John Bald/language and literacy

Guardian on "challenging behaviour".

At long last, a Guardian writer in this piece on a Pru admits that the term "challenging behaviour" is a euphemism for poor behaviour, consisting mostly of foul-mouthed abuse, low level violence and destruction. "I've been spat at, bitten, kicked. It's part of the job,"  the head says. "I feel privileged to work with these kids."  This is not privilege - it's licensed abuse, and as unhealthy for the perpetrators as for their victims.

Michael Gove on adoption - the piece of his life.

Michael Gove, here, on the experience of being in care and being adopted, has written, literally, the piece of his life. What he says is true, and the tragedy is that the lives of children and potential parents continue to be blighted by people who impose their own view of society on others in a brutal and ignorant power play. But then, ignorance is what these people deal in, usually in the name of equality.  

When my research for the Who Cares? Trust was published in 1995, it was criticised on the grounds that achievement was not an appropriate concept for children in care. I remain outraged at this ignorant, arrogant, anti-social attitude, which is, alas, still prevalent in the left, who see achievement as a middle-class preoccupation rather than as the goal of life and the basis of civilisation. Unfortunately, they are still in power in too many places, not least, if Michael Gove is right, our anti-social and left-leaning judiciary.

 

Katharine Birbalsingh on expectations, the Modern Bac, and AQA

Ms Birbalsingh on good form, here, on what she calls the "soft bigotry" of white pupils being expected to achieve less than other groups. Her main example is Australian, where she finds teachers ranking white pupils only after they have counted the invariably higher scores of Asians.

There is no good reason for Asians to achieve more than other pupils, except for the fact that they tend to work harder. This is part of the problem of the term "expectations". "We expect the world of these kids," an Essex deputy head once told me. But they didn't actually expect anything at all, because they did not expect the children to make a real effort. Unless the term expectation is backed up by some means of turning it into reality - and the only means I know of is concentration, determination and hard work - they might as well expect to win the lottery.

The modern bac will probably be just the same. New Labour's vocational qualifications were discredited by the wilful and transparent lie that one of them was worth four GCSEs, when in practice it was worth one at the most. Perhaps they could rename it the Secondary Modern Bac.

AQA, our biggest examining board, shows its own intellectual corruption here, by trying to boost low A level grades for pupils attending poor schools. This is the most blatant form of manipulation we have yet seen, as it overtly seeks to alter the marks awarded. My suspicion is that this happens already in discriminatory marking practices that penalise students from grammar and private schools, but the lack of transparency around the boards' procedures make it impossible to pin this down.

However, AQA's proposal is exactly in line with Ms Birbalsingh's point - an E at Passmore's should be worth more than a grade obtained at a school in which pupils are properly taught and have to work hard. We should not have schools in which pupils are not properly taught and required to work hard. I had a conversation with a prospective Passmore's parent on the train home this week, and was pleased to recommend that they look at the Channel 4 documentary on the school. I think he will now send his daughter somewhere else.   

Débâcle. GCSE languages entries.

 CILT has a usefuls table of entries in French, German and Spanish, since 1996. (the full table can be downloaded here).  

French entries have fallen from 347,960 in 1996, to 318,963 in 2005, to 154,221 in 2011. The fall in French entries since 1996 is therefore 56%.  Such is the legacy of New Labour on French.

Spanish entries have risen from 42,553 in 1996, to 62,489 in 2005, to 66,021 in 2011. This is a fall from over 67,000 in Spanish in the previous two years, so the growth in Spanish has stalled.

German entries have fallen from 134,286 in 1996, to 105,259 in 2005, to 60,887 in 2011. The fall of nearly 10,000 entries between 2010 and 2011 is proportionately the largest of these three languages.

These are national statistics, and so include the private sector, which has close to 100% of pupils taking a language. The fall of almost 200,000 pupils a year taking French, and 60,000 a  year taking German, since 2006, is catastrophic, and not seriously ofset by the gain in Spanish. Overall,  entries in the major European languages have fallen from 524,799 to 277,597, a loss of 247,202, or 47%.

The falls in entries for geography and history make this a compelling argument for Ebac. These subjects are all better represented in the private sector. It should be a matter of pride for those of us in the public sector that we do not offer children fewer opportunities than they would have if their parents were better off. Science has begun to pull its socks up. So should languages.

 

 

Dr Alan Beaton and Professor Dorothy Bishop (aka Deevybee)

Dr Alan Beaton responded very quicky and generously to a request for further information following his chapter below.  He has written a book  Dyslexia, Reading and the Brain: A Sourcebook of Cognitive and Biological Research. (Psychology Press,2004) with more detail than the article on research to that date. Dr Beaton is somewhat sceptical about some subsequent research, and recommended a review by Professor Dorothy Bishop, here.  Dorothy Bishop is the author of the excellent Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG2 is the revised version) an instrument for determining intellectual capacity in people who, for various reasons, have limited vocabulary and speaking skills. Designed originally for use with stroke patients, this test genuinely reaches parts other assessments can't, and is the last shot in my locker when I have to use a test with people who have failed to score on other measures.

Professor Bishop's blog is scintillating - her latest posting as I write is a sharp smack for Susan Greenfield for associating computer use with autism, prompting an anonymous correspondent to try to do the same to Professor Bishop. For my money, her correspondent did not succeed, and I'm fed up with the "autistic spectrum" being used as a dustbin for all sorts of misbehaviour that have nothing to do with autism. Thanks again, Dr Beaton. Way to go, Deevybee!

See also this Guardian piece by Professor Bishop on autism, and   this brilliant review of Isobel's World. And this on a range of related neurological issues - including the incisive and crucial point that

Dyslexia, and the other (neurological) conditions listed above, are all diagnosed on the basis of behavioural rather than neurological criteria. 

As the conditions are neurological in origin, and the criteria for assessment are not, misdiagnosis is both inevitable and endemic. This is the root cause of our strife over dyslexia.

Outrageous ignorance from South Gloucestershire County Council.

Ignocracy, my word for rule of the ignorant, hits new depths with this brutal tyranny from South Gloucestershire. The Mail, which prints the parts of the truth that The Guardian and Mr Speaker find politically unpalatable (The Guardian frequently returns the favour) has this story of the breakup  of a marriage by South Gloucestershire County Council because social workers and the police did not consider that injuries might be caused by brittle bone disease. The story is a little more complex than it appears, with an element of humanity from a judge who would not separate a mother from her child when he was still breastfeeding, and the children were fostered by the wife's mother and not taken away from the family completely.  Still, this is a sad story of ignorance, callousness and authoritarianism on the part of social services, and is as much an indictment of our broken society as last week's riots.    And what is behind it - Tony Blair, this time setting targets for numbers of adoptions that give social workers a perverse incentive to take children from their parents for no good reason. The police should be ashamed of themselves too, for arresting people without any evidence whatever of their having committed a crime.

A typically self-righteous spokesman for the ignocracy in South Gloucestershire said

"We have a legal duty to protect children and young people and we always put the welfare of the child at the heart of how we deliver our services.’

They obviously have no legal obligation to be competent, or to apologise to or compensate their victims. I don't know if the idiot who said this realises the effect such statements have on public confidence in social services and local authorities. Update - on Saturday, the Mail had a statement, from the council, saying that "of course we regret distress caused to the family."   

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026555/Social-workers-wrongly-accuse-family-breaking-babys-limbs.html#ixzz1VOSj9arz

Universities, ignorance and unfairness - the resit question.

Universities used to be founded on principles of truth, study, fairness and honesty. We used to have a system that was flexible enough - Oxbridge entrance apart - to take account of different patterns of development, so that an A was an A (and an F was an F) whether you got it at 18 or 80. A consequence of our debased examinations is that the element of flexibility and fairness has gone too.

I was very well taught at A level in English and French, and got grades that reflected the excellent work of the late Francis Holmes, Chevalier dans L'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, John Madell and Victor Sage. The history teaching was inconsistent, based on dictated notes in which I copied out the middle ages. I'm grateful to Alison Weir for her lucid book on the Wars of the Roses, which has at last explained to me how they came about. Anyway, I duly got a D in A level history and only really began to understand how the subject worked in my last year at university.  

Suppose I'd gone to a school without these distinguished teachers? I know plenty of people who did. My wife Enid, in a grammar school turned comp in the North-East, did not have a physics teacher at all for most of the sixth form. The specialist left, and the ignocratic headteacher considered physics elitist, and so did not appoint another. How she passed is a miracle. But if she'd neede a resit, that would at least have been possible, and the grade would have been accepted as accurate.

With the loss of confidence in the accuracy and honesty of marking, another door has been closed to people who do not get the teaching they need. In its own, small, way, this turn of events is a disgraceful testiment to  Ed Balls, Tessa Blackstone and Estelle Morris, who in their own ways have imposed ignorance on the population. I wrote elsewhere this week that New Labour had been the biggest disaster for Britain since the events set out in Ms Weir's book. I'm wondering if that was really much of an exaggeration.

 

 

 

New Ignorance and a ten year old girl

(Cross-posted with the Ofsted weblog)

John Stannard, the first director of the National Literacy Strategy, had an authoritarian cast of mind that I described in The Guardian as "Cromwellian".  The Literacy Hour was his, borrowed from Australia and New Zealand, and its appeal is not hard to find - it is clear, understandable, and easily enforced via the timetable. Mr Stannard (still Mr, with just a CBE to show for his efforts.) asked Chris Woodhead to use Ofsted to enforce his edicts, and Mr Woodhead (not so much as a CBE ) told him, quite rightly, that inspectors were there to evaluate rather than enforce. But headteachers are easily bullied, and Mr Stannard's writ usually ran.

Enter my ten year old pupil, whom we shall call Josie. Josie has had her English education in primary school under Mr Stannard's regime, and has suffered from one perculiarly stupid edict. The Literacy Hour is subdivided into a starter of ten minutes, a main teaching session of perhaps 20 mins, 20 minutes group work (during which the children would write) and ten minutes at the end for what is grandly called a "plenary" as if a primary class.

So, Josie, thanks to the great educator, was forced to complete every piece of writing in 20 minutes, even though, sensitive soul that she is, she needed longer to think about what she was doing. (At least she is not left-handed, unlike another pupil who was continually kept in at break at the age of 6 for not finishing his work in the pseudo-statutory 20 minutes). Now, no doubt the learned gentleman would complain that he never said things should be set in stone, or some other cliche, but he was old enough and experienced enough to know how power and fear operate in education, and should have known better. I'm now working with Josie and her mum to persuade her that she has genuine intelligence, that all writing does not have to be completed in 20 minutes, and that she can take her time. Her school, of course, is still following the national literacy strategy. So, whatever I do, she is back to 20 minutes on Monday. Shameful, ignorant, disgraceful, anti-social. Mr Stannard has surely earned a New Labour K.