[BITList] I beg you, Mr Gove, bring back thinking | The Sunday Times WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO OUR CHILDRENS' EDUCATION ??

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I beg you, Mr Gove, bring back thinking

Jenni Russell Published: 29 January 2012
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A couple of weeks ago an English teacher was asking for help on an education message board: how should she teach her class to answer a GCSE question on Romeo and Juliet? The examiners wanted to know how Shakespeare had presented the relationship between Romeo and Mercutio in one particular scene, as well as elsewhere in the play. How could she approach this question in the 10 lessons she had available?

Her more experienced colleagues had plenty of advice. Don’t bother to look at several scenes; study only the named scene and one other.

Don’t show children both the famous filmed versions of the play, since the characterisations are different in each and that will confuse the pupils. Others went further.

Don’t show them the play at all: just study the two scenes in isolation. One teacher recommended not even telling the children the plot. “I forgot to add, you don’t even have to tell them anything about the play, in fact it might be more effective not to.” Why bother? The point of the exercise is to get them the marks they need in the Shakespeare module.

This little episode encapsulates everything that has gone so miserably wrong with the country’s education system over the past 15 years. The compulsory Shakespeare section of the English GCSE is supposed to introduce every child to the wit, language and storytelling power of the country’s most famous playwright.

That grand ambition is preserved in some schools. In a great many others the Shakespeare question, like everything else on the syllabus, has been reduced to a tricksy, weaselly exercise in telling children only what will get them through a test. A huge amount of energy and effort is going into devising ways not to teach or enthuse children but to get them the right results.

This is the logical result of an education system that, under political pressure, has become preoccupied with delivering exam passes rather than an educated population. Politicians claim that they are “driving up standards” in schools. They cannot prove this is true unless pass rates and grades are rising.

Our education system has become preoccupied with delivering exam passes rather than an educated population Head teachers and senior managers lose their jobs if their schools don’t perform as expected. Only the most self-confident institutions dare to concentrate on something other than test technique. The result is a husk of a system, in which tests have become not a measure of what’s going on but the sole point.

The destructive consequences of this are now becoming apparent everywhere, from Oxford University to the people who are chosen for jobs at Pret A Manger. It’s not working. Standards have not risen. The Pisa tables, which rate us against other nations, demonstrate that we were average 15 years ago and are average now. The improvements in everything but the ability to pass a particular test on a particular day are a fiction. The costs, however, are real.

Last week the examiners’ reports on Oxford’s finals papers were leaked to a newspaper. While some finalists were brilliant, the examiners were scathing about many others, reporting that they had little general knowledge, did not think critically and had been so well trained in producing limited answers at A-level that they did not know how to respond to a broader challenge. An English don wrote: “We encountered a distinct sense of undeveloped critical thought, first year level work or, at the lower end of the run, A-level style responses: information dumped but not tackled.”

History dons complained of intellectual thinness and outdated knowledge. In a literature paper on Irish poetry, only 7 out of 80 students knew which country Derry was in, and “very few” understood the significance of references to 1916, the year of the Easter uprising. In modern languages, French translation was often “appalling” and Italian papers were “undeniably of a mediocre level”.

Candidates in many subjects had failed to revise properly, choosing instead to memorise and regurgitate essays that did not fit the questions they had been asked. Peter Oppenheimer, emeritus professor at Christ Church, told the newspaper that any Oxford tutor would say that the standards coming forth from schools now were appallingly low, and certainly much lower than a generation ago.

Those grim assessments are backed up by evidence given to the education select committee this month by examiners and university professors. Professor Alison Wolf from King’s College London told MPs the drive to make exams more transparent and accountable had made them steadily more banal and had narrowed children’s learning. Many universities teaching quantitative subjects were having to run catch-up classes and restructure their first-year syllabuses to take account of what children no longer knew.

Tim Oates, from the examiners’ group Cambridge Assessment, said their results showed significant problems in two areas: mathematical and quantitative skills, and academic writing. Candidates were ill prepared in both. The vice-chancellor of Cardiff University said the way school students were taught meant there had been an erosion of curiosity.

A student’s typical response when he tried to engage them was: “Is this going to be in the exam?”, rather than, “This is interesting. I need to know about this because I’m going to be studying this subject for a long time.”

The cynical thinking behind the examinations was exposed at the end of last year when undercover reporters sat in on seminars organised by exam boards to tell teachers how their exams worked. Examiners spelt out which areas of the syllabus could be safely ignored because they weren’t going to ask questions on it.

The selling point for teachers was how they could maximise results for the least knowledge or effort. The chief examiner for geography at Edexcel marketed her syllabus to schools on the basis that “you don’t have to teach a lot . . . There’s so little that we don’t know how we got it through.”

This stripped-down pretence at education doesn’t reward the qualities we need the next generation to have: curiosity, deep knowledge, innovation and self-motivation. It involves hard work but it’s a dull endurance test, which teaches children that nothing is worth doing for its own sake and superficial understanding can be all that counts.

That is very boring for those who succeed within it and enraging for the 50% who don’t. It’s no wonder they so often emerge sulky, jaded, demoralised and hard to employ. Diane Coyle, an economist who has spent years taking evidence from employers while on the Competition Commission and the Migration Advisory Committee, tells me that what has repeatedly emerged is that employers want the charm, discipline and hard work offered by migrants.

The three qualities they would like from the English-born — politeness, an ability to be punctual and an interest in the job — are very hard to find. Schools are failing to inculcate even these basic qualities. What they’re really teaching is disengagement.

My fear is that the government’s education reforms aren’t recognising these deep-seated problems. I support the free schools experiment because innovation offers more promise than central control. Yet while we have an exam system imposing a straitjacket on what children must learn, the nature of what is being taught will be hard to change.

It should be a priority for politicians and professionals to work out how to construct an exam system that is less prescriptive and encourages intellectual exploration and thought.

Michael Gove’s temptation will be to ignore this and to score the same cheap points as Labour did by trumpeting fake improvements. He must be discouraged, or the slow disaster that is being inflicted on millions of young people will have no end.

Recommend (31) Comment (15) Print Follow Comment

Read more of Jenni Russell's columns
Don’t argue – pick a benefit to abandon
15 January 2012
Brit lit recoils from the way we live
1 January 2012
Oh come, all ye faithless, we all need a little ritual
18 December 2011
Not skiving, minister, just suffering cancer
11 December 2011
The Commentary Box
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Comment on thisComment (15)
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Stephen ReeveSouthend On SeaRecommend (1)[ 3 hours ago ]
The general line of all comments is that the present situation is untenable - but that it will probably continue because nobody in authority has the courage or wit to make the required changes.

colin colin  ..... I feel for your ..... As a young teacher in the early 1980s I was making similar comments and finally in 1995 I resigned from teaching because I wanted to educate and inspire ... not teach to narrow outcomes / objectives .... a total waste of my time and that of the students.

I would also point out that all political parties have contributed to this mess - not one party. I have little hope that Cameron / Gove will attempt any serious changes.
Alan ThorpeBrightonRecommend (3)[ 3 hours ago ]
I agree completely with Robert's views about grammar schools. I no longer listen to anything that Shirley Williams has to say on any subject. One guilty party missing from the list is Margaret Thatcher. She had the chance to save the grammar schools but did nothing.
daniel caseNewquayRecommend (3)[ 3 hours ago ]
After 13 years of the trade union dominated Labour government most teachers are now just a bunch of lazy unfit for the job jobsworth who are only interested in three things  continually getting shorter working days, the school opposite me starts at 9 finishes at 3 and the kids spend at least 2 hours a day in the playground, today's teachers second thing is longer holidays, and third is higher pay and pension. Kids today don't stand a chance.
Peter BurgessBradfordRecommend (1)[ 3 hours ago ]
Rurik  all labour did was to carry on with the same policies of the previous government. The only noticeable change was that they closed the loophole that enabled teachers to retire at 50 on a  better pension than they might have done if they'd worked till they were 60. I suspect like me you approved of that.
What Ofsted, introduced by Thatcher and carried on by labour, did do was to put pressure on schools to improve their exam results. That's what improved results, up till then far too many schools had been coasting. Teachers now know how to teach to pass exams something that public schools have been doing all along. Teaching has become "so much more brilliant" at teaching children to pass exams. This is why Jenni has written this article.
By the way Robert, Maggie closed more Grammar schools than any labour government. She realised that the two tier system failed so many working class youngsters. The middle classes could pay to tutor less able children into taking the places of brighter working class children. Maggie wasn't all bad and did look at facts rather than political bias some times.
RurikReadingRecommend (7)[ 4 hours ago ]
Labour's twisting of our education system into a social-engineering tool is their most disgraceful deceit. Trying to fool us that teaching became so much more brilliant and pupils became so much more intelligent under their regime that they got so many more A*++** and all got into university. While turning out people who think they're amazing because they turned up, but can't write a comprehensible sentence.
Robert londonRecommend (10)[ 5 hours ago ]
The rot started in 1968 with Richard Crosland's (and later Shirley William's) abolition of the grammar schools. It was the most vindictive and destructive piece of legislation ever visited upon our once fine eduction system - oh wait, it wasn't even legislation. The Labour govt used an orders in council to push through (thus avoiding even a debate in parliament). 

What they did was observe a two-tier system and decided that, as one tier (SecMods) was failing, the excellent tier should be destroyed (only the left can think in such warped terms). Yet if the system still existed, one would be producing kids with strong skills - in IT, graphics, creativity, as well as more practical skills. The other an academic intellect capable of taking on the privately-educated. In fact, they could have become so good the abolition of private schools could have been mooted (rather than handing them almost total victory when it comes to choosing the UK's elite). 

Everything since has been a clumsy attempt to circumnavigate that one - massive - mistake. By the way, both Williams and Crosland were privately educated so had zero idea of the consequences of what they were doing. Either that - or their warped socialism intended destroying the life chances of millions and millions of bright working class kids.
Russell MurdayGainsboroughRecommend (6)[ 5 hours ago ]
colin colin

As a retired science teacher I am in total agreement with you. However, I would suggest the answer is to go back to what it was before the National Curriculum and GCSE. In those days I could, and did, digress from the syllabus if the situation merited it. Situations often prompted by a pupils asking a question based on something they had read or seen. The Nuffield courses helped immensly in encouraging the curiosity and thinking needed by the pupils to develop and succeed as scientists.

I produced my best scientists in those days, pupils who were interested and who could think through situations. In the later years of my career I became bored by the narrowness and lack of depth of what I had to teach. I wasn't teaching Biology, I was teaching how to pass an exam.
Nigel ToyeKendalRecommend (3)[ 6 hours ago ]
It is really interesting that you represent very well a gradual awakening to a problem that has been there for far more than 15 years.
The central issue is whether you want real education, the growth of minds, the stimulation of thinking, the awakiening to a personal appetite for learning,in pupils or you want to just measure outcomes.
The pretence to education we have at the moment, whilst only achieving bean counting assessment, is there because if you want education you have to accept that you cannot be measuring it all the time to prove that learning is happening.
You have to trust the pupils and the teachers, to allow productive confusion as challenges in learning are faced and pupils struggle with concepts and skills. The pupils and outsiders have to accept that learning includes making mistakes, trying things that do not work and learning from them, being a learner who is developing.
This is messy and is not constant success and brilliance.
That I am afraid is where true learning lies, but it has never suited the politicians and observers who put pressure on for "results".
G MulcrowRecommend (6)[ 6 hours ago ]
All points made are depressingly true and don't think that Free and Studio Schools will provide the answer. These are just another way of cutting ties with the Local Authorities. It's the outcomes they will be judged on.
Jessica GoochHARROWRecommend (9)[ 6 hours ago ]
It's not the job of teachers to inculcate "politeness, an ability to be punctual and an interest in the job." Nor is it the job of teachers to teach curiosity.
These faculties have to come from the home. Parents aren't mentioned in this article.
A home where a radio is only ever turned to XFM, where a newspaper is never read, where books are a rarity and where discussions over the tea table are non-existent because everyone eats separately or in front of the TV, is not a home where children are going to learn how to think.
Blaming teachers for having to salvage the consequences of uncritical or ignorant parenting is to miss the real problem.
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