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 think if you bother to explore, you’ll find some of the brightest brains in the country. With the mature behaviour to go with it.

l mean Boris and Truss weren’t the brightest tools were they?

TBH, in primary we are in desperate need of a curriculum overhaul. There is WAY too much in it.

I'm not convinced that they're planning to slim it down at all, with their addition of all those digital skills, raspberry pis, Python and HTML. The report slates kids' numeracy and literacy skills (so expect more of that) and you'll be adding 'oracy' to your list of things to do.

What a disgusting, childish, immature, appaling comment.

Someone has to look after older people. A country that treats its old with dignity is a civilised country.

There are no words for the intelligence levels of some people.

So if you have a controlled assessment in strict conditions that is marked by an external examiner - that's basically an exam. Like art exams

Art exams are marked internally.

The Tories have completely trashed education though. It'd be like doing a twitter poll of NHS staff asking them if they trusted Labour in charge of the NHS over the Tories, and Labour had just issued a report waffling on about how great homeopathy is. The vote could well be despite, rather than because of!

(And piggy! A twitter poll! You know better! )

I taught coursework for 27 years.

None of it is marked by the exam boards.

Art exams are marked internally.

Ok, like if an art exam were marked externally.

I would hate for coursework, or even worse, “controlled assessment”, to come back at GCSE in my subject. It was hugely onerous in terms of workload and very stressful because the grade boundaries were sky high because cheating was so endemic.

There was a perception that you could “bump up” grades with coursework but I have no idea how any school managed that within the rules. I stretched the rules as far as I could short of breaking them and CA was still our lowest unit in terms of grades (though obviously still higher in terms of raw marks). That was with a merry-go-round of extra interventions in evenings and on Saturdays so that kids could be prepared for and complete a second piece if they had under achieved on the first set of tasks. It was a nightmare and they remembered a grand total of fuck all about that topic at the end of the course.

I don’t have a problem at all with terminal exams. They are high pressure but give students the time to develop over a course and it doesn’t feel like they are being constantly examined. I also think there is something to be said for judging them on what they know at the end of a course rather than as they go along. For me, the old modular GCSE rewarded natural academic ability more than hard work and the terminal exams have brought more of a balance back. Bright but lazy kids are less able to wing it through now and those who revise really thoroughly are rewarded for that better than they were under the old specs which had more optional questions and higher grade boundaries. “Flair” and style now matter less in my subject than a comprehensive framework of knowledge about the course, which is as it should be.

l left teaching a year or so ago. I taught DT. I loved coursework, and so did the students. I don’t think there was much cheating. You can see in practical work if someone has cheated ( and some of the stories l could tell!)

Its still part of DT. But now you don’t get the time to mark it.

@MadameMinimes what about the children with poor executive functioning, poor working memory etc? Some people have brains that struggle to think and remember and concentrate in the high pressure of an exam. And it’s not a small minority.
surely ability in the subject is more important than rote learning? Surely the whole point is the ability in that subject not a reward for being able to cram lots of information in your brain and then regurgitate it in a couple of hours.
art gcse is 60% coursework and substantial prep time is given for the exam. Is there an enormous cheating problem? I’m not sure there is. A lot of work is done in lessons and is it likely that a child will be able to get someone else to do all of that for them. And is an art work that takes a person 30 hours to complete less valid than one that takes another person 10 hours? I think there needs to be a reappraisal of what is actually important and fairest.
many students are bright and academic and still
unable to achieve marks representative of their ability. The answer is not that they should all just do vocational qualifications instead

Art and DT still have coursework so the point is moot for them really.

It would be a nightmare to bring it back at GCSE for science and English, for example.

Is there an enormous cheating problem? I’m not sure there is.

The 'I don't think there was much cheating' comment from the PP suggests that it's certainly an issue.

@BungleandGeorge

Having a comprehensive framework of knowledge is not the same thing as regurgitation of rote learned facts.

I disagree that ability in a subject is more important than having learned and retained the content of the course. GCSEs are not meant to be an aptitude test. They are meant to be an examination of the extent to which students have learned and understood the content of the course and the extent to which they are able to manipulate and apply that knowledge.

Children with poor working memory or poor executive function were served no better by the modular system. If anything, I’d say those students do better now based on what has happened to the data in my school. I’m not sure about the national picture. The re-take culture under the modular system was totally demoralising for those students before. In my school they used to spend insane numbers of hours in school on Saturdays and weekends under the old system only to come out with worse grades than they get now under the terminal exam system with far less stress. SEND and disadvantaged students both did better when we switched to the reformed qualifications.

It's bizarre but I honestly don't recognise any of these controlled assessment stories from my own experiences. I think my school were very by the book in terms of the rules , not massively pressured results wise at the time, and came very late to the intervention party! I really quite liked it, although 100 % coursework was the best.

What I would HATE to see back is a return to gaming such as IGCSE entries and year 10 GCSEs.

It's bizarre but I honestly don't recognise any of these controlled assessment stories from my own experiences.

If your school is very 'by the book' with controlled assessment then I guess you might assume that other schools are, but they clearly aren't. It's like insisting that CAGs and TAGs were conducted in a completely fair manner because your school did, and then looking at the results for that school where they got all A*/As after years of more mixed results. It's disappointing, but inevitable.

If there are high stakes assessments, and teachers, whose pay relies on the results of the assessments are involved in the assessing, then there will be cheating. Or 'overhelping' or whatever. You get primary schools where SATs results are not representative of the kids who turn up in Y7, and you see questions on MN like 'is it ok that the teacher pointed to a wrong answer on my DC's test?'

It's acknowledgement of this fact that means teachers can't invigilate their own subjects (or at least weren't allowed to till covid lost us all our exam invigilators).

Systems can't be set up on the assumption that people will consistently act against their own interests. Look what happened when they didn't cap MAT CEO pay. Lord Adonis admits that was a mistake.

If there are high stakes assessments, and teachers, whose pay relies on the results of the assessments are involved in the assessing, then there will be cheating.*

Absolutely. It was marking your own homework on steroids.

Agreed, but then that system needs more oversight. It doesn't need to be thrown out altogether when it supported genuinely better outcomes for some students, allowing for creativity, drafting , editing, response to feedback, deepness of thought. All of these are actually really important skills.

I ma harking back mainly to a time before all the Govian control. The one other poster on here who has said they remember teaching 100% coursework in English has also spoken positively about it...

I have read the Labour policies again - and I think we have maybe let the debate drift entirely towards the exams/not exams thing. Some of it is actually quite good!

The one other poster on here who has said they remember teaching 100% coursework in English has also spoken positively about it...

I'm assuming that the 100% coursework was also in a time where there wasn't performance related pay, data analysis or league tables. So the positive memories aren't necessarily associated with the fact that it was coursework, but an entirely different era of teaching.

Some of it is actually quite good!

And some of it makes me wonder whether Labour are in the pocket of EdTech companies. You just know what's coming...

Well, God yes. Terrifying mention of AI.

Oh no , wait, that was the Tories!

Who can tell these days!?

Doesn't this mean with all the inclusive talk that they want to push flexible teaching for Sen?

I agree they need to talk to teachers but on this specific issue don't they also need to include Sen teachers as well?

True that. But then all the horror stories of cheating and interventions at weekends are from the accountability era so we can't really base arguments about the actual method on that either!

I don't think we can hope to roll back from accountability.

Even if your school does everything by the book, controlled assessments are still an enormous amount of work for the teacher.

I mean, I'd love to see league tables in the bin, but the argument for them is 'if the govt don't publish them, then the Telegraph/Times will, and the govt will have no control over the presentation of the data'. Which is true.