Britain scraps “reform” too
Wow, what a day in the education headlines. It seems the Labour government in England has determined that rigid standards, testing, and prescribed curricula are not bringing about positive change. They are doing away with the mandatory literacy and numeracy strategies imposed on teachers and are allowing teachers to come up with their own curricula. And get this: The tests that ten- and eleven-year old students are required to take may eventually be replaced by teacher assessments.
Tests scores rose when the “reform” was first imposed by Tony Blair’s administration, but guess what? The gains flattened out after a few years.
The national strategies are credited with a substantial improvement in school test results in the period after they were introduced, but that success has stalled. They were heavily criticised by the Commons education select committee, which concluded that what and how schools can teach under the programmes is too heavily prescribed. It said: “At times schooling has appeared more of a franchise operation, dependent on a recipe handed down by government rather than the exercise of professional expertise by teachers.”
via Labour to junk Tony Blair’s flagship school reform | Politics | The Guardian
Is anyone out there listening?
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With sympathy I ask: Who do you think should be listening? Who do you think would understand if they were to listen? And even if they were to both listen and understand, what could they do in a world where financial institutions are crumbling, the abused environment has rightly turned against us, and overpopulation in every nation has flicked on the gene switch for war? No one I know is not struggling with these stresses ….
But even in better times, what happens in schools has been a football exploited by everyone everywhere. It seems to me that learning is an inborn natural ability and that teaching is an art. To politicize it, to overregulate it, is like showing one’s admiration of Picasso’s work by telling him how to paint, giving him insufficent resources, and setting a predetermined pace and result. Well, even the pol’s have begun to see their top-down approach is not working. Perhaps that means a bottom-up approach will get a better chance …
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. The “reformers” should be listening! I completely agree that politicizing and overregulating education has backfired. If something isn’t working, it doesn’t help to throw more money at something that doesn’t work. I don’t claim to have the answers, but rigidity stifles creativity and it harms children, especially when they are taught that they are failures from an early age. It’s time we started thinking about the Whole Child, making sure they have their basic human needs met so that they can learn.
In response to another comment. See in context »