Festive Fiasco 4
Festive Fiasco 4
Festive Fiasco 4
The Bigger Picture
All of us within schools know that the English fiasco isn’t just about students’ results. It isn’t just about the performance of English teachers and departments and people who may have taught English for many years feeling a loss of pride or self-esteem.
It runs much deeper than that.
Because of the way English and Maths results are locked into school performance tables, the stakes are very high indeed for schools which drop below the 40% floor target.
They are opened up to inspection, threat of takeover and the possible loss of post by the head.
Here’s an anonymous account from one school of what inspection, post-GCSE Fiasco, felt like, and how they managed to prevail:
As a result of the GCSE marking fiasco, we suffered a 12% drop in English results which took us 5% below floor targets, though we had been exceptionally confident that we would be well above. In short, we were looking at ‘measures’ or ‘serious weaknesses’ at best.
I thought I would take a second to update you on our Ofsted visit last week.
Following a 2-day fight about standards in English, and having had to spend 3 hours with the lead HMI over those 2 days specifically putting data in front of him (nicely colour-coded in case the actual words were too big!)
I am delighted to let you know that we managed to convince the HMI team that we were worthy of ‘satisfactory’ (as it used to be called).
I just wanted to let you know we did it by analysing our data accurately, so that we could show good progress from starting-points and we prepared a set of shadow results that told the story of the farce in a non-defensive way, and we were willing to disagree firmly with them if they appear to be not listening. Interestingly they were willing to listen, and because they saw evidence of better standards in observations they were willing to be convinced.
If you know of any schools facing a similar Ofsted scenario to ours, I am more than willing to be contacted to talk through our experience and share any resources we used that worked.
Now we have 6 weeks before a return visit, and I somehow have to work out how to accurately predict English results in 2013?! Maybe I should just ask Glenys now and save my staff the bother?
Let’s be careful about being too heartened by this. This school put up a fight and prevailed.
But if the school’s estimates and tracking and monitoring were accurate, then it shouldn’t have dropped below the 40% floor target. That it did so was nothing to do with it, its students, or its teachers. It was the craven weakness of the exam boards and the failure of Ofqual.
As we count down towards the legal challenge, it’s clear that many people would love us to forget the implications of the summer’s marking disgrace and to get back to business as usual. That, indeed, is what is happening in many schools.
But let’s remember that injustice is injustice, whether the fairy-lights are out or not.
Today’s blog reminds us of how decent teachers are coping with the changed situation in their school caused by a GCSE fiasco which wasn’t of their making.
But that doesn’t mean they should be having to do so.
It’s a sign of the woeful lack of leadership that has contnued to prevail at Ofqual, the examination boards, the DfE and Ofsted.
People who talk about leadership so much might have been expected to show some.
Geoff Barton
4 December 2012
21:40
Tuesday, 4 December 2012