"Target Culture" in education - a good or bad thing or in between thing?

[SparkyLark]

My son has started secondary school, and generally its been good and I feel the teachers doing a good job.

However, I have found the "target culture" a bit hard to come to terms with. Everything seems to be 5a or 4c or whatever, with future targets thrown in. There seems to be alot of concern with what grade you are in and the school really "tracks" student's progress. Even in art, they are constantly graded in this way which in this subject in particular is killing off his love of art for its own sake.

To be honest, it seems like a lot of micro-management and educating to grades rather than education for its own sake (which really makes me ).

I did question the school about this, and was told it keeps the kids on their toes, as otherwise they tend to take it easy! And its also a way of measuring teacher's progress (they are also subject of target culture now).

When I went to school, it felt a little more free, apart from exams at the end of the year or GCSEs, which I think is slightly different.

Any thoughts, especially from secondary teachers?

I teach secondary. We had a massive roll out about this. I understood all schools had moved to this. They should not have been retained for 7 and 8

my secondary school and others in our La are currently sticking to old levels - there is a working party LA wide as they want all schools to work together but its at a very early stage

There's nothing for all schools to move to. Some LA's have come up with their own system but nationally it's a complete mess.

My school is sticking with levels and is hoping that someone else will come up with something fab that we can steal adopt.

Well I lost the plot about half way through the thread but glad to see my concerns were not imaginary. Are people saying all this grading in secondary school is on the way out anyway?

I feel this grading is detrimental to everybody.

I remember when my son was in Y6 I was cross when my son started putting dashes i.e. "-" everywhere in his sentences in English. They were everywhere, and they were put in the wrong places for the wrong reasons! He told me his Y6 teacher told him that these would get him extra "points" in SATS. I was incensed, of course. Our beloved English language being manipulated, INCORRECTLY as well, for "points" in SATS.

Anyway, I shall take the advice of those who mention the strategy of ignoring them, except at year-end exams perhaps.

I feel sorry for teachers having to go along with this, I really do. It must be absolutely exhausting. Though I struggle to understand why 'educationalists' generally have implemented this. OFSTED are often ex-teachers, no? My conversation was with a "head of year" and he was pretty aggressive with me in rebutting my concerns .

But overall, just feel sad that this is what has happened in education, it all seems rather neurotic. I loved the surprise of my GCSE results when I was at school. There were no targets, just some mocks. You just worked as hard as you wanted.

um, I'm not sure about merit of surprise results. Not when a high % of leavers are aiming for Uni or further education & they deserve decent advice about whether they are on track (and look at all the moans on MN about bad advice about GCSE & A-level choices, too).

Sometimes I think it's silly the targets that y6-DS gets, about composite sentences joined by a comma here and a "which" or "who" there. His sentences have the target features but they sound terrible because DS is so inarticulate he puts words together in very weird ways.

On the other hand, it does push DS to have these weird targets that completely ignore his poor grasp of language. And he is very target driven; he personally responds to targets.

I suppose I like a surprise because I like possibilities for the future: my son is only 11, not about to go onto further education, assuming he even wants to. I also think "on track" has become exactly what that phrase suggests, which for me is part of the problem. I can't comment on the moaning about bad advice on MN, because I don't often come on here!

It must be possible to inspire and guide young people and give a good idea of progress without micro-managing things in the way I've described in my son's case. Especially if so much energy is going into this constant grading from a young age, p.s. mocks also gave a good idea of results.

I wish I understands more about the Finnish system; said to be excellent but no targets and few exams or standardised measurements. What exactly do they do that works so well?

These levels were a huge culture shock to us & dd as she went to a private junior school that didn't do SATS & didn't use levels.

Whilst it us reassuring in some ways that she seems on track academically it is a bit confusing & she herself seems bemused that she has been given an end of key stage 3 target of 6b in Art, a subject she is spectacularly awful in current year 8 level 4a) yet her target for music is 6c (but she's already currently working at 6a).

"I think that we now live in a target-driven culture. In many jobs there are regular targets to achieve. So perhaps it is good for children to get used to this at school."

What a depressing statement. True I know but not what I wanted for my DC's education.

Conversation I had with DD (yr8) in car today. She was moaning that all anyone cares about is passing exams and what their levels are, nobody cares about "learning".

It suddenly struck me that the ideal of "an education for the sake of an education" goes back to a landed gentry model of who gets educated at all, the children of the affluent who had time to pursue learning Latin or music just for its own sake. Does that indulgent approach make any sense for mass education programmes, though? For equipping ordinary people with ordinary prospects to read the newspaper, understand their bank statements or pass job interviews?

I also wondered how many kids fell thru the cracks in past because there weren't tangible targets in the schools they attended and thus poor accountability. Even if it was relatively few kids, it was still an unjust postcode-and-class-you-were-born-to lottery.

I am minded to like targets if they mean a more level playing field for all.

Well, the day they stop teaching music in schools, to replace it with lessons in understanding bank statements (just how difficult is this, btw?!...), is the day I most definitely opt out of state education. And I'll tell you who passes the job interviews - the people who have had an education for the sake of education.

"What exactly do they do that works so well?"

It's not all roses: www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/dec/04/education-finland-pisa

Pictures, it seems to me a lot of the a, b and c's seem to be fairly arbitrary, along with the multi-level targets, and just add unnecessary confusion.

Notinaminute and Rabbitstew, its where I'm coming from.

Ljkk, I see what you mean in some ways, but I would argue Education has always been about broadening the mind in some way, from Aristotle onwards. (Except for the most basic 3 Rs arguably for the masses, and even that was possibly encouraged to enable them to have access to religious thought.)

I did ask my son what he thought about the whole 6a, 3b, 4c, 5b categorisation again, and he says he doesn't mind that much (though he hated it in Art), but I will ignore the whole subject completely I've decidedfrom now on, after spending a few days wrestling with it .

Interesting article, PiqueABoo n Finland, thank you. Brings up another question/issue of mine: "streaming". I shall be back with that one...

Thanks everyone for your ideas on this.

Ah.... but Aristotle lived in a society where 90% of the adult populace was disenfranchised and mostly uneducated (slaves & many women).

And rather than advance from that state, lljkk thinks we should return to a society where 90% of the adult populace are disenfranchised and mostly uneducated?...

when did I say that 90% should be excluded?

I was thinking that Aristotle's ideal of what education was for was constructed in a society where 90% did the boring tedious laborious things and 10% were men of philosophy & occasional leisure. Is the model of learning for sake of learning viable or even desirable in modern times when education must be things like... "cost effective" and "evidence-based" and "accountable", leading to job skills and employment prospects.

That's all I wondered.

It is quite apparent that we still have no idea whatsoever how to equip children for the modern age, still less how to do this in a cost effective, evidence-based way. And given, in any event, that music has been of measurable importance to human beings since our very beginnings, why on earth would anyone pick on that as "merely" being education for the sake of education? And how can you really learn how to read a newspaper if you don't understand the concept of outrageous bias and inept reporting?

You can't measure everything you know or need to know in order to live a productive, happy, meaningful life and the world hasn't become such an appalling place yet that we no longer need to consider whether our lives are meaningful TO US, not just to the great weighing and measuring machine.

Are you a Ken Robinson fan, Rabbitstew?

Never heard of him!

"You can't measure everything you know or need to know in order to live a productive, happy, meaningful life and the world hasn't become such an appalling place yet that we no longer need to consider whether our lives are meaningful TO US, not just to the great weighing and measuring machine"

brilliantly put, thank you, rabbitstew, maybe one of the questions of our age.

Sparky:

I get the point you're trying to make - and agree every child is much more than a single test score or end of year report grade.

but....

I also think lljkk makes a very good point - for many parents their aspiration/ hopes for their children is to go on to do a degree at University. I totally accept that isn't everybody - but I do think - if that is the desired trajectory - then yes you do need to have regular results (grades of quizzes/ in class testing/ end of term tests/ end of term or year grades).

I don't think knowing this information (Teacher A assessed my child as a C student in French) limits my child or curtails their creativity - but it does suggest things to me:

1. be alert to french homework and maybe make sure more time is put in on it.

2. help with learning vocabulary - quiz DC over breakfast/ after dinner kind of thing

3. consider doing something to help - watch a french film with subtitles, but let them listen to the language. Buy a french children's book. Get on to on-line language homework websites - many of which are free. Maybe consider a holiday in France - and encourage DC to use their French - nothing does you more good than a visit to a french patisserie I find.

I think the one thing you aren't considering is that it's entirely up to you whether you are concerned about these grades - and entirely up to your child.

If it matters to your child - I kind of feel you do need to respect that. They may want to do well - because they like that teacher/ the love the subject/ they like to be best/ etc.... - and I'm not completely comfortable with parents who stiffle that competitive spirit which naturally exists in some children - and often leads to improved results for everyone (groups of kids can naturally keep tabs on how others are doing at a sport, in class, etc... and work harder to be 'as good' or 'better' than x).

Personally I've had both extremes in results - fantastic and atrocious - both 'grades' have been helpful. They've informed me there's a talent there I should be fostering (in music in our case - which is a total suprise as we're not a particularly musical family) and it's told me there's real trouble in Dodge with DD1 in maths (about which I have posted a lot on MN Primary Talk). So for me, I've found getting feedback - academic/ sporting/ dance/ music feedback from examinations/ end of year reports/ etc... very useful - in guiding my decisions as a parent and in helping me to foster my children's unique talents and help them where they're struggling.

HTH

What do grades and numbers actually mean? A grade is given in response to how well certain skills are demonstrated, so surely it would be more helpful to student improvement to know exactly what skills they could improve (and be reassured by what skills they are achieving well) than to have a number or a letter saying so (which actually doesn't contain that information at all particularly well).
The day to day / week to week progress in a classroom is made by good teacher feedback about skills achieved/skill targets and teaching targeted to improving and developing those skills. Setting skill targets for individuals and achieving them is surely more useful than expecting linear and consistent progress (we are teaching human beings, not machines!) Sometimes students will 'plateau' for a bit while they are consolidating certain skills...if you try to rush the acquisition of these, it often makes for problems later on if the fundamentals have not been solidly achieved. How utterly demoralising for someone to be told you must make an arbitrary amount of numbered 'progress' within a certain time frame, if you are in a plateau period.
Targets are not bad in and of themselves - the type of target set, however, is crucial to whether the learning experience will be worthwhile or otherwise.
I vehemently object to the idea of 'levels' and hope that the ridiculous obsession with data in our education system will not interfere with teaching our students well, which to me means engaging them with enthusiasm in discovering more about the world and all the fascinating aspects of human life, past and present, developing imagination and creativity and skills and helping create productive citizens. If a teacher did this for me, it still matters today. As a teacher, if I can do that for my students it will have a much longer lasting and influential impact on their lives than how many sub levels I 'got them through' at school.
There is no question that it is important to gather occasional information about achievement levels through testing and assessment tasks, but the majority of learning is done outside of these and it seems only sensible to allow teachers to concentrate on how to help their students improve their actual skills, rather than their numbers/letters. CATS, MIDYIS etc... are all valid snapshots over time as to student progress. Micromanagement and constant reporting of 'levels' are not.

How do you grade art - Ds was assessed as a grade 2c in art in year 5, he was so embarrassed he didn't tell us until another incident in year 6 regarding his lack of effort in art. The poor little bugger had his confidence shattered by his 2c grade - school had only told us he was below expected level. Imagine how relieved we were for DS that when he was levelled in art at the start of year 7, he managed to get a 5c and his enthusiasm for drawing returned - he's no longer embarrassed by his attempts.

Levels can motivate but they can also bruise and damage confidence, I was so pissed off with the school for sharing his low level with him and leaving him to stew on his thoughts of inadequacy, at the age of 9 it was completely uncalled for!