The Black Box
The Black Box
The Black Box
I meet a lot of very good people in education. Too many of them these days say either “I wish I could get out” or “I’m glad I’m out of it”.
What an indictment of our profession and testament to the demotivating impact of the DfE’s increasingly remote ministerial team and their over-eager acolytes.
Me - I just retreat into the things that matter in school each day, ignore the rubbish, and remind myself, as Wiliam and Black taught us in ‘The Black Box’, that:
‘Standards are raised ONLY by changes which are put into direct effect by teachers and pupils in classrooms’
Of course - it’s the classroom that matters, and all the other stuff is a mere political sideshow.
I am pleased to note that many others feel similarly dismissive of DfE wacky wheezes and sham reports from Ofqual.
Here, for example, is a message received today which exemplifies that feisty spirit.
It’s intended as a direct response to Ofqual’s woeful £150K cut-and-paste report into the GCSE English fiasco, and it was first posted on the BBC website:
I’m sorry that it has taken so long to respond to this but much of my time has been spent helping students to revise and prepare for exams that they shouldn’t have to re-sit and then catching up with all of my other work that fell behind as a result. This was done for the students. Neither I nor my school will benefit in any way from helping these students re-sit. But we did it because we care.
On the whole, teachers are a selfless sort who do the job because they want to help young people achieve and go on to make valuable contributions to society. More than anything else we feel for the plight of those students who were unfortunate enough to take their GCSE English exams this June. However, something needs to be said about the effect that this is having on the profession. I am far from alone in feeling denigrated by Ofqual and this government. We feel that Gove has no respect for this profession and is seeking to bully us through his Ofqual cronies. Teachers are being made to feel worthless.
In our report from AQA we were told ‘The centre is to be congratulated on the efficient dispatch of controlled assessment marks and folders. All paperwork was completed in exemplary fashion and the folders presented in a secure manner…. In all three components the centre’s annotations and summative comments greatly facilitated the moderation process and made it clear how the final marks had been reached. The centre’s assessments were deemed to be very accurate… The centre is to be congratulated on a successful submission.’
Despite this, our results fell by 14% as a direct result of the grade boundaries changing and, to add insult to injury, we are now due to be inspected by the DfE who are clearly coming in with an agenda - to prove that the change in grade boundaries are justified and that schools should be chastised even further.
Ofqual claim that the pressure put on English teachers has forced us to cheat. Is it inconceivable that this pressure has caused English teachers to strive, year after year, to ensure that their teaching improves? That the students’ learning improves? In short - that results improve?
In trying to fling the blame away from herself, Glenys Stacey has tried to throw it at thousands of English teachers across the country. When this failed she tried to spread the muck even further by blaming moderators and yet the exam boards seem to be content to remain quiet, bend over and take it all.
Even if the problem did lay with the controlled assessments, why not just moderate the schools that had been over ambitious? And if this was too difficult to achieve logistically (although I fail to see why) why raise the grade boundaries on the exam and not the CA? Why deliberately target the C-D borderline on the foundation paper (which affects people from working class, disaffected backgrounds more than anyone else)?
It is interesting that the £150,000 independent report that was commissioned by Ofqual and carried out by Capgemini was made very little use of in their own report and instead, they chose to rely on anecdotal evidence from social media. Why has this report not been published? Is it because it throws further light on Ofqual’s absurd claims that thousands of English teachers and now hundreds of moderators all simultaneously got it wrong despite decades of getting it right?
Terry Freelander
Literacy Across the Curriculum Co-Ordinator
The Brittons Academy
Thanks to everyone who, like Terry, is still fighting the good fight. The simplest way to move this debate on is to publish your English moderator’s report in your school newsletter. Bit by bit, we’ll then see that the ‘English teachers cheat’ line to the media was a despicable fabrication.
Geoff Barton
Tuesday 13 November 2012
23:20
Tuesday, 13 November 2012