Wednesday, April 15, 2009
‘I 8 Skool’ by ‘Mr Read’ £8.99 To order the book contact MrRead1@aol.com
Book Outline
1. Introduction
Why teach? Why not teach?
Autumn
2. Gulls regurgitating fish
How the training is organised by ‘consultants’, we’re marked down as an “intensive support” school. I feel like walking out.
How the training is organised by ‘consultants’, we’re marked down as an “intensive support” school. I feel like walking out.
3. WLTM GSOH TLC
I inherit a classroom from another teacher and find drawers full of unmentionable things…
4. The Line in the Sand
Reality hits me like a Kirkby Kiss, tests every six weeks, will I be the only one to speak out?
5. The Silence of the Lambs
I am the only one to speak out. How can people stay silent, or worse still agree with tests every six weeks?
6. Has anyone got an INTELLIGENT question?
Some of the strange visitors we get - Mr Crabtree with his wildlife slides, Mr Cuddles who barely got out alive.
7. Creativity and the advance stages of narcolepsy
More creativity in lessons, but… we have to fill in reams of paper to prove it.
8. Health Fascism
I’m all in favour of healthy eating and hate McDonald’s, but banning sweets?
9. Teacher training and the class from hell
Why do student teachers carry round such large files, what the hell are we trying to produce robots or teachers?
10. School Newsletters
Chavs v Posh
11. Extracting the Bodily Fluids
A premiership football club organises some after school activities for our ‘gifted and talented’. They want teachers to attend – without pay!
12. Better Grammar
How to bore children to death from an early age.
13. Unity is strength?
Why are unions so weak and ineffectual?
14. My child is a genius…
Parents’ evening.
15. Speaking VERY LOUDLY
Why is our country so crap at languages? Should we teach it in primary schools?
16. Inspector Read Investigates
When Peter’s ball goes missing I’m forced to turn detective, but D.C. Smith gets a confession…
17. Mr Motivator
Why is training so useless?
18. The aroma of aftershave
A new literacy consultant with a ‘fresh approach’ doesn’t manage to hack it.
19. Where is the Roman soldier?
Where would primary schools be without the Christmas play?
Spring
20. I’m a celebrity
Some of the teachers who could appear.
21. Mimicking silly walks
The General Teaching Council. The organisation that is there to register and discipline teachers. It only makes headlines when teachers are sacked – cue tabloid headlines ‘Teacher Found Drunk in Charge’.
22. Trusting teachers
How observations of lessons are killing teaching – micro targets for each lesson.
23. Writing with Stephen King
A good lesson using Stephen King’s book ‘How To Write’ the detective stories we produce.
24. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Some of the grants, awards, schemes and fellowships I’ve managed to use to keep me sane.
25. The special education needs panel
They refuse a statement for one of our children, how the system is failing SEN children.
26. Cause related marketing
Tesco and other vouchers, why I hate collecting them, cutting them out and all the free publicity.
27. Dear Dairy
I organise a lesson about Anne Frank based on my visit to Amsterdam. All the children get a well-designed booklet to write in…Dear Dairy. Taxi!
28. Losing the will to live
Another ‘initiative’ is changed.
29. Take me to your subject leader
New proposals for ‘subject leaders’ and a file with 25 different items to file.
30. The SEF
The School Evaluation Form or management gobbledygook.
31. Zen and the art of play ground duty
The job that most teachers can begin to hate, yes it’s Saving Private Ryan again as chaos reigns.
32. Dame Edna and Madge
An Ofsted inspector takes the PE training day with her silent friend.
33. Hightown Park
Our local secondary school in special measures for 4 years, as part of my MA I interview the teachers.
34. The Morecambe and Wise dance
Why do so few people apply to become headteachers?
35. It’s ‘ot
Dean doesn’t remember much about the Egyptians.
36. Oversold and underused
Why ICT is not an each way bet, the book that all ICT teachers should read.
37. Morsels for Godzilla
Ofsted due another visit soon – the ‘light touch’?
38. School motto
Different mottoes that schools could use or not use.
Summer
39. I have a dream…
My visit to America and there are plenty of scary parallels with England.
40. White flight
Chicago and the unequal education system.
41. Blockading the streets
How testing is killing enjoyment in America, thoughts on my fortnight in America.
42. Julia Roberts and a ‘bad hair day’
We get £25,000 to make a film about Victorian times in our locality.
43. Losing my religion
Why should the Church of England that will close in 2050 (based on falling attendance figures) get millions of pounds for faith schools?
44. Stress week
Why is teaching so stressful?
45. The rolled up football programme…
We host a visit for our Irish school and visit the Beatles Museum, the Mersey Ferry and Anfield.
46. Nobody Drowned
We attend the school swimming gala, none of our children drown.
47. Brideshead Revisited
The great divide in our education system, I’m on holiday in Sedbergh looking at their sports facilities.
48. Links with secondaries
How not to do it. Why is it that there is so little contact? My scheme to involve them comes to a grinding halt. I teach a lesson and the teacher doesn’t turn up.
49. Teach what you’re interested in
The Titanic - how you can use film to interest children.
50. The inspectors call
Ofsted finally arrive.
51. Being sworn at by mega rich pop stars
Why I hate Comic Relief.
52. Is beginning to…
What school reports really mean…
53. Blackpool and the end of the pier
We visit the Tower and the brilliant circus; shame the town doesn’t match up.
54. The class of ‘97
What happened to my former pupils?
Conclusion
55. Conclusion
The solution is to trust and invest in teachers.
Labels: I 8 Skool
Monday, April 06, 2009
SATs BoycottThe joint call for a boycott by the largest teachers’ union (National Union of Teachers) and the main headteachers organisation (National Association of Headteachers) represents the most credible threat to the Key Stage 2 tests.
Almost every educational organisation and academic, across the political spectrum, has called for changes, if not outright abolition, of testing and league tables. Reports, enquiries and research papers must be straining every shelf in the misnamed Department for Children Schools and Families.
Last year Unicef reported on international comparisons of children’s welfare. Out of the twenty-one wealthiest industrialised countries the UK came bottom. Other studies have shown how children’s self-esteem is now linked to their academic ability. Scotland has never used SATs testing at 11 and Wales abandoned them in 2005. After last year’s marking fiasco the Key Stage 3 SATs in England were scrapped.
And yet, and yet, reasoned argument has failed, the government still clings on to Key Stage 2 SATs. There’s been so many letters written, calling for abolition that if quills were still in use every available bird would be denuded of feathers. The government’s response is always ‘standards’, this, despite the fact that when the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) remarked a sample of Key Stage 2 SATs papers, 22% of the English grades were incorrect.
So there it is, unpopular tests that are unfair and completely inaccurate.
The boycott call by the NUT and NAHT is a reprise of the NUT’s campaign in 2003. However, the problem then was, what did they mean by a ‘boycott’, who would be responsible for it, what would the action comprise of? Already there is the danger that it will be mired in legal technicalities, Phil Revell, chief executive of the National Governors’ Association has warned headteachers that any boycott might lead to disciplinary action.
A boycott could lean heavily on headteachers and the Year 6 teachers, who are usually members of senior management. The campaign should involve all members of staff in primary schools; personally I’d like to see a strike on one or more days during the SATs week. That way it would be a collective decision by all teachers to boycott testing, it wouldn’t isolate a few members of staff.
80% of primary heads are members of the NAHT. I’m sure there are older heads who can remember times, if not the Elysian Fields or a millenarian golden age, when children weren’t tested to destruction and phoney league tables weren’t used to judge schools. As retirement beckons there’s many who will be saying ‘sod it, let’s scrap the tests’. As for younger heads? They will be graduates of the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) this is the course that ensures schools are run by cloned, dull, conformist, automatons.
Local authorities employ teams of School Improvement Officers who constantly ‘monitor’ schools, any ‘under-performing’ heads are liable to get the Alan Sugar treatment. So just how many of them will be willing to participate in a SATs boycott and commit career suicide?
To its credit the NUT has led the campaign to abolish SATs. The only reason the ballot failed in 2003 was that the turn out was only 34%. It is though one thing to pass a conference resolution and another thing to get the members to participate. Most primary schools don’t have a union representative and many of the union branches are moribund. Before last year’s strike I visited some of our local schools, in some the reps had done a good job and the school was closed, in another the union posters were on the staffroom notice board but this was because a diligent school secretary opened the post and made sure they were displayed. In others I rang the intercom and asked to speak to the union rep, ‘we don’t have one’, could I speak to any union member, it was about the strike. After a few minutes the door would open slightly, enough to reveal one eye, a reluctant hand would appear, grasp the leaflets, hand and eye would retreat, door closed.
The National Association of Schoolteachers (NAS) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) have, a year before it is muted, condemned the boycott call. This must take the proverbial, stale, mouldy staffroom biscuit. As part of the government’s ‘social partnership’ the two unions have signed agreements that replaced Management Allowances (MAs) with Teaching and Learning Responsibilities (TLRs) thereby reducing the pay of thousands of teachers; introduced performance management criteria that allow maverick heads to use our old friend test results to limit teachers movement up the pay scales; allowed teaching assistants to replace teachers in front of the class and when the government wanted to change teachers’ pensions in 2004, every union was calling for strike action, apart from the NAS, only a rare conference revolt brought them into line.
Just to look at TLRs in more detail, the old Management Allowances gave extra money to teachers involved in things like pastoral care, the new TLRs only provided extra cash for work involved with increased test scores. In about 100 schools where the union(s) were strong there was strike action by the NUT and or the NAS. ‘Look we are a union! We organise strikes!’ Well, even the state controlled unions in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia organised the odd strike, if they hadn’t they would have lost all credibility. The NAS signed the national agreement that replaced MAs with TLRs, despite the rearguard action in few schools, that did in the main win concessions, nationally, according to the School Teachers’ Review Body, 30,000 teachers lost pay. The NUT as usual talked a good fight, but refused to organise national action.
The NUT/NAHT SATs boycott is a ray of hope. One of the NAHT leaders described the SATs tests as, ‘child abuse’. I don’t believe that was hyperbole. Thousands of children leave primary school as ‘Level 3’s’ saying ‘I’m thick’.
We also need to get the support of parents. What about an alternative vision for Year 6?
· Learn a foreign language
· Improve the link with secondary schools for Year 7
· Write a short story
· Learn to play a musical instrument
· Go on an adventure holiday
· Put on a play
· Undertake a community project
Labels: heads, Testing, Unions
Monday, March 30, 2009
JessThis is our cat Jess (no prizes for guessing how she got the name). It’s been tough the past two weeks having to wear a collar. Jess got neutered.
She likes –
· Lying in the warm coals on the gas fire and getting covered in soot
· Eating spiders
· Hiding in cupboards
· Scaring rabbits (my daughter’s)
· Getting stuck at the top of fir trees
· Whiskas pouches
· Lying under duvets
· Hiding under parked cars
· Gazing out of the window at birds
Labels: Jess
Friday, March 27, 2009
Rote Learning?The Rose Review of Key Stage 2 was reported in ‘The Guardian’. The use of selected papers to leak information has been standard practice under New Labour. Apparently, the education organisations that specialise in certain subject areas were only given three days for consultation on the final draft and the unions were ignored completely.
The primary curriculum is completely cluttered with so many subjects that some are not adequately covered, History only accounts for 4% of teaching time in primary schools.
As for the emphasis on rote learning, yes, it’s true that in some aspects of knowledge you can’t escape it, you just have to memorise French verb tables, German grammar or Chinese characters. There aren’t any short cuts. The old saying that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration is valid in many ways. David Beckham spent hours refining the art of bending the ball around a wall of players at free kicks.
However, I’ve taught children who memorised their times tables. The only problem was that they couldn’t apply them. Ask them 12 x 7, or to use it as an inverse in division and they were stumped. There was the infamous occasion in 1997 when the junior education minister Stephen Byers claimed that schools were falling down in the task of teaching children times tables. He was subsequently door-stepped by a reporter, ‘Minister what is 8 x 7?’, ‘Er… 54?’
Times tables are best taught through strategies 8 x 7? 2 x 7 is 14, double it and double it again.
I’ve got a similar problem with phonics, yes they are one important strategy in the process of learning to read, but our language is not phonetically consistent, you need other skills like reading in context and sight memory. In my experience the poor readers in upper juniors were the ones who could only use phonic strategies. As for whole class teaching, in Year One there are children who can already read fluently, they must be bored to death sitting in phonics lessons. Lastly, what about the joy of reading? Phonics reduces reading to a mechanical de-coding exercise.
Finally it’s good to see the some of the obsessive posters on the TES Forum are beginning to make a few comments that relate to the subject matter. Here are a few tips –
· Try to advance your own ideas rather than just carping and criticising. Keep to the high ground!
· Don’t use personal insults, it’s undignified, shows a total lack of class and you wouldn’t expect it from your pupils.
· Concentrate on quality rather than quantity.
· I’d like to see use of alliteration, metaphor and simile. Most of the writing is, to be frank, dull, repetitive and boring.
Good to see that there is, at last, progress. Some of you have a long, long way to go but keep trying; there are signs of improvement!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The End of SATs?There’s a report in today’s newspapers that the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) are both calling for a boycott of Key Stage 2 SATs in 2010. Is the day of liberation coming?
There’s a growing realisation that SATs tests are completely unreliable. The Qualifications and Curriculum authority (QCA) carried out a review of Key Stage 3 marking and found that 44% of grades in English writing were wrong, in reading up to a third were faulty and in science one in six.
The test results are used by Ofsted as an infallible guide to the quality of education in a particular school, Professor John MacBeath found that Ofsted inspection gradings directly correlated with exam results in 98% of primaries and 96% of secondaries.
The key stage 1, 2 and 3 tests cost £50 million in 2008, that’s enough to pay the salaries of 2,500 teachers.
So is it time to hang out the bunting? Both the NUT and the NAHT will come under pressure to retreat from a boycott. If there is a ballot I’m not confident that the NAHT will be able to deliver a majority vote. The NUT ballotted its primary school members in 2003, but whilst 86% supported a SATs boycott the turnout was only 34%. The other teacher ‘unions’ NAS and ATL have already waved the white flag and indicated that they would not join the boycott.
Amongst parents there is however a growing recognition of how useless the tests are, the NAHT carried out a survey of 10,000 parents, 85% thought that the present system of testing should be abolished and 71% wanted to see an end to league tables.
After the marking fiasco with the American company ETS the government were forced into a u-turn and the Key Stage 3 tests were abandoned.
It will be interesting to see how some Year 6 teachers cope, some of them will be like the long term prisoners who after they are released find it difficult to adapt to ‘life outside’. In Wales even though SATs were scrapped a majority of schools still used them for assessment. Doubtless Ofsted will still want to see test results.
Still, let’s dream dreams. If enough schools organised a boycott the national figures and league tables would be worthless and redundant. Hallelujah! A new day will dawn!
Labels: Testing
Rose Review, 'I see no testing'Freeing up the primary curriculum? The Rose Review prescribes more rote learning, chanting times tables, dates from history and phonics. The spin doctors were dusting their magic over the plans because to give it a good media spin they included using Twitter, Wikipedia and spellcheckers.
The main problem in primary schools is the inordinate amount of time spent drilling children in English, Maths and Science. Why? Because that’s what children will be tested in, the results of which will be recorded in league tables, the place the school occupies will then decide if it fails its Ofsted inspection and in turn the career prospects of the headteacher.
The terms of reference of the Rose Review of the curriculum specifically excluded the testing culture and that fatal emphasis on ‘the basics’. Sir Jim had to ignore the elephant in the living room, the dinosaur blocking the dining room, the Komodo Dragons cluttering the kitchen or more accurately that enormous Blue Whale wedged in the bathroom blocking every ray of sunlight. So he failed to take into account testing, league tables and the grim Ofsted inspections; their baleful influence has all but stripped any element of creativity, imagination or joy from the primary curriculum.
The Rose Review is the Hutton Enquiry Mark II – limit the terms of reference and install a ‘safe pair of hands’ who won’t ask any awkward questions. Me thinks the bold Sir Jim has laboured and brought forth a veritable mouse.
Labels: Testing
Monday, March 23, 2009
BSF – the best thing since sliced bread?I’ve received a comment posted by C. Ellams from Liverpool about BSF -
Could your attitude be anymore negative about one of the most exciting projects in this country? I am sick of people looking down, moaning about taxpayers money being used up, this is education for God's sake not nuclear defence so why do you oppose worthy use of the taxpayers money? It is expensive but history tells us the best does not come cheap, all great additions need large finical backing, the London metropolitan sewers, motorways and regeneration of Manchester to name a few.
Teaching is outdated in the UK, sat behind desks in classes of 30 originated as a regimental approach from the Victorian era. The new school designed by Aedas Architects in Kirby is one of the best in the country and there is no need for parents to worry about their children not running off without doing any work as this method of teaching has been tried and tested all over Western Europe, beyond this prior to opening this school had a truancy rate of 48% and since opening attendance is at 88% so something is right. How do I know this? As I am currently writing a dissertation on the BSF programme and have made extensive research into the BSF and I am aware of the negative attitude from the media but none more full of rubbish than this article.
Most schools will close but not until new improved schools are opened. As for the comments about Knowsley being abandoned by teachers, universities are producing a huge amount of teachers aware of 21st century learning techniques and not stuck to their chalk and blackboard.
Finally schools being turned into learning centres, Oh Dear what a disaster! As I type with sarcasm, this is to supply facilities to the community at all hours and our children's education will not be affected. New schools will offer fantastic facilities state of the art laboratories, ICT, teaching zones, local libraries and sports facilities. It would be senseless to deprive Kirby of these facilities that they significantly lack and could teach the unemployed skills that they so drastically require to work. BSF is a good thing it just needs time.
Well, good luck with the dissertation C. Ellams it sounds as though you’ve been talking to some of the Knowsley ‘consultants’, I wonder if you have spent any time with teachers?
You start with the usual consultant-speak, which is to employ that well-known debating tactic – reduce your opponent’s arguments to absurdity. So am I really opposed to spending millions of pounds on new school facilities? Amazing as it may sound, I’m not, the devil is of course in the detail.
That other default mode that the consultants always employ is that any one opposed to BSF is a Luddite and technophobe. This tactic was constantly used at the ‘consultation’ meetings with teachers.
Of course it is true that some people are resistant to change. On the other side you do need to try and take people with you and motivate them. At the start of BSF in Knowsley it was spelt out that poor results = crap teachers. Let’s just say that moral didn’t improve when all teachers were informed they would all get a P45 and have to reapply for jobs in the new ‘Learning Centres’.
Despite extensive national advertising only 8 people applied for 5 posts as ‘Leaning Centre Manager’ (a.k.a. ‘Headteacher’). One school recently advertised for a Head of English and got zero applicants. Knowsley’s attitude to teachers being made redundant was ‘Good Riddance!’ but now they’ve been forced to introduce a ‘bumped’ redundancy policy where teachers can retire early and the post will go to a Knowsley teacher.
So shiny new buildings, state of the art computers, what else do you need? Er, yes, teachers. Social class, ethnic origin, gender, parental help, they all impact on children’s learning but the most significant factor is the quality of the teacher at the front of the class.
And just how good are the shiny new BSF buildings? Has C. Ellams managed to find the report by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment? They reviewed 40 designs and found that 80% were either ‘mediocre’ or ‘not yet good enough’.
The other implication is that use of computers and ICT in and of itself will improve children’s education. A book I’ve quoted many times is Larry Cuban’s ‘Oversold and Underused’. Effect use of computers depends on high levels of maintenance and excellent training for teachers. In Knowsley RM have been given the contract for ‘maintenance’. I have to smile. We have had a set of lap tops, for eighteen months, one of them has never worked, during that time RM and Knowsley have passed the buck between them – ‘not us try RM’ and ‘no, it’s Knowsley’. Wonderful.
In the original BSF material Knowsley extensively quoted the example of Bishop’s Park in Essex who had changed children’s learning experience by introducing a topic based curriculum and vocational courses. Look now and you won’t find it. Why? Because although Bishop’s Park serves a disadvantaged area test results were poor, they failed their Ofsted inspection, went into special measures and are now facing closure. How long will the Knowsley experiment last? Knowsley is already bottom of the GCSE table, poor results and we will be back to rote learning and testing. The Government are constantly threatening to sack the local authority and install a private contractor.
So, school or learning centre? No problem with either, it’s just that the other Knowsley mantra is ‘no change is not an option’. Interesting that, twenty years ago the old mutual building societies were told that they would have to convert to banks, ‘no change is not an option’. Just lending money for people to build houses was old fashioned. What’s happened since? They’ve had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.
So, BSF? Demoralise the teachers, shoddy buildings and over reliance on computers. Yeah, ‘no change is not an option’.
You start with the usual consultant-speak, which is to employ that well-known debating tactic – reduce your opponent’s arguments to absurdity. So am I really opposed to spending millions of pounds on new school facilities? Amazing as it may sound, I’m not, the devil is of course in the detail.
That other default mode that the consultants always employ is that any one opposed to BSF is a Luddite and technophobe. This tactic was constantly used at the ‘consultation’ meetings with teachers.
Of course it is true that some people are resistant to change. On the other side you do need to try and take people with you and motivate them. At the start of BSF in Knowsley it was spelt out that poor results = crap teachers. Let’s just say that moral didn’t improve when all teachers were informed they would all get a P45 and have to reapply for jobs in the new ‘Learning Centres’.
Despite extensive national advertising only 8 people applied for 5 posts as ‘Leaning Centre Manager’ (a.k.a. ‘Headteacher’). One school recently advertised for a Head of English and got zero applicants. Knowsley’s attitude to teachers being made redundant was ‘Good Riddance!’ but now they’ve been forced to introduce a ‘bumped’ redundancy policy where teachers can retire early and the post will go to a Knowsley teacher.
So shiny new buildings, state of the art computers, what else do you need? Er, yes, teachers. Social class, ethnic origin, gender, parental help, they all impact on children’s learning but the most significant factor is the quality of the teacher at the front of the class.
And just how good are the shiny new BSF buildings? Has C. Ellams managed to find the report by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment? They reviewed 40 designs and found that 80% were either ‘mediocre’ or ‘not yet good enough’.
The other implication is that use of computers and ICT in and of itself will improve children’s education. A book I’ve quoted many times is Larry Cuban’s ‘Oversold and Underused’. Effect use of computers depends on high levels of maintenance and excellent training for teachers. In Knowsley RM have been given the contract for ‘maintenance’. I have to smile. We have had a set of lap tops, for eighteen months, one of them has never worked, during that time RM and Knowsley have passed the buck between them – ‘not us try RM’ and ‘no, it’s Knowsley’. Wonderful.
In the original BSF material Knowsley extensively quoted the example of Bishop’s Park in Essex who had changed children’s learning experience by introducing a topic based curriculum and vocational courses. Look now and you won’t find it. Why? Because although Bishop’s Park serves a disadvantaged area test results were poor, they failed their Ofsted inspection, went into special measures and are now facing closure. How long will the Knowsley experiment last? Knowsley is already bottom of the GCSE table, poor results and we will be back to rote learning and testing. The Government are constantly threatening to sack the local authority and install a private contractor.
So, school or learning centre? No problem with either, it’s just that the other Knowsley mantra is ‘no change is not an option’. Interesting that, twenty years ago the old mutual building societies were told that they would have to convert to banks, ‘no change is not an option’. Just lending money for people to build houses was old fashioned. What’s happened since? They’ve had to be bailed out by the taxpayer.
So, BSF? Demoralise the teachers, shoddy buildings and over reliance on computers. Yeah, ‘no change is not an option’.
Friday, March 20, 2009
The rot of targetsWe’re all familiar in education with the way that targets have completely distorted children’s learning, particularly during the testing years. Children lose all individuality and are converted into a ‘safe level 4’ or ‘borderline’. A marking review of SATs papers for 14 year olds by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) found that 44% of grades awarded in English writing tests were wrong. In reading up to a third and in science one in six.
Confirmation that the rot of targets has infected all public services was confirmed with the Stafford hospital scandal. In the pursuit of foundation status the hospital ignored patient care. One of the main targets they tried to achieve was patients moved out of Accident and Emergency within four hours. Patients were transported to a ghost ward, purely to massage the figures. It’s estimated that hundreds of patients died due to lack of care.
What is worrying is that no one within the hospital blew the whistle, it was only when an unofficial patients’ group began to protest that an inquiry was launched. Hospitals used to be checked by Community Health Councils, they were abolished and replaced by completely toothless and ineffectual patients’ groups.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the horrendous crimes of rapist John Worboys led to a wider examination of how the police assess rape. In some London boroughs inexperienced police constables were given the job of reviewing cases. In many instances it wasn’t reported as a crime but as an ‘incident’. More experienced officers were working on massaging the car crime figures. Why? Because that was the most important target.
The furore over the Baby P case highlighted how social workers rather than spending time working with vulnerable children are hunched over a computer inputting data to satisfy the culture of targets.
Targets are a symptom of the way that New Labour want to micro manage everything, as though a minister in Whitehall can pull a lever and everyone will move to order. It doesn’t work.
In the wake of the Stafford scandal the government reassured everyone that most hospitals were putting patient care first. How do they know this? Er… because they are reaching their targets.
Labels: Testing
