Balls Ups School Performance ?
They say change is here to stay. Therefore the announcement by Ed Balls that the Department of Children, Schools and Families are to change the assessment of children by replacing the current form of SAT’s should not come as a surprise. Operationally is a huge change and not without some peril.
Teaching resources in the UK are already stretched as tight as a drum. Many teachers claim to be stressed by an educational system introduced 11 years ago that has failed to achieve its intended objectives. Teachers, understandably, are reluctant to take on more work, revealed by a staggering number who opt out from seeking promotion to head teacher. The pinnacle of their career is in a job that nobody wants. The classroom is a combination of frustration, emergent social trends, sound pedagogy and a range of ability spread across an average class of 30. Targets hover over the process as a sword of Damocles inducing a resultant “teach to test” phenomena. This horrifies the purists who believe education should be an enjoyable all round experience. Lessons should be fun and supported by educational games to stimulate the learning process to last a lifetime that now appear to has become battle scarred.
The future of a teachers’ career and indeed an entire school lies squarely in the sights of Ofsted. Maintain performance against the target and you survive to fight another day. This quantitative approach does not always include quality. Self preservation rallies the defences and diminishes the adventurous who could challenge the system. Despite an abundance of educational games developed to bring fun into the classroom, the resources for teaching are limited, relying on the residue of an operating budget focussed on the prime objective to pass exams or tests.
We have streamlined a child’s education such that it is now a veneer; a glossy covering with no depth over a rough substrate of indifferent quality. A child’s learning journey is manipulated to hit a target. Just as pate de-fois-gras excels as a foodstuff, the maltreated geese have little additional scope, reared as a freak of nature their destiny is a travesty.
The news that the DCSF is to scrap best SAT’s is welcome providing that they think it through. Curtailing the teach to test syndrome is positive, although the staggered assessment timed when a child is ready, is a potential logistical nightmare.
Compare 30 children wishing to pass their driving test. Each student will be at a different point in their progress, and only take the test when their instructor deems them to be ready. This staggered approach requires the test to be taken with an individual examiner. Moreover those that have passed need further stimulation to maintain momentum whilst waiting for the balance of the class to catch up.
Potentially the spread of ability will increase. Although this must be seen as a positive, with brighter children gaining further stimulus based on their learning ability, we run the risk of demoralising such children if they have to wait for others to catch up. The demands on a teacher from this emphasised spread of ability will be a nightmare.
Alarmed by the chaos caused by the marking fiasco earlier this year, Mr. Balls, the Schools Secretary, has announced he is considering abandoning SAT’s as part of an overhaul of the education system. The jury is still out and the exact nature of the implementation of the replacement scheme has yet to be revealed. We can only hope it will be thought through and developed jointly with head teachers. The worst outcome is another 10p tax or Home Information Packs debacle; reviled by the professionals in the market yet introduced to cause confusion derision and ridicule. But this time it could thwart the learning journey of children who now awake to find themselves competing in a global market.
