Competitively rank students by results say Gove

[noblegiraffe]

Our esteemed Education Secretary has praised an academy in London which ranks pupils every term by their results in each subject.

Now I'm sure that parents of the kid who comes top will be pleased and proud, but what about the poor kids who are less academically able or who have SEN who are destined to by told term after term that they are rubbish? That their achievements, though they may be the product of hard work and great determination are of less value than a more academically able student who has slacked off and winged a good result on the test? How will that do anything but completely demotivate them and destroy their self-esteem?

What the fuck is he thinking?

If any of you have any respect for Gove as Education Minister, I sincerely hope that this changes your mind.

claig, I would expect that the most important reason on your list is time. I am always in awe of how much time the PE teachers put in to inter-school competitions, driving the kids around the country (they're all licensed to drive the minibus - another reason to put teachers off!) and standing out on the pitch after school and at weekends.
But I imagine that PE teachers have a much lighter planning and marking load than a core subject which would help.
And a sports match is relatively easy to organise, everyone knows the rules and just turns up.

Yes, I agree. Otherwise it starts becoming a 7 day and night job

"Noblegiraffe's arguments have made me change my mind."

so unexpected on an internet forum. Thank you for saying so, claig :)

"Whoever gets top mark is very proud of doing so and wants to maintain that position"

It is slightly more complicated than that. I find in the top maths sets it is usually the same student who gets the top mark each time and they don't normally have to work hard for it. They're naturally gifted, don't need to revise etc. In the lower sets, it is not normally the same person who gets the top mark each time. If they get the top mark twice in a row, they definitely move up a set. Students are sometimes more reluctant to move up a set than you might think - they don't like leaving their friends, don't want to get used to a new teacher, don't want to go from being top of the group to the bottom, worry it will be too hard. On the other hand, encouraging competition for the top spot might mean a heightened sense of expectation when the results come out and a bigger sense of failure if they had their hopes raised for moving up a set.
But mainly, I really don't want to encourage the idea of moving up a set as a prize, because then moving down a set would be a failure (the set moves up and down happen at the same time). I try as much as possible to encourage the idea that sets are about getting the right teaching at your level, with the lower groups getting more support and a smaller class e.g. 'Am I in the bottom group because I'm thick' 'No, you're in this group because you need more support in maths and in this group you'll be able to get that'.

Yes you are right. Moving between sets is disruptive, because they have to leave their friends etc. Too much change is no good, they need stability as well.

One of my favorite quotes about being a teacher

"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could! I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor, and I can make an A- feel like a slap in the face! How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best!"

If you are going to grade kids then it should be a mean of 50% effort and 50% ability.

And if you are going to rank then you need to do it nationally.

My grandmother was forever telling me how well my cousin was doing, being top of the class in everything. She attended a school with the option of going to a grammar at 14, she didn't go to the grammar but obviously a lot of high achievers leaving made it easier for her to come 'top' than me in a comp with all abilities.

'I think that the big phonics drive of recent years emanated in the States and then grew in strength here, though I may be wrong on that'

It did start in the US. However, all the US research that pointed to the efficacy of Systematic Phonics was done on 5-6 year old children, at the youngest. The research was then imported to the UK, swallowed whole, and the results applied to 4 year olds.

A lot of the rest of the ConDem educational policy seems to have been imported lock, stock and barrel from the US and is based on the No Child Left Behind Act foundation, most of whose operations have yet to bear fruit of any significant kind even in the country for which it was allegedly purpose-built.

mathanxiety, that is fascinating. That's what I had read before. I remember reading something about the phonics and No Child Left Behind being right wing Republican backed ideas. A lot of money was made. It is good for business.

We do tend to copy a lot of the ideas from the States several years later.

NobleGiraffe slightly OT but to come back on your comment re: natural talent. I am surprised how often 'natural gifts' are really 'hidden practice'. I've read about it (Matthew Syed, Dweck etc) and have since seen it in the classroom etc. Also seen how early decisions about a child's overall intellect can carry through their school careers and become self fulfilling prophecies.

Noble,

You clearly have experience that I do not have. However, what I will say is that a lot of parents like me who can choose the private sector will do so because there is a culture of encouraging or recognising excellence. Of course, I tend to believe that my own children will benefit from that. However, even if they end up not excelling, I still prefer that environment for them. I do think that the emphasis on the bottom 10% as opposed to the rest is one reason why the state sector loses a lot of bright pupils with influential parents, who could be an asset to the state sector.

Also, globally, the UK does incredibly badly at maths and science on all the objective comparisons. This is a tragedy and has to be due to something. It is clearly NOT funding, as places like China have a hell of a less money per capita to spend on education and get far superior results. Ditto most of Asia.

En passant, it is true that if you are bright at maths and science, you do not necessarily have to work that hard. Up to A level, I came top at all these subjects and never had to work too hard. On the other hand, as Claig said, I was considered a geek and rather uncool. I am not sure anyone was jealous of me aside from maybe four of five other "geeks".

Academic excellence is valued far more highly in Asia, as I am sure you know. As for not working hard primary school students routinely spend 4 hours on maths/science/english after school, sometimes even longer. Whilst some may catch on faster, I believe that when the basics are logically explained in maths (for example) and rote learning is emphasised early on to secure number facts etc even the 'average' can go on to excel. What would happen if our primary students did similar? I think we'd see an incredible improvement in results.

I have a feeling that here in the UK things are going to change, as standard of living inevitably drops for most and the recession continues to bite values will begin to shift. Celebrity culture will dwindle and necessity will mean that things get a bit more serious. Parents will want their children to have a competitive advantage and an edge that will mean better life chances. This will mean study centres in the high street as in China and other parts of Asia. Could be wrong of course and imagine this will be some time away.

I am not sure we want to emulate everything about Asia. We are starting from a (relative) position of strength and they do have very high stress levels due to very very competitive education. We just need to move more in that direction and get a balance which works for the UK. On the other hand, state education just has no reason to be smug. The only thing that matters is international comparisons ever since the government started dumbing down exams competitively (since they stopped benchmarking them). We are just not doing great internationally and need to have a serious think about how to improve.

Why do international comparisons matter so much? Our education systems are so different, how are comparisons meaningful? What do they measure exactly?

Our school ranks pupils in most subjects - it seems to motivate them. I also think it prepares them better for the 'real world' where results matter more than effort.

Imagine a private school Hula? We were told our position in class (not publically)and test scores were common knowledge. Worked well - not a private school.

Cortina - agreeing with Larry, having been the top of the class in maths and getting an A at A-level without any revision, I am sure that there are students I teach for whom top grades are effortless. This is probably a maths thing though, and one of the reasons that gifted young children can get an A* at GCSE maths in a way they don't seem to in History or RE where the answers require a certain level of maturity.

Some of the effort vs. achievement dichotomy thing stems from having a system where the grade depends to a large extent on the final exam. In places where effort must be consistent and where effort is clearly defined and quantified (positive contribution to class, homework always done, attainment on regular tests) the line between effort and attainment is blurred as you can't pull it out at the last minute. The DCs who graduated from high school in the US (oldest DD and DS) had to work flat out from day one of high school to secure their grade point average four years later.

For them, even doing Advanced Placement level courses where the result hinged on the exams was an example of the good habits/solid work ethic that the system geared towards consistent effort engendered in them paying off.

When I was at school we had a report every term and it showed your class ranking in each subject and then an overall ranking in the whole class. It made not a jot of difference to me, I did what I could.

"Also, globally, the UK does incredibly badly at maths and science on all the objective comparisons. This is a tragedy and has to be due to something."

I think there are many, many factors which lead to this, for maths (can't speak for science).
First off, it isn't cool to like maths, and maths leads to boring jobs like accountancy rather than cool jobs like (weirdly popular dream job with my students) marine biologist. Parents will happily take their children to museums for culture or make them watch nature documentaries, but talk to them about maths?
Secondly, it is socially acceptable to be rubbish at maths. So many people say 'I was rubbish at maths at school' to me at parents' evening in front of their kids, or 'No point in asking me to help with his homework'.
Thirdly, we will never compete with Asia educationally while their schools are backed up by exceptionally academically driven parents - good old Tiger Mother and our schools are plagued by parents who complain when homework interferes with extra-curricular activities and don't back up the school with sanctions for poor behaviour. There's a thread on here somewhere with parents complaining that schools expect them to teach their kids too.
Fourthly, our curriculum teaches and tests maths in discrete little units. The kids do areas of triangles and do a test on it. They do Pythagoras and have another test. They know that a question is a Pythagoras question because that's what they've just learned and it's a question that says 'here's a triangle, find the length of x'. They are used to little 2 mark questions where the question tells them exactly what they are expected to do to work out the answer. This is why I confidently predict that on the maths paper my foundation kids sat in November, none of them will have got the surprising 4 mark question which had a picture of a triangle with the hypotenuse and one of the sides and asked them to work out the area. Because it was an area question, it won't have occurred to any of them they they might need Pythagoras.
The 2 mark scaffolded questions are how the exams have been for some time now (the exam boards are to blame for this I think), although there are now measures being taken to fix this with the new specification - hence Edexcel's effort with the triangle question. I will be very interested to see what happens with the grade boundaries - if they want to make the exams more rigorous and challenging, then they must expect a dip in results if the change is to have value.
The way we chug through the curriculum is down in part to the drive to get as many students a C as possible - and in the past, like I said, there has been no need to prepare them for in depth questions so we haven't (league tables are king, teach to the test).
The brighter students for whom a C is guaranteed still chug through, instead of using the extra time to develop their deep mathematical thinking skills, we tack on another GCSE in statistics. Then they get to A-level and flounder because the questions don't tell them exactly what to do.
With the addition of functional maths and longer questions to the exam paper, it will take a while for the changes to bed down, but I know that in my teaching, I don't have time to take a week or 2 to do some in-depth problem solving because I've got to get them through percentages and fractions before the next test. And I'm also reluctant to do the in-depth work because a) I haven't been trained how to do it well and b) the kids are generally scared of any question they can't answer immediately, and give up, causing behaviour problems.
Fifthly, the primary school maths curriculum appears to be full of stuff that could probably wait until secondary school and short on the repetition repetition repetition and more repetition of basic numerical methods that we want them to have as second nature. When they get to Y7, the amount that can't remember how to do long multiplication or even how to borrow correctly when doing subtraction is quite frustrating. And those who only know 'chunking' and not the 'bus stop' method of division then come unstuck when we start dividing decimals. Not blaming primary school teachers, they are as bound by tests and league tables as we are in secondary.

Anyway, that was quite long. Sorry about that, although I could probably add much more :)

My problem with the "international" comparisons is that they measure rote learning, rather than analytical thinking.
It is analytical thinking that leads to inventions, patents and development.
Rote learning that suppresses individuality achieves the opposite.

Finland always comes high up on such tables because it drags ALL kids up to a certain level - but does not encourage excellence.
The Far Est is EXCELLENT at applying technology and brute force brain power to existing problems (such as manufacturing) but for the innovation you have to look to the more individualistic societies, particularly the US and the UK.
Remember that because of the brain drain, disproportionate numbers of UK schooled researchers work at overseas universities.

So all in all, the fact that the UK's normal distribution of results is a bit wider (top and bottom) is not such a big problem.

The long tail of non-achievement across the board, subject-wise, is a huge problem, and complacency about it is dangerous. So is the fact that Britain doesn't expect students to keep doing maths all the way through school to 18, imo. Nobody is keeping a tally of how many Britons work abroad in research and development and there are no medals awarded to Britain for exporting whatever talent it manages to generate. Intellectual property developed by Britons abroad develops the economy of the place they work, not Britain.

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noblegiraffe, you say "There's a thread on here somewhere with parents complaining that schools expect them to teach their kids too".

I think you missed the point of that thread. The point was not about parents complaining about homework or supporting school. The thread was about parents being involved in education and being worried that schools do not do what they should be, ie teach the children, so the children are not learning at school and coming home with huge gaps that need to be filled at home.

I doubt this is the position in the Asian examples you refer to. Coming from a similar culture to the one you refer to, schools were massively pushy and academic, no baking activities would have been tolerated by our parents!!

Agree with onceinawhile. It's not complaining but asking a very important question about the quality and provision of education.

It's not acceptable because many children will be disadvantaged because their parents will be unable to help them for all sorts of reasons.

I've just reread the thread, and as I recall it wasn't just parents whose children go to apparently crap schools who were grumbling about the expectations the school makes of them.

Claig, it is true that many children will be disadvantaged through having parents unable to help and the state system tries hard to equalise this - but then you get Larry complaining about state schools focusing resources on the bottom 10%! I don't think it is a good idea to say that because some children have no parental interest then that parents shouldn't be asked to do anything simply to level the playing field.

Cortina, yes it is a private school

noblegiraffe, I don't agree at all that 'maths is uncool and leads to boring jobs'. Most jobs in Engineering, Science, Banking etc require a high level of maths and in most countries these are hightly respected (more than your suggestions of a marine biologist ).