Whilst politicians cheat and deceive half our kids are failures

Supermum Leadsome and the adulterer Boris decided being ‘leavers’ was advantageous to their ambitions and manipulated the electorate. That the good people of Sunderland and Grimsby weighed up the likelihood of a fall in stock exchange values against the promise of £350 million a week for the NHS is admirable. The immediate 42% increase in race hate crimes is no-one’s fault.(BBC 08-07-16)

The sneaky duplicitous Gove says it is his, “privilege to serve,” but loyalty to Shaggy Boris was a step too far. I hope his love of classical education will comfort him as he descends Dante’s Hell, through those levels reserved for the greedy, the fraudulent and finally settling for eternity with the most treacherous. He may well meet 172 Labour MPs down there.

The politicians’ lack of care, understanding or interest ensures that teachers bore, alienate and fail our kids in homage to a romantic past, an education ideal that never existed. We witnessed dishonest, opportunistic slogan chanting in the referendum where they seduced the electorate they despise, only to reject within moments of victory their own promises on the NHS and immigration.

That hundreds of thousands of children are being falsely labelled failures matters not one jot compared to MP’s thirst for self-promotion.

Dodgy Dave, never tires of telling us about his blessed family, and tearfully used his affection for his dad as the reason he lied to parliament. If your underpants are too tight stop wriggling.

Last week one of Gove’s dwindling underlings, Pointless Morgan, tried desperately to explain that telling 47% of the country’s 11 year olds they had failed the new version of the 3Rs was nothing to worry about.

It is deliberate policy to instil failure into the majority of children and to identify the schools they attend as unworthy. It does take us nearer to the Tory dream of grammar schools – the good old days before working class families got uppity and their kids found ambition in schools that valued their achievements.

The first part of the failure game was to test the children at age 5 so that schools’ performance could be judged by progress at age 7. Incompetent officials discovered that their three measures were incompatible and the tests had to be abandoned. Amusingly, headteachers had been busy finding the hardest tests for 5 year olds, so that the children would score hardly anything and the school could show tremendous progress later on.

How long before teachers have to literally get into bed with pregnant mums to chant subordinate adverbial clauses at embryos?

Now we have tests at age 7, giving children three separate marks out of 100. The DfE has said it’s OK for schools not to pass the results to children or their parents. Well, what are they for, then? Here’s a test question for 7 year olds that some found ambiguous:

“There were some people on atrain.

19 people got off at the 1st stop.

17 people get on the train.

Now there are 63 people on the train.

How many people were on the train to begin with?”

(The answer: comes from x-19+17=63; so X=65.)

Recently Morgan decided there would no longer be parent places on school governing bodies, relegating them to tea making at school bazaars. Did the DfE officials – the experts – advise ministers that this might alienate parents who some of us see as vital to the success of the education process. Or is this a “jobsworth” situation

We do not need a knowledge based curriculum with an exam system designed to fail more kids. We do need a skills based education where children discover, discuss and decide, alone and in groups, in writing and orally, using ICT programs to present their solutions, able to evaluate and target their own success.

Tests at age 7 and 11 are taken by children who have spent months preparing, revising and relearning material solely relevant to the tests. The rest of what should be a creative, stimulating curriculum of discovery and mastery is cast aside because the tests are used to batter the primary schools.

We heard of previously happy children driven to tears of frustration and self-harming fear of failure by the mind numbing repetition of practising for the tests. The schools are blamed and dammed. Morgan told headteachers at a conference in May that she expected many more schools would see fewer pupils hitting expected scores. However she said the results would be “manipulated” to ensure the number of failing schools would be in the hundreds, not thousands.

Publicly' shamelessly and with no sense of irony the Secretary of State for Education announced that she will fiddle the results.

Weary teachers giggled when Gove told the Commons Select Committee that, “all schools must be above average.” Chancellor Osborne could not do a times table sum and Education minister Gibb failed a test question for 11 year olds. Nicky Morgan to refused to answer test questions. “…there will be one where I get it wrong and that's the one that everyone's going to be focused on.” (Daily Mirror 13-1-16) All the ministers were worried they would make mistakes if put under test conditions.

I've written books on English language. I reckon I can write to be understood, or wrap in camouflage and metaphor when the desire for obscurity appeals. Can I do the 11 year olds’ grammar test? How much use have we had for ‘determiners?’ Here’s guidance on how to teach them:

“The class may participate in a discussion about which words are determiners; for example, a child may be given the phrase 'happy girl' and suggest that the word 'happy' is a determiner. Class discussion could then lead to the teacher explaining that 'happy' is in fact an adjective.” (Schoolrun.com.)

Teacher assessments, coursework, resits, oral exams and controlled assessments have been abandoned because some kids in Shanghai take lots of tests. So we will test children against national standards at age 5, 7, 11, 14, 16 and 18 to emulate societies that we do not wish to mirror. Morgan says that the harder the test, the more they have learned. Thus we have GCSE Maths, now with A Level content so that it is inaccessible to around 50% of students. .

Back in 1980, Biology teachers at Little Ilford School set an exam where 3.5% was, “a really good mark.” What was the point? Then Biology, Chemistry and Physics teachers started to compete for kids to choose their subject. 98% became a fairly common score. Where was the learning?

There is a relationship between students, their parents and their teachers which praises effort, encourages progress built on self- belief, great teaching and respect, showing students what they can achieve by working hard. Show them that there’s no point in trying and things are going to get tough in our schools.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the civil servants working in the DfE. Those with principles fled into other jobs. Think for a moment of those who had to remain because of mortgages, access to stationery and their dreams of pensions and possibly a mention in the queen’s honours list for time serving. As they scurry around pleasuring the ministers, carrying out any number of contradictory tasks and producing nonsense like our assessment system remember that the bright ones left. Those with experience and understanding of state education left years ago. Gove told his senior staff I don't want your advice I want you to put in place what I say.

Out of DfE staff bonuses last year, the top civil servants received up to £17,500.((Schools Week 05-07-16) Do they still get luncheon vouchers?

Perhaps the DfE is full of Trotskyist cadres waiting for things to get so bad that they can step forward as the new leadership of an education revolution after which we will be freed to be creative, inspirational and sane.

Or will they mindlessly do exactly as they are told and excuse their compliance with, “I was just following orders?” Where did I hear that before?

Little more than a production line worker alienated from the product of his labour, the DfE officials are plodding along, “Yes Gove, Yes Gibbs, Yes Morgan,” as an alternative to unemployment.

In the last few days we have watched the parliamentary debate on Arts Education, where 12 MPs and Nick Gibb responded to hundreds of thousands of us in petitions. He dismissed the facts and that’s the end of debate. Such is democracy now. I wonder how heavy is the hand of history on Iraq-War Blair’s unaccountable shoulders this week.

Despite appeasing Tory MPs by publicly abandoning forced academisation Morgan was advised that Local Authorities will be forced to academies all schools due to a lack of money to keep open primaries. Dissembling is nothing but lies.

Stupidly, and he must know it, minister Gibb said that market forces will drive up teachers’ pay at a time when schools have deficit budgets .Let’s hope he’s been thoroughly tested; spouting nonsense might be contagious.

And if he or the Morgan-Gove folk think that I am going to make 50% of our kids waste their precious learning time on cramming, again, for the insult that is resit SATs on their first term at secondary school….

Choosing A secondary school: Some Advice, Some Condemnation.

In my June 2014 blog, “I am all for extremism in schools,” I called for an end to all faith schools. I claimed they were by nature divisive and encouraged social segregation.  A catholic school headteacher called me “destructive.”  and  that he was taking his balls home. I thought I had been quite reasonable in condemning the holy Irish priests and nuns who had dumped 796 children’s bodies in a Tuam cesspit after they had died in church run children’s homes. I hadn’t even mentioned the thousands of children forcibly removed from Ireland’s “fallen women” and exported to America. And as for the sainted Pope John 23^rd’s previously secret 1962 advice to bishops as to how to cover up for paedophile priests – not a word did I say.

In 1978 a group of Christians were offended by an article I had written and held a meeting where they decided not to pray for me. Fine thing, religion.

I had a look at the offended headteacher’s catholic school Ofsted Report and found that his school had fewer than average children entitled to free school and fewer than average children with special needs.

My niece went to a Hertfordshire catholic secondary. In the days when Ofsted judged “inclusivity” they wrote that her school had very few kids on free school meals, very few with special needs and no English as a Second language learners. They could have added that middle class, white catholics pre dominated. Ofsted said that the school was, “outstandingly inclusive.”

I wandered around Ofsted reports on catholic secondaries in these semi rural parts and amazingly the same picture emerged – it seems that, here at least, catholic secondary schools receive relatively few successful applications from the neediest families. When I wrote to all secondary heads in Hertfordshire and asked them to state at Open Evenings, “We welcome children of all abilities, including those with special educational needs,” I received one severe written complaint from an “outstanding” catholic school. Perhaps, we catholics, for you can never leave, are a wee bit defensive.

However, if there’s any doubt on what religious schools should be doing, take a look at Matthew 18:1-6 “ But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 19:14 “let the little children come to me.”

I think that meant all the children, not just the brightest.

This isn’t a blog about catholic schools. Many of our “outstanding” schools have the highest pupil scores on admission. One comprehensive, near me, cannot be judged on “closing the gap” criteria because the slightly weaker, needier students don’t go there. No gap to close. A trawl through five Hertfordshire “outstanding” secondaries will show that, coincidentally I’m sure, their Year 7 children come to them with high SATs results.

The brightest children at age 11 join outstanding schools who are judged that on the basis of levels of progress. Children with mild learning difficulties do not make the same rate of progress as other children. A Level 5 at age 11 has to get a “B” grade at 16 for 3 levels of progress. This is quite easy for a level 5 kid to achieve.

A Level 3 child, one who has achieved the standard of a good 7 year old by age 11, is expected, by Ofsted, to progress to a grade “D” by age 16. This is quite hard for a Level 3 kid to achieve. Such a student does not look good on school results tables.

Ofsted fails schools if most children are not making three levels of progress. Therefore the school needs fewer slowly progressing students to survive and prosper in league tables and with Ofsted. Fair enough, keep those kids out and you are on the way to an “outstanding” grade.

Don’t believe me? As I will show in October’s blog it is considerably easier to get a fat man through the eye of a needle than to be judged outstanding in a school with low entry grades.

To ignore league tables  a headteacher and their governors, would need to be on a mission or have some sort of vocation, and commitment to all students achieving their potential - precisely what we say at open evenings.

I wonder if the point of secondary admissions is to stop the children most in need of a good education actually getting in to the best schools. And, inviting approbation and condemnation from my colleagues, some headteachers seem actively engaged in turning away  children who need and deserve good schools.

When I called the first post war London Co-op’s milkmen’s strike broken bottles were regularly under my car wheels. I best be gentle with the headteachers.

During the next four  weeks thousands of families will be trying to choose the best secondary school for their children. In Hertfordshire this may involve choosing from a group of good schools but for some the choice is still daunting.

Here’s the choosing a secondary school game with Open Evening Bingo in italics:

For some parents the uniform rules can be a tremendous signal of a school’s worth: if it is unfashionable and expensive and can only be bought in one shop there’s your good school. I was speaking with a parent whose son’s blazer cost £130, and very pretty it was too. They may be acting illegally but who’s going to tell? I bet his blazer has never been a goalpost.

Some schools expect an annual “voluntary contribution” from parents – a useful message for families struggling to survive on low incomes at a time when wages have fallen behind prices. I know of a school where the USA football trip – already out of many budgets – demanded that each player’s family bought a £500 Quiz Night table. Another school required every student to buy their own i-pad. Helps keep out the riff raff.

If the school has an admissions test – usually looking for musical or linguistic ability surely that’s your good school.

If the school, “tries hard with kids with special needs but is not very good at it,” that’s surely a sign of excellence, because Ofsted certainly don’t care. We are jolly good with children whose special need is that they are exceptionally bright and you will find their names on our Oxbridge Honours Board.

Why should  schools admit kids who need a little extra help, children who would surely flourish in an outstanding school and soar to mighty heights of academia if there is a risk that Ofsted will criticise, league tables condemn and parents choose elsewhere?

We can’t be having schools which admit children of all abilities, children who may need stretching or supporting, boys and girls who live side by side in the same streets but are selected out of the “good” schools by the schools themselves. Hide the SENCO is a popular Open Evening game amongst some of the “best” schools who find educating children who need a bit of help to catch up the equivalent of climbing mountains in ankle length skirts.

As I approach a 15th Open Evening as headteacher I am aware that these events are proof that every science lesson contains explosions or volcanic actions and that PE teachers wear suits. One must never consider how many children, on how many occasions, contributed to the building of a wonderful kit car.

Once upon a time we all took on specialisms in return for government money. The funding is long gone, the specialism no longer favourably funded and the curriculum demolished and rebuilt on other grounds. Heaven help the school who took PE as a specialism 15 years ago.

The imaginary, “How to be a Headteacher” course tutors us in how to describe our schools. On Open Evenings we are all unique, have a special ethos where moral values are important and teaching and learning are at the heart of what we do.(I love that bit) Miss out the “we teach a traditional academic curriculum and have the highest standards” or,” “We have many gifted and talented students,” and a headteacher may be condemned.

Why do I tell you, “We have the highest standards of behaviour,” and “We aim to help all students fulfil their potential?”

Can you imagine a headteacher suggesting, “Our standards are pretty naff and expectations are low; we tolerate ill-discipline, encourage bullying and kids are scruffy on purpose; our curriculum is unbalanced and, we don’t care if students do well?” Quite obviously, the opposite of what we say at these events is unimaginable – “the Law of the Ridiculous Reverse” ( Simon Hoggart quoted in an excellent “Choosing a secondary school” article in The Guardian 23^rd September 2014)

Emphasise Latin if you’ve got it.

The money a school has in its accounts was allocated to schools to educate children. However, thousands of pounds are spent on glossy brochures, designer websites and superfluous adverts. Schools pose the children carefully by the nice tree; blonde girls with ponytails most prominently.

School facilities may well be very good but say, “state of the art,” “the envy of others” or even “the finest in the country,” and pray that no-one asks for the evidence. A few touch screen computers in a library can be state of the art to some of us older people.

Look forward to Open Evening Bingo.  I will be using all the phrases I condemn –did you think I was daft?  You will be looking for gravitas and perhaps accepting that you will be bored listening to my speech. My London accent is a bit common, innit? But at least I don’t drive a powder blue Fiat 500.

If you are choosing a new school for your children, please understand that the vast majority of our schools are better than when you went to school yourself. Teachers are better teachers and lessons are fuller and carefully planned. I think we have a right to good local schools and I am pleased that both my daughters were able to study locally in non selective comprehensives.

Talk to your neighbour’s children about their school, have a look through the literature on the school’s website, ask about extra curricular activities and try to see exam results in relation to your own child’s abilities. Younger students tend not to hate everything so ask the 12 year olds if they enjoy school.

Talk to the students if you can, although I must ask you not to hang around the school gates approaching random kids. One headteacher recently said “It’s important that every child is known,” to which one ex-student muttered, “You never once spoke to me in 5 years.”

Do look at Ofsted Parentview comments. Select “All” for a 3 year total.  Notice, if you do compare, that the majority of parents seem quite happy with their own child’s school.

Read the Ofsted Report, although the prose can be painfully inadequate. Take care. Birmingham’s Park View Academy received the highest Grade 1  accolade and the fine words, “All schools should be like this,” (Ofsted 2012) and  then became the so-called Trojan horse hotbed of Muslim takeover and indoctrination a little over 12 months later. It then received the lowest Ofsted Grade 4.

Ask to visit the school on a normal school day. If we will not let you visit then we may be embarrassed, very, very busy people, aloof or unwelcoming. I am touring with 15 sets of parents next week as I am entirely proud of what we do and the young people who study here.

I didn’t start out to give advice but if you are choosing a school, good luck.

Google an excellent 2008 article by Francis Gilbert, “How to Choose a Secondary School” for some common sense advice or, if in doubt, tell schools your Level 6, gifted daughter plays violin for England and watch them fall over themselves to form a disorderly queue for her admission.


Dennis O'Sullivan
Sunday 28th September 2014

GCSE Results Day: Now teachers lose their jobs

GCSE Results Day: Now teachers lose their jobs

Pretty girls leaping. It’s GCSE results day. With Performance Related Pay ordinary teachers of bright kids will fare better than those who brilliantly teach those children who don’t make 3 or 4 levels of progress. With the threat of Ofsted for the lower attaining schools results day defines their futures. The incentive to do all one can for the students means sometimes teachers have overstepped the mark. And talking of marks: over-extended exam boards’ standards are deteriorating and few teachers, parents or students trust them. The independent regulator, Ofqual has politicised itself in its toadying and the political parties just need a soundbite. Today, careers are savaged, destroyed by a single statistic and good people are distraught.

That’s everyone covered except to say it sometimes seems that young people are mere statistics.

The dominant phrase “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths” diminishes education, whilst making schooling at age 15 a bore beyond reasonable tolerance. For schools the phrase spells Ofsted inspection on the “computer says no” model we have come to detest. Fall below the ‘Basement’ figure and your school may be sent into an academy chain. My friend, Fiona, has put much of her life into successfully dragging her school away from the basement in a secondary modern school next door to a grammar school where the most able have been creamed off. Her teachers struggle in the 30% - 40% range with kids who have been told they are failures at age 11. Parents flock to her school and I have seen amazing things done there, for the partially sighted for example. Ofsted will destroy their efforts and abuse their achievements.

Another headteacher friend was so drunk on the joy of this year’s results she was unable to talk to me.

Compare unfavourably in raw data and teachers may spend demoralised months responding to frequent frenzied senior management edicts, policies and strategies as school leaders try to avoid condemnation and dismissal.

At Chauncy in 2012 we had 26 C grade students awarded a D grade in English. The Head of English was summoned and she and I faced resignation.  How could we have cocked up so badly? We had failed the kids. Some of them wouldn’t be getting into 6^th Form or college. At least one of us cried that night.

A picture emerged on the internet. Exam boundaries had been changed after the students had completed the course and taken the exams. Gove had said there would be no increase in pass rates and “independently” Ofqual told the exam boards to reduce 10,000 C grades in English to a D grade. Excel – one of the boards were told that if they didn’t reduce the grades Ofqual would. I can’t remember the number of foul words I used to describe this betrayal of students and teachers but I did join in a lawsuit against Gove and his regulator. How could students trust us or the system when they had been cheated? They made fools of us, legally but unfairly.

We do not need the GCSE measure at 16. The damning obsession means even less now that young people must stay in education or training until aged 18. I should have more faith but what’s the point of vocational courses for 14-18 year olds if you exclude them as a measure.

When one’s career, employment, standard of living, status and prospects depend on “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths” is it surprising that some of us give too much time and help to push borderline students over the grade boundary. Years 10 and 11 are now barren, tedious, repetitive years for students as they are drilled towards the “5+ A*-C grades including English and Maths.”  We are constantly assessing them and parents may recognise the language of  Predicted Grade, Target Grade and/or Challenge Target Grade. GCSEs are too narrow, have too much assessment and do not prepare students for further study or employment. Rote learning is not educational.

Don’t insult us by criticising “teaching to the exam.” Once the test becomes the measure it becomes useless as an educational tool. Did you expect us to lie down after 2012 and sacrifice more kids’ self-worth, just rewards and opportunities on the false altar of unreliable statistics. Exam attainment at 16 is now just a passport. No one expects a driving instructor to teach the glories of the open road prior to a test.

Did you think you could bully us into failing our students? Where was I supposed to lie down?

10% of my blog visitors are in America and this month Latvians, Poles, Ukranians and two of my sisters have been reading my blogs. I’d better explain what is making me cross (this time).

In England GCSE exams are set and marked by five exam boards (also called ‘awarding bodies’). They are supervised by the government regulator, Ofqual. The late Gove appointed Glenys Stacey as Ofqual Chief Executive from a field of one. When she asked a conference of headteachers if they believed she was independent of Gove we shook our heads in unison and she got quite animated in fruitless defence.

Gove said more kids would fail exams, Ofqual immediately did the deed. Gove doesn’t like American literature in English exams – like magic, Steinbeck and Harper Lee disappear. Gove didn’t like the A*-C grading; neither does Glenys. It’s a shame that neither have taught a single lesson in their lives, imagine that sort of empathy when working with kids.

Gove has gone, destroyed by his etonian betters and Stacey can now, settle down in regulatory mode and be a non political civil servant. She has much work to do and I hope she will do it with us.

Like many astute candidates for a job she started a Masters degree course on Educational Assessment just before interview. She has not yet graduated, but one must not condemn her failure to complete, in four years, what is usually a 2 year part time course. Many of us believe we should examine students when they are ready and if you need a little more advice from your tutor, don’t think it’s cheating.

In November 2013, Gove changed the rules, announcing major policy in “The Telegraph” rather than parliament. Two weeks before students were due to sit ‘early entry’ exams he declared  that resit results would not be allowed in  League tables.  Many schools immediately and at considerable expense withdrew early entries. Many headteachers made up excuses for the students and parents, sadly avoiding the truth.

Glenys Stacey had no experience in education but did claim at interview that being a mother was good preparation. Primary headteachers in particular find a front gate forum of parents who know how to run schools because they went to one themselves. I recently considered taking over my local petrol station on this basis.

If Ofqual has tinkered with results again this year, teachers will lose their jobs, some will be demoted and some will give up the profession they love. The feared ogre of Ofsted roars into schools on these results and the work of teachers is dominated by the havoc wreaked by the ungodly Gove-Wiltshire–Stacey trinity. With disingenuous disregard for students and teachers, Stacey has warned us to expect “greater volatility” in this year’s results. Apparently, this year’s students may be of different ability to last year’s. There are new, harder exams with less coursework and tougher boundaries. I hear that there are, indeed students, teachers and schools inexplicably in dire strairts today, yet  Stacey boasts, “We have maintained standards.” I fail to understand how English results going down and Maths going up can be the same standard. Add to this that one is meant to be able to compare a “B” grade in 2014 with a “B” grade in 2011 and that Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have their own grades and maintaining standards is a falsehood not worthy of your paygrade.

Ofqual’s  job is to make sure the system runs smoothly, overseeing the exam boards, specifications and syllabuses and ensuring the boards mark properly so that the qualifications are fairly awarded.  Good students earn their grades and should receive them.

The exam system is outdated, deteriorating and near collapse. It brutalises and demoralises good people with inadequate, inaccurate measurement of memory-test exams. Teachers will happily embrace constructive, planned and rational change designed to promote and celebrate achievement. Consider this please: our students would benefit from more assessment during their studies, and less examination at the end.

Ofqual should advise the government. Introducing new tests, exams, qualifications and curriculum for every age group from 4 to 19 at the same time is educationally unsound and daft. To create a new History curriculum you have to introduce the age 11 course to students four years after the age 7 one. This cannot be done concurrently to suit a political thirst. Think building blocks.

Don’t call us cheats. Gove gave us the inelegant term, “gaming.” Independent Stacey adopted the word and concept, asking teachers to let her know, anonymously, where their schools were “gaming” the exam system to secure higher grades. Gaming refers to practices helping kids do better than if they walked into exams unsullied by preparation and practice, wearing blindfolds and mittens. If this is the standard of your academic investigations let’s hope you can resit the Masters, after guidance, advice and a walk through the specification. I bet it’s a non exam course.

My wife has been gaming my daughter’s exams. They do it in the evenings, behind closed doors. They speak French before tests and this gives Cathy an adavantage.

Is it only half the middle class world who use private tutors: gaming, dependent on private wealth?

“Gaming” is forever with us; how innocent am I?

My school has (that means I have) increased the timetabled curriculum for English and Maths with more teachers and smaller classes. From age 11 we target the skills that will be examined  at 16; from age 14 we practice exam questions; at 15 we target likely questions. At 16 we do early entries and we double entry some students for GCSE English and the private schools’ preferred iGCSE. We do practice essays, and “walking talking mocks.” On exam day  we get the kids in early for a warm up; feeding them them toast and bacon rolls. Each student is given a bottle of water. We have a team of dedicated invigilators, an air conditioned hall and a very big clock. Students are provided with a black pen and we are nice to them. No barking attacks the students. As an exams centre we administer public examinations faultlessly according to exam board inspection.

Gamers such as Lewis Hamilton? He has a team of dozens, millions spent designing better car stuff, nutritionists and fitness trainers, coaches using every device to analyse his racing style, He has on board computers and pit stops where he doesn’t even put the petrol in himself . He practices in the car and in simulators, on the track he will race. My goodness, they virtually drive the race for him.

I’ve heard of candidates trying to spot interview questions, newsreaders using notes and prompters, firefighters simulating fire rescues, actors learning lines and fuel tanker drivers being shown exactly how to transfer toms of fuel. Gamers all.

There has been cheating. Extra help or time in SATs, model answers where kids change a few words, constant correction of coursework, inflated marks in oral exams and too much help in practical exams. Yes, it has always been done and it is wrong. To prevent such malpractice we need effective monitoring exam boards, to  visit schools during controlled assignments, talk with students, film oral exams, read coursework submissions and use computer plagiarism checkers. Warn, penalise and publicly ban centres found cheating. Headteachers will quickly impose internal checking to save their school’s reputation. Put this alongside an ethos of trusting schools and abolishing league tables and we stand a chance of integrity returning. Simply using a mountain of terminal exams which exam boards fail to mark properly is not the answer. Do away with resits, Modular exams, early entries and access to iGCSEs and you will remove a burden on markers. But with the 16 million papers (Guardian Jan 2012) all now to be sat in June the exam boards stand no better chance.

There are too many exams and too many end of course exams. Properly moderated school assessments in most subjects would be a more efficient and accurate way of assessing student achievement. The only way forward is for the assessment system to be built on trusting teachers and reported student achievement broadened. Have fewer formal assessments, with a new role for in-school trained, responsible assessors. Schools are really very, very good at knowing their students and assessing each one’s ability in each aspect of each course. Ofqual must look to use this knowledge rather than rely on statistical models of assessment. A lack of trust explains the removal of Practical assessments from the new Science A levels.

And. Please can we make the tasks assessed a bit more exciting, stimulating, challenging and rewarding. Problem solving maths is on the ball here.

A student’s grade should not be based on the choice of board . I am in favour of one board, one syllabus. However, the AQA Drama results were so crazily wrong in 2011 many schools switched other boards, saving thousands of students from irrational failure. This is by no means a unique example. Government and Ofqual seem to agree that speaking and listening should not be examined in English, so many switched to iGCSE. I want one resourced good board funded by the massive fees we already pay them and regulated by an Ofqual free of political catchphrases and interference. Any money received by an exam board employee for writing exam textbooks should go to reduce the cost of exams.

We should abolish league tables as unfit for purpose.  We now have the Govian exclusion of resit grades, many vocational subjects, “discounted” subjects which, for example, counts one of Art and Textiles as meaningful. The official, published result will be the first exam sat, so if Art was sat on Monday 10^th June and textiles on Tuesday 11^th June Art counts in league tables and Textiles is rubbished. Well, it isn’t as if any one designs, makes, sells or even wears clothes is it?

NAHT, ASCL and PiXL have combined to support schools with “end of Year 11” statistics including early entries, unintentionally wrecking league tables in the process. How then will Raiseonline enable Ofsted to condemn on figures alone? And by the way, what’s wrong with a Leaving Certificate/Graduation standard that records all student achievement as a passport to job interviews and further study? And goodness, how will we cope if more young people achieve this standard?

If the league tables are there to entice or deter parents on such simplistic measures do we really think families are that naive? I know dozens of people who love our school despite the drawback of a blogging headteacher..

Exam boards make many, many mistakes. Schools paid exam boards £328 million in 2013 (Channel 4, 15-08-14). Every year incompetent marking leads to incorrect grades given to candidates and attempts to get injustice corrected are met with bureaucratic, defensive obstruction from exam boards. We have seen our ICT coursework, marked by the same teacher for 12 years, reduced by 3 grades per A level student. Our English language coursework, marked by the same teacher for five years, has been marked down an entire A Level grade. There are countless examples of this across schools When a candidate gets a remark the remarker receives the original script with the first marker’s marks. This is bound to influence the second marker and is a highly dubious practice in academic matters. Appeals cost schools £5.5 million in 2013 (Channel 4, 15-08-14).

The arts suffer more than most from interpretive moderation. Just two recent cases in my experience:The Drama A level moderator told the head , that’s me, that she was happy with our marking. All kids were then downgraded. Our appeals were dismissed without explanation An experienced Music A level teacher resubmitted the exact same lower sixth work a year later.  All grades went up.

Exam marking is outrageously hit and miss with the misses failing good students. Marking is neither accurate nor fair (HMC Report 2012) “12,250 grades changed at A level and 26,270 grades changed at GCSE” after schools appealed (Ofqual Statistical Bulletin March 2012). Real people, real mistakes that could cost teachers and students their careers.

Schools pay dearly to appeal badly marked exams and Ofqual’s response was to add this to the gaming accusations. Stop appealing results, you said, because the examiners doing the remark were often tempted to give a higher mark on appeal.

Parents, teachers and students do not have confidence in the exam boards. Ofqual’s own polls showed that, “89% of headteachers had ‘considerable’ concerns about GCSEs, citing worries about incorrect marking of papers, grade boundary issues, incorrect grading and lack of information and knowledge about standards.”  (Ofqual, May 2013)

When Ofqual polled 4,696 people they found that “one in five of all teachers (20%) believe that around a quarter of GCSE students get the wrong grade.” Alarmingly, Ofqual declared this “a broadly positive statistic.” (Ofqual 2012) My Masters course emphasised research methods and use of statistics

In the same survey Ofqual reported 41% of parents ‘not confident’ students got the correct GCSE grade, 33% likewise concerned about inaccurate A Level grades. Goodness, Glenys, how high do these figures need to be before you demand higher exam board standards?

Chauncy has scored 24% on EBacc measures, 62% on First Entry only measures, 72% on the results achieved by the end of Year 11 and 73% if we include vocational courses in full. I reckon appeals may bring us to 74%.

Someone protect me from this nonsense.

The Eyes Have It

Wednesday 21st May 2014

Have you ever noticed that characters in novels look deeply into other’s eyes? I don’t know how often you make direct eye contact with people – personally it seems a bit seedy to me - but apparently there’s a lot to see there, and hard boiled detectives see more than most. In Dennis Lehane’s latest, quite good ”Live by Night” a character attacks some men because, “ they’d come upon him with a threat in their eyes so clear wasn’t no point in waiting for it to leave their mouths.” I think that’s brilliant.

At another point the hero is robbing some gangsters of and comes across a waitress,“ Her eyes left the pistol and rose up his forearm in such a way he could feel the hairs parting. She sculled across the centre of his chest and then up his throat and over his chin. When she found his eyes, hers were fuller and sharper, lit with something that had entered the world centuries before civilized things.” Heck!

Later, before the sex started, “She stared at him the way she had in the payroll office, like she could see the intestines curled inside him, the pink of his lungs, the thoughts that journeyed among the folds of his brain.”

So, can you spot a liar, a fraud, a charlatan? Can you see the blankness of the apathetic, the indifferent or the bored? Le’ts check the eyes of Mickey Gove, the DfE tweeters, our national press, the BBC and politicians of all hues. Their eyes were ablaze and their scorn plentiful when dubious analysis from the OECD gave birth to the headlines that we were “plummeting down “ international education tables. (December 2013)

On the 8th May news was released that contrary to this we are apparently 6th in the world and 2nd in Europe.Time for righteous praise from our leaders or even ruefully, apologetically smiling eyes?

These rankings are based upon an amalgamation of international tests and education data - including the OECD's Pisa tests, and two major US-based studies, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls).

Triangulated no less.

Well, well, well.

I waited, for the deafening applause, the beaming smiles, from a corrected media; front pages splashed with congratulatory messages to teachers, the call for a national day of joyful celebration bannered across news bulletins, tears of relief and possibly a letter from the grateful Queen of All England to be read out in classrooms. I waited.

I turned on the BBC News. Halal meat is prepared in halal style; Scunthorpe United finish 2nd in Division 3 and Mavis the cat has been found in a shed in Wycombe. The new education tables, the results, the international comparisons, came and went quicker than a passing glint in a regretful eye.

So, the news should have proclaimed: “Gove jumped on dodgy data to wreck our schools.“ Perhaps admitting to using incomplete, corrupt and incorrect information: Gove Is Well Sorry.”(The Sun)

So, surely, the next headline, after the glassy-eyed apology,

                                                          “Gove Resigns In Shame”

Well what would you expect from an honourable man, from a scholar of heroic deeds, a man with a fearsome supply of urgency pills who compares himself to brave “Horatio at the gate?” Of course he will resign.

Opus Dei style self flagellation and heavy grade barbed wire underpants for Mickey for the rest of this parliament, and Shakespearian banishment beyond. Of course, he will do the honourable thing because now he can see that our education system needs nurturing and developing, not wrecking.

He misled everyone. He proved incapable of rationale thought and balance supported by expert advice, instead, sweeping away the foundations of a world class education system for his own jaundiced, ideology, sacrificing millions of kids to perpetual practice for SATs, GCSEs and other dull repetitive tests.

Of course he will resign. For Govey is an honourable man who read about the age of chivalry and falling on one’s sword.

No doubt he will be round my house, in sackcloth to do my garden as penance for his anti-childhood sins. Sadly, for a man so immense in his own refection Gove now becomes the forgotten man, a bit like the once admired Gary Glitter - confined to the hidden pages of popular culture, an example of mistakes to be punished. An insecure man with so much to be insecure about, and no, I don’t want to be in your gang either.

Having worked in three schools in the last 35 years I can shamelessly, categorically state that we are doing so much better now. But we are being driven backwards by Gove’s stuff. Back to the 80s

…when many kids were failing, their schools couldn’t recruit decent qualified teachers. Mining, car plant, shipyard and docks jobs disappeared and it was students’ fault. The lack of ambition was endorsed by the state. Unemployed people were counted on disability lists to be statistically hidden. My first act as a Head of Year in 1983 was to bury a 14 year old gas sniffer called Mickey. There were riots of the disaffected, by the disillusioned in the cities.

With Gove’s nonsense, unopposed by all political parties, “more students will fail more exam,s” and this will show the students, struggling to pass demanding exams now, that there is no point. He’s also talking about quotas for each grade, so no matter how hard students work with their teachers there will be no criteria for success. As much as we improve our teaching normal distribution curves will screw the students and the schools.

Primary schools have year 5 children doing SATs practice papers a whole 12 months before their tests from fear of public comparison tables. Secondary school English and Maths teachers and headteachers are leaving the profession, driven out by the unrelenting attack on state education: the weekly backdated changes to assessment, the drive for pass marks rather than standards, the wholesale dumping of the curriculum for 4-18 year olds and this centralised, dogmatised, unscientific and frankly incorrect interference reflecting almost complete ignorance of the great things students and their teachers have been doing. Together we have been raising standards and achievement, encouraging hope and ambition, creativity and responsibility, communication and fair play and even suggesting that hard work will be rewarded – you know, all the things employers say they want.

So, back to the eyes. Somewhere in Chelsea, where the mickey-taker conducts his morning ritual, “Mirror mirror on the wall…” and the usual sneering snigger now unmasks a salivating pestilence as he celebrates his victory over a three quarters way decent education system. His hands rubbing together so rapid in their glee that the skin flakes in clouds of foulness, and as he searches his own eyes skin peels away from rotted eyelids, gore drips from the scales beneath,
and he stares, between the tiny slits of membrane at his own reflected eyes, grunting, “Education education education, I’ll show them bloody education!” as the reptilian metamorphosis completes.

Gove casts a damp deformed shadow obscuring the progress we have seen in the last three decades. Our system needed tidying and developing, not unseeing vandalism, and we should be encouraging the best teachers I have ever known.

The voice on “Alice’s Restaurant” resonates, the original 1967 version now. Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody, complains joshingly that the audience don’t sing along loudly enough. He says, “I’ve been singing this song for 25 minutes now, I can sing for another 25. I’m not proud, or tired.” Well, I’ve written nearly 40,000 words in the last 22 blogs and by tomorrow morning I will have been metaphorically hit 15,000 times.77 USA people reading, “How to choose a secondary school this month” makes me wonder if I’m on Michael’s reading list over there at Concordia College.

Feel invited to post a comment, maybe a suggested future topic. Or if you are my local MP and you don’t like my politics or you are the Hertford Headteacher who told my friend, “Dennis is mad,” there’s an all encompassing invite to post a few words.

And next time you see Gove on TV look into his eyes, look deep into his eyes.

Dennis O'Sullivan