Wednesday, 17 July 2013
PETITION ABOUT RANKING
IF YOU AGREE WITH THE BELOW CAN YOU PLEASE CONTACT SARA TOMLINSON BELOW OR TWEET ME WITH YOUR PROPER NAME AND ORGANISATION OR DO THE SAME WHERE I'VE POSTED IT ON FACEBOOK
We are writing to express our concern over the announcement on Weds of an increase in primary school floor targets, an increase in the amount of testing for primary school pupils and the intention to place all pupils in a league table ranked on ability. Rather than a philosophy of every child matters, this is a world where only the person at the top counts. Any child struggling to pass tests due to a special educational need is automatically labelled a failure.
Last month we held a conference to launch the Primary Charter. This was a conference which brought together teachers, parents, governors and teacher educators. We have produced a 'manifesto' for primary schools, outlining how we think pupils learn best. This includes trusting the professional judgement of teachers, allowing children to learn at their own pace and through play, while taking account of their own experiences. It involves giving pupils an opportunity to develop a love of learning and nurturing their ability to interact with others. We have already seen the damage done to children in this country through over-testing. Research has shown that our children are unhappy and more worried about tests than in any other developed country. Crucially this does not lead to improved educational outcomes. There is no evidence to show that testing and ranking children improves their learning, but plenty that demonstrates the effect being labelled a failure has on their self-esteem and confidence. We prefer to look to the model of education we see in Finland where no inspections, no punitive lesson observations and minimal testing leads to consistently high standards, huge levels of teacher satisfaction, minimal social selection and an education sector that is lauded throughout the world.
Instead we see an announcement today that the attainment thresholds schools must reach is to be increased from 60% to 85%. The government want to test children earlier and force a more formal education, learning by rote and parroting facts driven right down into the early years. We suspect this is part of a move to hand publically owned education over to the private sector though an increase in the number of schools forced to become academies. The signatories of the charter reject this model of education and appeal to parents, teachers and support staff to engage in a dialogue with schools to reject Gove's vision. The primary charter can be found on primarycharter.wordpress.com
Sara Tomlinson
Lambeth NUT
Hambrook House
Porden Rd SW2 5RW
Ranking children at 11 - what a waste
The plans announced (leaked?) today about testing 11 year olds are about 'ranking' children. It seems as if the aim is to find the 'top' and 'bottom' 10 per cent.
The idea behind ranking is trying to put human beings, with all their many characteristics, talents and quirks into 'order'. Why? Ultimately, it is in order to serve people with power rather than the totality of those being ranked. That's to say, those in power say that they want or need to select people according to their abilities to work for them. Clearly, if the state (ie our money) pays for the cost of testing everyone, this relieves 'business' of having to do some of this work.
However, ranking ultimately tells a person very little about ability, capability and experience. By its own definition, it's about relative worth: how one person stands in relation to another. Even then, this relative worth has no quantitative measure as it is only 'place' that is recorded. The analogy is a football league where we know who is first, second, third and so on, but we don't know the points difference between. In other words the differences may sometimes be 'significant', at other times they may not. The absurd thing about government or anyone else putting any weight on ranking is that this crucial aspect of testing (in their terms, not mine) is submerged or downgraded.
Then, the key behind any ranking is the question of what is being ranked. We've been told that the focus will be on 'core' subjects - English and Maths. I'm not clear whether the scores in the two subjects are to be amalgamated but I suspect so because that's what this kind of yardstick testing has done time and time again. Clearly, the success rate of students in subjects outside the core when doing GCSEs has irritated the right wing lobby as if doing well in any subject should be something to lament and decry rather than celebrate!
So, what does it mean to focus on the core and amalgamate the results when talking of pupils aged 11? It's been known that one consequence is that it results in a slewing of the results when trying to use them as predictors. We should remember that the history of education is littered with the failure of trying to label pupils at 11 with a view to using their scores as predictors of outcomes at 16 or beyond. My own education - and that of my peers - was heavily disfigured and distorted by that - slotting children into different kinds of schools and fixing people's destinies for years afterwards. Only last week, we had the statistically challenged head of Ofsted misunderstanding what a stat to do with variations between 11 year olds' and 16 year olds' test scores actually signified. He seemed to think that there should be exact correspondence between these test scores whereas the evidence suggests that there is no reason to think that there should be.
One of the reasons why there is variation and non-correspondence is a fundamental misunderstanding about what a human being is. You don't have to go along with everything that Howard Gardner says about 'multiple intelligences' but as a basic sense of how human beings are different, how these differences tend to 'clump' around certain capabilities surely there is something important here. Of course, I would say (wouldn't I?) that the job of education is most certainly not to fix these characteristics as all-defining and permanent, and I would say (wouldn't I?) that we have got nowhere near regarding people's capabilities as having parity of esteem.
In fact, this ranking (and the ranking of secondary schools according to English, Maths and Science scores, is an effort to push education in precisely the opposite direction: downgrading students, teachers and schools in regard of their abilities to do anything well outside of English, Maths and Science.
So, at the heart of this matter of ranking - quite apart from the pernicious element of labelling - is an enforced focussing of education on certain specific capabilities. To tell the truth, I don't think that this is all coming directly from 'business'. Much of this is motivated by feeble-minded electoral opportunism. It sounds 'tough' and 'rigorous' unlike all that other wishy-washy stuff outside of English and Maths. I mean to say, who wants people who are strong on compassion, curiosity, interpretation, invention and co-operation? I mean, when has civilisation ever needed such useless qualities? No, civilisation has advanced through focussing on learning by rote and performing fixed procedures accurately ie doing what you're told. And that is precisely how the enforced emphasis of ranking - based on this particular core - will impact on education.
I'm looking forward to reading how Clegg and Gove are going to explain (in their terms) how 'Britain' or 'this country' (when they mean England) is going to progress with the emphasis on the 'core' distorting education so much.
The idea behind ranking is trying to put human beings, with all their many characteristics, talents and quirks into 'order'. Why? Ultimately, it is in order to serve people with power rather than the totality of those being ranked. That's to say, those in power say that they want or need to select people according to their abilities to work for them. Clearly, if the state (ie our money) pays for the cost of testing everyone, this relieves 'business' of having to do some of this work.
However, ranking ultimately tells a person very little about ability, capability and experience. By its own definition, it's about relative worth: how one person stands in relation to another. Even then, this relative worth has no quantitative measure as it is only 'place' that is recorded. The analogy is a football league where we know who is first, second, third and so on, but we don't know the points difference between. In other words the differences may sometimes be 'significant', at other times they may not. The absurd thing about government or anyone else putting any weight on ranking is that this crucial aspect of testing (in their terms, not mine) is submerged or downgraded.
Then, the key behind any ranking is the question of what is being ranked. We've been told that the focus will be on 'core' subjects - English and Maths. I'm not clear whether the scores in the two subjects are to be amalgamated but I suspect so because that's what this kind of yardstick testing has done time and time again. Clearly, the success rate of students in subjects outside the core when doing GCSEs has irritated the right wing lobby as if doing well in any subject should be something to lament and decry rather than celebrate!
So, what does it mean to focus on the core and amalgamate the results when talking of pupils aged 11? It's been known that one consequence is that it results in a slewing of the results when trying to use them as predictors. We should remember that the history of education is littered with the failure of trying to label pupils at 11 with a view to using their scores as predictors of outcomes at 16 or beyond. My own education - and that of my peers - was heavily disfigured and distorted by that - slotting children into different kinds of schools and fixing people's destinies for years afterwards. Only last week, we had the statistically challenged head of Ofsted misunderstanding what a stat to do with variations between 11 year olds' and 16 year olds' test scores actually signified. He seemed to think that there should be exact correspondence between these test scores whereas the evidence suggests that there is no reason to think that there should be.
One of the reasons why there is variation and non-correspondence is a fundamental misunderstanding about what a human being is. You don't have to go along with everything that Howard Gardner says about 'multiple intelligences' but as a basic sense of how human beings are different, how these differences tend to 'clump' around certain capabilities surely there is something important here. Of course, I would say (wouldn't I?) that the job of education is most certainly not to fix these characteristics as all-defining and permanent, and I would say (wouldn't I?) that we have got nowhere near regarding people's capabilities as having parity of esteem.
In fact, this ranking (and the ranking of secondary schools according to English, Maths and Science scores, is an effort to push education in precisely the opposite direction: downgrading students, teachers and schools in regard of their abilities to do anything well outside of English, Maths and Science.
So, at the heart of this matter of ranking - quite apart from the pernicious element of labelling - is an enforced focussing of education on certain specific capabilities. To tell the truth, I don't think that this is all coming directly from 'business'. Much of this is motivated by feeble-minded electoral opportunism. It sounds 'tough' and 'rigorous' unlike all that other wishy-washy stuff outside of English and Maths. I mean to say, who wants people who are strong on compassion, curiosity, interpretation, invention and co-operation? I mean, when has civilisation ever needed such useless qualities? No, civilisation has advanced through focussing on learning by rote and performing fixed procedures accurately ie doing what you're told. And that is precisely how the enforced emphasis of ranking - based on this particular core - will impact on education.
I'm looking forward to reading how Clegg and Gove are going to explain (in their terms) how 'Britain' or 'this country' (when they mean England) is going to progress with the emphasis on the 'core' distorting education so much.
Sunday, 14 July 2013
More thoughts on 'stability' in history.
Further to my thoughts on 'stability'.
This comes for the 'Official' site for the 'British Monarchy'
"The Hanoverians came to power in difficult circumstances that looked set to undermine the stability of British society.
The first of their Kings, George I, was only 52nd in line to the throne, but the nearest Protestant according to the Act of Settlement. Two descendants of James II, the deposed Stuart king, threatened to take the throne, and were supported by a number of 'Jacobites' throughout the realm.
For all that, the Hanoverian period was remarkably stable, not least because of the longevity of its kings. From 1714 through to 1837, there were only five monarchs, one of whom, George III, remains the longest reigning king in British History.
The period was also one of political stability, and the development of constitutional monarchy. For vast tracts of the eighteenth century, great Whig families dominated politics, while the early nineteenth century saw Tory domination.
Britain's first 'Prime' Minister, Robert Walpole, dates from this period, and income tax was introduced. Towards the end of the Hanoverian period, the Great Reform Act was passed, which amongst other things widened the electorate.
It was also in this period that Britain came to acquire much of her overseas empire, despite the loss of the American colonies, largely through foreign conquest in the various wars of the century. By the end of the Hanoverian period, the British Empire covered a third of the globe.
The theme of longevity was set to continue, as the longest reigning monarch in British history, Queen Victoria, prepared to take the throne."
So, under 'political stability' it was possible to 'lose' the 'American colonies' and 'acquire' much of an 'overseas empire' 'largely through foreign conquest' 'in various wars'.
I'm not sure what 'stability' means in this context - apart from the mostly trivial fact that the same family passed the crown down through its immediate descendants. Even by this account, it was a period of the most extraordinary upheaval in an area described as the 'third of the globe'. As it happens, the process was one of appalling exploitation and oppression involving slavery, mass death and terrible hardship.
This comes for the 'Official' site for the 'British Monarchy'
"The Hanoverians came to power in difficult circumstances that looked set to undermine the stability of British society.
The first of their Kings, George I, was only 52nd in line to the throne, but the nearest Protestant according to the Act of Settlement. Two descendants of James II, the deposed Stuart king, threatened to take the throne, and were supported by a number of 'Jacobites' throughout the realm.
For all that, the Hanoverian period was remarkably stable, not least because of the longevity of its kings. From 1714 through to 1837, there were only five monarchs, one of whom, George III, remains the longest reigning king in British History.
The period was also one of political stability, and the development of constitutional monarchy. For vast tracts of the eighteenth century, great Whig families dominated politics, while the early nineteenth century saw Tory domination.
Britain's first 'Prime' Minister, Robert Walpole, dates from this period, and income tax was introduced. Towards the end of the Hanoverian period, the Great Reform Act was passed, which amongst other things widened the electorate.
It was also in this period that Britain came to acquire much of her overseas empire, despite the loss of the American colonies, largely through foreign conquest in the various wars of the century. By the end of the Hanoverian period, the British Empire covered a third of the globe.
The theme of longevity was set to continue, as the longest reigning monarch in British history, Queen Victoria, prepared to take the throne."
So, under 'political stability' it was possible to 'lose' the 'American colonies' and 'acquire' much of an 'overseas empire' 'largely through foreign conquest' 'in various wars'.
I'm not sure what 'stability' means in this context - apart from the mostly trivial fact that the same family passed the crown down through its immediate descendants. Even by this account, it was a period of the most extraordinary upheaval in an area described as the 'third of the globe'. As it happens, the process was one of appalling exploitation and oppression involving slavery, mass death and terrible hardship.
Thursday, 11 July 2013
BBC "Ancient Greeks" We do have slaves. Wrapped up in prog 1
I have now seen episode 1 of the Ancient Greeks and slavery is given its place in the final ten minutes. Kind of. As Scott says, the 'civilisation rested on the labour of the slaves' and in an excellent sequence he takes us to the silver mines and uses contemporary writing about the conditions. All fine. However, the problem is that this is presented as 'another thing'. Having said that the civilisation 'rested' on slavery, the programmes together aren't able to show the links between that notion of humanity, the very extraction of wealth that he describes to the 'contradictory' ideas and practices he talks about.
In a modern context, we could compare it, say, with the 'strivers and skivers' rhetoric (or whatever they call it). We might say, for example, that this division of working people in the minds and rhetoric of our rulers is always present but a) it has a function ie it's not arbitrary and b) the fervour with which it is expressed and taken up government-friendly media varies over time. In a time of acute crisis for those that rule and those that own and control the wealth, it is absolutely essential for them (not for us) that they keep the lid on dissent, revolt and rebellion. Part of this is punitive - clamping down on demonstrations, longer prison sentences, part of this is divide and rule - claiming that one set of the exploited are better off than another, nastier than another, acting against your interests etc etc. But however it happens, it's all related to a basic underlying structure whereby those in power, those in authority, those who own and control most of the wealth, extract wealth from the labour of those without wealth. If you were making a TV programme about that in 2500 years time, you could of course tuck this fact away in the last ten minutes of programme 1, showing the remains of a factory or call centre, you could show the fabulous wealth of bankers and then in episode 2 scratch your head with puzzlement about how such obviously civilised people as David Cameron or David Starkey could have found such startling inequalities tolerable; or why and how it was possible for the Hillsborough case to have taken so long to unravel, or how it was possible for News Inc. to carry out illegal practices for so long etc etc...
In a modern context, we could compare it, say, with the 'strivers and skivers' rhetoric (or whatever they call it). We might say, for example, that this division of working people in the minds and rhetoric of our rulers is always present but a) it has a function ie it's not arbitrary and b) the fervour with which it is expressed and taken up government-friendly media varies over time. In a time of acute crisis for those that rule and those that own and control the wealth, it is absolutely essential for them (not for us) that they keep the lid on dissent, revolt and rebellion. Part of this is punitive - clamping down on demonstrations, longer prison sentences, part of this is divide and rule - claiming that one set of the exploited are better off than another, nastier than another, acting against your interests etc etc. But however it happens, it's all related to a basic underlying structure whereby those in power, those in authority, those who own and control most of the wealth, extract wealth from the labour of those without wealth. If you were making a TV programme about that in 2500 years time, you could of course tuck this fact away in the last ten minutes of programme 1, showing the remains of a factory or call centre, you could show the fabulous wealth of bankers and then in episode 2 scratch your head with puzzlement about how such obviously civilised people as David Cameron or David Starkey could have found such startling inequalities tolerable; or why and how it was possible for the Hillsborough case to have taken so long to unravel, or how it was possible for News Inc. to carry out illegal practices for so long etc etc...
BBC "Ancient Greeks". What, no slaves?
I watched Michael Scott talking about the Ancient Greeks last night. Did I miss something? His theme revolved around an apparently mysterious contradiction between the glorious civilisation of Ancient Greece - which apparently 'gave us' pretty well everything that is good while at the same being cruel and occasionally barbaric eg at the Olympic Games and in the execution of Socrates.
I'll leave to one side the matter of whether the Greeks did or did not give us all that wonderful stuff or not for a moment. What was even more mysterious than the matter of the apparent contradiction that Scott talked about was the fact that he didn't mention the 's' word: slavery. This is not just a 'moral' question. Slavery involves a particular kind of attitude to the whole meaning of what it is to be human. Embedded within that is an idea of what it means to survive, reproduce oneself, reproduce society and produce wealth. That's to say, Greek wealth, society, culture, 'civilisation' (whatever that means), rested on the fact that at the heart of these processes of 'reproduction' of the self and society was the institution of seizing and holding the labour power and identity of other human beings.
This is a kind of extreme violence - even when it isn't violent. That's to say, it holds the person, his or her mind and body, in enforced service to other humans - the master, or the master's family.
So, when Scott scratches his head and wonders or muses on the apparent contradiction between the Greeks' great contributions to thought etc etc and their apparent cruelty, it isn't really a contradiction at all. At the heart of their civilisation was something that was largely invisible (though not to Socrates!): that they were conducting a form of extreme everyday violence on thousands of other humans. Of course what the Greeks' great intellectuals and artists said was extraordinary and amazing and wonderful but their ability to spend time strolling about wondering about the mysteries of life, death, love, hate - even cruelty! - rested on the fact that thousands of people produced enough wealth to enable them to have the time and leisure to speculate on such matters. The fact that it also rested on violence is crucial to what Scott was talking about.
I find increasingly when I watch TV or listen to the radio that commentators casually absorb and repeat what are in effect the views and attitudes of 'authority'. That's to say, at any moment in history or now, there is the 'prevailing' or 'dominant' view. This is the outlook expressed explicitly or implicitly of those with the power. So, to take one example, a monarch who 'brings stability' is described as 'good'. This might mean not much more than stabilising the means of exploitation, domination and foreign conquest. The very notion of 'stability' is a 'prevailing' or 'dominant' view of what is 'good'. Extrapolate that attitude to now, we have a 'stable' government that has been 'good' at overcoming the potential schisms that might have occurred with a coalition. However, that stability has just made it easier for the coalition to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. There isn't anything 'good' about it at all.
I'll leave to one side the matter of whether the Greeks did or did not give us all that wonderful stuff or not for a moment. What was even more mysterious than the matter of the apparent contradiction that Scott talked about was the fact that he didn't mention the 's' word: slavery. This is not just a 'moral' question. Slavery involves a particular kind of attitude to the whole meaning of what it is to be human. Embedded within that is an idea of what it means to survive, reproduce oneself, reproduce society and produce wealth. That's to say, Greek wealth, society, culture, 'civilisation' (whatever that means), rested on the fact that at the heart of these processes of 'reproduction' of the self and society was the institution of seizing and holding the labour power and identity of other human beings.
This is a kind of extreme violence - even when it isn't violent. That's to say, it holds the person, his or her mind and body, in enforced service to other humans - the master, or the master's family.
So, when Scott scratches his head and wonders or muses on the apparent contradiction between the Greeks' great contributions to thought etc etc and their apparent cruelty, it isn't really a contradiction at all. At the heart of their civilisation was something that was largely invisible (though not to Socrates!): that they were conducting a form of extreme everyday violence on thousands of other humans. Of course what the Greeks' great intellectuals and artists said was extraordinary and amazing and wonderful but their ability to spend time strolling about wondering about the mysteries of life, death, love, hate - even cruelty! - rested on the fact that thousands of people produced enough wealth to enable them to have the time and leisure to speculate on such matters. The fact that it also rested on violence is crucial to what Scott was talking about.
I find increasingly when I watch TV or listen to the radio that commentators casually absorb and repeat what are in effect the views and attitudes of 'authority'. That's to say, at any moment in history or now, there is the 'prevailing' or 'dominant' view. This is the outlook expressed explicitly or implicitly of those with the power. So, to take one example, a monarch who 'brings stability' is described as 'good'. This might mean not much more than stabilising the means of exploitation, domination and foreign conquest. The very notion of 'stability' is a 'prevailing' or 'dominant' view of what is 'good'. Extrapolate that attitude to now, we have a 'stable' government that has been 'good' at overcoming the potential schisms that might have occurred with a coalition. However, that stability has just made it easier for the coalition to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. There isn't anything 'good' about it at all.
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Educational League Table Lies
Michael Gove is extremely fond of citing the international tables which supposedly compare educational achievement. You might have thought that the journalists who repeat what he says about 'slumping' down tables (BBC) would pause a moment and scrutinize a) the tables themselves and b) the purpose to which they're being put by Gove.
Here are some observations:
1. Statistically a league table can only tell you about relative positions. A supposed 'slump' might mean a huge difference in performance, or a minute one. Think football league tables: being 3rd or 10th could be a matter of 2 or 3 points difference or 20 points difference. One is an insignificant difference and the other is significant. We are not being told whether the differences are significant or not. Just that there is a 'slump'.
2. Different international tables show different positions. This would suggest that international comparisons made on this basis are not fixed or certain.
3. One of the rules of statistics is that you must compare 'like with like'. Do the tables compare like with like? It would be fair to say that this is impossible for many reasons: the social, economic and cultural make-up and needs of different countries are different; what is being tested for is not the same; how the tests are conducted is not the same; the tests do not take place in the different countries' students' educational calendar at the same time (the students tested might have as much as nine months more or less schooling); it is a statistical nonsense to aggregate educational performance - too many different kinds of progress are going on.
4. Gove is selective in what kind of educational structure and content he pulls from the 'competitors'. As everyone now knows, he rejects Finland and opts for what he thinks is the Singaporean model ie rejects an education which involves trusting teachers and localities and opts for an authoritarian model. The Secretary of State for Education in England now controls the curriculum in local authority schools, and controls the rest directly from the DfE.
5. The economic argument that lies behind the league tables is absurd. The implication being touted is that England (the educational authority that Gove controls) is 'falling behind' because its students are poorly educated.
i) England is not a separate economic unit from the UK or indeed from the EU, so whatever is being administered for England can't be separated out.
ii) If England 'fell behind' that would be as a result of the people who ran the economy when England fell behind! Most of these people are in their fifties and sixties when - in one of the narratives peddled by the right - education was much better.
iii) the relative economic performance by countries (bearing in mind that the 'country' that Gove rules over is not a country) is hardly dependent on small differences in educational performance. The various kinds of economic mess that the UK is in were caused by decisions made about what kinds of economic activity were thought to be best for the UK to carry on. As we know, two key decisions were made:
a) to shift the balance of British capitalism from manufacture towards financial services
b) to deregulate those financial services.
Put less formally, it meant that the economy was geared to casino capitalism. This put the power of the British economy into the hands of a tiny group of gamblers. They gambled and lost. As a result there are stupendous debts hanging about in the financial sector alongside stupendous hoards of capital. This is causing the UK's difficulties more than anything else.
Meanwhile, the 'solution' cooked up by the Tories and largely reinforced by Labour is cutting the 'cost' of paying wages and supporting those in difficulty. (It isn't a 'cost' because this is the majority of people trying to earn a living and get what they need. It's only a 'cost' looked at from the point of view of capitalism.)
So, any failure by the UK to make its way in the world is wrapped up in this particular twist in the history of capitalism and not with whether students are studying Shakespeare or not, or whether five year olds are doing fractions.
6. So if this is all about different kinds of smokescreen and bs., what is really going on?
i) educational policy as presented by ministers is more about political propaganda than education. It's about being seen to be 'tough' or 'good on detail' or 'traditional' or some such.
Mostly this is about
a) playing to the narrative of decline ('everything has gone to the dogs') which chimes with a nasty anti-youth, anti-child agenda peddled by politicians
b) it panders to some older people's notions that they are better educated than their offspring
c) it panders to one idea that has run through northern European culture for three hundred years, that the best thing you can do with children and young people is to control, contain and discipline them.
ii) the economic mess that both governments have administered is, in truth, out of their control. They are trying to manage a whirlwind. They willingly carry out policies that were demanded by the economic masters of the City and big business and all it has brought is hardship to the majority. Gassing on about 'world-class education' sounds like busy-work: 'Look what we're doing to make things better.' This is a con. Even if they were creating a 'world-class education' the effects wouldn't be felt for at least another 20 years! Their crisis is now and they are trying to use that particular disaster as a way of levering in changes to education now.
iii) apologies for repeating myself, but the key structural change that has taken place in education is that the Secretary of State has been given almost total power over schools and curriculum. No other section of government has this kind of totalitarian power. Old systems of modifying and balancing that power (mostly through local authorities and big government 'Reports' like Bullock and Plowden) have been swept aside. The Secretary now directly controls the opening and closing of thousands of schools in the UK without any reference to that locality. He or she now controls the curriculum and the exam system without any need to refer to any profession-wide Report, any group of the professionals - teachers or academics. The Department is now run by a system of patronage and on the Secretary's whim. He or she will talk of consultation but this is positively Tudor: people are invited to offer their 'suits' to the monarch and he or she decides which are good or not. Clearly, the most important suits are those which chime with his or her prejudices or the loudest noises in his or her political party. I think it's particularly interesting that at a time of economic chaos and uncertainty, power in education has become much more centralised. To my mind this expresses a loss of nerve about the control of ideas ('ideology' if you prefer). Authoritarian government is mostly linked to moments of high economic stress. I don't think I'm overstating it, if I say that the way we have allowed education to be run is becoming - choose your adjective - totalitarian, Stalinist or fascistic. It is dominated by unchecked decisions made in one room by one person.
7. There are alternative ways of running education in a modern economy. There are alternative ways of running education which harness the best of what teachers can do within a fair and egalitarian context. That requires a different way of thinking about academics, professionals and locally elected bodies. It requires central government providing a means by which classroom activity can go on as a result of these different sectors being allowed and encouraged to talk to each other within a framework determined by a sense of equal entitlement. The last twenty years have become obsessed with notions of the 'great school', the 'great school leader'. Very little attention has been placed on the notion of the great locality (ie where all children and young people live and go to school) where all schools, all teachers and all children were progressing well. That's where real reform could and should happen in education ie where all children and young people are being educated - not just some.
Here are some observations:
1. Statistically a league table can only tell you about relative positions. A supposed 'slump' might mean a huge difference in performance, or a minute one. Think football league tables: being 3rd or 10th could be a matter of 2 or 3 points difference or 20 points difference. One is an insignificant difference and the other is significant. We are not being told whether the differences are significant or not. Just that there is a 'slump'.
2. Different international tables show different positions. This would suggest that international comparisons made on this basis are not fixed or certain.
3. One of the rules of statistics is that you must compare 'like with like'. Do the tables compare like with like? It would be fair to say that this is impossible for many reasons: the social, economic and cultural make-up and needs of different countries are different; what is being tested for is not the same; how the tests are conducted is not the same; the tests do not take place in the different countries' students' educational calendar at the same time (the students tested might have as much as nine months more or less schooling); it is a statistical nonsense to aggregate educational performance - too many different kinds of progress are going on.
4. Gove is selective in what kind of educational structure and content he pulls from the 'competitors'. As everyone now knows, he rejects Finland and opts for what he thinks is the Singaporean model ie rejects an education which involves trusting teachers and localities and opts for an authoritarian model. The Secretary of State for Education in England now controls the curriculum in local authority schools, and controls the rest directly from the DfE.
5. The economic argument that lies behind the league tables is absurd. The implication being touted is that England (the educational authority that Gove controls) is 'falling behind' because its students are poorly educated.
i) England is not a separate economic unit from the UK or indeed from the EU, so whatever is being administered for England can't be separated out.
ii) If England 'fell behind' that would be as a result of the people who ran the economy when England fell behind! Most of these people are in their fifties and sixties when - in one of the narratives peddled by the right - education was much better.
iii) the relative economic performance by countries (bearing in mind that the 'country' that Gove rules over is not a country) is hardly dependent on small differences in educational performance. The various kinds of economic mess that the UK is in were caused by decisions made about what kinds of economic activity were thought to be best for the UK to carry on. As we know, two key decisions were made:
a) to shift the balance of British capitalism from manufacture towards financial services
b) to deregulate those financial services.
Put less formally, it meant that the economy was geared to casino capitalism. This put the power of the British economy into the hands of a tiny group of gamblers. They gambled and lost. As a result there are stupendous debts hanging about in the financial sector alongside stupendous hoards of capital. This is causing the UK's difficulties more than anything else.
Meanwhile, the 'solution' cooked up by the Tories and largely reinforced by Labour is cutting the 'cost' of paying wages and supporting those in difficulty. (It isn't a 'cost' because this is the majority of people trying to earn a living and get what they need. It's only a 'cost' looked at from the point of view of capitalism.)
So, any failure by the UK to make its way in the world is wrapped up in this particular twist in the history of capitalism and not with whether students are studying Shakespeare or not, or whether five year olds are doing fractions.
6. So if this is all about different kinds of smokescreen and bs., what is really going on?
i) educational policy as presented by ministers is more about political propaganda than education. It's about being seen to be 'tough' or 'good on detail' or 'traditional' or some such.
Mostly this is about
a) playing to the narrative of decline ('everything has gone to the dogs') which chimes with a nasty anti-youth, anti-child agenda peddled by politicians
b) it panders to some older people's notions that they are better educated than their offspring
c) it panders to one idea that has run through northern European culture for three hundred years, that the best thing you can do with children and young people is to control, contain and discipline them.
ii) the economic mess that both governments have administered is, in truth, out of their control. They are trying to manage a whirlwind. They willingly carry out policies that were demanded by the economic masters of the City and big business and all it has brought is hardship to the majority. Gassing on about 'world-class education' sounds like busy-work: 'Look what we're doing to make things better.' This is a con. Even if they were creating a 'world-class education' the effects wouldn't be felt for at least another 20 years! Their crisis is now and they are trying to use that particular disaster as a way of levering in changes to education now.
iii) apologies for repeating myself, but the key structural change that has taken place in education is that the Secretary of State has been given almost total power over schools and curriculum. No other section of government has this kind of totalitarian power. Old systems of modifying and balancing that power (mostly through local authorities and big government 'Reports' like Bullock and Plowden) have been swept aside. The Secretary now directly controls the opening and closing of thousands of schools in the UK without any reference to that locality. He or she now controls the curriculum and the exam system without any need to refer to any profession-wide Report, any group of the professionals - teachers or academics. The Department is now run by a system of patronage and on the Secretary's whim. He or she will talk of consultation but this is positively Tudor: people are invited to offer their 'suits' to the monarch and he or she decides which are good or not. Clearly, the most important suits are those which chime with his or her prejudices or the loudest noises in his or her political party. I think it's particularly interesting that at a time of economic chaos and uncertainty, power in education has become much more centralised. To my mind this expresses a loss of nerve about the control of ideas ('ideology' if you prefer). Authoritarian government is mostly linked to moments of high economic stress. I don't think I'm overstating it, if I say that the way we have allowed education to be run is becoming - choose your adjective - totalitarian, Stalinist or fascistic. It is dominated by unchecked decisions made in one room by one person.
7. There are alternative ways of running education in a modern economy. There are alternative ways of running education which harness the best of what teachers can do within a fair and egalitarian context. That requires a different way of thinking about academics, professionals and locally elected bodies. It requires central government providing a means by which classroom activity can go on as a result of these different sectors being allowed and encouraged to talk to each other within a framework determined by a sense of equal entitlement. The last twenty years have become obsessed with notions of the 'great school', the 'great school leader'. Very little attention has been placed on the notion of the great locality (ie where all children and young people live and go to school) where all schools, all teachers and all children were progressing well. That's where real reform could and should happen in education ie where all children and young people are being educated - not just some.
Monday, 8 July 2013
"Austerity? I'm Loving It" by Lord Greed.
My Guide to Austerity
by Lord Greed
Some people are finding it difficult to understand what Austerity is all about, so I've written this as a guide.
1. Some people seem to think that the most important point about Austerity is that it should get the economy going. This is silly. There's no way that Austerity can "get the economy going". Let me explain: I try to sell things. That means that I need people to buy things. They need money to buy things. Austerity is about taking money away from most people. If most people haven't got money to buy things, people like me don't want to expand our businesses or open new businesses. We just haven't got anyone to sell to. That's OK for me. I don't need to expand. I'm doing extremely well standing still.
2. Some people seem to think that the next most important thing about Austerity is that getting the government to spend less is going to get the economy going too. What a strange idea. The government spending less money doesn't make sure there's more money going round. Our banks and our government can just create money anyway. No, if you want to find money, the best place to look is in the banks. We're hoarding money. Billions of it. Hundreds of billions of it. And we're not lending it. Why not? you might ask. Simple, because we're still in a state of panic about all the debts we ran up before the crash. We're not telling you how much this debt all adds up to because we want you to keep going on about the 'public debt'. Of course, we managed to get some governments to back our debts but that hasn't been enough to stop us hoarding.
3. So, what is going on? Well, it's quite simple really and it's only history repeating itself. Whenever people like me get into trouble, none of us great company owners wants to take the hit. So we try to 'improve our margins'. One way to do this is to raise our prices. Difficult to do that when people are earning less. The other way is to sack people - that's good, and we're doing that. The other way is to freeze wages or even cut them. That's good, and we're doing that. All with the help of governments. So people are getting poorer. If governments can help me get the same work out of my workers while I'm paying them less, that's a result for me. I get richer, they get poorer. And it's working. That's exactly what's happening. Put another way, Austerity is about transferring money from people who work for wages (and their dependents) to people like me who get money from profits.
4. So, Austerity is about making me richer. I could bore you with all the statistics showing this. The amazing thing is that people in the news rooms all over the world have these statistics, but they keep droning on and on about how 'we must bring down the national deficit" or "our country's bankrupt" and then they keep going on about how "we have to cut this kindergarten" or "we have to cut this library because there's no money left..." blah di blah. Rubbish, of course there's money. The banks are hoarding it. I've got billions myself. Yum yum. The great thing about them going on about all that, is that it takes attention away from me and my massive wealth. So I say, keep droning on, guys. You're doing great.
5. People ask me if capitalism is the best system there is for making and distributing the things we need and the wealth we create. Yes of course it is, because it makes me extremely rich. I own and control vast, unimaginable chunks of wealth and I boss hundreds of thousands of people around. Luckily, I have governments who help me do this by telling people that there's something special about me, that I am specially clever, or I am worth paying enormous respect to. That's why I'm a Lord. Governments are also very good explaining why this is the only way to run things. I particularly like it when ministers go on TV and talk about 'us' and 'the country' as if everyone is in the same boat. You ought to see my boat. You don't think I go to my Caribbean island in someone else's boat, do you?
6. Most of us in my position know what we have to do: is beat the next guy. Now we can try to do this in several ways: we can pay our people less, we can make them work harder for the same money, we can get in machines to make our stuff more cheaply, we can try pushing up prices, we can get governments to give us special deals, we can fiddle our taxes, we can produce brilliant ads, we can foist our stuff on to people and countries by getting governments to do what we say...and so on. In fact, we try to do all these things. Can I be clear? None of this is about making sure that what we make or lend is of top quality or that it is particularly useful or good for the majority of people. It's just about whether we flog it or not.
7. Of course, you might say that this is how we got into the mess in the first place: we flogged mortgages and debts to people. Yes, yes but that's why we invent 'Austerity' so that we can get out of these sticky situations. We just get poor people to pay. And I stay rich...or get richer. Yum yum. Austerity? I'm loving it.
by Lord Greed
Some people are finding it difficult to understand what Austerity is all about, so I've written this as a guide.
1. Some people seem to think that the most important point about Austerity is that it should get the economy going. This is silly. There's no way that Austerity can "get the economy going". Let me explain: I try to sell things. That means that I need people to buy things. They need money to buy things. Austerity is about taking money away from most people. If most people haven't got money to buy things, people like me don't want to expand our businesses or open new businesses. We just haven't got anyone to sell to. That's OK for me. I don't need to expand. I'm doing extremely well standing still.
2. Some people seem to think that the next most important thing about Austerity is that getting the government to spend less is going to get the economy going too. What a strange idea. The government spending less money doesn't make sure there's more money going round. Our banks and our government can just create money anyway. No, if you want to find money, the best place to look is in the banks. We're hoarding money. Billions of it. Hundreds of billions of it. And we're not lending it. Why not? you might ask. Simple, because we're still in a state of panic about all the debts we ran up before the crash. We're not telling you how much this debt all adds up to because we want you to keep going on about the 'public debt'. Of course, we managed to get some governments to back our debts but that hasn't been enough to stop us hoarding.
3. So, what is going on? Well, it's quite simple really and it's only history repeating itself. Whenever people like me get into trouble, none of us great company owners wants to take the hit. So we try to 'improve our margins'. One way to do this is to raise our prices. Difficult to do that when people are earning less. The other way is to sack people - that's good, and we're doing that. The other way is to freeze wages or even cut them. That's good, and we're doing that. All with the help of governments. So people are getting poorer. If governments can help me get the same work out of my workers while I'm paying them less, that's a result for me. I get richer, they get poorer. And it's working. That's exactly what's happening. Put another way, Austerity is about transferring money from people who work for wages (and their dependents) to people like me who get money from profits.
4. So, Austerity is about making me richer. I could bore you with all the statistics showing this. The amazing thing is that people in the news rooms all over the world have these statistics, but they keep droning on and on about how 'we must bring down the national deficit" or "our country's bankrupt" and then they keep going on about how "we have to cut this kindergarten" or "we have to cut this library because there's no money left..." blah di blah. Rubbish, of course there's money. The banks are hoarding it. I've got billions myself. Yum yum. The great thing about them going on about all that, is that it takes attention away from me and my massive wealth. So I say, keep droning on, guys. You're doing great.
5. People ask me if capitalism is the best system there is for making and distributing the things we need and the wealth we create. Yes of course it is, because it makes me extremely rich. I own and control vast, unimaginable chunks of wealth and I boss hundreds of thousands of people around. Luckily, I have governments who help me do this by telling people that there's something special about me, that I am specially clever, or I am worth paying enormous respect to. That's why I'm a Lord. Governments are also very good explaining why this is the only way to run things. I particularly like it when ministers go on TV and talk about 'us' and 'the country' as if everyone is in the same boat. You ought to see my boat. You don't think I go to my Caribbean island in someone else's boat, do you?
6. Most of us in my position know what we have to do: is beat the next guy. Now we can try to do this in several ways: we can pay our people less, we can make them work harder for the same money, we can get in machines to make our stuff more cheaply, we can try pushing up prices, we can get governments to give us special deals, we can fiddle our taxes, we can produce brilliant ads, we can foist our stuff on to people and countries by getting governments to do what we say...and so on. In fact, we try to do all these things. Can I be clear? None of this is about making sure that what we make or lend is of top quality or that it is particularly useful or good for the majority of people. It's just about whether we flog it or not.
7. Of course, you might say that this is how we got into the mess in the first place: we flogged mortgages and debts to people. Yes, yes but that's why we invent 'Austerity' so that we can get out of these sticky situations. We just get poor people to pay. And I stay rich...or get richer. Yum yum. Austerity? I'm loving it.
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