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, October 18, 2007
Test the foetus?Falling standards? First create your moral panic – by whatever means necessary. There was a great example of that this week with the news that our latest group of failures are the under fives (no honestly). Forty per cent are struggling to write their own name and only 58 per cent of five-year-olds were reaching a “good level of development” in writing. One in three children (35 per cent) did not reach a good level of development in linking sounds and letters, for example through recognising and saying words such as “red” and “dog” or “pen”.
Once again our results obsesesd system has opened itself for ridicule. In most European countries formal education doesn’t start until the age of seven. Many children don’t develop fine motor skills until that age, they aren’t ready to write. Couldn’t the authors of the report have written in large capital letters at the start ‘STARTING FORMAL EDUCATION TOO EARLY ARRESTS CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT’?
What next give the foetus a range of tests, interrogate the sperm? Let’s not go there. As Ted Wragg was fond of saying, ‘When it comes to education irony is dead’.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
A Tank Full of PiranhasThere are moments in teaching when you feel a complete and utter heel, usually because a careless or unintended remark upsets a child. Through experience you know where some of the potential land mines are sited, you have to carefully navigate around them. ‘Mothers’ Day’ can be problematic for children in care or those being brought up by their grandparents.
This year as cover teacher for PPA (that’s Planning, Preparation and… something beginning with ‘A’) I get to teach in different classes. You know that some children will always try it on with a supply teacher or any new face. That class you had under the thumb will chance their arm. The permanent primary class teacher has a whole arsenal of weapons at their disposal, in particular those all-important jobs to bestow or withdraw like pencil monitor and merits or house points.
Discipline should of course be a whole school issue; here the key is consistency and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!). In our school we follow the three strikes on the board and detention rule (we also have the ‘smiley side’). It generally works firstly because the children hate losing a playtime and secondly it is instantaneous.
It wasn’t always so, our old headteacher Erica didn’t really ‘do’ discipline, along with most of the other parts of her job description. I discovered the ‘discipline issue’ early on when I sent a child to her; they returned after half an hour with stickers all over their shirt and within a few minutes were worse than they were before. ‘I’ll send you to the head,” is usually one of your trusted reserve weapons in primary schools. Sending children to Erica was about as effective as feather duster in a bare-knuckle fight.
One child, Marvin, was a trainee psychopath; he was constantly pinching, kicking and thumping other children. One day I found a child lying in a heap in the corridor. Marvin had repeatedly slammed his head against the door handle, he cheerfully admitted it all, the child had been, ‘winding him up’. Erica started to give him a stern lecture, I had to walk away, later she told me that he was ‘so sorry’. Marvin appeared back in class with an evil grin plastered all over his face. I was convinced that if he did succeed in killing anyone Erica would send a stiff letter home to his dysfunctional family.
Luckily we had a succession of capable deputy heads who took on the role of enforcing some semblance of order and disciplining the small minority of miscreants. Mrs Moore could have fun with the children but when push came to shove she had the kind of scary voice that could penetrate the deepest reinforced concrete bunker, and a stare that could turn children into stone, verily she could have frozen hell. Detention meant children sitting in silence doing work. Such was her fearsome reputation that even some of the most recalcitrant Year 6s still quail at the mention of her name.
Last week I was teaching partitioning with Year 3. It was one of those mornings when you became aware that the bright promise of the new school year has begun to fade. Maybe it was the dull weather, but a collective lethargy had set in. You begin to wonder, ‘Is it me?’ Have you not explained it clearly enough? I got the class back together and clarified it again… glazed expressions, children fiddling with shoes, staring out of the window.
Teachers should always be patient, but you can have bad mornings too – the memory of the holidays a distant blur, the long stretch until Christmas, another imposition from the government, a chance remark by a colleague that throws you off balance, that costly repair on the car, the darkening mornings. Eventually I snapped, ‘If I don’t see more effort some of you will stay in at break time with Mrs Jones’ – our new deputy head.
I carried on with the explanation but still the glazed look of utter incomprehension from half the class. Then I spotted Peter with tears rolling down his cheeks, as I carried on he was desperate to answer every question although it was hard to understand his replies.
After I’d sent the class back to their desks I called Peter over, he was accompanied by his friend Chris who had his arm around him trying to console him. I taught Peter’s sister last year and you could tell the parents wanted their children to succeed, homework was always excellent, reading folder completed, notes from school replied to.
I asked Peter what was wrong. Now he has a speech impediment and in his highly charged emotional state the words came out in flood, a relentless unstoppable torrent at high volume, ‘DEE, DUM, DAT, DOO, DAT, DEE, DAH…’ Every thirty seconds or so he would pause and his lungs would heave in more air. I sat and listened sympathetically, after a few minutes he dissolved into tears. ‘OK don’t worry’, I sent him back to his desk. Peter carried on with his maths work, tears welling from his eyes like an unquenchable spring. Tiny blots of salt stained tears marking his book.
Later I called his friend Chris over and asked him quietly what was wrong, ‘Sir, he’s terrified of having a detention with Mrs Jones’. I summoned Peter over and gravely examined his Maths book. ‘Peter, we only give detentions for very naughty children and that isn’t you, is it?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve tried really hard this lesson and that’s all that counts.’
Thinking about it I’d been way too harsh, Year 3 for goodness sake. You forget those school landmarks, those rites of passage; the journey from Infant to Juniors is a big leap for some children. There’s that fear of the unknown.
Detentions in our school are usually confined to the usual suspects and for the old lags it holds no fears – in the same way that Norman Stanley Fletcher viewed prison as an acceptable risk in a criminal career. Peter just couldn’t bear the thought of explaining to his Mum that he’d been in detention.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression, rewards have always featured strongly in our school, all stick and no carrot never works particularly for the vast majority of children who do want to learn. In nearly every case our ‘problem children’ come with a lot of baggage. I’ve taught in schools with perfect order and discipline but it was like being in a penal colony. Schools should be happy places. The other side is that children have a right to learn.
Luckily children have short memories, at playtime Peter and Chris were racing round the schoolyard. In the afternoon I moved on to gym with Year 2 and got them walking along the upturned benches. ‘Next week you’ll be balancing over a tank full of piranhas’. ‘Whatever!’
Saturday, September 15, 2007
BREAKING NEWS!It was the Iraq war that convinced me that the Rolling News Programmes (Sky, BBC) demonstrated that old law – more means less. Less analysis, less comment and less in-depth reporting.
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann has confirmed that ten-fold. Like jackals circling their prey the media haven’t been able to leave it alone. Breaking news, in a red box constantly appears at the bottom of the TV screen as another titbit is fed to the waiting hordes.
This ‘human interest’ story was perfect for the Rolling News Programmes, constant ‘updates’ the grieving parents, the suspect Murat and then that twist as the McCanns were named as ‘aguidos’.
The journey of the McCanns back to England was followed in excruciating detail. The TV commenting on all the media present… That ghoulish interest by the on lookers waiting to catch a glimpse.
There’s that old quote about the press, ‘Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’ How the hell do you describe the coverage on the McCanns? Words fail me; the best thing is to switch off.
Read the ‘Guardian’s’ incomparable Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn.
Labels: Children
Monday, September 10, 2007
Trial by media?Images of Madeleine McCann have been ubiquitous throughout the summer. You couldn’t escape them, on holiday by Lake Annecy we walked onto a tiny wooden jetty by a small village and there was a photograph and an appeal for help.
During the press interviews Gerry McCann did most of the talking, but there was one point when Kate McCann interjected and appealed to the kidnapper, ‘Don’t harm her, she’s beautiful.’ No parent could fail to have been touched to the core by that emotional plea.
Within hours the Internet site coordinating the search had received millions of hits worldwide. People wanted to ‘do something’. Maybe in a world so vast some issues are too large or complex to comprehend, how can one person tackle global warming, poverty or the nightmare that is Darfur? As Primo Levi noted the Holocaust and the vast scale of the slaughter of six million people was beyond most people’s understanding, yet one child’s suffering, Anne Frank, and individuals could relate to that.
In an era when people are disengaging from civic involvement – voting, writing letters, attending meetings – here was something almost unprecedented, mass involvement. Possibly it was because this was a cause with no shades of grey; there weren’t people ‘for’ or ‘against’ finding Madeleine.
With that slight abnormality in her eye and living in the global village where every movement is recorded by a host of CCTV cameras finding her should have been a synch. Yet as the months rolled by the ‘sightings’ turned to nothing.
For the press it was a chance in the ‘silly season’ (normally dominated by whales in the Thames, UFOs and Big Brother) to get serious, the blanket coverage would get results. The press set the tone – paedophile abducts child, grieving parents and bumbling foreign police with their halting English. Naturally if a Portuguese child disappeared in England they would find a local police inspector with faultless Portuguese.
The first crack in the wall came at a press conference in Berlin when a foreign journalist asked, ‘Have you acted like normal parents?’ This act of lese-majeste was met with silence and incredulity by the British press pack.
For me there was always a question, were the childcare arrangements for the McCann children on that fateful night adequate? When my children were young we never left them unattended at night, it was one of the sacrifices you made, as children arrived your social life and most other parts of your life just disappeared (I was known as the Olympic flame – I never went out). I’m not saying the McCanns were bad parents, or that I was Superdad, I wasn’t.
Let’s just consider the following scenario; unemployed single parent Tracy Smith is enjoying a week’s holiday in Benidorm with her three children, on the last night she is enjoying a drink with some friends in the hotel bar, she is ‘within sight’ of her apartment, when she goes to make one of her regular checks the eldest has been abducted. The press eat her alive. Social services take the rest of her children into care. Cue moral panic. Gordon Brown wants parenting lessons for the unemployed and Davis Cameron goes one better by demanding compulsory membership of the Mothers’ Union.
From the start the McCanns had the kid glove treatment, after all they were articulate professionals. Now we have the unseemly sight of the press pack in full cry, they can almost literally smell blood and the vicious rumours that have circulated in Portugal about the McCanns are now being recycled by the tabloids. Ex-detectives are entertaining us with different ‘versions’ of how the blood appeared in the car. The character assassination of the McCanns has begun.
The tabloids always deal in moral absolutes, that also translates to individuals, you only need to read the sports pages, players are either ‘heroes’ or ‘zeroes’. As the press can promote, encourage or elevate people into the status of icons so they can also turn and devour them.
We now have the unedifying sight of ‘trial by media’. Will there be a happy ending for Madeleine or the McCanns? I don’t think so.
Labels: Children
Monday, April 02, 2007
Child Cruelty?There’s an interesting debate in the TES Primary Staffroom about SATs revision at Easter. “Pilko” has posted to say that her daughter was given a three-inch high pile of worksheets. The letter from the school explained that this was “voluntary”, should “allay anxiety about SATs” and would only take 60 minutes a day. To compound it all they asked for a £2 “donation”. Our intrepid correspondent fired off a letter of complaint, much to their annoyance. I think I might have been tempted to suggest which orifice they could place their three inches of worksheets – rolled up of course.
Other contributors reported that sad, no-life-outside-of-teaching, automatons were volunteering to take Saturday morning or Easter holiday revision classes.
My immediate reaction is, “what the hell are we doing to our children?” Or see the Unicef report for more details – the unhappiest children in the western world.
‘The Independent’ quoted Mary Bousted the leader of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (normally the most somnambulant of unions) on SATs,
“The consequences are catastrophic. They lead to a period of exhaustion, not only for the teacher, but also for the pupils who are route-marched through to level 4. We know that real learning does not take place in boot camp year six classes.”
Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has also argued that the national end-of-year tests should be replaced by testing of a sample of pupils. Professor David Hargreaves, a member of a Government appointed inquiry team, has criticised ministers for neglecting one of its recommendations - that there should be a top-level investigation reporting by September into what forms of assessment and testing are needed. He accused them of “wilful blindness” in desperately supporting “a discredited system”.
Some of the posts in the TES Staffroom were more concerned about children having fun and learning outside the classroom. They also felt that grinding their children down with test papers was not the way to forge a lasting relationship i.e., “do you remember when you slaved over those test papers?” versus “remember the fun we had on holiday?”
Why should teachers oppose SATs testing?
“The consequences are catastrophic. They lead to a period of exhaustion, not only for the teacher, but also for the pupils who are route-marched through to level 4. We know that real learning does not take place in boot camp year six classes.”
Dr Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has also argued that the national end-of-year tests should be replaced by testing of a sample of pupils. Professor David Hargreaves, a member of a Government appointed inquiry team, has criticised ministers for neglecting one of its recommendations - that there should be a top-level investigation reporting by September into what forms of assessment and testing are needed. He accused them of “wilful blindness” in desperately supporting “a discredited system”.
Some of the posts in the TES Staffroom were more concerned about children having fun and learning outside the classroom. They also felt that grinding their children down with test papers was not the way to forge a lasting relationship i.e., “do you remember when you slaved over those test papers?” versus “remember the fun we had on holiday?”
Why should teachers oppose SATs testing?
· High stakes testing are stressful for children and adults
· Constant testing can reinforce failure
· The curriculum becomes narrowed down to English, Maths and Science
· Children don’t actually learn anything new
· Only a narrow range of abilities are tested
· Teachers teach to test
· Teacher assessment is more accurate, tests lead to grade inflation
For children with special education needs the testing week is horrendous and for more able children they are usually bored out of their skulls. Is it any wonder we have one of the worst rates in Europe for children staying in education after 16?
How do you “raise standards”? Even a brain-dead chimp could do it. All you do is focus on the borderline group. In the average class of 30 children you might have – five SEN, five borderline Level 3 to 4, fifteen Level 4 and five at Level 5. If your borderline group don’t perform your pass rate is 66% - result P45 and misery, if they all do well your pass rate goes up to 83% - result the LEA, Ofsted and the DfES are happy, your career path is intact. No prizes for guessing which group get all the attention in Year 6.
I’m sorry but three-inch thick “voluntary” SATs revision worksheets belong in the lower echelons of child cruelty. Oh ye latter-day Gradgrinds hang your heads in shame. Year 6 teachers should print out this quote and display it in a prominent position, “The only way for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent.”
Here’s my alternative Easter holiday plan for Year 6 – with curriculum links
1) Switch off the television and read them a good story – English
2) Visit a museum – Geography/ History/ Science
3) Go for a walk in the countryside and look at the birds, trees and plants. Paint a picture afterwards – Geography/ Science/ Art
4) Visit relatives, talk about times gone by – History
5) Play board games – Maths
6) Cook something with them – Technology
7) Sing some songs – Music
8) Talk with them – Speaking and Listening
9) Invite their friends round – PSHE
10) Help them to dream dreams
Naturally you will be required to fill in assessment forms on all of these activities, provide a Level Descriptor and set clear targets for improvement which must be displayed in their bedroom. Ofsted may also arrive to undertake a ‘light touch’ inspection. Gotcha! Just a belated April Fool… on the other hand.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
You Can Call Me ‘Al’‘The Guardian Education’ carried a lengthy interview with the new children’s commissioner for England, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green (to give him his full title). It started well. He stated that he was concerned at the numbers of unhappy children and schools’ ability to cope with them.
He cited the problem of constant school tests,
“Children feel under such pressure from endless testing, they do not feel they have the time to enjoy themselves. What is the purpose of education? Is it for the attainment of government targets, or is it to provide children with life skills to become confident adults?”
But just to show he’s ‘on message’ he reverts to ‘Blairspeak’ – you trot out a platitude that no one can disagree with.
“Of course we have to have measures of achievement, but to subject very young children to regular testing is a worry.”
A worry? Obviously child-friendly ‘Al’ doesn’t do over-statement. What about the most pernicious form of testing the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum Tests (SATs) which alongside that spawn of the devil, league tables, have blighted and distorted education in England (they aren’t used in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)? What does ‘Al’ have to say on this? Nothing. Look at the web site. Nothing.
Maybe he inhabits the same moral home as those Labour MPs who retain their CND cards but voted to spend billions on replacing Trident, or those with an Amnesty International card who remained silent about abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraid.
Really it’s not surprising, who gave ‘Al’ the job? The government. Naturally they’d want a ‘safe pair of hands’ and not any old ‘loose cannon’ who would ‘rock the boat’ (you can probably guess what the grammar target has been for this week and yes, rule one is - don’t mix your metaphors).
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Irony is Dead!I’m an optimist by nature, but I’m also a realist. I’d rather be writing about the joy of teaching young children, but here goes…
I’ve just read the DfES proposals for children from birth to five. Babies will be assessed on gurgling, babbling and toe-playing abilities. Every nursery, childminder and reception class will use 13 scales, give them a score and then pass on the information to the DfES.
By the time children enter Year 1 they will be expected to read simple sentences using phonics, count up to 10, sing simple songs from memory, as well as respecting others’ beliefs. Honestly, I’m not making it up.
Any organisation that wants to opt-out must apply for exemption.
On the birth to 11 months assessment carers will be expected to note the interest infants show “in the marks they make when they rub a rusk round the tray of a feeding chair”.
Just imagine the following scenario –
“Quick Thelma, look at this, he’s copying the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We can tick that box.”
“No he isn’t you daft bugger, he’s just having fun!”
What happens when there’s excessive form filling? Rather than spend time making lessons interesting staff spend hours ticking boxes. In Finland they encourage creativity, outdoor learning and cooperation - formal learning begins at seven or earlier if children are ready for it. Still I suppose the targets culture and testing will prepare our tots for the school regime that will grind them down with 100 formal tests by the time they are 18.
Ted Wragg memorably raged against the ‘foundation stage profiles’ in 2004 and asked why nursery staff weren’t out demonstrating on the streets. Maybe there are people out there in the wilderness of cyber space raging against it. Surely when Unicef say we have the most miserable children out of the wealthiest countries there should be some pause for thought?
Ted Wragg always said that when it came to education - ‘irony is dead’. What did he say about tick boxes for infants in 2004? “…in the totalitarian society in which we now live there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Except vomit.”
Labels: Children
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Bring back the Orphanages!It doesn’t exactly sound like a rallying cry, not in the wake of the abuse scandals, the way that some children were institutionalised and talk to any social worker and they’ll tell you that ‘residential’ is usually full of badly paid, unqualified staff, working unsocial hours.
Phil Frampton’s ‘Insider’ documentary for Channel 4 on Thursday night painted a different picture, his foster placements broke down and he was brought up in a Barnardo’s home in Southport. It wasn’t always clean, he was on occasions beaten and humiliated but he did get to university, along with other children from the home. Siblings stayed together and ‘everyone looked after each other’.
In the last thirty years the numbers in children’s homes has gone down from 25,000 to only 5,000, most placements are now with foster parents - in a ‘family environment’. However, although payments have increased there is a shortage of foster parents, which means that children can be shunted around a succession of short-term placements. One child had had 58 different foster placements, another had to travel one and a half hours to get to school.
There are many excellent, caring, foster parents but there are cases where they are given minimal training and support. A high percentage of placements break down. And as for the ‘family environment’ siblings are often split up with terrible consequences for the children’s mental health. Also it’s not unheard of for foster parents to go on holiday and not take the children they are fostering.
The German ‘Kinderhaus’ system places children in large houses with well-qualified staff, but due to the economies of scale it costs £20,000 per child as opposed to £30,000 in Britain. In Denmark a very high percentage of children in care go on to higher education.
We spend over £1 billion on the care system yet something like a third of homeless people and a high proportion of prison inmates have been through the care system. A higher proportion are in prison than university. It costs about £40,000 a year to incarcerate someone, surely it would be better to spend it on a world class care system – including some well equipped ‘orphanages’ staffed by well qualified professionals?
Phil Frampton's book - The Golly in the Cupboard
Thursday, February 15, 2007
UnicefThe Unicef report on child poverty in the twenty-one wealthiest countries was disturbing reading. Britain came bottom in the overall table, which measured forty different indicators. British children were most likely to feel left out, awkward and lonely. They were less likely to eat the main meal of the day with their parents. Only 40% of over-11s found their peers “kind and helpful”.
There were some fairly predictable knee-jerk reactions from the press; the ‘Daily Mail’ blamed one parent families and the breakdown of the family; ‘The Times’ used that time honoured tactic – shoot the messenger (Unicef). The best piece was by Steve Richards in ‘The Independent’, yes there were problems with the survey and it is possible to pick holes in it, but the Unicef report follows other critical investigations into the welfare of children in Britain.
Why are America (the world’s wealthiest country) and Britain (fourth wealthiest) at the bottom of the league table for child welfare? What do we have in common? In both countries the state has been absolved from responsibility for poverty, state providers have been replaced by cheaper voluntary organisations or charities, under pinning this was Thatcher’s infamous 1987 quote, “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” Lastly there’s the enormous wealth gap - company executives earned five times the wage of a shop floor worker in the 1970s, now it’s eighty times or more.
The Labour Government’s response was that the figures were ‘out of date’ and that 700,000 children have been taken out of poverty. As welcome as those figures are they must share the blame for the way that young people have been marginalised and demonised. The New Labour reaction is to reach for the Asbo and the CCTV, yet where is the investment in the youth service?
Another interesting fact was the poor self-image of children in Britain. Maybe that’s something to do with the ‘celebrity culture’ where the only role models on offer for young girls are intellectually challenged, surgically enhanced, stick-thin models. The whole modus operandi of the advertising industry is to peddle the myth that money = happiness. This point is developed by Oliver James in his book ‘Affluenza’, why are there such high levels of depression in the wealthiest countries?
In schools we have the testing culture that children find extremely stressful. As the TES pointed out in some classes friendships are made or broken according to ‘the Level’ pupils are allocated in tests.
We don’t teach in hermitically sealed classrooms, the influence of society is apparent all the time, children are the products of their environment. All we can do is promote the values of friendship, community and solidarity. As the hippies used to say, “It’s not what’s in your pocket, it’s what’s in your head that counts.”
Other articles
Year 6 Teacher
Daily Telegraph
