Do any teachers on here support Michael Gove's education policies?

[SummerExhibition]

Just wondering. Everything related to curriculum changes, academies, free schools etc gets a bashing on here and just wondering if there's another side to the argument really.

chubbleigh which points in particular are like a car crash?

Could you perhaps join in the discussion and give examples, and your ideas for making it better, as opposed to jumping on the "Kill Gove" bandwagon?

I'm all for debating these issues but it's pointless if people come along with fixed views yet don't actually respond to the posts that have been made giving other valid points.

Alice you wrote You only have to ask why some parents fork out £30K a year for a type of education- and look at what they get- to see why more is needed in the state sector.

Much of the reason why educaton is better in the private sector is the supportive parenting and high expectations of their children. You pay to put your kids in with kids from likeminded families.

Yes, I would love to see more of that in the state sector. I would love all my parents to share my high expectations for their children's education.

I've worked in both systems (at extreme ends of the spectrum) and the quality of the teaching in general was far better and creative in the 'more difficult' school. However I loved teaching in the private school because the classes were so receptive to learning.

Alice I am not and never have argued for making maths A-level easier. I am saying, as the Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education are saying that making A-level maths harder - even just by making it linear and getting rid of AS level, (although Gove would apparently like to make the content harder too) will reduce take-up of Maths A-level and this would be a major issue. Maths A-level was deliberately made easier in order to improve take-up. This decision wouldn't have been made lightly and Gove doesn't even seem to acknowledge it. As for it being 'easy' now - maths is still considered one of the hardest A-levels! The Russell Group Unis that are moaning about maths being insufficiently rigorous should be told (as ACME points out) that they are not the only stake-holders in this - unfortunately Gove seems to think that their opinion is more important than the other stake-holders when in fact, as previously mentioned, they should be told to look at Further Maths as a solution to their problems.

I would also seek to further increase take-up of maths A-level by improving the Maths GCSE. I talked about this in previous posts.

Interesting, Alice.

I'd say that if you mix the sensible/unrealistic and charming/vindictive sides to Gove's content and presentation, the jury is still out as to whether he is to be applauded/vilified. Perhaps, even, the same is thought of May, Pickles, Lansley, who are the departments most of us see the effects of. The common factor is that they all ignore their professionals' advice to an unprecedented degree. Perhaps they are reserving their ears for when their experiments affect more and cut deeper, and it gets nearer election time.

My other point is that most professionals do not need telling that competition for their services is always increasing. So we all need to reform ourselves, honestly and harshly so outsiders push at already greased doors, meet and are guided by well thought out proposals and safeguards. Otherwise we will lose more of the important and inherit a more damaged field after these politicians have departed.

I didn't go to school in this country, but I do think there is a problem with adults and basic numeracy. Many, too many, don't seem to be able to do simple calculations (%ages, fractions or just adding up).

I don't know whether that has improved in the last 10 years or so, but I don't want my DC be amonst those maths phobics - and I do what it takes to avoid it.

But how did it come to this? More exciting teaching? I didn't have an entertainer for maths and still, most got the basics. I don't think there is anything wrong with a bit of route learning, where appropriate (x tables).

I think each child with average ability should be able to get a good GCSE (A-C), I don't think that's beyond anyone.

What I am making sure at the moment with my DS (7) in Y2 (average ability, I think) is that the L2 and a bit of L3 basics are rock solid and hope that will give him a good basis to work from in Y3.

Much of the reason why educaton is better in the private sector is the supportive parenting and high expectations of their children. You pay to put your kids in with kids from likeminded families

This is just not true. I am a really supportive parent with very high expectations. I am not alone in our primary school however, the ethos of the school (which is a good school with outstanding features and is a really nice, positive place) is that the kids and thier parents) are encouraged to compare themselves only to their peer group, and not to an external standard of 'the best they could achieve', which is, I think, the main distinction between the two systems.

Alice the proposed curriculum for primaries is widely available and yes, I have read the year on year targets in some depth because I have a child in Yr6 and another in Yr4. As I've said before, I have very few problems with the content - it sets the bar a bit higher but not much, we can quibble over the usefulness of tables past 10x10 in terms of teaching maths and we can certainly argue about the list of set spelling words by year. However, that's all by the bye.

The problem is the rigidity of it all. You don't seem to have read my post at all - nowhere have I said that I am opposed to targets. I just don't think it is sensible to have inflexible targets, and I stand by my assertion that when children are in KS1, the effect of rigidity is worse. The crux of the matter is that these proposals do not allow very young children to develop at differing rates, which young children (and older ones) inevitably do. What is wrong with having milestones across an age range instead of 'In Yr 6 children must achieve x,y and z'?

And yes, I do feel that very young children will be labelled as failures - not face to face or in person perhaps, but because governments constantly use test data as a stick to beat schools and teachers with. This inevitably means that young children will be tested even more. How many threads do we get on here saying 'so and so's school gets 60% L3 at KS1, why can't I get my child in there?' without anyone thinking very much about all the other things that matter about schools? Why on the other side of the coin do we hear stories of schools which on the face of it do brilliantly academically but are poor at pastoral care - but get away with this because the government does not care about this?

Going back to poetry, you seem to be saying - and please clarify if you are not - that memorising poetry is the only way for children to appreciate its rhythms, structures, content and meaning. It's the emphasis on memorising poetry that I struggle with - I read a lot of poetry, always have done, but I don't sit there memorising it. This does not mean that I don't appreciate or understand it. Should poetry be part of the curriculum from a very young age? Absolutely. Should memorising poems be compulsory? Absolutely not.

I think smaller class sizes and more resources do make a difference.

Everyone wants their children to do well and as far as I know parents do the best they can to support their DC. Some parents, especially those how have few qualifications themselves don't quite know how to go about supporting their DC.

I am opposed to rigid targets of skills to be acquired year-on-year because that is what the French system, in which my DC are educated, is all about - and it does tend to focus the minds of teachers on those targets to the exclusion of all other things (including fun and creative ways of teaching to those targets).

Hm, I never got on with memorising poetry. Always tried to get away with not doing it. Is he suggesting that should be done? Why could that be useful? Are there benefits?

But aren't there targets now? Expected Levels for the end of each year?

DD has to memorise poetry (French school). I am not convinced of its benefits, personally - at least, not for DC like DD who hear masses of quality French and quality English and know loads of songs and speeches by heart anyway. The only poetry I really want her to learn are the absolute classics but she hasn't learned any of them (yet)

I can understand learning X tables and songs' lyrics - they will enjoy singing along, but maybe I just can't appreciate poetry because I did get away with not learning it .

My major problem with Gove's agenda is that it seems entirely motivated by rolling out his own experience of a traditional, private school education of 30+ years ago rather than based on any sort of EVIDENCE of how children learn and what they need to learn now.

Take the move to remove AS Levels and return to one set of exams at the end of 2 years of study post 16+. Why? I mean are all the reasons for modularity (modelled, incidentally, on what was actually happening in the very universities which now criticise this) that were used when AS Levels were introduced now no longer current? Or is it simply that one set of policies, based on no more than current fads and the personal preferences and experiences of ministers, have been replaced by another? Teachers end up feeling frustrated, powerless and very cynical because the ideas, approaches and structures that they're meant to espouse with enthusiasm one year are then derided 10 years later.

Or less than 10 years. Well, it's not possible for teachers to be just as enthusiastic and have as much faith in 2 approaches which are in direct conflict with each other is it? And it's not possible for them both to be right.

'Well, it's what worked for me' is just not an acceptable justification for the millions of pounds of investment and time, enthusiasm, expertise that is then all put on the scrapheap a few years later. And it's incredibly stupid to suggest that the sort of education experienced by an already privileged minority is responsible for their future success. That's the other thing that annoys me, the suggestion that education is a magic key into social mobility which is somehow separate from other social forces instead of recognizing that the sort of education you get and the way in which you respond to it is largely determined by your social background.

fivecandles thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room - inequality. There's a reason why so many of the western nations that do better than the UK in terms of education have far lower levels of socio-economic inequality.

But since IDS has already decided that income is actually not that important a factor in defining poverty we can't expect his pal Gove to pay much attention to any of that.

FerryGirl I wrote a long an eloquent post addressed to you which was eaten by my dodgy broadband connection, but it basically boiled down to this:

I would like to see a secondary curriculum where reading whole texts is the norm, where excerpts are used wisely to illustrate particular aspects of literature and poetry and where there is a wide-ranging list of books available for pupils to choose from. I would not be averse to setting limits - say, a percentage of the texts should be pre-1900 - but even within that I would like to see the focus far wider than the inevitable Shakespeare-Dickens-Dryden list. Across the ages there is far more to English literature than that.

And to literature in other languages as well - I refused to read any of the recommended 'mainstream' literature for my French, English, Dutch and German A-level equivalents and became acquainted with a range of wonderful novels, poems and plays.

Is there such a thing as a 'Heritage Literature Fetish'? BTW I read some Dryden poems online during my lunch break and couldn't see what the fuss was all about. Witty, profound, interesting - yes, all of those. But no more so than many of his contemporaries, and many of his non-contemporaries come to that.

Gove went to a Scottish school so i don't think he will have sat A - levels himself ( not unknown in Scottish indepedant schools but very unusual). This might also be influencing his thinking about Maths GCSE as in the old days when I was young ( about the same time as gove) we sat separate Arithmetic and Maths O- Grades, which worked well IMHO . I remember working on practical problems like income tax and compound interest on mortgages, useful stuff. Arithmetic was regarded as an easy A to get by the clever kids too.

Interestingly, his ideas are otherwise the polar opposite of the new curriculum that has just been rolled out in Scotland.

Pointy I don't see TBH why you feel so strongly about "rigid targets"- surely the same rigid targets aleready exist so that children are assessed at KS1 and 2 ?

I've read the NC targets for each year group- term by term- and it states quite clearly what is expected of children say at the end of term 2 in year 3. This has been so for years.

What precisely is going to change?

Also pointy- no, was not saying that about poetry, at all. was saying learning it by heart has its merits in many ways, but as a writer of poetry and a lover of it as well, I wasn't saying that was just how it should be learned, appreciated, studied, whatever. No and absolutely no.

Alice I think what I have a problem with is 'creeping targetisation'. Under Labour the current NC levels were first pitched as 'average' levels and then as 'expected' levels - as in, all primary children were expected to reach them. That was where the rigidity started creeping in.

Now it's getting worse. If you read the new proposed primary curriculum, it is so prescriptive that it dictates for each year what mathematical operations a child is expected to have mastered, what spelling words they are expected to know, what reading skills they are expected to evidence. It started under Labour, now it is getting worse. All this does is encourage teachers to teach to the curriculum with its myriad targets.

My DDs have been in the UK state school system for 7 and 5 years respectively. I am a product of the Dutch system of the 70s and 80s, DH is a product of the American system in the 60s and 70s. For both of us it is the case that our DDs are learning things in school that we would not have begun to tackle at their ages. Both DH and I were considered very able, DH joined the military, I have a Masters degree. I see my DDs moving ahead of where I was at their age, and I think to myself that if I had been taught maths the way they are being taught maths, I might have been good at it.

Instead of bringing in yet another new curriculum, this one based on his own 1950s schooling, Michael Gove should spend some time looking at best practice in all sectors of the education system and basing his curriculum on that - but the way it's looking, he isn't interested in evidence.

I'm glad that after all our earlier wrangling we do in the end agree on poetry and what it can bring to our children .

wiggly the double maths GCSE suggestion is nothing to do with Gove, I'm not sure whether he has ever mentioned it. It is an idea that has been kicking around for years and Labour introduced a pilot scheme whereby some schools already sit it. Carol Vorderman also recommended it as the way forward in her Tory-commissioned maths report (which was actually quite good) a couple of years ago. Tainted by the association with Labour it was thought that the pilot scheme would be abandoned, however the news came out very recently that the pilot scheme would be extended, giving some hope that it might actually eventually be adopted. I think it's probably the way forward for maths, however Gove seems to be dragging his heels in endorsing this.

But Pointy really and truly, I don't think that from what you say- and what I understand- this is making any real change.

I have the National Literacy Strategy on my shelf here from around 10 years back ( must have a clear out...) In that, there are lists of the actual spellings children should know, by a certain date in the school year, which grammar they should know, imagery, dialogue, punctuation, etc etc.

WHat you describe for maths appears to be no different.

My own view is that too much of the less important aspects of English are taught at KS2- who needs for example to be able to convert a novel into a play/dialogue? And vice versa. Why teach young children how to write "persuasive language" when this is the job of marketing and media gurus-when those very children still leave school unable to use an apostrophe correctly ( same as many of their teachers) and not undertand few/less and other basic grammatical usage.

I don't think we are saying anything differnt really- just perhaps that my children were in primary school 15 years back and the "prescriptive targets" were there then and still are.

'Instead of bringing in yet another new curriculum, this one based on his own 1950s schooling, Michael Gove should spend some time looking at best practice in all sectors of the education system and basing his curriculum on that - but the way it's looking, he isn't interested in evidence.'

Yes.