Who is Underperforming?

The Secret Teacher ends with the question How helpful is our help?  The concern is that the perennial battle to take students over the C grade boundary, is not helpful to them, or indeed to teachers or schools.  I am reminded of this every time I opt for the word student; students, by definition, are learners.  When we teach, coach, coerce, monitor, prepare students to the point where they are simply repeating what is needed to obtain a grade, they have ceased to learn; they have rather become parrots.  We need to be brave and recognise that this C grade is losing whatever value it once possessed.

Say No to C Grade Culture

Having spent many years, some as a Senior Manager, championing the righteous necessity of obtaining C Grades, I am delighted to be able to say that this is no longer my mission.  In truth I never really believed in that mission; grades are the educational equivalent of Santa Claus, they become more real the more we suspend our disbelief.  As an ex-teacher, however, it is possible and refreshing to read the Secret Teacher's criticism of my erstwhile pursuit.  There are clear winners when we hothouse, coerce, manipulate, cheat our students into grades that they don't deserve; students, learning and education unfortunately are not among them.

A Bridge too Far or a Differentiated Curriculum

Debbie Clinton, Principal of Nunthorpe Academy, offers a worthwhile defence of the now abandoned English Baccalaureate.  We need, she argues, a curriculum that challenges and educates young people according to ability; and this challenge should include the most able.  Sadly, it would seem that British Education is once more the victim of a political will that lacks backbone.

Evidence and Lies

At a time when the government is rightly looking to change the exam system, addressing flaws at GCSE and A Level, it is amusing to read that school improvement, justifying academies, is judged on the current diet of GCSEs and A Levels.  The government is claiming proof of success for its breakneck programme of turning secondary schools into sponsored academies as league tables appear to show these schools generating more rapid improvements in results than the overall average.  It must be possible for somebody to realise that either the exams are flawed, and therefore not worthy of being used as a measurement of success, or else they are valid, and therefore not in need of changing.