EADT 9
EADT 9
EADT 9
My ninth column for the East Anglian Daily Times:
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There’s an odd little Yiddish saying that I like a lot: “To a worm in horseradish, the world tastes horseradish”.
It reminds us how easy it is for us to take our environment for granted, to think that what is the norm for me is therefore the norm for everyone else. It’s about the way we become acclimatized to our own environments – their look, their character and even, if you’re a worm, their taste.
Then occasionally something jolts us, making us realize that what’s everyday for us is far from everyday for others in the world.
Take for example that 14-year old girl, Malala Yousafzai, on her way to school in Pakistan last week when she was shot in the head by the Taliban. The reason? She wrote a blog about why education was important for girls as well as for boys.
It’s a reminder of the way education is a life-changing element in the lives of many people in the world – something seen as a vital stepping-stone to a better life.
An example of something we take for granted in our country is choice.
Think of the aisles of breakfast cereals in even the smallest UK supermarket or the way we expect to choose the settings and screen-savers on our phones and computers. Choice, we believe, helps us to make our world better.
But there is a different view.
In his book The Paradox of Choice writer Barry Schwartz warns us that choice isn’t necessarily the positive experience we’ve been conditioned to believe. Going into a shop which gives us a choice of more than a hundred styles and colours of jeans may actually make us more stressed. We may leave the shop with a gnawing feeling that we made the wrong decision.
Which is why I believe choice many be over-stated in education. I believe we should aim for what the best education systems in the world achieve. In Finland, for example, the idea of ‘choosing a school’ is a pretty odd one. They do something far simpler. They make sure there’s a good local school in every neighbourhood. As a result they are one of the top-performing counties in the international leagues tables.
It’s such a sensible idea - every neighbourhood with a good local school: no expensive transport costs, a strong sense of localness, and the end of school choice stress for parents and pupils.
Isn’t that something we should aspire to achieve?
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One of the many things that keeps headteachers awake at night is the publication of league tables. A school’s reputation can be made or shattered by how it does in these lists, published with a fanfare by the Department for Education once a year.
That’s why the effect of the summer’s GCSE English fiasco is so serious. English and Maths results are tied in to a school’s overall performance and so that some schools – like ours, for example - will seem to have tumbled from the premier league to obscurity. Many headteachers genuinely fear the consequences.
I’d love to know more from parents about how important the league tables are. I realize I’m probably now a wizened veteran of education who has seen fads come and go.
But I remain generally cautious about many Ofsted judgements. I certainly know schools deemed outstanding which I wouldn’t want my own children to set foot in, and I suspect we may sometimes patronize parents by assuming they see league tables as the main indicator of how good a school is.
My own view is that a great school will deliver really good results but won’t be a mere exam factory. It won’t introduce courses in the interests of its own league table positions over the needs of its students. And it will have a rich diet of the stuff that forms students’ character– sport and music and the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme and charity days and drama productions and lots of fun.
These are things that performance tables won’t tell you anything about. But my guess is that most parents believe, as I do, that they are essential ingredients in a truly great school.
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A joke for Maths fans:
A mathematician walks into bar and asks for 10 times the normal number of drinks anyone else has. “Wow,” says the barman, “That’s an order of magnitude.”
October 2012
Friday, 19 October 2012