The purpose of morality is to teach you,
not to suffer and die, but
to enjoy yourself and live.

This is ridiculous. It should not need saying:

Ofsted is to launch a crackdown on “boring” teaching in response to concerns that children’s behaviour is deteriorating because they are not being stimulated enough in class.

…

The inspectorate’s latest annual report, published in November, warned of “pedestrian” teaching in primary schools, and said pupils in secondary schools were too often set tasks that are not demanding enough of them.

…

Gilbert said: “People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it’s appropriate to them. Then they’ve not got lost five minutes into the lessons and therefore started mucking around. Behaviour in our schools is generally very good. But there’s what I would describe as low-level disruption where children are bored and not motivated, so they start to use their abilities for other ends. That then can lead to other children being distracted in lessons and so on.”

via Ofsted’s new mission – to get rid of boring teachers | Education | The Guardian .

The answer to boring teaching and bad behaviour will not be found in further attempts to whip teachers into running through deep treacle. It will be found in responsible freedom.

Honestly, it makes me want to do this:

The latest publication from the Centre for Policy Studies arrived today: “Freedom for Public Services” by William Mason and Jonathan McMahon. Better services at lower cost, and more fulfilling jobs for public servants, are quite possible.

As ever, this CPS report is intelligent, brief, clear and insightful. The sheer scale of central regulation is shocking even as one who has begun to study the situation. Consider for example the list of regulators for the NHS:

• The Healthcare Commission
• Strategic Health Authorities
• Monitor
• The General Dental Council
• Payment by Results (The Audit Commission)
• The National Patient Safety Agency
• The National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme
• The Commission for Social Care Inspection
• The Mental Health Act Commission
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
• The Health and Safety Executive
• The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
• The Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts, part of the NHS Litigation Authority
• The National Commissioning Group
• and the Department of Health itself

Furthermore, healthcare professionals are individually regulated by, variously, medical schools, Royal Colleges, the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board, the General Medical Council and other professional organisations.

As you would expect, the paper makes a number of practical recommendations for simplification, efficiency and greater accountability in health and in the other public services, including the police, local government, schools and higher education. One summary point is particularly telling:

Central control is not working. Leading politicians of both main parties recognise that public services in the UK today are too large and complex for effective central management. In particular, David Cameron’s advocacy of the post-bureaucratic age is based on the premise that freedom of information can “make possible a new world of responsibility, citizenship, choice and local control.”

I recommend the report.

Doh! Time to dumb down?

The Telegraph reports on efforts to make A-levels “harder”. My concern is that hard-working students and teachers too often have their work and achievements undermined by speculation about the quality of the system.

Is the problem more fundamental?

According to the QCA, grading swapped from “norm referencing” – where, say, the top 10% get an A – to “criteria referencing” – where you get an A if you meet the criteria. On first inspection, there seem to be two problems with criteria referencing: the criteria and the usefulness of the grade.

It appears that criteria referencing has been chosen so that everyone who meets the criteria gets the grade, and so that year on year, greater numbers of passes at higher grades are a meaningful indicator of improving standards. But surely when, inevitably, you change the criteria, the foundation of each grade is undermined? Surely the question “Are A-levels getting easier?” is only meaningful under criteria referencing? Provided questions range adequately in their difficulty, wouldn’t norm-referencing solve this problem?

Does criteria referencing answer the question universities and employers are asking: how did people fare relative to one another? Competition is a fact and hard-pressed companies can’t afford to make a bad hiring decision, so if A-levels aren’t grading people helpfully, the burden must fall on some other part of the recruiting process, shifting the burden of cost and risk further to the employer.

It seems that criteria-referenced A-levels are having their criteria changed to make them harder, to better grade students, but the changes themselves undermine the system. Does criteria referencing actually represent “progress” and is it time to return to norm-referenced A-levels and harder exam questions at the extreme?

Labour appear to be in yet another pickle, but in the meantime, a heartfelt congratulations to all those who have demonstrated their abilities through this year’s exam results.

read more | digg story

According to the BBC:

Fast-food giant McDonald’s has become one of the first firms to offer its own nationally recognised qualifications. It will offer a “basic shift manager” course, training staff in skills such as human resources and marketing.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the company had been approved to develop courses up to the equivalent of A-level standard.

The QCA will also allow Network Rail and Flybe to award qualifications based on their workplace training schemes.

So, now the role of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is to rubber-stamp bespoke corporate training?

Before we go much further into changing education, we might do well to define its purpose. Is it to produce good employees within the franchise system, or is it to set people free to appreciate our world and to make their own, independent, informed and sensible decisions?

Who gets to choose who goes down which path? What about “equality”? Will everyone ultimately be forced to sit for only narrow vocational qualifications? Where and what are the benefits?