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Raising the bar

18/2/2016

6 Comments

 
Picture
​I’d like to use a sports analogy to explain how I feel about the changes to the writing assessment.
 
Imagine you had been training for the Rio Olympics to be held in the summer of 2016.  You could be a high jumper for example. 

​The qualifying height for Rio ’16 is 2.29m (men).  So, imagine you are that high jumper and you hit your target again and again and again. You feel like you are ready for qualification. Ready for Rio.
But a few months before, there are rumours that the bar will be higher for qualification so as an athlete you start to jump higher, training harder and exceeding your personal goals.
Once again you feel as though you have cracked it, however four months before qualification there comes a shock announcement from the governing body. As well as jumping 2.29 metres you also have to jump 2 metres horizontally.  Now you may think that ‘good’ athletes should be able to jump 2 metres anyway so this should not have a detrimental effect on the athletes.  However, for some athletes the original 2.29 metre target was their best.  They focussed fully on achieving more height as this was what has always been measured.  For these athletes, jumping horizontally is almost impossible as all of their effort has been expended on the original vertical target.
So what happens to those athletes who do not meet the new targets?
They lose their funding, they are labelled as failures and they feel that all of their training has been for nothing.  There are athletes who can meet the new expectations, they cannot see what the problem is, in fact their coaches support the changes as it makes their athletes and themselves look even better than usual.
 
What happens to the coaches of the ‘failed’ athletes?  They are put under increased scrutiny and eventually lose their jobs while the governing body touts their positions to the highest bidder.
 
Now imagine that instead of athletes you are a 10 or 11-year-old who has gone through their whole primary school career with one curriculum.  This was changed by the government less than two years before testing and the bar was raised.  Their teachers heard rumours that the standards required would be higher so they taught accordingly.  Then four months before the assessment process the goals were changed.  Under the old system some objectives were not put under as much scrutiny as they are now, which meant that in some schools they were not practised as much as there could have been.  This could have been for a number of reasons but perhaps all of their energy was expended on reaching that ‘higher bar.’  So now a large amount of our pupils will be labelled as failures, their teachers will be put under greater scrutiny and could possibly lose their jobs when their schools are forced to become academies by the government.


In summary, I am all for ‘raising the bar’ but raise it gradually, and then just move it vertically and not horizontally.  If you want to move it sideways or even change the bar altogether then give teachers and schools enough time to implement the changes before testing the children and using the results to label them, their teachers and their schools as failures. 

6 Comments
Brian Owens
19/2/2016 10:02:36 pm

We are lions led by donkeys .We are poked and prodded to jump through hoops for the satisfaction of the political circus . The children come last into the rings of hooped fire. They do not care that they consign our children to fear or failure but will test them again to prove what ? That they actually did need more time for teaching and learning. I sense the tide is turning . Parents don't trust our ego led politicians anymore and distrust these crude measures . This time they are hurting children and parents will begin to roar. This is not fair nor valid. It is ill thought through and rushed. It is arrogant political dogma. It is muddled and even unnecessary . It is a political disaster and together we should turn and roar or bite the ringmasters .

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Torsh link
24/2/2016 09:27:16 pm

Agreed, great response & great article.

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Andrew Kite
19/2/2016 10:50:17 pm

Completely agree Rob ... Exactly what I was saying to a friend of mine this eve. Well said.

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Rob
20/2/2016 01:18:36 am

Cheers Andrew

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Sally link
20/2/2016 08:13:49 am

For me, it beggars belief that the government seem to think that they can improve standards by raising expectations.

We've all worked in schools for years and I'll bet that you've all had the same experiences as me - teachers who couldn't work harder, trying to help children reach the standard but unable for a multitude of completely valid reasons.

Sometimes the challenge is the children. Maybe they have children in their class who have a really unsettled home life. They may be living in a refuge or under a Child Protection order. We know that this has a massive impact on their ability to make progress at school.

Sometimes the challenge is the school leadership. Maybe they have a Head who insists (as I saw recently in a Facebook group) that they have their planning printed and ready by the door for EVERY lesson, just in case there's a drop in. Working under that kind of system means that you have to reprioritise your time to give priority to administrative tasks rather than teaching tasks.

Sometimes the challenge is the parents. Maybe the focus for some schools for their children in Year 6 at the moment is making sure that they eat breakfast when they come into school and that they have the time and the opportunity to talk to staff about things that are happening at home. To talk about the latest argument where someone kicked a door in or how they didn't have dinner last night because their adults were passed out on the sofa. It all takes from teaching time.

And these aren't isolate cases. Nicky Morgan says that 65% of children need to meet the floor standards across the board for a school to have met their target. And I have no doubt that she THINKS that's reasonable.

But I work in 2 schools - each is in a respectable neighbourhood and you would think that they have a 'decent' intake. But, to be honest, to have 65% of children in a class who are physically, mentally and emotionally able to face every day with confidence and ready to learn, to have 65% of children in a class who are in a place where they stand a chance of being able to be taught enough to meet the floor standards...that's a dream.

And don't get me started on the fact that we're focussing so much on key skills that we forget that we're teaching young children who need to innovate, to experiment, to try think out in practical scenarios to fully understand them.


I understand that if a child doesn't master the early skills they are forever playing catch up but this is also the time that they are young children. Drilling them in percentages and fractions isn't what we should be doing. We should have fewer 'key skills' and the time to practise them in practical scenarios and innovative lessons. We should have time to give groups of children a £50 budget and ask them to use this (and their collective skills) to raise as much money as possible for a charity. We should have time to have the children plan their Christmas party within a given budget. We should have time to build things to reinforce measure and angles.

But we don't because there's too much to get through and the percentage of children who are ready to learn is different every day.

And that the reality of teaching. Teacher's don't moan about things that are reasonable. Teachers work above and beyond - they work every hour they can to help their children succeed.

But its not enough. The expectation is too high. At what point do we say enough is enough?

These children who are in tears because they don't understand and feel like failures (and I read about these all the time) is that OK?

OK - rant over. Sorry :-)
Great article!

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Dawn
24/2/2016 10:35:32 pm

An excellent analogy Rob. It's heart-breaking that children who are creative, think outside the box and yet are dyslexic, will fail to meet the standards for WT and WA because they find spelling a challenge. What has happened to individuality, to diversity and to celebrating differences? Our Year 6 classes will have had only 5 terms of the new NC before they are tested - if this is enough, then do we need to put young, inquisitive children through the rigours of the KS1 curriculum?

Thanks for the forum to be vocal on such a far-reaching situation.

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    Rob from Literacy Shed

    Just writing down what I think about school and education. 

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