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.

Can I give a to Gove? Go to the bottom of the class boy...

What is the business about sending every school a bible? I'm sure they all have plenty. RE is on the national curriculum.

Oasis Academy schools give all of their children bibles.
At our local one, most were either thrown at buses, torn up or burned.

So one bible per school. In DD's school there are 1800 pupils. I knew the cutbacks were bad, but obviously didn't realise quite how bad.

What a complete and utter waste of taxpayer's money.

Praise for effort, not results, is pretty central in Matthew Syed's writing, in which it is held to be one of the key things in achieving optimal performance. Most of that is about excellence in sports, but I don't see why it shouldn't apply to academic progress too.

Given that some of the 'best' (in terms of exam results) children are very good at passing exams but can be absolutely useless in terms of social skills or practical application of their knowledge (I speak with bitter experience of many brilliant-on-paper accountancy graduates who couldn't do a simple reconciliation), I don't think that academic achievement alone is a particularly useful method of ranking.

And Gove's a wanker.

Gideon's society still give out those little red Bibles to school kids. But probably not in flowery enough language for Gove. What does he expect schools to do with one Bible that's going to somehow raise standards?

I'm not being ironic. I don't want DD ever praised for being bottom of the class. It's patronising and sends the wrong message.

I don't think you can tell how hard someone is trying. If they're staring ino space are they thinking or daydreaming?

Do private schools still do this, and if so, why, if it's so counter-productive? Genuine question.

Even setting can have a negative effect on the motivation of the kids in the bottom set. This idea is damaging and demoralising.

Indigo I think I have a pretty good idea of who tries in my lessons and who doesn't. It's not that hard.

Quite honestly I think it should be up to individual teachers and I also agree with the poster who says that sporty, musical, theatrical kids can be praised but academic ability is shied away from. I taught a class of all boys who were targetted grades C/D and E at GCSE. They were typical 15 year old boys, mouthy and pretty lazy and all into football/rugby. My strategy for getting them to pull their finger out was to rank them, literally every week. Every lesson at least one piece of work was graded out of 10 or 20 etc and at the end of the week the percentages were averaged and the boys ranked against the Premiership football teams. It was by far the best strategy I have ever used to increase motivation, the boys loved the competition and at the end of Y11 their results were stunning. I used the right strategy for my class, it might not have worked for another group.

kritur I concur. That would work with those boys - nice strategy by the way. They were being lazy.

My concern is for students who aren't academically strong. They already know they are struggling. Why tell them again?!

Actually I went to a school that ranked the students. I loved it because I was near the top in the academic subjects. I don't think it made me any more motivated for the subjects I wasn't so good at though.

lovecat I used to mark ICAEW Audit coursework papers. The lack of common sense was jaw dropping.

Setting can be demoralising, but so can sitting in a mixed ability group thinking slower than others and then never getting a word in.
Streaming is an abomination but if setting is done well, every child is in an upper set for SOMETHING - even if its cookery or boxing

kritur
my point exactly. You, the expert on the ground did what worked for your pupils. Politicians are psychopaths who should butt out of classroom management.

Elderberry - I went to private school in the 80s, and even there they had stopped doing this, as it is so negative for the kids who don't come top, as well as pressurising for those competing to stay at the top.

In a comprehensive school with kids of all different abilities (and SENs) it seems downright cruel, not to mention pointless.

Ah talkingpeace I like the idea of setting that way. I've only ever seen it done for English, Maths and Science only.

This sounds like a good plan, if used sensitively. I found the most refreshing thing about moving to the private sector was that i know where my children are in their sets. And where they should be. The combination of ranking and aptitude and CAT tests made it easy to see when they weren't doing their best work.

Learning is a process. But there are targets along the way, as well. We do not operate in a vacuum. There are millions and millions of Eastern European and Asian children who are competing with our children for jobs. They have no scruples about rankings and competition. Who do you think will come out best in the competition for jobs globally?

As posters have said above, lots of boys particularly have no problem with being ranked. They already know who's where in the class; they're not stupid!

Abra you can keep kids on track, especially with CAT tests etc, without having to publish the rankings.

That's why we set targets.

beaten
my kids comp streams mainly on academic
BUT there is also streaming in PE and arts and tech
so the athletes get to excel even if their other grades are poor
and the kids are encouraged to big up ALL of their achievements not just the ones Gove recognises.
It means that Every Child's achievements Matter

Abra
every child in every school know where they are within the class to within two places. And it is often on the wall somewhere or telegraphed in the seating plan
BUT
Gove cannot see that if he gets his way non academic kids will just stop trying and he will create the "lost generation"
ARSE

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Gove, what a plonker!

It's a King James bible though. Not seen one of those in school. In fact you'd be hard pushed to find one in church these days.

Research shows that kids who get ranked or graded work less hard, the bright rest on their laurels and the rest feel disheartened.
From my own experience of my kids, if they are given a grade that is all they take in (either happy or dejected) and ignore the teachers comments on how to improve.

But then our beloved secretary of state for education is a Journalist not trained in Education, so what worked for him in his private selective school must work for everyone.

One would hope that a journalist can do some research though?!

Are these policies being introduced by personal experience of the MPs or are they fully supported by up-to-date and unbiased research?

But you can do this and still reward for other things

What's the point?
It's soul-destroying for those who struggle, and it breeds complacency in those who don't.
Individual targets are personalised and set against expectations of the child's own performance.

And some children struggle with almost everything at school.

Some boys thrive on competition regarding academic results.

This year I am teaching a polite, hardworking and enthusiastic boy. He always puts his hand up in lessons to answer questions, always has a go at the work. He is delightful. He also is exceptionally weak in maths (SEN), he got an N in his KS2 SATs. We did a baseline assessment at the start of Y7, the same test for the whole year and he got less than 10 out of 100. He refused to tell his friends what he got (and I told them to stop asking him as it was none of their business). I kept him back at the end of the lesson to ask how he was and he burst into tears. He knows he is very weak in maths, telling everyone else just how bad he he is at maths isn't going to improve his scores, it would make his life a misery. And I don't think telling him that at least he's not bottom in cookery would make up for that.

I just read this about the academy which already does this ranking

"At one school where ranking has already been trialled, Burlington Danes academy in Hammersmith, London, it had improved pupil performance and led to students rating their teachers.?Parents love it,? he said, ?because they give information that they?d previously been denied. In the past, parents asked ?how has my son done?? and they would receive the reply ?he?s a lovely boy?. Now they accurately knew where he stood.?Results had also improved."

Now what worries me here (apart from the bizarre claim that the alternative to strictly ranking students is to say that they're lovely) is this suggestion that students are using it to rate their teachers.This is appalling. For example, our Y7 is split into two and I teach the bottom set in one half, my colleague the other. My bottom set happens to be much weaker (from KS2 SATs levels) than her bottom set, it just worked out that way. But kids looking at the rankings and seeing that my group ranks lower than her group would be encouraged to think that it's because I'm a shit teacher and she's great? FFS. What is the head at that academy thinking in allowing that sort of crap to a) go on and b) be publicised as a good thing?

If parents want to know how their kid ranks, they can (and have) asked me at parents' evening. They will get an honest answer, but put in context of my knowledge of how that student is working. Publishing a league table loses all that explanation and all the parent sees is a number.