Any government, especially a coalition, will shirk responsibility for its decisions when it can lest it be saddled with something that it can’t shift come coalition-meltdown and fresh elections.

The tired mantra of the free market is a trusty friend at such a time. It has never been proven either way that this causes a rise in quality. Intuitively, it just sounds good especially when the media do little more than lap up press releases and reshape them as their own.

The fact that this new development in free market innovations comes at a time when it’s now known that other privatisations (gas, water, electricity etc) have not lead to the expected number of positive improvements and the fact that costs never really seem to fall (IT projects, rail privatisation etc).

This is evidently not important to UK journalists. It is lucky that others are around to do their job properly.

This dogmatic and wholly unedifying way to treat fellow human beings is at the heart of the peculiarly sickening manner in which ‘efficiencies’ are made in education. Doing it the education way has a particular nastiness of its own, of course, so here is our guide:

1. Managers asked to reduce costs by ministers.

2. Remember from business management training that wage costs are the largest single drain on funds.

3. Look for obvious targets to get rid of e.g. older teachers with pension entitlements.

4. Bring in OfSted inspectors to do the initial dirty work and legitimise the whole enterprise.

5. Rate school, college etc’ as ‘underperforming’ (based on the current fashion in classrooms but without any rigorous scientifically foundation).

5. The predictable ‘bad’ inspection results then lead to ’special measures’ and inspectors brought in again to observe teachers once more.

6. Surprise, surprise! Older, more expensive teachers are told they are out of a job unless their grades improve.

7. Teachers with decades of experience and local knowledge decide either to a) tell management and inspector to “f*&K off” and then quit b) take sick leave due to stress or c) play ball but sour the staff room atmosphere permanently.

8. Other good teachers decide that the school is not a good place to work and jump ship.

9. School is left with disgruntled, older and/or younger, inexperienced staff.

10. Union action follows under the pretext of protecting teacher jobs but really to drum up support, raise subscriptions and fight the Left’s corner once more.

11. Meanwhile, pupils and students lose experience, qualified and content staff and suffer lost classroom time due to strikes.

11. Management happy because they have reduced costs. Hooray!

http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/

What a joke!

Lord Browne-nose, how about explaining why students whose parents have paid taxes all their lives now face fronting up more cash so their kid can go to university? And how about explaining why kids with high grades should pay fees and loans so that other less able students can get a degree?

First reactions to this have revolved around increased tuition fees and redirecting funds to on-line, mature and part-time students.

We’ve taken the statement made by Mandy at BIS. It includes all the NuLab buzzwords, management jargon and public sector euphemism that you’d expect e.g. “widening access”, “strengthening our research capacity”, “framework”, “high level skills”, “competition”, “engaged”, “contextual data”, “critical mass” and so on.

The statement then sets out the main items of the framework which we’ll critically appraise:

* More competition between universities, giving greater priority to programmes that meet the need for high level skills;

Competition for what? Government funding? This already goes on and will only make a bad situation even more worse. It will also further the culture of silence that besets HE where no academic is able to speak out or be critical of Government. While we all know what ‘priority for high level skills’ is referring to – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Well, that’s all well and dandy but where’s the proof that having more non-Arts graduates is more profitable for UK plc than Arts grads? It seems to make prima facie sense but is there any proof? Did the most successful people in the UK study the STEM subjects? And, doesn’t the Service sector, where STEM graduates aren’t so vital, contribute 3/4 of total GDP? Why are we bothering with STEM subjects? Why not invest more in SSELL subjects e.g. Social Science, English, Languages and Literature as that’s where the money is?

* Business to be more engaged in the funding and design of programmes, sponsorship of students, and work placements;

Another idea that won’t go away. McDegrees have already been covered in this blog and we’d thought they’d been scrapped but here we go again. If businesses provide course, why do you need universities? To provide the unprofitable courses that students prefer?

* Creating more part-time, work-based and foundation degrees to make it easier for adults to go to university’s, with routes from apprenticeships through to Foundation Degrees and other vocational programmes;

This is nothing new. Raising tuition fees is hardly going to help.

* Encouraging universities to consider contextual data in admissions, as one way of ensuring that higher education is available to all young people who have the ability to benefit;

Not a new idea. Hasn’t worked so far as universities are resisting quotas and the middle classes will resist this in the election. Unless a real Old Labour party comes back from the dead or there is a long, drawn-out Depression, this is a non-starter.

* Universities setting out clearly what students can expect in terms of the nature and quality of courses offered;

Don’t they do this already?

* Sustaining our world class research base by continuing to focus on excellence, concentrating research funding where needed to secure critical mass and impact;

This crystal ball gazing will no doubt be implemented by the dreaded Research Assessment Exercise which according to the UCU, “has had a disastrous impact on the UK higher education system, leading to the closure of departments with strong research profiles and healthy student recruitment. It has been responsible for job losses, discriminatory practices, widespread demoralisation of staff, the narrowing of research opportunities through the over-concentration of funding and the undermining of the relationship between teaching and research.”

* Encouraging collaboration between universities on world class research, especially in high cost science.

Don’t they do this already?

In the House of Lords, Mandy repeated the oft-said mantra of more people in HE and more quality research. It is commendable that they wish to offer more flexible courses but the OU has been doing this very successfully for many, many years. And, it simply isn’t realistic to only “hope that all universities will look at their examples and consider incorporating such data in their admissions processes.” The only way to solve this problem is not ‘hope’ but quotas, but this is electoral suicide. If Little Johnnie doesn’t get his Oxford place then Nu Labour will suffer in the pocket as Daddy Johnnie pulls his financial support for the party.

Higher Ambitions for no-one but Mandy, it seems.

As argued before on EducationState, the awarding of grades is out-of-date as it doesn’t take recognise the impossiblity of removing personal judgement from the process. No matter what is done, be it anonymising papers to using mutliple markers, the grades awarded reflect the prejudices and biases of the graders, their backgrounds and their current situations. As a result, grading is a reflection of what a grader thinks is important and has been raised to value and NOT a case of applying objectively generated standards. These standards are themselves subjective judgements.

Why is it costing so much? External agencies holding educational establishments to ransom? A National Qualifications Framework with too many levels? An obsession with examinations as a panacea? Education being run by people without education backgrounds?

We hear the new body, OfQual, will conduct a review. Bit like Bernard Matthews, turkey farmer, voting against Christmas, we think.

PS. We propose a new regulating authority, OfGov, which will assess whether UK voters are getting value for money!

Explaining the volte-face Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, explained that “the time is now right for those who know about teaching and learning to be given the reins.”

Upon hearing the announcement, a Tory spokesman commented that it welcomed the decision, then suggesting that it had been their idea all along.

Specific details are as of yet not forthcoming but it seems likely that the handover will occur sometime in August as long as necessary legislation can be fast-tracked through Parliament.

As a result WE have put together a list of reasons why observations, at least in their current form, make little sense:

1. They lack objectivity because objectivity is unattainable. The mere selection of criteria with which to judge a lesson reflects bias. Managers will argue that they are only following the criteria and it is the same for everyone but humans do NOT interpret things in the same way (is the glass half-empty, half-full?!) and this will be reflected in observations. Managers who say this are kidding themselves or are hiding behind them.

2. There is no proof that any particular teaching style is more effective than any other. There is anecdotal evidence but nothing compared to the hard science of splitting the atom. What we are left with are hunches and fashions. It is then your right as a teacher to do WHATEVER you like. Rote learning or group chanting, no-one has the normative right to tell you it is wrong. They only have institutional authority.

3. Similarly, the whole notion of learning is still controversial. Recently, Ofsted have peddled the belief that “learning = task completion” whereas in the past learning was all about creativity. Again, there is no categorical proof that learning is what we think it is. Currently, context and situation are seen as key components in learning. This is not reflected AT ALL in Ofsted’s notion of a good lesson.

4. You have a PGCE or such like. If your grades are low, what have they been teaching you on the course?

5. Observations can be rigged. You can teach the same lesson every time. You can have others plan the lesson for you.

6. They upset people. What good is a system that demotivates and demoralises?

7. If managers are also observing then this adds to suspicions of bias. If the manager likes someone then this ‘halo effect’ will be reflected in their grades and vice versa.

8. It damages relationships between staff by creating false divisions. Those who are graded high and those who aren’t.

9. If it is developmental, then why not have them every week? Too busy? No faith in them?

The solutions are to remove the institution from the process by having peers observe each other without grades and without the potential for punishment. The Edumonolith doesn’t want this a) because it means relinquishing control and b) it could to them losing their jobs.

Whereas in the past we may have expected observations to be in-house and free of inspection jargon and tick-boxes, it is now the duty of educational institutions to carry out the Government surveillance dirty work for them. Same system, same grades, same rubbish.