Why are Labour so shit at education policy?

[noblegiraffe]

It should be pretty clear that I am as keen as anyone to see an end to this Tory government and their destruction of education through consistent and persistent underfunding and deprioritising.

So it is incredibly depressing to turn to the education policy of a Labour manifesto and every time experience a feeling of wtf.

Anyway, Labour have just realised a report that will be used to inform education policy in the next manifesto, and it's that sinking feeling once again.

They acknowledge that teacher recruitment and retention are a massive issue.

And then:

"This will include, beginning from initial teacher education, being trained in a wider range of methods than the traditional ‘chalk and talk’, including high quality team-based learning which will lead students to understand how to approach the delivery of projects in the workplace."

"Labour should introduce multimodal assessment so that young people’s progress is no longer just measured through written exams"

"A syllabus should be designed to ensure all students have accessible and practical, hands-on applicability of digital skills, so that they are able to engage with the transformative approach to problem solving that is rapidly changing the economy."

"For primary and secondary school, Labour should design an inclusive, inspiring, creative and future broadening curriculum which will liberate talent, promote the enquiring mind of every young person, and prepare young adults for the ever-changing world, designed to ensure that no child is left behind. Not only are we preparing students for their contributions as employees, but unlocking their potential as entrepreneurs, and therefore the innovators and job-creators of the future."

And how will ripping up the curriculum and assessment system again improve teacher recruitment and retention, eh, Labour? Teachers were massively pissed off with Gove when he did it, it created massive workload and we're still dealing with the problems of its rushed implementation.

Teachers will see the prospect of all their current practice and knowledge being ripped up and put in the bin and say 'fuck this, I'm off'.

I understand that Labour want to be seen as the party of bold and ambitious plans. But education cannot support bold and ambitious plans. It needs careful investment, tweaks to the current systems that will lead to immediate improvements (like reintroducing AS levels), and major focus on fixing immediate problems that urgently need fixing, like the state of school buildings, mental health and SEN support. Not the curriculum and assessment system.

And Labour need to talk to and listen to actual teachers who will have to implement their ideas before publishing their policy.

So if anyone on here has anyone in Labour's ear (or an MP you can beg), please tell them to stop this crap before it gets to the manifesto.

schoolsweek.co.uk/major-labour-review-calls-for-creative-curriculum-and-less-exams-focus/

Actual report:
labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/WR-16813_22-Labour-Skills-Council-report-Edit-19-10-22.pdf

I like the triple science curriculum in the main but I would love to see the double science curriculum for less academic children massively reduced and reshaped. It should be a subject with easy wins for engaging useful lessons and instead we are dragging children through an enormous curriculum that is no use to them in later life. I was still having to throw new facts at my set 5 kids every lesson right up to Easter before exams which is nonsense. We have conversations as a department every year about leaving out sections of the curriculum but it’s hard to do in practise.

My chatting in the pub idea would be a ‘zombie apocalypse’ curriculum which essentially focuses on all the stuff that you might need come the apocalypse. So disease /contraception/ basic electricity / growing plants/ chemistry around useful products or hazards etc

Give us time to get the kids comfortable and confident with the content and make it useful and FUN. Even striping out half of the double award gcse to make an option of single award would be great. Behaviour issues are massively increased when students can’t cope with the amount of material.

And dear god please no to coursework. I taught on the last year of the applied science gcse and the amount of marking and remarking was insane. Plus the cheating that went on during the phase of gcse coursework exams was bonkers. Huge relief when we moved to required practicals tested in the exam and a sensible solution in my opinion.

It took Labour at least 5 years to recover the education system from its run down state that the Thatcher/Major government left it in. Same as the NHS. The shortage of teachers, just like the shortage of doctors and nurses is down to Tory policy, after all, Tory MPS and their offspring ģet private education and don't want riff raff working class children competing with their brats when it comes to university placement and careers. We have had 12 years of Tory austerity which has impoverished millions and undermined the health, education and many other aspects of quality of life. Gove introduced a regressive education policy which has now been in place for 8 years. An interview (not Guardian opinion) shows why.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=amp.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/22/michael-gove-legacy-education-secretary&ved=2ahUKEwiHhNaAh_76AhVCh1wKHWm9D5QQFnoECCwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2Hq8v3CS6LcQPCD0YNdkM5

Hi lola, long time no see!
Lots going on Piggy and took a step away from a lot of social media.

I teach English (no coursework) and a subject with 30% coursework. The workloads are different but in the NEA subject the admin is given no time at all by SLT - if more of us had it it would be. The workload around Easter to May day is intense. But, all year round, I would say English is more demanding on my time and produces more marking - and waaaay less autonomy. It is also far less creatively challenging for me, and for the students. And more spoon fed.
I'm also English and it could be more a reflection on the schools I've been in but exams reduced my workload substantially. The controlled assessment made up of two linked pieces of creative writing was a killer, and that was only one piece of the folder.

I'd happily see a small piece of coursework, low weighting overall if it was more like a foundations for A Level type of task, but not anything like a return to coursework and controlled assessment of old.

I'd quite like to change the English Language spec, but actually really enjoy Literature. Of course that relies on being in a school that allows staff to use professional judgement and not follow the centralised PowerPoint.

always disappoint to Labour manifesto.

When tory is suck, the labour is also not that good.

Teacher recruitment is so easy to tackle. just raise the pay! for a high requirement, but just get £20K?
(Primary)

and TA only £10 per hour? (primary)

I was thinking to be a teacher before. but when I know the salary, WTF? are you kidding me?

However all the emphasis on "creativity" sounds very much like a return to waffly skills based education which doesn't help young people

This government have pretty much killed all the creative subjects. It would be great if they were reinstated properly again.

It all sounds really interesting to me. The current curriculum and mode of assessment is boring at best and prevents a full and fulfilling education for many. But then I remember teaching under Labour last time. It was a lot better than a lot of the stuff happening is schools at the moment.

I wish they'd leave things largely as they are (curriculum-wise) for at least a decade, putting together a cross party group to look into longer term changes. Let teachers catch their breath!

In the immediate future, raise pay but forget nice extras like sabbaticals until there's more money. And reduce the admin burden on teachers. And most of all, schools need enough money to balance the books without redundancies or no heating or stationery.

I’m not a teacher but a parent of 3, two have ASD/ADHD and my third is mid assessment for dyslexia. Elder two were assessed for academic ability and tested 130+ and 145+.

Im trying my best to get back to the UK and send my children to an academic private school. Why private? My children can’t cope with more than 15 in a class. I’ll pay money for my children to be able to access education.

Currently my children are at private Catholic school in Texas. I have no alternative. The quality of education outside of the religious aspect is excellent. Homework is 30min a night and 30min of reading. Discipline is firm but fair and parents are held accountable for making sure their children follow their rules.

My heart breaks for the families who have children like mine and can’t access the right schools. My eldest went from failing at school, 3 medications and self harming to all A grades and one B. Her teacher and the staff at the school are the reason for this transformation. Paying for school has been worth every penny.

We also need to face facts and remove children from parents who refuse to parent. That means funding social care properly and supporting these parents so they have a chance to learn. It’s not about workhouses. Supported housing for single parents isn’t the worst idea. It’s not about working but providing resources to help those who need it. These children deserve better and so do their parents.

The rose review and subsequent curriculum which was due to come in before the tories came to power in 2010 was FANTASTIC and absolutely shows that Labour understand education much better than the tories..obviously it would need to be reviewed for 2022 but it would've had such an enormous positive impact had it came to fruition.. so a change based on the principles behind that I absolutely would support by labour!

I've been teaching since 2008 (in early years/ks1) and have seen 3 early years curriculum changes, 2 almost 3 huge national curriculum changes, numerous phonics programmes introduced/promoted/scrapped at (fun to train in when they all insist on being followed with fidelity for the best results but which dont allow for actual creativity or teachers to use what they know is best for their pupils).

I have to fight with SLT to prove that what I do in early years is appropriate and that provision is just as important as quality lessons provided higher up the school..I am subject to book scrutinies for science/geography/history which are not stand alone topics in early years..

The year 1 curriculum does not allow for children to still do play based learning and then we wonder why children get switched off from learning?!

I am watching with interest the Scottish changes in education and hope labour are doing the same...

It's really hard because I do agree with a lot of what labour have said in principle. I think coursework and a broad curriculum benefits a lot of students.

I teach (among other things) btec applied science, which is mostly coursework based - and I do think that students with more support at home probably do better. But the marking and verification process is rigourous, and there's no way to pressure staff to bump up grades or allow just one more resub. It's all externally checked.

The downside of this is a lot of admin - we employ one teacher as "lead IV" and although she teaches a little bit, her main job is sorting out all the btec admin! If we had to do this at GCSE as well, it would be a job for multiple people and this would need to be properly funded. We also check all work for plagiarism, which is another expense.

It was also a learning curve for me, because I trained to teach after the new GCSEs started, so I didn't have any prior experience of marking coursework. I've previously worked in industry so my practical skills are quite strong but some science teachers aren't familiar with some of the practical techniques we have to use, and there's been a general move away from practical teaching in science recently.

I do think you could have issues around teachers leaving rather than adapt to a completely new curriculum - maybe even worse than last time, because at least last time teachers were used to preparing students for exams. You've now got 7 years of teachers who in the main have never taught a coursework based subject!

I also do think smaller class sizes and more PPA would be essential. You couldn't safely do the practical work needed in a class of 34!

I do like the idea of the "zombie apocalypse" curriculum for science, plus maybe a bit about the scientific method and some general health and safety stuff which would be applicable in a lot of careers.

Definitely the subject content for science GCSE and A-level is ridiculous.

Thinking about PPs' comments about specification content...

Here's a problem that's often occurred to me, but I have no idea how to solve it. The content you'd like to teach someone who is going to carry on with a subject to the next level (A level/BTEC, degree) is often very different to the content that would be useful to someone who will never study it again and who wants a general overview. Trouble is, students often don't know which that will be until near the end of the course.

Oh, not this shit again.

This will include, beginning from initial teacher education, being trained in a wider range of methods than the traditional ‘chalk and talk’,
I'm sure it has been widely researched and accepted that chalk and talk is more effective at building retention and preventing misconceptions, compared to more "creative" approaches.

including high quality team-based learning which will lead students to understand how to approach the delivery of projects in the workplace.
i.e. one or two students in a group will do the work and the rest will coast off their results - it has ever been thus, even when I was at school in the late 80s. Alternatively, it will always be the same students presenting - group work never really challenges the individual to actually go beyond their comfort zone.

Labour should introduce multimodal assessment so that young people’s progress is no longer just measured through written exams
Please dear god, if we reintroduce coursework, we will push even more collagues out.
I am already teaching in the one subject with the highest workload of all core subjects (in the Sciences we not only get to plan, mark both mathematical and long-answer questions, but also get to risk assess, book and assemble every practical, in addition to doing all of the after-school shite only core subjects need to do all year round).
When coursework finally got scrapped it was a massive relief. No more being told to cheat on students' work. No more SLT not helping to enforce silence during the written part of every bit of coursework (they usually let pupils talk overtly even though it was meant to be 100% student work). No more frantic evenings after school every day for a month getting students in to re-write bits again and again until it hit all the criteria. No more students passing with a C-equivalent who couldn't string a sentence of English together in real life.

A syllabus should be designed to ensure all students have accessible and practical, hands-on applicability of digital skills, so that they are able to engage with the transformative approach to problem solving that is rapidly changing the economy.
Cool, I look forward to the funding for this one. Our head of computing is an ECT - that's how rare qualified personnel are. And because they're the only one qualified in the subject, we have PE, Maths, Science and English teachers all teaching a bit of computing, too, because we cannot for love nor money recruit a second, let alone a third person to teach the subject.
Our computers don't work, a quarter of them take half an hour to boot up, behaviour is bad enough that I frequently find keyboard buttons all over the school site.
And beyond actually having functioning computers, where is the money for all the extra tech coming from? I could do with some for my Physics department. where I still make do with equipment from the 1970s.

For primary and secondary school, Labour should design an inclusive, inspiring, creative and future broadening curriculum
So we shove more into an already full curriculum? I introduce 2-3 new concepts per lesson already. Little time for application, there is just too much to take in.

which will liberate talent, promote the enquiring mind of every young person, and prepare young adults for the ever-changing world, designed to ensure that no child is left behind. Not only are we preparing students for their contributions as employees, but unlocking their potential as entrepreneurs, and therefore the innovators and job-creators of the future.
Is this the return of learning by discovery? If so, it was scrapped - quite rightly - because it did nothing to help students learn.

Say about Gove what you want - I can't stand the man and was very upset when slapgove was taken offline - but the one thing he did do right was recognise that teachers are the experts in a classroom for a reason.

Urgh. Why does no one see the actual issues? Smaller classes, better facilities (you know, like a roof, which doesn't frequently leak onto our ICT resources), better equipment, more non-contact time. It's not that hard.

Hell, one academy I worked in managed to find businesses sponsoring their IT equipment for a bit of advertising around school - not desirable, but I don't see why we cannot introduce more meaningful partnerships if they lead to actual employers having a bit of a say in what we deliver (soft skills, business knowledge), if it leads to recruitment of our students later on.

Other teachers feel the same as @noblegiraffe and the rest of you here

https://twitter.com/rhodrimorgan_/status/1585321019317063680?s=46&t=ILhG0cnh7UcMHfn6rqq_0fQ

Their letter:

medium.com/@ceitcampaign/an-open-letter-from-the-campaign-for-evidence-informed-education-c9b6f0217280

I've just seen the same thing on Twitter.

Also the shadow education secretary is doing a MN webchat- I have posted a q in there about this too!

Nope, nope, nope.

If Science became coursework based I would leave teaching.

I've finally managed to get to a point where I have a work life balance where I'm not planning or marking until stupid hours at night.

Hell, I don't even mark my students' books only their tests.

A couple of posters have suggested bringing back AS levels. Surely schools can do them if they want? (In England, that is - I know things are different in Wales).

My daughter is an ECT. In the school where she did most of her training last year (a comprehensive in SE England) all students in the lower sixth students took 4 AS levels. Then they dropped one in the upper sixth.

At her current school, students don't sit AS levels but they all start off studying 4 A level subjects and then drop one after this half term when they have had a chance to try them all out.

That seems to me to make good sense, especially in the case of subjects (like the ones my daughter teaches) that students won't have studied before. The disadvantage is that it gave her some big classes. She had one class of 30 which is pretty big for A level, I'd have thought.

They're decoupled. Sitting AS doesn't count towards A-level and therefore it is too expensive to enter a whole load of students in for an exam that will only count for something if they subsequently decide to drop the subject.

Education and health are two particular areas (and I'm sure there are several others) that really need cross-party planning over a long timescale, and much more lead-time for any changes!

I do wish that planners would stop trying to have a one-size-fits-all education system. We do need to ensure that anyone can achieve to their potential - but trying to use the same exams to assess basic literacy skills, and high flying sophisticated language ability, seems terribly unhelpful and inefficient.

One thing I've wondered about, is whether it would work to replace the "4 in GCSE English and Maths" requirement, with a functional skills assessment that all students undertake WHEN READY. So students heading for As at GCSE might be ready to take the functional assessment in, say, year 8 or 9, and others could do it later. Years back now, I did the equivalent of a PGCE in secondary science teaching, and one of the things we discussed was "scientific literacy". I wonder if the best science course for those with lower aptitude could be constructed around that idea; scientific method, how things work, household science and human biology etc.

These threads are so interesting- they always become so one sided, either primary or secondary!

All these voices saying no to reforming the curriculum- it desperately needs an overhaul in primary! It's far too much, far too young and we can't possibly teach it well. Anybody know why year 2 should know apostrophes for singular possession when a vast proportion of adults can't use them correctly?!? The curriculum is so heavy that most kids leave primary not knowing the basics as they should because we're shoving fronted adverbials and Roman numerals into them instead, making the job at secondary far worse than better!

The test machine culture makes me want to cry. The lack of understanding of how early years and KS1 children learn is ridiculous. Just because something is developmentally possible (5 year olds sitting at desks 'learning' for hours on end!) doesn't mean it's developmentally appropriate! At least Labour seemed to have a better understanding of our youngest children.

I am with you on the alevels. I only sat them a decade or so ago. Didn’t even realise they were gone!

I did 6 AS and then 3 a levels.

I wouldn’t be doing the job I am today without those minors. They enabled me to tick boxes to do the BA and MA of my choice yet continue A level in my area of passions.

Also hate teamwork. It’s horrendous. I don’t think it taught me anything except seething resentment for certain individuals which still linger to this day.

But somethings have to change. If I look at when I grew up, my education wasn’t that different to my parents bar a couple of IT lessons and an assembly on sustainability.

The world has changed drastically in the last 20 years! I was watching a documentary about hurricane Katrina and it shocked me that this was a time before smart phones.

I think we forget how quickly things have changed. And when I look at my 6 month old son I think holy fuck, your going to be 20 in the blink of an eye and god knows what the world will be like then. I am going to be 50 odd and all his pals will be standing around with visors on in the meta verse earning bitcoins by verifying a robot weeding in Mars.

HTML and python is primary is crazy. My year 7 this year are struggling with mouse skills and basics like saving and finding a file 😑

"I'm sure it has been widely researched and accepted that chalk and talk is more effective at building retention and preventing misconceptions, compared to more "creative" approaches."

Widely researched, but not necessarily accepted. Well it is in schools, but not necessarily academia. Can't remember all the details, but I know Cognitive load theory is pretty popular, but it rests on a set of assumptions that can be questioned. Can't remember all the details, but did it at the start of my EdD when we looked at the dangers of applying academic research into the classroom on face value. I could dig out my notes if you are particularly interested.

I, like many teachers, spent the early part of my career learning for myself that group work and 'creative approaches' were shit at getting the kids to learn what you wanted them to learn and that telling them what you wanted them to learn was more effective.

If it's widely accepted in schools as more effective, that's because we've done our own research in our own classrooms.