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

Oh it's OK MrsHamlet DD can't punctuate well either and her grammar is iffy too. Do you think she can fix it in 3 days?

So whats the purpose of banging on about Labour?

Because they're one more Tory crisis away from being in government and I'd like to wake up feeling optimistic about the prospect of a Labour government, not a cold dread when I think what's coming at work.

If they could shelve any plans to be 'bold and ambitious' and instead aim for 'calm and stable', that would be great.

Like Liz Truss suddenly announcing grammar schools, you just think 'FFS no'. Or Rishi and his British Baccalaureate. FUCK OFF.

Or tbh even SLT standing up in briefing and announcing a new policy because they're doing a masters and need everyone to do extra work because of it. LEAVE ME ALONE.

@noblegiraffe Yes, a million times yes. Whenever my work email pings (actually we're now using Teams, or are we? nobody knows!) my initial reaction is, "Oh, FFS, WTF is it now?" Let alone staff meetings. We have a new Deputy (Academic) who is obviously in a hurry to make a mark and move on, so we have initiatives-a-plenty.

No. But her teachers should have given her some simple sentence structures to learn and use to get a range of accurate punctuation in.
If she has a scribe, I recommend she dictates the punctuation because that gives access to more of the marks.
Ambitious vocabulary is rewarded in AO5 and 6, so it's arguably better to use it and spell it wrong than to stay simple.

I LOVE that!
And on reflection I am also anti the very specific tech/computing specifications. Are we going to redo the curriculum every time things become obsolete? Can't we plan for flexibility? And I think we should wait for the research showing students learned more virtually than in person (it might be a loooong wait) before upping the classroom tech in general. Agree there may well be vested interests at play in getting AI etc into the classroom.

Can I ask where this suggestion came from originally? So good.

@TheHouseonHauntedHill
yes my child had coloured lenses and papers. It helped a little with reading and copying. It’s not actually a proven treatment for dyslexia though, in fact the evidence is the opposite.
and for those asking encoding skills which are used in spelling are extremely complex and difficult to tackle for dyslexics (which is totally different to just being a poor speller). In my child’s case it has improved extremely slowly and they’re a fair bit below ‘average’ for age despite some interventions and being intelligent. Still got mainly 9s for GCSEs but I think that just shows that the deficit is not for want of trying or intelligence. They often can’t pick out the correct word on a spellchecker, multiple spellings for same word in an essay, can’t distinguish the difference between some sounds.

and yes @MrsHamlet every teacher does say don’t worry about the spelling it’s only a few marks etc. but it’s the effect on their self esteem over the years that effort is going in and they’re not improving. And despite having a diagnosed disability it’s thought ok to penalise them for it. My child was 2 marks off the next grade in English, so yes was very probably due to the spelling alone

@BungleandGeorge

We had to totally ditch phonics for my dd and once we did she really came on.
She doesn't get sounds or learn in that way at all.
For spelling we broke down actual words, some special name I can't remember. We found this technique then discovered it was an"thing". .

A lot of the complaints about exams (and other assessment) seem to boil down to "Can't we please have a mode of assessment where all kids can do well?"

And the answer to that is, we do assessment largely to distinguish between one candidate and another, so a mode of assessment where everyone does well would be meaningless as assessment.

If someone has poor working memory, they are not going to do as well at most tasks as someone who has good working memory. It's right that assessment results reflect that, otherwise we will end up with students in the wrong courses and people in the wrong jobs.

I get that it's hard for parents of kids who have challenges like these, but I don't think it's possible to have assessments and curricula which manage to be rigorous and meaningful while still ensuring that everyone comes out with good results.

As for coursework---it was always about parents helping their kids (doing half the work for them, in some cases) and was open to educator bias. Coursework assessments also remove the need for revision, which is worse when you are trying to learn stuff; kids doing coursework can just cram stuff over the period of the coursework then forget about it. With exams, you have to come back to content months later and go over it again in preparation; this is better for long term memory.

What is more, plagiarism now makes coursework next to impossible.

We need exams.

@user1471427614

No, it's about an equal playing field so all children can be fairly assessed and reach their potential.
Usually dc with Sen can be offered extra time, a scribe, read and write etc.
But the problem is too many DC need extra and don't get them because they are not getting assessed or extra help.

Why is someone with dyslexia who was never taught in a flexible way ,i'e one that could help them understand spelling, being marked on that?

There is no consistency across the board.

I agree that the system shouldn't be about making everyone do well.

I also agree that exams is pragmatically the 'least worst cost effective system' we have.

However it is a bit frustrating. My DD1 was way better verbally than written. If she could have had 'viva' like exams that prompted her by asking 'why?' or 'explain more' when she was too succinct she would have been able to show what she knew.

Contrast to a couple of of grade 8/9 students I know, both of whom were poor verbally at that age. Written exams served them well, but it is likely they would have done less well under a verbal system.

When 95% of assessment is done by 1 method it favours those who are good at that method.

That's not what I said were the benefits of coursework at all actually user.

Now if exams actually improved long term memory , I'd be with you to an extent because we would have all sorts of huge claims for brain health but using and improving are different things.

FWIW , I loved exams, thrived on them and did not like coursework myself but I don't see why we should relegate students who are the opposite to some pile of 'non academics'. Creativity, editing, drafting and reworking are not lesser or less demanding skills than regurgitating learned content, which is what most exams have become. I will repeat I exempt maths from this whose exams are application, not regurgitation.

Or tbh even SLT standing up in briefing and announcing a new policy because they're doing a masters and need everyone to do extra work because of it.
LEAVE ME ALONE
Are we working at the same school(s)? 😁

With the new NPQs the need to be seen doing something new and brilliant seems to have gone through the roof.

As for coursework---it was always about parents helping their kids (doing half the work for them, in some cases)

No it wasn’t. Controlled coursework or NEA is meant to be done in school. I used to teach DT. I could tell straight away if someone’s stuff was done by someone else. I had 3 kids who were disqualified for this.

l taught textiles. Someone submitted an item that had the back neck label unpicked. 🙄

Creativity, editing, drafting and reworking are not lesser or less demanding skills than regurgitating learned content

How does coursework reward those skills? (Maths coursework was always only marked on the final product).

I was thinking about your and Dennis' (not convinced of apostrophe use there) beef with exam grade boundaries - issues there about inability to mark fluffy subjects against hard grade boundaries would apply to coursework too?

I taught a coursework subject that had endless creativity though.

Reworking and adapting had its own huge assessment criteria.

A level had ‘risk taking’in its creativity criteria

I think you've misunderstood my post- there are definitely topics which I don't bother with for a borderline group. I'm talking about the amount of content a student would have to memorise to get a grade 4 on the foundation paper. Not because it would all come up, but because we don't know which aspects will come up.

And yes, in theory, only 30% of the marks are knowledge recall- but actually, for an application question on, say diabetes, if you don't know what insulin is, you often can't answer the question. If you don't know what coronary heart disease is, it's hard to answer the evaluation question on stents and statins.

I agree it totally is frustrating. And being able to communicate in different ways, and to actually do, rather than just describe is an important skill in a lot of subjects.

But unless any changes come with a lot of funding attached to provide more time for teachers (and exams officers etc) to get their head around a new system, schools will just lose staff over it, and that won't help anyone.

There is so much content in GCSE science these days- and soooo many exams even if you aren't doing triple- that it verges on cruelty.

... and long exams in English which if you are unfortunate enough to need extra time are even longer.

But - going back to the OP - I'd prefer Labour just funded things better and rolled back removal of BTECs than trying again to rejig the exam system right now.

Evidence say otherwise because of the fuller discussion of marking and the more extensive moderation noble . Dennis is not necessarily cheerleading for coursework though. Not sure that's his point.

Some coursework does specifically reward drafting and planning processes ; some doesn't but better outcomes are seen by those who do it well. But it is isn't all about outcome. My repeated point is that is actively teaches and reinforces those skills, including the life skill of responding to feedback.

I have kept saying I exempt maths from this!

I totally disagree that we need exams, I think people putting exams vs coursework is a false dichotomy that they're the only two ways of assessing. Not all countries do terminal assessments like we do, and it could be done differently. I do think that different subjects require different things, and so what works for one subject might not work for another, so just because it doesn't work in maths or science, that doesn't make it a bad idea for humanities or arts type subjects. Labour suggested multi modal, to me that could mean different methods in different subjects. It is the one size fits all assessment that is the problem.

There's a good book called Examinations examined which looks at this, and considers some of the different way in which students are assessed around the world. There are serious inequalities in the exam system. For example, it disadvantages women, people who speak English as a second language, those who are slower writers, students with dyslexia and similar difficulties, students from lower SES and students with varying types of anxiety. If exams were part of many forms of assessment, you could perhaps buy it, but when it is the only form of assessment for so many subjects, then the inbuilt inequality sucks.

Other issues with exams are that it reduces assessment down to mainly knowledge, understanding and evaluation. Certainly it does in my subject, but Bloom says these are relatively lower order skills. There are others much higher on the taxonomy than his. Certainly for something like sociology, what would we prefer a student who could actually produce their own research project, or someone who can regurgitate the advantages and disadvantages in an exam? Where I taught the subject at my last school, after they taught research methods, the students then had to conduct their own research project using the methods they had been taught, I have to say, those that did the best in this were not necessarily the same students who got the highest in the exam on the topic... but what's the skill we really want for university students?

There are other ways of assessing, if we could look at other countries. For example, some countries do ongoing portfolios of evidence that the student needs to build up. It doesn't have to be an exams v coursework dichotomy.

Indeed, we don't even need to look abroad to see how this could work. My daughter is at a RG uni doing a AHP course and her assessment is multi modal. She has a mix of exams, practicals, essays (written at home) and ongoing short tests to assess her. So if it is good enough for unis, why not for A level?

Of course, to make it work, we might need to rethink some other aspects, like linking teacher pay to student achievement. But, the system is broken. It favours the few and we do need to rethink it. It is not a coursework vs exams debate, we need to look at what other countries are doing, if we did we could see there are better systems we could ge doing here.

This year on her (level1) City&Guilds my DD will have 10 practical assessments, 8 written assessments and 2 multi-choice exams. That hopefully will work better for her than high stakes, terminal exams. However every 'assessment' of course eats into teaching time, and what if someone is ill, that has to be accounted for, plus general time and effort for all the sessions. I'm not sure you could do that for general education certification.(Last year was even simpler, portfolio based, photos of doing stuff, with commentary.)

Oh, I love a good ed book and got quite excited. But it's £46.92!