No time for much today. Out partying. Just time to link to this, from Kenya:
Nyanza Provincial Commissioner Aggrey Mudinyu yesterday expressed fear that the province may once again perform dismally in national examinations.Mudinyu said education standards have steadily deteriorated in the province due lack of co-ordination among education stakeholders.
"All has not been well with the education sector in the region and I foresee a situation where our candidates may perform poorly in KCPE and KSCE," he said.
Mudinyu said Nyanza came second last in the last year's national examinations after North Eastern Province, adding that a stakeholders meeting needed to discuss the falling education standards in the region.
And why might education standards be falling? The next two paragraphs throw some light on that:
Mudinyu was speaking at Moi Stadium during Kenyatta Day celebrations. Present were Kisumu DC Wilfred ole Legei, Kisumu Mayor Priscah Auma and provincial police boss Bakari Jambeni.Mudinyu assured the residents of enhanced security as he promised that within one week the police would curb insecurity in the town.
This is a place where the politicians are promising that within a week "insecurity" will be "curbed", and by "curbed" I'm guessing they don't mean got rid of. In a world like that, education is bound to be one hell of a struggle.
One thing's for sure. Just using phrases like "lack of co-ordination among education stakeholders" isn't going to make much difference, if any.
Count your blessings.
I have done a couple of postings with educational themes for Samizdata, today and on Tuesday.
Today's was a response to this fascinating and excellent Guardian article about how a recent tax law change is crippling university entrepreneurial spin-offs. (Has any other media outlet picked up on this story?) And Tuesday's was a response to a seminar I attended which was addressed by Francis Gilbert.
When I write something which would do for here, but which would also do for Samizdata, I stick it on Samizdata, because, frankly, Samizdata is the one with the mass (although please understand that these things are relative) readership. And then I link from here, for those who read this more than they read Samizdata. I like to think that there are a few who fall into this category.
Kirsty Wark, on the telly, has been journeying around Eastern, post-Soviet Europe. And I caught the last bit of a report she did about a very interesting school, different from the usual sort:
As expected, Lithuania's largest cities have the most affluent club settings. The Sarunas Marciulionis Basketball School in Vilnius is perhaps the most well known of the developmental clubs. …
The Marciulionis school is located on an unassuming site which also houses the magnificent Sarunas Hotel. The Sarunas is known as one of the finest overnight accommodations available in Vilnius. Inside the training facility, three full-sized NBA courts lie side by side under one roof. Each of these courts see plenty of training action during the week with some 750 boys enrolled in the various age group training programs. The Marciulionis Basketball School believes in a holistic approach to player development. Every boy enrolled in the Marciulionis school takes classes in the English language and computer science. Formal classes on character development and social etiquette are also a part of the supplemental curriculum. International travel is also one of the basic tenets of the Marcilionis approach. Teams from the school have traveled to 25 countries since it's formation in 1992. The lobby of the Marciulionis school houses one of the most interesting collection of basketball shoes ever assembled. Many great NBA stars (Jordan, Barkley, Drexler, etc.) have donated pairs of the signed shoes for this one-of-a-kind exhibit.
This place was founded by and is named after the great Lithuanian basketball player Sarunas Marciulionis, pictured above right.
I wish there were more schools like this in England, catering for the sporty types, bringing the best out of them instead of the worst, turning them into noble and honourable young men instead of embittered, knife wielding bullies.
When I was a schoolboy, my school, Marlborough, used to play sports against a rival fee-paying school called Millfield, who built their entire system around sport, which meant they were very, very good at it. I can still recall the Millfield rugby team demolishing the Marlborough 1st XV, with a dazzling exhibition of pace and passing from their backs such as I have seldom witnessed since, despite a lifetime of TV rugby watching. Millfield is still going strong, it would seem. But, unless things have changed completely, it costs. A lot. The Marciulionis school presumably demands far less from its parents.
I can't say that I fully understand all the raminfications of this, but it sounds very important, and very good:
A significant number of Oxford colleges are supporting calls for the university to move towards privatisation and independence from the Government.An analysis of Oxford's 30 undergraduate colleges showed widespread anger at government interference and concern about funding.
It also produced claims that a move towards independent status – similar to that enjoyed by leading universities in the United States – could begin within 10 years.
The time frame, predicted by colleges that support a move to privatisation, is half that suggested by Michael Beloff, the president of Trinity College, last week. Mr Beloff said that increased government pressure on colleges to admit more working class students, combined with funding shortages, could force Oxford towards independence within 15 to 20 years.
Several college heads went further, however, stating that privatisation was not only inevitable, but desirable - and would take place more rapidly than Mr Beloff suggested.
You see, me, I thought these places were pretty much "independent" already. So file under: But what does Brian know? As I occasionally have to remind everyone: this Blog is for Brian's Education, as well as being an Education Blog done by Brian for all you ignoramuses out there.
Gratuitous picture there of Michael Beloff, from here.
Daniel Johnson in today's Telegraph:
So the Tomlinson report, supposedly the greatest shake-up of secondary education since 1944, has been endorsed by the Government. In our household the news induced nothing but a sinking feeling of déjà vu. My wife's first response to Tomlinson was to think of our four children: "Guinea pigs again!"Have they forgotten what happened when Keith Joseph replaced the O-level with an exam (the GCSE) which almost everybody could pass? Or how the A-level has been degraded into a muddle of modules and multiple choice?
Today, fewer than one in six school-leavers knows which king signed Magna Carta. Forty years of permanent revolution in our schools has produced the most examined but least educated generation in modern history.
Tomlinson is supposed to be about restoring confidence in our discredited examination system. The report actually does the opposite. Tony Blair insists it does not abolish the GCSE and AS-level. But it does, replacing them with "teacher assessment" of the pupil, who is only required to do an "extended project".
If there were any doubt that the replacement of formal exams by assessment has been an intellectual disaster, the curious case of Prince Harry's Eton art project ought to have dispelled it. For a former chief inspector of schools to be blind to the institutionalisation of cheating shows how deeply the rot has set in.
What school did Tomlinson go to, I wonder? And what university? (Are they now pleased with and proud of themselves?)
Times Online did a profile of him yesterday, by Jenny Booth, which will disappear soon, I guess, so here is all of it:
With a lifetime in education, first as a teacher and then as a schools inspector, Mike Tomlinson is seen in government circles as a safe pair of hands with a good record for dealing with tricky situations.Born in 1942, and educated in Rotherham and Bournemouth, he studied chemistry at Durham University and taught in schools in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire for 12 years. He also spent a year as a liaison officer between schools and the petrochemical industry.
He joined Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools in 1978. In 1996, the year after he was appointed director of inspection, he headed the team that went in to run the troubled Ridings School in Halifax for a year, when it was named the worst school in England.
He also helped to restore the education system in Kuwait after the 1990 Gulf War, and to develop a schools inspection regime for China.
He was awarded a CBE in 1997, and in 2000 was made chief inspector after the sudden resignation of his boss, Chris Woodhead. After the bitter antagonism that had existed between schools and Mr Woodhead at the renamed Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), Mr Tomlinson was seen as the right man to pour oil on troubled waters.
He was not a caretaker leader however, criticising the Government over damaging teacher shortages.
He retired in April 2002, but rather than opt for the quiet life he became chairman of the trust running schools in Hackney, one of England's most problematic education services.
He had been there rather less than six months when Estelle Morris, the Education Secretary, called him in to sort out the mess over A-level grading and standards.
Miss Morris resigned not long afterwards, and it was her successor, Charles Clarke, who asked Mr Tomlinson to take charge of the review of 14-19 education, a much bigger political hot potato.
He was careful to build a broad consensus on his committee, which included representatives from schools, further education colleges, independent schools, employers, vocational trainers, universities, but it remains to be seen whether the far-reaching reforms he proposes will be acceptable to the public.
Interesting man, with an interesting life. But how are the mighty fallen.
This looks like a classic example of a self-reinforcing and collectively self-deceiving committee making a gigantic blunder than very few of them would, individually, have made.
Natalie Solent had an amazing new idea yesterday:
Betcha Prince Harry did get help on his coursework. Not so fast with the chopper, Mr Headsman! So does everybody, as Mr White of the Telegraph sagely observes. Not quite everybody, actually. Last year Jenny Sweetham-Klewlesse (18) of The Old Vicarage, Pootlington Parva, did a Social Studies project completely unaided. Interested reporters can contact Miss Sweetham-Klewlesse behind the counter of her local Little Chef.It can't go on, you know. We need think outside the envelope and find a better way. Surely it is not beyond the bounds of human cunning to devise some sort of system which would actually make it difficult to cheat. Something like, um, gottit, getting all the A-Level candidates to do their coursework in school with no mummies and daddies allowed. No, that wouldn't work - what about the teachers? They have a stronger motive to cheat than anyone. Except the pupils, of course. I know! All the pupils would have to do the coursework the same day. All together in one room. And – and – and no talking to each other. Yes! It's a crazy idea but it might just work – so long as we took away their mobile phones.
Don't look at me like that. We'd give them back afterwards.
Okay, not the mobile phones. They'd have to put them under the desk.
Sorry. Sorry. I've calmed down now. I now see clearly that my idea was ill-judged, not to say intemperate. And contrary to human rights. My party leader has sent me to a local sixth-form college to apologise.
Last night I found myself asking Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute: why is there still no free market in exams, and why aren't exams consequently okay, like cars or cakes or soya sauce in bottles in the supermarket, instead of a national joke? You'd have to involve industry and a critical mass of the universities he said, and that's hard. But why is this not now happening?
Before I get the usual answer, to the effect that exams are already a "free market" ... exam suppliers may now be "independent", but the government still seems to be the sole or principle customer, with the private sector schools tagging meekly along behind. But why? Why cannot universities and businessmen decide for themselves which exam results they will take seriously, and which not? I'm told that many employers now have their own exams, so clearly lots of employers have already lost faith in the state-purchased exams. So, why don't they shop around?
If the answer is that the government enforces its purchasing preferences on everyone with the force of law, than that means that the exam business already is nationalised, in all but names.
The Government makes a rule. A particular case shows the rule to be ridiculous, and the media get heavily involved. Contemptuous people assemble in crowds saying: rubbish. So, the Government suddenly invents a policy which says that the rule doesn't apply to this particular case after all.
I'm talking about the case of Dr David Wolfe, an excellent physicist and a superb physics teacher, who, the Government said, because he hadn't passed his GCSE maths, wasn't "qualified" to be a teacher. There can be no exceptions. Curse rage, government is idiotic, media hubbub, David Miliband is a plonker, and hey … how about that? There can be an exception. It turns out there's a "fast track". Some government inspectors can sit in on his classes and declare him qualified.
Read the Telegraph here, or the Guardian here.
I read about this in the Sunday Times here, who end their report yesterday thus:
But this may yet be a story with a happy ending. After the flurry of media exposure last week Wolfe was summoned to the phone. On the other end was "a very nice man" at the Department for Education and Skills. He told him that an assessor from the University of Gloucester would soon come to the school to observe one of his lessons. If it was fine, hey presto, he would be a qualified teacher."It's a complete volte face by the government," says Dingle. "No other head has heard of this 'fast-track' route. Heads up and down the country are saying, 'I beg your pardon?'" Nonetheless, he adds, "This time next week I earnestly hope David Wolfe will be a qualified teacher. Hurrah!"
But the rules remain in place, and not many good but "unqualified" teachers will be as vigorous in challenging them as Wolfe and his many friends have been.
The obvious riposte to this is that there do have to be rules. Well, maybe, in this centralised, nationalised system that we now have, with London in charge of everything, well, then, London has to be in charge, to have rules, and to stick to them. In Brian-world, people just educate themselves as they wish, and get what help they want. The idea that the government could forbid people to learn from some particular individual that they want to learn from would be regarded as ludicrous.
I should have picked up on this story sooner, instead of just babbling on about America. Sorry about that.
Category: Examinations and qualifications • Science
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Alex Singleton did a Samizdata piece yesterday about an attempt to muzzle The Saint, a St Andrews University tabloid student publication which has apparently offended the muzzling classes. I commented that the muzzlers would only be making fools of themselves.
Sure enough, Joanne Jacobs, the Instapundit of Edubloggers, has already done a posting about this. Something tells me she won't be the last overseas blogger to notice this.
When you do something stupidly left-wing, there is now a whole new global readership waiting to guffaw at you.
