EADT 7
EADT 7
EADT 7
My latest column for the East Anglian Daily Times (August 2012):
Back to school
As a child I used to see it as a deliberate, provocative act of sadism by Marks and Spencers.
All of those ‘Back to School’ signs that would appear so early in the summer holidays – it was as if they were taunting me with what we all now know, that all good things must come to an end.
It was that sense of deflation, of feeling a bit lost, that many of us felt at the end of the Olympics in the long gulf before the Paralympic Games began. I suspect the joy and emotion and the BBC’s brilliant coverage and, well, everything about it had taken us by surprise.
The Games held a mirror up to our nation and helped us to see not just who we had been, but who we were. It made us feel proud again.
And then David Cameron had to start using our most successful Olympics in a hundred years to criticize school sport and to lament the absence of competition. It was the only sour note in two weeks of feel-good glory.
And it was as unnecessary as it was misguided. The assertion that schools don’t do competitive sport is a myth. But nor will we create the future generation of British Olympians if all we do is expect primary children to shiver on November fields being barked at to play more hockey or netball matches.
Because what high quality school sport should do is to enthuse young people, to make them want to do more sport, to teach them about winning and losing, to build their confidence and self-esteem.
And it’s precisely what the school sports partnerships were achieving before the Education Secretary, as his first swashbuckling gesture, scrapped the scheme in 2010.
Now politicians of all persuasions are starting to see what we’re missing.
***
Storm in a teacup
People on the outside of education may have been mystified by the storm that erupted over the marking of GCSE English papers. I was one of those shouting most loudly about it, and here’s why.
Results matter a lot. They matter to students and they matter to schools. For students a grade C in English is often an essential ingredient in gaining their sought-after place at college or in the Sixth Form. That’s why many of us feel it’s so unjust if this year a student gained a grade D instead of a C, not because she had done worse in the exam and not because had a poor teacher, but because of circumstances beyond her or her teacher’s control. Someone in an office somewhere made a decision that grade boundaries should change.
This means that a student in the January exams was more likely to get a grade C than one sitting the same paper in June. How can that be fair? Why should students be penalized for a desire to end grade inflation? And why did so many schools not just see a small drop in the number of C grades but a massive one?
We still haven’t had any satisfactory answer to this and because of the way it leaves some young people with an unjustified D on their CV instead of an anticipated C, it’s an issue I’m going to keep banging on about until we get reassurance that our students aren’t being used as the victims in some shabby political game.
It’s worth noting why this matters so much to schools too. The only important measure in school performance tables is the number of students gaining five GCSEs at C or higher, including English and Maths. So if there’s a drop in Maths or English, then there’s going to be a drop in the school’s overall results.
And with a macho Education Department which keeps making dark threats about closing down underperforming schools, or get them taken over by some academy chain or other, you can see why so many headteachers feel so unnerved.
And that’s why we need to ensure fairness in marking – for the sake of our students and the sake of our schools.
***
Olympic giggle
For me, the best joke of the Olympics came from Tim Vine:
"I took part in the sun tanning Olympics. I just got Bronze."
Friday, 7 September 2012