Happiness in Bangor

It's half term now, or Long Exeat as we call it, and I'm enjoying the week off doing very little apart from reading books.  I've been reading the 'Weird Tales' of H P Lovecraft, which are pretty weird in a Victorian Gothic ghosts and ghouls-type way.  I've obviously not switched off from School completely though, because I came across an article in last week's TES which makes Lovecraft seem like the epitome of normality.


The article is by Maths teacher Jonny Griffiths, who teaches at a Sixth Form College in Norfolk.  In it he attempts to explain that whereas we are all frustrated by the low motivation and work ethic of some pupils, the opposite can also be the case, and pupils do exist that are 'driven' and 'obsessed' and sometimes these can be 'just as draining'.  He gives the example of one of his pupils called 'Michael' (this can't help reminding me of the Franz Ferdinand song, which is unfortunate given its strong homoerotic message).  Anyway, Michael is an able mathematician, who has done well in his A level modules, but is worried that he has lost some marks along the way that may mean he does not secure the A grade he needs to attend Cambridge.   



Here's where Jonny steps in, and says: 


'Michael, apart from you, who cares what you get in your A level?'. [controversial line, needs some back up]

His Bambi eyes look at me in a bewildered way, as if he has just seen me kick a puppy.

'I mean, I care, of course,' I add, swiftly. 'But what is better: to go to Cambridge with three As and hate it or to go to Bangor with three Cs and love it?' [classic argument fallacy - limit the options, neither of which sound that great to me]

"Michael is too stunned to reply."

Later of course, the moment that Jonny is right all along dawns on Michael in a cringe-worthy final paragraph.  Michael answers a question in class (wrongly) and is corrected by another member of the class.  He then turns to look at Jonny, a smile breaks out over his face, and then he realises....what?  That he was crap at Maths all along, that he might as well go to Bangor, that he doesn't really give a shit either way, or maybe Franz Ferdinand were right all along, and that he and Jonny should head down to Disco X right there and then.


The real problem here is that there is a very important and valid point that Jonny is trying to get across, but that it's been lost in a clumsily-worded article.  The problem is that the current examination system has heaped extra pressure on pupils, pressure that did not exist until about ten years ago when the examinations went modular.


One of the main purposes of examinations (and I do mean examinations, not education) at Sixth Form level is to sort a very large number of pupils into two distinct categories: those that go to university and those that don't.  Within the former category, the examinations need to assign pupils to universities and courses that are appropriate to their interests, talents and ambitions.  Students at university should be appropriately challenged academically, but it's wrong for someone to end up on a course that is too demanding for them as to end up on one which is conceptually beneath them.


So what's the problem?


1.  You can do the exams several times


Some papers can be taken four times through the course of the Sixth Form, and only your best mark counts.  Most universities don't care how many times you had to take the paper to gain the best mark.  


2.  Some subjects are much easier than others


Studies show that there's about a two-grade difference between the hardest and easiest subjects.  This means that the same pupil (without specific talents in one subject over another) would get two grades higher for, say Film Studies, than they would for Physics.  Even within the same subject, the percentages of A grades are different depending on what exam board you take.  The differences here are smaller, but not negligible.


3.  You can pay for examiners to come in and tell you the answers 


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/8941589/Exam-boards-WJEC-chief-examiners-caught-on-film-telling-teachers-what-is-in-next-years-GCSE-history-paper.html

4.  Formulaic examinations


I very rarely hear pupils telling me that they don't understand topics, or that they don't possess the knowledge to be able to answer questions.  The oft-most cited reason for losing marks is 'examination technique', as in 'I knew everything about that question, but my exam technique let me down'.  Never mind; all we have to do is work through a filing cabinet-full of past papers, and all the examination technique problems will disappear.  Except they won't; all that will happen is that you will do the same style of question so many times that you've developed a rote manner for answering that particular question.  It doesn't matter that this particular brand of technique will never be required again, so long as they help you gain that A.  These formulaic examinations also reward a particular type of pupil, the automative 't-crosser'.  This type of person is useful if you want a large data-entry to be completed accurately, but they aren't necessarily the kind of creative thinker that's going to deal with the population/economic/energy crises.


5.  Grade inflation


1980: 8% of A level grades were A.  2011: 8% of A level grades were A*, with around 30% at grade A.  Grade inflation is happening, and it's not that teachers are getting better or pupils are getting cleverer.  It's also not that exams are getting easier, which is often seen to be the public's belief.  It's simply that much more teaching is focused on how to pass these exams.  This isn't really what teachers want, but this is what has happened, and it's understandable why.  By cramming so many grades awarded at the top end, we are struggling to differentiate between pupils, and this is the reason that Jonny's pupil Michael feels quite so under pressure.  He knows that to get AAA twenty years ago would put him in a real academic elite; nowadays, this isn't good enough.  He needs A* grades, maybe two of them.  He's stuck with 'gymnastics scoring', where 9.975 is good, and 9.895 is frankly rubbish.


6.  Unfair grading


Every now and again, I mention to non-teaching friends of mine that it's possible to get 320/400 marks at A level to gain an A*, and to get 379/400 and gain an A.  They think it's ridiculous and so do I, but it's the truth.  Bearing in mind that top universities use A* grades in their offers, they're not even certain of separating out the top pupils by marks any more.   


7.  Extra filtering


Pupils can now be filtered out of top courses on their GCSE grades, and it's very unlikely that anyone will get an offer from Oxbridge without at least 6A* grades on their CV.  But why does a Maths GCSE matter for a brilliant linguist and why should an aspiring medic be discriminated against for being only quite good at French?  Pupils at different Schools take different numbers of GCSE subjects, and some subjects are harder than others.  Due to the grade inflation point above, universities need extra ways of filtering out pupils.  Looking at GCSE scores makes little more sense than looking at hair colour.


So what's the solution?


Place more emphasis on problem solving in examinations; take away an over-reliance on past papers; add an abilities test to the end of Sixth Form examinations; scrap GCSEs; allow universities to set their own entrance papers; do away with coursework; don't allow re-takes; cap the number of A grades that are awarded each year; break the links between chief examiners and School visits; have fewer Sixth Form subjects - not every course needs to have an exam at the end of it to be educational.


And finally, don't let Jonny Griffiths write an article in the TES again.

Bruce's Britton

I'm no social or cultural historian, as if you hadn't noticed already, but I do take an interest in fashions and fads; in particular the question of whether the sort of fads that seem to grip the nation are dictated by what people actually want to wear, watch or listen to, or whether there's some kind of conspiracy by higher powers to see what people can be made to wear, watch or listen to.  I can understand the popularity (past or present) of X Factor, Downton Abbey, Masterchef, Ugg Boots, Take That in boy and man incarnation, jeans tucked into boots (Uggs or otherwise), small plates of food and pop-up restaurants and cinemas.  I can even just about comprehend the very short lived fad of staying up half the night to watch some hatchet-faced Scottish Grandmother win a Curling medal at the Winter Olympics (it was only a one-night thing, after all).  I'm not sure why my 'Dead Pool', in which one predicts which celebrity deaths will occur over the next twelve months has not caught on yet, but it's got time to become a fad that'll grip the nation, and my next blog will feature the crop for 2012.

The latest TV fad seems to be the travel + food-umentary, and it looks as though everyone's cottoned on to this sure-fire ratings winner.  The Hairy Bikers, Oz and James, Jamie Oliver, Michael Portillo, Ade Edmondson, Rick Stein, some posh twit mates of Hugh F-W, Rory McGrath and Paddy McGuinness and the soap dodger from single-serious curate's egg 'One Man and his Camper-van'.

The premise is quite simple, and by this, I mean cheap.  It involves a man, or maybe a couple of men, or sometimes even three men, driving around Britain, meeting local people, usually doing a bit of cooking along the way and generally reminding us what a great place this island nation is to live.  The rules seems fairly simple, and consist of the following:

1.  A regional stereotype must be wheeled out at every opportunity.
2.  The vehicle in which the man/men travel around the country must be 'vintage', ideally caravan/campervan.
3.  Any cooking must be done on location, ideally using a mini-stove from said campervan.
4.  (optional) - some kind of challenge might be involved, presumably to add a competitive edge.  This might involve the protagonists needing to cook only food that they can catch/barter/work for/steal.  It is never explained why this should be necessary.

A perfect example of how one can cram all three of the above rules into just 5 minutes of television came from the truly awful 'Ade in Britain', starring Ade Edmondson.  This show seems to have been put together simply because someone thought the title was good, and there's only one famous Ade out there of course, which at least keeps him in work.  One stop on Ade's trip was Morecambe.  He pulled up in his Mini Cooper, complete with small cavannette/stove being dragged behind.  He visited a local man that made potted shrimps, obtained the recipe, re-created it from his very own camper-stove before feeding the fruits of his labour to four buck-toothed men from the George Formby appreciation society (we knew this because they each had a ukelele); all this took place in the shadow of the Eric Morecambe statue.

Why has there been a sudden explosion of TV shows of this kind?  Has there been an outcry from the public, demanding a fusion of game-show, travel and al fresco culinary travails?  Or have a group of media moguls suddenly come to the same conclusion that this is what our screens have been missing?  Or are they just cheap, and require little or no budget/planning?  I think I know which one it is.

Hugh F-W seems to have had the best idea, in that he doesn't even appear in his latest culinary road-trip.  Instead, three snaggle-haired photogenic posh-boys hammer round the South West in (you guessed it) a camper-van, with no money, eating only food they have earned, before cooking it all up on a ring-burner in the back of their vehicle.  Hugh merely provides a voice-over, and even that looks to associate him a little too closely with this rot.

I await the next installation of the format with baited breath.  'Bruce's Britton' perhaps, featuring Bruce Forsyth and Fern Britton.  Bruce and Fern drive around the country in a 1973 Austin Allegro, compete with the sort of caravanette you used to win on Bullseye.  They visit artisan food producers, but can only eat the food if they manage an arm-wrestle win.  Voice-over by Vernon Kay.  I'd watch it.  Wouldn't you?