Gobsmacked.

That is the only word I can use to describe the announcement today that Justine Greening made via a letter to the Education Select Committee. (BTW If any of the committee are reading this I suggest you clear the diary in Autumn because I suspect you will be opening an enquiry into this Summers GCSE changes … in my opinion (yep, I’m entitled to one!) it’s been a fecking shambles for the last 3 years. I’ll even make myself available as a witness!! (as if!!) These constantly moving goalposts are making teaching almost untenable – you want a reason that teachers are leaving the profession? One reason is the constant shifts and changes in policy that come out of the DFE and no amount of “workload” posters take this away!! There is so much accountability that comes with the job. If you have ever been part of a team that doesn’t deliver results for whatever reason, including students “can’t be arsedness“, or the fact that several (lots!) of the students are either pregnant or in the local PRU you will know that returning to school in the Autumn can be soul destroying.

Anyway, I’m waffling … you can find the letter and read it for yourself -> ESC_letter

You need to read the letter for yourself but until we get the official guidance from the DFE I’m trying to be a but pragmatic about it (I did say “trying”) – in the letter Justine states: “I want to provide certainty about how this new grading will work and, in particular, the consequences for individual pupils of achieving a grade 4 or grade 5″ … so lets deal with this point: Suuuuurrrrrrrrely, no seriously, surely this “certainty” should have been provided months (years!!) ago at the outset of these wholesale changes to our exam system. Anyone would think this sh1t is being made up as they go along. I am almost positive when the original Ofqual postcard (shown on the right below) was published they thought they were providing this “certainty” and then Nicky Morgan announced the whole “good” pass thing back in 2015 and again, I’m sure we had “certainty” then too! Oh how foolish of me!

I’ve written before about how the message of the 5 being used for accountability wasn’t getting through to the coalface but  just to remind you: Back in 2015 the DfE (Nicky Morgan) said that a 5 would be a “good pass” but to add to the confusion the conditions of funding in post 16 education were relaxed for the next few years so that a grade 4 would be sufficient for pupils to avoid mandatory post-16 resits until at least 2019 and now, even the idea of compulsory resits is in doubt. The crux of the letter is that grade 4 will be the “standard pass” and grade 5 will be deemed a “strong pass”. According to this TES article the English Baccalaureate GCSE measure – “something the government wants 90 per cent of pupils to achieve – will be  measured by both grades 4 and 5” … ummm … just … ummm … how will that work? 

So Ofqual (if you’re reading this … remember I can see who subscribes to this blog!) you now need a new postcard! You know that campaign about getting the message through to stakeholders? I think you may need to go back to the drawing board! 

Some of you will say this change is not important and that we should just teach them “stuff” and I agree to some extent but how can a system whereby the measures for the student and the measures for a school are different ever work in the best interests of BOTH parties. It’s a farce! This current year 11, will now hear all sorts of media rubbish and schools across the country have been slogging their guts out to get students to believe that they can achieve a 5 (and beyond!) if they work hard enough and now will be looking for ways to manage this news that there are two levels of “pass”. The message has to be that regardless of what “we” get measured on they need to do the best that they can and that it’s not just about what they need for the next stage of their lives it’s about the currency of these exams beyond college/Sixth form and how it’ll compare to future cohorts.  

I’m sat here shaking my head about the whole thing – WE HAVE LESS THAN 7 WEEKS BEFORE THE EXAMS KICK OFF … I just can’t get my head around how (again, in my opinion) this level of poorly thought out deployment of the biggest change to education we’ve seen in a long time can have happened. In any other industry, if a project of this scale and visibility had been this badly communicated with such fundamental changes (and no, they can’t be called “tweaks”) being changed along the way heads would have “rolled” by now. FFS a football manager loses a couple of games and they’re sacked! Right now the important thing is to wait for the guidance documents that come out of the DFE to be published – we will then know the detail behind her letter and how it’ll “REALLY” work in practice. The fact that there wasn’t a coordinated approach i.e. new accountability guidance documents and even a new Ofqual postcard all published at the same time makes me wonder whether this letter was a knee-jerk decision or a reaction to something else? Maybe someone has finally realised that making the accountability measure a 5 would mean that we’re looking at such low national performance figures that we haven’t seen for a long, long time and given that we are likely to be heading for a general election it won’t be a good thing! Education needs a 20 (at least!) year plan that is mandated across all political parties and not subject to the whim and whimsy of politicians.

Some of you may also say that it doesn’t change a thing. No, maybe not – teachers will try to do the best by the students. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again: no teacher gets up and thinks : “Today I am going to be a sh1te teacher” … we are all in this to do the best we can and often do so much more than is expected. This goodwill just will not last. I am concerned that new teachers think this is “normal” and that if they find they can’t cope that it is down to “them” and they must be doing something wrong when in fact they probably aren’t aware that teaching hasn’t always been this way!

Anyway, its late .. I’m off to Grimsby tomorrow so I’ll bid you all good night … and here’s hoping we get the “detail” tomorrow! xxx