Very few national education stories interest me as much as perhaps they should, given the subject matter of this blog, but this one looks interesting:
Any organisation could be allowed to set itself up as an exam board under radical proposals to create a free market in qualifications currently being considered by the government's testing watchdog.
A free market in exams is something I've been arguing for here.
Senior officials at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) are discussing plans to deregulate the market in GCSE and A-level exams to provide greater choice and competition for schools.
This is the killer paragaph, which tells you that actually this is most definitely not going to be a free market in exams. It is going to be a "market" in who can best (in who's eyes?) administer the exams that the government has already decided upon. A true free market would mean the examining enterprises examining any darn thing they chose to examine, and people being allowed to pick and choose among all the different offered exams.
Such a move would reverse the recent trend towards fewer exam boards - the three main boards in England were formed out of the amalgamation of more than 20 since the 1970s.
Hm. Markets don't necessarily result in lots of different enterprises. Often they result in a few huge ones. This is because in many markets people especially value standardisation. Think PC compability in the personal computer market.
It would also accelerate the controversial trend for commercial companies to become increasingly involved in running public exams, which recently saw Edexcel, a charity, taken over by the media giant Pearson.
Running "public" exams? And as we've already see above, "public" means the exams that have already been decided on by the government.
The plans were proposed by Sir Anthony Greener, the QCA chairman, a City grandee who is also deputy chairman of BT. He proposed a market similar to that in the energy industry, where some companies are primarily "upstream" generators of gas or electricity, while others sell the product to consumers "downstream".
Doesn't sound much like a "free" market to me, more like an administered one.
Under his plans, exam boards' current responsibilities would be split between different bodies. Tasks from writing the syllabus to marking papers and setting grade boundaries would be handled by separate organisations.
Split? Separate organisations? Sounds rather like what's happened to the railways. I also write for Transport Blog, which has dug deep into that, and if there is one idea that seems to unite us all over there, whatever political direction we come at the argument from, it is that "fragmentation" has been a disaster. This sounds like a plan to "fragment" the exam industry, as opposed to actually creating a free market. Okay, maybe fragmentation won't be such a disaster here, but it remains one of the big myths that in order to introduce capitalism, competition, etc. you have to smash everything to bits.
Any organisation would be able to set itself up as an exam board as long as it was accredited by the QCA and awarded a licence to run academic exams.
See what I mean about administered.
Opponents of private sector involvement in state education are likely to oppose the proposals.
You don't say.
A spokesman for the QCA stressed that the plan was one of several options under discussion, but he said that it was "unlikely" the number of awarding bodies would increase.
So, one of the opponents then.
England's two other exam boards, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance and Oxford and Cambridge and RSA currently remain as charities.
Not quite sure what the significance of that is. Either it just happened to be the end of the story or something is being implied about how the existing boards might have their charitable status removed, or maybe that their charitable status is causing problems, or that making them businesses would make them even worse, or something.
Anyway, as to the story as a whole, the first paragraph of it is inaccurate. The headline is much better:
Exam boards could be subject to market forces.
That's right. And tell me an existing civil servant or other public servant who is not now subject to market forces. Civil servants get paid, and they are bombarded with a stream of instructions from the government about what they must do. That's the plan for these new exam "enterprises".
The problem with this new administered market is that, being collective public officials rather than true free market enterprises, these exam boards will be dominated by the short term matter of keeping their licenses, rather than the long term matter of offering and sustaining good exams, worth taking and worth having passed. And short-termism could result in dumbing down under this new regime, just as it does now. Everything depends on the licensing body. They will be the people in charge, not the new exam enterprises.
This will not, I repeat, be a true free market.
The one aspect of the situation which might just tantalise me into hoping for the best rather than simply assuming the worst, is that some of the suppliers of examination services might be very big. If the supplier is big, then that supplier might be supplying such services to a number of governments around the world, rather than just the one, and therefore might be said to have some kind of reputation to preserve. That would at least nudge the big suppliers away from the worst sorts of short-termism.
But "might" is the operative word there. Plenty of Britain's rail franchisees do lots of other business, and they don't seem to have managed very well. They just blame their one customer, the government, for the mess, and who's to say they're wrong?
A real market would be if individual teachers, parents, children and future employers could choose which exams to take, encourage, and pay attention to, unmolested by the government, which regards education as beneath its attention. We're a bit of a way from that, I think.
Category: Examinations and qualifications • Free market reforms
[1]
[4]
I went to one of those sites which says how you rank in the blogosphere. Someone said they ranked 364,276th, or something. ha ha. And at some point in my odyssey I typed in brianmicklethwait.com/education and eventually I found myself here, which looks useful. I don't know how I got there, but there it is.
Home education is a perfectly legal form of educational provision in the UK; furthermore, it is always a parent's responsibility to make sure that their child receives a suitable education.
Yes, I've read that before, but it can't be said too often.
Home education is open to all parents, whatever their race, creed, income, social class or level of education.
- You don't have to have any teaching qualifications.
- You don't have to follow the National Curriculum.
- You don't have to keep to school hours, days or terms.
- You don't have to give formal, school-type lessons
- You don't need to use a timetable.
- Your child will not take Key Stage tests (SATs)
Now for the bad news.
So what do parents need in order to teach their own children successfully?
Ah, successfully.
John Holt answered this question in his book Teach Your Own."First of all they have to like them, enjoy their company ... enjoy all their talk and questions ... have enough confidence in themselves, scepticism about experts, and willingness to be different from most people …" (Holt p. 38)
Yeah yeah. I preferred the earlier stuff, the bit about what you didn't have to do.
I'm addled and, er, confused. I've been hosting one of my Friday evenings, and have been so busy getting things ready for that that I haven't done my edublogging for today until now. So it was either this or nothing. Consider yourself lucky.
David Carr was one of the attenders. He has a posting up on Samizdata with an educational theme.
Twelve months ago today, I set Sitemeter running. I should hit 296,500 by the end of the day. I'm running at more than 1,000 visits a day during the week, about 600 on weekends. Not bad for an education blog. I'm not sure how many visits the grand total would run to: I started in January, 2001, but didn't keep count of visitors.
Not bad indeed. I haven't set up a Sitemeter or any other such device, because I'm one of those scrawny take-it-or-leave-it bloggers. I do my bloggings, and who knows what they make of it? Maybe the occasional thing sticks. Occasionally you see one of them getting some flash of insight which makes it all worth while. But a machine to see whose paying attention? Don't want to think about that just yet.
My point is that whereas this blog here is still a blog groping into proper shape and proper existence (a redesign and a reorganisation is in the pipeline plus any month now I may start doing some actual educatingwhich will liven things up here considerably), Joanne's is the real thing and has been for some time.
She has a great long list of blogs and non-blogs on the left. Good blogs, fun blogs, also good, good books. And what item is at the very top of her list of things? Well, by virtue of this being in the "edublog" category and by virtue of Brian starting with B which is very close to the start of the alphabet … (being called Brian does have its advantages) … yes, you've got it, this blog is the absolute top of Joanne's list. Ahead of all manner of aristobloggers and grandees of every sort.
This must have helped my traffic, and this is me saying thank you. When you get the drips from the biggest hole in a big bucket like this, you get a lot of water. It must be. Obviously some come here, take a look and leave it at that. But equally obviously, a few must be staying around. I don't go on about American edubloggers and their postings, because my aim here is to expand the edubllogosphere beyond the confines of the USA, but this is not something I can just ignore.
So, to make an exception, let's take a look at Joanne's latest posting. It's about some parents who put their twelve year old son and his friend in the trunk during a twenty mile car journey. The official version is that they did this because they were abusive monsters of the sort who can't be trusted to have children let alone raise them, and that junior should be taken into whatever they call "care" over there, which would be the equivalent of locking the trunk for ever, I would say. Well, what I mean is, the authorities didn't like it. The parental version is that the kids thought it might be fun to do, so they said okay.
Lt. Joseph Jordan, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Police Department, said the parents are lucky no one was hurt.
All parents are "lucky no one was hurt", all the time. But I agree, that's not a reason to nail them to the kitchen wall or keep them in rabbit hutches, to educate them about pain, life, etc.
"Obviously, there was a lot of danger there," Jordan said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "They're supposed to be in seat belts. If there would have been a rear-end collision, they could have been seriously injured. So we feel that it was reckless to put the kids in the trunk," Jordan said.
Ah yes. Seat belts. I forgot.
Twelve year old boys, taking risks. Whatever next? And we definitely mustn't help them do that. Twelve year old boys who want risk must live a further three years without risk of any kind, and then do the adolescent rebellion running-away-from-home crazy-sex and crazy-drugs thing. There's a proper way to do these things, sir, ma'am. We're policemen, and we know about this stuff.
None of this could ever happen in Britain, because here we call it the "boot".
There are those who say that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a less than perfect leader, and say, for instance that he could and should have finished matters in Europe in 1944-45 at a date nearer to 1944 than he managed to. Nevertheless … Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe, President of the United States (for two terms). The man was clearly doing something right. Here's an explanation of what, from the book How To Be A Star At Work by Robert E. Kelley:
Harvard Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik, an expert on the mentoring process, writes about President Dwight Eisenhower, who had a mediocre record when he graduated from West Point. He seemed headed for a lackluster career as a lower-level army officer when, during World War 1, he was assigned to support duty at a desk job. Meanwhile, his classmates were on the front lines of the French-German border gaining valuable combat experience and winning battlefield promotions.After the war, it was Eisenhower who realized that if he wanted a distinguished career in the army, he had to find someone to show him how to understand the institution in ways he couldn't learn at West Point. So he sought out a highly respected commander, General Fox Connor, and requested a transfer to serve with him.
Eisenhower was fortunate that Connor warmed up to the mentoring prospect. The two men, Zaleznik notes, bonded like father and son-it was Connor who showed him the lay of the land in the army and challenged him to live up to the high expectations a mentor places in a follower.
Eisenhower later wrote that what he learned under Connor was "… sort of like a graduate school in military affairs and the hurnanities, leavened by a man who was experienced in his knowledge of men and their conduct." Eisenhower later won an appointment to the prestigious Command and General Staff School, where he graduated first in his class and launched his brilliant career. He owed it all, he wrote years later, to his mentor.
So okay, Eisenhower didn't learn how to finish world wars quite as quickly as he might have, but he certainly learned how to get great jobs.
Since this posting includes a request to send information, and since it is about two comments which appeared on a Samizdata posting, I posted it first on Samizdata, with its larger readership and helpful commenters. I reproduce it here, because of its obvious educational vibes.
Two comments have appeared on a long ago posting of mine here (i.e. on Samizdata) about the menace to Western Civilisation posed by people dropping chewing gum all over the damn place.
Comment 1:
i like chewing on gum^^ It should have neva been banned!!! I feel sooooo sorry for the singaporeans....owell beta get on wiv my english assignment nowz...byebye :)Lana
Comment 2:
Hi its me again (Lana) if anyone noes any interesting facts about Singapore then can u plz email me qt_mashi@hotmail.com, bcuz this is for my english assignment and its very important THANK YOU :)Lana
You know what? Lana likes chewing gum, and I like her. She has her own individual take on English spelling, although maybe it's her whole generation and they all spell because bcuz. But, she seems to be able to spell in the regular manner when she wants to ("any interesting facts about Singapore") or when she is forgetting not to, plus she has a nice ingratiating manner and understands the value of a smile. I think she should be encouraged.
So, if anyone has any interesting facts about Singapore, please email them to her.
J. P. Laurier, who has started this blog, sent an appreciative email today about this blog, to add to his first comment here, on the piece immediately below this one about exams.
He says his blog is still at the growing pains stage, but I think it already well worth a look. I liked in particular the posting about the movie Stand and Deliver, which is the one about the Latino maths teacher played by Edward James Olmos.
I'm so glad I'm not a teacher anymorePartly because you have to deal with things like exam grades being completely stupid and meaningless. How does a teacher spend all year encouraging kids to take something seriously, only so that at the end of the year, the whole thing ends up becoming a farce?
Well, in my view, almost all school exams are pretty farcical. They don't help children learn, and there's no real value whatever in examining them on things unless they need clearly to demonstrate some kind of commitment to and ability in some subject in order for universities to have confidence in accepting them on courses, say.
If people are going to have examinations, they should organise them properly, with some kind of decent academic standards. At least then people know where they stand. Otherwise, they definitely ought to forget the whole thing.
I'm not so sure. Proving commitment is right, but it's not just proving it to universities.
In Brian-world, children decide for themselves whether they take exams or not, but if they want my advice I'll tell them that exams surely prove something important besides the mere matter of whether they have merely learned the contents of the syllabus. They prove, it seems to me, the ability to handle information under pressure, on the one big occasion when it really matters. This is surely an immensely important skill, and arguably the key skill of working in a modern information-based economy.
It is said that, a few years later, and maybe even a few weeks later, you will have forgotten everything you "learned" for those exams you took. So what? Most of us forget the facts around whatever task we are performing, after we have performed it.
I will have forgotten most of the mere facts surrounding this post pretty soon, and probably in a matter of a few days. That's not the point. The point is: Am I using the knowledge I now have to make a worthwhile point, to you, now? If I am, then mission accomplished, and if I've forgotten all about it in a week, that won't matter. The posting will still be here, in the archives, even if I have to think hard to remember anything about it myself.
What exams test is the habit of switching on one's concentration, onto what matters, when it matters. And since concentration can't be permanently switched on, exams also test the ability to switch off one's concentration at the right times, and thereby to make best possible use of it.
This is why employers take exam results seriously, and why they are surely right to do this.
It is also surely why they are not that bothered about the mere content of the syllabuses being examined. Just so long as it's something, and just so long as the brains of the examinees were really tested.
Anyone who combines being British with trying to be honest knows that there is more to British black underachievement than white racism, and that a big part of the story is a black macho culture of street-based anti-achievement, or perhaps one should say achievement of another sort. One day, maybe, some genius (don't know what colour) will manage to combine the best of macho black street culture with the best of white nerd culture. As it is, any black boy who shows the slightest tendency to go the black nerd way – to study, do his homework, try to go to university, etc – is liable to get the crap kicked out of him by his black "brothers".
This debate in the Guardian on this fraught subject is of particular interest, because it doesn't bang on only about white racism. Sample paragraph:
… The gospel I preach is a simple one. It asks black young men to look beyond the street and beyond immediate gratification. It asks some hard questions about their own responsibilities: homework, bedtime, respect for peers and adults, good manners, self-control and how to succeed in the system. Nobody is asking our boys these questions. We just get more politicians telling them they're victims of racism.
It's worth a longer read. Thanks to the Philosophical Cowboy who also alerted Joanne Jacobs to this piece, who also comments.
Yet another educational expert is praising computer games:
Violent video games are more educational than school, stimulating children to be more critical, constructive and reflective than conventional classroom teaching, says one of the world's leading educational experts.Children trying to escape a maze, find a hidden treasure or blast away an enemy with a high-powered rifle in a fantasy world make greater cognitive leaps than they do in the classroom, Professor James Paul Gee believes.
'Better theories of learning are embedded in video games than many children in primary and secondary schools ever experience in the classroom,' said Gee, author of What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy, to be published next week.
'Violence is just a way of grabbing the child's attention. What's important is that the more violent the game, the more strategic modes of thinking the child has to develop to win - modes of thinking that fit better with today's hi-tech, global world than the learning they are taught in school.'
Never having played computer games, or had any sustained dealings with children who do so a lot, I don't know about this.
But the argument certainly throws a different light on the debate about whether educatinal standards are climbing, or falling. Can there be any doubt that today's children tend to be better at computer games than were their grandparents at the same age?
I still remember remember fondly this poster at TCS blog who saw a day coming when children won't be allowed to do sums or read books and write reports on them until they've done their daily stint of computer gaming. I wouldn't put it past them.
Here's an article from Le Québécois Libre praising homeschooling. Last two paragraphs:
From my contact with homeschooling parents, it was not unusual for children who enjoyed their self-directed, self-paced learning in a pressure-free environment, to freely choose to struggle and learn extremely challenging, rigorous and even comprehensive academic material that was of interest to them. This was especially the case when the material was arranged to begin with the basics, then progress in a very logical sequence to higher levels of complexity. All one parent did was to provide encouragement, reassurance and emotional support as her child freely chose to struggle through such material, which came packaged in a series of CD-rom discs, VCR's and work books.It seems that when the state and its regime of forcible compulsion is absent, children who enjoy their self-directed, self-paced learning in a nurturing and supportive family environment can actually make progress in learning the kind of challenging and comprehensive academic material that has driven highly stressed Japanese school-children to committing suicide in that nation's high-pressure state-run school system. Yet state education bureaucrats in several North American school districts remain adamantly hostile to the concept of homeschooling, harassing and victimizing homeschooling parents, even arresting and laying truancy charges against homeschooled teenagers.
There are more homeschooling links within the text.
