”

Apparently, the abolition of levels, "Will help to ensure that schools concentrate on making sure that all pupils reach the expected standard, rather than on labelling differentiated performance." (June 6^th 2012) I haven’t a clue what he means.

By June 13^th 2013 Gove recited a little speech abolishing levels, just as 11 year olds had sat his new Level 6 tests, demanded by Gove, to test the most able. And just as Ofsted has recommended expectations of secondary school attainment be raised to 4 levels of progress – for next year – there will be no levels to measure.

So how will we hold schools accountable? And how will we hold the government  accountable without levels? Oh no, Michael, people might see a plan here: Wreck the education system and remove the measures for showing your demolition. Your Year Zero figures will doubtless impress.

Gove says, “Schools will be able to introduce their own approaches to formative assessment.” We can make up our own system of notlevels and Ofsted will inspect us using our assessments which will be in non universal notlevels. Every school may use different systems. Honestly, I am not making this up.

As  Headteacher I now have to think of new ways of measuring, testing, recording and reporting.

Could we use the music scale EGBDF. I can see a weakness in that this scale allows a mediocre middle grade (B) and might encourage expectations of an average, and as the mathematical genius Gove told the Select Committee, all schools have to be above average.

How about we measure children on the likelihood of making it to Oxbridge: measure their ability on family income, private health and education, house price and model of car. The USANDTHEM scale, simplified to US for a straight pass/fail, like the old 11+ separating the elite at age 11.

With all scales one needs to work out where it starts and ends. With the DONKEY scale for measuring common sense from politicians it really doesn’t matter which end of the donkey we start with.

I think Gove has decided he invented and now owns the universal system of numbers and counting. Only last month he smugly announced the replacement of our GCSE grades A*-G with the numbers 1-8. They must be different 1-8 numbers to the ones he’s abolishing for 14 year olds.

So, Gove’s new number scale at 16 is 1-8 with the potential to make it 1-9 or 1-10. The now abandoned A* worth, say, 96% but when a student achieves 100% he can give them a 9 or 10 and of course, Spinal Tap fans, I bet Gove’s scale can go up to 11.

We know that Gove likes anglocentric history, where we jolly good britisher chaps taught the foreigners to play cricket in our benevolent empire. His new history curriculum, devised by him, will make sure children tackle history chronologically. In junior schools we could measure progress on the Henry Scale: Henry I, Henry II, Henry III up to Henry VIII. Or if we want to tie in with the new curriculum and go further than roman numerals we could follow the scale Conquer, Rape, Attack, Pillage, based on the Iceni Queen Boudicca family experience of the Romans and, of course, easy to recall as an acronym.

Yr 7 will be doing Ethelred the Unready, Tom the Small-minded, Billy the Kid,  Harry the Longdrawnout and Macavity the Mystery Cat. Will parents really find this less confusing than the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4?

By Year 13when they might get to study contemporary history everyone can be measured on the great man scale – the OMICHAEL scale, with O being finally the ultimate achievement – maybe called an O level?

I quite like the idea that we should use the Mr Men Scale for assessment. I’m unsure of the correct order but Mr Self Denial, Mr Having a Laugh,  Mr No, Not me Guvnor, Mr 3 wise Monkeys, Mr Failure and Little Miss Perfect will be in there.

Achievement could be measured by organs in any order appreciated by our education secretary. Dear parent, Mary has achieved a lung grade in Biology, an Ear grade in Music….and an Eye grade overall. (I Levels!)

This is getting very silly, I know but how about the Small, Bigger, Very Big Indeed, Bloody Enormous scale for intellectual capacity?

Finally, I reckon I have the Gove-friendly scale

Dim
Rather average
Jolly good
Spiffing
A mickle above a muckle (because many a mickle makes a muckle)

Dennis O'Sullivan

Stop Press:

Looking for what next to abolish or destroy Michael turned to his wife and purred , “Shoes, shoes…..” He had read that in some countries some kids walked miles to school without shoes and one of them went on to Oxford University. Sorry about the image of Gove purring. I hope you don’t have to sleep with that.

We don’t need Arts Education in schools; what we need is rigour, lots and lots of rigour

Posted Friday 14th June 2013

We don’t need Arts Education in schools; what we need is rigour, lots and lots of rigour 

With 460 blog pages read from USA based computers I am told some people abroad fear their governments taking a lead from UK educational reform. They may have been bemused by this week’s stage-managed announcement of “rigorous” new exam grades. Government-friendly newspapers have given the impression that we are all happy with yet another attempt to destroy our exam system. New “rigorous” GCSEs were leaked to the press last week.  Gove subsequently launched them in “The Times” (for whom both Mr and Mrs Gove have been very generously paid to write articles of little consequence) and then praised in “The Mail “(UKIP territory) The Telegraph (politically Conservative) and The Times (paymasters as above).

The intent, dressed in deliberate misrepresentations is to tell our students that they are failures and to ensure more of them fail.

From his own unique mouth: “More students will fail their GCSEs.” (21-02-12) Clear enough? But then: “Exam success boosts children's happiness and encourages them to learn.” (13-11-12). Also quite clear, but contradictory.

To show off intellectual prowess, Gove told parliament that he makes decisions following “Hegel’s notions of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.” Unfortunately Hegel never used the phrase, nor is contradiction Hegelian. Wonderfully, it was Marx who first used the phrase in his “Poverty of Philosophy” so Gove has quoted the Number One Communist (ever) and did it without due academic rigour or accuracy.

As part of the demolition plans, Arts Education will be impoverished. For the internationalists I will hurry through 50 years of student exams and school comparison and show how the education system has managed anomalies without smashing everything up.

In the 1960s 5 O Levels including English and Maths were the passport to jobs in banks and entry to 6th Forms. I got 5 O Levels in a narrow range of subjects at what people mistakenly thought was a good school.  ‘Passport’ grades achieved, I went on to A Levels, degrees and professional qualifications.

In the late 1970s success was 5 CSEs at Grade 1 or 5 O Levels. The CSE Grade 1 was too easy and quite rightly it had to go.

GCSEs came in 1987 and 5 of these, at A*-C made you a success. Schools were measured by the numbers getting these grades. League tables comparing unlike schools came in at this time.

In the late 1990s schools were compared by “value added” measures – the progress above expectations based on prior attainment by each student. Some selective schools were criticised for “coasting” and were instructed to improve.

From 1960 to 2013 the brightest kids used to get 8 O levels or GCSEs and more than that meant you were probably a bit odd. From around 2000 schools spotted a statistical game and played it so that with some inflated courses kids regularly achieved 13 or more GCSEs. This was silly and needed to change, and it did. Employers still went for 5 GCSEs including English and Maths.

For 20 odd years we have had league tables and some parents think they are very important. There has been a floor target regularly raised by which ‘failing’ schools get in trouble. It was Under 25%, then 30, then 40 and is soon to be 50 %.A*-C grades. There are so many measures in schools league tables that no-one looks at many of them. And yippee, we have a new one coming very soon. We will be measured by students’ top 8 GCSE grades. That’s OK, but the ministry vandals want certain things destroyed.

Some newspapers like to pretend that school students get grades in Bong Design and Budgie Grooming. These should not count as school exams, nor do they because, like government consultation exercises, they do not really exist.

I can understand why The Level 1 Diploma in Performing Arts cannot be counted alongside the Level 1 Certificate in Performing Arts. It makes sense that the AQA exam in GCSE Chemistry cannot be counted alongside the NEAB exam in GCSE Chemistry. The minister is opposed to students taking exams at 15 rather than 16 so we can’t count GCSE French alongside AS French which our brightest linguists take. It doesn’t seem to matter that the students were ready to progress nor has he remembered that early entries were a standard feature in grammar schools.

Under new rules we can only count one of the GCSE courses in Art, Photography and Textiles. We can only be credited with one of Drama and Dance, I guess because having the ability to simulate a right strop, which I can, is identical to my stumbling interpretation of contemporary and classical dance.

I am so, so pleased that Latin Language GCSE can be counted separately to Latin Literature GCSE so that all those Latin speakers are treated fairly. Surely it is a mistake of numerical understanding to allow Maths, Further Maths and Statistics to count as 3 separate GCSEs in the 8. They do sound a bit similar. When he writes his brainstorms on the back of a fag packet Gove ought to consider smoking king size cigarettes, firstly for his long term health and secondly so he can develop his numerous, ill thought out ideas in the greater space available.

What is likely to happen, delightfully, is that Mr Gove will get his “I” Levels ,the Welsh and Northern Irish  will retain GCSEs, the Scots will be keeping  their  Standard Grades examinations (SGEs anyone?) and the private schools will  retain iGCSEs. Many employers still refer to all exams as O levels – 25 years after their abolition so perhaps one may predict a little confusion.

My school is a government approved Specialist Art College and we attract some students because of this. Our Top 8 ranking will reduce our League Table points by 5% next year, possibly dissuading a few parents unimpressed by Ofsted saying this is “an inspiring and exciting place to be.”  Schools will be driven by what is measured as success; schools are competitive and people’s jobs depend on student numbers. If it isn’t to count in the league tables it wont be taught. Bye Bye, Arts specialists: you can do one or none. It will be much easier and cheaper to offer just one of the Arts subjects so we will not be winning The London Fashion Show National Award again….. if we are sensible.

In a post industrial age, with computer technology handling much labour intensive work we need to appreciate that employment is no longer factory, mine or dock based. There are jobs in Media, Music, Photography, Fashion, Film and Computer aided Design.

Do I have to make a case for Arts Education.? I believe that the arts offer intellectual stimulation, use parts of the brain other subjects cannot reach, lift our souls, make us smile and cry, cause discussion, dreams  and consideration, strengthen our unique species status and are a jolly good thing, Harry Chapin fans might recall the instruction to a creative child that, “flowers are green and red,” although impressionists, expressionists, surrealists, Dadaists, cubists, futurists and my departed friends amongst the situationists might think there was a little more to Arts Education than this.

Our curriculum will be determined by stealth, manipulating a subtle change in league tables. I am in favour of accountability, of targets for individual and school success, of schools explaining themselves to parents and students.  I will not reduce our arts curriculum. Our school will suffer the drop in league tables and our parents will enjoy this. Like their offspring, they are not stupid.

P.S. My next blog is called, “The Sins of Michael Gove.” Contributions whose truthfulness I can verify can be emailed to head@chauncy.org.uk or posted on the blog comments page.

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)