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Sport as punishment?

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Really...??
http://news.sky.com/story/1216322/sport-stars-slam-goves-school-punishment-...

The man is a cretin. What a way to put kids off sport in a nation where obesity and lack of exercise is becoming a national crisis!
 The New NickB 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

I heard something about this on the Marathon Talk podcast, yet another thing that shows how out of touch Gove is.
KevinD 24 Feb 2014
In reply to The New NickB:

He truly is special. I wonder what he has on Cameron. Got to be something to allow him to keep going.
 crayefish 24 Feb 2014
In reply to dissonance:

> He truly is special. I wonder what he has on Cameron. Got to be something to allow him to keep going.

He gives a great handy j.
 Yanis Nayu 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

Watching basketball is a suitable punishment for most transgressions.
 jonnie3430 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

Ooohhh! I get to be mr controversial and say it is a good idea! People will actually feel better for themselves after they've been punished! It is something that people will want to avoid doing as they would hate having to do it in front of friends, whereas exclusion from the classroom is a relief sometimes.

What should they do instead for punishment? Attend a focus group on understanding how the impact of your behaviour affects all others in the classroom and how their future is being jeopardised by their actions?
 Shani 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554: By Jove, Gove's infatuation with Victoriana will drag this country backwards. Exercise as punishment is a quintessential example:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/04G2X6rXSsiAvbotujleew
 Postmanpat 24 Feb 2014
In reply to The New NickB:

Worked in Top Gun and Full Metal Jacket. What's not to like?
 graeme jackson 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

I must be missing something. Lunchtime and apres school detention cross country runs were a standard punishment for us back in the 70's.
In reply to Postmanpat:

Not wishing to get involved in a Gove good/bad debate.

As punishments go, this seems pretty good to me. Whats wrong with a "PE" style detention? It's part of the curriculum isn't it?
 Postmanpat 24 Feb 2014
In reply to graeme jackson:

> I must be missing something. Lunchtime and apres school detention cross country runs were a standard punishment for us back in the 70's.

Made me the man I am.

OK, ok, quiet at the back……!
 kathrync 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

I'm not sure that associating sports of any form with punishment in the minds of children is a good thing - I think that would only put children off.

On the other hand, sometimes what a misbehaving child needs is just some space and time to blow off some steam and a run round the field is a good way of achieving that.

A lot of schools do give children time out to calm down and only punish after repeated transgressions. Perhaps a run could be offered at that point and touted as a positive opportunity to calm down and re-gain focus before a punishment becomes necessary rather than being forced upon a child as a punishment later on...
 Clarence 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:
It didn't work when I was at school. A french teacher once said to me "if you don't stop acting the giddy goat you will be with Mr S on the running track for the rest of the afternoon". My reply was "go **** yerself you ****** ****". Result - an afternoon of pleasant, gentle jogging in the sun watching the girls playing netball rather than struggling with IR verbs and the pluperfect tense.

I had started off the lesson being mildly unruly but once given the option of jacking it in for a run I really put some effort into being an arsehole.
Post edited at 14:58
 rallymania 24 Feb 2014
In reply to kathrync:

and if the kid has hope on being a running champion, they just need to be disruptive in class to get out of lessons and go training
 Timmd 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:
Just had a thought, what about pupils who'd rather be doing sport than classes and act up as a way of going and doing sports instead of classes?
Post edited at 14:59
 The New NickB 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

> Worked in Top Gun and Full Metal Jacket. What's not to like?

Quiet Pyle!
 kathrync 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Timmd:

> Just had a thought, what about pupils who'd rather be doing sport than classes and act up as a way of going and doing sports instead of classes?

Well, I guess you couldn't use it as a one-size-fits-all punishment!
 Timmd 24 Feb 2014
In reply to kathrync:

More school complexity. Erk. ()
Lusk 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Clarence:

Quality!
 silhouette 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554: Where is this petition of which the article speaks?

 kathrync 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Timmd:

> More school complexity. Erk. ()

Indeed - how remiss of me to expect people to treat children as individuals
JMGLondon 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

Cut school sports funds and get kids to associate exercise with punishment. The man is a total cretin.
 Timmd 24 Feb 2014
In reply to JMGLondon:

He's bonkers too, he accused Mark Steel and Linda Smith of secretly pedalling a communist or Marxist agenda in one of their shows.

???
 silhouette 24 Feb 2014
In reply to JMGLondon:

> The man is a total cretin.

I would agree but I don't trust Sky not to make things up. Has this been covered anywhere else?
 Liam M 24 Feb 2014
In reply to silhouette:

> I would agree but I don't trust Sky not to make things up. Has this been covered anywhere else?

It's from the department rather than the man, but you can read it on here http://tinyurl.com/q7lgrhq




 Postmanpat 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Timmd:

> He's bonkers too, he accused Mark Steel and Linda Smith of secretly pedalling a communist or Marxist agenda in one of their shows.

> ???

Why is that "bonkers"?
 The New NickB 24 Feb 2014
In reply to silhouette:

Excellent piece here from Chrissie Wellington.

http://www.chrissiewellington.org/blog/

 Timmd 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

It just is, I challenge you to go back through their shows on the radio and find one which sound's like it's secretly pedalling a Marxist or communist agenda.

Sorry, but have time to post more at the moment.

Tim
In reply to mh554:

Yes, it will clearly foster the wrong attitude to all sports. For example, I was made to write lines as a punishment and I now fear writing. Similarly I was hit with a slipper and I now fear all footwear. I was caned so I now fear sticks. I had a cup of cold water poured down my sleeve at Scouts (for swearing - odd, I know) and I am now hydrophobic.
 Carolyn 24 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:

Given the Speaker's reaction to Gove's recent announcement about the value of writing lines, I'm hoping he'll send Gove outside to run up and down the corridors of the House of Commons next time he misbehaves in Prime Minister's Question Time.
 Postmanpat 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Timmd:
> It just is, I challenge you to go back through their shows on the radio and find one which sound's like it's secretly pedalling a Marxist or communist agenda.

>
It would probably be harder to find one in which they didn't Google "the Mark Steel solution" No doubt some of these will help you.

They were both committed far left activists and,shall we say, didn't hang their politics up at the studio door.
Post edited at 18:04
 Timmd 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Turdus torquatus:
> Yes, it will clearly foster the wrong attitude to all sports. For example, I was made to write lines as a punishment and I now fear writing. Similarly I was hit with a slipper and I now fear all footwear. I was caned so I now fear sticks. I had a cup of cold water poured down my sleeve at Scouts (for swearing - odd, I know) and I am now hydrophobic.

Were as I got grumbled at by other team members in PE and disliked taking part in team sports for years afterwards. Happily that has passed.
Post edited at 18:45
 DaveN 24 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

Exactly, it the use of the word "secretly" which makes him oit of touch, as there's nothing secret about it.

> It would probably be harder to find one in which they didn't Google "the Mark Steel solution" No doubt some of these will help you.

> They were both committed far left activists and,shall we say, didn't hang their politics up at the studio door.

 Jim Hamilton 25 Feb 2014
In reply to The New NickB:
> (In reply to silhouette)
>
> Excellent piece here from Chrissie Wellington.
>
> http://www.chrissiewellington.org/blog/

Chrissie Wellington is being a bit fanciful if she thinks children should view running round school pitches as a "pleasure" - the majority of teenagers don't or are ever likely to. Even after the 2012 Olympics the running club at my local secondary school (over 1000 pupils) is attended by less than 10. A running detention is not going to adversely affect that already low level of participation and I would have thought unlikely to "entrench lasting fear and loathing for sport" (sport in general).
 The New NickB 25 Feb 2014
In reply to Jim Hamilton:

Well grass roots athletics is seeing an upturn in participation at all levels and age groups, I suspect with the work Chrissie is doing with Junior Parkrun, she will have a reasonable idea about the enjoyment kids get from sport.
 pebbles 25 Feb 2014
In reply to mh554:
he's an arse. theres no point being more subtle about it. Its like putting the old git in the corner of the pub in charge of education. He thinks everything since 1945 is part of a plot by pinkos to undermine the countries moral fibre.
Post edited at 12:45
 Postmanpat 27 Feb 2014
In reply to pebbles:

> he's an arse. theres no point being more subtle about it. Its like putting the old git in the corner of the pub in charge of education. He thinks everything since 1945 is part of a plot by pinkos to undermine the countries moral fibre.

No, he thinks educational policy has been dominated by views of the left wing. Is he wrong?
 Jon Stewart 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

> No, he thinks educational policy has been dominated by views of the left wing. Is he wrong?

What a ridiculous way to frame his idiotic and destructive policies.

The trouble with Gove is not that he objects to the views of the left wing. The trouble is that he is full of crap. What I mean specifically by this is that his policies have no basis in anything except an absurd fantasy world in his mind.

He might think that educational policy has been dominated by views of the left wing. And why should we care if he thinks that? How could that possibly be a useful basis or guiding philosophy for developing education policy? What has it got to do with developing good policy that works. "Works" by the way, means that it has demonstrably positive outcomes that would not have happened without the change in policy, it doesn't mean "doesn't sound so lefty" or "is a bit like in my weird dream about the 1950s".

We are talking about the futures of the people of our country. Gove is so thick and so arrogant that he believes that pulling nonsensical, unworkable, destructive policies directly out of his anus and into schools is in some way a good thing. It isn't. Good policy is based on evidence and analysis. Gove has made transparently false statements about wanting to embed evidence into education policy and then announced policy after policy proving beyond any doubt that he was lying, bare-faced, and he's actually got absolutely no interest in finding out what works and would rather just serve up policies from his 1950's arsehole that the entire education profession find staggeringly asinine.

Oh, but that's just because they're left wing?

Perhaps he should consider that people who have experience of teaching children under many, many different pointless education policies from the left and from the right might actually know something about teaching children. They might know how new, unresearched, thoughtless, politically motivated initiatives, with or without a 1950s feel, and more absurdly small-minded guidance on how they should approach discipline are not useful, and will not bring about anything other than expanding the already vast and deep hatred of that pointless little w*nker and his sickening, stampable face.

 Skol 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:
Good rant! Liked it! Especially the last sentence! Good work
 Postmanpat 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> What a ridiculous way to frame his idiotic and destructive policies.

> The trouble with Gove is not that he objects to the views of the left wing. The trouble is that he is full of crap. What I mean specifically by this is that his policies have no basis in anything except an absurd fantasy world in his mind.

>
Sorry Jon but when it comes to Gove your normally rational thought processes seem to desert you so there is not much point in debate. Would you leave banking reform to the bankers? So why your faith in the failed educationalists of the past fifty years.?

Suffice to say I've spoken to several vaguely leftie teachers who , although far from agreeing in every detail, regard him as breath of fresh air fighting the low aspirations and poor performance that dogs so much of the sector.
 pebbles 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

liking your work...
In reply to mh554:

Does anyone think this will be enforcable in today's "I know my 'uman rights" culture?

 Jon Stewart 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:
> Would you leave banking reform to the bankers? So why your faith in the failed educationalists of the past fifty years.?

That's not a good comparison. Bankers, under a regulatory system which failed, caused a global financial crisis. Education, on the other hand, has drifted through a series of fads which have resulted in neither crisis nor triumph.

Education policy doesn't make any difference. It is swamped by the effects of culture outside schools. Kids whose parents are inadequate and do not value education will in general fail, no matter what ministers do. Kids who are brought up with high expectations and rich intellectual stimulation and support at home will excel. Talking about "failed educationalists" simply doesn't match up to reality. We don't have worse doctors or lawyers or less people becoming educated to a good level or anything that constitutes meaningful evidence of this so-called failure. The fact that we're not like the Chinese is because we're NOT CHINESE! The idea that education was more effective prior to the last 50 years is horribly nonsensical: the world was a different place, education was a different thing.

The arguments that we should be like the Chinese and/or like the 1950s because this would deliver success rather than the "failure" of what we have now just don't follow any kind of sensible logic. That view demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works. How could these things be possible in the actual society we inhabit? By making kids write lines and run round the field when they've been naughty? That's a policy??

All education secretaries have a completely distorted idea of the control that they have over outcomes. But Gove appears to think he can achieve outcomes by meddling in the minutiae of people's jobs. He has no understanding of his job at any level, from the big picture of what the role of the education system is in society, down to the detail of policy development. It shows in every word he says.
Post edited at 22:49
 Postmanpat 27 Feb 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> That's not a good comparison. Bankers, under a regulatory system which failed, caused a global financial crisis. Education, on the other hand, has drifted through a series of fads which have resulted in neither crisis nor triumph.

Not the point. The point is that you seem to think education should be left to educationalists so I am asking if you think banking should be left to bankers.

> Education policy doesn't make any difference.

In which case why get so angry about Gove's policies?

> The arguments that we should be like the Chinese and/or like the 1950s because this would deliver success rather than the "failure" of what we have now just don't follow any kind of sensible logic.

That's a media argument not Gove's. His argument is simply that we can and should do better.
If you don't believe we should aspire to be better then so be it.

You sem to be hung up about some overly traditional details he refers to.


> All education secretaries have a completely distorted idea of the control that they have over outcomes. But Gove appears to think he can achieve outcomes by meddling in the minutiae of people's jobs. He has no understanding of his job at any level, from the big picture of what the role of the education system is in society, down to the detail of policy development. It shows in every word he says.

Not so. He's basically providing a framework and encouraging teachers realise they have options that have hitherto been out of favour.
 Jon Stewart 28 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:
> Not the point. The point is that you seem to think education should be left to educationalists so I am asking if you think banking should be left to bankers.

I don't think this is illuminating in any way. Yes I think 'how to bank' should be left to bankers as it's business not delivery of a state service, but I think banking needs heavy regulation so that greed and rigged odds (i.e. risks which aren't actually risks for the people taking them) don't create catastrophes for those not in control. The situation with education is different: I think that in delivering this state service, the techniques should be learnt from people qualified advise through their experience. Power-hungry ex-journalists do not have useful contributions to make to achieve the aim of improving the effectiveness of teaching methods in schools. An education secretary might want to commission research which is genuinely objective and actually attempts to answer questions. But being a power-hungry journalist, the only research Gove ever commissions has the express purpose of justifying policies he's already decided on. And he has no idea how to interact with a profession, a huge group of people who he needs to collaborate with if he wants to achieve anything in his role.

> In which case why get so angry about Gove's policies?

Because they're so incredibly stupid, no other reason. The won't make any demostrable difference to kids, but they'll piss off everyone off who has to look at the floor in a meeting and say "yes, that's a good idea, I'll take that on board". This is the effect of really really bad policies: no one actually takes any notice, they just pretend they'll do something and then don't. They waste time and money and inspire hopelessness and inertia in a profession.

> That's a media argument not Gove's. His argument is simply that we can and should do better.

Oh is that his argument? Funny, because I've heard him banging on and on about how teachers should pretend they're in the 1950s. Did you hear the one about telling naughty kids to run round fields? That's the topic of this thread by the way, it wasn't made up by the left wing media. Or the one about writing lines? Or the one about using only final exams as a way to assess quals? Etc etc. You're not listening to what he's saying, and you're hearing something that sounds like bland motherhood and apple pie, which is not his argument.

> If you don't believe we should aspire to be better then so be it.

I believe we should use research and evidence to improve educational techniques so that they keep up with a changing society. I think that the effect of government policy on teachers' job satisfaction and the link between job satisfaction and outcomes in schools should be examined, to assess the hypothesis that government education policy in general wastes money, causes damage and achieves nothing.

> You sem to be hung up about some overly traditional details he refers to.

Because that's what he's always banging on about. Show me something with substance, based on evidence, that he's come up with, and I might be forced to take him seriously.

> Not so. He's basically providing a framework and encouraging teachers realise they have options that have hitherto been out of favour.

He's issuing guidance to teachers based on a personal fantasy. It's horribly patronising to the profession. Head teachers do not need to be told what behaviour policies are suitable in their schools.
Post edited at 18:47
 Postmanpat 28 Feb 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

You seem to have totally misunderstood the central points of the policies, which are to devolve power to the head teachers and teachers an raise the aspirations of teachers and pupils. His key initiatives are not, as you bizzarely seem to believe, making kids do lines or extra detention, but to increase the number of academies and introduce free schools and give those running them the discretion to run them. And he has encouraged them to rise the bar of what can be achieved. Instead of focusing narrowly on one metric-the number of Cs at GCSE that can be achieved (that could of course be gamed by choosing the subjects taken) he insists that the GCSEs taken are the key ones and then demands that sights be set higher.

How can you possibly think that handing power back to teachers, insisting on basic standards and raising aspirations are "incredibly stupid"??

Actually there are independent analyses that provide support for his policies but of course they don't count because they are not produced by the entrenched reactionaries in the industry. Your defence of the latter is a guaranteed recipe for continuation of the failed status quo. Every institution, be they banking, the Church, unions, education or whatever develops their own cultures which produce their own self justifications and go barely challenged but in hindsight, look ridiculous. With a fair wind, we will be able to look back and realise that British education was one of them.
 Jon Stewart 28 Feb 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

> You seem to have totally misunderstood the central points of the policies, which are to devolve power to the head teachers and teachers an raise the aspirations of teachers and pupils.
> How can you possibly think that handing power back to teachers, insisting on basic standards and raising aspirations are "incredibly stupid"??

Because he's not handing power back to teachers. As far as teachers in classrooms are concerned, he's doing exactly what all Education Secretaries do: making changes to policy that they are required to implement. The funding and governance changes - and these, granted, are actual policy changes, not just dicking around with people's jobs - have massive problems as you're already aware. It's classic 'sink or swim' policy: if you've got the backing you can break free of the system that tries to ensure that everyone gets a decent deal.

It would be absolutely marvellous if you could use these initiatives to drive up standards without taking resources away from the those schools that won't succeed under these arrangements, and leave these others still in a good place. But where are the most resources needed? Where the parents are inept and incapable and the state is cleaning up the mess of the generations of poverty. Where are the resources going? Where the parents have the wherewithal to set up their own super-school, or where there are incentives for business to provide support. Who's losing out? The expensive, "low return" students with special needs that still need the LA support but it's all been syphoned-off by the schools that are already outstanding.

This aspect of Gove's policy is not incredibly stupid: it's incredibly right-wing. It says: if you're in a position to succeed, lucky you, we're on your side. If your kids lives are already pretty f^cked because of the situation they were born into, then sorry, they're a waste of our money and they can swivel. We'll begrudgingly pay their benefits and use them as a scapegoat for society's wider ills once they've suffered in the dysfunctional, lower-tier system that's all that's left once those who have the competence to play the system have creamed off all the resources.

I find it amazing that you're able to swallow the "raising aspirations" (don't look over there at the autistic kid from a poor family who's now double-f^cked) line. Aspirations are raised in families when they see that opportunities for them exist in society, not when a power-hungry ex-journalist trots out his latest vacuous policy announcement. The same theme recurs with the policies of the Conservative Party: if you find yourself at the bottom of the pile, then screw you, you're a waste of money. This is the unappetising, rotten core of right-wing policy.

> Actually there are independent analyses that provide support for his policies but of course they don't count because they are not produced by the entrenched reactionaries in the industry.

Which policies? Which studies?

> Your defence of the latter is a guaranteed recipe for continuation of the failed status quo.

I still don't know what evidence you're using to justify the bald statement of 'failure'. What metric are you using? And I haven't been defending anything other than minimising cocking around with silly little policies and instead trusting the profession to simply do its job, coupled with research based improvements to educational techniques. You impose on this the Gove-invented notion of 'The Blob', which simply doesn't mean anything or relate to reality. It's a theoretical, political construct, not something that has any meaning in the actual world of people and jobs and policies and outcomes. There isn't a consistent lefty approach to education that's gone in one direction and taken outcomes with it. This is a fantasy of the right, which Gove propagates. There has been a load of New Labour target-chasing crap in which people who were actually failing were 'tagged' as succeeding by attaining some some crap quals (I agree with turning this back), but that's not educational methods, that's just target-chasing - we know that that was what New Labour policies were best at inspiring.

If there's a problem with a specific educational method, then one can present evidence to support a change. Creating fantastical theoretical constructs with silly names is not the intellectual level on which policy debate works. Oh sorry, it is, isn't it?

> Every institution, be they banking, the Church, unions, education or whatever develops their own cultures which produce their own self justifications and go barely challenged but in hindsight, look ridiculous. With a fair wind, we will be able to look back and realise that British education was one of them.

What is this potential that isn't being realised? British kids are graduating from universities that attract students from all around the world - what am I going to see when I give the Gove funding changes + 1950s olde worlde curriculum and discipline policies a chance to deliver?

I know exactly what I'm going to see: f^ck all. It won't make any difference because school is not the biggest influence on kids' outcomes. We live in a complicated world where what trajectory a child's life follows is influenced strongly by the circs they were born in and ever so slightly by the sort of school they went to. Get real. That's how it works. The kids that would always have succeeded always succeeded. The kids that would always have failed always failed. New Labour tried to mask the issue, but did nothing about it. Gove is removing the mask and making the problem more pronounced through the resourcing and governance changes. You want me to give him a big round of applause for that?
 pebbles 04 Mar 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

absolutely fecking superb summary
 Puppythedog 04 Mar 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:

Nicely put Jon.
 Postmanpat 06 Mar 2014
In reply to Jon Stewart:
> Because he's not handing power back to teachers. As far as teachers in classrooms are concerned, he's doing exactly what all Education Secretaries do: making changes to policy that they are required to implement. The funding and governance changes - and these, granted, are actual policy changes, not just dicking around with people's jobs - have massive problems as you're already aware. It's classic 'sink or swim' policy: if you've got the backing you can break free of the system that tries to ensure that everyone gets a decent deal.

So basically your view is that academies and free schools have no more independence than "bog standard" comprehensives?
Is it logical to argue that, for example,by cutting the guidance to teachers on discipline from 600 pages (!!!) to 50 page he is increasing micromanagement?
Is it logical to say that helping schools in difficult areas to allow teachers to teach within a framework of discipline and learning is anti education for the disadvantaged?

> Where are the resources going? The expensive, "low return" students with special needs that still need the LA support but it's all been syphoned-off by the schools that are already outstanding.

The DoE is throwing money at the disadvantaged but if the educational model is wrong money alone won't solve the problem.

> This aspect of Gove's policy is not incredibly stupid: it's incredibly right-wing. It says: if you're in a position to succeed, lucky you, we're on your side. If your kids lives are already pretty f^cked because of the situation they were born into, then sorry, they're a waste of our money and they can swivel. We'll begrudgingly pay their benefits and use them as a scapegoat for society's wider ills once they've suffered in the dysfunctional, lower-tier system that's all that's left once those who have the competence to play the system have creamed off all the resources.


Except that he's not saying that. He is saying just the opposite: that State schools should raise their aspire to the same quality as private schools and that by successful academies working with under performing schools best practise can be adopted and that schools should be able and willing to do their own research and best teaching practise and adopt it.

You're not really addressing the policies you're just reflecting your own prejudices by attacking his policies for being "right wing" and indulging in unfounded rhetoric.


> Which policies? Which studies?

Numerous, but Proff Mark Smith at Lancaster,Proff Tim Gowers, Proff Martin Hyland, Proff Mark Warner, Proff Plum, Proff Chris Pelling, , Daisy Christodoulou, Tom Burkard, Colonel Mustard, Paul Kirschner, Richard E Clark and John Sweller and many others.


> I still don't know what evidence you're using to justify the bald statement of 'failure'. What metric are you using? And I haven't been defending anything other than minimising cocking around with silly little policies and instead trusting the profession to simply do its job, coupled with research based improvements to educational techniques. You impose on this the Gove-invented notion of 'The Blob', which simply doesn't mean anything or relate to reality.

Point of order; Gove didn't invent the term "the blob" and doesn't generally use it. Chris Woodhead did.
If there is no "leftie" approach to adduction then how can there be a "righty" one. Are you seriously suggesting that the "progressive" education movement as embraced by the Plowden report was all a myth? That the comprehensive anti streaming, anti phonetics, child centred learning movement didn't exist?

Here's a list of demands from circulated in a secondary school in the 1970s "the control and eventual elimination of marks and failures; the abolition of selection in school; accountability of teachers to students; removal of all reactionary and authoritarian teachers; setting of the curriculum from below". I'm cheating. It's a rather extreme version of the educational philosophy taken from an Italian school but the philosophy it reflects was highly influential in the UK.

Regarding metrics and evidence of failure, obviously PISA results, the centre for social justice report on educational inequality , the cataclysmic failure at GCSE level, Eurostat league tables, Moser report on basic skills, and employers' reports on the skill levels of new employees. I don't doubt here are more.

> If there's a problem with a specific educational method, then one can present evidence to support a change. >

Yes,and he does, see the list above. Of course one can go the safe bureaucratic route and accept gradual decline, or one can recognise the status quo has failed and take an alternative route. Sometimes that involves taking risks and the stakes are high but not to take the risk is more immoral.

> I know exactly what I'm going to see: f^ck all. It won't make any difference because school is not the biggest influence on kids' outcomes.

Essentially what you are propagating is a philosophy of despair, that society's failings mean that educators cannot educate. The trouble is that the simple evidence that schools in the same sorts of areas with similar intakes, or the same schools within similar intakes over different periods, will produce different outcomes according to the quality of the teaching. presumably you've spoken to teachers. I have and they are very clear that how schools are run and how teachers teach makes a difference.

Here is the conclusion of the 2010 BERA report on the subject:

"To sum up ...
•Schools can make a difference, and even small differences can be life-changing and are worth •fighting for.
The potential of schools to make that difference has not been fully realised, perhaps because national policies do not always reflect the available knowledge about how schools actually •improve the quality of education they provide. Schools cannot ‘close the gap’ on their own – parallel developments to support disadvantaged children and families in the community are •required.
Twenty years of competition between schools has done little to improve the lot of disadvantaged pupils. Collaboration between schools has shown some promising results, but needs to be encouraged through clearer
•incentives.
An overhaul of school governance and management structures is needed. Traditional
structures will not generate the radical changes across children’s services needed to support sustained improvements in school outcomes."

Essentially what you describe as Gove's views are almost the opposite of what he says. You say he wants to micromanage teachers. He says and by his macro policies demonstrates, that he wants allow heads to develop and sure their own best practise. You say he cares only about the top cohorts. He says and demonstrates that one of the major problems for teachers is the number of pupils who enter school "unteachable" , that these problems need to be addressed (eg. by special resources of these kids and adopting the best practice of the Harris schools etc)and that beyond the baccalaureate vocational education must be improved for those for whom it is appropriate and says the greatest failing of education is the educational apartheid between the best and the worst.

The obvious conclusion is not so much that you disagree with his concerns but that you hate or distrust him so much you think he is lying and therefore claim to know that his real motives are the opposite. 9 out 10 for the rant, puts Simon4 to shame, but it simply reflects your prejudices rather than an evidence based analysis.
Post edited at 20:28
 Chewie65 06 Mar 2014
In reply to mh554:

There will be a "human rights" cry, an expensive legal battle etc etc, all of which the Tax payer will pay for.

Sport and fitness has taken a back seat in day to day education. Where did this " No one loses" come from.

Goves and all the politicians from all partied need to get real.
Leave europe and bring back the cane and corporal punishment.
Kids need to learn, just the thought of a cane made me behave
 Jon Stewart 07 Mar 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

> So basically your view is that academies and free schools have no more independence than "bog standard" comprehensives?

Sorry I could have been clearer about this. It's the curriculum changes that have been imposed without consultation at stupid times in the middle of courses already ongoing that typify the as ridiculous as usual unneeded, unhelpful intervention of this education secretary, not the free schools and academies programmes.

> Is it logical to argue that, for example,by cutting the guidance to teachers on discipline from 600 pages (!!!) to 50 page he is increasing micromanagement?

That's a nice soundbyte, but I'm afraid it looks shallow and inconsequential in the face of headteachers' reactions to his policies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22558756

> Is it logical to say that helping schools in difficult areas to allow teachers to teach within a framework of discipline and learning is anti education for the disadvantaged?

I can't devine any meaning from this. When were schools in difficult areas not teaching within a framework of discipline and learning?

> The DoE is throwing money at the disadvantaged but if the educational model is wrong money alone won't solve the problem.

True. But I see no evidence that Gove's policies are anything other than destructive for the reasons I gave above.

> Except that he's not saying that. He is saying just the opposite: that State schools should raise their aspire to the same quality as private schools

Yes, and I'd like to make a superb coq au vin out of some frozen chicken nuggets and a bottle of buckfast, wish me luck.

> and that by successful academies working with under performing schools best practise can be adopted and that schools should be able and willing to do their own research and best teaching practise and adopt it.

Maybe there's something sensible here.

> You're not really addressing the policies you're just reflecting your own prejudices by attacking his policies for being "right wing" and indulging in unfounded rhetoric.

And you're failing to address the point that his policies redistribute resources from central pools where they can be spent according to need into the hands of those with greatest capability to work the system.

> Numerous, but Proff Mark Smith at Lancaster,Proff Tim Gowers, Proff Martin Hyland, Proff Mark Warner, Proff Plum, Proff Chris Pelling, , Daisy Christodoulou, Tom Burkard, Colonel Mustard, Paul Kirschner, Richard E Clark and John Sweller and many others.

Errm thanks. I didn't say that no one in the world of academia agreed with anything Gove had ever said, or that Gove didn't have any friends in Russell Group universities. What I was looking for was something like "x study showed y which supported policy z". And we all know that Colonel Mustard and Gove were at Oxford together.

 Jon Stewart 07 Mar 2014
In reply to Postmanpat:

> Point of order; Gove didn't invent the term "the blob" and doesn't generally use it. Chris Woodhead did.

Sorry, I thought he did, because when he did use it, being the education secretary, he kind of made quite a statement that's how he viewed the political landscape.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/what-is-the-blob...

> If there is no "leftie" approach to adduction then how can there be a "righty" one. Are you seriously suggesting that the "progressive" education movement as embraced by the Plowden report was all a myth? That the comprehensive anti streaming, anti phonetics, child centred learning movement didn't exist?

I'm saying that that view of the education system is absurdly out of date. In my experience of school in the 90s, it changed hugely from free-form topic work with no national curriculum to SATs and league tables and stacks of formal learning, and after me into a ludicrously narrow target-driven state of affairs where the pressure for numerical measures became the chief focus ahead of children learning anything that would be useful for anything other than scoring the school points.

Schools don't operate silly, wishy-washy educational models as they did in the 80s. They do however do normal, modern things that reflect the real world and higher education, like assess students through coursework rather than 100% exams.

> Here's a list of demands from circulated in a secondary school in the 1970s.

Yes, the 1970s. Why are we talking about this?

> Regarding metrics and evidence of failure, obviously PISA results, the centre for social justice report on educational inequality , the cataclysmic failure at GCSE level, Eurostat league tables, Moser report on basic skills, and employers' reports on the skill levels of new employees. I don't doubt here are more.

You're giving me a tricky job of separating out metrics that are unreliable, from unsubstantiated value judgements, to irrelevant material but all the same I accept that there are problems with the skills that many people end up with. But as I said from the beginning, the education sec isn't going to solve these problems with his policies. My view is that the fact that so many kids can't write decent English is because the teaching they get in school is swamped by a far more complex cultural environment. The amount of stuff other than school that kids are now exposed to compared the pre-internet world is just unfathomable.

It's this notion that ill-conceived policy initiatives that the profession despises are the way solve the issues that me just roll my eyes and shake my head. It's arrogant, and it's thick, and it doesn't reflect reality. All education secretaries think they're going to drive up standards, and all of them piss the profession off with their pointless little policies that don't achieve anything. But Gove thinks he's doing something different, when all he's doing is trying to be more radical, but it a regressive direction, and so cack-handedly that even if they were good ideas, they could never get any results because of frank failure in implementation.

There are multiple levels on which he fails in his role: his ideas, such as returning to 100% final exam assessment are crap and are not supported by any evidence (despite your ever so impressive list of academics above). And he does not possess the skills to implement his ideas, as born out by the double vote of no confidence from the profession.

By all means defend Tory politicians who are succeeding in what they're doing, but with Gove you're defending the indefensible. He is a failure.

> Essentially what you are propagating is a philosophy of despair

Yes, kind of. Unlike politicians and academics commissioned to write reports about what great things changes in education policy can do, I don't have to believe that. I can even consider common sense and experience-based evidence like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b9hjs

> Essentially what you describe as Gove's views are almost the opposite of what he says. You say he wants to micromanage teachers. He says and by his macro policies demonstrates, that he wants allow heads to develop and sure their own best practise.

Yet the heads say his policies are putting unbearable burdens on their schools and thus failing the children. Who am I to believe?

> You say he cares only about the top cohorts. He says and demonstrates that one of the major problems for teachers is the number of pupils who enter school "unteachable" , that these problems need to be addressed (eg. by special resources of these kids and adopting the best practice of the Harris schools etc)

The pupil premium is a Libdem policy. The funding system redistributes resources in favour of those who can work the system.

> and that beyond the baccalaureate vocational education must be improved for those for whom it is appropriate

The bacc gives kids a 'sink or swim' pathway. The vocational ed stuff isn't even window dressing, sorry. The reality is that vocational ed in this country was shit and underfunded under Labour, but the crap quals in nail varnish technology were given status they didn't deserve. He took away the status from the crap quals and left vocational ed crap and underfunded. And to make sure that no one would actually be given any opportunity to succeed through vocational ed, this govt have made kids pay for it themselves (fee loans for FE - unbef^ckinglievable).

> and says the greatest failing of education is the educational apartheid between the best and the worst.

You can see why I find that funny.

> The obvious conclusion is not so much that you disagree with his concerns but that you hate or distrust him so much you think he is lying and therefore claim to know that his real motives are the opposite.

No, I am entirely convinced that he is lying from observing what his policies actually involve in practice and by listening to the views of those who work under them. Have you never noticed that politicians are at best foolish and misguided about what their policies will achieve, but more commonly consistently dishonest?

> 9 out 10 for the rant, puts Simon4 to shame, but it simply reflects your prejudices rather than an evidence based analysis.

Ouch. Compared to Simon4. You know how to hit me where it hurts!



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