My girlfriend is currently going through her NQT year at a primary school (first year as a teacher after qualifying). She's majorly stressing out over the scale of how much she's expected to cheat in regards to assessing the children's performance. She's not happy lying but it's what they're all expected to do!
Basically every term the children are assessed against a set of criteria and given a level relating to their ability. There is an expected level of improvement each pupil is expected to make over the course of a year and this relates to how the school is graded by ofsted, how much money the school receives from the government and how it is viewed by the public.
At the start of the year she was told to just drop the entire class by 1 level as this is the expected set back after a summer off, which did in itself sound reasonable. However during the assessed work over the year so far she has assessed 4 pupils as making no progress (which she has been aware of), on trying to arrange extra support for these 4 she's been told to effectively dictate to them a story to write down which can then be graded and show the improvement they're expected to be making. The work will be in no way their own! The struggling children will receive no actual extra help to prevent the reality of them falling behind. Effectively these 4 year 5 (9-10yrs) pupils will be assessed as having a very high standard of English yet she knows they still cannot even write in sentences. Ideally she'd be able to go back to basics with the 4 so they could catch up (or an extra teaching assistant etc) but this isn't possible as she'd fall behind with the current subjects she has to teach.
She has spoken to her mentor and has been told this is just what happens. The school can't afford to have pupils that aren't on paper making the correct level of progress so teachers just make sure they can assess everyone to the correct standard, either by dictating the work or by setting the work again and again (with explicit notes on what they need to change) until that particular piece makes the grade.
The whole scheme just seems like a complete waste of time! So much time is devoted to these assessments that she can't teach what she needs to. The results of the assessments are forged so that the school meets the grade making the entire effort pointless. She's spoken to other friends from her course and they're all in the same situation at other schools!
Not sure what the point of telling you all about this... Any other teachers out there in a similar situation? If you're a parent I definitely would not judge a school by the grades its pupils produce, visit and decide for yourself how good it is!!!
Basically every term the children are assessed against a set of criteria and given a level relating to their ability. There is an expected level of improvement each pupil is expected to make over the course of a year and this relates to how the school is graded by ofsted, how much money the school receives from the government and how it is viewed by the public.
At the start of the year she was told to just drop the entire class by 1 level as this is the expected set back after a summer off, which did in itself sound reasonable. However during the assessed work over the year so far she has assessed 4 pupils as making no progress (which she has been aware of), on trying to arrange extra support for these 4 she's been told to effectively dictate to them a story to write down which can then be graded and show the improvement they're expected to be making. The work will be in no way their own! The struggling children will receive no actual extra help to prevent the reality of them falling behind. Effectively these 4 year 5 (9-10yrs) pupils will be assessed as having a very high standard of English yet she knows they still cannot even write in sentences. Ideally she'd be able to go back to basics with the 4 so they could catch up (or an extra teaching assistant etc) but this isn't possible as she'd fall behind with the current subjects she has to teach.
She has spoken to her mentor and has been told this is just what happens. The school can't afford to have pupils that aren't on paper making the correct level of progress so teachers just make sure they can assess everyone to the correct standard, either by dictating the work or by setting the work again and again (with explicit notes on what they need to change) until that particular piece makes the grade.
The whole scheme just seems like a complete waste of time! So much time is devoted to these assessments that she can't teach what she needs to. The results of the assessments are forged so that the school meets the grade making the entire effort pointless. She's spoken to other friends from her course and they're all in the same situation at other schools!
Not sure what the point of telling you all about this... Any other teachers out there in a similar situation? If you're a parent I definitely would not judge a school by the grades its pupils produce, visit and decide for yourself how good it is!!!
Its the modern way and certainly defeats the basic principle of sending a child to school and grosly unfair on the children. 
