Eye eye ....what 'ave we 'ere?

An almighty BALLS up by the "Teacher's friend" The Schools Secretary ED Balls.

Right, now, correct me if I am wrong, but if you are going to make a sweeping change to the education system at Secondary schools that will affect ALL 14 year old students (year 9) and the teachers who teach them, with immediate effect you would of course let the schools know directly? Yes of course you would.

IN THE REAL WORLD

However in Ed's World, a surreal parallel dimension where students and teachers really don't matter, what you actually do is announce your broad sweeping change with immediate effect ON THE NEWS before even bothering to send any sort of direct communication with schools ....

How to get people on side.

How to cause chaos?

Yes, Tuesday night saw the news headlines that KS3 SATS tests are being scrapped with immediate effect. How did we hear about it? ON the BBC, Sky News etc. Many phone calls ensued on Tuesday evening (on the way to the Boosh and on the way back) - along the lines of "have you heard?" "is this true?". My answers were No I hadn't heard, I don't know if its true and "SHIT"

Yes, so in schools like ours, where we are working exceptionally hard to maintain motivation and raise standards because we have Balls cronies all over us like a bad case of leprosy, suddenly the f**kwit announces to anyone who's listening "Look at me, I'm a nice man, I'm going to abandon formalised assessment for Year 9" ...............of course there wouldn't be any parents OR kids who saw the news now would there.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Oh yeah - Wednesday morning - year 9 kids "So no SATS tests then at the end of this year - whats the point - I'll not bother working then" Way to go on the motivation front!

Don't get me wrong - I don't have a problem with the SATS tests going - we do have too much pressure on schools to test children in this way and the results are used for spurious reasons by external agencies, therefore the pressure is to 'teach to test' to ensure that children 'perform' - therefore losing the broad and rounded education that we all probably experienced when we were kids - or at least those of us over the age of 30! - what I do have a problem with is the way this is all handled - as in-eptly as we have come to expect from Mr Balls. Bring back Estelle Morris

When did the email arrive in school?(yes email - not a formal letter from the Education Secretary to announce such a significant change, just a bleedin' email) 14 hours AFTER the announcement was made to the general public.

Along with with are sweeping statements about changes to the process of reporting school performance (i.e. abandoning the league tables in favour of something equally as objectionable) and other such wondress snippets about investigating whether teachers are trained and capable of assessing students effectively, and asking teachers to report 'real time' (i.e on a weekly basis) to parents on every child's progress. Equally there is to be a "stronger focus on 1 to 1 tuition" in Year 7 (first year at high school)....interesting in schools that cannot fully staff their timetables as it is with the budgets that they have available.

None of this would have anything to do with the almight cockup with the marking of the KS3 tests this year, which meant that many schools did not get their results back, even now, and for example, the papers we have sent to be re-marked, we have been advised will be returned by December 31st!!!! SO the Government cannot publish its "league tables" in full this year because there is no data to furnish them with ....oooooh.....abandon the tests, do something completely different and everyone will forget!

But the icing on the cake is the statement about 'investigating'......

"How best to ensure that this package of measures does not add unnecessarily to teachers? workload. "

Oh, NURSE, my sides ....bring the thread - they've split and my guts are spilling over the floor.

The Press Release in all its full comedic glory - note the date 14th October at the top, with the comment at the bottom that Ed Balls has "written to all headteachers and local authorities today" - right so the postal system is THAT good that the letters were supposed to arrive before the 6 o clock news.


The 'department' in charge of education in the past few years has changed its name many times ....from the DfE (Department for Education) to DfES (Department for Education and Schools) to most recently DCSF - which nobody can remember the order of the letters....so we coined a handy mnemonic....The Department for Comedy and Science Fiction. Everyone at our school knows the order now. Although I'm thinking it should be Department for Cocks and Stupid F**kwits

Here endeth the rant. I'm off to read about the "School Report Card" system used to grade school performance in New York City which Mister Ed is so taken with. Maybe do a bit more marking too!