The Telegraph reports:
Schools are increasingly focusing on average pupils in an attempt to “flatter” official league tables, according to research by the Liberal Democrats. They are prioritising teenagers on the cusp of getting C grades – officially a good pass – at the expense of the very brightest, it is claimed. Figures show the number of pupils getting these grades in GCSEs has increased quicker over the last decade than in other areas. Focusing on so-called “borderline” candidates can dramatically improve schools’ positions in national rankings.
David Laws, the Lib Dems shadow secretary of state for schools and children, is quoted saying the rate of progress for pupils on the borderline of a C or D grade had “clearly been greater than across other grade boundaries”:
There must now be a real concern that schools are being forced to concentrate on pupils at this key borderline in order to flatter the league tables. Ministers must now reform the whole target and league table system to give teachers a greater incentive to stretch and get the best from all their pupils.”
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11 Comments
Thank you! This is so true. And has deeper implications for inequality as well.
I felt the effects of that concentration on the C/D people a bit and resented it as only a sulky teenage girl-nerd can. But I also did all right ultimately because the overall standard of the school was sufficiently high, I’m from an affluent area, we had lots of books at home blah-di-blah. So it was all right. But the people with the same abilities as me and without the background will have suffered by that concentration. It reinforces existing inequalities.
Schools are not forced to do concentrate on C/D people. They choose to do so. They choose to do so because the consumers choose to rely on that figure when making a choice to the exclusion of others.
Those who argue the problem with state schools is that there’s no competition must surely say David Laws is talking nonsense here. Their line is that state schools don’t bother because they aren’t in a competitive environment, so why should they bother about the C/D boundary or anything else?
The other line of these anti state schools people is that parents will make choices in all sorts of ways using all sorts of factors. So they will also be saying that David Laws is talking nonsene here. Since their argument is that parents are sophisticated enough to be able to make choice involving all sorts of factors, parents must surely be sophistated enough to be able to use other figures and not be so hung-up on the C/D boundary figures.
It’s not only the compilers of league tables who look at the C/D boundary. It’s also considered important by further and higher education institutions, and by employers. So I’m not sure that schools concentrating on the pupils near the boundary are actually doing anything wrong, however unfair it might seem to everyone else.
Matthew Huntbach – I suspect you’re not a Laws fan. I am.
Be that as it may …
The simple facts of the matter are these:
– here are c30 pupils in a class
– there is only one teacher
– the bright ones are left to fend for themselves
– the least bright ones dont take much teaching
– so the ones in the middle get concentrated on
Its only when class sizes are halved (at least) that all will start to get some attention.
Tabman:
“Its only when class sizes are halved (at least) that all will start to get some attention.”
Well, if that’s the answer, it’s basically going to require a doubling of expenditure on education.
Is David Laws advocating that? Of course not.
To be honest I agree with Tabman. Frustrating as it was to be one of the ignored bright kids (interchanged with occasionally being made to effectively teach the class), I and most of the other bright kids did find, because if you’re bright GCSEs and A-Levels aren’t that hard. The middle rank is therefore where the teacher can make a difference.
The poor-but-bright kids that would miss out here by Alix’s reckoning would, unfortunately, already have dropped back under the current system (by the age of six, is it?), so would probably form part of the middle rank. To be honest I think we should be concentrating on younger kids to reduce this effect.
@Matthew “They choose to do so because the consumers choose to rely on that figure when making a choice to the exclusion of others.”
Hm, sort of. But it’s the government that encourages the consumer to rely on that figure, because it’s the A-C passes they publish in league tables and consider to be an indicator of a “good” school. It’s a prescribed standard, not a genuinely free market.
@Anon,
The plan includes cutting class sizes for 5-7 year olds to 15, does it not (picking up on Perenially’s point)?
Alix
Surely this discussion is about secondary education. 5-7 year-olds don’t do GCSEs, do they?
Yes, sorry, I should have said that teacher provision is being doubled at one level of the education system – just long before the GCSE level.
Tabman,
Actually, I have no real problem with the point David Laws was making here.
The real point I was making was to express some scepticism over suggestions that market choice between schools will do a perfect job of driving up standards.
Arguments against:
1) The desperation of the schools to look good on these figures indicates, contrary to some suggestions, that they are under competitive pressure.
2) The readiness of the consumers to fixate on just one aspect of schools’ performance is an indication the market isn’t always as wise as some of its enthusiasts claim.
I noticed the same when I was a university admissions tutor. The overwhelmingly dominant factor in students choosing between degree programmes was overall position of the university in league tables – not even individual subjects, just the university overall.
As a consequence, all the pressure on universities is to do whatever pushes them up the league tables. Improving teaching quality does not figure highly in this.