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.

"As a matter of interest, are the exams ever manipulated to suit a political agenda"

I am but a mere classroom teacher, who am I to guess at the real intentions of our Lords and Masters?

Society, as you will be aware, thinks that the next generation is rubbish at maths, despite record numbers of Cs etc. Employers bemoan the lack of numerical skills, the inability to solve real life problems and apply maths knowledge. So, to address this, the functional maths qualification was dreamed up. It was to be a free-standing exam and if you took it and failed, you wouldn't be awarded a C in maths, even if you got high enough marks in your maths exam. Schools could voluntarily sit the exam in June of one year, with it becoming compulsory for all students from September of the same year. After that June sitting, the requirement to pass it was scrapped. Who knows why, perhaps it was too problematic to organise. Anyway, it was decided that this functional maths element was to be incorporated into new maths GCSE exam papers instead. These functional maths questions are more challenging than previous exam questions.

And it is well known that more challenging papers lead to lower grade boundaries.

I am very interested to see if next August whether the government will be presiding over very low GCSE maths grade boundaries, or a drop in pass rates.

" I like the sound of these new elite maths schools"

It sounds like a nice idea but I'm not sure why Gove isn't just using the £600 million to give to sixth forms and colleges who already do maths and further maths to work with the universities instead.

Oh yes, because he wants to push his Free Schools agenda, of course.

Do you think the 'next generation' is rubbish at maths?

IME of primary, mathematical reasoning has soared in the last ten years.

I think that the 'next generation' is certainly poor at the functional reasoning and unscaffolded questioning which the new GCSE seeks to address. I think that it will take a while to bed down into the KS3 and KS4 curriculum to see real improvement.

I also think that the move to two tiers was a mistake. I think that the new higher tier GCSE doesn't sufficiently challenge the more able students because as lower grade questions were included, this didn't leave enough space for many A-A* grade questions. I also think that it is not good for the reputation of maths to have an exam where you in some cases only need 25% to get a C, or 40% to get a B.

Seems odd this discussion seems to have split into two poles, peer ranking vs nebulous grades for effort. They seem to be taken as representing the conflicting ideals of the Daily Mail/back to basics school of robust elitism on one hand vs caring/sharing/inclusive education on the other.

As far as i can see neither of these gimmicks methods reflect the main way that work is actually graded in both private and state schools and by exam boards - that is by attainment.

i.e. to get a Grade A at GCSE/A level or a 5c or whatever in SAT levels you need to demonstrate x, y and z in the work.

In these kind of absolute grades of course handfuls of As and A*s are celebrated, but so too can lower grades, for pupils who really had to try hard to achieve that level.

Is anyone in favour of nebulous grades for effort on here? There's been some discussion about what effort means...

FallenMadonna - but that's what I mean - the whole discussion on this thread seems as if there are two alternatives: ranking against peers vs grades for effort.

It seems to be ignoring the fact that the grades that really matter are the absolute ones (did you get English and Maths at C or above, did you get the A levels you need to go to Uni etc...) and what they stand for - do you actually understand the concepts/have the skills you need to succeed in your next step in life?

I havent read all of this but so much seems along the same lines. No one wants their less than top of the class DD or DS to know that in case it knocks their self esteem. I can understand that, but in life there are knocks and some are more able than others and self esteem gets knocked. Best learn early.
Effort is already praised and look where that gets us.

Just for historical accuracy it was always the case that pupils knew their position in class when I was a lad. I not sure it affected me too badly. It was also the case in university that graduands were not only told their class of degree but their actual mark and these were published openly so everyone could see who was top and where they came in the order. It was accepted as a fact of life and no one felt hard done by.

But society is different now.

Yes, exams have been dunbed down and I do fear many of those who are considered good at maths these days are not good. Not telling pupils precisely where they stand is leading to a lot of high self esteem and over expectation.

All our kids have talents and personal attributes we can be proud of - why so much emphasis on not letting them know realisitically what the score is?

I have no issues with my DS being told he was bottom of the class and a duffer if that is what he was. I have no issue with a Bible in every school either although I cannot see how it will improve education any. I once worked in a school which had no Bibles at all. I was asked to teach RE. The students started telling me all sorts of things that according to them " the Bible said/ was" ...... so I got my own copy and shoved it under the barrack room lawyer and told him to show me where it said what he said it said - Horror! he had never read it and he was supposed to be commenting on it in GCSE. How do you expect any child to know what they are discussing if they havent read the text that is supposed to be the basis of their study?

Why do I suspect, jabed, that neither you nor your DS have ever been told that you are 'bottom of the class and a duffer'?

You might change your mind if you saw the effect that it does have on children.

"it was always the case that pupils knew their position in class when I was a lad"

I expect the children at the bottom of the pile were less than thrilled back in your day too. I don't know how far back that was, but with inclusion there are now children in mainstream schools who would have been in special schools before they closed most of them. Is it inclusive to publicly highlight their academic deficiencies?

noblegiraffe - you are wrong. I have indeed been told I was a duffer. I cannot say it was the end of the world. I knew it to be the case anyway. I just put my mind to doing something about it and working out what I could do.

I have one child who would be towards the bottom of the class and one who would be towards the top (definitely at the top in some subjects).

Tbh I can't see that either of them would benefit from ranking. Both need to focus on what they actually have to learn rather than on whether Emily is doing better or worse than they.

As a university teacher, I can always tell the students who come from schools with a heavy culture of in-year competition. On the whole, they don't do as well as other students: they are too busy looking sideways at other people to engage with the thinking. Once you've weaned them off the idea that their position in the group matters more than if an idea is viable, they do a lot better.

The reality is that when children reach GCSE and A level they get graded anyway and it is hard to keep up any pretence of everyone being equal from then on in. Sometimes it comes as a big shock to the children in my experience. They have been told how well they are doing and have no external measure and then suddenly the GCSE grades appear and it becomes obvious they were not doing so well after all.

Noble - I am the Mum of a child who is absolute bottom of the class. And when I tell you I wish she was told this you just accuse me of being horrible to her.

But at the moment she thinks there is no problem at all because school are continually telling her what good work she does, and then they design the lessons so they require her to do no reading or writing.

She believes thus message school give her that everything absolutely fine, and so is not willing to do extra effort at home.

School are doing her no favours. They are patronising and have incredibly low expectations of her. It doesn't matter to them if she learns to read or write or not. They can always get her a reader, writer and extra time in exams.

Do you know parents don't even have to give consent for children to be given these concessions in exams? I can't stop school from giving her a scribe.

Extra help in exams and telling her how brilliantly she is doing is not in her best interests.

I agree with twinklytroll - I think that a system that awards prizes to the top three in a class is a useful motivator, and I also think that schools can award prizes for qualities that are not academic (eg most selfless student, best teamworker).

Cory exactly my thoughts.

Jabed - at DS's school they have a target attainment grade each year in each subject depending on ability and how long they have been studying it - 5a, 5c etc...and an attainment grade each term which is meant to show whether they are on track for their target. It seems like a sensible system, to measure kids against their own benchmark and avoid nasty shocks at GCSE time.

Do most schools not do this?

I admitted last year on MN to putting these grades on a graph to discuss with DS, so we could see progress each term and the gap to reach his target. I was pretty much told that this was cruel and unusual behavior by a parent.

It seems much better to me to privately measure a child against their own previous performance and agreed target than against 'the best in the class'.

Himalaya - I don't think there is anything wrong with your graph system - it is important for a child to measure his/her own progress, and the best way to do this, IMO, is to visualise the gap between past attainment and future attainment goals and to go about filling in the gap in a systematic way.

However, setting a child's attainment goals as a function of past attainment is a bit limiting. Set the benchmark higher and, IME, they achieve more.

jabed -when I was at university the marks were a secret! We were never supposed to know our exact mark in any exam/assessment. I did know some of my marks because I could read upside down and my tutor had them in front of him when discussing the mark.
I often wonder what they do now when my old University issues transcripts, and have vaguely been interested in seeing if they could provide one for me.
Yes we did know the grade of the final degree, and before that which grade we were in, or which grades we were on the borderline for.

"Do most schools not do this?"

Of course they do. Ofsted require that children know what level they are working at and what level they are targeted at.

If jabed thinks the first time a child is graded is at GCSE time then I don't know where she has been for the past couple of decades!

Indigo, I have no idea how your child doesn't know that they are bottom of the class seeing as every other child I have taught seems pretty aware of where they are in the pecking order. Isn't she tested and leveled? Isn't she in a set for at least some subjects? Isn't she aware that she gets extra support that other students don't? Isn't she aware that pretty much every other student can read and write?

Noblegiraffe - that's what I thought. Thats why i can't understand why people seem to be making out that Gove is promoting some revolutionary method for grading academic performance, and that schools are all handing out prizes and grades for effort.

Bonsoir - I think the target should be set high but achievable, which will be a different level for different children. There is no point telling every child in a comprehensive setting that they should be measuring themselves against the highest achiever in the year.

Himalaya, Gove isn't suggesting that children should be graded on their academic performance, he is referring to a school which tests the children every half term (as is pretty usual) but then posting the results for the whole year group ranked from highest to lowest in order in the corridors and classrooms.

I think that some people are debating whether praising for effort should be done at all, not that it is the only thing that is praised. My school, for example grades on effort and behaviour (e.g. good or inadequate) and attainment (a decimal KS3 level) on each report. Some people are saying that the effort grade should be dropped.

Having seen my DD's Y1 teacher make decisions about Y2 streaming, and get it so very wrong (fortunately not for my DD but I intervened big time with the headmistress), with some children in completely the wrong groups based on a single teacher's opinion of what those children's capabilities were, I think there is something to be said for impersonal external goals!

Bonsoir - what do you mean by impersonal external goals? Not having a go at all, just genuinely don't know what you think should happen.

Noble - she's only in primary school (Y4). So she's not told the results of her tests / work, and the school don't set.

She's aware every other student in her class can read and write, but keeps on being told everything's fine and she's doing well and she's wonderful.

And this is the message she listens to.

Crucially, it's also the message school believes. It's OK to not teach her to read and write, because she's very bright and happy and confident and school have done everything they could for her. If she fails her IEP that's not their fault. If she doesn't make any progress that's not their fault.

School won't take responsibility for teaching her to read and write. Nor will they make her take responsibility for learning to read and write.

All school cares about is everyone trying hard and being happy. :( And ticking a few boxes to say that they're doing stuff for kids with SEN.

Indigo does she have a statement? The Annual Review would be a good place to bring this up.

Otherwise, what level is she working at? Are you saying that everyone else does reading/writing but she does differentiated work that doesn't involved literacy?