Gove - a clarification on marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar

This link to the Channel 4 fact check site confirms that, whilst the original method - 5% of marks which could be awarded for 'correct' spelling, punctuation and grammar - no longer applies, pupils can still be marked up or down in those GCSE subjects that involve extended writing, according to their abilities in these areas.

Unlike Gove and Gibb I'm happy to acknowledge inaccuracies.

Whether this emphasis on 'correct' spelling, punctuation and grammar makes any sense is another matter entirely. There was an incisive letter on the topic from Michael Rosen in yesterday's 'Guardian'. Rosen contributed a very forceful chapter on the same topic to Hard Times for English Teaching which I edited for the Secondary Heads Association (now the Association of School and College Leaders). I don't own the copyright of course so can't reproduce his contribution, but I also wrote a chapter which explores this and related topics.

Gove's interview on the Marr show today makes it clear that he is also effectively abolishing modular GCSE courses in English, maths and science - they can still be modularised (i.e. broken down into topics as ever) but all the exams will have to be taken at the end of the course for reasons which are not clear but probably have as much to do with what Gove had to do when he was really immature. If you were designing exams from scratch, why the hell would you decide on a system that tested kids on things that they were taught a few weeks previously in the same way that you tested them on what they were taught two years before?

Gove, nothing if not predictable

The full story is here.

He's pressing all the right 'Daily Mail' buttons but most of what he says he's going to do has already been done by New Labour - coursework reduced, in the vast majority of subjects, to a tedious irrelevance, marks deducted for 'bad' spelling and grammar in all subjects (thereby invalidating the exams as measures of attainment), headteachers becoming entrepreneurs (like the head who managed to get the Department of Education to pay her the equivalent of her salary for work done for them when she should have been earning her salary by running her school perhaps), heads running chains of schools and so on. And to cap it all, Gove is marketed as this incredibly intelligent guy. Well either he's intelligent and knows he's talking bollocks, or he's completely stupid. It's already been pointed out that he's certainly talking bollocks when he refers to 'Newton's laws of thermodynamics'. Hoist with his own petard maybe? Because the fact that he has completely misremembered something he was 'taught' and that he 'learned' during the course of his rigorous education, that he doesn't know or understand something that he himself has actually chosen as an example of what should be taught and learned, makes one think that if most educated people, apart from those who become science teachers, would show equal ignorance in this or similar areas - and I'm sure they would - then it would probably be a lot more useful for today's young people to spend time learning about climate change.

Similarly, his fatuous generalisation from his own daughter's history experience is utterly worthless. It reminds me that the first Tory assault on coursework was by John Major and he was motivated by the fact that his son was finding that it interfered with his cricket nets, don't you know.

The one hope is that his flurry of rather desperate announcements in recent days is a result of his anxiety that the series of cock-ups he's been responsible for have put his job at risk.

Gove's next clever weeze

The main Guardian headline today: Schools told to raise the bar on GCSE results. Full story here:

This is simply a continuation of the New Labour approach: Keep raising the bar. The difficulty is, as readers of this blog will know, that it entirely overlooks the facts that schools' intakes vary, dramatically. There are some schools where, unless the intake changes and becomes more balanced, i.e. closer to the normal distribution of 'ability' (whatever that is), there is no possibility of ever achieving 50% grades A*-C including English and maths. You could put whoever you liked in as headteacher - Professor Michael Barber who knows everything that there is to know about improving schools (according to him), Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted and former headteacher (who must have all the answers), Albert Einstein, or Gove himself, assisted by David Willetts (two and a half brains are better than one) and you'd still have a school with an unbalanced intake that could never reach the target.

Imagine how demoralising it is to be working in such a school and to be constantly told you are failing. And if by some miracle - an unexpected influx of brilliant asylum seekers, say - you achieve the current target, there's always a Blunkett or Gove to smash you back down again.

A good many years ago I wrote, in the journal 'Education', about how you can improve schools. Some of the references (opting out etc) are now out-of-date but essentially things haven't really changed, if anything there is now more encouragement and opportunity for unscrupulous schools to advance at the expense of their neighbours - schools create each other.

YOUR SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

1)

Remember that it's all about money

and how to get it.

If you've got a lot

you can do almost anything.

If you haven't,

you'll struggle.

2)

You can opt out.

Not only will you have cash to improve your school

but, unless you're in a really crumby area

where parents don't know what they're supposed to think,

many parents will assume

that your school's better than the one down the road.

You'll become a popular school,

and you'll have more

money.

3)

If you've got a deficit

and you opt out,

your deficit will be wiped out.

Your neighbouring schools will pay

in the long run

but, hey, this is the (rigged) market.

Use their money

to improve your school.

Nice one!

4)

New legislation

allows a GM school

to move to a more salubrious area,

so if the good kids won't come to you......

5)

If you have a lot of land

sell it off to Tesco

or Macdonalds'

or BNFL

or

the highest bidder.

6)

Tighten up on uniform,

the more expensive and elaborate the better.

Not only will the right kind of parent

be attracted,

the riff-raff will stay away.

7)

Have a good name.

'King Edward' seems to work well

judging by the league tables (who says they're useless?).

You could try changing your name

but since it will take members of your local community

a decade or three

to stop calling you by your last name but one

this is a bit of a long shot.

8)

Be a church school,

or a former grammar school,

or a current grammar school

or a school in the suburbs,

or a school in the home counties

(avoiding urban areas smeared by OFSTED).

Most parents will assume yours is a good school.

9)

Avoid admitting

children with special needs,

truants,

bullies,

and other undesirables.

Not always easy,

but it gets easier

as you get more popular

and fill up.

Success breeds

success.

10)

Get rid of your trouble-makers.

Exclusion is effective

but can be problematic.

It's much simpler to advise parents

that they should find another school

and avoid the stigma of exclusion.

This way YOU avoid the stigma of exclusion

and if you're really lucky

your direct competitors

will be dumped on.

11)

Or you could, as a staff,

over a number of years,

patiently and painstakingly,

working with your parents,

your students, your governors (if you can find them),

your local community,

and, yes, from time to time, your LEA,

gradually prise up standards.

Despite the poverty, sickness,

unemployment, family crises, crumbling buildings,

lack of resources, budget deficit,

staff recruitment and retention difficulties,

drugs, violence, vandalism, security problems, intruders,

you can make unsteady

(three steps forward, two and a half back)

but obvious

progress

even in the ways which are measurable.

However, this will not stop

the Secretary of State for Education

from finding many and varied opportunities

to kick you in the teeth.