Open letter to Michael Gove (23/08/12)

When the Class of 2012 made a wish for someone in power to restore their faith, they were granted Glenys Stacey and Michael Gove.

2012-09-16T05:32:00.001-07:00

Any student fortunate enough to have come away from the great GCSE grading fiasco of 2012 with higher than an A grade will, according to the criteria set out, have a solid grasp on the concept of irony. They, like me and many of my fellow professionals, will have sat open-mouthed and watched politicians and the head of Ofqual use their moment in the spotlight to, rather than address the issue at hand, complain that the levels of English which students leave school with is simply not up to “the standards expected by most employers”. Ironic then, that people in high powered jobs such as these find it almost impossible to construct a sentence which suggests any coherent grasp of the language.

Firstly, we had the Chief Regulator of Ofqual chuckling her way through an interview on Sky News, appearing to gain some sort of perverse pleasure from the distant sounds of college doors slamming in the faces of distraught sixteen year olds. She declared that students in the January cohort had simply got a “lucky break”. This was the most memorable sound bite from a pitiful performance, addled with the complacency you would expect from a woman who had just conducted an inquest into the shady actions of her very own department.

Michael Gove’s first comment on the matter in ten days after the story broke was “I share the er, erm, er, sadly, the sadness of the students.” Despite having had the confidence knocked in my own ability to accurately assess a speaking and listening piece, I’m fairly certain that an opening like that would have left him well short of a C grade, even if he had been assessed in January.

Both of these influential people have agreed that a travesty has taken place. Both have accepted that things could have been done to avoid the travesty taking place and that thousands of students have been short changed. So why won’t they put it right?

When pressed by the Commons Education Select Committee on why he was refusing to follow the Welsh Education Minister’s lead and order a re-grading of the affected papers, he took the opportunity to launch a political attack. Claiming that Leighton James was trying to cover up the failings of the Welsh education system, he declared that it would be the Welsh students who would suffer. His rationale for this stance was that those students in Wales who had been given the C grades, which they had rightly earned, may come under scrutiny in the future from employers who, Gove believes, will not see this exam pass “as the equivalent to other exam passes.”

If he believes this to be a worse fate than that which their English counterparts are currently suffering, he is deluded.

I have received a number of visits from our now ex-students affected by this issue since returning to school two weeks ago. Those who have been allowed into college have been ordered to re-sit their English Language GCSE course, usually during evening classes. In addition, many have not been allowed to take the four A-levels they had planned to take and will be forced to drop a further one next year, leaving them with two A-levels and minimal chance of achieving enough credit to get into university. The repercussions from this shambles are monumental. We must not let the media divert this story towards a debate about grade inflation. We must demand decisive action to get justice for these youngsters, sooner rather than later.

It isn’t just our ex-students who are suffering. I had my first lesson of the new year with my year 11 boys last Wednesday. There are 26 of them in there, all with varying difficulties, which they have been working unbelievably hard to overcome. They put their trust in me last September when I told them that if they gave me everything, I would have them fully prepared for their final exams in a position to exceed all previous expectations of them. It was with great difficulty and discomfort that I had to inform them that, due to issues with grade boundaries, the controlled assessment pieces, which they put their hearts and souls into, are now worth less than they were when they went on their summer holidays. I am sure I’m not alone, also, in finding it difficult to continue to exude enthusiasm for an English course which the Education Secretary has deemed “not fit for purpose”.

My traditional assembly to mark the start of Key Stage 4 was also dampened by the turbulent events of this summer. It is a time when we attempt to inspire the students with stories of those who have worked hard to earn incredible awards, promoting the desire to succeed as the key to achieving the very best grades. Unfortunately, those amongst the audience with elder friends or relatives were fully aware that last year, the work ethic of the students was a less determining factor than the time of year the examinations were taken.

We will continue to do our best for these children, who still have dreams of progressing through college and onto University. But let’s not allow ourselves to forget the class of 2012, who didn’t get the “lucky break”.

Chris Edwards
@chrisedwardsuk

Students left in limbo, whilst from Gove, the silence is deafening

2012-08-30T11:47:00.001-07:00

“Teachers howling with anguish over GCSE grades are betraying every pupil of the future”, wrote one journalist from a national newspaper this week. In fact, according to this gentleman, we are not only betraying our pupils, but also our “calling”. One female journalist, in her weekly column, buried on page 11 of a tabloid, suggested, helpfully “Why don’t we just give them all A*s and be done with it?”

The breathtaking ignorance of these people has inspired me to write my second ever blog. They pumped out tired old clichés about the dumbing down of exams and suggested that Michael Gove was a hero for being brave enough to “proclaim the cruel truth that state education is failing, and is determined to do something about it.” It appears incredible that any sane human being would laud someone for attempting to curb the inflation of grades by simply changing the grades achieved by the 2012 cohort.

Many of us teachers would welcome a new structure to the examination system. I cannot tell you how demoralising it is to work in a profession which produces record breaking results every single year, only to be greeted with howls of derision and cynical calls that exams have got even easier.

The exam revamp discussion, however, must wait for another day. Since my open letter to Michael Gove, we have heard some rumblings from Ofqual, with a response expected on Friday. That they can come to any conclusion, except for the students to have the grades they earned reinstated, appears impossible. What we haven’t heard is a single word from the Education Secretary. Presumably, he is hoping that this row will simply blow over and normal business can be resumed. Well, having read yesterday that as many as 67,000 students have been affected by this “brave” man’s meddling, I don’t believe that will happen.

This has been a manic week, by any standards. Due to the phenomenal support from my friends, family and the general public, I somehow managed to make the front page of Saturday’s Independent and was interviewed on SKY News.

I have been humbled by messages of support from well-wishers, but the most rewarding message I received was from one of the students at my school. She is from Nepal and was the student who most inspired my open letter. It was her tears that I saw over and over in my head on Thursday evening, whilst trying to imagine how she could have possibly explained this terrible travesty to her parents. After hearing of the press coverage, she wrote me a message, which read “Thank you, Sire. It totally means a lot. If nothing changes, I will still do my best in future. I just hope they will let me take my courses.” She continues to promise a quite incredible work ethic, even after all of her hard work has been deemed worthless by those at the Exam board. It is for people like her that I will continue to fight to keep this story in the news, until justice has been done. And for the benefit those people who spend their days commenting on the spelling and grammar of others, don’t waste your time. In a bid to improve her English skills, this young lady became very fond of the BBC show “Merlin” and asked me whether I would mind being addressed as “Sire.” I agreed, but insisted that it was combined with a curtsy on each occasion. I’m pleased to report that she obliged.

Amongst the other students at our school whose results were simply downgraded, through no fault of their own, was a young lad who joined us from London, midway through the first year of his GCSEs. He had been moved away from the capital to escape from the lure of the temptations made available to impressionable teenage boys. When he joined us, I promised him that if he was prepared to give his all, he would have a fresh start at our school and would stand every chance of achieving a C in English. I put him into my outstanding colleague, Mr. Furness’ class, who worked wonders with him and he looked to be on course for a C grade, something he never could have dreamed of when he was on the verge of permanent exclusion from his previous school. When he made it to the start of the exam period, I congratulated him for keeping his side of the bargain. I said to him, as his English teacher had done, that, barring anything catastrophic, he would achieve the C that we had predicted for him.

Unfortunately, for this young man, it wasn’t to be. For a C in English Language, you need a UMS score of over 180. As part of the June cohort, his unit scores of 35, 39 and 47 translated to a UMS score of 177, hence his D grade. If those exact scores had been submitted in January, when the identical controlled tasks could have been entered, his UMS score would have come out as 192, the comfortable C grade which we predicted for him. As it stands, this young adult has been shown that his change of attitude and extra efforts towards his GCSE in English were for nothing and once again in his young life, he has been labelled a failure. To make matters worse, the teachers, in whom he had placed all of his trust, appeared to have failed to deliver their side of the deal. Of course, in reality, he had been guided to his promised C, only for it to be snatched away by an exam board which feared the repercussions of allowing too many students to pass their English GCSE.

These students are still stuck with their D grades and, as their college places slip away, our Education Secretary keeps the least dignified silence imaginable.

Chris Edwards

An open letter to Michael Gove from an English teacher on a dark day for Education.

2012-08-23T13:42:00.001-07:00

Dear Michael Gove,

You will never read this, but I feel compelled to put it out there in the faint hope that more people will realise the repercussions of your latest initiative.
I am proud to work at a small school, on a small estate, in the most deprived ward in the county. The life expectancy in this ward is a full 20 years lower than the neighbouring village, which tells you a little bit about our intake. Add to this that within our 530 students, we have 36 different languages spoken and over 40% of students do not count English as their first language. Effectively, we are everything you hate and everything you would like to abolish. We are the skidmark on the sparkling underpants of your brave new world of academies and free schools. It is no secret that you would like nothing more than to see us swallowed up by a nearby school which features higher in your flawed league tables, but we have worked relentlessly hard to maintain our independence and have done enough, miraculously, to keep our heads above your floor targets for the last couple of years.
This time last year, I got immense pleasure when watching my English group, all boys, opening their exam results. 13 of this class of 22 were learning English as an additional language and a further 7 were on the special educational needs register. I was delighted, as you would imagine, that 21 of them passed their English and English Literature Exams and headed off to college, full of confidence and ambition. They hadn’t had the greatest start in life, but had worked incredibly hard to achieve what may seem to you a modest grade C at GCSE level.
Today, I was excited to witness more of the same. The anticipation and excitement I feel on results day is something a thousand times more than when I received my own results. Anyone who teaches at my, or a similar school, will tell you exactly the same. We don’t teach students whose parents pay big money for them to learn Latin with private tutors, simply to be used as status symbols at social gatherings. We teach kids who have seen more turmoil and turbulence in their young lives than you or I will ever have to face and I can tell you that watching them learn that they have passed their GCSEs is the most satisfying, heart-warming reward you could ever imagine.
Fortunately, this year I was given a high set (where only about 30% of students were either EAL or SEN students) and they all performed exceptionally well. However, I spent the vast majority of the morning consoling students, who worked more than hard enough to achieve a C grade in English, had been predicted a C grade in English and effectively had earned a C grade in English, but had been credited with a D grade, thus scuppering their chances of going to a college which had conditionally accepted them based on their predicted grades. Just to be exceptionally clear, these are not privileged kids who were bright enough to get a high grade, but just couldn’t be bothered to work. These are students who are learning English as a second, sometimes third, language who have attended every revision session provided and still requested more, leading to some of us teachers having to put video lessons on YouTube to quench their never-ending thirst for knowledge.
The work ethic shown by some of these students to overcome their language barriers was breathtaking and awe-inspiring. When coming to collect their results, they were far too humble to be over-confident, let alone complacent, but deep down they were content with the knowledge that they had given their all. On opening the envelopes and seeing their D grades, each and every one of them covered their faces due to the shame that they felt. They should, of course, have been celebrating. But instead, a combination of devastation, embarrassment and confusion descended upon them and it was left to us teachers to try to explain to them what had gone wrong.
The wrongdoing, it has become clear, was not their own doing. It would appear that, in a bid to halt the increase in GCSE passes, particularly in English, you have put pressure on exam boards to ensure that only a certain number of students achieve a C grade or above. When the January examination results came out, it would seem that far too many students were passing, so something would have to change for those unfortunate enough to be entered at the end of the GCSE course, which is ironically something that you are trying to make compulsory. So, the marks entered for Speaking & Listening and Written Controlled Assessment (60% of the final grade) were moderated, and agreed. This gave a number of students false hope that they had already achieved a pass in more than half of the course and all they had to do was match that mark in their examination.
Incredibly, it has become apparent that the raw marks given for this part of the course, when converted, are now worth less than originally suggested and less than the credit given to those students whose identical work was submitted in January. This has, in turn, meant that these students were entering the exam, where they traditionally struggle due to issues with accessing the questions, on D grades. They never stood a chance, but they didn’t know. Unfortunately, they found out today. They can’t understand why someone would want to play around with their futures in such a cruel way and we, as teachers, should not have to be the ones to explain it to them.
You have not simply moved the goalposts. You have demolished them, sold off the playing fields where they once stood and left the dreams of these youngsters in tatters.
So, there we go. It appears that today you got what you wanted. The statistics show that GCSE passes are down and to you, statistics is all they will ever be. But to me and every other teacher I have had the pleasure of working with, these children are not statistics. They are young people who you have betrayed and will forever be affected by the contents in that envelope which they opened today. We teachers will continue to do our jobs and sleep soundly in the knowledge that we did all that we could and will continue to do so.
Chris Edwards