So Election 2010 continues with the posturing and mud slinging between different political parties in full swing. As always it is education and healthcare that seem to get the majority of the attention, I just hope this time that someone starts to come up with solutions for the chronic problem of league tables. A blight that is massively failing a generation of learners.

League tables are causing schools to only concentrate on struggling pupils, or to simply make sure everyone passes. We’ve already seen that some schools are entering students in what they consider ‘easy’ subjects to ensure they get good grades; and I know from several colleagues that the pressure in our school is to focus on ‘borderline’ pupils to make sure they get their vital C grade, and not to worry about moving some of the brighter kids from a B to an A.

High aspirations are entirely gone, teaching today seems to be about being average and doing the minimum – everything is ab0ut league tables. We  have endless meeting about them, are shown spread sheets with targets and projected outcomes on. Teachers are being singled out for praise when everyone in their class is getting a C. This is not teaching, it’s target hitting.

Whoever gets voted in on 6th May needs address this problem, as much as they do any other, and yet it seems from all their manifestos that it will just be the same old same old.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 3:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.