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.

It's quite old-fashioned, isn't it? DD has been reading the Malory Towers books & they comment on such results, ranking children by their place in the form. We also have some old report cards for DD's great aunt, from the 1920s-1930s, and they all rank the child by place in form. However, those may have been private results, not the same as publishing it for all to see.

I can't say that I see it as a good thing, either.

Michael Gove was at secondary in the late 70 s in to the 80s, in the top (only) boys school in Aberdeen. It was really old fashioned, boys in primary were only allowed to wear shorts or kilts, even in an Aberdeen winter. They still washed your mouth out with soap for swearing, maybe he'll bring that back too?

Indigo - I doubt that your DD is ever praised for being bottom of the class, rather praised for good effort, progress etc.

If you had a child who was very dyspraxic who tried very hard in PE and (say) managed to score a goal, you'd be happy for them to be ranked according to how many goals scored and then have it pointed out to them and everyone that they are at the bottom of the league and how abysmal that is? And tell them that you won't be happy till they're at the top of the league for goals scored?

Because that is what you seem to be saying.

That is not at all what I'm saying. I haven't commented whether or not I think ranking by academic achievement is a good thing or not.

Being able to kick a ball is not important. Being able to read and write is.

It's not acceptable to pretend it doesn't matter whether you can read and write, as long as you've tried your hardest.

In the end it doesn't matter how hard you try.

Indigo, going 'Shit, you still can't read and write' isn't the appropriate response to someone who has just painstakingly formed their first letter, is it?

I know that it must be really frustrating for you to see such slow progress at something you think it so important, but shooting down any good efforts as not acceptable attainment (rather than achievement) will surely only demotivate in the long term.

LMAO at a Bible per class

In my house we have 3, a copy of the Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, Guru Granth Sahib, several Jain writings, Prajnaparamita (and no I didn't need to spell check that LMAO) and other parts of the Buddhist Canon and apart from indicatong I have an RE degree I can see that it means zilch...

But that's not always true Indigo

My friend's son has severe dyslexia: he can wrote but it's really just kicking in at 13. He has had trials for a decent level football club. If he gets in, that might just pay his rent.

Some kids will never be very literate; othes like my ds3 will read and write (he can) but have other issues that over ride that and make it pretty much defunct as a skill. It is important to try as ahrd as possible to get over hurdles but equally if not more (especially when SEN / SN are in play) to try and identify other talents and abilities that can give a child an alternative route. DS1 has ASD and whilst very bright gets low academic results. He has a wonderful talent for jewellery design that he wishes to follow up as a career. He can';t attend all his classes (goes to a Base atatched to a MS comp) but those he does attend - and those are enough to be the majority- and those he does not are chosen around his abilities and aims: so no french or Welsh, and never a missed art or science class. it's his best chance of independence and he is lucky to be in a system that supports it.

"being able to kick a ball is not important" actually Indigo, I think being good at physical activity can do wonders for your confidence.

I wasn't very good at some subjects at school when younger but because teachers praised me for trying (not for being rubbish) meant I worked harder and improved my performance so much so that by secondary school I was one of the better pupils. However secondary school was easy and I had no reason to make huge efforts because I was usually top of the class. In subjects where I wasn't and where teachers only had their favourite I gave up.

"In the end it doesn't matter how hard you try" have you ever worked your bollocks off in something, been proud of what you've done and someone has not acknowledged it? That's how the kids who have tried but are at the bottom of the class will feel. Like sh*t.

I quite like the idea of ranking. I don't need to know exactly where on the scale DC lies, just which quartile.
DC often come home and say "I got 68% in my test". This means absolutely nothing. If everybody else got more than 80% then it is rubbish; if nobody got more than 50% then it is astounding. But "68%" in isolation means absolutely nothing.
The DC now know that when they say that they got x% in a test my first question will be "what did everyone else get?".

I'll always tell the kids the class average for any test, and the top mark (but not who got it).

But I won't tell them the lowest mark.

It is not necessarily soul destroying for those bright kids which is why I said only for the top 10%.

If I think about my A Level class and top sets they do scramble over who comes first and it pushes them to achieve more and more.

Of course I don't say who came last etc but I will say the top two or three in the class were.

As I understand it, the school concerned ranks every pupil in every subject and also for effort, artistic and sporting achievement. The children are told their rank every half term but it is kept private (although I would be surprised if the children don't tell each other). In the speech which the Guardian reports Gove says that he thought this was a bit hardcore when he first encountered it and expected it to be unpopular with at least some parents and students. However, he has been told that it is the most popular change this school has made and has allegedly led to pupils petitioning the head to be moved from classes with weak teachers into those where teaching is strong.

I have no experience of this school and am not here to defend either it or Gove. My only interest is to keep this factual.

Having said that, I cannot agree with the poster who said "the end product [of learning] really doesn't matter".

By the way, reading this speech I don't think Gove is in any way saying all schools should do this. He is telling his audience what a love of learning looks like (his words) and highlighting a couple of specific examples. In this case his real interest seems to be in the apparent fact that pupils are asking to be moved to classes where the teaching is stronger, although he certainly seems to think that the ranking system has produced this result.

The Guardian does, of course, have a point of view to push, as do all newspapers. I would always go back to the original text of a speech if possible rather than relying on newspaper reports.

prh, I'm not sure where you were told that the ranks are kept private, this is from the Burlington Danes website:

" Meanwhile every six weeks students can expect to be formally assessed, receiving a National Curriculum level (KS3), GCSE grade (KS4) or A Level grade (KS5). Rank orders showing attainment across all subjects are displayed in corridors and classes are setted according to ability, with frequent opportunity for transition between sets."

Displayed in corridors. Plenty of time for scrutiny and piss-taking of the lower achievers then.

"allegedly led to pupils petitioning the head to be moved from classes with weak teachers into those where teaching is strong."

Yes, I posted about this earlier. It is astonishing students are being allowed to think that weak classes means weak teachers and not simply weak classes, or that students are being allowed to blame teachers for their own lack of progress in the first instance.
It reminds me of this cartoon of the difference between the 60s and 2010 when a kid gets a poor report.

twinklytroll, the top 10% in my school would be maybe 22 kids. So 2/3 of the top set only would be ranked (maybe a couple of set 2s would sneak in). That, instinctively seems like too many to me, as the ones in the top set left out would be in the minority. Research shows that with setting, girls especially feel very stressed in the top set and I don't think that knowledge that their results are going to be publicised (or not!) would improve their experience much.

An awful lot of people with the choice choose competitive private schools. Why do you think that is?

There seems to be a disconnect between what "professionals" believe and what most parents and children actually want. This is either because the professionals know better or because they have been persuaded by a political rather than a scientific view. Sports teams, best parts in drama etc are all based on ability and it is never considered detrimental to anyone else's interest or progress in these fields, so why is academic ability so different? What is wrong with the best being praised for something that they do well? And, also, it must be a real come down when pupils who never achieve anything but are continuously praised for "effort" enter the market place for jobs and realise that they will be mostly judged on accomplishment.

Finally, I hope all you teachers who hate Gove for what he is doing realise how popular this school is with parents. And, not just parents of geniuses. It must say something.

"What is wrong with the best being praised for something that they do well? "

They do get praised. You don't see kids with middling results in the paper jumping up in the air do you? The kids with the good results get all sorts of benefits from them, whether they worked hard for them or not.

Did you ever listen to the Taylor Mali poem What Teachers Make?

'I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.'

I expect it will be harder to do that if the kid with the C+ is being slapped down for being so low in the rankings and the kid with the A- is praised for being top.

"An awful lot of people with the choice choose competitive private schools. Why do you think that is? "

Because the people who have the means to choose competitive private schools think that their kids will be the ones at the top?

Noble,

Not really. Most private secondary schools are accessed via Common Entrance exam. Parents know the results and know what the school's requirements are. So, they send their children to great schools knowing that they have only scraped in. They know their children and not going to be at the top.

I think it comes down to how parents bring up children (along with the schools). It is for a parent to say "never mind, I know you did your best" after a child comes home with a D, not the school. A school is meant to be a preparation for life, not an environment where all should have prizes. Every parent I know with children at schools where they have "non competitive" sports days tell me that their children hate it and "don't see the point". People are motivated by achievement. You can rank every child in a school academically and still give effusive praise to the child who has come up from bottom of his class to 5th bottom, by dint of sheer hard work.

I think that if it is used along side praising for effort and praising for improvement there is nothing wrong praising the top achievers. If 10% is too high a different figure could be chosen .

Yes,larry. The OP said, "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?"

So the OP is saying that the feelings of the less able are more important than the feelings of the most able; that it is OK to play down the thing (academics) that they (the academics) are good at. As a matter of interest, would teachers like to explain why the pupils they receive as bright-eyed and eager Y7 become jaded, disillusioned and badly-behaved by Y9?

Also, I don't understand the vitriol about Gove sending a bible to each school. If you read the article, the whole idea is to celebrate the 400th anniversary of one of the most influential books in out history. Practically every aphorism in everyday usage is either from the bible or Shakespeare. (I really don't like the Secular Society's idea of sending a copy of Dawkins. I tried to read it but couldn't get past his awful, awful writing style. The bible is beautifully written and poetic, irrespective of what you think of the contents.)

"I hope all you teachers who hate Gove for what he is doing realise how popular this school is with parents."

I've just had a look at the school league table for Hammersmith and Fulham. I must say that it is a rather strange league table - the CVA scores make me wonder what sort of area it is or whether there is a problem with the primary schools!

Burlington Danes is the top school for results which isn't a single sex or private school. The top two state schools are Catholic. Schools which get good results are always popular with parents. The Phoenix School appears to have a far better CVA (and is also outstanding) although it is lower down the results rankings so will probably be less popular.

" As a matter of interest, would teachers like to explain why the pupils they receive as bright-eyed and eager Y7 become jaded, disillusioned and badly-behaved by Y9?"

I'll tell you something, it is not my top sets that become jaded, disillusioned and badly behaved by Y9. It's my bottom sets. Teaching Y9 top set is a joy, teaching Y9 bottom set is a challenge.

Trust me, bottom sets don't need any more telling that they're shit at academic work.

"So the OP is saying that the feelings of the less able are more important than the feelings of the most able"

If the result to the most able is to make them feel a bit pleased for moment and to the least able is to systematically demotivate them to the point they drop out of engagement in their education, then yes.

twinklytroll perhaps I would concede that publishing the top three, as they do in sports would be acceptable :) But competing against yourself to improve is the general message I will continue to give.

"If the result to the most able is to make them feel a bit pleased for moment and to the least able is to systematically demotivate them to the point they drop out of engagement in their education, then yes.

Eh? Why are the most able only pleased for a moment but the least able are systematically demotivated?