Tuesday 30 September 2008

Away from the numbers

" 'No evidence' exam tagets work" Threatening schools where less than 30% of the pupils obtain 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C with closure does not actually work. Who says so? The NUT, perhaps? Another teaching union? The Green Party? The SWP? The Lib Dems? The National Audit Office, the mild mannered number crunchers.? Could be! What a shame neither of the big two English political parties can grasp this.

Saturday 20 September 2008

Sherlock Holmes Strikes Again


Hmm... apparently the Senior Leadership Team are 'concerned' about the falling Religious Studies GCSE results over the last five years. This wouldn't by any chance be the same Senior Leadership Team that has reduced RE's teaching hours by 36% over exactly the same period? I wonder how other examined subjects in the school have coped when their teaching time has been cut by 36%...What you mean to say no other subject has had their teaching time cut like that? Really? If reducing my teaching time by 36% did not have an impact on GCSE results, frankly, I really would be worried.

Friday 19 September 2008

Ofsted inspector suspects wood might be bear dumping ground.


"Too much maths taught to test" apparently. Who would have thought it? You insist that GCSE league tables are published and that they must include maths results. You introduce de facto payment by results for teachers. You threaten schools with closure where less than 30% of kids get 5 or more GCSEs (including Maths) and then you discover that those pesky teachers are teaching to the test.
Well the only good thing about this latest bit of nonsense from Ofsted is that it will be greeted by derision by just about everybody and it further undermines this organisation's credibility - you might remember that this is the organisation that has mangled the English language and indeed reason so much that satisfactory now means unsatisfacory. If you can remember that sine theta equals opposite over hypotenuse you will probably not be able to remember why it does. Most parents who take an interest in such things would probably think that rather than spending two lessons explaining why tangent theta equals opposite over adjacent, Mr Robinson should be teaching something else that will get little Johnny through his maths exam.

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Goodbye, Mr Stinky.


Reading an excellent post on Miss Snuffleupagus' blog has made me think about the man my friends and I knew and loved as Stinky - Mr Sinclair. He taught us History at A level and was simply inspirational. He never pretended to be our friend, if he had a sense of humour he kept it hidden from his pupils, but we adored him. Why? His knowledge of his subject seemed amazing, the passion he had for his subject unmistakable. He could be withering in his criticism of your essays, or of you if you had a habit of handing them in late - "Gentleman Loser, why is it you want to go to university when you so dislike writing essays?" Twenty three years later I can still feel that shame. Quite simply he was one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever known - certainly of all the teachers that taught me. Like a lot of fifty somethings during the late 1980's he got out of teaching because he could see the writing on the wall, the arrival of the National Curriculum and all of that - and although his early departure from teaching was very sad it was absolutely the right move for him. OFSTED would have hated him - learning intentions were decided upon five minutes into the lesson when we reminded him that we had done John Pym a couple of months beforehand. I imagine he would have been taken to task for his failure to embrace the new technologies and pedagogical orthodoxies but I can't help feeling that teaching is very much poorer for the loss of Stinky and his kind.