Ever so ‘umble
Ever so ‘umble
Ever so ‘umble
I’m writing this as a humble English teacher.
It’s what I became in 1985, inspired by my own English teacher, Roy Samson, who - when I told him what I wanted to do - said “It’s a brilliant job: you spend your life reading stories”.
And that, in a way, is how it’s been. Even though I’ve taken on other roles through the years - 2 i/c, Head of English, Head of Sixth Form, Deputy Head and now Head - I’ve always taught English. It’s what I do and I couldn’t possibly be called head ‘teacher’ if I didn’t continue to teach. And English is all I know.
Which is why those 28 years of experience tell me that something is very deeply wrong with this year’s GCSE results. And why I won’t accept the outcomes of Ofqual’s limp investigation.
I’m merely a humble English teacher, and it took me five attempts to get my O-level Maths, so I can’t do the fancy statistical pyrotechnics that others can.
But I know what a C in English looks like; I know what you have to do to achieve it; and I cannot accept that because some kind of quota system has been created, through the incompetence of distant bureaucrats, our students - my students - should have a D on their certificates rather than the C they deserve. I taught a group of Year 11 students this year and they - like so many across the country - have been let down. Obvious C grade students have been given a D.
After all, to get a C you essentially only need to do be able to do three things: write using paragraphs; write using mostly accurate sentences and spelling; and be boring. If you stop being boring you move to a B or higher.
A grade C therefore demonstrates a general level of technical accuracy in the construction of writing and an ability to read that goes some way beneath the surface level of a text. It’s what we ought to be able to expect of more of our students.
And this, over any years, is what I’ve trained students to be able to do, in my own school, on courses and at conferences, and as a guest speaker in many other schools across England.
I know what a C grade is, what is looks like and involves, and I cannot accept that a cohort of up to 60,000 young people (according to ASCL’s calculations) should be denied the grade because of an error that’s not of their own or their teachers’ making.
What kind of lesson about life is that teaching them?
Glenys Stacey’s comment that those who sat the English exam in January “got lucky” was disgraceful, as is the Prime Minister’s comment today that this exam season marks the end of a culture of “dumbing down” when “all must have prizes”.
The verdict is that January exams were marked too generously (though I note several bloggers point out that grade boundaries in January 2012 were the same as in June 2011). Therefore too many students gained a grade C. and therefore fewer could be given a C in the June exams.
This is what I mean by a quota system - the early birds were rewarded and those sitting the exam at the end of the course were effectively squeezed out. This is an undeniable case of pressure to ensure no automatic grade inflation forcing some students to receive lower grades. Had they sat the examination in January, then they would have been awarded their C. That isn’t ‘getting lucky’: it’s doing what the criteria demanded.
Which is where, as I wrote in Friday’s TES, children have been sacrificed to ideology.
And we know what will be the consequence: a headlong rush by more and more schools to enter students early for English in order to gain as many chances as possible to get their grade Cs.
Thus a Secretary of State who speaks so dismissively of modularisation will preside over its exponential increase.
So students are the major victims of this, which is why we must keep fighting a decision that’s so unjust. School rankings, reputations, and Ofsted judgements will also be severely affected.
But it’s English teachers I want to focus on here. I’ve written elsewhere about what English teachers are like. In my most frequently downloaded article ever, I said:
Great English teachers are passionate. They're passionate about many things - books, literature, theatre, their classes, film, wine. They're people to be reckoned with, people with opinions, people you can't ignore. They're people who students want to listen to and ask questions of. Whatever their age, these teachers are still relevant to their students' lives.
Great English teachers get nervous on the day of exam results. They don't need to, but they do. It's a sign of their concern that their students should do well in exams, as well as enjoy their subject. It's a sign also of their accountability: great English teachers don't automatically blame their students if a result is disappointing: they live the exams along with their students.
Great English teachers are more important than they realise. They teach the most important skills within the most important subject. They remind us of the power of language and the delights of literature. They help students to mediate a bewilderingly complex world, standing for certain values - for the confidence to ask questions, for the security of knowing there aren't always simple answers, for being prepared to argue your case, and doing so in a style that is powerfully appropriate. Great English teachers do all this and more. They have an impact beyond their knowledge, influencing generations of young people.
Today, and for the past ten days, and tomorrow and for many days ahead, many English teachers will be feeling pretty miserable.
Of course, they will have that characteristic sense of nervousness that we all have on returning to school. But in schools that have been hit by the GCSE fiasco, they will feel also a mix of guilt, of disappointment, of deflation and, I hope, of fury.
They will be asking, as I am, who has been sacked as a result of the mistake over marking? They will be wondering how the Chief Executive of the body responsible for maintaining standards can look into the television camera and (a) tell us that something was wrong in January - on her watch, (b) give no hint of an apology, (c) describe those students gaining a C as having “got lucky”, and (d) proffer a deeply cynical opportunity for a free re-sit like some junior member of a Ryanair cabin-crew trying to fob-off a disgruntled passenger.
It really isn’t good enough and it marks a shabby low-point in the way our dysfunctional assessment system has narrowed our lives in schools. It also exemplifies the lack of accountability and leadership we should expect of people in high places.
English as we knew it has been rendered utilitarian by unimaginative syllabi and the joyless yoke of controlled assessment. The freedom to read, discuss, explore, laugh, and head off at mad tangents into unexpected areas of literature and experience now requires English teachers brave enough to take many more risks.
There are likely to be fewer risk-takers after this judgement.
So here’s what, as English teachers, we should do next.
First, we should use the coming week to analyse what went wrong in our own schools, by comparing predicted grades with actual grades and by doing an internal re-grading that looks at what D grade students would have got if assessed using January grade boundaries.
Those revised results should then be presented to governors, and the Chair of Governors should send them to our MPs, demanding that they write for answers from the Secretary of State as to why this was allowed to happen, why no action has been taken against the examination boards or Ofqual, and insisting on some leadership to resolve the fiasco.
Next, we should rally parents - either of those students who were affected, or of those who hate to see our schools’ reputations affected by something not in our power - to complain to MPs, by letter rather than email.
Next we should consider encouraging every student who got a D - whatever his or her predicted grade - to go for the free re-sit. It galls me to accept this shabby little offer, but it would be interesting to see the system creak a bit in November as hundreds of thousands of youngsters re-take the exam.* We might even train them up to write a persuasive piece on the theme of “justice” on the off-chance that it comes up.
Next we should look at boycotting AQA and, as a warning shot, write to its Chief Executive, Andrew Hall, or its Council of Trustees asking what action has been taken against those who have so monumentally messed up.
Most importantly we should throw our energy into redefining what great English teaching is, teach less to the test, lobby for a better curriculum, support the campaign to regain ‘The Heart of English’, and work for the end of an exam system that makes any grade below a C feel so worthless and which denies it to almost half our young people after eleven years of compulsory schooling.
What we mustn’t do is accept that this fiasco is of our making, that it is deserved, or that it was inevitable. English teachers are a feisty crowd. Their meetings are often the liveliest of any department in any school.
Now it’s time for us not to be cowed or deflated. Our instinctive feistiness has never been more urgently needed.
Geoff (‘ever so ‘umble’) Barton
2 September 2012
9:20am
*I’m really in two minds over this one, but what if English teachers refused to be markers for the November resits in protest - so there are mass numbers of scripts to mark and a paucity of people to mark them. I’m kind of thinking aloud here - am not sure about all of this.
Sunday, 2 September 2012