A conversation about OCR Science – myself and a pupil, aged 15.
Did you write this yourself?
Yes, the teacher helped me a bit.
How did the teacher help you?
She showed me what to copy and paste.
(Looking at a very professional powerpoint on weathering of rocks. She said "That’s a pass. If you put it into your own words, you’ll probably get a merit." I point to exfoliation on the powerpoint and ask him to read it. He can't. What does it mean? "I haven't a clue.")
(On a second science teacher) I just feel, like, there’s no point doing the work. He gives us the link to click on, and that brings up the website we need to go on, and we copy and paste and add to pictures.
He does a Sir’s edit- what we’re meant to do, but in his words (he copies and pastes this too – that’s what he says he does, anyway). Then we have to delete all the words that he’s done, just leaving the headings, then copy and paste from the link on the website. Cut out the words we don’t understand, then put in words that we do understand. Some of the words I’ve never even heard of, and he says leave it, you’ll probably get a higher mark. But you’d think the examiners would be more smart, to know that we’d copy and paste that, wouldn’t you?
But we have to delete the link before we save it. Everyone does it.
Sometimes he puts on rapper music – Tinie Tempah – I don’t see the point in going to school, to be honest.
This is fraud - the work is not the pupils' work, but elaborately designed plagiarism. I would have reported it to OCR, but the Board's complaint procedure makes it clear that if I did so, the fraud would probably be covered up by the time it investigated it - complaints have to be addressed to the centre in the first instance, so the "work" could simply be deleted. I considered reporting it to the headteacher, but do not want to expose the pupil to victimisation.
The school's Ofsted report, May 2011
Highly effective leadership for students with special educational needs ensures that staff receive detailed information on students’ specific needs and strategies to help support their good learning and progress.
So that's all right then. It has always been one of the main parts of a headteacher's job to make the school look good. Part of the hidden agenda of the 2005 changes to Ofsted was to make this part of Ofsted's function too. A four point scale rather than a seven point scale made it easier for a school to be rated good or outstanding, and giving Ofsted control over inspection in the private sector allowed it to be tougher on high-attaining private schools, making them move to the same criteria as state schools. Individual inspectors have looked for and told the truth when they could, but have been given less time to find it out, while being forced to pay more attention to dubious test and GCSE scores. In this case, the inspectors missed what was sitting under their noses, and it probably wasn't their fault, because they would not have had time to look - this is a big school, and they were there for two days only. We need a system that will allow them to inspect schools properly once again.