Before I start this post, a caveat and some reassurance. Reassurance first: this will be my last post about the bloody e-bac. For a while anyway. Now the caveat: I simply cannot bring myself actually to read Gove's statement, let alone watch or listen to him making it. If I am therefore guilty of misrepresenting his views please tell me. It is utterly irresponsible of me, I know, to seek to criticise proposals I have not heard at first hand. Perhaps they are infinitely better thought through than I give them credit for. Perhaps Mr Gove has been listening and learning and now actually does understand how education works, and it is the commentators who have got it all wrong. Miracles sometimes happen.
Anyway, there are two aspects of Gove's proposed replacement for GCSE that appear to have gone largely unchallenged thus far. Indeed they seem to have been accepted as truisms and hence beyond dispute. They are these: that his new exams will be more academic; and that they will stop teachers teaching to the tests. However just for a minute, let us examine these two claims.
Mr Gove (it appears) has stated emphatically that his new exams will be more academic, citing as evidence that there will be no more modules or continuous assessment and instead a three hour terminal exam. The only debate that this appears to have engendered is over the question of whether this is fair to the "less academic" students. The primary claim seems to have gone largely unchallenged. However I personally really don't get it. In what universe does academic ability equate with the ability to succeed at a three-hour exam? What proportion of the average academic's working life is spent sitting three-hour exams or doing anything remotely similar? Academic study approximates far more closely to the processes involved in modular and continuous assessment. Academics conduct research, produce papers, interact with other academics, take part in debates and review the work of their peers. These are not dissimilar activities to those students engage in when producing continuous assessment. In science for instance the only part of student assessment that comes anywhere close to the working life of academics is the coursework element in which students carry out a scientific investigation.
So to claim that a three-hour terminal exam is per se more academic than modular or continuous assessment is absurd. When Mr Gove went to school the academic students were the ones who sat the three-hour exams while the non-academic ones did woodwork. However I have news for you Mr Gove: the world has changed since then. We have found better and more sophisticated ways to test academic ability. Except that you seem intent on destroying them.
The second claim is that these exams will stop teachers teaching to the tests. Indeed they will free up teaching time so much as to allow whole vistas of advanced learning to be explored. Again this claim appears, to me, to be going largely unchallenged. However again, I don't get it. We live now in a world where every aspect of schools' success (and indeed survival) is linked to the exam performance of its students. Mr Gove is ratcheting up the "floor target" for exam success at the end of KS4 just as he is forcing down the percentages of students who do succeed and schools caught in this unholy vice face compulsory conversion to academies and/or forced closure. At the same time everyone who feels qualified to pontificate on education (that would be everyone then) is loudly bemoaning the numbers of students who fail to achieve high grades at the end of KS4 and prophesying calamity for those who do. It stands to reason therefore that teachers care, and will continue to care, about the exam performance of their students above and beyond anything else.
So how will the new exams prevent teachers teaching to the tests? Why under the new system will teachers suddenly feel that yes, these exams are the be-all and end-all for my students' achievement and yes, my own career progression and possibly pay will be linked to my students' success in these exams and yes, my school may even be forced to close if the students do not succeed at these exams but no, I am not going to spend as much time preparing my students for these exams as I used to? Can't quite imagine it, can you?
So for a time I wondered why on earth even someone as brazen as Mr Gove might suggest that these exams will prevent teachers teaching to the tests. And then suddenly I got it! He won't tell anyone what's in them. Brilliant! All that teachers and students will be told will be that there's a three-hour exam. That's it. No more details. No practice papers, no mark schemes, no assessment criteria. Just like the old days. See teachers trying to teach to the tests then! No- they'll go back to how it used to be, like when I was at school. Students will get to sit at their desks copying out chapters from old textbooks and when they ask what this has to do with the exam the teacher will simply say, "No idea. Do it anyway," just like they used to when I was at school. Dolores Umbridge would be proud.
So back to my reassurance at the start of this post. This really is the last I will write on this subject, at least for a while. It makes me sick and dizzy just to think about it. Thank God I'm not in education any more.
Tuesday 18 September 2012
Sunday 16 September 2012
Mea culpa (or why Michael Gove really should be running the WHOLE government)
I made the mistake in my last post of trying to offer a reasoned and thoughtful analysis of what is wrong with Michael Gove's proposals for a return to an O-level type exam system. I'm sorry. It was a schoolboy error and demonstrated my innate inability to understand the basics of Tory philosophy. Reasoned, careful arguments are a sure sign of wet, liberal, Guardian-reading namby-pambyism. I should have known this and I apologise. Sincerely and deeply.
Because of course norm referencing is A GOOD THING. It is only right and proper that a (very small) fixed proportion of society be allowed to succeed whilst others fail. To argue anything else is frankly communist and as discredited as the average MP's expenses return. In fact, I now understand that the principal of norm referencing should indeed be more widely applied. It is frankly scandalous that so many people pass their driving tests, simply because they can drive WELL and not because they can drive BETTER than everyone else. Surely the top 10% of all entrants should pass the driving test and NO MORE. And in case that bothers anyone intending taking their test in the future, don't worry! You never know, it could be that on the day you take your test everyone else is utterly, unadulteratedly crap at driving and just by not killing a pedestrian you'll get through. Driving tests should be COMPETITIVE. It stands to reason. And if you can bump up your chances by nobbling some of the other candidates then so much the better.
It is a well known fact, accepted by all but the most dyed-in-the-wool socialists that competition INEVITABLY leads to improvement. So surely the concept should be applied more widely. Mr Gove has led the way, of course, arguing that all schools should be better than the average (of COURSE they should. It is only swivel-eyed left-leaning mathematicians who argue that by definition nearly 50% of any sample must be below the average) but where he leads others should follow suit. Antibiotics shouldn't be offered to just anyone with a condition susceptible to treatment by antibiotics. That's criterion referencing. It leads to an erosion of standards- everyone knows that. There should be some sort of COMPETITIVE element to the prescription of antibiotics. I don't know- the patients with the top 10% of temperatures that day. It would lend a dynamic element of jeopardy to the visit to the doctor, because presumably you'd have to wait to the end of the day to see if you had come in the top 10%, when (if you had) you would get your antibiotics. Presuming you were still alive to receive them.
Of course the same logic could be applied more widely. It is patently absurd for people to be given disability benefit simply because they meet some criterion, such as that they are physically incapable of working. Would it not make sense that a fixed (and very small) proportion of applicants are given the benefit, thus ensuring that only the most severely disabled get any state support whatever?
Oh no, wait a minute. That is what happens. Of course. Yes. Well, carry on...
Because of course norm referencing is A GOOD THING. It is only right and proper that a (very small) fixed proportion of society be allowed to succeed whilst others fail. To argue anything else is frankly communist and as discredited as the average MP's expenses return. In fact, I now understand that the principal of norm referencing should indeed be more widely applied. It is frankly scandalous that so many people pass their driving tests, simply because they can drive WELL and not because they can drive BETTER than everyone else. Surely the top 10% of all entrants should pass the driving test and NO MORE. And in case that bothers anyone intending taking their test in the future, don't worry! You never know, it could be that on the day you take your test everyone else is utterly, unadulteratedly crap at driving and just by not killing a pedestrian you'll get through. Driving tests should be COMPETITIVE. It stands to reason. And if you can bump up your chances by nobbling some of the other candidates then so much the better.
It is a well known fact, accepted by all but the most dyed-in-the-wool socialists that competition INEVITABLY leads to improvement. So surely the concept should be applied more widely. Mr Gove has led the way, of course, arguing that all schools should be better than the average (of COURSE they should. It is only swivel-eyed left-leaning mathematicians who argue that by definition nearly 50% of any sample must be below the average) but where he leads others should follow suit. Antibiotics shouldn't be offered to just anyone with a condition susceptible to treatment by antibiotics. That's criterion referencing. It leads to an erosion of standards- everyone knows that. There should be some sort of COMPETITIVE element to the prescription of antibiotics. I don't know- the patients with the top 10% of temperatures that day. It would lend a dynamic element of jeopardy to the visit to the doctor, because presumably you'd have to wait to the end of the day to see if you had come in the top 10%, when (if you had) you would get your antibiotics. Presuming you were still alive to receive them.
Of course the same logic could be applied more widely. It is patently absurd for people to be given disability benefit simply because they meet some criterion, such as that they are physically incapable of working. Would it not make sense that a fixed (and very small) proportion of applicants are given the benefit, thus ensuring that only the most severely disabled get any state support whatever?
Oh no, wait a minute. That is what happens. Of course. Yes. Well, carry on...
Michael Gove- another Education Secretary who really doesn't understand education
So we are to have a return to 'tougher' O-level type exams are we? Of course there is a certain logic to making the announcement now. In a piece of news manipulation that would make Alistair Campbell green with envy Gove has managed to discredit overnight an exam system (GCSEs) that has taken decades to develop, involving some of the best minds in education today. Never mind that, because despite being brought in under Thatcher GCSEs were clearly part of a New Labour plot to undermine the glorious traditions of British education, so they had to go. It is instructive to examine the brutal simplicity with which Gove delivered the coup de grace to a system that government (through league tables) has used to define every scintilla of secondary education. There were essentially four steps:
"The system we propose will be tougher, but clearer and fairer. It will be more intelligible to users, better than O Levels, and better than CSE. It will stretch the able more and stretch the average more."
Recognise the rhetoric at all?
However there is something deeper here that, for me, reveals Gove's terrifying lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the exams and assessments with which he is meddling so recklessly. He constantly uses the image of toughness to describe what the GCSEs lack and the O levels had. Indeed it is clear that a restoration of this "toughness" is his prime motivator for undoing the work of his Tory predecessors in developing GCSEs. So what does "toughness" mean in this context?
Well it is pretty clear that what "toughness" means for Gove is limiting the proportion of students who gain the highest grades. He sees the increase in the proportion of students getting top grades in exams as a clear sign of the soft, wet, liberal, all-must-get-prizes lack of rigour that for him clearly lies at the heart of state education. Back in the good old days you see, the proportion of students who got an A was fixed in advance and it meant that only the very, very best could say "I got an A." Now any Tom Dick or Ahmed can boast of a string of A*s that probably puts little Michael's own O level grades somewhat to shame. Why? Lack of rigour, obviously. Lack of toughness.
Oh dear. Oh dear me, no Michael. Listen to your advisers in the DoE (he won't- he never does) and they will explain it to you in simple terms so you can understand. It is NOT about toughness. It's about the difference between norm referencing and criterion referencing.
So what does that mean, I hear you ask (if you have read this far, that is)? These are the sort of terms educational professionals use, and are thus by definition tainted for those such as Michael Gove who believe that educational professionals lie at the root of the problem (his panacea for education being Free Schools set up by parents and employing unqualified teachers). However they are actually quite important, and not really that hard to grasp. To make it simple, here are two examples NOT from education:
Criterion referencing: This is like the driving test. There are a set of predefined standards, achievement of which leads to success. It doesn't matter when you take your test whether everyone else that day has passed or everyone else has failed. If you meet the standard you pass, if you don't you fail.
Norm referencing: This is like an Olympic 1500 meter final. The objective standard (in terms of time) is of no consequence. All that matters is how your individual performance compares to that of the other athletes on the track.
It would be ridiculous to claim that the second system is tougher than the first- if anything it has less objective rigour, as it is possible to win the Olympic men's 1500 meter final in a time of 3 minutes 34 seconds, 8 seconds off the world record, if all the athletes are looking at each other and no one wants to lead from the front.
Yet that is what Gove is saying (and repeating ad nauseam). The new O level system Gove is proposing, will, it appears, be a norm referenced system: "percentages of students achieving the top grades will be limited" apparently. Fine, except of course that this means it cannot also be criterion referenced. That would be like telling a driving test student that yes, they have met all the required standards but, no they are not going to get their driving test because the quota has already been reached.
Criterion referencing in GCSEs is actually a fairly solid guarantor of standards across years and decades. The descriptors of each grade in each subject are a matter of public record, and one can compare descriptors between different years to ensure that a C today is broadly the same as a C in 1989 when the first students took GCSEs. Each year the whole system that administers and assesses exams spends countless thousands of hours ensuring that these criteria are fairly and consistently applied, so that the exam papers do test performance against those criteria, and the exam marking does fairly assess it.
Until this year, that is.
So does it matter that Gove wants to rip all that up and return to a misty-eyed vision of 1950s England? Would there be any problems in returning to a norm referenced system? Well not really, if you didn't mind about a potential unchecked erosion of standards. Because of course under a norm-referenced system, getting an A grade simply means that you were in the top X% of the particular cohort who took that exam. Who might all have been crap. Without criterion referencing there is simply no way to know. If Gove reintroduced a norm referenced system he would GUARANTEE that into the future a certain percentage would achieve each of the top grades. What he could not guarantee (without criterion referencing) was whether that X% were simply the best of a bad lot.
Oh dear, oh dear, Mr Gove. You really don't get any of this, do you? And yet the future of our education system is in your hands.
- Gove put very public pressure on the exam boards and Ofqual not to allow pass rates to increase this year.
- The exam boards and Ofqual duly bowed to the pressure and for thousands of students arbitrarily changed the goalposts after the ball would appear already to have been in the net.
- Gove responded to the furore by telling the Welsh Education Secretary that restoring fairness to this year's marking would fundamentally undermine the credibility of GCSEs.
- Gove announced that GCSEs were now not fit for purpose.
"The system we propose will be tougher, but clearer and fairer. It will be more intelligible to users, better than O Levels, and better than CSE. It will stretch the able more and stretch the average more."
Recognise the rhetoric at all?
However there is something deeper here that, for me, reveals Gove's terrifying lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the exams and assessments with which he is meddling so recklessly. He constantly uses the image of toughness to describe what the GCSEs lack and the O levels had. Indeed it is clear that a restoration of this "toughness" is his prime motivator for undoing the work of his Tory predecessors in developing GCSEs. So what does "toughness" mean in this context?
Well it is pretty clear that what "toughness" means for Gove is limiting the proportion of students who gain the highest grades. He sees the increase in the proportion of students getting top grades in exams as a clear sign of the soft, wet, liberal, all-must-get-prizes lack of rigour that for him clearly lies at the heart of state education. Back in the good old days you see, the proportion of students who got an A was fixed in advance and it meant that only the very, very best could say "I got an A." Now any Tom Dick or Ahmed can boast of a string of A*s that probably puts little Michael's own O level grades somewhat to shame. Why? Lack of rigour, obviously. Lack of toughness.
Oh dear. Oh dear me, no Michael. Listen to your advisers in the DoE (he won't- he never does) and they will explain it to you in simple terms so you can understand. It is NOT about toughness. It's about the difference between norm referencing and criterion referencing.
So what does that mean, I hear you ask (if you have read this far, that is)? These are the sort of terms educational professionals use, and are thus by definition tainted for those such as Michael Gove who believe that educational professionals lie at the root of the problem (his panacea for education being Free Schools set up by parents and employing unqualified teachers). However they are actually quite important, and not really that hard to grasp. To make it simple, here are two examples NOT from education:
Criterion referencing: This is like the driving test. There are a set of predefined standards, achievement of which leads to success. It doesn't matter when you take your test whether everyone else that day has passed or everyone else has failed. If you meet the standard you pass, if you don't you fail.
Norm referencing: This is like an Olympic 1500 meter final. The objective standard (in terms of time) is of no consequence. All that matters is how your individual performance compares to that of the other athletes on the track.
It would be ridiculous to claim that the second system is tougher than the first- if anything it has less objective rigour, as it is possible to win the Olympic men's 1500 meter final in a time of 3 minutes 34 seconds, 8 seconds off the world record, if all the athletes are looking at each other and no one wants to lead from the front.
Yet that is what Gove is saying (and repeating ad nauseam). The new O level system Gove is proposing, will, it appears, be a norm referenced system: "percentages of students achieving the top grades will be limited" apparently. Fine, except of course that this means it cannot also be criterion referenced. That would be like telling a driving test student that yes, they have met all the required standards but, no they are not going to get their driving test because the quota has already been reached.
Criterion referencing in GCSEs is actually a fairly solid guarantor of standards across years and decades. The descriptors of each grade in each subject are a matter of public record, and one can compare descriptors between different years to ensure that a C today is broadly the same as a C in 1989 when the first students took GCSEs. Each year the whole system that administers and assesses exams spends countless thousands of hours ensuring that these criteria are fairly and consistently applied, so that the exam papers do test performance against those criteria, and the exam marking does fairly assess it.
Until this year, that is.
So does it matter that Gove wants to rip all that up and return to a misty-eyed vision of 1950s England? Would there be any problems in returning to a norm referenced system? Well not really, if you didn't mind about a potential unchecked erosion of standards. Because of course under a norm-referenced system, getting an A grade simply means that you were in the top X% of the particular cohort who took that exam. Who might all have been crap. Without criterion referencing there is simply no way to know. If Gove reintroduced a norm referenced system he would GUARANTEE that into the future a certain percentage would achieve each of the top grades. What he could not guarantee (without criterion referencing) was whether that X% were simply the best of a bad lot.
Oh dear, oh dear, Mr Gove. You really don't get any of this, do you? And yet the future of our education system is in your hands.
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