Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, should resign

[noblegiraffe]

Let's judge him on his record. His two stated priorities:

1. Students smoothly get the exam results they deserve

2. Schools re-open in a way that is safe for your children

Target 1: Not met. The exams fiasco will go down in education history as the biggest shambles ever, including the time Y9 SATs paper were lost by the company paid to mark them.

Target 2: Not met. Latest data shows that 55% of state secondary schools had children isolating due to contact with a positive case at school on 22nd October. 39% of secondary children in Knowsley were out of school - an area with one of the highest deprivation rates in the country.

In addition:
Universities return - turns out having massive movement of young people around the country led to massive outbreaks of covid. To be fair, that was impossible to predict.

Free School Meals: Gavin tried to blame Rishi for not giving him any money. Rishi countered with the fact that Gav hadn't asked for any money. Gav himself voted to let children go hungry so clearly wasn't going to fight for it.

Laptops for the disadvantaged: In the best DfE tradition of dropping shit on headteacher's laps just as they break up for a holiday, the number of laptops allocated for disadvantaged kids was slashed just as it became a legal requirement for schools to provide remote education for isolating pupils. How can they fulfil that requirement without the resources, Gav?

Throughout this, Gavin has been basically invisible, except for a photoshoot with a whip.

YABU: Gav has met his targets and deserves a pay rise
YANBU: Gav should resign

No, my mistake, that was Alan Johnson. Don’t even remember him as Ed Sec tbh!

Not me!

Nor me, ffs! I don’t think anyone thought I was Alan Johnson!

Has there been any education secretaries in recent years that teachers have actually liked? And, if not liked (because managers are not there to be liked necessarily) actually respected?

@RedskyAtnight

Has there been any education secretaries in recent years that teachers have actually liked? And, if not liked (because managers are not there to be liked necessarily) actually respected?

No, but I doubt that will ever happen, tbh.

Teachers tend to be left wing, for starters. So a Tory government will automatically lead to complaints.

For the most part, the teachers currently working in schools will have the Blair / brown years as their point of reference for a left wing government and I’m not convinced that was a great example of education working effectively (I am not sure it ever has, tbh, but I don’t think it was shockingly bad pre Covid.)

Plus teachers do like to moan. And I am a teacher. And I do moan

I'm not sure even Tories would be happy at the level of underfunding and complete mess that education has been in for the last 10 years.

Shirley Williams and Estelle Morris were liked and respected by teachers. Estelle Morris actually resigned, because she felt she wasn't up to the job. I wish some of the present cabinet would emulate her.

@noblegiraffe

I'm not sure even Tories would be happy at the level of underfunding and complete mess that education has been in for the last 10 years.

It’s about perception. I don’t think it’s been a complete mess, tbh giraffe. I think this last year has been but I’m not sure it could have been avoided.

I wasn’t born when Shirley Williams was education secretary! I’m not sure 1976-1979 can in any way meaningfully be applied to today’s discussion. Estelle Morris wasn’t even in post for a year.

Beg pardon, she was. June 2001 to October 2002.

It’s about perception.

Which bit about chronically underfunding schools, teachers quitting in droves so there are critical shortages, the mess of the rushed exam reforms etc can be seen as a positive thing?

No, there hasn't been a good one because it's an appointment that isn't sexy and no one wants it. Gove did want him (for a while) because he is an ideologue. But vanishingly few ed secs have had any background in education at all, much less understood it.

But what is being missed from the discussion possibly because he is so hidden away none of us know, is that Gav is apparently deeply unpleasant. It sometimes does show.

ps Shakespeare was compulsory at KS3, most people taught more than a scene of Shakespeare and, in terms of English, I'd rather like coursework (and certainly the interesting Spoken language unit) back. So much less stress for the kids then. The last 10 years have been very damaging in terms of a final assessment end goal treadmill.

I miss the spoken language study. It was genuinely interesting.

You could tell Gav was a dick when he did the whip photoshoot instead of making a statement about exams.

Wasn't it something in the region of 5 billion that was cut from the Education budget since 2015 up to 2019? If that's not a disaster I don't know what is!

@noblegiraffe

It’s about perception.

Which bit about chronically underfunding schools, teachers quitting in droves so there are critical shortages, the mess of the rushed exam reforms etc can be seen as a positive thing?

That’s why I said prior to the Covid year. Do you ever actually want to discuss anything giraffe or is it just shouting? Just wondering as I actually CBA with the latter.

rainy you said:

I don’t think it’s been a complete mess, tbh giraffe. I think this last year has been but I’m not sure it could have been avoided.

Did you not mean that you thought it wasn't a complete mess prior to this year?

It has been a mess prior to this year.
Getting rid of coursework to replace it with controlled assessment then scrapping that but retaining speaking and listening in English and then suddenly removing that mid exam series - that's a mess.
GCSE computer science having 40% coursework but that suddenly being removed from the assessment mid exam series - that's a mess.
Funding cut year on year - that's a mess.

Yes, correct giraffe.

Before Covid I thought there were things about the education system that I would change but I personally found it preferable to 2002-2016.

English was appalling before that mrshamlet

It was a crippling workload for the teachers.

Students who should have been getting As ended up with Cs because of a result culture in many schools.

It was awful.

But the things that I listed were for before Covid, the underfunding, the mess of exam reforms, the critical shortage of teachers, and you said I was just shouting

I know, rainy. I well remember working for a hod who wanted every child to do umpteen coursework drafts and who insisted that I couldn't give a child zero for speaking and listening because it would "reflect badly". The child was an elective mute.

We'll ahve to agree to disagree rainy. You don't thinkt here is a result culture now?

We spend entire POS doing multiple practice assessments, having exam revision sessions (oh, sorry - 'intervention'), teaching texts in 8 seconds flat so we can spend 8 months 'revising'. I have never known English teaching to be so dull. Been doing it a long time.

Nothing wrong with redrafting coursework :checking, drafting and editing is an important life skill. My workload is MUCH higher now.

And, let us not forget Gove arbitrarily removing beloved texts because he wanted to (ie he thought they were too left wing). His echoes still persist in the declaration a couple of weeks ago that there appears to be a valid opposite to anti-racism and that teaching anti racism is some kind of lunatic propaganda.

@noblegiraffe

But the things that I listed were for before Covid, the underfunding, the mess of exam reforms, the critical shortage of teachers, and you said I was just shouting

Apologies but sometimes it does seem you don’t want to hear a view that might not align with yours.

chronic underfunding - OK, but you know, not all problems have a financial solution. This is where I do sometimes clash with people (not intentionally but you know) because unfailingly in many circles it’s - we want more money, more funding, more support. But inevitably when you do that a fucktonne gets wasted.

mess of exam reforms - I think there are things I’d do differently but I don’t think I’d call it a ‘mess.’ I think as I’ve said prior to 2017, things were in a far worse state. But I’m coming at that from a one subject angle, of course.

critical shortage of teachers - again, that’s subject dependent and area dependent. And that’s been the case since the dawn of time: there might be a national shortage but some areas are still doing just fine for recruitment thank you very much. And a lot of that is linked into high living costs in that the most critical shortage are some parts of the SE. But attempts to address this like Teach First are also dismissed.

I think the problem is there isn’t a golden era in education. My own 1980s primary education was non existent. My 90s secondary education not much better. My teaching years 2002-2010 were a mess. Cheating, awful behaviour, ridiculous and expensive schemes, stupid ofsted expectations (no one made progress in the first five minutes, shock horror!) the hell that was APP (remember that!?) and other wanky things.

Then the tories come in and unsurprisingly there’s a new load of wank. Capability changed and it’s way too easy to get rid of teachers now. Knowledge organisers need sticking where the sun doesn’t shine. There have been grave errors on exams too, that should never have happened. There’s also been an increased focus on mental health which has opened the door for snake oil merchants.

So can I honestly say any is notably better or worse? No, tbh. That’s what I’m getting at here. There isn’t a magical solution. Maybe it will always be wank

MrsH ah they were the days weren’t they ... I am still surprised I wasn’t struck off, some of the things I was forced to do by corrupt SLT.

Sure piggy but there is still an element of objectivity on the day itself which isn’t the case with coursework/CAs. I can honestly say I have high workload now (well I don’t as I’m on ML but y’know!) but it’s manageable. Before that it wasn’t. Year 11 and 10 on a constant CA cycle - nightmare.