Michael Gove is wrong—again

I don't disagree with Michael Gove on everything he says. Learning in any context is always a combination of knowledge acquisition and the development of skills, and I take some sympathy with the notion that the rest in secondary education has moved too far to the latter and needs more of the one-time. Caused cognition is very often the gateway into discussion and an exchange of ideas in which critical thinking skills are then deployed, so yous must have the onetime to make use of the latter.

But his latest idea, of teachers' pay beingness linked to performance, appears to be yet some other ideologically-driven, unfounded, unresearched notion, designed to further undermine the didactics profession and gear up them against him, thus demonstrating (in his eyes) how self-interested they are.

When I was a personnel manager in an industry-leading manufacturing business, I arrived at merely the time when performance-related pay had been ditched as a personnel policy. Why was this? Considering even in a manufacturing-based, highly measurable, consumer-oriented, performance-focussed context, operation-related pay was just as well subjective and likewise controversial to be worth the additional administrative brunt. If that was the case in such a context, just think what touch its introduction would have in an already administratively over-burdened teaching environment.

With two children in secondary school and one merely left to go into Higher Education, I am under no illusion that unlike teachers accept different effects on children's operation. We are treated (every bit I suspect all parents are) to regular instructor appraisal—our children tell us what their classes are similar, and regularly assess their teachers' performance. But how would this be enshrined formally? What qualities would be assessed? The teacher's ability to inspire? Mastery of subject? A sense of humor? Intuition about what makes children tick? Authoritative efficiency? All these are important, but tin can they measured so objectively as to justify a specific pay rise?

Of grade, the easiest matter to measure would be children's performance. And nosotros have seen that measuring schools and teachers on exam results has a profoundly corrupting impact on the whole arrangement. Children end up being taught to pass tests, not to learn, and examining bodies sell expertise on passing their exams to the schools whose profile depends on it. And what would the impact be within schools? Layla Moran, a former teacher, recounts her experience:

The worst upshot, though, was the way it gear up teacher against teacher and the importance of working as a squad diminished. People who had been dedicated team players felt their job satisfaction collapse and divisions arose between those who helped and those who were only seen to help. For those who worked hard yet got the lower amount, information technology felt like a slap in the face.

Michael Gove argues that this change 'will make teaching a more bonny career and a more than rewarding job'. Still at that place is little show for this. The Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD notes that there are many more important issues:

Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have frequently done so not just through pay, but past raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform. This requires teacher education that helps teachers to get innovators and researchers in education, non merely ceremonious servants who deliver curricula.

Changes proposed by Gove to the curriculum do indeed make it expect very much every bit though teachers are 'but civil servants who deliver curricula' and his disdain for the profession demonstrated at the recent briefing for Caput Teachers reinforces this.

At one stage in the proceedings there was a bout of ironic laughter afterwards Mr Gove said it was necessary to find out the sources of heads' stress to tackle it. "They think you're one of them," said Mr Kelly [editor of the Times Educational Supplement] dryly.

Or as one witty commentator on the Guardian article mused:

Hurray, nevertheless another brilliant wheeze! The acute shortage of teachers in key subjects such every bit Maths and Physics is definitely going to be a thing of the past now. Why would anyone with a ii:1 in Maths from a Russell Group uni go into, say, a high-paying job in the City when they could be earning peanuts in the teaching profession and be subjected to an endless deluge of ill-thought-out, morale-sapping, Mail service-fuelled nonsense designed for no other purpose than to further the political ambitions of Michael Gove? Go on, you know information technology makes sense…

But the most disturbing thing about this and other contempo proposals is that they are based on no prove at all—or even that they wing in the face of the prove. On the question of early years instruction, for example, the bear witness appears to exist that ideas in recent Government proposals have actually been demonstrated to be damaging to children's welfare.

Enquiry does not support an early start to testing and quasi-formal teaching, but provides considerable prove to challenge it. Very few countries have a schoolhouse starting historic period every bit young equally four, as nosotros do in England. Children who enter schoolhouse at six or 7 – after several years of high quality nursery instruction – consistently achieve better educational results as well as higher levels of wellbeing.

Simply this appears to have no affect on Gove or Authorities. This raises much bigger questions about the honesty and integrity of the whole discussion, as well every bit primal questions of justice and access. The result of all the changes made under both Conservative and Labour Governments has been to increase the impact of wealth on educational performance; it is harder than ever to do well from a poor background. It seems that not merely does money talk just it at present decides whether or not yous can—whether you become literate or numerate.

We seem to exist more and more working with a hideous vision of the kid in schoolhouse as a hereafter unit of measurement of production that must him- or herself exist efficiently produced by an industrial knowledge organization. This is no vision for teaching, for childhood, or for what it means to be a human beingness in the twenty-kickoff century.

Additional note:

I loved this interchange from final year betwixt Gove and Education Select Commission, recorded in its unedited transcript. It is depressing at one level to run across how sick-thought out current policy is, but also offers a moment of light relief:

Q98 Chair: One is: if "good" requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?

Michael Gove: By getting better all the time.

Q99 Chair: And then it is possible, is it?

Michael Gove: It is possible to go better all the time.

Q100 Chair: Were you meliorate at literacy than numeracy, Secretarial assistant of Country?

Michael Gove: I cannot remember.

Second Additional Note:

The about viewed TED video to date is Sir Ken Robinson talking near how an industrialised education system stamps out creativity in children:

Wikipedia comments on his piece of work:

Robinson has suggested that to engage and succeed, education develop on three fronts. Outset, that information technology should foster diversity by offering a wide curriculum and encouraging individualization of the learning process; That it should foster curiosity through artistic teaching, which depends on loftier quality teacher training and evolution; And finally that it should focus on awakening creativity through alternative didactic processes that put less emphasis on standardized testing, giving the responsibility for defining the course of education to private schools and teachers. He believes that much of the nowadays education system in the United States fosters conformity, compliance, and standardization rather than creative approaches to learning. Robinson emphasizes that nosotros tin only succeed if we recognize that didactics is an organic organization, not a mechanical one. Successful school administration is a matter of fostering a helpful climate rather than "control and control".

What is puzzling though is to annotation that he has been an adviser to regime on education and, after all, has a knighthood. So why have successive didactics secretaries ignored his insights?

Third additional note

Polly Toynbee has written an interesting article on this subject area, which I comment on in another blog postal service hither.

Fourth additional note

There is a really expert 'open alphabetic character' to Michael Gove from Deputy caput Michael Steer, in which he comments:

You lot are very vocal about the need for improvement, and in actuality, everyone working in education would concord with y'all but that won't happen with a series of, seemingly, articulatio genus-wiggle policy changes and a culture of blame and finger-pointing.

While education standards remain a political weapon, any improvements will ever happen on a political timescale rather than an educational 1. If at that place is a serious desire to have a 'world class' education system in this country, and then why not remove information technology from the political arena?

Hand it over to the experts and the academics who have dedicated their lives to the study of education and learning, to the thousands of dedicated staff who are committed to securing the all-time possible outcomes for young people.

Let's be radical, Mr Gove: try working with united states instead of against u.s.a., support us instead of denigrating what nosotros practise, don't endeavor and pit u.s. direct against each other when information technology is conspicuously a meaningless practice. Sit downwardly with usa, ask our opinions, meet if we can come up with a shared vision and think of creative, yet practical ways to implement information technology. You may exist surprised by what the Enemies of Promise are capable of.

Spot on.

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