Letter to the DfE

This is circulating on Facebook. It's a letter from a teacher to the DfE

"Just a quick note to thank you for your reply to my letter concerning the assessment arrangements for KS2 this year. I had, after 6 weeks, given up on on receiving a reply from you, but I'm so glad it finally came. I will be using it next week with my Year 6 pupils to develop their evaluating & editing skills. I'm sure they will easily be able to spot the 5 punctuation and grammar errors, and, as this won't take too long, I can then ask them to use the interim teacher assessment criteria to judge the level of your letter. 

As 'correct use of full stops' must be achieved for a child to be deemed to be 'working TOWARDS the expected level', they'll probably judge this piece of writing to be below this standard and therefore not "performing in relation to the national expectations".
I am not disappointed by this letter, it has saved me planning one of my SPAG lessons, and has also confirmed my suspicions that the Department for Education is not capable of meeting the standards expected of primary school children. 

Oh, and just a tiny bit of advice, if you need to print a letter out over two pages, it looks more professional if both sheets of paper are the same quality and colour."

Nicky Morgan talks rubbish about creativity to head teachers today

Nicky Morgan throws down a challenge:




"What are the limits placed on a child's imagination when they cannot write down their ideas for others to read?"


This is the Gove theory that we can't be creative or inventive until we've done the 'basics'. Why is it a fallacy?


1. We are creative, imaginative and inventive from the day we are born. Yes, what we are creative 'with' is, as they say, 'contingent' - that's to say it depends on what materials or resources we have to be creative with. So as tiny infants we can be creative and inventive with clay, paint, coming up with ideas for things to play with, and we have to be creative in order to learn language - that is we play with alternatives and find out which words and constructions work.


2. Nicky Morgan is posing the idea that when this comes to one specific matter - 'writing' - first you have to learn how to write, then you can be creative. This supposes that we can't learn how to write by being creative! What an absurd and illogical idea. Anyone who has worked with young children has observed hundreds, if not thousands of occasions, when children have been inventive and creative and pushed at the frontiers of what they can (and can't do) with a pencil in their hand making words and sequences of words.


One example: children often ask me what is the bear thinking in the last picture of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. I say, 'I don't know. What do you think?' Then they tell me. If I'm with a group in, say, Reception or Year 1 class, I get them to say these out loud and then, say, let's write these down. And the teachers will organise the children in such a way as to enable the better writers in the room (including adults) help those children who aren't able to write down their thoughts, and those who can write it, do. This will involve 'stretching' all the children into finding ways of writing down the thoughts they have just had - all of which involve 'creativity' because there are no words in the book to tell us immediately what the bear is thinking. However, the children have the resources of the book, their other reading (and listening) and their lives to answer the question that they themselves have posed. So, they are in control of the very question themselves.

In other words the children are learning literacy THROUGH being creative. That's the point.


This is in direct and total contrast to SPaG/GPS learning which determines a) what must be taught and learned b) treats the learner as having no control over the learning process c) has no other outcome than a right/wrong answer.


3. In short, Nicky Morgan you have shown yourself to be ignorant of a basic tenet of learning and creativity.

Letter to me from teacher about SPaG test

"It occurred to me that although there were 49 questions [50 if you include one question with two distinct parts (Q21)], many questions have several elements, all of which must be correct to be awarded the mark - and then some. The cruellest question in this regard is Q39. Not only do the children have to think of five suffixes, they then have to spell every new word correctly. That's ten elements for one mark. Just one letter out of place...and the whole question is a big fat zero, even though the child understands what suffixes are and how to combine them with nouns albeit with a silly (sincerily??) slip.

We counted nearly 80 separate elements in a '49 question' test for 50 marks."

The test-crazy regime is based on treating our children as if they are machines.

This is about the teach-test regime where the tests are used to measure schools and not to help teachers to teach and children to learn. It's the input-output method (or theory) of measuring schools and it comes from technology, business and some science.

The input-output model of measuring performance works on the basis of measuring output as a way of measuring how good the input is.

Imagine, for example, a racing car test on petrol. In a test, you could change nothing apart from the type of petrol : same, car, same driver, same pressure on the accelerator, same amount of lubrication, same wear on the tyres but in one run you use one kind of petrol, in the next run you use another kind of petrol (same amount in the tank, each time), same weather, same track, same route. In these circumstances, you could measure the difference in performance and draw conclusions about which petrol is better.

The measure of performance would measure the input.

What is going on in education is based on this principle.

So, the Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation tests for Years 2 and 6, were brought in specifically because it was claimed that they give right and wrong answers. This means that on the basis of the performance of the children in these tests, the relative worth of the 'input' (ie teachers' teaching) could be measured. It's the input-output model.

So, why shouldn't we use this method?

One reason is because the output (the tests themselves) are unreliable. There are too many ambiguous features in the tests. Multiple choice can be done without any reference to knowledge (stick a pin in and you get a one in four chance of being right). Some things that are being marked as wrong, are in fact right.

The other reason - more importantly is that children are not cars. They are not machines. This is an argument about education itself.

We have to ask ourselves, what kind of person do we want to develop and grow within education? If we want children to be responsive, thinking, interpreting, inventive,  flexible people aware that what they say and do can affect materials, language and other people around them, then we shouldn't treat them as if they are empty receptacles waiting to be filled up and measured.

We will want them to express choice in what and how to learn; express ideas that can change things around them, things that they meet. We will want them to learn how to discuss things, to swap ideas between adults and children around them. We will want them to learn how to question things.

These are not add-on skills. They are not add-ons that you stick on in the sixth form or at college or in adult life. They can be part of how we enable children to investigate, choose and discuss.

Needless to say, this is much harder to measure in ways that the government wants. But if the way the government wants to measure teachers and schools is against the interests of our children, we should say so. If we think this input-output method is constraining our children's growth as thinking, choosing, reflecting, inventing, developing people, we should say so.

I think we can say that we reject the 'Top Gear' way of treating our children.

PGCE student writes about how trainee teachers are feeling

"I am halfway through a Primary PGCE at one of the UK's leading institutions. When asked recently what our short-term (5 year) plans were, only a third of my tutor group anticipated that they would still be in the profession. This is before they have even set foot in the classroom as an NQT. 

Teaching has become so degraded as a profession, with every element of it prescribed by government mandates, that new teachers feel inadequate from the outset. The expectations placed on us to perform within a system that often doesn't reflect the pedagogy we have learnt (as skilled professionals) or the experiences we have had in the classroom, leave many of us confused as to what exactly our role and purpose is. We are left with the choice to 'play the game' or to leave. 

When so much of the research indicates that a good, effective teacher has the biggest positive impact on learning, why is this exodus of teachers not treated with a greater sense of urgency? (of course, I already know the answer to this question.)"

Unqualified teachers in senior roles; principals on 2x head-teacher's salary...

(This comes from someone who visits schools constantly.)

"I've been into schools where senior roles (ie Head of House) are filled by staff without a teaching qualification, Principals are being paid 2 or 3 times a head teacher's salary, students who would previously be given extra support being permanently excluded for relatively minor incidents, and a lack of resources for anything non-academic (sex & relationships or drugs & alcohol for example). 

Good staff are leaving as teaching is no longer the career they signed up for. Sad, but completely avoidable results of this hideously misguided policy which already seems to be falling apart - after a lot less than the duration of a 125 year lease!"

10 points for you to use or discuss for a meeting on education

If you're doing a meeting on education, here are some points you might want to make as part of the meeting.

1. When schools become academies, that means that they stop being directly in public control. They go onto 125 year leases. We have already seen that this means that the management of the school can use the school for all kinds of shady financial goings-on, the salaries of management can go through the roof.  Here's one example:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/24/perry-beeches-academy-lauded-cameron-serious-breaches-of-guidelines

2. The government say that becoming an academy gives a school autonomy and improves schools.

Autonomy: this can't be said for schools in academy chains - in 'MATs'. These are run and controlled by a management outside of the school. This is a new bureaucracy that has no direct accountability to parents or the public.

Improvement: there is no evidence for this. In other words, this is not about bringing in something that the government and educationists know will make schools and education for all better. It's being done because the government wants to end public control of education.

3. The academy system as a whole is not responsible for the education of every single child. Children excluded or not admitted to academies are the responsibility of the local authority. But local authorities are being starved of cash and have hardly any educationists left in them. Local authorities are becoming unfit for educating excluded children.  This is putting thousands of children into danger.

4. It is becoming clear that children ARE being excluded from academies for what one report that looked at how 160 schools 'turned round being failing schools' , described as being 'poor quality students'. This is the new attitude to vulnerable and challenging children. This is a huge danger to children of many kinds including children with special needs. The White Paper says that it will be the job of the local authorities to ensure that academies take children, but the local authorities have no legal authority over academies. They can't force academies to take on children. They can only ask. And academies can refuse. One statistic: it's becoming clear that academies exclude at a far greater rate than local authority schools.

5. The test system that has come in is doing several jobs. Its first main job in primary schools is to measure teachers and schools. Our children are being used as the 'test material' for this job. They take the stress and the upset. In order to 'measure' the teachers and schools, they have come up with tests that are supposedly made up of 'right and wrong answers'. But this isn't true. The grammar, spelling and punctuation test is full of questions that have various possible and correct answers. What's more a good deal of what the children have to learn for this test is not agreed on by expert linguists, there are useless categories that neither children or adults need - like 'fronted adverbial', 'expanded noun phrase', and 'subjunctive'. Even worse, these categories are being used as a measure of what makes 'good writing'. This is nonsense. Good writing is what amazes or moves or intrigues or excites us. Teaching that good writing is writing with 'fronted adverbials', 'expanded noun phrases' and 'embedded relative clauses' is a nonsense.

Its other job is to replace the national curriculum. The curriculum will become the testing. If it all goes through, we can expect this government to impose even more testing on the system so that they can control the curriculum that way. But...

6. ...the test system is narrowing education. Children are spending far too much time just doing tests and rehearsals for the tests. And we should remember that the tests can only test the testable. Whole areas of experience and learning are not included in what an 'education for the test' covers. Think of investigation, invention (creativity), interpretation (coming up with various conclusions for things), discussion, co-operation, compassion. These vital ways of learning are getting squeezed out of the curriculum.

And remember - at the end of the day, the tests are not there to help our children. They are there to test whether the teachers have taught the stuff that's in the test - some of which is useless anyway.

7. Full academisation means the end of the National Curriculum. This will, in effect, be replaced by the test-regime. The tests will determine what is taught and how it is taught, as teachers are forced to teach to the test in order to get good marks in the tests.

8. Academies do not have to employ qualified teachers. No matter how good an individual might be, this increases the possibility of academies hiring cheap and incompetent teachers. It's probably going to be a way of forcing down teachers' salaries. This is not good for teachers or children.

9. If academisation goes through, we lose our schools to charities and sponsors. We put schools even more under the control of the test-regime.

10. The government is in big trouble with all this: they've had to cancel baseline testing for 4 year olds, they've had to cancel this year's Key Stage 1 SATs because of incompetence and unreliability. Many of their own supporters including MPs, and local councils are opposed to the White Paper on academies for all. We need to unite and fight against the tests and the White Paper.

Some people are already organising protests in advance of the tests on May 3. People are resisting forced academisations.

(You may want to get speakers from these campaigns to  your meeting)

Nicky Morgan fesses up about what all the tests are really for

Hello Nicky Morgan here. Yes, you're right, I am no good spelling and my handwriting is really awful but that's got nothing to do with all these tests we're giving children, is it? The point is we didn't bring the test in because we think all children are going to get them all right. We know that most children will get something wrong. Of course they are.

And the tests aren't really about what they appear to be about: grammar, spelling, reading, writing, handwriting. All that is just a means to an end. We wanted to come up with something that we could use as a measurement. It could have been any old thing. And we happened to land on that one. There really is no point in looking too closely at whether it all hangs together as something that makes sense. It's just little bits of stuff that you have to get right or wrong. I hardly know any of it!


But, you see we get the measurements at the end of it. Data. Performance. That sort of thing. If there are good marks, we can say, well done us. If there are bad marks we can blame Labour for all the damage they did before and how there's so much more work to do. But as for the stuff itself, god knows what half of it's about! And who cares?

Ofsted screw up as they are trying to recruit

Dear Michael Wilshaw

Below is the text that Ofsted produced as part of their instructions to people wanting to become Ofsted inspectors. As you'll see, in line 3 there is a word 'excersise'.

You'll probably know that the Ofsted inspectors sent out into schools monitor teachers and children, and make assessments of how such things as spelling is taught. This is all done in the punitive framework of league tables and forced conversions.

You'll also know that we can't force you to convert to anything even when someone in your department fails to do what your department is set up to enforce.

How much longer do you think this ridiculous mess can last?

(By the way, I am told that on the first showing of this document the word 'assessment' was spelled 'assesment' too, so you can count that in to the mess too, if you like.)

Best
Michael
ps I'm much less bothered by this sort of thing that you and Ofsted. I can see exactly what the writer meant here. It was just a typo, I suspect. Maybe one day, you or someone else in authority, will say something very simple: 'we all make mistakes'.

Before commencing the assessment please check that you can play the video below.

The assessment contains a video as part of the excersise and it is important to make sure you will be able to view it before commencing. This test video has no sound, but the actual assessment video will do - please ensure you have sound turned up on your computer and any speakers (if needed) switched on.

If you are unable to successfully view the test video, then before starting please ensure your web browser is up to date, and if you are still unable to view the test video then contact us via the help and support telephone number/email address.

Nicky Morgan fluffs more of the rules she enforces

Dear Nicky Morgan,




In the SPaG instructions I've got, it says that after fronted adverbials, the children must use a comma. You've written in your letter to Kevin Courtney (where you wrote 'sincerily' ) : 'I am sure that going forward we will have many more opportunities to discuss the White Paper...'




By my reckoning, 'I am sure that going forward' is a fronted adverbial, but you haven't put a comma after it.




I can conclude from this that

a) it doesn't matter or

b) it does matter but you don't know about this sort of thing, even though you are in charge of it all,

c) it's all a load of tosh anyway.




In the meantime, my children get to think it is really important,we have to teach it, because if we don't our school will be measured as inadequate, in which case, the only person who seems inadequate round here is you.




Best wishes, Michael.

Satire on testing posted by Mark Ellse at 'Conservative Woman'.

Satire on testing from Mark Ellse who posted this at a site called 'Conservative Woman'.

Now listen, boys and girls, I'm just going to explain to you exactly why the maths I am going to teach you today is impossible and why just about no-one in the class is going to have a clue what I'm going to be talking about. You may think that it's bonkers that I have to teach you something that you can't follow. I couldn't agree more. In fact, just about every teacher in the land who is actually teaching maths thinks it is bonkers as well. But teachers have no choice in the matter. A gentleman called Mr Gove had a bright idea that he could magically raise standards and, since it requires a little bit of mathematical thinking and will be good practice for you, I am going to start this lesson by explaining why Mr Gove, himself, got his maths wrong.

About fifty years ago, when your grandparents were at school, only about about a fifth of people did exams before they left school. What's that, Bloggs minor? Yes, you are right. One fifth is 20 per cent. Yes, Blogs, only 20 per cent of pupils took exams. Well done!

Now the exams that these children took were called O-levels and, since these were very hard exams, even though only the top 20 per cent of children took these exams, only 80 per cent of those bright children passed these exams. Come on Blogs, what's 80 per cent of 20 per cent? Yes, indeed, it's 16 per cent. The O level examinations were so hard that only the top 16 per cent of children could pass them.

Now, I'll tell you something else about the old days. People had different ideas then. In those days, it was acceptable to say that some children were not as bright as others. Yes, Angel, you are quite right that it does sound unkind to say that but it really does seem to be true. Some children really do find maths harder than others. Yes, Smirthwaite, I know that maths isn't your strong subject. Yes it probably is because you aren't very bright. But we can't really say that, can we?

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Well, about thirty or forty years ago, things got into a bit of a mess. More and more jobs needed people to do paperwork and some children at school started sitting exams called CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education). These were a lot easier than O levels because they were designed for the children who were not good enough for O levels. Exactly, Angel, children just like you, not nearly so good at maths as Bloggs but entirely good enough to count out the change in a shop.

Anyway, if I may continue, some children were taking O-levels, some were taking CSEs and, frankly, school exams were a mess. Children didn't know whether to take O-levels or CSEs. Employers didn't know how good children were because there was no direct comparison between the two sets of exams. Eventually, along came a man called Kenneth Baker and he produced an exam system called GCSE, which combined the O-levels and CSEs together. Yes, Bloggs, they were easier than O-levels. They were designed so that half the school children would get a grade C, which was called a pass. Yes, Angel, half is 50 per cent. Well done! And yes, you are quite right that the new GCSE had to be easier than O-levels because it was designed for the whole ability range and not just for the top 20 per cent.

I'm sorry, Smirthwaite, there has not yet been designed a maths exam that is easy enough for you to pass.

Now, children, this is what this has to do with today's maths lesson. That man that I mentioned, Mr Gove, was keen on what he called standards. Some people told him that GCSEs are not as hard as O-levels used to be. And, of course, it's true. GCSEs are not as hard as O-levels. I've already told you why. But Mr Gove didn't understand that. Truth to tell, like most politicians, Mr Gove wasn't very good at maths. He knew the difference between its and it's, between practise and practice, and he could spot a split infinitive at twenty paces. But he wasn't very good at maths at all. But Mr Gove was determined to raise standards. So he set up loads of committees and told them to make maths GCSE harder.

Yes, Angel, you are quite right. If the GCSEs become harder, it is indeed likely that you won't pass. But Mr Gove didn't like that idea. You see, like many Conservative politicians he thinks of himself as a One-Nation Tory. Conservatives like calling themselves that because it sounds grand and is nearly the same as saying that everyone is the same. And because Conservative politicians talk in a muddled way, they start thinking in a muddled way. Mr Gove actually believes that you can make exams harder and still have the same number of children pass them! What a silly idea! But Mr Gove believes it! You'll find it hard to believe it but Mr Gove really believes that, if only teachers did their job properly, even you, Smirthwaite, would pass O-level maths. Yes, Smirthwaite, you are quite right. He would indeed have to be as daft as you to think that.

And so, children, before you have really understood the basic maths that I really should be teaching you, today we are going to be studying completion of the square, the differentiation of the resulting equations and the implications this has for finding the turning point on the corresponding graphs. Sorry, Bloggs. You're not going to understand it either, but this is what Mr Gove calls 'raising standards'.

Comment by someone at Guardian on 2016 testing disaster

Here's a comment from a thread at the Guardian today, following on from the KS1 disaster:




"What I think gets missed in all the conversations about education, health etc.. is how badly they are being run from the centre, in practical terms. A Department of Health that doesn't know how many doctors it employs is missing something quite fundamental.

Leaving aside whether we agree with curriculum, governance and testing changes brought in by the government, the real story is how incompetently it is being done. Looking at it from the side of the children, it is immediately apparent how little they matter in their own education. The speed and lack of thought around implementation cannot be in their interest: there are plenty of examples where, by waiting as little as the start of a new school year, the changes that are said to be so desperately important would have a better chance of success.

To pick a few:

The changes to the GCSE English specification: kids starting their course as year 10 in 2012 had their course specification changed during the summer holidays between years 10 and 11. The Department of Education consulted at Easter 2013, responded around June/July 2013 and had the specification changed to remove the speaking and listening component in the August. It seems extraordinary that OFQUAL went along with this: is the benefit to the kids of an immediate changed specification, where their teachers are scrabbling to keep up and having to change all their planning, so great that it outweighs the less stressful option of letting that cohort finish the course they started and instead implementing it with the year below? How can it be justified?

The current year 9 have chosen their GCSE options without many of the new specifications signed off. How can this be fair to them? Isn't it a basic standard of competence to finish defining a task before you expect someone to commit to taking it on? It is a basic, practical consideration to ensure that the person teaching them knows what their student is supposed to be able to do. Why the rush? What is the benefit that outweighs the extra stress for both kids and teachers of being held to account by an unreasonable 'boss' who doesn't give them the tools they need for the best chance of success? Again, the failure is a central one, leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces. And being put down while they do so.

The new KS1 and KS2 SATS tests, hurried out without meaningful evaluation. The publishing of the KS1 test shows how incompetent the whole department processes are. These tests originally were meant to evaluate performance in deciles and the tests frameworks were developed to try to do this. Then it was decided that it would be a pass/fail test to determine whether children had reached a 'national standard'. At that point the test structure should have changed: performance no longer needs to be separated out. Yet the 'standard' hasn't been defined: there's a load of waffling about PISA and how important it is to set the 'standardised scale' after the results are in. That's not a 'standard', it's a contrived threshold based on relative performance within a cohort. As this contrived 'standard' will be used to 'standardise' future tests, it is a no-brainer that results will get better: the 'standard' will be set with kids, who've barely had any time with the new curriculum, sitting a test that is unfamiliar to them (and to their teachers), with last minute samples and exemplifications. Again, the fault is central, with kids and teachers not being giving the tools to succeed. Why is it so important to introduce these tests without proper scrutiny and defined standards first? Would it be so terrible to wait a year or two?

The sad thing is that kids are being stressed unnecessarily. The driving test has a standard: it doesn't matter how anyone else does, expectations are clear, and it is repeatable. It cannot be beyond the wit of man to develop classes and types of, say, grammar questions: don't we want to know what they can do? If a primary school teacher, who is an intelligent graduate, as well as an experienced education professional, cannot teach grammar from their own knowledge, then it's not a reasonable test. If there is a 'standard' that we expect around 60-70% of kids to reach, then actually the test should be easy and straightforward for most children. Doing it properly would make it less stressful for young children: it's win/win.

Health, education etc... are starting to unravel because it's not enough to have an idea (no matter how great) to improve outcomes. Stephen Hawking isn't paid to just have ideas. It isn't difficult to design a system that will show whatever you want it to show. It isn't clever, and whatever good intentions were there at the start are lost, when there is no interest in the reality and practicalities of putting ideas into practice.

The kids are nowhere in this."

Nick Gibb addressed the DfE this morning: transcript

I've called this meeting this morning because of the extremely unfortunate matter of the leaked Key Stage 1 Spelling paper. I'm taking the chair because Nicky is practising how to spell 'sincerely'. Perhaps, Nicky you could do some work on your handwriting too. Thank you.

Thanks, John, bringing a leek to the meeting is fine as a satirical point but this is serious. Deadly serious.

Thousands of parents, teachers and children are going to school today laughing at us. I've had to come away from some really important work on exclamation marks and now this!

First: do we know who was responsible for the leak? No, John, not the leek. No need to wave it every time I say 'leak'.

We don't.

Second: do we know how to find out who was responsible for the leak? John I warned you. No one's laughing.

We don't.

Third: do we know what to do next?

We don't.

No, John, I don't like leek soup.

Meeting over.

Nicky, the down strokes should be parallel. Parallel. It means lined up in the same...er...line.

Yesterday's screw-up with the KS1 spelling test: my reaction

Below are some observations on yesterday's screw-up over the Key Stage 1 papers:


First, here's how the BBC is reporting it:


"A Sats spelling test due to be taken by half a million seven-year-olds in England next month was accidentally published as a sample test months ago.
The error was discovered when a school running an official trial of the new national spelling test saw that pupils recognised all the words being tested.
Teachers then found the exact same test was among practice papers on the Department for Education (DfE) website.
The government said it was a "serious error" and was investigating."


1. Every year there is some kind of screw-up with national centralised testing.


2. One kind of reaction to this is: they could do better, they should do better, we must all make every effort to do better, one day we will do better, it's so important to do better so we will strain every sinew to be better, we will be better, because we are really good and next year we will be unbelievably better.


3. My own reaction is this: you run these high stakes centrally-run national tests because you have a misguided idea that this is the way to make education better. In fact, it's having a disastrous effect on education because it is narrowing it down to the testable. The curriculum is fast becoming the test, the pre-test, the booklet for the pre-test, the rehearsal for the booklet for the pre-test, the question that you might find in the booklet for the pre-test....and so on.


The whole apparatus is based on an assumption that it is desirable and necessary to grade children as often and as much as possible. Behind this assumption there is something to do with the ideal child and the ideal teacher and the ideal human. I think is tending-towards-the-fascistic. It's the cult of the unrealisable ideal. But the ideal is based on being right about things which can supposedly only be either right or wrong, as if that is a summary of everything: life, nature, human beings, the universe. It involves the removal or downgrading of investigation, invention, curiosity, varied interpretation, contemplation, compassion, and co-operation. 

The problem is highlighted by this particular test itself. These spelling tests prioritise spelling over, reading, interpretation, discussion, and 'enactment' (writing, drama, art, music responses). Instead, huge amounts of time are taken up with children learning (or supposedly learning) isolated, single words in lists, lists which often involve putting words together which children often confuse, thereby making it easier for them to confuse! Then this is tested.


Yet, in the midst of this, we find that the very people in charge of this apparatus make errors. Of course they do. We all do. But we are not all in charge of an apparatus that pretends that it is possible or desirable to be error-free. We are not in charge of an organisation that penalises and punishes people who are not error-free.


So I rejoice in this screw-up. It reminds me of how we are all fallible. It reminds me of the absurdity and horror of your tending-to-be-fascistic tests that inflict so much stress and anxiety on our children and teachers, and destroy so much of what could be exciting and interesting in school.


4. There are other forms of assessment that have been tried and used in other places. Part of the test-curriculum agenda is to squeeze from view our knowledge of what other forms of assessment might be more useful for children, teachers and parents.

Letters I received today telling me about DfE's mess-up with KS1 Spelling tests

This was a letter I received this afternoon:

"Our school was selected, as were many others, to administer the tests early to allow the STA/DFE to 'set the benchmark' for age-related expectations at the end of KS1. This early administration is currently happening in a handful of schools all around the country in all three of the tested areas. (1 area per school)

Upon receiving the phone call from the STA - we were given no option to decline taking the tests early - we put a plan into action so that the children would not be put under any undue stress but would still be given the best possible chance of achieving, what the government deems is, age-related for the end of KS1. So, on Thursday we started sitting tests with 61 6/7 year olds.

Now you can imagine my frustration when today I actually found that the STA/DFE themselves have published the spelling test online for anyone to see. It looks to me as though a major mistake has been made by either publishing the paper online or sending us the wrong one. Our teaching staff have tried to make what is essential a dry and inaccurate curriculum as fun, engaging and creative as they can and our children have worked extremely hard this year. Yet, the test, which they are essentially going to be judged upon, has been shared with the entire world."

This was followed up by:

"I suppose it matters because the very nature of a test is that it is meant to be unseen, so that teaching to the test can be avoided.

Our children have already sat this test now, the way I see it the DFE/STA have a limited amount of options:

1. They will tell us, and other early admin schools, that our results are null and void resulting in our children re-taking a different test. This will have an impact on their wellbeing. They've already sat it once! Also, there are financial implications. Re-printing a test paper for every year 2 child in the country is costly not only in terms of resources but also staffing costs.

2. Stop all schools taking the test and advise them to use teacher assessment instead. This would be brilliant by why insist on these poor children taking it in the first place. If teacher assessment out does the test, don't bother wasting money printing it! Scrap all the tests then!

3. Other schools could now have an unfair advantage as they have already seen the test. This would distort all data and could make it seem as though the governments new curriculum is really working when it really is not.

4. If they discount our results/make our children re-sit it/scrap the tests our school has wasted valuable learning time administering these papers. This has a financial impact on us and our children.

We are held to account for the storing of these test papers so that no information can be 'leaked' and no other schools are given an 'advantage' yet the paper has been published online. Our school could have maladministration proceedings against them if we had shared it. So imposing these rules on schools implies that the government do not want other schools to see these test early yet have published it online."

This was followed up by:

"We only know that it is the test as we have already seen this year's. This does mean that other schools won't know that it is this year's test but could have been using it to assess children already.

I have been contacted by the DFE, who have told me that it is definitely this year's test that they have made a mistake in publishing it."

Pupils are in fact meat.

Ultimately, for people who view schools as 'performance factories' with 'performance' based on scores for right/wrong answers in tests, the children are not really 'pupils' or 'learners' they are meat. Good meat and poor quality meat.

If you want your butchers shop to be better than the butchers down the road, get rid of the poor quality meat. The local authority will come and collect it and give it to the dog meat factory.

Rebrand - and call yourself 'The Excellent Butcher'.


'Improve' the quality of meat you get from the supplier. Try to make sure no poor quality meat gets into your shop.

Take over the supplier. Tell them it's for their own good. Try to get them to chuck out their poor quality meat. The local authority might be able to give it to the sausage factory.

The language of the powerful: 'low achievers', 'poor quality pupils'

Alan Duncan talks of people of 'low achievement' who might get into the House of Commons - or, heaven forfend - are already there. (He means people who are not millionaires.)
The 'Centre for High Performance' talks of 'poor quality' pupils.

We are in the era in which the people who run the show are becoming more and more confident about using their private language in public. The way they insult and sneer at the poor, the disabled or indeed anyone they think of as 'less' than them, is supposed to be kept being closed doors, but every now and then we catch sight of it.


Of course, if it really was just a matter of words, we could say, 'Sticks and stones will break my bones but words can never harm me.' But this is policy. These words are the literal and actual representations of what is being enacted. The people in power and control think that some human beings are 'poor quality' and because they have been so designated, they 'deserve' less state provision, or no state provision.

Remember, we are talking about children here. An academy could decide that a 4 year old is 'poor quality'. Four years on earth and he or she is already 'poor quality'. Then what?

As I've said, the next stop is the local authority. Local authorities of the future are going to have tiny amounts of cash, and skeleton staff. People who run 'education' from local authorities in the future are going to be administrators not educationists. Their job will be to 'transit' 'poor quality' children into 'units' where the lowest 'cost' teachers will be hired to do what they can. If not, they go to a new kind of charity 'unit' run by people like the Princes' Trust. And we can be sure that on 'Children in Need' we will be warmed and delighted with images of kids being taken on a trip to London Zoo as if that's the best that a society that allows the superrich to stow trillions in tax havens can do.

Pupils of the future: more for some, less for others.

In 1950s, researchers discovered that children who passed the 11-plus had more dosh per pupil than those who didn't. 

After academisation, pupils excluded (so that academies can 'improve') go to cash-starved local authority. 

Same as 1950s.

Note: many arguments swirl around about selection, grammar schools and social mobility but this inequality in provision is rarely mentioned. What is emerging from the plans for academisation, is that this kind of unequal funding is on the way back.

Picture the local authority of the future, with a skeleton staff of a few people responsible in a purely administrative (not educational) way for getting everyone into a school. They have no legal power to force an academy to take a given child. They are essentially like beggars knocking on academies' doors on behalf of excluded and SEN children. Then the more that the local authority comes to provide by way of cheap, pupil referral units and the like, the more the academies will be able to wash their hands of these children.

But at the core of it, will be a lack of cash. These children will get less per pupil than those in the academies.

This is unequal, unfair and has to be fought. 

The secret's out: improve a failing school by throwing out 'poor quality' pupils!

What follows is, I think, a shocking revelation. It shows that there are people swirling around in the world of academies and 'school improvement' who know quite well that they are in a new landscape: if you can arrange it that your academy can improve, then it doesn't matter what happens to the rest. Any 'pieces' (i.e. children, you know - real human beings) who fall out, fall by the wayside, then the vilified - and, more importantly, cash-starved -  local authority will pick up the pieces. They have to. They have the legal requirement of providing places for all children. Academies do not. So, if you look back at my previous blog,  you'll see that local authorities (the people we elect) now have the job of mopping up after academies' messes. But these messes are our children.

For me that's the heart of the matter. 

Below, is research paper which shows that when 'researchers' look at what's going on, some spot that there are ways to 'improve' academies. And these are already going on.

Please, please, please look at point 4: ''exclude poor quality students", "improve admissions" and 'acquire a local primary school".

So 'research' is showing that this is the way to 'turn round' a 'failing school'!

We know what this means, don't we? It means throwing children out of schools who are deemed to be 'poor quality' - which could mean 'difficult', 'vulnerable', 'too many absences', 'too many low scores'. 

It means 'improving admissions'. I think that this sounds like a euphemism for 'selecting pupils'. Someone tell me otherwise.

It means 'acquire a primary school'. What is this? What sort of language is this? Go get a primary school? Like a big fish swallows a little fish? What sort of pressures are involved here? Who benefits in the long run? It sounds awful. 

As we've seen from the Educating Yorkshire and other similar programmes, yes, some children are indeed 'difficult' within the terms of an institution like school, but with care and help within the mainstream, they can learn that they can achieve things, they are not useless. 

Anyway first: here's the website the document comes from: 

http://high-performance.org/Full-Research-Report.pdf

Google 'The Centre for High Performance' to find out more.

START HERE:

"This paper presents the findings from a study by The Centre for High-Performance (a collaboration between senior faculty at the Universities of Oxford and Kingston) of the changes made by 160 academies after OfSTED put them into 'special measures' up to seven years ago. These findings form part of a larger research programme looking at how to create and sustain high-performance in a number of art, commercial, education, entertainment, science, sport, technology and military organisations. We now wish to use these findings to help develop a stronger and more robust UK economy, society and environment.

Learnings for academies
The findings suggest academies should make eight changes in the following order:
1. Leadership and objectives - appoint new leaders and narrow objectives
2. Market perception - rebrand school and communicate change
3. Resources - expand service offering and improve admissions
4. Student quality - exclude poor quality students, improve admissions and acquire a local primary school
5. Structures - centralise activities and improve facilities
6. Process stability - improve student attendance and behaviour
7. Process capability - improve teaching capability
8. Systems - introduce performance development systems

Each step requires a different type of investment, creates a different type of benefit and impacts performance in a different way. This impact is affected by a school's access to resources (where it is located) and the changes it has already made. The research shows academies improve faster, with less resources and are more likely to sustain their improvement if they complete the steps in the right order (as shown above).
Our findings challenge some of the prevailing beliefs about how best to improve schools. These beliefs claim more resources accelerate improvement and it is more difficult to turn around Inner City schools. Also, we found that although practices such as having small classes, using a ‘Super Head’, improving teaching first, creating a new building to improve behaviour and using a ‘zero tolerance' behaviour policy create short-term impact, they are not the best long-term solution or the most efficient use of resources.

Learnings for OfSTED
Our research with non-educational organisations suggests academies can sustain high-performance if they stabilise leadership, impact society, use alumni and collaborate with other organisations. However, we found no evidence of these sustaining behaviours in the ‘outstanding’ academies we studied. Instead, to meet OfSTED’s assessment criteria and targets, they have developed behaviours that may have a negative long-term impact on society. They have become selective, do not teach their local community, do not teach 'White British' students, exclude poor performing students, focus on Maths and English and focus on getting students to C-level (not B or A). To help correct this, our findings suggest OfSTED should modify its criteria to help develop ‘sustaining’ behaviours in ‘outstanding’ schools and introduce school-specific targets reflecting the type of market it serves.

Next steps
The Centre of High-Performance now seeks funding and support to use these findings to:
• Help schools improve - by raising awareness, delivering leadership programmes, coaching head teachers and developing a high-performance community
• Develop the right environment to help schools improve - by helping rethink the current OfSTED framework Conduct further research to:
• Test our findings - against a wider sample of academies
• Help academies better impact society - understand how academies can best impact society
• Create sustained high-performing academies - how to create sustained high-performing practices
• Solve headteacher ’demographic time bomb’ - with over 50% currently eligible for retirement."

END

White Paper says local authorities will 'ensure' academies take every child. How?

Look at this from the White Paper. It means, I think, that local authorities will run about making sure that the academies in their area take all the children in their area. But how? Local authorities have no power over the academies. Why would the governing body of an academy or MAT necessarily say yes? Chaos, children-dumping and risk to follow:


4.77. In future, local authority education duties will be focused on three areas:


Local authorities play an important role in the education system: ensuring every child has a school place, that the needs of all pupils are met and championing parents and families. They will step back from running schools and school improvement
a. Ensuring every child has a school place:including that there are sufficient school, special school and alternative provision places to meet demand.


Local authorities will retain responsibility for this in a fully academised system. The government will support them by continuing to provide substantial funding to allow them to deliver sufficient places, as well as by creating places through the free schools programme. As in the past, we expect that they will use their strong relationships with local schools to deliver the places needed in a local area, including planning ahead where necessary to support applications through the central free schools programme or to seek proposals for presumption free schools. Where local authorities are failing in this duty, the government will not hesitate to intervene. Local authorities will also work with schools and parents in developing local school transport policies, giving schools the opportunity to provide school transport services where that makes sense locally; and take a lead in crisis management and emergency planning

Testing? In the new world of academies, testing will be 'The Curriculum'.

Why is the testing getting harder and more stressful? Because it's a build-up to the time when there is no National Curriculum (i.e. when it's all academies) and the only way central government can control education, schools and the philosophy behind schooling, is through the exam system. 

Harder, tougher, more stressful is 'good', because it takes up more time and has a knock-on effect in teaching to the test, filling up school-time with test-time, pre-test time, pre-test test time.

The headline for 'Academisation' should also say, 'Exams take over the curriculum'.

Good writing, bad writing...how about the problem of 'over writing'?

Hey, in primary schools, there are criteria for 'good writing' and either by default or design there are criteria for 'bad writing'. So how about criteria for 'over writing'?

This would include the insertion of too many adjectives into 'expanded noun phrases', random 'fronting' of 'adverbials' for no obvious reason, and random 'embedding' of relative clauses for no obvious reason.

The 'punishment' would be for the school to package up the sentences and send them to Nick Gibb and Nicky Morgan with a note on it saying, 'This is the silly nonsense that you make our children write. Without these artificial criteria, there is every chance they would write well if we had the time to stimulate them in the ways that we know well.'

Notes for helping children write

I offer the following as a group of possible strategies when helping primary school children to write. They are not meant to be ‘criteria’ for what makes good writing, but they are intended to help teachers, parents and children to get writing to say what you want it to say. It’s not intended to be a substitute for whatever’s in place at the moment. It’s simply meant to be a contribution.


At any given moment - at the beginning, in the middle or towards the end of a bit of writing - we all get stuck. We all need triggers and nudges to keep us going. That’s what these are, expressed in terms that are meant to be accessible to young children, but of course you can adapt them in any way that you think would be better.


So, imagine the situation of a story, or a recount, or some persuasive writing. At any given moment there will be a person, a creature or a thing who is the focus or focal point. It might be the ‘I’, or a ‘you’ or a ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘it’ or a ‘we’ or 'they'.

As we write, we can ask of this 'focus'  some questions and write answers to these questions as a way of either making notes or of making a draft or of ‘final copy’.

This, then, is a kind of checklist, for you to use to help clarify and focus a bit of writing. We never need all of them. We only need some of them.

You could think about putting it up on the wall of a classroom, and saying to the children:

if you get stuck, do any of these questions help you into the next bit? 

(Reminder: the questions below are for children to 'say' to characters in the piece they are writing, or even to the person who might be being written to.  They are not questions being asked directly of the child doing the writing.)


Who are you?

What can you see, hear?

What are you thinking, saying, doing?


What if you could see, hear, think, say, do something? What would that be?


Where are you doing your seeing, hearing, thinking and doing?


Where are you coming from?

Where are you going to?


When are you seeing, thinking, saying, doing these things?


How are you thinking, saying, doing these things?


How often are you thinking, saying, doing these thing?


How much are you thinking, saying, doing these things?


Why are you thinking, saying doing these things? 

[This question is sometimes the most important of all, because it shapes what you're writing.  It's a great question to discuss, because out of the question will come more writing.]

In order to help decide which of these questions is the best or most useful to use you can ask:


Can this person do these things?

Would this person do these things?

Should this person do these things?

Could this person do these things? 


[ps - if anyone wants to make this into a poster for teachers and schools,  can you let me know, and we can discuss...]

Author and very experienced "workshopper", Antony Lishak, adds this one:

You may also want the child to ask: "Who am I writing this for and what do I want my reader to feel when they're reading it?"


Here's Antony's website: www.antonylishak.com 

In sympathy with Year 2 and Year 6 teachers

[To be said as fast as you can, rather like Lucky in 'Waiting for Godot'.]

You chop up sentences into various categories. Here are some of them: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions. Right away there's a problem with several of these: where nouns have a clear function in terms of a structure of a sentence, adjectives are handmaidens to nouns, but adverbs are handmaidens to verbs, adjectives and whole sentences. They are of a different order of feature. Now we slot some of these into functions - subject, object and indirect object but 'verb' doesn't have a special name for its functional role. A verb is a verb. Now we stick these into some other structures - phrases and clauses. However, we can't agree what's a phrase or clause. Now we have the idea of a 'main clause' and a 'subordinate clause'. But the problem is that there are some main clauses e.g. ones beginning with 'but' that are really as subordinate as some subordinate clauses. And there are some subordinate clauses which are as important as some main ones. The term is dodgy. Now we have 'relative' clauses. These are a kind of subordinate clause. But they can also go into noun phrases...or noun clauses...if we knew exactly what the difference is between phrases and clauses...which we don't. No matter, this is all really easy. Now we have some descriptions of types of sentence: commands, exclamations, questions and statements. Easy, other than that we can ask questions by making statements, and we can make commands without using the 'command' structure of the verb 'the imperative'. And we can exclaim without the words 'how' and 'what' in whole sentences. But these don't count. Still with me? Now to fronted adverbials. Fronted adverbials don't have to be adverbial. They are basically any old phrase that appears in front of a main clause. But that doesn't include what's in the noun phrase. It has to come before the noun phrase at the head of the main clause - except when that main clause is a question which in English involves inversions. So a fronted adverbial can include elements which can also be in other categories like for example a relative clause, a subordinate clause (bearing in mind all relative clauses are subordinate clauses but not all subordinate clauses are relative clauses) but can also include adverbial phrases (bearing in mind we don't really know the difference between phrases and clauses) and adjectival phrases, and while we're on it these involve determiners which includes a whole set of features which appear before nouns all of which must be determiners and nothing else, though I should point out that some of these features can be a single word or several as with 'all of' or 'each of' but when we say 'every day' though it looks like an adjective, it isn't an adjective because it's a determiner, though why it's a determiner and not an adjective isn't clear even though an adverb can modify it as in 'nearly every day' so after all that adverbs can also modify determiners. Got it?

Noun phrases are getting bigger and bigger and harder and harder to understand...

Just been trying to help my 11 year old with the latest SPaG paper. I came to 'noun phrases' with this question:
'Underline the longest possible noun phrase in the sentence blow.
That book about the Romans was interesting.'

I thought I knew what a 'noun phrase' is. (Ignore that for the moment.) 
But I thought I would look up the SPaG bible to check.

This is what I found (see below).

According to this, a noun phrase could include another noun phrase. It could also include a relative clause. People with Ph.D's and a long publication history in linguistics produce things like this. 

Now, this is a form of structural grammar so, in theory should be able to describe how language is put together in much the same way as architects describe buildings. So, bearing that in mind, how is any of us, let alone 10 and 11 year olds, supposed to understand and learn a classification system which involves understanding a term that can include elements that are the same as itself?! That would be like saying that there is a thing called a gutter and inside the gutter is another thing which is called a gutter. At the very least, this wouldn't be useful. 

Noun phrases - English Grammar Today - Cambridge Dictionaries Online

Noun phrases - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage -…

DICTIONARY.CAMBRIDGE.ORG

Why SPaG is nasty and dangerous

This is why the SPaG test (now remodelled as the GPS test) is serious, nasty and dangerous.

1. It is deliberately and intentionally too hard for many children. It is ultimately simply and only a means of grading children.
2. Because of this it penalises teachers and schools trying to teach it.
3. It's not only too hard. The way the questions in the test are framed,  it's full of ambiguities and inconsistencies, particularly in the matter of categories. Example: 'determiner' groups a set of 'parts of speech' that can't be anything other than 'determiners'. 'Fronted adverbial' groups together a mix of parts of speech, phrases, clauses all of which can be other things. Example: there are serious problems with the notion of 'subordination' (i.e. 'subordinate clauses') and so with the knock-on effect of having 'subordinate conjunction' which supposedly differ from other conjunctions. Example:  'fronted adverbial' actually lumps in phrases or clauses which aren't 'adverbial'. That is, they describe the subject of the clause that follows it, as with 'With his hat on, Jack picked his nose.' 'With his hat on', is as much 'adjectival' as it is adverbial but would still count as a  'fronted adverbial'.
4. We should remember that there is (1) 'grammar' which simply means that language is words stuck together in certain ways. There is (2)  'linguistics' which is the study of language, investigating language. Then there is (3) 'SPaG grammar' which is a specific way of laying down rules about how the language should be described and written. It is 'prescriptive'. The whole trick of SPaG is to pretend that SPaG 'is' all three. It isn't. It's one specific kind of interpretation of language and teaching born out of government demands.
5. It was brought in because the government said that they wanted a means to impose 'right/wrong' tests on schools. But, spelling, punctuation and grammar questions are not 100% right/wrong. Nor should they be. Government even told linguists what specific features they wanted. Michael Gove told linguists that they had to put in questions on 'subjunctives'. The linguists said no. Gove said yes. That's how absurd and wrong SPaG is. (The reason why linguists said no, because even in their narrow, structural description of language, they acknowledge that English doesn't really have the same kind of structures that linguists usually call 'subjunctives' e.g. in French. So whatever  'WERE' 'If I WERE going to the cinema' is, they said, it isn't really a 'subjunctive'. Oh yes it is, said Gove. That's why teachers have to spend time telling children how to spot it. That's why many children won't. Because Gove said they should.
6. SPaG grammar is full of problems that many linguists argue with.
7. SPaG grammar is based on an idea that you can describe language purely on the basis of 'structure'. In fact, you can only know the structure because you know the meaning of the words but most of the terminology does not reflect that meaning has been included. Example: 'determiner' is a term to describe some of the words that come before 'nouns'. But you can only identify which ones are determiners and which ones are not, on the basis of their meaning. But the word 'determiner' doesn't tell us that. On the other hand 'possessive' at least has the virtue of telling us that the word in question tells us that we have words that tell us about how we indicate we 'possess' things. This also tells us that the terms themselves are inconsistent between them.
8. SPaG grammar is based on a false idea of what language is. That's to say, it treats language as unchanging, static and written. This is because it is based on a grammar that was devised centuries ago to describe an unchanging, static written language: Latin. They then recycled many of the terms to use to describe modern, living, changing languages and then tried to use these to impose rules. This is intellectually shoddy and there is no place for this in the modern world.
9. There are excellent alternatives to this. In 1970, teachers and experts at the School Council devised a huge resource called 'Language in Use' which enabled teachers and children to explore and investigate language - as it is actually used. There is a strong intellectual tradition which poses a different view of how knowledge about language can be taught.
10. SPaG grammar imposes a false, inaccurate and useless model of how writing can be taught. Example: teachers are being asked to define 'good' writing by asking pupils to insert 'expanded noun phrases,' 'embedded relative clauses' and 'fronted adverbials' into their writing. These are then used as criteria for getting marks when pupils use them. This is absurd and wrong. This only arises out of the government's wish to classify writing. It has nothing to do with good writing - or children! It is a perfect example of how the needs of government override the needs of the topic and the needs of children.
11. This problem is made worse by the absurdities  being imposed in relation to punctuation. Across the writing of English, there is a huge variation in usage of punctuation marks. These are determined by newspapers, publishers, writers of advertising copy - not by linguists or governments.  It is impossible to say which of these are right or wrong. Many of the examples given to children as right/wrong are not right/wrong. Example: the use or not use of the 'Oxford comma'.
12. It is worth remembering that no one gets SPaG grammar right all the time. My writing, your writing, our writing is littered with typos and what SPaG grammar would call wrong. Editors and copy-editors work hours and hours every day, 'correcting' the writing of people who appear in public as writers. We writers are incredibly grateful to them. If you are a powerful person, you also have people paid to check through what appears in public. Nicky Morgan, Nick Gibb, Michael Gove all make these errors and typos. Unlike children and teachers, they are not penalised for this. They have people to edit and check their writing so that it looks better than it is. Even so, errors appear in, say, DfE letters they send out to us and even in their own tests. To imply to children that it's possible to be 100% right is unpleasant, if not nasty.  Meanwhile, there is a whole 'market' (!) in writing that does not obey the very same rules that government is imposing. It's the 'market' of advertising copy which children see every day of the week.
13. They have also levered in a question which is not spelling, not punctuation and not grammar. It's 'synonyms and antonyms'. This poses a false model of language - that there really are words which are 'identical' or 'opposites'. In fact, language rests precisely on the fact that there aren't. Meanwhile, the specifics of what children are asked to do on this topic, involve 'hard' words like 'meandering' and 'evade'. So it's not a test on the principle of synonymy and antonymy! If it was, it would be on words like 'good' and 'bad'. So it's a test on knowing some hard words - which is actually a test mostly on home background and culture. So 'aptitude' or 'ability to learn what's taught' is not what is actually tested here.

Dear union leaders, your predecessors, education, how the Tories are stealing it

Dear union leaders,Your predecessors demanded a democratic education for all, owned by all. The Tories are stealing it from us.

The Tories' model of education is based on a pre-1870 system plus diktats based on ministers' memories of their private education.

Remnants of an education system based on egalitarian principles is being dismantled, to be replaced by competition: = selection is back.

Will forced academisation enable govt to make big cuts in education whilst saying it's academies doing the cuts?

In a few years the situation will revert to a cash-starved Academy sector and 'those who can pay, should pay' so end up going private.

How doing antonyms is a throwback to the 11 plus and the 1950s

Further on synonyms and antonyms - they were keen on 'opposites' in the 1950s. We would be given a word and asked to give its opposite. I can remember two that I couldn't do:

ebb
wax


Now, given that I came from a home where both my parents were teachers, the house was full of books, we all read voraciously, both my parents quoted whole chunks of literature out loud, I was taken to the theatre regularly, the 'Home Service' was on in the house, and the house was full of political and literary types arguing over Malaya, Kenya, Suez, nationalisation etc....it's quite funny that a question on a pre-11plus paper (or the actual one, perhaps) was 'too hard' for me. That tells you that the story of examining is a long and awful one. It is the story and culture of people driven by a mania to grade children, invent tests that are full of bias and inconsistency, and which end up ruling over great swathes of educational practice.

How SPaG ends up testing children's home life

On SPaG papers there are Qs where you have to link synonyms or antonyms. These aren't spelling, punctuation or grammar but a carry-over from Victorian vocabulary exercises. In theory they are testing some kind of dubious semantic principle that words have identical twins or true opposites. They don't. Words are different, in different ways and better to explore these than spot 'ideal' identical or opposite partners. 

Even so, if the test was to see if kids 'got' the principle, the test would use simple and obvious words. No, they put in hard words relying on a cultural background in wide sophisticated reading and talk. Here's one example from a SPaG test. The child has the following in a pool and has to pair up the words into antonyms: meandering sympathetic evade plausible confront unfeeling unbelievable straight.

So really what they're testing is the child's cultural background, it's mostly a Q about children's home life, actually disguised as something else. 

Pointless, useless SPaG rules ok.

Boy and Grandad on train in great linguistic moment

Great moment on the train:

Pre-school boy with his grandparents. Non-posh. Boy (about 4) looks up at the moving LED sign about travel info.
Boy: What are they saying, Grandad?
Grandad (reading) "Customers are reminded to take care of their bags and possessions to prevent crime, when travelling."
Boy: What does that mean?
Grandad: Watch your bags or they might get pinched.


I've been thinking about this:
1. The boy initiates a bit of literacy. He knows it 'says' something. He's curious. He asks.
2. Grandad straightaway tells him exactly.
3. Boy thinks about it and realises he doesn't understand. He knows what to say to get clarification. (In the jargon, he has 'metalanguage' (i.e. language about language)) to get what he wants.
4. Grandad translates the sentence into everyday speech. (In jargon, he changes register) so that the boy can get it.

Wonderful stuff.

Reading aloud is not necessarily 'reading'.

Here we go again:

People looking at the Key Stage 1 'exemplifications' for 2016 will see this:

"• read accurately by blending the sounds in words that contain the common graphemes for all 40+ phonemes*"

This is a 'reading-aloud test', isn't it? But as I boringly keep saying, a reading-aloud test is only a test on whether children can make the sounds generally agreed on for a given set of letters. The govt usually calls that 'decoding'. Reading is something we do when we read - to ourselves or to others - and understand it. It's not the same thing as that blurting out what you see because you've picked up the principles of the 'alphabetic code' as they call it.


So why is the govt calling it reading?

Because it's necessary for them to try to kid as many people as possible that doing phonics is reading. It's not. Reading comes about as a result of reading for meaning.

[Here's the full document: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/515358/STA-Ex2016-KS1-ER-WT.pdf ]

Cameron thought he was off-mike....

The trouble with Labour, said Cameron this morning, is that they are the party of tax and spend. "We are a party of low taxes. And..er...no taxes. I mean...no taxes for those who can afford to be...er...and not spending. I mean those who can afford to spend, do. Of course we do. I spend. You spend. And the deficit. That's another thing. Labour spent everything. There was nothing left. It's amazing how we've managed to find something. But we have. And I've got it. Not all of it. Hah! It's not been the best week. But next week's going to be good. Bloody hell I could have gone into Dad's business and saved me having to do this shit. And I could have ended up writing the Money pages in the same bloody newspapers telling me I'm being wrong for doing what the bloody Money pages say is right. Oh, was I on mike there? Apologies. We will fight them on the beaches. Too bloody right I'm wearing a suit. And you can tell that bastard Corbyn to stop bloody smiling. I'm out of here."

Cameron. Boris. Daily Mail. Money. Wooden Blocks. Towers. Tumble. Your Turn.

Something very odd is happening this morning. Right wing papers who put in a lot of time and energy explaining how it's rich people who make the world go round, it's rich people who 'give' poor people jobs, it's rich people who 'build' the economy, are busy seemingly complaining that Cameron is rich and used the legal levers in place to secure family wealth - something that rich people have been doing since Ancient Egypt and possibly before that. The papers who are saying this are owned and read by people who wouldn't under most circumstances think that anything is wrong with how much money Cameron has or how he came to get it and keep it. In fact, let's imagine a scenario this coming week, where Cameron is forced to step down, which of the Tory front bench is not going to have 'similar arrangements'?

In fact, many of their readers might well be thinking just that. So, all we can assume is that the reason for these headlines is that they've got in a huddle and decided that some kind of ticket involving Brexit and Boris is 'better'? Boris????!!!!! Can you imagine what Boris has got stowed away?????

There's a rule in politics that's something to do with that game you play where you pull the wooden blocks away from a tower of blocks and the one who pulls the block that pulls down the tower loses. At the moment, these papers are competing with each other to pull the blocks.

C'mon, the Mail's headline is about a 'tax dodge'!!!! It's owned by a non-dom. Even the Guardian, which has led on all this, has some tax 'arrangement'....

Wooden blocks. Towers. Your turn.

How to get 'grammar' wrong in primary schools

1. Create a system for describing human behaviour (in this case, 'language') which separates it off from what words mean and their social function (i.e. how we relate to each other using words).
2. Pretend that this system is water-tight, scientific, accurate, and produces right/wrong answers.
3. Pretend that good writing depends on inserting features of this system into writing.
4. Demand that teachers teach both the system and this method of writing to very young children.
5. Test children on it.
6. Judge teachers on the basis of the results of the test.
7. Call this rigour.

My company Glaremore will help you pay no tax...

My company Glaremore is a means for people on incomes which are above the no-tax threshold and below 50k to pay no tax. You simply write to us and say that you don't want to pay tax. We write to the police who live nearest to you. They arrest you. You end up in prison on no income where you pay no tax.

Do determiners determine? Are they like nouns, verbs, adverbs or carrots?

In a pre-SPaG test that someone has put up on twitter, a child has to answer the question 'Which word class does the word 'sunrise' belong to in "Getting up to watch the sunrise was worth the early start."


You have to choose between noun, adverb, verb and determiner.


What could be more reasonable than that?


Hold it, are noun, adverb, verb and determiner in the same order of classification? If I asked you to choose between apple, orange, banana and plant, might you not think that was at the very least a bit odd?


And, anyway, what is a determiner?


Again, back in the Stone Age, when I was at school, we didn't have determiners. The various things that come under the heading of 'determiner' each had their separate name, and we didn't necessarily think of them as linked in use, function, purpose or meaning. So, what comes under the heading of 'determiner'? Stuff that comes before nouns but which are not adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions or prepositions.


The things we used to call and they still call 'articles' - the, a, and an.
The things we used to call and they still call 'possessives' - my, your, her, his, our, their.
The things we used to call and they sill call 'demonstratives' - this and that (in the phrase 'this dog' or 'that dog'.)
The things we didn't really ever know what to call which they call 'determiners of 'amount'' or 'quantity' - both, some, each, every, any, many, all, few, none
Some others like 'other' and 'either'
The things we used to call numbers - and are still called numbers, as in one potato, two potato...etc.

(Apols if I've got any of this a bit wrong. I may have been distracted by watching Lineker talking about Leicester City. )


All these apparently 'determine' what comes after them.
Any problem with that?
Well, what about 'a' and 'an'?
They are what the grammarians themselves call 'indeterminate'. So they do the opposite of 'determining'. Not very determiner at all.
And, though it's often skated over, it's just as important in English to put no 'determiner' in front of a noun as to put one. 'It's balls' is very different from 'it's some balls' which is different from 'it's the balls'.
In other words, nothing is also a 'determiner'.


But what about from the point of view of meaning and social function?


I like the term 'possessive' because it's one of the few examples of these words referring to a world (the real world) outside of this sealed-up system of language. It says, 'We say 'my' when I want to say it's 'mine'.' And we can then talk about all the different ways we want to indicate possession. (if this seems terribly obvious, remember that in French, when you want to say 'his' or 'her' you can't. You can only say a word which can mean either 'his' or 'her' depending on context. The word 'agrees' with the gender of the word that follows it, as in 'sa mère' which can mean 'his mother' or 'her mother'. In other words languages mark 'possession' in very different ways. Fair enough.
(By the way, in America, they tend to call these 'possessive pronouns'. Don't blame me, I don't come up with these names. If you call them 'possessive pronouns' anywhere near British people who love this stuff, they may stab you.)


Anyway, for those linguists who like lumping things together according to the systems they see in front of them, whilst pretending they are doing this without incorporating meaning, 'determiner' is the handy term.


Now back to the SPaG question. Are noun, adverb and verb in the same category as 'determiner'? Or is 'article' or 'possessive' of the same order?


Does it matter?


And you can be pretty sure that at some point, an examiner or a writer of these booklets will include two determiners and ask you to decide which is the determiner.


ps, some people say that numbers aren't determiners.
pps, I'm pretty sure that we used to call both, same, each, every and the rest some kind of special 'adjective'. Someone changed that. I don't know why. Sorry.


ppps the Tories' favourite educationist and linguist, John Bald thinks that determiner is a useless concept but they don't take any notice of him anymore.


pppps - people who call these 'determiners' also have a problem when we say 'both of the boys' because in theory 'both of' is 'a determiner' . See also 'all of the girls' or 'each and every one of you' Not easy to teach that lot, huh?

People are asking me how would I teach writing...

People have been asking me what would I put in place of the cults that have taken over the teaching of writing in primary schools.

1. I have written about helping children to write many times here on this blog and there are articles on my website.

2. I wrote a book called 'Did you Hear me Write?' which was an attempt to put into practice a theory of literacy based on speech and children's own culture(s). It's available second hand or in libraries.

3. One of the best and simplest ideas to emerge out of the 1980s/90s is 'speakers, listeners, readers, writers'. These are interconnected faculties. If we separate one or two from the others, we lose rather than gain. I would suggest that any school interested in this should spend a little time looking very closely at the differences between spoken and written English. The best way to do this is to record children talking about something they care about, transcribe every detail of it, then compare that with some examples of writing. This represents the leap that children have to make in order to learn to write.

4. A crucial concept to emerge out of the 1970s is the idea that when we write, we write with our heads full of the 'texts' we have come across - spoken and written. They are our 'repertoire' or 'store' of ways of speaking and writing.  Our job in helping children write is in great part ensuring that this store is constantly being supplied and replenished with stuff that children want to listen to and read. This is the 'reading for pleasure' agenda. It cannot be minimised or overlooked if we are interested in helping children write.

5. There are various plans and schemes and lists online and elsewhere which put 'powerful texts' at the heart of teaching to write. This prioritises certain 'good' writing over others and gives teachers a framework for inspiring children in a variety of ways. I've seen this work well.

6. I've worked with drama teachers who start from either a play, a story or an improv and establish dramatic situations full of conflict and dilemma and use these as starting points for writing.

7. I've take part in plenty of 'outings' , trips and the like, and then come back to the classroom and looked at ways of writing about such things. It always struck me that the best writing came out of these situations when the modelling or scaffolding wasn't too rigid.

8. A crucial part of writing needs to incorporate some aspects of investigation into how the texts that children like manage to engage their interest. This needs to be done in ways that are not too prescriptive or all that happens is that the children get turned off. Indeed, how and why writers engage our interest is often quite mysterious and not a simple matter. One simple example: how do writers of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, speeches open their writing? How do they grab the reader or listener? A further part of 'investigation of writing' can be to investigate the huge variety of written forms. For example, I would go on a field trip to a place where there are many ads, notices, signs and the like and look at how these put language together and compare that to the language used in continuous prose. I would do the same for poetry ,newspapers, books for very  young children - comparing these. They are very different grammatically and structurally. Why?

9. One of the unfortunate results of the new craze for 'grammar' is that it pushes out of view that what we need are many different kinds of 'knowledge about language' in order to help writing.  For example, all writing depends on 'audience'. In fact all writing incorporates a sense of audience even when the writer doesn't know it does! This is what's called the 'implied reader'. This is a way of saying that all our language has incorporated within it a set of codes or connotations which imply certain things about who is or might be reading or listening to it. To be a writer is to a great deal a knack of learning how to put together passages of writing which 'imply' the readers you want. The best way to do this is to connect writing with listeners and readers over and over and over again.  This means limiting the amount of writing that children do in exercise books and expanding hugely the amount of writing they do for audience. This means thinking of schools as publishing and performance houses using every possibly outlet - blogs, school bulletins, wall magazines, diaries, journals, book-making, booklet-making, poster-making, school plays, cabaret evenings - and much more besides - as opportunities for children to 'internalise' audience into their writing.  I cannot under-estimate this.

10.  The kind of grammar in the primary school texts is limited to 'structure'. In other words, it treats language as if it is just a system that exists for its own internal purposes. But language exists for us to make meaning and to achieve purposes.  It is vital to find ways of describing language which includes these meanings and purposes. It is hard to find this and where people have done it, it is very complex. I don't think that it needs to be.  This is something I'm working on.

Question Time - a lesson in why we don't need to worry about tax or inequality.

Well, I came off watching Question Time much relieved. The Tory explained that the tax take from the mega-rich is really huge (top 1% pay 28% of the tax-take) , the Tories are doing fantastically well at closing loop-holes in tax avoidance (£2 billion) and Cameron's Dad did nothing wrong (people used Blairmore as a go-to place to invest and what could be wrong with that?)

Sadly, the Labour geezer, Chris Bryant didn't really get to grips with this. The whole point is that we don't know how good or bad this government or any government is at getting taxes off the super-rich which are due. That's why they're secret. All we know is that it's what they do and do it in vast quantities. What the Tory did quite successfully for a popular audience is make it look as if taking taxes off them is going quite well -  but that's just a politicians' trick of giving you stats without the key things to compare them with. So, to be crude, the 28% tax haul could on the one hand be a remarkably successful take of what's due or it could be pretty bloody feeble. Meanwhile, the stat only referred to income tax take and not to corporation tax or any others e.g. inheritance tax. So, it could well be swings and roundabouts going on - reasonable take on declared income, absolute crap on corporation and inheritance???

The closing loop-holes thing, again, is only significant if we know the number and size of loop-holes. What percentage of the loop-holes are we talking about?

Blairmore is interesting in that it itself didn't pay tax - according to Michael Crick, the journalist, who has looked back at how they presented themselves. This is clearly true and carefully not mentioned in the programme. However, that still leaves the question as to why, if you had a few million to invest, you would go to a company which was based in a tax-avoiding place. Isn't there just the possibility that Blairmore might know how to handle your investment in 'tax-efficient' ways, just as it knows how to handle its own? Or is that conspiracy theory getting the better of me?

Anyway, according to the Tory, all's well on the good ship Megabucks, and we should all settle down.