A quiet revolution happened last night that seems not to have made the front pages or even featured particularly prominently on Today. However, to me it represents one of the best examples of Lib Dems making a difference in education since being in government – and a genuine step in the right direction with regards to realising the potential in all students.
There is to be a massive shake-up of GCSE league tables which is designed to stop the ‘perverse incentive’ for schools focusing on the students close to the C/D border to maximise the number of students achieving A*-C grades. Thanks to David Laws and his work in the department of Education, league tables will no longer be measure on just 5 subjects but 8 subjects, which include the humanities and vocational subjects or arts. Schools will be measured not just by how students do at the end of GCSE’s but by how much progress was made between GCSE’s and the end of Key Stage 2 (about age 11).
As a secondary school Physics teacher, I cannot overstate to you how revolutionary and welcome this is. Some of you may remember my speech at Conference Rally 2012 when I described how in one school I worked in, students were labelled as red, yellow or green depending on how close to the C/D border they were. We were told in no uncertain terms that the yellows were to get all our attention, despite our natural instinct to bring out the best in all our students. It’s a true story and one repeated in various forms across the country. I remember that at the time, over 10 years ago now, my heart broke. Today, it is being mended, just a little bit.
But let us also be clear, this is not a panacea and will not fix everything. Teachers at the moment are facing huge pressure and a change in the way schools are held to account will not be easy on many. As the NUT has pointed out, there is still work to do to ensure that all the good work schools do in preparing students in softer skills is yet to be properly recognised. However the ATL Union backs the principle of “prioritising the progress schools make with their pupils rather than simply rewarding those with the top grades. However it also warned that this means the Sats results are all the more important as they form the ‘base’ measure against progress is measured.
CentreForum are quoted as saying that this is ‘the single most important education reform of the coalition government’ and I agree with them. And I am even more proud that this is something that has been spearheaded by Liberal Democrats in government.
Given the relative lack of prominance this story has received in the news, I hope you will join me in telling as many people as you can. Today, I am very proud to be Liberal Democrat.
* Layla Moran is the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon
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5 Comments
This is good news indeed.
For once, a policy announcement to be proud of. I’m having to get my jaw around a difficult and unfamiliar concept:
“Well done, David Laws.”
Are schools COMPELLED to do all they can to raise their position on whatever is this year’s calculation of league table points? Or is it something they do by their own volition? To my mind, any school that behaved like the one Layla Moran wrote about, with its red/yellow/green labelling is a BAD school – if I knew a school worked like that I would NOT want to sent my (hypothetical) kids there. It’s an indication of a school that has forgotten its real purpose, or is just too ready to jump to command from the politicos.
As a teacher (albeit at Higher Education rather than school level), I spend a lot of my time telling my students not to get obsessed by the exact mechanism for awarding points in assessment, and instead get down to actual learning. It’s sad to see schools doing the equivalent of students who are forever asking “how many marks do I get for this?” or “what bits of that will come up in the exam?” and other such questions, instead of asking about the material because they want to learn it for its own sake.
League table points are just a snapshot, a way to get some idea of what is happening, that’s all. There was some merit in doing an assessment on the core subjects and on how many pupils get across the crucial C/D line, just as there is merit in other ways of assessing how the teaching is going. Anyway, here’s a radical suggestion: calculate the league table points in a different way each year and keep it a secret which way they will be calculated until it’s done. A bit like the way we don’t tell students what’s in the exam in advance. That way we stop all this gaming the system.
I’m afraid the new way of calculating the points is just as open to gaming as the old way. For example, you could look good by deliberately giving the pupils low marks in the initial assessment. Or you could push them at GCSE level into subjects that aren’t the most useful for them, but tend to get high grades – this was why the points system got switched to a 5-subject only one, and the continuance of all-subject league tables for A-levels has a perverse effect on the A-level pupils are encouraged to take.
Over the years the public perception of schools has evolved to that of education shops where parents can exercise ‘choice’ which is actually only preference. This accounts for the busier roads during term time because the local school is not deemed good enough. League tables provide the information driving the market. The Education world has a number of measures used in schools to drive improvement (FFT for instance)
Matthew H’s final paragraph is correct. Added value is obviously a worthwhile measure but, as with all things in education, it needs to be viewed with caution. I am no expert merely an ex councillor who has seen it evolve over 24 years..
The critical factor which is never discussed is the home environment and the widening income differential which correlates with international performance.
The improvement to league table is to be welcomed. It’s a significant improvement over what has gone before.
However, improving a system that is broken in principle doesn’t actually do much make things better. League tables are a toxic influence on schools regardless of how they are implemented.