Teacher Strike

[ks.234]

Yes I was and I said so up front. However it was because I grasped the opportunity with both hands and worked very hard whilst others just gave up and didn't bother. I certainly didn't feel lucky at the time. I studied the complete Chemistry 'O' Level syllabus myself in my own time on top of all the other school work and gained the certificate. My Sec Mod didn't even have a Chemistry teacher only General Science and Biology. I'm forever grateful to those teachers and the Head that believed in me and gave me the chance.

How many pupils have that opportunity today?

DV

For many it’s not a question of giving up, but not having a sense of self belief in the first place. Art was not something that I was recognised for at school, it was just something I did. It was not until my mid 20’s that a girlfriend pursued to go for an interview at the local art college who there and then accepted me onto a Pre BA course. I could not believe it. I could not understand how I could get access to a degree course. I wasn’t particularly happy, more confused.

In my mid 30’s I went back to college to do a different access course to get into Sheffield Uni doing History and Politics. I expected everyone there to be so much cleverer than me, and it still surprises me to this day, that so many who have had a much better education than me, are not.

 

[Del monaco]

I don't think that's totally right.

You are correct. A few years ago a study( I seem to remember) looked at this exact question. It concluded that there hadn’t really been a change over a number of decades. More or less the same amount of children failed, the same amount succeeded and the others stayed put. I think teaching is generally much improved using evidence based approaches. Certainly if I think back to my late 70s education, most of it was inactive. Just copying out of books. I excelled in the things I liked, fell on the things I didn’t. I don’t really think it’s different today. Well led schools thrive. Others don’t. Much as it was in my early schooling.

 

[ks.234]

You are correct. A few years ago a study( I seem to remember) looked at this exact question. It concluded that there hadn’t really been a change over a number of decades. More or less the same amount of children failed, the same amount succeeded and the others stayed put. I think teaching is generally much improved using evidence based approaches. Certainly if I think back to my late 70s education, most of it was inactive. Just copying out of books. I excelled in the things I liked, fell on the things I didn’t. I don’t really think it’s different today. Well led schools thrive. Others don’t. Much as it was in my early schooling.

In my last year of teaching in my bog standard comp, we had some girls from the local grammar school do a few weeks of work experience in the English department. They were amazed at how interesting and involving the English lessons were compared to their own grammar schools where all lessons were ‘silent’ lessons reading, copying, or doing tests.

It is not true that teachers in ‘outstanding” schools are better teachers than the rest

 

[cutting42]

In my mid 30’s I went back to college to do a different access course to get into Sheffield Uni doing History and Politics. I expected everyone there to be so much cleverer than me, and it still surprises me to this day, that so many who have had a much better education than me, are not.

Thats cos intelligence and education are different things.

Not saying I am intelligent or clever but I dropped out of 6th form and only have 6 O levels to show from school. I currently am a director in a large global supplier to the Pharma industry and manage a team of MBA’s, PhD’s and other highly educated people. Actually they are very clever and fabulous people and I do think they are all much cleverer than I am however my point is you can succeed and be clever without an education.

 

[ks.234]

my point is you can succeed and be clever without an education.

I didn’t say otherwise.

 

[Del monaco]

It is true that outstanding schools attract good teachers though. Our local academies are frequently visited by teachers from the local private college so they can understand why the results are better in the academies than in their colleges. It’s mostly good teaching with focused strategic approaches.And generally excellent leadership. It’s clear to see. And these are challenging catchments.
I still teach. I work in an academy that has been subject to a run of temporary leaders whose sole purpose appears to be to further their own careers. Just recently, both senior leaders bailed just prior to Ofsted and left a car crash behind. It needs a long term vision but the phrase ‘poisoned chalice’ springs to mind!

 

[Enfield boy]

The thing about exam grading is that most (all?) are norm referenced rather than criterion referenced.

If that's true there should be no such thing as grade inflation, yet there is. Some years ago I read a quote that a mid-level A level of the time was no better academically than a top grade O level from years gone by. Anecdotal as I can't find it by googling and apologise for that but I've seen little evidence to suggest that successive conservative governments take the education of the plebs seriously.

 

[Cav]

Norm-referencing pretty much guarantees grade inflation...

 

[Tony L]

I'll stop there as the point I am making is that schooling and the opportunities offered in the '50s and '60s was from my experience far better than what I glean today.

Not a universal view. I’d argue I was totally failed by 1960s and 70s education. There was not a minute of schooling I did not detest. I connected with nothing despite entering the system with a “reading age” 4-5 years above my age. I absolutely hated every aspect of it and after a considerable period of disruption ended up streamed in the lowest stream of a secondary modern. I played truant much of the time as it was so obviously a waste of my time being there. I left with 7 CSEs, some in subjects I’d barely attended. My school years taught me to have utter contempt for authority. One very long and tedious lesson learned.

PS Not a class thing, I grew up in a nice safe middle class area. Possibly some degree of Asperger’s, though I have never had a formal diagnosis. If that was the case I bet I’d have fared far better in today’s system.

 

[Spike]

You are correct. A few years ago a study( I seem to remember) looked at this exact question. It concluded that there hadn’t really been a change over a number of decades. More or less the same amount of children failed, the same amount succeeded and the others stayed put. I think teaching is generally much improved using evidence based approaches. Certainly if I think back to my late 70s education, most of it was inactive. Just copying out of books. I excelled in the things I liked, fell on the things I didn’t. I don’t really think it’s different today. Well led schools thrive. Others don’t. Much as it was in my early schooling.

It’s called normal distribution.

 

[Spike]

If that's true there should be no such thing as grade inflation, yet there is. Some years ago I read a quote that a mid-level A level of the time was no better academically than a top grade O level from years gone by. Anecdotal as I can't find it by googling and apologise for that but I've seen little evidence to suggest that successive conservative governments take the education of the plebs seriously.

Rubbish! How can you compare current A-levels to 40 year old O-Levels? You can’t. Current A-level biology is teaching so much that wasn’t even known then eg biotechnology, genetic engineering, chemiosmosis…

 

[Mike Reed]

but I dropped out of 6th form and only have 6 O levels to show from school.

The fact that it was O levels dates you D) and in the late fifties when I took mine (half from a sixth form), my 6 passes were considered pretty good in the workplace out there in the Smoke (no jobs locally). It also facilitated my entry to teaching college in 1970, so still reasonable academic currency, as it were.

My only stab at A level was when I was sent for maths retraining when my and other small local schools were closing around '84. Not sure whether my then dodgy domestic situation impinged on progress, but I suddenly discovered that maths A level came in a different language to the CSE stuff I was quite au fait teaching previously.

It didn't help that my allocated course for CSE was cancelled and combined as an A level course due to staff shortage and a totally unprepossessing and disinterested lady teacher from the local uni. was drafted in. I was one of the drop-outs, but I was never asked to take an A level maths in supply teaching at junior and sec. schools throughout the area, si I wouldn't have used it. I do vaguely remember being introduced to BBC machines (?) and computing at that time but doubt I leant anything, as I'm still useless now !

 

[Mike Reed]

Rubbish! How can you compare current A-levels to 40 year old O-Levels? You can’t. Current A-level biology is teaching so much that wasn’t even known then eg biotechnology, genetic engineering, chemiosmosis…

Same as history; there's been so much more happened since then!

 

[Tony L]

I do vaguely remember being introduced to BBC machines (?) and computing at that time but doubt I leant anything, as I'm still useless now !

Annoyingly that happened three or four years after I’d left school. I never saw or heard mention of a computer at any time I was there. I met the BBC Micro at a friend’s house in about 1983 and obtained a fair few programming concepts at that point that served me well later.

Speaking from my current perspective as a computer geek who volunteers in a museum on a vintage computer exhibit now and again it is interesting looking at different generations. The BBC computer literacy thing was hugely important and set that generation up with some real understanding of computer concepts. I have researched this as I love the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum etc, plus it is evident in so many people I speak to. Kids of the time and teachers.

It appears this later went very wrong in the ‘90s and school computing was largely relegated to basic usage of MS Office etc with little if any attempt to teach the fundamental concepts as part of the standard curriculum. This is backed up by speaking to teachers too, the generation between the BBC Micro and now seem to have the biggest knowledge gaps.

Things seem to have improved hugely recently with most kids having some grasp of Scratch or Python thanks to the Raspberry Pi, Pi Zero etc. Even so it seems hugely inconsistent. It is impossible to look at a random bunch of school kids and have any clue what they have been taught. I don’t understand enough about the education system (I have no kids, no stake/interest etc) to know why there is such a huge discrepancy. Some kids of a given size understand binary, variables, conditional branching, loops etc and are reasonably fluent in a programming language, others just stare blankly. Even so I’d say things are way better now than they were in my day or the ‘90s when it comes to this area. The ‘80s was a positive blip when it came to computer literacy and one I think we are learning some lessons from today.

 

[Seeker_UK]

In my school, computer science was something that you did if you were not an a-stream students. All it did was give you basic computer literacy - to prep you for likely work the majority of leavers would face if it involved a computer. For a while (80s) that was basic coding and word processing but later spread to MS Office apps. FOr those of us in the A-stream, it was seen as more important to get STEM O and A-levels to get you into Oxbridge or other places.

 

[gintonic]

computer science for me started at secondary where it was treated seriously by maths teachers, Algol on punched cards, sent to University of London for batch processing, then on to BASIC on a teletype and saved on paper tape. Did O'Level in '82 and A'Level in '84. By the time I got to A'Level it was Pascal on a RM 380Z machine, BBC Micros were just arriving at school.

I only discovered applications like word processing when I got to Uni....Computer Science at school was some serious maths, algorithms, problem solving and computational thinking. This view of Computer Science has never left me, under pinning how my department delivers Computer Science education - of course the pedagogy is very different.

 

[Tony L]

I was out the door in ‘79 so even if I’d been streamed properly I’d have seen none of that!

 

[Darth Vader]

Not a universal view. I’d argue I was totally failed by 1960s and 70s education. There was not a minute of schooling I did not detest. I connected with nothing despite entering the system with a “reading age” 4-5 years above my age. I absolutely hated every aspect of it and after a considerable period of disruption ended up streamed in the lowest stream of a secondary modern. I played truant much of the time as it was so obviously a waste of my time being there. I left with 7 CSEs, some in subjects I’d barely attended. My school years taught me to have utter contempt for authority. One very long and tedious lesson learned.

PS Not a class thing, I grew up in a nice safe middle class area. Possibly some degree of Asperger’s, though I have never had a formal diagnosis. If that was the case I bet I’d have fared far better in today’s system.

There have been some interesting input/experiences on this thread. I still feel that the quality of schooling and opportunities offered have for whatever reasons somewhat degraded over the decades. If I had to point a finger I would say the introduction of Comprehensive schools had a big part to play.

As outlined above I went to a tough Sec Mod that serviced a large area Council estate and left at 15. Around 8 years later I was a Science teacher in one of the first Comprehensive Schools where some of my old teachers were working. It was a smack-in-the-face difference teaching a class of mixed ability pupils than I experienced as a pupil taught in streams. Over the years I taught in several different schools from the toughest inner city boys school, girls Sec Mod, boys Sec Mod, Church mixed school and a brand new mixed Comprehensive. For me the final straw was the merging of GCE and CSE followed by the introduction of 6th form Colleges. These changes made teaching a lot more challenging and harder and the 6th form colleges removed the 'A' level capitation and attracted the more academic and usually better teachers away from the Comps. I envisaged these changes would cause a decline in education and after thinking things through decided to change my career.

I also taught evening classes one of which was 'O' Level Maths. At the time schools were teaching to the New Maths syllabus but that didn't prepare pupils for careers such as engineering so they came to my classes. In my Chemistry 'O' Level classes I had a similar problem and offered extra maths tuition for such simple things as ratio and proportion stuff I did at 11!

This is one of the teachers who worked in the Sec Mod that I attended and also in the Comp Rex Brinkworth - Wikipedia There is a mistake in that entry as the school was not Turners Green but Turves Green and you'll note that both schools are in Brum. It wasn't until I worked with Rex that I realised that forms 1.10 and 1.11 were ESN classes and at Great Barr I supported a few lessons of his ESN classes and a very interesting experience it was too.

Apologies if I'm rambling a bit its the Co-Codamol.


DV

 

[lordsummit]

Do you really think Comprehensives teach in mixed ability? Only in some exam groups like tech, the arts or PE will that happen.

 

[ks.234]

I still feel that the quality of schooling and opportunities offered have for whatever reasons somewhat degraded over the decades. If I had to point a finger I would say the introduction of Comprehensive schools had a big part to play.

Disagree quite strongly here. Comprehensives were an alternative to an overtly two tier system which served those selected very nicely and ignored the rest. The rest now have to be accounted for and are blamed for lowering standards, the only solution to which has been to reintroduce a two, or more, tier system covertly.

I would point the finger at successive Tory governments who have systematically starved the funding of Education in order to promote Free Schools, Academies