Exams: fiddles and diddles

 A comment I put up on this thread:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/sep/11/exam-board-pressurised-by-ofqual?commentpage=last#end-of-comments

1. All exam boards, all authorities checking exam boards manipulate the results that they receive in from markers.
2. The boards etc will always say that they're doing it for reasons of fairness but they would, wouldn't they?
3. They are in fact doing it in order to justify their own existence as arbiters.
4. When students sit down to exams they believe that they're going to be marked on the basis of whether they can or can't fulfil the task set them.
5. In fact, most exams are operating a system that is hardly ever explained in full to the students out of fear it might demotivate them: ie that their result will be put into a mixer and extracted to appear on a graph that will be the 'right shape'. This might be a matter of tweaking, or it might be a matter of it being the predicted outcome. Those of us who have been a success in the exam system over the last 60 years (including me) are people who were designated the 'right' place on this shape.
6. This 'right shape' is a historical construct: it says to boards, markers, politicians, teachers: this is the intellectual 'shape' of the population.
7. In fact, exams themselves are systems which prove whether people are good or bad at a particular kind of exam. They do not prove much else.
8. This particular episode is in fact one in hundreds of similar tweakings and fiddles that go all the way back to the origins of national testing and the supposed 'reliability' of them.
9. The core problem with exams is that there is a tug-of-war between 'validity' and 'reliability'. Thus: the more 'reliable' you make a test, eg through very narrow -based questioning of some kind, the less 'valid' you make it ie you end up testing what people don't know rather than what they do know.
10. Further to this, it is clear that several key features of what makes someone a good learner, or good 'player' in the world beyond school will not and cannot be tested by these 'sit-down-heads-down-write-down' kinds of tests eg the ability to contribute to and learn from others; eg the ability to be flexible when faced with new problems; eg the ability to construct for oneself (or with others) learning and/or research and/or enquiries.
11. For all the government's puffed-up rhetoric about 'gold standard', there is every indication that these 16plus exams are becoming redundant. There is a desperate need for people to continue education and training till 18. A government will bite the bullet soon and implement this - hopefully in a humane and non-punitive way. Any testing at 16 should be to help students direct their thoughts and energies in the right place for them and not be this huge apparatus that mills and grinds all subjects in the same way. If national testing is needed it need, perhaps, be only in place for English language and Maths and the rest could be locally devised and used by schools, colleges, students and parents as guides to the student in order to help them find out what kind of post-16 education/training they really want to do.
12. What has happened to this year's school students and their GCSE's is shameful. I hope that they will be regraded and/or the grades ignored by all colleges etc. For what it's worth, I predict that Gove will tough this one out. If Hunt and Cameron can tough out Leveson, Gove can tough out this one.

You can't always get what you want.

Well, I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would go meet her connection
At her feet was her footloose man

No, you can't always get what you want
No, you can't always get what you want
No, you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime, you just might find
You get what you need

And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair shares of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
And if we don't, we don't blow a 50-amp fuse", yeah

And no, you can't always get what you want
No, you can't always get what you want
Well, no, you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need, baby

And I went down to the Chelsea drugstore
To get your prescriptions filled
I was standin' in line with Mr. Jimmy
And man, did he look pretty ill

We decided to have a soda
"Whatcha favorite flavor?", "Cherry red"
And I sung my song to my friend Jimmy
And he said one word back to me, that was "Dead"
I said

Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need

Oh, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want

And I saw her today at the reception
In her glass was a bleeding man
And she was practised that the art of deception
I could tell by her blood-stained hands

Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want

Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want
Oh, you can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need


It's not the profoundest or most important song ever written or performed but I liked it at the time, even though I was never a druggie. Like a lot of songs, sometimes it's the mood of the song, or the 'how it's sung' of the song that does something. And then the moment you try to describe that, it slips through  your fingers like water.

So, at the risk of breaking the glass, here's a few thoughts.

As others have spotted, the song seemed to be saying that something wasn't right about the end of the 60s to or about the people who had tried to do the different and new things. We hadn't got what we wanted...but...'if you try sometimes, you just might find  you get what you need.' So one side of the song was about saying it hadn't worked, and the other side said but you could and perhaps should go on trying.

But what of this mood thing, I'm talking about?

First the memory:

I always liked the Stones. They 'discovered' the Blues, both Mississippi Delta blues and Chicago blues at the same time as other small groups of white suburban kids in the US and in Britain did. In my grammar school in Harrow, there was a group of dissidents who found Folkways records and other labels who were putting out Alan Lomax's field recordings alongside vinyls taken from 'race' records produced in the 1920s and 30s, alongside the electric blues of Chicago. This was the stuff that Brian Jones and Jagger passed between them as they gravitated towards Alexis Korner's blues club next to Ealing Broadway station. The story has been told many times but sometimes misses out the fact that Jones and Jagger were part of a mini-movement of enthusiasts, one part of which were the suburban grammar school dissidents - most of whom turned up for the CND marches from 1958 onwards.

So, in my mind, this song has the tug of the personal. It seemed to be talking to and about something to do with a London that I knew. And of course the song-scholars have done their identifying of 'Jimmy' and exactly which Chelsea 'drugstore' the song is talking about.

Like millions of others I spend a bit of time combing YouTube for the songs and performances I like.

Here's the original track: (someone's put it up with pix of his favourite record covers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIX0ZDqDljA

Here's David Frost introducing the Stones 'performing' it in a studio...
On close examination, I think you'll see that they're miming it minus the London Bach Choir's intro.
(1969)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM_p1Az05Jo&feature=related

Here they are in 1981 in the US

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9dySmseOPo

Here's they are in 2003 live in Twickenham:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM_p1Az05Jo&feature=related


It seems to me that the meaning of the song changes across these different performances. When it was produced, it had this ambivalent regretful-hopeful quality which (to me) seemed embodied by the idea that you can't always get what you want but if you try you might just find that you will...

Then the song evolves into something that becomes more and more assertive. It seems as if Jagger's 'strutting' mode of performing has taken over and that more nuanced ambivalence has gone. I'd be hesitant about inscribing on to this story something of enormous political significance. I suspect that they thought that their old way of performing it was too quiet for their stadium rock shows or perhaps that the vibe they picked up when they wrote it is just something that a few old lefty rockers knew about or were interested in and they had to pump it out now...

Or, perhaps, there is something a bit more acquisitive in the air around it when you make the song more assertive. You've got to go and get it if you want it, and, because the song is in the first person, it's about 'me' , and how 'I' have to go and get it if 'I' want it - which of course has been the official, political sub-text of the last 30 years through Thatcher, Reagan, Major, Bush, Blair etc etc.

Just a thought.

Gove is wrong about our school: letter to Evening Standard

Letter in Evening Standard Thursday September 6




"Aside from the hypocrisy of insisting parents will have more choice when he runs roughshod over the view of any who oppose him, Michael Gove seems intent on blinding us all with waffle about the 'knowledge economy' without attempting to address issues underling inequality (September 3).

And what a devastating judgement on Downhill Primary, which he has never visited, as 'one of the worst schools in London'. Based on what exactly - such a label conjures up images of a dire sinkhole light years away from the local community's experience of a happy, inclusive, school with well-behaved children, and SAT results showing an upward trajectory of the past two years."

Brenda Butler.

Phonics Screening Check - 'results all over the place'???

The gossip on the Phonics Screening Check front is that 'the results are all over the place'. Oh dear, the very worst scenario of all for exam- and test-crazy governments:  a national test whose results are so varied that it's hard to deduce a pattern.

This is only a rumour, but it rather seems as if the results coming in from the schools are causing the needle to whizz to and from - there are schools down in the 30 per cent pass rate and others in the 80 per cent pass rate. Why? No one's quite sure. Are the 80 per cent passers the ones who have most successfully taught to the test? If so, what does that prove? That the school will produce the most and the best readers? That can't be shown or proven yet because the phonics check is not a 'reading' test. It simply and only tests the decoding of individual words. That is not 'reading'.

And what about the 30 per cent pass rate schools? What will that show? That this is a school that won't or can't produce readers? That seems like a dodgy conclusion, given that the average rate of being able to read WITHOUT exclusive, intensive, systematic, synthetic phonics is 80 per cent.

And we must beware of false conclusions here. I suspect, like the story in the Independent that I put up here yesterday, more and more experts will try to claim that failure at the PSC show 'reading problems'. I suggest that we will have to work very hard to point out that the only problems they could possibly show are 'phonics problems' which is a different matter. As we know, it's quite possible for children to be good readers and fail the PSC.

How to get a story about phonics wrong.

News Story in Monday's Independent:


"Children are proving too clever for their own good when it comes to taking the new reading test for six-year-olds, according to research published today.

In the test, which is designed as a phonics check, pupils are asked to sound out or decode a series of words, some of which are made up. However, when encountering pseudo words such as "strom", pupils assumed the teacher had failed to spot an error and changed the word to "storm" – and getting the answer wrong.

The Government, however, insists the test – jointly carried out by the National Association of Head Teachers, National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers – is essential in spotting children who have a reading problem early."


Difficult to think of whether you could pack more errors into the one story!

1. It's not a 'reading' test. It's a 'phonics decoding test' ie making appropriate sounds when seeing letters.

2. It was not jointly carried out by those Unions. It was carried out by teachers, many of whom may be in those unions.

3. Those unions have produced a statement opposing the Phonics Screening Check.

4. The test does not spot children who have a 'reading problem'. It spots children who have a phonics problem.

Hey where are the results of the Phonics Screening Check?

Any MPs reading this, could you please ask Michael Gove, David Laws and Liz Truss what they've done with the results of the Phonics Screening Check; why the results haven't been published yet and what conclusions they draw from the results?

Rumour has it that the pass rate (ie getting 32 out of 40 words right) was about 55%. However, 80 per cent of children learn to read (NOT using exclusive, intensive, systematic, synthetic phonics). So why is there a differential between approx 55% and 80%? Surely this shows that the Phonics Screening Check is irrelevant, a waste of time and a waste of money (How much? exactly how much? Please let us know.).

We also know that some children who could read well, 'failed' the PSC. Several reasons have been put forward: eg they tried to 'correct' the nonsense words eg 'strom' to 'storm', 'osk' to 'ask'. In a sense, they were too good at reading for the test.

We don't know yet what the 'failure' effect will be. How did the parents and children respond when they were told the child had failed? What happens now, as they proceed towards more SSP and another PSC? How is that working out?

Why is Reading Recovery being discredited and sidelined, when it can be shown that it was proving successful in picking up children who were struggling with reading in the first round of initial reading instruction?

There are plans afoot to make changes to Early Years Education including (rumour rumour) to raise the admission age to 6 and to allow more unqualified staff to have more contact time with early years. (Of course, if your school is a designated 'free school', academy or private school, you can hire unqualified staff already.)

I detect a mismatch here between the almost fanatical introduction of exclusive, intenstive SSP for Early Years and Year 1 and a possible de-professionialising of staff? Is it an example of one bit of ideology conflicting with another? ie the 'instrumental' approach to learning how to read conflicting with the 'marketisation' of education driving the de-professionalising and possible raising of the admission age as part of government cuts?

New appointments at the DfE: qualifications?

All change at the Department for Education, so let's see the qualifications of those coming in (according to wikipedia) :

Here's David Laws, the new Schools Minister:

Laws was born in Farnham, Surrey,[3] the only son of a Conservative voting father who was a banker, and a Labour voting mother. He would later joke that he was the "perfect fusion" as a Liberal Democrat.[4]

Laws was educated at fee-paying independent schools: Woburn Hill School in the town of Weybridge, Surrey, from 1974 to 1979;[4] and St George's College, Weybridge, a Roman Catholic day school in the same town, from 1979 to 1984. Regarded as a skilled speaker in intellectual argument, he won the national Observer Schools Mace Debating Championship in 1984.[4]

Laws graduated in 1987 from King's College, Cambridge, with a double first in economics.[5]

Here's a recent article about him from the Independent:

David Laws was the first ministerial casualty of the coalition Government, resigning after just 17 days amid a scandal over his parliamentary expenses.

But he remained a close adviser to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has never made any secret of his wish for a swift return to the frontline for an MP who is seen as one of the Liberal Democrats' biggest talents.

His appointment today as education minister risks reviving controversy over his expenses claims, which saw him suspended from the Commons for seven days in 2011 when a parliamentary inquiry found that he had committed "a series of serious breaches of rules".

Mr Laws apologised to Parliament and voluntarily repaid more than £56,000 after it was revealed that he claimed allowances to pay his partner James Lundie rent for the London flat where they lived. The Yeovil MP argued that his motive was to avoid outing himself as gay, rather than profit.

His resignation as Chief Secretary to the Treasury on May 29, 2010, was the first bombshell to hit the coalition administration.

A key member of the Lib Dems' team during negotiations over the formation of the coalition with Conservatives in the wake of the inconclusive 2010 general election, he had been lined up for the crucial job of working with Chancellor George Osborne on the deficit reduction programme. His resignation meant that the less experienced Danny Alexander had to be drafted in to take on the sensitive role.

A former investment banker, 46-year-old Mr Laws has always been on the right of the Liberal Democrats and was expected to take to the task of reining in public spending with more relish than many of his colleagues.

He was a driving force behind the Orange Book, which signalled a resurgence in the party's free-market wing in 2004, using his contribution to deride "soggy socialism and corporatism" in favour of the "traditional building blocks of liberalism".

And, more recently, he used an interview in June this year to call for radically deeper cuts to public spending and taxes, arguing that the share of the economy accounted for by the state should be trimmed from around 40 per cent to 35 per cent.

Born in Surrey in 1965, Laws was educated at the Roman Catholic fee-paying school St George's College in Weybridge before gaining a double first in economics at King's College, Cambridge.

This in turn led to a stint in the City, working as an investment banker at both JP Morgan and Barclays de Zoete Wedd.

But in 1994 he left the City behind him to become an economic adviser for the Liberal Democrats.

Following a failed attempt to unseat Conservative minister and future leader Michael Howard in Folkestone and Hythe in 1997, he was elected to Parliament in the 2001 general election, succeeding Paddy Ashdown as MP for Yeovil.

His rise through the Lib Dem ranks was rapid, beginning with a post as junior Treasury spokesman in 2002 and taking in work and pensions in 2005 before eventually being appointed schools spokesman two years later.

Here's Liz Truss, the new Early Years Minister (again, according to wikipedia) :

Truss was raised in a northern, left-wing household; her father is a professor with an interest in mathematical logic, and her mother was a nurse, teacher, and member of the CND.[5] Truss has described both as being 'to the left of Labour'.[4] While her mother agreed to campaign for Truss when she ran for election to Parliament, her father – due to his politics – refused to do so.[6][4]

Truss attended a state primary school in Paisley, in Scotland,[4] followed by Roundhay School, a comprehensive school in north-east Leeds. She lived in Canada for a year, and contrasts the competitive attitude in schooling there with the 'trendy' education she received in Leeds.[4] Amongst her A-levels, Truss studied both Ordinary Maths and Advanced Maths.[7] She read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Merton College, Oxford.

After graduation in 1996, she worked for Shell as a commercial manager and Cable & Wireless as economics director, and became a qualified management accountant.[8] Truss became the deputy director of Reform in January 2008,[9] where she advocated more rigorous academic standards in schools, a greater focus on tackling serious and organised crime, and urgent action to deal with Britain's falling competitiveness. She co-authored The Value of Mathematics[10] and A New Level[11] amongst other reports.

Truss was President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and expressed anti-monarchist sentiments at the 1994 Liberal Democrats conference.[5][12] Truss joined the Conservative Party in 1996.[2] She served as the chairman of the Lewisham Deptford Conservative Association from 1998 to 2000.[2] She was elected as a councillor in the London Borough of Greenwich in 2006, standing down in 2010, shortly before the end of her term of office.

More appointments to come...