A reaction to a reaction reacting to someone else’s reaction

Gosh, what a week it has been! There once used to be a time when an English teacher’s life was quite quiet, but now I am forever faced with bombshells of educational delight on a daily basis. The most dramatic things we used to get, in the past, was the changing of the Bic pen design. The furore that caused still gives me nightmares. There were teachers shouting. There were teachers campaigning. There were even some teachers writing nice little letters to the makers used the traditional style pen in the hope of changing the maker’s mind. Nowadays, it is change after change. It has got so bad, I dread the holidays or days when I am not teaching. Didn’t it used to be the other way round? Nowadays, all the big education news stories are timed for when I am supposed to be recharging my batteries or having some down time. But, no! They’re on the front cover of the newspaper is a picture of Mr Gove announcing his new ‘idea’. Ignore it, Chris. Go home. But, no! They’re on the television in a news story about the new proposal. Sadly, there is no escape from things. No longer can we hide from these things. The changes permeate the air like a bad smell and no amount of Fabreeze or Glade plugins will clear the air. You can’t escape it.

So in a nutshell: ‘Of Mice and Men’ is dead and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has been taken out by a hit man.  Gove did it apparently. However, he categorically denies it. Plus, he is clever enough to spot the abuses of language. These texts haven’t been ‘banned’, as some people have suggested. They have just been taken off the set text list. Teachers will not be locked away if they teach them in schools. There will be no Jack Bauer torturing teachers if they dare mention the book in lessons. In fact, we can, and we probably will, use these books in lessons. I know I will. A good book is a good book irrespective of the country it comes from.

They haven’t been banned; they are just not going to be examined. The banning of controlled assessments means that there will probably more time for books like ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. So what if they are not going to be examined? I will no longer have to spend months and months of teaching the text, when I can simply teach it for enjoyment. No longer will I have to prefix my comments about the texts with: ‘Remember this for the exam’.  In fact, I will probably use it at the start of Year 10. What better way to prepare students in Year 10 for GCSE? An engaging text from the start.

There have been lots of arguments and discussions on Twitter and blogs about the list of set texts for English. People have argued what should and shouldn’t be on the list. When reading this, I am reminded by one Australian English teacher’s comment in a conference: ‘It’s funny that the one book that most students read in England is an American novel.’ My problem is always the list of books is so uninspiring. I am generally not too inspired by the choice of books used. There’s so much furore over ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ because they are inspiring choices. They motivate teachers, as well as students. I have always internally groaned when I have seen previous exam lists for set texts. They have always looked like the 10p bargain box in a charity shop. A collection of random books that would never be seen together on a shelf. They are an obscure list. It always surprises me that with all the fiction created in the English language these are the choices. Now, don’t get me on to the drama. Too late: the drama texts chosen are dire and insipid. England has a history of fine drama and we end up will dross. Or, very superficial plays. I, personally, have always struggled with ‘An Inspector Calls’. A nice play, but not really complex enough for GCSE. Give me Miller any day for complex emotions and subtle nuances.

I had a look at the OCR draft specifications for English Literature. I was hoping for a new lease of life for inspiring texts to teach. In my head, I had planned what I wish would be on there. What do I get?

Six modern texts:

• Anita and Me – Meera Syal

• Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

• Animal Farm – George Orwell

• An Inspector Calls – J. B. Priestley

• My Mother Said I Never Should – Charlotte Keatley

• DNA – Dennis Kelly.

Am I inspired? Am I …? ‘Animal Farm’ will become the new ‘Of Mice and Men’. And, ‘Never Let Me Go’ will become the new ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. You know in your heart that the dream combination, which used to be the popular ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’, will be ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’. Again, I’ll say it: out of everything written in the English language and this is what they came up with. Six modern texts. Six – why only six?

My hope and inspiration will lie in the classic texts and the pre1914 choices of text. This is what is suggested in the draft specifications:

·         Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

• The War of the Worlds – H G Wells

• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

Well, each text is good on its own, but as a choice of texts I am underwhelmed. Again, six texts. I would have loved to have seen some Hardy on there, or maybe some obscure writers of fiction. No, these titans are dragged out as being the pinnacle of literature. There, sadly for me, is no breadth of text here. I feel constricted rather than inspired. The choices made are short / long texts. Or, boy-orientated / girl-orientated texts.

This could have been a pinnacle moment in the teaching of English. We could have been inspired by the choices. We could have been delighted with the choices given. Yet, I can’t help feeling that the modern texts are a mishmash of texts and the pre1914 are just safe, somewhat predictable, choices.

If we are to have an education system to be proud of, then we need to have texts that are a reflection of the quality we aspire to. I can’t help feeling underwhelmed with the choices. Are these the choices of text that will mark a child’s soul indelibly for life? Will these choices inspire them to study at A-level? Will they inspire them to read? Will they inspire them to read again and again?

I don’t feel inspired by the choices. I know I can teach the texts, but where will the magic come from, if I am not wholly inspired.   

On a cultural point, the texts of English past never really dealt with disability and race, as it was often shoved into the attic or left in another country of our colonial past. I live in a multi-cultural society. The texts here represent texts with a predominant focus on class and money. In fact, money features heavily in all the texts. The difference between the rich and the poor is the dilemma at the heart of the stories. ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Jane Eyre’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ are about a character’s journey to becoming rich. ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ is parable of what the rich do when they have a lot of money and a lot of free time – they live a dual existence where they crush the poor and the weak by standing on young children. ‘The War of the World’ has a thin connection to money, but the alien invaders are probably only after people’s money. Go back to your own planet!

What is more worrying is that ‘The War of the World’ is a comment on xenophobia, which is something we need to work on. It is surprising that at a time when the far-right are gaining some power, we are removing texts from a GCSE curriculum that challenge views about racism and promote tolerance. Our view of the past, as seen through literature, is class dominated in England. We don’t need to see things solely in terms of class. In schools, we teach. Through books, we teach students about society. Through these books, we will teach students they are from a class orientated society. Through these books, we will teach (incorrectly) them that world is shaped by white men and women.

‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ may be leftie texts, but they both told stories about a society that is made up of different people with different sets of values. The story is about how different people live together and how tolerance is an important part of modern life.  How men, women, the poor, the rich, the black community, the white community, the able and the disabled have to work together and not against each other.

It is funny how the two books of America’s past are so relevant now. Both books are about an economic depression. Both books show a society with lots of different kinds of people. Both books show people working together to make the world a better place despite the harsh conditions they live in. There’s a real sense of irony about things. UKIP is receiving more votes and we are removing two books that have scope for making some see things from a different perspective.

But, who cares? We have a Conservative government and so we are obsessed with money. It is only right then that social justice is ignored and we concentrate on those that have money and those that don’t have it.

‘It’s funny that the one book that most students read in England is an American novel.’

Thanks for reading,

Xris32  

Lists, acronyms and MOTOWN

Teaching is a constant sea of acronyms: “Remember to use AFOREST when writing and ARTWARS when looking at poems, and always check your SPaG. And, don’t forget to PEE, PEER or PEEL”.  Basically, these acronyms are lists in a short-hand form. I live by lists. Each day in my diary is a list of things to do, or try to do. I have a list of things to do this term. I have a list of things I need. I have a list of things I need to remember when Ofsted pay a visit. I have a list of things for virtually everything in teaching. Students who are on target. Students who are not on target. Students who have brought a permission slip. Students who have paid. Students who have not brought their homework. Students who are gifted. Students who are on pupil premium. Therefore, I feel a little sad that I am not challenging or changing this reductive process with students; I am spreading these lists on to them. I give them lists to revise. I give them lists of things to write. I give them lists of things to include in their writing. In fact, I need to write a list of the lists they have to remember in the exam.

I am a man and my childhood revolved around lists. I used to have a little book that listed all the Doctor Who books I had read and all the programmes I had watched. Furthermore, I would collect Doctor Who memorabilia and tick them off a big list. It seems ‘lists’ were ingrained in my genetic make-up.  Lists were my way of making sense of a chaotic world. As a teenager, everything was changing and unpredictable; at least, I have my little book of lists to combat this sea of change – my little book doesn’t change, even when my voice changes. Even as an adult, I have a little book for lists: a list of the books I have read. But, at the moment, I am getting a little fed up of lists. Why? Because writing cannot be reduced to a simple list of a few components.

The KS2 SATs are the epitome of this ‘component’ or ‘feature-led’ writing. I have taught Year 7s for several years and each year I have always been faced with that awkward comparison between Year 6 and Year 7 levels. I have stared blankly at a piece of paper like a magic eye picture, thinking how did this student achieve a level 5. I have also had the awkward conversation explaining to parent how things were assessed ‘a little’ differently in KS3 and that is why their child isn’t getting the same levels they did in Year 6.  Recently, I had a Year7 class produce a piece of creative writing as their first piece of assessment. It was incredible to see what they did. In fact, they virtually all had the same features and the same techniques. It was like they had the same list in their head. The same sentence openings. The same words. It was the equivalent of ‘beige’ writing. They were writing some good things and it just lacked that something special: creativity.

Primary teachers have the hardest of all jobs in education. I know as I am married to one. I don’t blame them at all for this problem. For me, it always about the system. The system is the problem. There will always be a problem if writing is assessed on features and components. If it means you get a higher level, put a semi colon in it.  The SATs preparation process became a set of constant revisions of texts to include specific features. Students would write endless versions of texts and each time have a tick list checking what techniques to include. They would have to remember those key words and phrases like VOCAP, WOW words and Punctuation Pyramid.  It seemed that writing had everything apart from a …soul.

I don’t think there was ‘soulless’ writing going on these classes. There probably wasn’t, but I think the end result was a ‘soulless’ style of writing. It was writing for the examiner, and, boy is that examiner dull. This week, I have started telling students to show me how intelligent they are through their writing. They have been practising writing some responses for the poetry comparison exam. I didn’t give them a checklist, but I said I wanted them to ‘think’.  I wanted them to show me how clever they were/are and it has produced some great results. They were proving their worth, rather than regurgitate a list of things I told them to do. In the past, I have given out lists and cried when I have seen students try to crowbar something in, because it was on the list of things I gave them. Endless sentences of ‘the writer used rhythm to make it sound good’ or ‘the poem is structured so it shows that there is a structure’. Writing is about choices. Making the right choices is important. I’d rather have a student decide on whether something is appropriate, rather than put it in because in one lesson the teacher had a funny acronym that was quick and easy to remember. A rhetorical question is great, but in the right place. Isn’t it? Writing isn’t about putting everything in and hoping that it is effective. Writing is about picking the best tool for the job. A simile in the wrong place can change the whole tone of a piece of work like an unwanted turd on a freshly cut lawn.

Recently, I had a go at having some more soulful writing in lessons. I asked my Year 7 class to write a blog entry about some 'One Direction' news. They could make up the news, but it had to be interesting. They could decide whether they were positive or negative. The result was hilarious as the girls were excited to tell us some gossip about Niall or what ever he is called. The boys, and the occasional girl with taste, responded with these sarcastic news blogs about the band's inability to sing. The group connected and produced some interesting and varied writing, and not a single tick list in sight. For my sins, I'd read a hundred spoof news blogs, than thirty 'beige' pieces of work that have the same features, content and sentence openings, because they had a tick list.  I want them to think and articulate their thoughts effectively. Not produce the same piece as everyone else.

The exam boards agree with me. Numerous reports have said the same as me: avoid formulaic responses to tasks. There are changes afoot and I think these changes are going to stop some of these quick-fix methods. Terminal exams in English will mean that students will have to write well - full stop. I am hoping that the changes in primary schools will help with this; however, I am not too convinced by the grammar and spelling tests next week. Only time will tell if they are good, effective or just simply a PR stunt to show education to be doing something ‘tough’.

Let’s have soul in our writing. Writing that is varied, interesting and communicates ideas intelligently. Writing that is effective because it has been shaped, moulded and crafted to have the greatest impact on the intended audience. Let’s make writing interesting and fun for the writer and not just for the intended reader. Let’s write for an interesting person who will laugh at our jokes and cry at our sad anecdotes. Let’s not write for an examiner who is only looking for a ‘marker’ of Band 4 or Band 5 writing. Let’s grab the reader in the first sentence and show how we are witty, clever people. Let’s have a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T and find out what it means to me and let’s give it to the writing process.

Thanks for reading. I am off to paint my placard: ‘Ban the List – Have Flair like my Hair!’. Sorry, my list told me I had to fit some rhyme into my writing.

Xris32

 

P.S. My list for this piece of writing:

                                                                                                                                Evidence

A simile                                tick                                                                         like a magic eye picture

Repetition                           tick                                                                         Students who have paid. Students

A rhetorical question      tick                                                                         Isn’t it?

WOW word                        tick                                                                         epitome

Rhyme                                  tick                                                                         Have Flair like my Hair

Extended metaphor       cross

Observations, Burgers and Mystery Shoppers

Why is it most of my teaching is based on one hour’s worth of observation?

Aside from the endless reams of data, my teaching is judged successful or unsuccessful based on a miserly sixty minutes worth of sheet ticking and pensive, thoughtful looks from an observer. It is the career equivalent of having a driving test every year. You know you can drive, but you must have a test every year to see if haven’t forgotten how to do it. This is how teaching is. If you are lucky, it happens once a year. If you are unlucky, it happens a few times a year. If you are really unlucky, Ofsted will do it.  On my driving test, I stalled the car three times, because of the pressure of the make or break moment.

We try to plan outstanding lessons; it just doesn’t always coincide with the one time you are being observed. Often our teaching is judged on one snapshot : a single hour in several months’ worth of lessons. It can be a simple case of hit or miss. And when it is a miss, we feel it most.

The preparations for an observed lesson are often military in its scope. Minutes are planned in fine detail. Resources are prepared, cut, colour-coordinated and alphabetised. You might even have scented candles prepared, just to get the ambiance just right for learning – jasmine is a personal favourite! Lessons are trialled and retrialled with the hope of finding that one weak point. Students are surveyed to find out the engagement level of the materials. Even at 11 pm at night, you still make those changes, because you worry that you might have under planned the whole lesson. The mantra is repeated several times during the whole planning process: you can never have too much. Finally, you have the printed list from a friend of a friend and you check to see if you have included every buzz word under the sun that Ofsted like with the hope of attaining greatness.  

Then, the day of the observation comes. The class don’t all arrive on time. You panic and fret. You look worryingly at the observer and notice they are already writing something down. Better start the lesson. It goes well, but you feel the pressure and you notice that you are speaking twice the normal speed of a human being.  You rush around the room, while the students are on task, hoping that the observer notices that the people you go to are the ones highlighted as your focus group. Then, you notice that the observer is talking to one of the students. You causally look to see if you can lip-read their words. Nothing.   You can always interrogate that student afterwards. Next comes your feedback of the task. You know this could be the make or break moment. There’s one of those awkward moments when people don’t respond or there is the general lack of understanding.  Cue silence. Lots of silence. So much silence that you can hear the sands of time falling grain by grain. Generally, at this point, I think: sod it. Then, I act as I normally do, thinking that I failed it already, so I may as well be myself.

It is so artificial. The 60 minute observation is a performance.  It is a show. It is your debut night. The performance isn’t an accurate view of teaching. If you know you are being observed for an hour, then every action of that lesson is planned. It may be the one occasion to show off, but it is also the one occasion to see if you are the square peg that doesn’t fit in the round hole. Are we focusing on the learning? Or, are we focusing on the teacher?

If we are focusing on 60 minutes, we are looking at the learning in that lesson, right? We are more bothered about what the teacher is doing, than the learning. If we were to have three 20 minute observations, then the focus would be on the learning. What are these students learning? How are they progressing? After all, most observations by Ofsted are 20 minutes long.  I think you could sit in a classroom for 20 minutes and judge the ‘learning’ of that lesson. Note I say ‘learning’ rather than ‘teaching’.  Are they learning? Are they engaged? Are they making progress? You would have enough from that, which would make the other 40 minutes surplus to requirements.  Then, you can focus on learning over time – the real issue. A flash in the pan lesson is fine, but where is the deep seated learning? I agree that the emphasis should be on learning, rather than teaching. If the emphasis was on teaching, then we would have the issue of teaching to a preferred style of teaching?

Personally, I want my teaching to be judged over time, not because of one isolated block of 60 minutes long. We have all had the lesson where it has gone wrong. You may have pitched it too high. You might have pitched it too low. Perhaps, the class were really late for some reason. Maybe, there was a fight before the lesson. Possibly, there’s a bit of salacious gossip being spread around school and it just so happens to correspond with your lesson. It can all happen to us and it does happen in the normal progress of lessons. Rarely do things go to plan.

I once had a lesson observation where I was disturbed 8 times. The observer’s phone went off. A student came with a message for the observer. A student came with a message for a student in the class. Another student came with a collection for a teacher leaving. That wasn’t a normal lesson, yet it was one that I was being judged on.  All these things affected the lesson that I was being judged on. If they came to the next two lessons with the class, they would have seen a normal lesson and seen the student learn a lot.  

Before people go mad at me for saying this, listen: if we have this culture of seeing real lessons, then our expectations will be less on perfection and more on the learning. Twenty minutes here and there could be more effective than one performance that has to be pitch-perfect. I get nervous. A bum-note in 20 minutes of lesson can be redeemed with a harmonious tune in the next lesson.

On the other side of the argument, are we now focusing too much on the ‘consumer’ rather than the product? Are we focusing more on how satisfied the consumer (the student) is and less on the teaching?  Are Ofsted taking on the role of the mystery shopper?  Do they walk into an establishment and expect certain phrases from the students and they expect the teacher to say at the end, ‘Have a nice day’?

Learning is messy, imperfect and certainly not a straight line.  It is boring and fun. It is easy and hard. It is quick and slow. It is a lot of things at once. It is complex. That is why it is such a problem when people observe, because it can be an artificial thing. We might be having a plenary every twenty minutes to show progress, or we might be crowbarring in a strategy that is the latest thing. These things might not fit into the natural layout of that particular lesson, but we feel the need to put these things in, because we are being observed.

I have a growing concern for the consumerism of education. Should we really be questioning the students like a mystery shopper, when Zeus in the Olympus of education doesn’t know what real learning is? Students can be part of the talk, but are they really the most reliable source of information in a classroom. It is like asking a customer of Burger King about the hygiene in the kitchens, yet the customer doesn’t even step into the kitchen.  They might see a bit of it behind the counter, but they don’t know what really goes on in there. They eat the product, but they don’t know all the different components that go into making that burger.  

The mystery shopper needs to see the burgers being made, or the teacher teaching. However, will one 60 minute observation really show them the true picture? They will see the burger prepared correctly for the whole of that period of time, but is it consistent? The mystery shopper needs to visit again and again to see that it is consistent and that the people in the shop are not just preparing the burgers correctly when being observed.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.  Would you like fries with that?

Xris 32  

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark: the exam system

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses


Like Hamlet, I am procrastinating too much at the moment:

Three years ago, I pulled my car up to a swanky hotel for an interesting meeting. I was excited because the whole specification for GCSE English and English Literature was changing. I love change. I love change so much that each time I pop to the hairdressers I ask for something new or different. I love changes so much that I change the Shakespeare play I teach to GCSE classes every two years. As I pulled up to the hotel for the free course, I was excited, interested and enthusiastic.  For the past six years, I had taught four different GCSE courses from two different exam boards. The experiences of these courses hadn’t always been positive, so I waited with bated breath for the new specification.  What will the changes be? What new things will I have to do? What will we not have to do anymore?

I wasn’t disappointed. Smaller writing tasks. Interesting tasks. No marking of drafts. Something new called ‘controlled conditions’. A bank of tasks that we could adapt. There were lots of things that had me buzzing with excitement.  The whole thing felt different. It seemed to have a ‘creative slant on things’. It even had a unit on ‘spoken language’ and I instantly adored it, because of my A-level background.  I was sold. This was going to change some of the ways we teach English, I thought, and it was going to help me teach with a closer focus on particular skills. Each assessment had a narrower focus than the previous courses. Each assessment had a clear focus, rather than the previous combination of everything.

About halfway through the presentation, a man asked, ‘What are the grade boundaries?’.  A fair few of us were a little perplexed by our unfamiliarity of the whole marking scheme. Band 1. Band 2. Band 3. Band 4. The idea of working in bands had me a little nervous, but I’d give it a try. The man presenting informed us that the board wanted to move away from the grade culture. This, apparently, would free the teaching to focus on teaching. To be honest, I was in agreement. Mentally, I agreed and signed a contract then and there in my head. The rest of the room nodded their heads in a ‘oh, I see’ gesture. We all worked in schools and we knew how the obsession on grades can destroy effective teaching.  I am a human, yet just knowing the word ‘human’ is not enough to be human.  Knowing you are a C, doesn’t make you understand what a C or a B is. However, collectively we knew we had to have an understanding of what a C was, otherwise somebody back at school would ask us at a later stage. The man asked us to guess where we thought it would be. We replied. He responded in the affirmative, but gave the coda that the exam board could change it, depending on the circumstances.

I left that presentation on a high. No more drafting coursework. Yes! Shorter tasks. Result! Variety of questions, tasks and opportunities. Double yes! Less obsessing on the grades. Woop! Those two years of the new course were a little wobbly but fun. New texts, questions and exams had changed some of my routines. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. The only problem I had was that the nature of the course meant that things were a bit disembodied. You felt that you moved from one thing to another very quickly. The old style of things meant that you could do a lot more joined up thinking. With this new course there was a lot of spinning of plates, but it was invigorating as a course.

Three years on, I feel duped. That ‘brave new world’ has become a ‘cowardly cruel world’. While we were getting used to not obsessing about the grades, others were. While we were thinking that the controlled condition assessments were not going to be polished as the old coursework pieces, others did not. While we were placing our faith in a system that would grade our students accurately, others did not. There were a lot of machinations going on that my school was not part of. In fact, I was shocked when I saw things mentioned on the TES forum about how the controlled conditions were being run by some departments. It wasn’t the fair process that I was led to believe it was. People had been bending the rules to make sure students got higher marks. Subsequently, I have heard of worse things happening in departments. But, there lies the crux of the issue. Some of this rot had an impact on the national figures. As a result of these higher than expected marks in controlled conditions, the grade boundaries were raised, making my students, who worked hard for their marks, miss out on the grade they deserved. While some students who got grades by dubious methods, got the grades they might not deserve.

We are talking about a minority of teachers and students. Most teachers are like me. We do the best we can with what we have. Who do I blame for the GCSE fiasco? I don’t blame any single teacher. I know the pressures that people are under. I know how tough things can be. I blame the system. The exam system is the poison. It is the problem. We have an exam system that isn’t ‘robust’. That’s my new ‘Ofsted’ speak word at the moment. The controlled conditions elements can be manipulated. The speaking and listening assessments can be manipulated. They are the flawed elements. The exams are marked in isolation and in an objective way. The subjectivity of some of the current elements is its downfall.  It is the poison in the King’s ear. It is killing off the system. It is leading me to doubt what a C, B or A is like. I now look at work thinking: It would be a B last year, but now it might be a C – however, when it gets to the exam it will probably be a D. Ofsted can come in and say to us, ‘You didn’t push these B grade students to achieve their target!’. Our response of ‘we didn’t know what a B looked like’ wouldn’t do.  A data driven culture needs a robust data culture and that is something we haven’t got in the education system. I don’t want a data driven culture, but that is the current way with Ofsted. 

In truth, I am advocating a ban on coursework and controlled conditions. I want it gone now. Today, if possible. Why? Because, I think the integrity of every English teacher needs to be re-established. We work bloody hard. We mark a lot. We do a lot. We plan a lot. We think a lot. I want us to go to the terminal exam system now, because it will help reaffirm the great job we do. Yes, it will mean that there will be an element of ‘teaching towards the exam’, but it means that we can hold our heads up high and say we did the best for our students and that every student is assessed on a level playing field. It will be sad to see some elements go, but I will not miss the student who got his parents to write his coursework essay or the student who copied his essay off the internet. I want my integrity back. Yes, I know that it will not help the girls, who perform better with coursework, but this has been a political 'hot potatoe' in education for decades. Boys underperform = focus on exams (competitive element) . Girls underperform = focus on coursework (time, care element). I want girls and boys to do equally well, but the current system isn't working.

At the moment, I am preparing some students for their GCSE exams. Yet, I am worried. Worried because of this simple question: How can I help a student fulfil his/ her potential if the grade criteria is in a constant state of flux?  And, given the fiasco last year, how are most schools reacting? You not telling me that people are going to sit down and let things happen again. No, they will fight.
 

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The time is out of joint.  Hamlet, I mean Gove, is on the course to turn things right.  However, Hamlet can’t and shouldn’t rule Denmark, as he too is part of the rot. He has become infected. The weeds need to be removed and a new gardener is needed. (I am not suggesting a ‘Hamlet’ style bloodbath; something more humane).

Prince Fortinbras enters stage.

Fortinbras: Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

 

Thanks for reading,

Xris