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Teacher says Gove has left dreams of youngsters “in tatters” over GCSE grades

August 24, 2012 12:35 pm

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Chris Edwards writes:

“You have not simply moved the goalposts. You have demolished them, sold off the playing fields where they once stood and left the dreams of these youngsters in tatters.”

charles.ward

I’m sure Chris Edwards’ message to his pupils that their failure to get a grade C in English Language was Michael Gove’s fault will prepare them well for the world of work. Employers love employees who blame others for their failures and who exhibit a strong sense of entitlement regardless of ability.

If the pupils are unfortunate enough to encounter an employer without such a progressive attitude (what are the chances!) then when they are fired they can always “stick it to the man” by burning down their neighbour’s houses and looting. After all, nothing is ever their fault.

Clearly we need to reform the education system so that good grades go to those who need them rather than those who perform the best. The current system of everyone being judged to the same standard is not working.
Quiet_Sceptic

According to the Guardian 63.9% of GCSE English entrants got a grade C or above this year, compared to 65.4% in 2011, so a fall of 1.5%. Obviously it was bad for those pupils on the C/D grade boundary who fell foul of the tightened grading standards but it’s not quite the end of the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/23/gcse-results-grades-sixth-form-college
http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael

The Tories have always hated the idea of an educated proletariat because an educated proletariat rejects bourgeois values and critiques capitalist policies more effectively. That’s the reason why the Tories and the Lib Dem Stooges were so keen to increase tuition fees. As that has not completely choked off applicants to university from poor and lower income homes, Gove and the Department for Education have decided to devalue the examination results of the children from those homes. This has infuriated parents who know how hard their children have worked for their high grades which the Tories and their stooges in the Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and the Institute of Directors have always rubbished and which the Tories and the Lib Dems have now physically downgraded. This is an outrage. We should be demanding Gove’s resignation.
- jaime taurosangastre candelas
  
  This does read like a completely unbalanced view, and also one with some huge and unproven assumptions.
  
  I suggest that it is not automatic that an “educated proletariat” would reject en masse bourgeois values and collectively critique capitalist policies: if anything, human nature and history would suggest that a majority of them would seek to take advantage of the opportunities given to them and move “up” if that is an appropriate word in society, individually adopting those values you believe they would collectively reject.
  
  The rest seems to be a mere list of unevidenced “bogeymen” and assertions of political interference. Can you back up your view that Gove and the DofE have actively devalued the exam results of children from poor and lower income homes, as that is what you say? And not those from better off homes? How does a very small drop of 1.5% in one subject only support your thesis?
  - Cari_esky
    
    Many teachers seem to think so. They are the people at the forefront and is something this Government has wanted to do and that is put the professionals in charge, the teachers. Yet all this Government seems to do in practice is do the opposite and will undermine teachers in what they know and do. We have a contrary Government and it is not good.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
    
    “This does read like a completely unbalanced view”
    
    Presumably that simply means that my view is the opposite of yours.
    
    Are you seriously suggesting that if workers achieve better pay and economic conditions it prevents them from critiquing Tory policies and the activities of capitalist employers that determine those conditions? That better educated workers only want to “get on” as you put it and not think about anything else? Presumably that’s what you mean by “human nature”. Perhaps you could provide a more specific definition of “human nature” ?Personally, for me the term is meaningless and can be made to support any number of assertions which is why I never use it. As regards “history” I refer you to Peter Barnard’s apposite comment below.
    
    When an examination paper submitted in January receives a 10% devaluation in marks if submitted in June I suggest that is hardly an “unevidenced assertion of political interference,” particularly when this has been prefaced by Gove and other Tories talking about “grade inflation” and the need to reduce exam results.
    
    Relative to the millionaires on the front bench and the country’s wealthiest two per cent, the majority of people in this country are poor and low paid. Therefore the devaluation of their children’s results in the public examination system affects them all. I do not make a distinction between “lower” and “middle” class children but between the Elite (particularly those educated at Private Schools) and the Proletariat.
    
    Finally, when did you last hear the Tories, the Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and the Institute of Directors praise the sterling efforts of our young people who, by dint of hard work and with the support of a Labour Government totally committed to education, have achieved higher examination grades year on year only to hear their marvellous results dismissed by the Tories and their stooges as “grade inflation”? What an insult to those young people and how disillusioning for them at a crucial period of their lives.
    
    Twas ever thus. If you study the records of the 19th and 20th centuries, the period of massive state educational expansion, you will see that Tories and the employers have always rubbished the proletariat’s achievements in education and have always complained about school leavers who can’t read and write in a period when literacy and numeracy levels were soaring. Why do the employers do this? Because an educated workforce increases labour costs as the people rightly demand better pay for the improved quality of their labour. The Tories and their employers do not want an educated work force: they want a work force which will ideally work for nothing and can be treated as a lump. What they call “flexibility” Other than that they want to pay their workers as little as possible which means denying them higher education or rubbishing their educational achievements.
    - KonradBaxter
      
      “the support of a Labour Government totally committed to education”
      
      So why did they bring in tuition fees?
      - http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
        
        After the neglect of the Tory years Labour’s commitment to education stands out like a beacon. I am thinking particularly of their commitment to improving standards of literacy and numeracy with the literacy and numeracy hour; the introduction of Teaching Assistants; the reduction of pupil teacher ratios; the introduction of EMA; the huge raising of academic standards; ( dismissed by the capitalists and their lackeys as “grade inflation” ) ;the massive programme of building and repairing that took place, when teachers for years had been working in buildings that should have been condemned and which the Tories were quite happy to see the children of the proletariat educated in. As for the introduction of tuition fees, naturally, I opposed those, and was bitterly disappointed to see them increased to astronomical rates by the Tories and their Lib Dem stooges.
      - KonradBaxter
        
        Part of that beacon is that Labour brought in fees for University education which we all knew would lead to where we are now – massive debt for students which will inevitably put off those from lower income backgrounds and force social change in university intake.
        
        It was a mistake and for me tarnishes any claim about education for Labour. It certainly does not destroy it but tarnishes it. They did a lot of good.
- PeterBarnard
  
  History is certainly on your side, Michael (“Conservatives and an educated proletariat”).
  
  From my Oxford History of England ; ”The Age of Reform 1815-1870″ : “Self-made and successful men …. from their point of view an educated working class meant an increase in labour troubles.”
  
  There are a number of historical references to the idea that an educated working class would actually start to question the then “foundations of society.” I guess we are still in the questioning phase – and more so, since 1979.
jaime taurosangastre candelas

If that is indeed the case (and I have no reason to disbelieve it), and if the drop is evenly spread among all in the student population, then it hardly seems noticeable.

I am also mystified as to why the children’s’ teachers place so much more emphasis on interim predictions made by themselves six months before the end of the course. By definition, they have not learned everything on the syllabus at that point.

Surely the best system in exams is for a completely fair bell curve assessment, in which the top 5% get A*, the next 10% A, the next 15% get B, the middle 40% get C, the next 15% D, the next 10% get E, and the lowest 5% simply fail altogether? That way, year on year you have a standard metric so an A* in 2012 is the same discriminator as an A* in 2020, and it allows for exams to be made harder or easier at an overall level.

It seems odd to allow children to grow up with everything possible being done to make them think they are all doing very well, and then to dump them into life at the age of 18 with no concept that most of them are not in the top rank of achievers.
- Brumanuensis
  
  I prefer objective standards myself. Quotas always seemed to me to be a slightly arbitrary mechanism – like in economics!
  
  What the education system in England and Wales needs is a new, more broadly based qualification for 16-19 year olds, based on the principles of a broad, liberal arts education, rather than narrow concentration on three disciplines. I’m an IB graduate, myself, so I’m familiar with such systems.
  - jaime taurosangastre candelas
    
    Not enough science?
    
    I’d go the other way, a broadly based education based on science. not discounting English language, the British history and culture, or foreign languages, but grounded on proper science. It might stop our young people from being so clueless with numbers and their inter-relationships.
    - Brumanuensis
      
      Yes, the state of mathematics is definitely sub-par. It would be advisable to require students to take mathematics and at least one science, up to the age of 18. My calculus was fairly awful, which dragged down my marks, but I discovered a surprising talent for biology which otherwise I wouldn’t have taken up otherwise.
      
      An even more radical step would be to end the practice of single-concentration degrees, by moving over the the American ‘major-minor’ model. We believe in the virtues of ‘inter-disciplinary’ studies – or at least we did when I was at university – but fail to consistently do so in tertiary education. Cross-fertilisation and all that.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I mean, who wouldn’t like the opportunity to chloroform fruit flies and observe them under a microscope?
      - Alexwilliamz
        
        It starts with fruit flies….
        
        :cough:
- PeterBarnard
  
  ” …it hardly seems noticeable …”
  
  Correct, Jaime – it’s a reduction of just 2.3%, so that for every thousand pupils who obtained English C-A* last year, there are 977 pupils this year.
  
  Given that this summer’s markings have been welcomed as ”more realistic” (or so I believe), it kind of blows a hole in the “massive grade inflation” hypothesis since GCSE was introduced in the mid-late 1980s. And, I’m not sure that children can’t become more “educated” over time ; certainly, if we look at standards of literacy and numeracy taught in schools over the last 200 years, and the number of children who have benefited, and are now both literate and numerate, there has been a vast improvement.
  
  Having said that, the change in marking rigour between January and June this year has been handled in a ham-fisted way. “Moving the goalposts,” especially when unannounced to those affected by the move, is not good.
  
  I’ll have to do some reading on the Bell curve assessment, but my gut feeling is that there are problems with it. As Brumanuensis remarks below, application of the Bell curve to any year’s results is not objective, ie it does not deliver an absolute standard and it’s absolute standards that should be the objective, not “in the best x% this (or any other) year.”
  - jaime taurosangastre candelas
    
    Peter, in response to the “absolute standard”.
    
    This is a well known phenomenon, not just in academia. You can have two absolute standards: one measured over time, one measured over a fixed point. Rarely would the two coincide: it is more normal for the “over time” measurement to float +/- of the fixed point by a few percentage points. I cannot recall the name – something like Kinkoff’s Proposition, but that does not come up in Google, but it is something like that.
    
    An absolute standard at a fixed point would ultimately imply the same question asked each year, which is clearly not going to work in an exam. So you have to accept that there will be variation each year as examiners try to find different questions that are equally as tough as each other.
    
    An absolute standard over time says nothing more than X% or in each percentile per year (ie what I lay out above). It allows for everyone to get relatively lower marks in a difficult exam, relatively higher marks in an easier exam. All it says is that if my daughter gets an A* in her maths in 2014, and my son an A in 2019, then my daughter is reliably morel likely to be better at maths than he is, despite the 5 year difference.
    
    Of course, the sensible thing to do is to try to intelligently combine the two things, accepting tiny variations as being unavoidable, and normally self-cancelling. So put effort into setting exams of equal difficulty, but measure and grade specifically on percentiles (that was Kinkoff’s proposition, even if that is not the correct name).
    
    What this also allows central policy setting agencies to achieve is to gradually increase or decrease the difficulty of the exams if that is what is wanted, without “crashing the system”, as some (frankly alarmist) teachers wish to do this year for your proven 23/1000ths of a difference in one single exam a child takes among 10-12 exams.
    - PeterBarnard
      
      Jaime,
      
      (i) if an examination is “easier,” then by definition an “absolute standard” has been set aside?
      
      (ii) the “alarmists” are to be found, I would submit, in the letters pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail as they have fulminated for fifteen years and more about “massive grade inflation” ; this summer’s markings in Eng Lang appear to show that this “massive grade inflation” is responsible for just 23 in 1,000 pupils being not where they should be ;
      
      (iii) perhaps – this is only a thought – this “massive grade inflation” has made it just a trifle more difficult for Rupert and Samantha to proceed as they should*, without competition from the upstarts Kevin and Sharon?
      
      * the middle classes have never got used to the idea that the working classes should also enjoy prosperity, and old attitudes die hard. A writer** in 1763, denouncing charity schools : ” …. nor is it easy to conceive or invent anything more destructive …. to the interests of a nation … than the giving of an education to the children of the lowest class of her people that will make them condemn those drudgeries for which they were born.”
      
      Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo cemented the concept of the “lower orders.” Adam Smith, to his eternal credit (although you won’t hear much about it these days, and certainly not since 1979 after Margaret Thatcher and the rest of the Manchester Liberals took command), was a humane man and thought that the “lower orders” should receive an equitable share of the national prosperity.
      
      ** quoted in Trevor May’s “An Economic and Social History of Britain 1760-1990 ; an excellent book.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Peter, normally I can see the essential point you make in a response, such is the clarity of your thinking. But in this, I just do not see it. I’m making a specific point about how exams “can be” usefully benchmarked year by year (not that they are, simply that they can be), and now you are going off into political philosophy?
        
        I “do not give a damn” about whether a child is the son of a duke or of a Tesco checkout assistant (is that the equivalent of the old candlestick maker?), I just want them measured to the same criteria.
        
        I know nothing of grade inflation, beyond the fact that people talk about it with little apparent knowledge and less rigour and discernment. I do know that young people of today seem to be completely inadequately equipped for life in the sense that even young middle-aged people accept is a bare minimum. I look at my children’s teachers, and the standards they set, and what they expect of the children in their care to achieve, and it is laughably deficient. Laughably, but tragically deficient.
      - PeterBarnard
        
        Jaime,
        
        I think that this could go on for ever and ever, and I’m going to bow out.
  - Hugh
    
    ”Given that this summer’s markings have been welcomed as ”more realistic”
    (or so I believe), it kind of blows a hole in the “massive grade
    inflation” hypothesis since GCSE was introduced in the mid-late 1980s.”
    
    No it doesn’t. It simply means the balance has begun to be redressed. It says very little about whether an A this year is comparable to one 15 years ago.
    
    “If we look at standards of literacy and numeracy taught in
    schools over the last 200 years, and the number of children who have
    benefited, and are now both literate and numerate, there has been a vast
    improvement.”
    
    But if we look over the last 20 years, according to a Sheffield University study of report literacy and numeracy of
    13- to 19-year-olds in England it has hardly changed: with 17 per cent of 16- to 19-year- functionally illiterate.
    
    http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6042996
    - PeterBarnard
      
      Hugh,
      
      Thank you for the refernce to the Sheffield University report – all 77 pages of it.
      
      (i) Looking at the full report – and the “Yellis tests” that the authors seem to recommend – it does not seem clear cut that “massive grade inflation” has occurred, as some say. In fact, there appears to be some correlation between the Yellis tests results in Vocabulary and Mathematics and the improvement in the number of pupils attaining higher grades ;
      
      (ii) Correct – there may be some way to go to “redress the balance.” However, where that balance is is possibly not as far away as some people say ;
      
      (iii) the fact that the same proportion of children are still “functionally illiterate” does not bar the remainder from improving their literacy skills.
    - PeterBarnard
      
      Hugh,
      
      Thank you for the refernce to the Sheffield University report – all 77 pages of it.
      
      (i) Looking at the full report – and the “Yellis tests” that the authors seem to recommend – it does not seem clear cut that “massive grade inflation” has occurred, as some say. In fact, there appears to be some correlation between the Yellis tests results in Vocabulary and Mathematics and the improvement in the number of pupils attaining higher grades ;
      
      (ii) Correct – there may be some way to go to “redress the balance.” However, where that balance is is possibly not as far away as some people say ;
      
      (iii) the fact that the same proportion of children are still “functionally illiterate” does not bar the remainder from improving their literacy skills.
    - PeterBarnard
      
      Hugh,
      
      Thank you for the refernce to the Sheffield University report – all 77 pages of it.
      
      (i) Looking at the full report – and the “Yellis tests” that the authors seem to recommend – it does not seem clear cut that “massive grade inflation” has occurred, as some say. In fact, there appears to be some correlation between the Yellis tests results in Vocabulary and Mathematics and the improvement in the number of pupils attaining higher grades ;
      
      (ii) Correct – there may be some way to go to “redress the balance.” However, where that balance is is possibly not as far away as some people say ;
      
      (iii) the fact that the same proportion of children are still “functionally illiterate” does not bar the remainder from improving their literacy skills.
      - Hugh
        
        I’d say there’s some way to go in redressing the balance: in just 10 years from 2001 to 2011 the percentage of GCSE grads A* to C awarded increased from 57.1% to 69.8% – up 22 per cent. It’s a similar story with A level results, where the share of A–level entries awarded grade A has roughly trebled since 1980.
        
        I’d say those Daily Mail and Telegraph letter writers have some reason to fret about rampant grade inflation – particularly since, as the OECD noted last year, “official test scores and grades in England show systematically and
        significantly better performance than international and independent
        tests”. And, on the rising A level results: “Independent surveys of cognitive skills do not
        support this development.”
        
        Perhaps it’s just middle class writers at the OECD resenting the increased competition from lower orders, but in fact the academic studies do seem to draw the conclusions they state. Strangely, universities and employers have failed to detect this massive improvement in pupils either. In fact, I’d be interested if anyone could point to a single way in which these improvements manifest themselves other than improving grades.
        
        I don’t think it’s the disgusted of Tunbridge Wells brigade that really face the burden of proof on this issue.
        
        Finally, it’s interesting to me that, despite the exam boards having a clear commercial interest in awarding better grades, they are, uniquely among private sector companies, trusted by the left to be behaving with perfect integrity. Why is that?
- Alexwilliamz
  
  The problem comes for those schools who by design (grammar system) or chance have a large proportion of c/d borderline students. In such schools this could have a much bigger overall effect on both english results and the other standards (5 arcs including eng & maths) or even the eng bacc. As schools are rated by this criteria and it can mean the difference between survival and failure, it maybe should be included in special circumstances this year. Especially as this seems a perfect valid line of argument when the performance of the economy is out by .5 of a percent here or there. The real problem in the whole system is the over emphasis on exams, a teacher will unsurprisingly then try and prepare a student for an exam based upon previous expectation (especially when related to a subjective subject such as english). If these things are all changed, or the goal posts moved it can be unfair on those targetting specific things in the exam. This all sounds a bit over the top but when these qualifications are being used to decide far more than a simple level of ability in a specific area at a given time then even a couple of percentage points can make on hell of a difference. As a result of a percentage point overall whole classes will be heavily hit (if setted) and individual teacher’s working conditions may be affected, A level courses may struggle to recruit sufficient numbers as expected and some people may be laid off and most importantly of all a significant actual number of students will be denied certain options because everything has become so fixated on a handful of gcse grades (eng & maths specifically). If the fall is purely down to students being less able than the last couple of years and performing badly fair enough, but the whole charade that is exam boards and mark schemes means that we know that these students are probably no worse than last years, just as deep down we knew the last 10 odd years students are not better then those before.
girlguide

Perhaps those of us who took our O levels in the sixties and seventies should complain that our grades have been deflated, by the inflated grades given from 200o onwards.
- MarcusTankus
  
  and even worse …degrees
Brumanuensis

The problem with British exam systems is the number of retakes permitted, as well as some problems with the syllabus, notably on languages – although of all the people I’d trust to reform the national curriculum, Michael Gove is pretty low down the list, with his fetish for Latin and rather quaint ‘Our Island Story’ view of what the history curriculum ought to be.

Where the GCSE farce comes from, as Andrew Rawnsley noted, is that in response to Gove’s persistent complaints, the exam boards panicked and revised the thresholds at the last minute and in doing so, to use the vernacular, ‘screwed over’ the students taking their exams. When even one of Gove’s favourite headmasters is annoyed, this suggests that the plan wasn’t thought through: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/24/gcse-results-michael-gove-butchery

By all means tackle grade inflation and make exams more difficult, but don’t change your criteria so abruptly that students won’t have time to adjust. That’s just cruel and counter-productive.
- Mr Arthur Cook
  
  I am not entirely clear on the issue of “retakes”. Given that any form of examination system is supposed to act as the recognition that a student has demonstrated the required skill, knowledge or understanding specified by the syllabus then it would seem reasonable to allow a candidate to attempt the examination on a number occasions.
  
  Alternatively, if the examination system is meant to separate the “worthy” from the “unworthy” then denying a second attempt makes sense, all be it morally corrupt.
  
  Being a democratic fellow and willing to listen to the voice of the people who may well feel that children should not be allowed a second chance to resit school examinations I suggest that we extend it the the driving test! One chance, no second attempt. If you fail then you are banned from driving for life.
  
  Why!! I see so many pale faces!
Brumanuensis

I’ll give you a 6/10 for effort.
- charles.ward
  
  Is that an A or an A*?
Mr Arthur Cook

Before engaging in statistical and geographical
analysis we might reflect on the individual tragedies of children who, had they
had their work marked according to the framework in place during their period
of study would, have gained better grades. College places will be lost and many
will be put off further engagement in an education system they will rightly see
as corrupt and self-serving.

Gove has whipped up ‘grade inflation fever’
which has no proven basis in fact but provides some solace to those who are desperate
to believe that the young are not up to their own academic standard.

What those who left school over 20 years
ago might be unaware of is the context in which so called grade inflation has occurred.
Pupils are now relentlessly perused to achieve the grades that they must
deliver to ensure their school’s success in a plethora of league tables. Now children
must not ask what their school can do for them but are held accountable for
what grades they can achieve for their school. Further, the number of GCSE’s
each pupil studies is higher than the number of O levels those like myself had
to cope with and the volume of content has increased considerably. To focus on
grade outcomes schools have narrowed the curriculum and participation in
extra-curricular activity has been recast as “homework clubs” and
coursework catch-up sessions run in the school holidays. As such it is hardly
surprising that grades have improved.

To understand what is happening we might
also turn to the political context.

Agencies like Ofqual and Ofsted elicit the
laughter of head teachers when it is claimed that they are politically
‘independent’ and examination boards see their profitable business being curtailed
if they do not deliver ‘rigor’. Further, the recasting by OFSTED of
‘satisfactory’ schools as unsatisfactory, increasing the number of pupils
failing and raising the grade threshold schools must achieve all heads in the direction
of ever more academies and ultimately the establishment of yet another conduit
for public money to flow into corporate pockets.

We might also a little circumspect about
the annual ritual of ‘businessmen’ lamenting that young people cannot ‘read or
add up’ and concluding that state schools are failing. We might reflect that
even the best private education received by some MPs and cabinet ministers was
not sufficient to render them capable of understanding the written rules on
parliamentary expenses and the numeracy of some was found to be so poor that
they were found to be claiming interest on mortgages which had already been
paid!

So, where does this leave Labour?

Firstly there is a lack of a coherent
alternative policy and Twigg’s rather weak and lack-lustre protestations
against the particulars rather than the principles of academies and tuition
fees remind us that the foundations of Gove’s most extreme policy constructions
were laid by New Labour.

Unless Labour relocates its faith in
democracy and community governance of schools rather than failed and
inappropriate notions of market and the illusion of parental choice the
electorate will see no clear water between Labour and the Tories.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
  
  I concur with everything you say Arthur.
http://profile.yahoo.com/KVGWRSNIFQHIKNMNKUKCL74ZGI prziloczek

This makes me really cross. I had a loyal Labour supporter in my A level class when Mr Blunkett deliberately set out of make the GCSE and A Level political. Her marks were reduced (in all subjects) from A down to C. this affected a lot of teachers, not just me.
I was there when the chief examiner was kept waiting for half an hour by “Sharon – a Labour appointee.
I was there when the new marking system for A level was introduced – and nobody, not even the chief examiner – could understand it (and she admitted in front of us too).So less crocodile tears please. It still makes me cross, even now.
jaime taurosangastre candelas

If I want you to understand that my view is the opposite of yours, I will use those words. If I want you to understand that your post reads to me like a completely unbalanced view, I will use those words.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
  
  “If you had not noticed, both communism and socialism have been global failures, both well dead, and thankfully, for several decades.”
  
  Is that why the French voted for Hollande, then?
- Mr Arthur Cook
  
  Re. ”
  If you had not noticed, both communism and socialism have been global failures,….”
  Given that the capitalists edifice of Europe is begging bailout from China, the situation is rather more complex than your argument suggests.
  Without communism China would have become another “Africa”. Instead communism has led to an economic trajectory which suggests global dominance within decades.
  I might be willing to accept that the processes of building a communist state was stained by social conditions which are very real and well publicized by opponents of communism. Certainly these conditions blighted lives in the process of nation building.However do you feel the industrial revolution and the foundations of capitalism in the west was achieved by means which were substantially different?Sadly, I must concur with Mr Gove. History should be compulsory!!
  - KonradBaxter
    
    This could be convincing if China were communist but it is not. It is what could be called state capitalist perhaps but certainly not communist. Indeed, it was the deliberate reduction of communist influence in the economic planning of the Chinese system which unleashed Chinas vast potential – and most of that is in making goods the West wants and selling them to us, and latterly to their growing middle class, cheaply.
    China would not have become ‘another Africa’ because one is a continent of many nations and the other a single country which has been roughly united for a long time. Without Communism there would have been no Great Famine, no Great Leap Forward, no Cultural Revolution – all of these (and much more) retarded China’s economic and social development for decades. Dropping them along with much of the communist ideology and rhetoric is what has powered Chinas rise, not communism.
    There is little attempt to build communism in China outside of some official pronouncements and window dressing for the naïve and the remaining true believers. The Party through the Army controls the State which runs the Economy for the benefit of the Party and the Army. China’s new imperialist ventures in Africa are to continue to fuel this prosperity and allow the Party to maintain its control.
Alexwilliamz

What we have to realise (this is my cynical side speaking) is Gove has only got this and possibly the next set of results to blame on Labour policy. He needs to get the grades lower now so that we can finish this parliament (2014) with improved education figures across the board, thanks to conservative education policy!!
- Mr Arthur Cook
  
  What you say may be true but taking a more panoramic view of education policy I am more inclined to favour cock-up over conspiracy.
  First we witnessed the confusion over the schools building programme. Then the programme of curriculum form is undermined by Gove’s own experts resigning. His appointee to the role of cheif inspector narrowly misses a vote of no-confidence from head teachers. Freeshools have stalled or are teaching creationism. The gains in school nutrition are thrown away. Playing fields are sold off with experts over-ruled by ministers. Now we have chaos with examinations with Gove squeeking “it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me!”
  If this constitutes a “cunning plan” then it is so cunning that I cannot fathom it!!
  If it is taken at face value it simply outlines the thrashing about by an ideologically confused secretarty of state who will not listen, who has little experience of the state school system and who is addicted to whatever bizzare notion and nostrum is peddled to him by edu-entrepneurs with an eye on tax payers money.
  Given that Gove is presented by the right wing press as a sucessful minister god help us if he is replaced by an unsucessful one!
jaime taurosangastre candelas

M Hollande’s socialist appeal will never see the light of day, as he will not produce it in the form of legislation, and the French people would not wish it upon themselves. It was a convenient electoral conceit.

Even two months after his election, it has gone astonishingly quiet on the socialism front in France. One of his first acts was to reduce the right to strike for workers on the French railways, an abandonment and volte face of his electoral campaign, and both his supporters and his opponents have kept quiet about that. But that is French politics. Perhaps because it is August and the French are largely on holiday no one noticed?

Do you have any other practical arguments? Or being a socialist, any other “visions” that can be easily disproven?
- http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
  
  What extraordinary logic you employ to refute the revival of socialism. According to you, the French people voted for Hollande, a socialist, because they didn’t want socialism. I suppose you’ll be advancing the proposition next that the British people did not vote overwhelmingly for Cameron because they really wanted to see him in power.
  - KonradBaxter
    
    Not extraordinary at all.
    
    They voted for some nice promises in tough times - some of which have already been dropped – and against Sarkozy who genuinely seemed to rankle many French.
    
    In third place, 6,421,426 French voted for the National Front.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/JP42QNYATVR2UKDJIUXUEV6RNY Michael
      
      I have no idea why millions of French people individually voted. And neither, I suspect, do you. All I know is that they voted for socialism.
      - KonradBaxter
        
        You do not know that at all. You are projecting what you want based on incomplete data.
Alexwilliamz

While my own comment was slightly tongue in cheek I think the truth may be some where between our accounts. Just because something turns out not to be very cunning does not mean it wasn’t intended to be so. I would not be surprised int he back of gove’s mind was the ‘strategy’ I suggested but in execution and subsequent management it all ends up looking a bit inept. Don’t forget the devil’s greatest trick is convincing you he doesn’t exist, perhaps gove’s ala boris J is to convince us all that they are totally inept yet despite this end up getting what they wanted all along…
- Mr Arthur Cook
  
  Certainly there are political motives behind this both explicit and implicit. Clearly downgrading many pupils in core league table subjects from C to D whilst raising the base line threshold from 35% to 40% will force more schools to become academies.
Alexwilliamz

Amusing. It does demonstrate the very confused situation we now find ourselves in, by which no two people can even agree what exams are for let alone how they should even operate or manifest themselves.
Alexwilliamz

What makes you think China is one country and that it should naturally remain as one entity in its present geographical extent. How would you broach this issue with a Tibetan?
- KonradBaxter
  
  China is a united nation and one country.
  
  Whether or not all the different ethnic / national groups want that to remain is a different issue.
  
  With a Tibertan i’d say exactly the same – they are a part of China whether they like it or not. They may want a different future, they may point to a different past. But currently they are part of China.
Alexwilliamz

Only way to afford the vast expansion of university places. Not that I’d support tuition fees, but then simply trying to force more people through a system designed for a different era and purpose often leads to these problems.
- KonradBaxter
  
  And the vast expansion was a mistake as it has devalued degrees and inevitably led to higher fees for all which will hit the poorest the most.
Mr Arthur Cook

Having read the posts below I wonder if it
is worth outlining, with an example, the issue with grading examinations. Some
below have obviously grasped this issue whilst others seem to imagine that “grades”
are some kind of holy writ which accompanied the ten commandments and were
given to humankind as a universal measure of “rigour”. I note that the term “rigour”
is now used by Gove and his acolytes as some kind of mystical substance like phlogiston
which can be spooned into pupils and their capacity to retain it measured. The
volume a pupil can contain is measured in an “examination”.
For three pupils sitting this examination., a simplified, illustrative example
might be:

John (score 79/100) = Grade A

Julie (score 70/100) = Grade A

Anne (score 69/100) = Grade B

Here 9 marks separate two candidates with
the same grade whilst 1 mark separates two candidates with different grades!!
Coupled with the relatively high level of discrepancy in the marking process
itself, grading takes on the characteristics of a perverse lottery.

This is why many countries do not use
grades but use raw scores instead.

Those who defend grading offer that it’s a
simple system which helps employers etc. Given that employers are frequently
lamenting the numeracy skills of interview candidates I am inclined to believe
that they themselves must have the capacity to put three, two digit numbers in
order of magnitude.

In short, grading is a perverse and unfair
ritual which does not help pupils, colleges, universities or employers and encourages
“gradymandering” (please remember I invented that term!!)

If we wish to see real reform rather than
political tinkering these are the issues which should be tackled.
Robert_Crosby

I am right behind the main teaching unions as they resist the attacks on their members by Gove and his relentless and twisted pursuit of academies and free schools. I am under no illusions regarding what this man is capable of. It would be nice to see Stephen Twigg do what he’s supposed to do and actually OPPOSE him.

Where headteachers and governors – especially in secondary schools that have foolishly opted to become one of Gove’s academies – are concerned, I just wonder… are they motivated by a genuine sense of injustice for their pupils or is their prime concern the shallow career aspirations of these heads and/or their “position” in the league table? Yes, I think it’s probably the latter too.

Dance with the devil and all that…
Mr Arthur Cook

I agree with your points, sir.

The pressures to become an academy are powerful and financial incentives are backed up by the undemocratic but apparently irresistible stroke of ‘libertarian’ Gove’s pen. The wishes of parents, teachers, governors account for little it appears. This is doubly tragic as the government imposing these policies is unelected.
Any appointed rather than elected government, failing to receive the people’s mandate would discharge it’s duties honorably by governing to the following general election by steering a course which maintains stability and responds responsibly to circumstances. This they have not done.
Gove’s opportunistic “hit and run” approach to ‘reform’ which has no mandate, is challenged by parents and professionals and is an outrage against democratic principles.
This said, the role of the opposition is to challenge these abuses of power and offer coherent alternative policies. In my view Twigg has failed to:
a) Challenge the abuse of power by Gove with energy and commitment.
b) Present an alternative coherent policy matrix for reform.
The parents, pupils and professionals of the country deserve better than the over confident Gove and the listless Twigg.
- Robert_Crosby
  
  The (so-called) “pressures” aren’t absolutely irresistible though. Governors seem to have been swayed by self-perpetuating myths, such as “all other schools are going and we don’t want to be left behind/without services as there won’t be any provided by the LA”. Total nonsense if people stand firm.
  
  The Tories in particular (we were just timid from 1997 and allowed it to continue) used parent governors to undermine LA and staff representatives. They’ve now served their purpose and have seen themselves increasingly marginalised at the expense of no-mark, unelected ‘community’ governors. The calibre of governors generally is much less than when we opposed the Thatcher-Major ‘opting out’, sadly.
Alexwilliamz

Widening participation in further education was and is not a mistake, expecting degrees to be the vehicle to do this was/is.
Alexwilliamz

Widening participation in further education was and is not a mistake, expecting degrees to be the vehicle to do this was/is.
leslie48

There’s a crisis coming for our meritocracy – this GCSE English problem- is going to be used to demand new exam reforms at both A Level and GCSE which will return us a 1960s elite model. Who will be the winners of a two year system with no modular exams, no retakes, no coursework – you’ve guessed upper middle class kids in smart schools aiming for the Russell university group. Of course middle class kids win out now but these changes will reduce opportunities for the rest even more as it -reduces- chances at improving grades over year 11, 12 &13. Gove and Woodhouse are now happy back to the good old days!
Brumanuensis

Apologies, there’s been a change in the marking criteria and I’m afraid I’m going to have to mark you down to 5/10. I believe that’s a C, but don’t quote me on it.

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