Brave New World
Bit of a self-indulgent rant about Government interference in the teaching profession this time: non-teachers may want to skip this one altogether - sorry!
Started thinking the other day - yes, I know - dangerous pastime. By next summer I will have spent half my life working as a teacher. I love my job, but sometimes I get the impression I'm like a hamster running on a wheel getting nowhere, just going round in circles.
When I started teaching in 1984, there was no such thing as coursework in any subect, mine being Mathematics, but it was brought in to encourage students to think in independent and divergent ways.
The trouble is, how do you objectively use this to contribute towards someone's overall performance? The exam boards were doing a pretty good job with this, but then the Government sent in their so-called "experts" (who have a specialised knowledge of a small area; as you become more expert, the greater your knowledge of a more contained area, making the ultimate expert into someone who knows everything about nothing) who with their size elevens imposed a generic mark scheme for all tasks. The result was an inevitable slide into everyone jumping through the same hoop in a uniform manner.
This defeated the object of independent thought - perhaps this was a hidden agenda by the thought police, who have now decided to pull the plug on coursework altogether in Mathematics. They claim the system is open to abuse: too right it is! Every educational system has its flaws, but exploitation is one that is normally reserved for the rich and powerful: how else could high ranking members of society pass an entrance examination to our top universities when even a low grade A level pass appears almost beyond them?
Nowadays, most homes have internet access, and just typing in the name of a coursework task we use, can reveal a tailor-made solution (for a price) to whatever you want. Once the masses learn to join in with abusing the system, suddenly our politicians are falling over themselves to take drastic measures to correct it.
I firmly believe in having a level playing field. I used to work with a teacher who was a chief examiner for a subject. Our students always did well in his subject, as they were well prepared for their papers, which had been written by my colleague, albeit a year or so earlier. What annoyed me was that the performance of these students in my subject was being measured against this, and inevitably we came worse off every year. I also believe totally in maintaining integrity, even when the odds are unjustly stacked against you, and I will be writing about this in my next post about the OFSTED inspection we have just had.
Started thinking the other day - yes, I know - dangerous pastime. By next summer I will have spent half my life working as a teacher. I love my job, but sometimes I get the impression I'm like a hamster running on a wheel getting nowhere, just going round in circles.
When I started teaching in 1984, there was no such thing as coursework in any subect, mine being Mathematics, but it was brought in to encourage students to think in independent and divergent ways.
The trouble is, how do you objectively use this to contribute towards someone's overall performance? The exam boards were doing a pretty good job with this, but then the Government sent in their so-called "experts" (who have a specialised knowledge of a small area; as you become more expert, the greater your knowledge of a more contained area, making the ultimate expert into someone who knows everything about nothing) who with their size elevens imposed a generic mark scheme for all tasks. The result was an inevitable slide into everyone jumping through the same hoop in a uniform manner.
This defeated the object of independent thought - perhaps this was a hidden agenda by the thought police, who have now decided to pull the plug on coursework altogether in Mathematics. They claim the system is open to abuse: too right it is! Every educational system has its flaws, but exploitation is one that is normally reserved for the rich and powerful: how else could high ranking members of society pass an entrance examination to our top universities when even a low grade A level pass appears almost beyond them?
Nowadays, most homes have internet access, and just typing in the name of a coursework task we use, can reveal a tailor-made solution (for a price) to whatever you want. Once the masses learn to join in with abusing the system, suddenly our politicians are falling over themselves to take drastic measures to correct it.
I firmly believe in having a level playing field. I used to work with a teacher who was a chief examiner for a subject. Our students always did well in his subject, as they were well prepared for their papers, which had been written by my colleague, albeit a year or so earlier. What annoyed me was that the performance of these students in my subject was being measured against this, and inevitably we came worse off every year. I also believe totally in maintaining integrity, even when the odds are unjustly stacked against you, and I will be writing about this in my next post about the OFSTED inspection we have just had.
posted by Sparky at 10:08 pm
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