This morning on Twitter I saw that William Lau had drawn people’s attention to an article in yesterday’s Sunday Times:
Shall we release this at 10pm on a Sunday in a 200 page DFE document? Nah, let’s just leak it to The Times. https://t.co/sefWfbHlcq
— William Lau (@MrLauLearning) February 14, 2021
The article referred to is Back to school on March 8 as Johnson starts lifting lockdown, and the offending paragraph is:
“Exam boards are to ditch plans to force teenagers to sit mini exams to help them decide their GCSE and A-level results, under plans set to be published next week. Instead the tests will be voluntary and teachers will hold one-to-one meetings to students about the grades they should be aspiring to in order to avert last year’s grades fiasco.”
There are several aspects of this to discuss.
First, the manner of the announcement. As far as I can tell, the first that teachers will have heard of this is when they read it in the paper, or on Twitter. If anyone in the DfE wishes to know why so many teachers hold them, and in particular the Education Secretary, in such low regard, I suggest they consider the way they go about things. Announcing important updates on Friday evenings or just before a school holiday or in the middle of a school holiday is bad enough, but to announce it to the press first is arguably worse.
Second, there is the tone: teachers will hold one-to-one meetings, not “we would like them to — if they don’t already”.
Third, there is some discussion on Twitter about the time involved. I agree that the DfE always seems to fail to scale up the time required. For example, if you teach, as I did, around 120 students in their exam year, spending 10 minutes with each of them equates to around 20 hours, which is about 4 days in terms of school time.
However, I should think many teachers hold discussions with their students anyway. I know I used to, but I think it’s more difficult now. I found the time by having chats with students privately during lessons while the others were working on a problem in their small groups. One could do that online, of course, in breakout rooms, assuming the students you wish to speak to are present, and that the school is happy to allow that to happen, as opposed to insisting that each lesson is completely “full on” in terms of teacher exposition. I think that it would be reasonable for the school to schedule revision lessons, aka study periods, in which students are given appointments for a discussion with the teacher while the others work on their own.
Fourth, I have a problem with the wording:
“… teachers will hold one-to-one meetings to students about the grades they should be aspiring to…”
This sounds a lot like the enactment of one of Clint Eastwood’s favourite lines: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” In my experience, many students understand all too well their limitations — it was more often their parents I had problems with:
“Well, Mrs Bloggs, it would be unusual for Oxford to give a place on a mathematics course when they have not progressed beyond Year 8 in terms of ability….”
I thought a large part of my role, though, was to encourage students to aspire to higher grades that they had in mind. My reasoning was simple: if you aim for a grade 7, say, hopefully you’ll emerge with at least a grade 6, because you’d have done the revision needed to obtain a grade 7. I know it’s not as simple as that, especially now, but that strikes me as better than what the DfE appears to be advocating.
Also, a lot of the students I taught had low self-esteem already. They didn’t need me to reinforce their opinions of themselves. Students rise or fall to the level of teachers’ expectations, as all teachers know.
These issues are complex. Is there anyone in the Department for Education who understands that education is more than issuing edicts?
Terry Freedman qualified as a teacher in 1975, has written for educational publications since 1989, and has published this website since 1995.
