shuggy's blog
I saw something else from the Fancy that! department the other day - that children learn more from having good teachers than from being supplied with computers and gadgets. Wasn't it Blair's idea that if you gave every kid a laptop that would somehow educate them?
Wasn't it Blair's idea that if you gave every kid a laptop that would somehow educate them?
Oh god - probably. I always thought that despite his expensive private education - or perhaps because of it - Mr Blair was, and is, something of a philistine.
You're a bit behind the times if you think the Telegraph is still a Tory paper. They have Mary Riddell now, you know, and they're firmly in the warmist camp.
More to the point, if we reduce (or eliminate, as I'm sure you'd prefer) the amount of formal assessment in schools, how will we tell how they're doing?
You can't really be suggesting we should just rely on what the teachers say, can you?
Is "teaching to the test" really a direct result of the fact that tests exist?
Or is it a direct result of a broken education system, in which teachers are reduced to doing the absolute minimum, and no more?
Is "teaching to the test" really a direct result of the fact that tests exist?
Yep - although this needs expanding: there's much more assessment than there used to be and so much more weight is put on them. I should say this is a specifically English problem. We have it here but tis much worse in Englerland.
More to the point, if we reduce (or eliminate, as I'm sure you'd prefer) the amount of formal assessment in schools, how will we tell how they're doing?
What makes you think I'd want to eliminate them? Nobody is arguing this - I doubt anyone thinks this. What makes you think formal assessment is the only way, or even the best way, to find out how schools and pupils are doing, eh?
Just out of interest when I was at school in the 70s doing GCE O and A levels, were the teachers "teaching to the test" or not back in those dear dead halcyon days? Cos if they weren't, you could have fooled me. And when I was at junior school, after we took the 11 plus, our class teacher read the paper and let us play soccer and cricket for the remainder of our days at that particular school. Evidently not having to teach to the test any longer.
Just out of interest when I was at school in the 70s doing GCE O and A levels, were the teachers "teaching to the test" or not back in those dear dead halcyon days?
Teachers have always taught to the test - it's just that then a) there were fewer of them, b) they mattered less - therefore the curriculum wasn't narrowed to the extent it is today.
"it's just that then a) there were fewer of them, b) they mattered less "
And, in many cases, they were harder to teach to because they required longish (comparatively) discursive essays, the marking was less transparent and schematic, and the pass threshold was moveable.
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