Summer Teaching Blues
The BBC have made the astonishing claim that teachers cheat and help pupils too much at coursework Teachers cheating to raise grades. But it is hardly a surprise to find teachers losing the plot a bit when the entire system encourages organised cheating. Since the A-level went modular in 2000, we have had the fiasco of seeing pupils enter the same examination up to three times during the course in order to get a better grade - completely justifiably under the QCA rules. Not satisfied with that the new science GCSEs have gone modular allowing pupils the possibility of sitting the same examination up to four times in two years to achieve a descent grade. So is it a surprise that pupils want to redo their coursework once "Sir" has given it a low mark? The examination boards rules are so lacking in clarity that no-one is sure exactly whether pupils should be allowed to see their work once it has been looked over by a teacher. Under the new GCSE arrangements we are being told to ensure the pupils write up their assignments in around an hour under examination conditions. But they have weeks to prepare if needed and can bring in any information they need. Would it be a surprise if they wrote up the assignment before hand probably with parental help and brought it in to the teacher to go through before the official examination? The worst rows I have had about coursework are with parents disputing poor grades obviously because they did not undestanding the assignment "little Johnny" had to do when they were "helping" him at home. But blaming parental pressure and league tables for the pressure on teachers to bend the rules misses the point. The entire assessment system encourages cheating from the top down. It's just easier to kick a few teachers than to address the mess that is the schools examination system.
posted by David Perks at
09:33
1 Comments:
I completely agree. In English, AQA circulates lists of 12 'key poems' for higher tier and 12 for foundation tier that will be named in the exam paper, encouraging teachers to concentrate on the 12 poems that the exam questions will be about, at the expense of the 20 which will not. The Anthology has 32 poems for the English Literature GCSE examination, 16 by contemporary poets and 16 by pre-1914 poets. Of the 12 key poems, only 4 are taken from the pre-1914 list, which is supposed to include the poems that are harder to understand.
This is not surprising, as examination boards are in competition to provide the easiest syllabuses, those which ensure the highest grades, as government, LEAs, schools and teachers, all have targets to improve exam results.
Paradoxically, the system of accountability set up to guarantee the quality of education, penalises schools and teachers who want to teach more than the narrow skills and little content assessed by the exam.
It would be better if we had exams that randomly assessed the subject knowledge of pupils with more open questions and teachers and examiners with the autonomy to judge the knowledge of pupils as evidenced in the answer, instead of pretending that we can measure objectively the level of pupils' ability, following, not our own judgment and knowledge, but a standardised mark scheme provided by the examination board.
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