a penchant for rote learning, “back to basics”, a fetish for testing, and an almost pathological aversion to creative and critical thinking.

Problem is, this very accurately summarises the New Labour attitude to education, or at least what happened on the ground under Tony and Gordon.

There’s definitely a problem with education in this country, but the rot goes way back to at least 1992 and the introduction of the National Curriculum and league tables, and was merely exacerbated and reinforced under New Labour.

The BBC headlined the specific recruitment of ex-soldiers into teaching. I was amazed at the lack of response to the idea that soldiers had special skills needed in the classroom today. It was utterly bonkers!

Soldiers are no more special than any other group with regard to teaching ability. I worked in schools for a few years as a science demonstrator. It was interesting that some teachers had a sort of presence that the kids picked up on, but to say that ex-forces will have this quality above other people has no reasonable basis.

@ 2

“The BBC headlined the specific recruitment of ex-soldiers into teaching. I was amazed at the lack of response to the idea that soldiers had special skills needed in the classroom today. It was utterly bonkers! ”

It’s really strange. Almost as if Cameron’s thought: “OK, we need more teachers, and soldiers are having trouble finding work when they return from Afghanistan. I know, two birds with one stone, soldiers are teachers now.”

The army is a vocation to kill follow orders or die just how does that relate to teaching? I’m not saying some soldiers do not have tesching skills but when your first choice of occupation is to go on a killing spree that should raise serious concerns?

Simon Jenkins foes an excellent critique in the Guardian here is an extract

“The truth is that the entire curriculum is juju. Nobody knows its purpose. It is a miasma of archaism, bogus assumption, bland assertion and inertia. Nobody assesses what is a sensible way of spending a day, week or term. Nobody thrashes out the appropriate balance of vocational and educational, preferring to leave politicians to decide on the basis of “what was good enough for me”. Almost everything taught to children is forgotten. The waste of money, time and talent must be stupendous. Yet we sail happily on, gazing over the stern and marvelling at the wake trailing behind”.

What happened to the local people making local decisions?

Paul #1

Are you kidding? The testing bit fits – but the rote learning definately doesn’t. Labour oversaw a major shift to project work and interactive learning – not through any real political direction – but because teachers and schools tended towards that sort of learning as it worked well.

@ 4

I think the line of reasoning, if that word can even be employed in this case, was “kids need discipline, army uses discipline, soliders live in the army, make soliders discipline kids”.

Breathtakingly clever, no?

@margin4error – have you seen a GCSE or AS Level exam paper from the past 5-10 years? Tell me that isn’t the systematic rewarding and fostering of unreflective rote-learning and I’ll call you a banana…

I’m not sure what you mean by “dumbed down basics”.

Too many children don’t acquire the “basics”.
And I assume you are not denying the problem of discipline?

“nearly half of it rated outstanding”

As in Lake Woebegone, everyone is above average.

“Even the most cursory examination of right-wing educational ideology reveals; a penchant for rote learning, “back to basics”, a fetish for testing, and an almost pathological aversion to creative and critical thinking.”

Well after the failures of “progressive” teaching methods (promulgated by the sort of idiots who thought “child-centred learning” and getting rid of synthetic phonics was a good idea) I’m willing to give it a chance.

(That said it should be up to the schools which methods they prefer to use. Let’s see how many lefty parents really want their children to go to schools which don’t use “traditional” teaching methods.)

Cherub @ 2

Soldiers are no more special than any other group with regard to teaching ability.

When not engaged in shooting at the Taliban, the greater part of any young Army officer’s time is spent doing something called ‘training’. This involves telling soldiers (many of them around 18 years old) how to do stuff. Quite a lot of it takes place in a classroom with a whiteboard and involves techniques of presentation and confirmation that is quite similar to what goes on in schools.

I really hate it when people make me want to defend Michael Gove, but, as ever, he seems to get criticised more for the fairly sensible stuff than the daft stuff.

Whatever OFSTED say, much university-based teacher training is not very good. I worry that “school-based” training is going to be used as an excuse for getting more unqualified teachers into schools and lowering pay and conditions for teachers, but let’s not pretend that there is no issue here.

As for the wider issue of teaching methods, give me a break.

“Creative and critical thinking”? “Stimulating creative and critical faculties”?

You do get that this is just meaningless jargon used to justify dumbing down?

How about being able to read, write and add up? Pretending we can eliminate an element of rote from teaching has been a disaster. How is it “right-wing” to object to the fact that kids leave school unemployable because they haven’t mastered the basics? How is it dumbing down to suggest children should know the basics? About the only thing you have right is that vocational education in schools is pointless. However, you appear to have missed the fact that Gove is far less enthusiastic for it than his predecessors.

Teaching blog here: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

“Labour oversaw a major shift to project work and interactive learning – not through any real political direction – but because teachers and schools tended towards that sort of learning as it worked well.”

Absolute bollocks.

Project work was forced on teachers by central diktat as part of the revised National Curriculum.

The irony, of course, was that Labour had originally, under David Blunkett, moved away from project work and other “progressive” methods and put in place an infra-structure to dictate teaching methods in order to bring this about. It was only after 2001 that the drift towards progressive education restarted, ironically just as Blunkett’s approach was beginning to show results, and by 2007 all of Blunkett’s enforcement apparatus was being used to impose progressive methods on schools regardless of the will of teachers.

Teaching blog here: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

Paul

I have, and you can call me a banana all you like – doesn’t make it true.

2009 History exam (GCSE)

“Do you agree with the view that intrigue among the leading members of Germany’s
political and business establishments was primarily responsible for Hitler’s rise to power in the years 1932–33?

Explain your answer, using these three sources and your own knowledge.”

Now since the three sources are not pre-read – and since they disagree with eachother – I struggle to see how this reflects rote learning.

Incidently, does anybody know which sorts of teaching methods were used in Cuba and Soviet Russia to increase literacy? I sincerely doubt that these revolutionary regimes made use of the dubious methods suggested by radical lefties in this country. Say what you like about the commie countries but they knew how to do education well.

This is a silly overreaction. I”Even the most cursory examination of right-wing educational ideology reveals; a penchant for rote learning, “back to basics”, a fetish for testing, and an almost pathological aversion to creative and critical thinking.”

But the white paper should not lead to any of these things, in fact it should allow schools to teach in any way they think is most effective. The testing regime will be no worse than at present and may be a lot easier. The basic thrust of the white paper gives schools what they have been crying out for nearly unanimously for at least ten years. To immediately start whinging looks ridiculous.

That’s not to say that everything in it is welcome, but when does hat ever happen? I reckon it is more god than bad on balance and has the fundamentals right, although the detail will be revealing. Much more power to the teachers here, so two cheers.

As the parent of a daughter who just left a state school to go on to Uni, I have to say that overall, I was impressed at the education she received.

The experience of any given student is of course down to a number of factors, but from what I’ve seen there was certainly no issue with the teaching of basics, indeed I would say that in terms of mental maths, basic arithmetical skills and grasp of grammar, spelling and reading comprehension things are probably better than in the 70′s when I was at school.

What does alarm me about much of the current debate, and indeed much of education policy over the past fe decades, is the regularity with which all the cards are thrown in the air, reviews are undertaken, and a great “new direction” proclaimed. Is it just me or do the English seem particularly prone to action for action’s sake? Does the same thing happen elsewhere in Europe, or in the USA, Canada and Australia?

I think one aspect that definitely does need attention is the approach to disruptive pupils, as it can make a huge difference to the learning chances of others if bad behaviour isn’t tackled. Many teachers I know and have discussed it with say the same thing; the problem today is that the “middle ground” seems to have shrunk. There are “more” problem pupils now, but also more who perform well.

In ordinary schools, problems can often be attributed to the fact that it is very difficult to deal with children with special needs and behavioural problems, who in the past would have gone to special schools, or had more support in units withing schools. I’m not sure importing soldiers will necessarily solve the over-arching problems.

15 m4e

I agree; we frequently hear complaints about current standards, and calls for a return to basics etc., etc. ….but from everything I’ve seen it is misguided. Sure, they may be taught differently, but that doesn’t ipso facto make it easier, or of a lower standard to A levels in the 60′s.

They are taught to look at a variety of sources, think more critically, precis complex ideas, and write about them succinctly. Recent exam papers, essay questions and course work I’ve seen for sixth form work, and the standards required for decent grades, looks more like early university work from previous decades.

“Incidently, does anybody know which sorts of teaching methods were used in Cuba and Soviet Russia to increase literacy?”

I don’t know about Cuba but there was a real boom in progressive education in Russia following the revolution. Many prominent American progressive educationalists praised developments there. Then it turned out the methods didn’t work very well at all, and Stalin sent the trendy teachers to the gulags and the schools returned to more traditional methods.

The education system of the Soviet Union then went on to be very successful. By the late fifties the US were panicking that the Russians were in danger of becoming more technologically advanced than the US where progressive education had held sway in public education for three decades. There was a significant backlash against progressive education in the US at that time, a lot of which focused on the success of the Russian space program. Unfortunately, this backlash didn’t last and by the late sixties the progressives had the upper hand in the US again – see that’s what happens if you don’t have gulags – and for the first time progressives were also becoming dominant in the English (state) education system. Curiously enough, a lot of the most militant opponents of progressive education methods in England at the time were (literally) card-carrying members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who clearly felt Stalin had had the right idea.

There you go, a little bit of history.

I hope you learn it by rote.

Teaching blog here: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

“ure, they may be taught differently, but that doesn’t ipso facto make it easier, or of a lower standard to A levels in the 60?s.”

It does wherever coursework is submitted as part of the test, because teachers cheat. Happily, this is now coming to an end and we will have proper end of stage exams.

“I agree; we frequently hear complaints about current standards, and calls for a return to basics etc., etc. ….but from everything I’ve seen it is misguided. Sure, they may be taught differently, but that doesn’t ipso facto make it easier, or of a lower standard to A levels in the 60?s.”

Nobody said it was “ipso facto” the case and I’m not sure why you are comparing A-levels between now and the sixties.

That said, there are many ways in which things have got easier. A-levels became considerably easier when they were reformed in 2004 and were already becoming easier due to modularisation. GCSEs have been easier than O-levels for as long as I can remember, and there is a general trend for them to become easier or to be replaced by “vocational” alternatives which are considered the same in league tables but are far easier.

Dumbing down is certainly not a myth in the majority of schools.

Teaching blog here: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

21

No, sorry, it just doesn’t. Some of the subjects my kid studied had an element of course work for A2 (History and English), and some didn’t (Latin). Even in those where course work was counted, it was a relatively minor contribution. However the work involved in essays or project related work was by no means a soft option from what I saw.

The lesson from the past (when 100% depended on exam results) still applies; pupils will simply be taught to pass exams.

“Is it just me or do the English seem particularly prone to action for action’s sake? Does the same thing happen elsewhere in Europe, or in the USA, Canada and Australia?”

It certainly happens in the US. Indeed there is a constant flow of silly education ideas between the US and the UK. Most of Europe seems more stable. I don’t know about Canada. I think Australia is prone to the same mentality but it is hard to tell as I think state governments, rather than the national government, tend to drive reform there.

“However the work involved in essays or project related work was by no means a soft option from what I saw.”

It just does. If teachers are set targets and can fake up coursework, that is what they will do. Your daughter may not have needed it but we are looking at the system as a whole.

25

It may happen in isolated cases, but suggesting some widespread or systemic “fake-ing up” of coursework, or setting of false targets, to the extent that it skews the system as whole just looks like some overdone Daily Mail headline.

Did you attend ‘Writing a left wing attack article 101′?

Step 1: Accuse Tories of employing right-wing ideology
Step 2: Accuse them of being dogmatic
Step 3: Return to step one

I think this video sums up my feelings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

26,

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but teachers *do* routinely cheat on coursework. Or at least they do if they are teaching working class kids (middle class kids can get parents and/or private tutors to do the cheating instead). A teacher who was scrupulously honest about coursework would simply be letting it disadvantage working class kids more than it does already and damaging their own career in the process.

22

“GCSEs have been easier than O-levels for as long as I can remember, and there is a general trend for them to become easier or to be replaced by “vocational” alternatives which are considered the same in league tables but are far easier.”

Aren’t you comparing different things though? GCSE’s cover what used to be O Levels and CSE’s. Is there really compelling evidence that the best O Levels and the best GCSE’s aren’t of similar “worth” (given the passage of time, I realise it’s not a direct comparison as the curriculum will have changed)?

Isn’t the charge that they are “asier and considered in the same league tables” misguided in as much as in the past they were in 2 different “areas”: O levels were academic, and CSE’s were more vocational. Isn’t it just a different way of streaming?

“O levels were academic, and CSE’s were more vocational. Isn’t it just a different way of streaming?”

The charge, and I think it is a compelling one, is that the ‘vocational’ qualifications do not education in any sense but are designated to have the value of sometimes three or 4 GCSEs for the sake of target reaching.

“Is there really compelling evidence that the best O Levels and the best GCSE’s aren’t of similar “worth” (given the passage of time, I realise it’s not a direct comparison as the curriculum will have changed)?”

It depends what you mean by “compelling evidence”.

If you are capable of looking at a GCSE paper and an O-level paper, and you know roughly how they are marked, it is pretty damn compelling. If people want to say “oh, but it’s different” and refuse to make a sensible judgement of which is easier then I know of no way to convince them.

@28

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but teachers *do* routinely cheat on coursework.

Evidence?

“Evidence?”

If I told you that a banker’s performance review bonus was based on investment returns but that there would be no independent corroboration of the figures he submitted, would you think it implausible that some cheating might take place?

31

“If people want to say “oh, but it’s different” and refuse to make a sensible judgement of which is easier then I know of no way to convince them.”

Fair enough – just seems a bit evasive to me, and I’m genuinely interested in the debate about how to make the judgement. I’m no expert, but I hadn’t noticed GCSE or A level papers being significantly easier. I’m sure they have changed though, so I suppose I would echo the point about how far you could directly compare an O level paper from years ago with a GCSE paper now?

It may indeed be a possible to look at the topics covered, marking schemes etc and say it is objectively “easier” to get an A grade now, than 20 years ago say…. but does that mean the person getting an A grade now is less accomplished?

Although it’s only based on anecdotal evidence from my own child, I wouldn’t say maths, the hard sciences, history, english or languages papers were “easier” now than wehn I sat them; in fact I’d say in many respects they were more challenging.

Galen

It is interesting that despite the constant attacks on education for “dumbing down” the OECD continues to rank the UK highly on science, maths and “first language (English) teaching in our schools.

It is also interesting that despite the “dumbing down” accusations – every study conducted to verify that exams are easier now than in the 50s finds that there is little discernable difference.

I tend to think that “dumbing down” accusation results from zero-sum ideas about the world.

This means that when people see more people get good results – their assumption that intelligence and knowledge, like oil or gold, is finite, leads them to the only possible conclusion. Good grades must be easier to get.

The notion that it happens because we better exploit existing resource (so teach children with better techniques and technologies) and expand the basic resource (teaching more children to a suitably high level rather than just keeping them inside until they are old enough to start mining) doesn’t make sense.

“but I hadn’t noticed GCSE or A level papers being significantly easier.”

You need to look at the marking schemes. They are very restrictive. So long as a candidate hits the marks she gets the points no matter how much garbage is in there. The impulse is one of fairness, but the result is degradation. That is why benchmarking against international standards is such a good idea.

Torquil

There is independent verification of exam results and coursework grading.

So your analogy is fatuous.

“It is interesting that despite the constant attacks on education for “dumbing down” the OECD continues to rank the UK highly on science, maths and “first language (English) teaching in our schools.”

We spend billions and force kids to spend at least ten years in full time education, we should be getting outstanding results. In fact we are slipping down the OECD rankings in all subjects very fast. 4th to 14th in science, 7th to 17th in literacy, and 8th to 24th in mathematics.

also – on 36 – that’s not true.

A student answering the question I posted above – and doing so by comparing the nature of the three sources – would be eligible for top marks up to level two – but to get to level three or four a greater depth of knowledge about the subject, and strong analytical assesment must be in evidence.

—

Of course I do love how everyone is an expert on education – presumably because, y’know, they went to school once too.

“There is independent verification of exam results and coursework grading.”

There is almost no investigation into cheating because it is not in anyone’s interest to do it, so far, least of all the government. Independent verification checks little more than standards of marking. How much do you think it would costs to really stop cheating?

” student answering the question I posted above – and doing so by comparing the nature of the three sources – would be eligible for top marks up to level two – but to get to level three or four a greater depth of knowledge about the subject, and strong analytical assesment must be in evidence.2

But that doesn’t answer the point. It is possible to pass GCSEs to grade C with almost no understanding of the subject and sometimes without any obvious ability to read or write. Even so, a huge number or UK school students pass no GCSEs at all.

Cjcjc & Richard

My point about dumbed-down basics is that children don’t learn the basics very well if they are only taught the basics. If you have endless lessons on spelling, grammar, phonics etc, you will end up with a child who is funtionally illiterate. If you engage children with creative and critical work which includes basics, such as spelling etc. you wil motivate them to learn. It is the way humans are designed to learn; children are naturally inquisitive and want to find out about the world around them. “Back to basics” was introduced b y John Major in the early 1990s and failed miserably to raise standards because children’s minds are never properly engaged when they have to learn things which are not meaningful for them.

But Natacha, no school would choose to teach the basics at the cost of all else. When a child has learned to read using phonics (which she will do in about three months on average) the broader education can begin. these reforms allow schools the freedom to teach as broadly and experimentally as they choose.

@33

So what you are in fact saying is that you don’t have any evidence.

32,

It wouldn’t be very good cheating if we left evidence of it lying around, but it’s common knowledge. I suppose if you really want to deny it then you can dismiss it as anecdotal, after all I’m only a teacher what do I know about what happens in schools? However I’m not the only one saying it:

http://frankchalk.blogspot.com/2010/06/coursework-cheating.html
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=377197
http://www.johannhari.com/2005/11/04/coursework-a-charter-for-cheats
http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/162090.aspx?PageIndex=1

If you want some kind of documentary source then the qcda coursework review (which led to the abolition of a lot of coursework) observed any number of incosistencies and irregularities in help although obviously it didn’t explicitly state that teachers did everything they could to get students to pass (although 5.4 is pretty much saying that in educationist-speak):

“Help and advice from teachers

5.3 The code of practice includes some description of the kinds of help and advice to candidates that are permitted. The code requires teachers to ‘record full details of the nature of all assistance given to individual candidates that is beyond that of the teaching group as a whole.’
5.4 However, the rules given in specifications or teachers’ guides on teacher advice, redrafting and interim marking are limited and open to interpretation. Most teachers in the sample treated coursework as a method of formative assessment until the deadline date was reached, whereupon the same piece of work was regarded as an item for summative assessment. This is perfectly understandable, but demonstrates the need for awarding bodies to give much clearer direction on the nature of activities permitted during the developmental phase, and to be more specific about the transition from development to final assessment.
5.5 The amount and type of help given to candidates varied between teachers and subjects. Writing frames, templates and checklists – given to teaching groups as a whole – were cited as common teaching strategies for coursework. This approach sometimes led to ‘coursework cloning’, with candidates fulfilling the minimum requirements and displaying little original work.
5.6 At the coursework conference (see 2.3 above) some awarding body staff regarded the use of writing frames and templates as malpractice, and noted that some centres had been warned about over-coaching. This must also be a source of confusion for teachers. There is a need for clarity and consistency about the nature and permitted use of writing frames and templates, with examples of good practice and malpractice in the use of such aids.
5.7 Teachers reported use of a variety of different coursework teaching methods in addition to whole-group teaching, including:
• one-to-one individual tutorials either organised on a regular or an ad hoc basis
• after-school coursework clinics for interested candidates
• the provision of comments on coursework (either verbally or with notes) to help the
candidate redraft work (which they may do more than once). However, it was noted
that redrafting was not allowed in some centres, with the first submitted coursework
being taken as the final version. Redrafting and marking rules are very specific in
some specifications, for example OCR and Edexcel GCE history, but these are the
exception rather than the rule.
5.8 Candidate coursework record sheets have to be signed by both the teacher and the candidate. They include a section in which details of all individual help, beyond that given to the group as a whole, should be documented. This has been understood by some teachers to mean that if individual tutorials were offered to the whole group, then they did not need to mention this help, even if only half of the cohort took advantage of the offer. Teachers stated that this is a grey area and that (understandably) they gave their candidates ‘as much help as conscience permitted’ in the absence of tighter controls. The majority of teachers also stated that they would welcome clearer rubrics, specifying the conditions under which coursework should be undertaken.
5.9 Assistance given to individual candidates was recorded by only 15 per cent of teachers surveyed. These were almost exclusively teachers of art and design, media studies, and design and technology.
5.10 There is a considerable burden on teachers and candidates resulting from the desire to redraft or rework coursework assignments in order to improve the quality of the product before final assessment. Many teachers mark the same assignments or parts of assignments several times, at both GCE and GCSE level. The same is true for the candidates redrafting their work, at GCSE level in as many as 10 subjects.”

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/q/qcda%20cousework%20report.pdf

“So what you are in fact saying is that you don’t have any evidence.”

Only circumstantial. But find me a teacher who doesn’t believe that this happens routinely.

34,

I’m really just trying to get a handle on what you would find compelling as evidence of dumbing down.

In many subject it is so obvious that is has happened (simply from a glance at exam papers or textbooks) that I can’t really provide evidence unless you give me some idea of what would persuade you. Even then it is likely to be for individual subjects, but there are a number of things out there.

“It is also interesting that despite the “dumbing down” accusations – every study conducted to verify that exams are easier now than in the 50s finds that there is little discernable difference. ”

In which parallel universe?

“There is independent verification of exam results and coursework grading. ”

Is this a joke?

I am amazed that people think that incentives don’t work in education uniquely among markets. We have companies competitively trying to sell exams to schools (for enormous financial returns). We have schools choosing exams who are assessed on the number of pupils who will get to grade C in them. What is likely to be the outcome there? Which school is going to choose the most difficult, least dumbed down exam?

46

No, as you say much of it is subjective. I’m much more inclined to agree with m4e’s view per post #35 above, but accept that it is my subjective view based only on my personal experience, and that of seeing the experience of my own child at school, as well as the children of friends and family.

I’m not denying that you could come up with evidence which you think supports your view, although whether that constitutes objective “proof” that things are easier now is another matter. In fact, even if one accepted that it was “harder” previously, I’m not sure that automatically equates to “better”.

As pointed out above, back to basics isn’t really the answer; whether these policies are the answer either remains open to debate. Experience of the recent past under both left and right wing governments isn’t encouraging.

Galen

How do you answer the fact that we are getting record levels of achievement in exams and yet our OECD rating is sliding fast? Have the other countries simply improved by an even more massive margin? What is going on there?

51,

Fair enough, if you wouldn’t listen to evidence then I won’t feel obliged to find any.

“back to basics isn’t really the answer”

Back to basics is part of he answer. Every child who is not educationally sub-normal should be able to read at the age of 6. That is perfectly achievable and the way to do it is to go top the basics and stop accepting excuses. Once they can read, they are away.

51

I don’t know enough about other countries to speak to that question really; for all I know it may be because they are all just doing better, or perhaps they have similar debates about their systems being manipulated too, or they spend more money?

I also think we have to be careful about setting too much store by over reliance on league tables don’t we? Our own experience here ought to have demonstrated that point.

As someone pointed out on another thread, we still seem to punch above our weight in terms of number of Universities amongst the world leaders, as does the USA which simultaneously seems to get a lot of flak for its primary and secondary education system, so perhaps the story isn’t all bad?

“so perhaps the story isn’t all bad?”

Nobody said the experience is all bad. Eton to Oxford is still a fine education. But if you are in a Hackney comp., well good luck to you.

I am amazed that you don’t find the OECD rankings at least a little suggestive. The countries that are doing better than us must be improving at astonishing levels, don’t you think, given the massive improvement in our own pupils’ achievement? Is there no limit to how educated kids can get? If the UK was heading up the table would you dismiss the evidential value of that too? Simply assume the other were getting worse?

20 – thanks, very interesting. I thought that was the case i.e. they went progressive immediately after the revolution but then realised the old-fashioned methods worked best.

55

I didn’t say they weren’t suggestive; I AM suggesting they aren’t the whole picture. Surely that’s an unexceptional observation?

From what I’ve heard the Japanese system sounds like a nightmare for kids who have to deal with the pressures inherent in their system, but no doubt it gets good results. Whether that means we should emulate their system to ape their results would also be debateable, no?

I am struck by the muted reaction to this quite radical white paper, even on the interwebs. I realise that there are other distractions in the education world at the minute, but I THIN IT betrays a general sense that this is the right direction for schools.

“Whether that means we should emulate their system to ape their results would also be debateable, no?”

Of course, but what shouldn’t be debatable, surely, is that as many UK children as Japanese should be able to read and write.

When I was doing AS levels back in 2000-2001 my history tutor (Old Labour) was of the view that they were more like the old O-Levels i.e. GCSEs were easier than O-Levels. I got full marks on an A Level economics test even though I know I got a question wrong and in class practice tests I was getting borderline A/B. My friend who got a B overall had been getting borderline C/D in class. Everyone in my history class but one also got an A despite there being a wide range of abilities in the class. Admittedly this is only anecdotal evidence but it didn’t give me much faith in the idea that standards were getting better.

Then there is the issue of international GCSEs – why is it that these are increasingly popular amongst private schools? The answer is that they are believed to be more rigorous than national GCSEs.

@45

I’m sure most teachers believe it happens, but I doubt they’d go so far as to say it happens routinely.

@53

Every child who is not educationally sub-normal should be able to read at the age of 6. That is perfectly achievable and the way to do it is to go top the basics and stop accepting excuses.

I’d be interested to hear what you think these accepted “excuses” are. And what “basics” are you talking about – keeping the kids in after school every day until they’ve mastered “The Cat Sat On The Mat”?

oldandrew

Probably many parallel universes. If parallel universes exist then the theory behind them suggests many of them would be so insignificantly different to our own that we would barely be able to tell the difference.

teachers believe cheating happens.

Wow – people are cynical and moan about their field of work. That’s got to count as valued evidence. I mean it never happens so on the rare instance that it does it must be serious.

oh wait…

Maybe they’re just the same as everyone else and they quite reasonably read the same here-say and conjecture Torq reads and by into it because so many people believe cynicism is the same as intelligence.

“Maybe they’re just the same as everyone else and they quite reasonably read the same here-say and conjecture Torq reads and by into it because so many people believe cynicism is the same as intelligence.”

I know many teachers who candidly admit to ‘polishing’ their pupils work submissions and literally no teachers who do not believe that it happens. That is some kind of data.

It would be useful if schools could by rote teach the kids to be happy in preparation for their inclusion into the happiness index. Those with an A in happy could be fast-tracked to a being a coordinator in the Big Society.

@64

Leaving the anecdotal basis of your evidence aside – are we talking about across different schools, and are we talking comprehensive, grammar or independent?

I’d also be interested in what they meant by “polishing” – did they refer to handing work back to the student and telling them to think about it more, or editing the work themselves after final submission?

Either way, I’d say this is evidence of the marketisation of education and the league table nonsense having a corrosive effect – both were Tory ideas.

I have just one sentence in response to the title of this article; it is not possible to dumb down teacher training any further, or to recruit a lower common denominator.

Do you know any school inspectors and/or teacher trainers?

It’s enough to make you choke on your cornflakes.

@68

A little harsh, I feel…

What brings you to that conclusion?

55,

“I don’t know enough about other countries to speak to that question really”

Given how little it took for you to form an opinion about exams in this country, that really shouldn’t be a problem.

59,

I think that might simply indicate that there’s a lot in it, not just in terms of measures but in terms of ideas. Nobody’s really had a chance to actually think through the full consequences of it. We’re still at the point where the kneejerk ideologues (of whatever stripe) are passing judgement based on preconceived ideas and newspaper headlines. It will be a while before we have any interesting analysis.

62,

You now appear to be quibbling over words.

Coursework cheating happens. A lot.

Given that the rules on undue help have been ambiguous it is hard to judge what exactly counts as cheating and how much it happens. But most teachers would be aware that something resembling cheating on coursework happens most of the time, and something that definitely is cheating is hardly a rarity.

Teaching blog here: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

64,

You sound a bit desperate. Are you really intending to claim that teachers are a poor source of information about what goes on in schools?

What’s the alternative source of information? Watching Waterloo Road?

@70 – having come through teacher training at one of the TES best rated initial teacher training providers convinces me of that statement. People with third class degrees qualifying for training, people with lousy subject knowledge and no classroom skills. Worse, the people in charge have elevated box ticking to an art form, instead of elevating teaching to an art form – not to mention being the worst form of hypocrites.

But I could rant on this subject for hours.

In the end I chose not to stay with teaching, surprisingly.

Try these two articles in Saturday’s The Economist – especially the second:

At the chalk face
http://www.economist.com/node/17581696?story_id=17581696

How to get good grades
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=17572635

What seems to have escaped everyone’s attention, is that ‘University-based’ trainee teachers spend 120 days in school and only about 60 days in University.

What much of that little University time is spent doing is trying to enable beginner teachers to think about what they are seeing/doing and why.

I wonder if it is the ‘art’ of Critical Analysis that the current government is afraid of….

It seems clear to me that several of Gove’s reform proposals amount to no more than froth but there are solid grounds for concern about the standards of attainment in many schools.

“What much of that little University time is spent doing is trying to enable beginner teachers to think about what they are seeing/doing and why. ”

And much of it is spent being given really bad advice about how if lessons are interesting nobody will misbehave, that mixed ability teaching works and that a lesson is only good if it involves mini-whiteboards.

While I doubt school based training is a solution, let’s not pretend there isn’t a problem.

Teaching blog at http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com

@80

I get the feeling that the author of the teachingbattlehround blog is something of a misanthrope – especially towards children. His attitude is frequently condescending and mean-spirited – so @74, yes, I think that kind of teacher is a poor source of information because they’re clearly in the wrong job.

@ Pedant 77. I entirely agree with you.

@Dave Semple 75. As someone who came through a one year PGCE university based teacher training programme some 4 years ago, I have to say that my conclusions are entirely contrary to yours. Yes, there was box ticking and form filling (particularly while based at schools), but the substance of the university based elements of the training still complemented very well the (majority) elements spent in schools. We were exposed to a variety of approaches and encouraged to apply those which we found most effective. Yes, some of our trainees weren’t up to it, but only about three quarters of our group eventually made it to the end of the course and it was the weaker ones that fell by the wayside in what was a pretty tough year. Unlike you, I remain a teacher today and consider that my training served me well.

@oldandrew no 20

Interesting that progressive education has never really worked on a wide scale. It’s still been within a compulsory schooling system. If you force people to learn,it’s best to use strict structured force or contain the learning well through plenty of reward and punishment.

Really progressive education would do away with compulsion. This would allow more rigorous structure but the rigor would be consented to by the learner.

Study done by DCSF last year on self regulation in learning.

http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/RRP/u015803/index.shtml

“Even the most cursory examination of right-wing educational ideology reveals; a penchant for rote learning, “back to basics”, a fetish for testing, and an almost pathological aversion to creative and critical thinking.”

But what exactly does this darling of left wing educational theory “creative thinking” actually mean ? What it has often meant, at least in the 1970s/80s was “don’t teach the kids to read/write/count because it harms their creativity” which is, to put it bluntly, bollocks. If people cannot even communicate then how can they express creativity ?
As to “critical thinking” I don’t know when you last went near a state eductional establishment but my experience of it, having recent graduates work for me is that they are taught to process information and box tick. They are completely defeated by unstructured problems and incapable of comprehending anything that cannot be discovered on the internet. The the concept of independent, let alone critical thinking is alien to them.

BTW the reason the right like “rote learning” is that it is the only method that reliably works. Now say after me; “human activity causes climate change” 100 times…………….see, you’re starting to beleive it.

@20, @82

…there was a real boom in progressive education in Russia following the revolution …Then it turned out the methods didn’t work very well at all, and Stalin sent the trendy teachers to the gulags and the schools returned to more traditional methods.

That’s one way of reading it – another is that as originally envisioned Marxism called for an educated proletariat capable of critical thinking – whereas Stalin, who wanted to be a totalitarian dictator, would have prefered loyal, patriotic workers with enough knowledge to further Stalin’s aims for the USSR. Rote learning and harsh discipline tend to favour the latter.

To refer to one of oldandrew’s examples, remember that synthetic phonics were originally considered progressive by supporters of traditional rote learning (traditional then meaning rapping the poor kids over the knuckles with a ruler until they got the word right). Personally I prefer the balanced reading approach, which combines elements of phonics with the whole-language approach.

80,

Didn’t take long did it?

As ever any teacher who tells the truth about what is going on in schools is accused of being negative and hating children.

After all it couldn’t possibly be that reality has failed to live up to the ideologically pure fantasy, could it?

Teaching blog at: http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/

@83

But what exactly does this darling of left wing educational theory “creative thinking” actually mean ? What it has often meant, at least in the 1970s/80s was “don’t teach the kids to read/write/count because it harms their creativity”

Which is, to put it bluntly, bollocks. And just to be clear, I’m referring to the second sentence as a whole.

As someone who went through primary education in the 1980s, I can assure you that I was taught to improve my writing and do arithmetic (thanks to the efforts of a wonderful mum, I could already read, write and count by the time I entered the infants), as were all the other kids in my school.

What boils my piss about so many of these responses is that there seems to be an assumption among the traditionalists that introducing more progressive methods threw the baby out with the bathwater – in my experience it certainly did not. Rote learning works for some, but leaves others behind and creative thinking only works when there’s a grounding in the basics. There needs to be a combination of techniques employed to get the best out of every child.

“That’s one way of reading it – another is that as originally envisioned Marxism called for an educated proletariat capable of critical thinking”

Oh for pity’s sake. “Critical thinking” is just a slogan. There is no well-defined concept of critical thinking and nobody has ever found a way of teaching that can be proven to develop it.

” – whereas Stalin, who wanted to be a totalitarian dictator, would have prefered loyal, patriotic workers with enough knowledge to further Stalin’s aims for the USSR. Rote learning and harsh discipline tend to favour the latter.”

For pity’s sake, the system produced rocket scientists and chess grandmasters. Whatever its deficiencies, producing people with an inability to think wasn’t one of them.

“To refer to one of oldandrew’s examples, remember that synthetic phonics were originally considered progressive by supporters of traditional rote learning (traditional then meaning rapping the poor kids over the knuckles with a ruler until they got the word right).”

Again, ideological fantasy appears to have taken over from reality here.

“Personally I prefer the balanced reading approach, which combines elements of phonics with the whole-language approach.”

You may well prefer it, but it doesn’t work half as well.

@ 84 I think you are mixing up “critical thinking” – the ability to analyse an argument and construct it’s counter argument, the classic; thesis, antithesis, synthesis method of argument,

with “critical theory”;

A compenent of deconstructionism which is about removing all context/meaning from cultural texts and, and replacing it with a more “progressive” meaning.

The first is education and should be the business of teaching, the second is Stalinist “re-education” and has no place in schools.

@ 86 “Which is, to put it bluntly, bollocks. And just to be clear, I’m referring to the second sentence as a whole”.

Well my brother went to a state comp in the 1980s (a relatively good one) and that was very much the attitude, call the teacher “Dave” and learn all about “citizenship”. His basics, even 20 years later, are average at best, and he is bright.

@ 86 “(thanks to the efforts of a wonderful mum, I could already read, write and count by the time I entered the infants)”

Which kind of blows a hole in your own argument – what about the kids whose parents couldn’t/wouldn’t do that ?

@85

The assumed names you assign to the troublemakers in your blog clearly indicate to me that there’s a part of you that earmarked them as trouble before you even set foot in the classroom.

On the other hand I sympathise with your struggles with management – but the “box-ticking” mentality came in not with progressive education methods, but with the National Curriculum, league tables and all that other bumpf that came along in the late ’80s and early ’90s – Tory policies all. In fact, league tables came along with the “back to basics” programme, which favoured a return to traditional methods – but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

“Rote learning works for some, but leaves others behind and creative thinking only works when there’s a grounding in the basics. There needs to be a combination of techniques employed to get the best out of every child.”

Since when did traditional teaching consist only of learning by rote? Even the most dogmatic advocates of rote learning want people to learn by rote in order to enable students to use the knowledge learnt in that way. I don’t think anybody ever has advocated a system that only consists of rote learning.

The straw men are flying thick and fast at the moment.

“The assumed names you assign to the troublemakers in your blog clearly indicate to me that there’s a part of you that earmarked them as trouble before you even set foot in the classroom.”

This is not terribly clear.

Are you accusing me of assuming children with certain names are trouble makers?

Or are you claiming that any teacher who thinks some children may be badly behaved is somehow making it happen?

Either way, it sounds like you are simply including me in your ideological fantasies. I don’t tend to blog about anything that I haven’t seen happen many times to many teachers. Of course, you can stick your head in the sand and imagine that everything in schools is like one of those TDA commercials, but please show some respect for those of us who actually have to confront the reality that you are apparently scared to even acknowledge, let alone work in.

@87

Firstly, there’s a perfectly good method of encouraging critical thinking, and that is to instill and foster a love of learning from an early age. Secondly, the Soviet system under Stalin may have produced a few rocket scientists and chess grandmasters – but they were a distinct minority – what about the rest who didn’t respond to those methods and ended up not fulfilling their potential? Finally, my anecdotal evidence tells me that the balanced reading approach works extremely well, especially if applied in the early years. As a secondary teacher what you’re seeing is the cumulative effect of many different teachers over the course of your students’ primary education and I suspect that you don’t actually know for sure what methods were applied and employed.

@89

Show me one part of the National Curriculum and teacher training that advocates deconstructionism.

@89

Don’t you think that secondary education is a little late for mastering the basics? If he’s struggling as an adult, I’d say that his primary education probably left something to be desired.

@90

Not really – apart from a couple of kids who had unfortunate backgrounds and.or learning difficulties, many of the other kids had caught me up by the time we went to junior school.

@93, see @86.

BTW the reason the right like “rote learning” is that it is the only method that reliably works. Now say after me; “human activity causes climate change” 100 times…………….see, you’re starting to beleive it.

@91

You didn’t make it clear which “box-ticking” you are referring to.

Box-ticking “learning criteria” as a form of assessment is a standard strategy of progressive educators (as a progressive alternative to exams) and has its origins in various incarnations of progressive education in the US. In this country it has appeared in some education reforms under Tory governments too, but this hardly means it isn’t a progressive teaching methods; the Tories have never been slow to push some aspects of progressive education when it suits them, like vocational education and dumbing down.

Box-ticking as a way of assessing teaching methods is, of course, an aspect of accountability movements and these aren’t specifically either progressive nor traditional in nature but pushed by whoever hates teachers most at any given moment.

“Firstly, there’s a perfectly good method of encouraging critical thinking, and that is to instill and foster a love of learning from an early age.”

Of course, we manipulate their emotions to feel the way we want them to and then they will think for themselves.

Is it just me, or is the flaw in that obvious?

“Secondly, the Soviet system under Stalin may have produced a few rocket scientists and chess grandmasters – but they were a distinct minority – what about the rest who didn’t respond to those methods and ended up not fulfilling their potential?”

Sorry, what is your complaint? A moment ago you seemed to be complaining that the system was hostile to critical thinking. Now you have acknowledged that the system produced great thinkers, but failed to let the majority achieve their potential.

These are two utterly different complaints (and neither supported by anything I’ve ever read about the Soviet education system). It does seem like you are grasping at straws.

“Finally, my anecdotal evidence tells me that the balanced reading approach works extremely well, especially if applied in the early years.”

And my anecdotal evidence, and my knowledge of four decades of empirical research, suggests the opposite is true.

Oldandrew;

I think you are missing the point.

I currently teach large numbers of students who have good A’Level grades. They are not stupid and they have been taught very well to pass exams. As such I have no doubt that exam grades do reflect a genuine increase in attainment by students. However, there seems to be a much more disturbing trend of students with good A’level grades who cannot actually think for themselves. Particularly students who come from academies. Universities are about being critically analytical and engaging in creative thought. This is the problem; schools no longer teach children to think. I used to teach Y6, in fact I spent most of my 21-year career in teaching in year 6, and in many cases I can think of children I taught who were better at critical analysis than some of my current students.

This is something which is likely to get much worse with Gove’s deskilling of teachers. One interesting statistic. Psychological tests were recently carried out on children aged 4 and ages 19 to discover the extent to which they are able to think divergently – one of the key indicators of being able to think creatively. 98% of 4-year-olds scored highly on the test and could be described as divergent thinkers. By the time children had reached 19 only 2% were divergent thinkers. Schools are knocking creative thought out of our children and if we allow the Tories to get their way it will get even worse.

The Torie are clearly saying, with their education policy “we are happy for ordinary kids to train to be hairdressers, plumbers or care assistants. But we do not want them to study philosophy, economics, medicine or psychology.” They are not merely dumbing-down educatin but also dumbing-down children’s expectations. That’s why they want troops to be teachers.

@96

Both – they have the same origin in the fetishisation of accountancy and management theory prevalent since the ’80s.

I have to add that my anecdotal evidence suggests that – at primary level at least – no reasonable method of learning has ever been refused by management or senior teachers when suggested.

I’m also surprised at your apparent view of vocational education – everything I’ve read on your site indicates that you have a view that some kids just don’t belong in school – or at least on an academic path – by a certain age and something else should be found for them to do. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

98,

The point is that these thinking skills and creative skills are usually very badly defined. When cognitive psychologists have looked into the issue then they cannot find generic thinking skills, the skills are usually very subject based, and even in areas of apparently “pure” thought like maths or chess knowledge is still the greatest factor in thinking ability. If students don’t think as well as they used to it is more likely to be because they don’t know as much as they used than for any other reason.

Even if this wasn’t the case, it still would not be evidence in favour of progressive teaching methods and against traditional ones. If you are talking about current sixthformers then you are talking about people who would have done their GCSEs in the last few years when progressive methods were once more in the ascendency and being enforced from above.

As for the divergent thinking tests, I can only assume that this is a reference to the “paperclip tests” publicised by Sir Ken Robinson. Let me quote my usual source for all things psychological:

“As evidence that education kills creativity, Robinson cites a study showing that, as kids age, they score lower on the “alternate uses” task, in which the subject is asked to think of alternate uses for a common object, for example, a paper clip. The goal is to produce the maximum number possible, but responses are scored for plausibility. Robinson suggests that scores drop as kids age because schools drum into kids’ minds the idea that there is always one right answer.

“That may be a factor, but there’s an alternative explanation. Thinking of alternative uses is easier if you are unfamiliar with the typical use for the object. If you know what a paper clip is, every time you say to yourself, “Hmm, what might one do with this?” the idea “fasten papers!” intrudes.

“Thinking only of the typical use for objects is called “functional fixedness” and other data show that kids are less susceptible to it, and become more susceptible to it when you show them the typical function. So it’s probably not that education drums into kids that there is one right answer. Education teaches kids (among other things) what objects are for, and yes, under some circumstances, that gets in the way of solving problems. But usually knowledge is good.”

From http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-is-a-paradigm-shift.html

“I have to add that my anecdotal evidence suggests that – at primary level at least – no reasonable method of learning has ever been refused by management or senior teachers when suggested.”

Is this a joke?

“I’m also surprised at your apparent view of vocational education – everything I’ve read on your site indicates that you have a view that some kids just don’t belong in school – or at least on an academic path – by a certain age and something else should be found for them to do. Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

I am too dumbfounded to correct you. Fortunately an earlier commentator found someone to do it for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

@101

It’s not a joke. And unless my reading comprehension skills are seriously suspect, then I’m sorry, but a lot of stuff you’ve written does seem to indicate that viewpoint.

I will always believe that discipline through fear is a bad way of doing things, in parenting as well as education.

102,

It should be a joke. I am hardly alone among teachers in having had to hide resources from managers when photocopying them, knowing that I was doing the right thing, knowing that my classes got better results than theirs, but knowing that it would not meet their ideological standards.

As for the insulting and offensive straw man you claim to have found indicated on my blog: apology not accepted. If you are going to make things up then you should apologise for making it up rather than claiming to have been misled. How dare you suggest that I would deny anybody the opportunity of an academic education.

@103

I am hardly alone among teachers in having had to hide resources from managers when photocopying them

You’re not a primary school teacher though, are you? I specifically said “primary level”. How many primary (and specifically early-years specialists) do you include in your number?

How dare you suggest that I would deny anybody the opportunity of an academic education.

From “Getting ‘Terrored’”:

Until schools are allowed to adopt a policy of permanent exclusion for verbal abuse of staff the feeling of power terroring a teacher gives a child will outweigh any deterrent value of any punishment.

Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

104,

I thought you meant that your anecdotal evidence was from primary only, rather than you were only making the claim about primary. After all, you replied to me and I wasn’t talking about primary.

The claim that if you permanently exclude someone from a school where they are refusing to behave then you are denying them the opportunity of an academic education is not clear-cut, it is just silly. They are considerably more likely to get an academic education if they are required to behave in school than if they aren’t.

105

Doesn’t it depend on the extent of the bad behaviour? I’m not sure a zero tolerance policy, or “one strike and you’re out” would actually work; certainly if that is the type of approach you are suggesting, aren’t you guilty as charged by bluepillnation above?

I seem to recall from an earlier thread on education, where the experience of Finland was being discussed (they were being held up as a country which outperformed the UK), that they are not allowed by law to exclude ANY pupil, they are expected to deal with all pupils irrespective of how badly behaved.

Of course, no doubt in the olden days of selection and grammar schools, this was rarely an issue. I’m not sure what the answer is, I’m just not sure that exclusion is a panacea.

(continued from @104)

And from “The F***-Off Factor”:

It doesn’t take account of the fact that some children cannot tolerate a classroom where learning takes place.

You continue:

What should happen is this: The child is made to leave the school and never return.

Now there’s a few things I want to make clear. I am in no way ideologically driven when it comes to education – I am, and have always been, a pragmatist at heart and I want to see something that works. I believe that the best elements of traditional and progressive methods should be combined and employed because every student (of any age) is an individual – some will respond better to traditional methods, and others will respond better to modern methods. However both groups should have a right to use the methods that work for them so that they can get the best out of their years in education.

Also, I have no love whatsoever for certain aspects of the education system that we have in this country at present. I believe that part of the malaise that affects secondary education in this country can trace it’s roots all the way back to the hobbling of the comprehensive system before it was completely implemented (specifically the half-hearted implementation of streaming). I think imposing a top-down structure on early-years education is fundamentally wrong (because if you lose a child then, then it becomes progressively more difficult year-on-year to re-engage them). I think the league table system is an invention of Randian lunacy, and Labour’s decision to keep it was the biggest mistake they made education-wise in their years in government. I think that putting the parents at the centre of education choices (championed by the last three successive governments) is a bad move, because it undermines the effectiveness of teaching staff and ignores the fact that education is supposed to be for the benefit of the child. It also means that the tendency will then be for the pushiest parents at both ends of the achievement spectrum to get their own way in terms of academic consideration at the top, and dispensations for bad behaviour at the bottom. The bright student from a family where parental engagement is limited gets overlooked – and the difficult student in the same situation gets punished more severely and more often, and their resentment of education in general gets more fuel to it’s fire.

Believe it or not, I encountered your blog a while ago and have a lot of sympathy for the position you are put in on a daily basis – I understand the frustration you must feel, and I’m aware that you are far from a Tory ideologue or ultra-traditionalist (I hope you understand now that I am ideologically wedded to neither the Labour Party nor progressive educational methods applied exclusively). However I did and still do disagree with some of the conclusions that you have drawn, and another problem I have is that Tory ideologues and ultra-traditionalists *are* using your blog to support their arguments for a return to a two-tier system and the return of the cane to the Headmaster’s disciplinary arsenal. We may disagree, but I do not consider you an enemy.

I’m going to put all my cards on the table at this point. I mentioned that my mum fostered a love of learning in me from birth, and that I entered the infants able to read, write (to an extent – my motor skills were never the best) and do basic arithmetic. What I didn’t mention was that she left school at 16 with two O-Levels and had me at 17. If the powers that be are to be believed, I didn’t get the most auspicious start – but in fact I got the best start possible. When my sister and I were both in full-time education, she studied to get her qualifications to do teacher training and she has been a primary teacher and early-years specialist for the last 15 years. She uses the same methods (mixing synthetic phonics with whole language learning, and encouraging her students to take an interest in the world around them) that she used to give me and my sister a head start, consistently achieves excellent results and is one of the most dedicated and beloved teachers in every school she has taught in. Also, despite some hiccups and frustrations over the years, she still teaches in the state sector.

My experience of secondary education was at a local independent school courtesy of the assisted place system in place at the time (which opens me up to all kinds of accusations). The experience was a mixed bag though – despite encountering some truly inspiring teachers, the social hierarchy was something of a minefield and every personality type oldandrew describes with distaste in his blog was there, despite the selection criteria of entrance exams and the majority of students being fee-paying. There were classes where nothing got taught because it was easy to run rings around some teachers, and there were some students who quite obviously had some serious personality issues. Being an independent school, the teachers were able to use whatever methods they deemed fit (the school as a whole tended to favour traditional methods) and yet the problems that some ascribe to progressive methodology and the abandonment of selection were still very much present.

Fundamentally, I only have opinions, not answers – but I’m deeply suspicious of those who claim a return to traditional methods and reward/punishment regimens is the answer, because my experience (and those of many I’ve encountered over the years) does not bear that out.

106,

As I said, I support permanent exclusion as part of a sensible discipline policy. But this is in order to increase the number of people who get a decent academic education, not reduce it, and I do find it objectionable that anyone is seeking to suggest I want anything else.

It is also a straw man to suggest it is a panacea. It’s just something we (i.e. England not Finland) urgently need. We cannot continue indefinitely with the situation where teaching is a job fit only for people who don’t mind being verbally abused on a regular basis and any serious attempt to impose discipline on a class can be met with a mouthful of abuse.

107,

With regard to the quotations about exclusions, I’ll say again: I support a more aggressive use of exclusions in order to increase rather than decrease the amount of students getting a decent academic education.

With regard to education methods, both “traditional” and “progressive” are wide enough categories that when you talk about mixing methods then it is very difficult to see what that would mean (except for the phonics versus mixed methods point where I believe that the empirical evidence settles it quite decisively) and it might then actually be easier to distinguish positions by talking about aims rather than methods. However, I do object to the suggestion that it is likely to be possible to fit methods to students. There is very limited evidence that people actually learn in distinct, fixed ways. “Learning styles” is one of the progressive myths that I strongly object to.

With regard to the politics of schooling. I hold to the belief that every child deserves the opportunity of an academic (not vocational) education until at least the age of 16, although obviously that may involve moving at different speeds and there may have to be a handful of exceptions. For that reason I don’t sympathise with the various shades of Conservatism that seem so keen on preserving that sort of education for a minority. However, the standard leftwing alternative of achieving equality by trying to force everyone into bad schools, either by trying to hide exam results, or by removing choice, is to me pretty abhorrent too. It’s bad enough that any children have to go to terrible schools, but forcing it on people who know just how intolerable it is and aspire to better seems like the politics of class hatred. It is not the intake that determines the quality of the school, very often it is the quality of the school that determines the intake. There is no social engineering fix to the problem of bad schools, middle class kids forced into bad schools will go native or keep their heads down; they won’t change the culture.

The system itself is broken and that has to change.

How else will we get the surgeons, lawyers, economists and politicians of the future unless we dumb down education? Well, let’s not include politicians.

@109

However, the standard leftwing alternative of achieving equality by trying to force everyone into bad schools, either by trying to hide exam results, or by removing choice, is to me pretty abhorrent too.

Well, if Mrs. Thatcher hadn’t holed the comprehensive system under the waterline in 1970, then maybe there wouldn’t have been so many “bad” schools. And in our day and age, thanks to the league tables, even supposedly “good” schools do everything in their power to game the exam results to their advantage.

I also find the broad brush definition of the left wanting to “force everyone into bad schools” a bit beneath you. It sounds less a reasonable assertion than a trope from the Daily Mail. I don’t think you’ll get the same answer from any two people on the left when it comes to this issue. I think you will get agreement on the idea that if people of means (who tend to be the type to make policy) are able to use those means to provide an advantage to their own offspring – whether by sending them to a fee-paying school, or buying property in the catchment area of a good state school – then to borrow an Americanism, they “have no skin in the game” and will have no incentive to improve the educational lot of the country as a whole.

I had a brilliant teacher in junior school – while I didn’t know what it meant at the time, he had a Labour Party sticker in the back of his car and was a supporter of ILEA and his union. I think you’d agree that on the face of it he was a card-carrying lefty. But he certainly did not subscribe to the idea that all children are inherently good, was awesome at applying verbal admonition when necessary and at the same time had all the traits that make a memorable teacher – he was engaging, funny, very intelligent and had an innate feel for what made every child in his class tick.

middle class kids forced into bad schools will go native or keep their heads down

Imagine two boys, both 15 and they both attend a well-regarded independent school. One of them comes from a stable two-parent family, they live in an large, expensive house in the suburbs, and they pay the fees to send him there. The other was brought up in a single-parent family where the parent is a low earner and he’s got a scholarship to attend. It’s GCSE year, and one of the subjects has been taken over by a supply teacher who clearly has problems controlling the class. One of the students throws an object at the other, then does it again and again while the teacher is writing on the board, oblivious. The other student eventually gets fed up and throws the object back which just makes things worse – so he goes over to the initiator, taps the back of his chair with his foot and asks what his problem is, whereupon the initiator turns round with a craft knife in his hand and slashes the other student, drawing blood.

Which of the students, given their backgrounds, do you think did the slashing?

It wasn’t the scholarship boy.

Middle-class kids don’t need to go to a “bad” school to “go native” – class is no indicator of willingness to be well-behaved. I’m aware you you probably know that well, but many don’t – after all, every politician has told them that their little cherub will get the best possible education. No politician ever won an election by saying “Improving education as a whole is a long and thankless task, and there’s a good chance that your offspring have behaved abominably in school at some point”.

The way I see it, dismissing educational issues as other (usually poor) people’s problem, along with a political aversion to saying things that will court unpopularity, is a significant part of the rot eating away at the heart of the education system.

111,

I think most of what you are arguing against here are straw men.

When I talked about the “standard leftwing alternative” to selection I meant the common, unthinking, kneejerk reaction to the issue. I was not claiming that it was a belief held by everybody who wasn’t a card-carrying Tory and I certainly wasn’t trying to claim that everyone who held those beliefs also had a particular view on other education issues like teaching issues. You can have a look for my comments on the Telegraph website in the last week, or my views on Katharine Birbalsingh on my blog, to see that I have very little sympathy for people who try and turn teaching methods into a simple left/right issue.

I’m glad you agree that middle class kids don’t necessarily behave better than working class kids. I don’t see how this supports the argument that forcing middle class kids into bad schools will improve them. My point about middle class kids going native was a reference to them assimilating the ethos of the school rather than to the social class of the kids already in the bad school. There are some very bad schools which the middle class haven’t avoided and good schools they haven’t discovered. A number of academies have attracted a significant middle class intake without it changing anything. Schools have a culture, and class can affect it, but once a school has been going a through years the demographics of the intake cease to be the main determinant of the quality of education; the expectations of the school have a life of their own.

“but once a school has been going a through years the demographics of the intake cease to be the main determinant of the quality of education”

Sorry, that should have been “going a few years”. I don’t know where the “through” came from.

@112

I think most of what you are arguing against here are straw men.

And you’re entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine. I agree with your definition of a lot of problems (in fact I find your definition of disruptive kids as unwitting class traitors somewhat fascinating), but I think your proposed solutions read somewhat simplistic at times. Going back to what worked in the past is great in theory, but in practice we live in a very different world these days than it was even 10 years ago. You touch on this yourself when you say that there is far less respect for learning and knowledge than there was in your school days – and it’s hardly surprising when we live in a world where learning and knowledge may get you a job that pays better than minimum wage, but even a cursory view of the state of the world will tell a kid that the only way serious success can be achieved is by inheriting a lot of money and going into banking (a door closed to all but a very few) – or for the rest of us – the media says – our best chance of success seems to be going on a TV talent show and being manipulated by those who are already successful.

I don’t see how this supports the argument that forcing middle class kids into bad schools will improve them.

I didn’t say it did. I haven’t made this point clear so far, but I believe that for universal education to work, all schools have to be of a minimum standard – however, that minimum standard should be set far higher than it is now. What I was saying is that as long as a plurality of middle-class parents perceive that they can avoid sending their child to a school where these problems exist, then there will be no pressure to make the kind of across-the-board improvements that are necessary. It’s an extension of Thatcher’s rampant individualism – anything that can be defined as someone else’s problem does not need to be dealt with.

A number of academies have attracted a significant middle class intake without it changing anything.

But, as I’m sure you’re aware, academies are merely a sticking plaster – and for all their vaunted success in league table/exam result terms, kids are coming out of them knowing exactly what they needed to pass the coursework and exams, but many lack the reasoning required to work out why the answers they gave in those exams are correct.

As you’ve said many times, children of school age are extremely socially aware these days, even if it only applies to the social structure immediately surrounding them. Thirty years ago, it was possible to take as read the fact that if you kept your head down in school it would benefit you later in life. Kids have *always* asked “What’s in it for me?” and “Why do I have to learn all this stuff?”, but years ago it was easy to demonstrate why. Nowadays they see celebrities (many of whom are proud of sacking school off) venerated, failure rewarded (as long as you have the right connections or are rich enough to take the hit) and their own opportunities vastly diminished. As a result “Because I say so”, a hollow reasoning even thirty years ago, carries even less weight now.

“And you’re entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine.”

I don’t think anyone is challenging your entitlement to your wrong opinion.

“Going back to what worked in the past is great in theory,”

It’s hardly just in theory that doing what worked in the past is better than doing what didn’t work in the past. The great myth of progressive education is that the twentieth century never happened, and that we have to choose between new ideas and ninsteenth century ideas. In reality there are no new ideas in education and history tells us what works and what didn’t and it is ridiculous to label the rejection of the ideas from the 1920s that are the current orthodoxy and have been since the sixties as “going back”.

“but in practice we live in a very different world these days than it was even 10 years ago.”

No, we don’t.

“You touch on this yourself when you say that there is far less respect for learning and knowledge than there was in your school days and it’s hardly surprising when we live in a world where learning and knowledge may get you a job that pays better than minimum wage, but even a cursory view of the state of the world will tell a kid that the only way serious success can be achieved is by inheriting a lot of money and going into banking (a door closed to all but a very few) – or for the rest of us – the media says – our best chance of success seems to be going on a TV talent show and being manipulated by those who are already successful.”

The point of education is to transcend a “cursory view” of the world. Certainly, the well-off and the most recent immigrants don’t fall for this myth, so why should we adopt the “non-aspirational” view of the world as some kind of unchangeable reality, rather than something to be overcome?

“What I was saying is that as long as a plurality of middle-class parents perceive that they can avoid sending their child to a school where these problems exist, then there will be no pressure to make the kind of across-the-board improvements that are necessary.”

Why do you think that forcing middle class kids into the bad schools will create a pressure for improvement rather than for a return to the escape routes you’ve taken away? Can you really imagine any political party saying to middle class voters, we are going to make your children lose out in order to prove a point about the children who are already losing out?

As a general principle, do you think stealing somebody’s breakfast makes them appreciate the plight of the starving or resent the theft of their breakfast?

“But, as I’m sure you’re aware, academies are merely a sticking plaster – and for all their vaunted success in league table/exam result terms, kids are coming out of them knowing exactly what they needed to pass the coursework and exams, but many lack the reasoning required to work out why the answers they gave in those exams are correct.”

This is what they call “changing the goalposts”. It is also unnecessary as academies on the whole (as opposed to in specific instances) *haven’t* been a huge success with regard to results.

“Kids have *always* asked “What’s in it for me?” and “Why do I have to learn all this stuff?”, but years ago it was easy to demonstrate why. Nowadays they see celebrities (many of whom are proud of sacking school off) venerated, failure rewarded (as long as you have the right connections or are rich enough to take the hit) and their own opportunities vastly diminished. As a result “Because I say so”, a hollow reasoning even thirty years ago, carries even less weight now.”

The problem here is not that kids are now harder to motivate but that it is a bizarre idea that schools are there to motivate individuals rather than to educate in the first place. Some children will want to learn, some won’t. That only becomes a problem when the preferences of the child are allowed to determine the expectations of the school. And trust me, boys 30 years ago looked up to celebrities no less than they do now, and while celebrities in the past may have been a bit more talented (musicians, footballers rather than reality TV stars) they were no more academic back then.

@oldandrew

I’m certainly no expert on any of this, but according to my friend who is a primary teacher, and who did a degree in education, the evidence for synthetic phonics is seriously flawed in a number of ways, particularly in terms of conflicts of interest by the researchers. Apparently on balance synthetic phonics has no advantage over the alternative (it’s another “phonics” system, but I don’t know what it is called), and combining the two approaches is the most effective method.

I just thought I’d throw it in because you kept referring to the empirical base – I am just repeating what my friend said so I have no authority to talk about this.

116,

Vague accusations of “conflicts of interest” (as opposed to identifying any actual fault in the research) sounds about right for the opponents of synthetic phonics. The research is pretty overwhelming.

@ oldandrew

The accusations were specific – the researchers stood to gain financially from promoting the sole teaching of synthetic phonics. Not much for me to say given that I don’t know a lot about it. I did a quick google scan, and of the websites which weren’t selling synthetic phonics products and materials (all of whom unsuprisingly thought the evidence base for synthetic phonics was rock solid) seemed to suggest that the evidence for synthetic phonics was far from robust.

Quick Guardian overview here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/mar/20/schools.uk

British Educational Research Journal article here:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a901727409&fulltext=713240928

Feel free to cite the overwhelming evidence so people can compare them. Particularly if you have a meta-analysis or something, that’s normally what people use when they talk about an overwhelming research consensus.

It just might be possible to address the class divide imposed through our schools and that is by equipping children and families to go beyond that which they are given and to act in their own best interests. Visit http://www.ActionOnEducation.org

Action on Education

118,

You’ll have to specify exactly what you want phonics compared to in order to get details of evidence, although if you are just focusing on synthetic versus analytic phonics the best evidence is here:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/36496/0023582.pdf

I’m not sure either of your links provide much of a critique of the evidence. The first seems to have no evidence at all, the second seems to suggest that it is unfair to compare analytic and synthetic phonics if the analytic phonics group aren’t taught synthetic phonics too. As a criticism it harldy undermines the effectiveness of synthetic phonics.

@ oldandrew

As I have repeatedly said, I do not know this topic well or in detail. My guess would be that saying “analytic phonics vs. synthetic phonics” is a false dichotomy if opponents of pure synthetic phonics argue that you should teach using a combination of both, so you could compare synthetic with analytic/synthetic hybrid, or compare synthetic with one of the combinations bluepillnation mentioned above.

I’ll clip the relevant bits from my links above. The Guardian overview doesn’t have any evidence (the clue is in the name), but the relevant bit was here:

“However, a report commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, published in January this year, found the research to be inconclusive. While synthetic phonics looked “promising”, the evidence in favour of using it was still “relatively limited”, the researchers said. According to the study, there was no conclusive evidence that the phonics method improved children’s spelling or their understanding of what they read.”

The BREJ research paper I cite explicitly critiques the experimental design of the evidence you link to. Presumably you are referring to a bit in the “case for synthetic phonics” section when you say that the authors of the piece say analytic phonics students should also have been taught synthetic phonics. If this is right, I think you have misread the paper. The complaint is that synthetic phonics (i.e. working from partial word sounds to whole words) was taught systematically, while analytic phonics (i.e. working from whole words to partial word sounds) was not taught in the same rigorous and systematic way, and as such the trial wasn’t a fair comparison. Bad trial design is a good way of getting poor quality results that you can’t infer from.

That is probably the least important bit of the paper with regards to evaluating the efficacy of synthetic phonics. There are various other more important and more obvious bits in the paper where they review the literature and conclude that there is no significant difference between synthetic phonics and other systematic phonics teaching styles. It is a bit annoying that I have to spell this out in such tedious detail when you have apparently read the paper, but here we go anyway.

From “the case for systematic phonics”:

“One of the most significant contributions to questions about research evidence and the teaching of reading was the American National Reading Panel (NRP) report on teaching children to read in English (NICHD, 2000). This was an extensive meta-analysis of research evidence which addressed a number of questions about early literacy [...] As far as differences between analytic and synthetic phonics programmes were concerned, the NRP concluded that ‘specific systematic phonics programs are all significantly more effective than non-phonics programs; however, they do not appear to differ significantly from each other in their effectiveness although more evidence is needed to verify the reliability of effect sizes for each program’ (NICHD, 2000, ch. 2, p. 93). In the NRP, the effect sizes for the phonics approaches classified as ‘synthetic’ versus ‘analytic’ were statistically equivalent.”

From the same section:

“More recently, England’s Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commissioned a large-scale study of approaches to the teaching of reading. The methodology of the NRP was refined to produce a meta-analysis focused on studies that were randomised controlled trials (RCTs). On the basis of their study Torgerson et al. (2006, p. 49) concluded that ‘There is currently no strong RCT evidence that any one form of systematic phonics is more effective than any other’. As RCTs are one form of the ‘optimal research conditions’ noted by Rutter (2006), this is an important finding.”

This appears to be the research the Guardian piece is referring to which you dismissed.

From “the case against synthetic phonics” section:

“Although carried out with very different samples, the experimental studies by Walton et al. (2001), Landerl (2000) and Spencer and Hanley (2003) all reach the same conclusion. The conclusion is that no one method of teaching phonics to children learning to read in English appears to be superior to any other method. This is exactly the same conclusion as was reached by the meta-analyses reported by the NRP and by Torgerson et al. (2006). There is no empirical research base to justify the Rose Report’s recommendation that the teaching of reading in England must rely on synthetic phonics.”

I’m only pointing this out because you were so aggressive about synthetic phonics, relying on research and throwing around words like “overwhelming” when describing the evidence. Looking at the available evidence for myself, the randomised controlled trials appear to show that synthetic phonics is no more effective than other phonics systems. The meta-analyses (which are the gold standard of evidence) show the same thing. So I think we can safely say that the research for synthetic phonics is not “overwhelming”, but that it is at best conflicted, and that’s probably being too generous.

121,

Synthetic phonics is learning what sounds letters and groups of letter make before placing them in words. Analytic phonics is learning what sounds they make only when they are in words. They are about the order you do things, therefore a hybrid system really doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.

The DFES-commissioned review of phonics the Guardian talks about appears to be Torgerson (2006) which refused to consider non-randomised studies but did include tiny non-peer reviewed studies. This skewed the research severely, but even then it only enabled the authors to refuse to reach a conclusion rather than to suggest that phonics were shown not to be best. (And this was about comparing phonics and non-phonics, not about synthetic versus analytic phonics). Possibly this approach might be suitable for an extreme sceptic to avoid taking any position on any educational issue, but from the point of view of a rational policy maker the evidence for phonics remains overwhelming.

With regard to the BREJ, the complaint is that in the trial comparing analytic and synthetic phonics the analytic phonics did not do enough to teach the sounds independently of their position in the words. Given that this is what synthetic phonics does, then this is a bizarre complaint, as I pointed out, it amounts to complaining that there wasn’t enough synthetic phonics in the analytic phonics method.

The rest of the case against synthetic phonics in that article consists of Togerson which deliberately ignored most evidence, and cross language studies which were not primarily about comparing synthetic phonics with other methods but about comparing phonics methods with phonics in other languages.

When I said the evidence was overwhleming I did not mean to suggest that nobody could cherry-pick evidence the other way, what I meant was that they could not do it without it being blatantly obvious that this is what they were doing. I stand by that claim.

@ oldandrew

First point is taken.

All the other points I don’t think are fair. I still think you’re misreading their point about synthetic and analytic phonics.

“With regard to the BREJ, the complaint is that in the trial comparing analytic and synthetic phonics the analytic phonics did not do enough to teach the sounds independently of their position in the words. Given that this is what synthetic phonics does, then this is a bizarre complaint”

Analytic phonics teaches words and uses that to discuss the component parts of words, so they both teach the sounds independently of their position. The difference being that synthetic phonics starts from the sounds, analytic phonics starts from the words. You’ve given quite a good consise definition of the synthetic/analytic distinction at the beginning of your post so I don’t know why you won’t grasp this point.

As for the cherry-picking and criticisms of the meta-analyses, you see a lot of this kind of stuff from people who want to promote quack remedies like homeopathy – “you can’t trust the meta-analyses, they exclude all the poor-quality trials that say homeopathy is great!” Meta-analyses ignore badly designed trials. That is the point.

Anyway, the quacks then proceed to count the number of trials, insist that low sample size means the studies are inevitably useless (it’s not ideal, but not necessarily the end of the world), and generally state that they, an amateur, are more informed about this than someone who analyses trials for a living. Apart from counting trials, you remind me of this kind of apologist for an ineffective remedy. The strategies are similar. You haven’t talked about the US meta-analysis or the experimental studies I’ve mentioned.

Cherry-picking is picking individual trials or sets of trials to support your point of view, rather than looking at the totality of the evidence. In comparing the actual evidence, I’ve presented an overview piece which mentions two meta-analyses (i.e. views of the whole evidence base) and several individual experimental trials. You have presented one trial. When you present something more substantial, such as a meta-analysis, then I will take you seriously on the balance of evidence and cherry-picking.

Clearly you are wedded to synthetic phonics independently of the evidence, and I’m not going to change your mind whatever I say. This is getting to be a waste of time, and I’m beginning to get embarrassed (http://xkcd.com/386/). I really really struggle not to try and have the last word in these kinds of arguments, but I will try my hardest this time.

PS: If you don’t want to take my word for it about the evidence based stuff (and there is no reason why you should), here is a good overview, although the content is about homeopathy, by Ben Goldacre who writes about this much more gracefully than I have managed here:

http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/

@ oldandrew

OK, this is really, really my last word. Basically I actually found a Ben Goldacre article that specifically mentioned synthetic phonics (http://www.badscience.net/2010/07/boris-johnson-and-his-innovative-trial-methodology/) and was going to show you, but noticed you’d commented several times on the article itself already.

Interestingly, the research in support of phonics that you cited @66 of that thread(http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/upload/ch2-II.pdf) actually says there were no significant differences between the various types of phonics (see p. 6 (of the pdf pages that is) of that report).

123,

The point about the difference between analytic and synthetic phonics is how explicitly you teach the sounds. A complaint that in a comparison between the two, then the teaching of analytic phonics did not make explicit the fact that letters make the same sounds in different parts of words is little more than a complaint that it wasn’t enough like synthetic phonics. Can you not see how dubious this is as grounds for ignoring a key piece of evidence for synthetic over analytic phonics? What recommendation would you give teachers based on this interpretation of the evidence? Teach synthetic phonics but it’s okay if at times it has some features of analytic phonics, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the synthetic phonics which is the essential part?

With regard to my cherry-picking claim, I am not being casual or partisan with this criticism at all. Just to be clear, the BREJ article and the Guardian article between them refer only to:

1) A meta-analysis that compared *all* methods but didn’t demonstrate a statistically significant synthetic versus analytics difference.

2) A “meta-analysis” that ignored most of the evidence-base on the grounds of a non-randomisation criteria, but included small unpublished studies, and then concluded that there was not enough evidence to conclude anything about anything.

3) Individual studies which were not about synthetics versus analytics, but happened to include results hostile to synthetics (although not necessarily pro-analytics).

It seems to me that there are obvious problems with 2) and 3) and it should seem that way to you. There seems no reason to accept the methodology of 2) other than as a way to eliminate inconvenient evidence and thus reach no conclusion. Certainly you cannot get away with suggesting it was merely excluding poor quality trials. 3) is obviously just cherry-picking and it shocks me you’d even defend it.

I accept 1) is reputable evidence for its time, but the whole point of the Lanarckshire studies were that they looked directly at the question the NRP wasn’t able to answer. To throw out the Lanarkshire study is to do nothing more than ignore the best evidence we have on the question. It needs more justification than a quibble about its analytic phonics being too analytic.

With regard to your request for a meta-analysis – you still haven’t said what question you want it to answer. If you want meta-analyses that demonstrate systematic phonics is the best method, you have already referred to one and it really won’t be difficult to find others. If you want a meta-analysis just for synthetics versus analytics then I admit that would be problematic as it is something that has only recently been looked at in isolation and we would rely on the Lanarckshire studies, but the results from that comparison were overwhelming.

Now I assume from the ad hominems that you realise that you are grasping at straws, but if you do get back to me, can you be utterly precise as to which hypothesis you are doubting (the advantages of systematic phonics or the advantages of synthetic over analytic phonics), precisely what evidence you think gives reason to doubt the hypothesis, whether that evidence represents research designed to directly address that hypothesis, and whether the evidence contradicts the hypothesis or simply gives no reason to conclude one way or the other.

I think if you were clear about this, instead of jumbling everything together, it would be pretty obvious how weak your argument is and how utterly misplaced your lectures to me about empirical method are.

@ andrewold

OK, I failed at the not trying to have the last word thing, but seeing as there are a lot of individual questions I think that’s defensible.

Firstly, I don’t understand is why you have to be so rude and bad tempered about all this stuff, and I really wish you would stop with the aggression. Bear in mind that I started reading about this yesterday whereas you have form and have read about it before, so I’m still working out my position in relation to the research. Insulting me and saying “oh you’re jumbling everything up on purpose to confuse everyone and mask your weak, misplaced arguments” is needlessly harsh I think.

As I’ve made clear from the beginning, I don’t know a lot about this stuff so it’s hard for me. I’m just attempting to cast doubt on your assertion that the evidence for synthetic phonics specifically is overwhelming, as people who would know have suggested that that is wrong to me. I don’t have a solid grasp of the empirical basis (not being a teacher or education researcher), so a lot of what I’m doing is to try and expose any “look over there!” strategies, or attempts to change the subject, or bully people out of talking about stuff. All I really know is rules of thumb about what quacks have a tendency to do, and you are exhibiting the signs. Judging by the discussion at Bad Science a lot of people there agreed as well.

To answer your specific penultimate question paragraph:

I am mostly interested in the hypothesis “synthetic phonics is the best method for teaching reading” – I do not know enough about the various alternative methods to say which one I’m particularly interested in, and even if I did it’d be an arbitrary decision. I am interested in whether there is evidence that synthetic phonics is the best, and I don’t especially care what it is compared against. I have no particular desire to big up analytic phonics, but it is what the BREJ review article I was talking about mentioned, so I presumed it was the main alternative.

To be clear – I am happy enough to accept that systematic phonics is a good, superior method in the round. I’ve not questioned this at any point during this discussion, focusing wholly on synthetic phonics, so I don’t know why you have become confused about this.

I’ve mentioned the research before. It’s the American meta-analysis, it’s the DfES meta-analysis, those are the main ones. The other experimental studies from the BREJ article that I quoted – I have not read but am taking on trust from the BREJ article that they are trustworthy.

I am not concerned whether the studies were specifically designed to compare synthetic with analytic phonics, only that they can make well founded inferences about this topic, or about the effectivenes of synthetic phonics compared with other interventions. I don’t see why you insist that the paper studies synthetic vs. analytic phonics and nothing else to be valuable. That seems totally arbitrary. Feel free to correct me.

I am interested in the claim that the evidence is “overwhelming” in favour of synthetic phonics. As such any evidence that synthetic phonics is worse than other kinds of teaching methods would be interesting, as would any evidence showing that there is no difference, as would any study saying that the evidence base is weak and that you can’t solidly conclude anything on the basis of current evidence. I don’t see why I need to choose between them, and I think you are just making a distraction by demanding that I do.

“The point about the difference between analytic and synthetic phonics is how explicitly you teach the sounds. A complaint that in a comparison between the two, then the teaching of analytic phonics did not make explicit the fact that letters make the same sounds in different parts of words is little more than a complaint that it wasn’t enough like synthetic phonics. Can you not see how dubious this is as grounds for ignoring a key piece of evidence for synthetic over analytic phonics?”

I still think you’re misrepresenting the article, and have shifted from one description of synthetic phonics (“moving from sounds to words”) to another one which just doesn’t seem right (“synthetic phonics focuses on the sounds in the words [and by loose implication analytic phonics doesn't]“). According to this Guardian article on phonics (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/apr/05/schools.uk) analytic phonics “…teaches the children whole words and then breaks them down into the letter sounds, concentrating at first on the initial letters of words.” So the key thing is the ORDER in which sounds and words are encountered by students, not the mere presence of sounds. So you’ve distorted that debate again.

The specific results of saying that the trial did not compare like with like does not lead to any policy prescription, quite obviously. But assuming that either synthetic or analytic phonics worked as well as each other (that’s not what saying “the trial design is flawed” entails, but never mind) so long as you had a focus on sounds as well as words, then yeah I’d be perfectly happy with the policy description you give, and I don’t see why you think it is so outrageous.

Finally, with regards to cherry picking. Your assertion that “the evidence” (implication – the totality of the evidence) for synthetic phonics is overwhelming is dependent on one study. I don’t really know what I can add here. Given that I have “only” managed to refer to a few studies despite my inexperience with the subject matter, including reviews of the evidence and meta-analyses, and you have referred to ONE STUDY (which must be better because it is newer), I would like to know how I could avoid accusations of cherry picking other than:

1) agreeing that the study you cite is the totality of the evidence and ceding the argument to you.
2) being an academic who can throw some kind of argument from authority at you to demonstrate that I know the literature well.

Again, the rolling “I’ll try not to stubbornly have the last word” disclaimer applies, the ruder you are the less likely I will be to respond (and it’ll be interesting to see how you react to that last statement).

@ oldandrew

Also, point out supposed ad hom’s and I’ll be happy to retract.

127,

The ad hominem arguments were:

“you are wedded to synthetic phonics independently of the evidence”

and

“you see a lot of this kind of stuff from people who want to promote quack remedies like homeopathy”

Although you now appear to be adding to it with accusations of aggression and bad temper.

@128

Well, to be fair you spent a lot of time accusing me of wanting to force middle-class children into “bad” schools (not the case – I explicitly said I don’t have any solutions), and denying you believe that some children don’t deserve an education. You also spend a lot of time accusing others of arrogance whilst adopting an unwavering debating stance in which you proclaim yourself unimpeachably correct.

If you use the same methods on your students, I’m frankly not surprised that some of them have no problem telling you where to get off.

126,

With regard to the “jumbling, that isn’t a personal attack, it is a way of trying to make this discussion readable. As things stand I think some of our longer comments have probably been close to incomprehensible to anybody not familiar with the sources we were discussing, and I think the two separate questions:

1) Are systematic phonics the best way to teach reading?

2) Are synthetic phonics better than analytic phonics?

need to be clearly separated. You have repeatedly drawn attention to sources arguing about point 1) despite the fact that at other points you appear to agree with me about it. It is not helping that as well as muddling the two questions you seem to be resorting to a lot of ad hominems and commentary as well. Now you can take this as personal criticism if you like, but if you don’t stop doing this then discussion becomes close to incomprehensible. Certainly, in 126 you appear to have written 14 paragraphs in which I think the only arguments that address the evidence base for point 2) are:

a) a claim that you don’t care what question research was set up to answer, you will draw inferences from a failure to answer the question anyway

and

b) the straw man that I think the Lanarckshire research is better because it is new, as opposed to better because it was deliberately designed to investigate the question at hand.

Have I missed something? On their own these seem like particularly weak arguments so I would prefer it if you could state clearly whether these are the only points you are making and if not, to clarify what I’ve missed.

129,

I always consider it a good sign when people decide to attack my style of argument rather than its content, but I would be curious to know:

a) where I accused someone of arrogance

b) where I said that you personally wanted to force middle class kids into bad schools

c) the precise difference between stopping parental choice and forcing people to send their kids to bad schools

@131

a) It’s not a specific accusation as much as your attitude towards those who disagree with you.

b) See your comment @115 – argue semantics if you like, but the inference is pretty clear to me.

c) Having not suggested stopping parental choice, I don’t see why it matters.

I left this thread a while back because I felt that I’d never get anywhere. As I’ve said many times, I understand the predicament you feel you are placed in – and have quite a bit of sympathy. However I disagree strongly with some of the conclusions you’ve drawn and the hostility you display towards those of your students who don’t automatically respect and fear you just because you’re their teacher. I’ve also got a lot of work on and don’t have the time to go any further, so I have to leave it there.

132,

So just to check:

Having claimed I “spend a lot of time accusing others of arrogance”, you now admit that I have *never* done this?

When you said “I think that putting the parents at the centre of education choices (championed by the last three successive governments) is a bad move” you weren’t opposing parental choice?

Despite your repeated unprovoked personal attacks on me, you think my attitude is the problem?