EVERY SCHOOL HAS AT LEAST ONE BAD TEACHER, SAYS MINISTER

5/27/2008 7:16:00 AM

The Guardian 27 May

Every school has at least one incompetent teacher who should be helped to improve or "moved on", the schools minister, Jim Knight, has said. Over the course of a career, one bad teacher can undermine thousands of children's education, he said, adding that it was a "social justice issue" to ensure every teacher is up to scratch. The government is developing plans to remove more under-performing teachers but is hoping to enlist the support of the teaching unions in order to avoid a "massive fight" with the 400,000-strong profession, Knight said. The schools secretary, Ed Balls, promised new moves to root out teachers whose "competence falls to unacceptably low levels" in his children's plan last year. The General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) has suggested that under-performing teachers should be moved to neighbouring schools to retrain. In an interview with the Guardian, Knight dismissed estimates over the last year of between 17,000 and 24,000 incompetent teachers in schools, saying there was no firm evidence to put a number on low-performing teachers. But he said: "If you spoke to anybody about their experience in school and asked them whether there was a teacher who probably should have been doing something else, probably every one of us would say, yeah, we remember that teacher. What we need to do is be able to find a way of helping those people either achieve what they came into teaching for, the moral purpose of helping every child achieve their full potential ... or helping them move on to something they will be better at. But we've got to do that with the support of the profession, because it's about raising the esteem of the profession." Teachers should receive extensive support to improve, for instance from in-school training with high-performing colleagues, he said. He wanted a discussion with the teacher unions about "what we can do to help those teachers teach better, and if they are not capable of teaching better how to help them move on. That's a discussion I need to have about whether or not they [the unions] can help us with this."Guardian

Lead Story | General

GENUINE ENGAGEMENT ON THIS TESTING ISSUE

5/27/2008 7:29:00 AM

Estelle Morris; The Guardian 27 May

It is very difficult to have a sensible debate about testing. The House of Commons select committee report on the subject, published earlier this month, is one of the best summaries of the issues that I've seen. Yet it was predictable that some would dismiss it as another attack on the standards agenda. There was a time when the dividing lines in the testing debate were quite simply whether we should test children or not. That battle has been fought and won. Tests are an integral part of school life. Teachers use the data to raise standards further, and it is unimaginable that parents shouldn't have the right to know how their children and the schools they attend are performing. As Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, told the committee, "Nobody in our association wants a return to the 1970s when you did not know what the school up the road was doing, let alone a school at the other end of the country." Yet, in its response to the report, the government risks giving the impression that anyone who questions any part of the existing testing regime wants to turn back the clock. For the most part, their evidence to the committee rested on linking the rise in standards to the present form of the testing regime, implying that by fiddling with one you threaten the other. So, let's agree that any attempt to weaken or undermine the tests or to make schools less accountable would be a backward step. However, defending this position must not become an excuse not to engage in the debate that the committee has started. It's report reads as though ministers live in a parallel universe to some of the other witnesses. One says children are over-tested, creativity has been squeezed out of schools, and modern children are the most stressed generation ever. The other says we only test children three times in 11 years, millions of pounds have been put into the arts, and the quality of childhood has never been better.Guardian

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

A TESTING TIME FOR EXAM CHEATS

5/27/2008 7:56:00 AM

Leader; Daily Telegraph 27 May

Last week the OCR examination board sent out a GCSE music paper with the answers conveniently written on the back. Spy tactics to root out GCSEs and A-levels cheats Some might assume this to be official government policy, given the devaluation of our public examinations - but in fact it was a mistake.As we report today, exam boards are actually going to extreme lengths to ensure security and prevent cheating. The full MI5 toolkit of codes, radio transmitters and microscopic identification marks is being deployed to thwart the cheats.This is just the start. Examiners also want fingerprinting and CCTV cameras introduced, presumably to curb the use of "ringers".It is all very commendable; no one likes deception.Perhaps the same energy could also be put into ensuring ministers are not cheating when they trumpet record-breaking exam successes year after year.DT

Curriculum / Quality Assurance

NAPPY CURRICULUM HITS FAMILIES, SAY TOP SCHOOLS

5/27/2008 7:47:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 27 May

The Government's planned curriculum for the under fives is an unjustified assault on family life, a coalition of top schools has claimed. In a leaked letter to Beverley Hughes, the children's minister, the Independent Schools Council argued that it would see greater interference in the education of younger children than in any other age group.The organisation, which represents 1,280 fee-paying schools teaching 500,000 children, added that the target-driven programme would be a "clumsy" and "unjustified" imposition on schools.The Early Years Foundation Stage framework, nicknamed the nappy curriculum and due to become law later this year, sets out hundreds of developmental milestones for younger children and envisages assessing them on almost 70 different skills areas. It will apply to all 25,000 nurseries and child care settings in England, whether they are run by the state, charities or private companies.A total of 916 ISC member schools, which have nursery and other facilities for children aged three to five, will be affected by the scheme.But the Department for Children, Schools and Families defended the project, saying that parents would be able to opt out of parts of the programme that conflicted with their beliefs. DT

Curriculum / Quality Assurance | Foundation

SCHOOLS TO BE GRADED BY NUMBER OF PUPILS GOING ON TO UNIVERSITY

5/27/2008 6:44:00 AM

Times 27 May

Schools would be assessed on how many students they send to university under proposals being put to an influential body set up by the Prime Minister. University entry data could be used to create rankings of schools according to the number of their pupils who reach higher education. Steve Smith, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter, who is in charge of higher education on the National Council for Educational Excellence (NCEE), will make recommendations at a meeting chaired by Gordon Brown in early July. But teachers’ leaders said that this policy would lead inevitably to some schools being ranked lower through no fault of their own. Times

FE/HE/ Skills

HERE'S WHY WE CAN'T LET FE FALL THROUGH THE CRACK

5/27/2008 7:30:00 AM

The Guardian 27 May

We need fresh thinking if we are to provide more opportunities, says David Willetts. Further education is the unsung hero of our education system. A vibrant FE sector is essential to improve skills and provide quality education. Without the FE sector, we don't have a hope of meeting the country's upskilling and reskilling needs, as identified in the Leitch report. And it is the key route for widening participation in higher education - especially important now that the government is bound to miss its target for having half of young people at university by 2010. But since the old Education and Skills Department was split last year, FE has often fallen down the crack between the two new departments. Both Ed Balls at the Department for Children, Schools and Families and John Denham at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills have some responsibility for the FE sector. Yet neither has provided a clear vision for its future. Ministers have recently undertaken to abolish the Learning and Skills Council and replace it with three new bodies, while putting FE colleges back under local authority control. The details are foggy, but this feels very messy. Fifteen years after the last Conservative government provided FE colleges with more autonomy via incorporation, the current government is planning to tie them up in more red tape. In contrast, our approach is to treat FE colleges as grown-ups, freer to make their own long-term decisions for themselves. On my visits to FE colleges around the country, I have been most impressed with the provision of basic life skills, including the so-called "soft" skills that make students more employable. We know from employers' organisations that too many Britons lack these vital skills. And FE colleges have an important role to play in improving financial literacy. It is shameful that so many people have so little understanding of the alphabet spaghetti of the financial world - they are understandably confused by terms such as APR and CPI.Guardian

FE/HE/ Skills

TURNITIN SOFTWARE CATCHES STUDENT PLAGIARISM

5/27/2008 6:57:00 AM

The Times 27 May

Exam boards are using a sophisticated computer software programme that scans students' work and compares it with material published on the internet, to catch coursework cheats who have copied all or part of their GCSE and A-level projects. Under an agreement reached by the Joint Council for Qualifications, all the leading UK awarding bodies will be using software known as Turnitin this year. Until now it has been deployed mainly by universities to help to detect plagiarism. There is now a booming “industry” in which essays and coursework can be bought and sold over the internet. Some students become unwitting cheats because they do not understand that it is wrong to copy other people's work and present it as their own. John Black, of the Edexcel exam board, said: “Moderators are experienced at spotting the signs of plagiarism, but Turnitin helps us to confirm those suspicions and identify the original source of the work.” Times

FE/HE/ Skills

WHO NEEDS TO KNOW?

5/27/2008 7:31:00 AM

The Guardian 27 May

A new ruling will allow colleges to omit details from their financial statements. Is this accountability? Peter Kingston reports. Should colleges make public how much money their staff and governors spend on overseas business trips? Most definitely, says the University and College Union, which will be calling for greater transparency from colleges in their accounting at its annual conference this week. The union's appetite for this issue has been whetted after learning within the past few days that colleges have been granted permission by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to omit a raft of details from their annual accounts, including foreign travel costs. The reduction of what colleges put in their financial statements is part of the general cull on unnecessary bureaucracy in further education, according to college finance directors and to the Association of Colleges (AoC), which jointly requested the changes. And it makes it easier for colleges to benchmark, ie to compare their performances against the best models. The move was described as "very disturbing" by Sally Hunt, UCU's general secretary. "I can think of no good reason why information about college finances should be reduced or made less accessible to the local community, but many reasons why transparency and accountability should be improved." Moves to slim down college accounts would "intrigue many people" at a time when 47% of colleges were pleading poverty as a reason for not implementing national pay awards, she says.Guardian

FE/HE/ Skills

'MIDDLE-CLASS STUDENTS MORE LIKELY TO GET FIRST CLASS DEGREE'

5/27/2008 7:42:00 AM

Daily Telegraph 27 May

Middle-class students are more likely to get a 2:1 or first class degree than others from poorer backgrounds. A study found that women outperform men in almost every subject, including those traditionally thought of as male, such as engineering.White students tend to outperform those from other ethnic backgrounds, even at universities where whites were a minority, researchers said.The study was conducted by the Higher Education Statistics Agency for the Recruiters' Guide to Courses and Campuses (RGCC).DT

FE/HE/ Skills

PUSHING ALL PUPILS TO TAKE A DEGREE JUST ISN’T RIGHT

5/27/2008 6:53:00 AM

John O’Leary: The Times 27 May

Schools must publish everything from their truancy rates to the proportion of pupils with special needs, as well as examination results. So why should they object to telling the world how many sixth-formers get into university? Parents would like to know, and universities might find it useful in deciding where to target their recruitment efforts. But what would the figures actually show? Almost certainly, the number of sixth-formers going to university will be in direct proportion to the A-level results that already appear in league tables. Universities use them to gauge whether applicants deserve special consideration, while parents can see which schools have the track record that makes a degree place more likely. But every published statistic affects the way schools behave. They focus on teenagers on the boundaries of five high-grade GCSEs, for example, in order to improve the school’s position. In this case, the incentive will be to get as many students as possible into university, regardless of whether that is the best course of action for them. As Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter and chairman of the 1994 Group of universities, Professor Steve Smith can be forgiven for seeing higher education as every teenager’s aspiration. But some are better served by going straight to work. Teachers are sometimes accused of not encouraging their pupils to aim high enough. One of the objects of publishing leavers’ destinations is to address this problem. But schools should not be tempted to steer students towards higher education when they are not ready for it. Times

General | FE/HE/ Skills

EVERY SCHOOL HAS AT LEAST ONE BAD TEACHER, SAYS MINISTER

GENUINE ENGAGEMENT ON THIS TESTING ISSUE

A TESTING TIME FOR EXAM CHEATS

NAPPY CURRICULUM HITS FAMILIES, SAY TOP SCHOOLS

SCHOOLS TO BE GRADED BY NUMBER OF PUPILS GOING ON TO UNIVERSITY

HERE'S WHY WE CAN'T LET FE FALL THROUGH THE CRACK

TURNITIN SOFTWARE CATCHES STUDENT PLAGIARISM

WHO NEEDS TO KNOW?

'MIDDLE-CLASS STUDENTS MORE LIKELY TO GET FIRST CLASS DEGREE'

PUSHING ALL PUPILS TO TAKE A DEGREE JUST ISN’T RIGHT

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