Teachers being told to cheat

[Diagro]

It's rated as 'good' and it's supposed to be one of the better schools in the city. Glad to hear that not all schools perform the same way, but from her asking around it certainly sounds like it's not alone.

As an aside were you surprised by how much workload is involved for primary education??!?!? After my girlfriend finished her phd I thought things would maybe start to calm down but the pgce was a much higher workload! Then teaching seems to have stepped it up again!

Oh god yea.

The workload is insane.

She gets there at 8 and doesnt leave till 6. Then she will do around 2 hours of marking and planning a night.

Weekends are spent researching better ways of teaching.

She gets around 1.5k after tax a month so she thinks its worth it.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Shhhhhh, you are NOT supposed to kiss and tell!

 

[Edrof]

That's just the way it is at the moment. Teachers also teach to tests.

I totally agree with the sentiment that grades and Ofsted reports don't really matter, as a parent you should visit the school in question and see for yourself.

Sadly, many parents are statistics driven and they want their children (even those of nursery age) to be hammered with work. I've seen it first hand. I'm one of those that think children (youngsters especially) should have fun at school and that being taught how to act in a social environment is more important than how many vegetables they can name in Spanish.

 

[Streeteh]

Can't get away with that in secondary schools, it's policed quite heavily.

Very common to see students come out of primary schools with heavily inflated stats though. Often if they're a difficult student their behaviour is downplayed in the character reports too, I'm assuming this is because the feeder schools have failed to meet intervention criteria, so pretend their nasty student is a little angel to avoid a slap on the wrist.

 

[schumi84]

After seeing first hand how the GCSE/A-Level results are manipulated at the school I work at, they're basically not worth the paper they're printed on and it where your child goes should definitely be based on what you think of the school at open days/evenings and general walks around etc.

It really does worry me the way in which students are taught, especially when moving to secondary school, I have to work in both Primary and Secondary and half the stuff children are taught in Primary is regurgitated for their first 3 years at secondary. From my perspective, Primary School teachers definitely seem to have the higher workload, however there seems to be no communication between the different school as to what the students have actually been taught.

As an example, in IT, pupils are given log in details in Reception/Year 1 and are computer literate pretty much the whole way through Primary School. What do they have to do for the first 2 weeks of Secondary School, oh yes, learn how to log in and out

 

[Streeteh]

After seeing first hand how the GCSE/A-Level results are manipulated at the school I work at, they're basically not worth the paper they're printed on and it where your child goes should definitely be based on what you think of the school at open days/evenings and general walks around etc.

How exactly does the school manage to manipulate their examination results?

As an example, in IT, pupils are given log in details in Reception/Year 1 and are computer literate pretty much the whole way through Primary School. What do they have to do for the first 2 weeks of Secondary School, oh yes, learn how to log in and out

Sadly that's just a fact of education in its current form. Due to not all primary schools being equal, it's expected of ICT in the government designed curriculum to teach basic ICT skills in the first year to 'level out' all of the students. It's the same as many degrees where, for example, I had to spend the first year of my Networking degree repeating basic Java and HTML script eg. 'Hello world'. This was purely to ensure every student was on the same page when the more advanced theory appeared in second year.

 

[Deleted User 234324]

I know that when my younger sister was in school she never received the help she needed to improve properly.

Turns out years later she was diagnosed with dyslexia, had she received the proper help in school, it probably wouldn't have been much of an issue later in life. Teachers having to cheat and/or lie about pupil performance, doesn't surprise me one bit.

 

[vicisthebest]

I work at a Junior School (Year 3-6) and we have problems coming from the local Infants' school.

At the end of Key Stage 1 (Infants) the children are teacher assessed at a particular level, it is then our job at the Junior school during Key Stage 2 to make sure they make 2 levels of progress while they are with us.

The levels are split up into sublevels, C B A, then up to the next level, and it is baffling to see the number of children, when you look at their data, who go something like:

Middle of Y1: Level 1B
End of Y1: Level 1A
Middle of Y2: Level 2C
End of Y2: Level 3! Wow, what progress!

It's a load of rubbish designed to make the Infants school look good, the writing assessment they do is not unaided, and we then have a huge rod for our back because we've got to make sure that children who were never a Level 3 to begin with at the end of KS1, achieve a Level 5 when they leave us. It's just never going to happen in some cases.

Our attainment is excellent, well above average compared to the national average; our levels of progress are below average.

Our head has had so many meetings with the head of the infants school about it and she just doesn't believe that they're doing anything wrong.

OFSTED's view? Up until now: Suck it up. Our head has spent years gathering infant school data from the children who come through our school now, so that the next time they come calling we can make a good case for ourselves. (We are rated Outstanding at the moment, as an aside).

Makes me especially as I teach Year 6 - the pressure on me and my colleagues to get those expected results is huge and this is exacerbated by the infants school.

I love teaching and I think that as a school, we offer our children so many different experiences and a great education; it does worry me, however, that all the government sees is numbers and the fact that we're not hitting our progress targets in all cases.

 

[Edrof]

I would love to overhaul this country's education system.

 

[No1newts]

It's a joke but that's schooling these days. No teaching just aiming them to pass an exam so the school gets a pay on the head.

It's one of the negatives of targets, people stop trying to actually do anything other than hit a target. All additional effort disappears and all real desire to do better is instead channeled at the target. Targets are useful, but they should be an indicator not a goalpost or this is the system you end up with.

 

[Mr Jack]

Tutors have always done this from year DOT. They all just hide it well.

No. That's not true. The problem only really kicked off when we decided that it'd be a really good idea to publish league tables of schools.

Anyone watch the Wire? Juking the stats.

 

[do_ron_ron]

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!!!

I said when this was brought in and many times since that when the system rewards

how much money the school receives from the government

teachers will be forced to get results rather than teaching the child. Teaching for results in secondary schools is the norm to the detriment of education. Fiddling tests/results is common as positions in league tables and therefore school money has become the be-all and end - all of the system. It was a flawed system brought in from the US(and was known in the US to be badly flawed) by Blair and kepy on by Cameron.

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.

This sums up what teachers think...the system is a current waste of time and effort to the detriment of educating children. Govt is to blame, not teachers....but who listens to what teachers think nowadays.

 

[asim18]

What I've always wondered is what does it take to get expelled from school?

Cannabis, alcohol, armed robbery, GBH/ABH, general bullying, no interest to learn anything, the list is endless. I've seen so much of this crap in my school it was unbelievable.

The only time one of these types actually got expelled was when someone finally punched a female teacher in the face. Yeah you're so ****ed off about getting punched, but you didn't give a **** when the ******** threw a hardback dictionary in the ugly kid's face, or when he threw a metal chair out a 3rd floor window, etc., etc.

Wont someone please think of the children.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

I hope you gave that boy his dictionary back, asim.

 

[StriderX]

Its why I left Secondary Education before I was finished, when realise its rather pointless (while still in the school of course), it annoys you till you decide that you aren't having it any more.

Another issue at the moment as well> Headteachers are going in and out of their jobs decades faster than the average teacher, there's something desperately wrong with the entire thing honestly.

This is for Scotland of course, it is somewhat different now and I dont know how the new system is doing, the last thing I knew was the fact that all the teachers agreed that it was bad or something.

I have no opinion on English/Welsh or NIrish systems, but i imagine its worse.

It goes down to the parents who think the government should teach their children everything about life, the teacher disparity between the heavily stressed older generation and the newer graduate teachers (which is becoming rarer and rarer) who feel they just walked into hell, some genuinly nice people as well who (personal experience) sometimes make creative ways of teaching that I enjoy and can actually respond to.

You get terribly sick of just being told what to know, especially when "test" session comes up and it trumps actually learning...UGH...so bloody annoying, I could blame Labours stupid decisions, i don't see the point though.

 

[Haggisman]

And this is precisely the reason why I quit teaching after 6 months.

 

[muon]

Assessments are needed as otherwise rubbish schools will continue to exist with no one the wiser.

People might say school league tables are rubbish and yet the good schools always appear at the top! Even with GVA measures.

 

[do_ron_ron]

Assessments are needed as otherwise rubbish schools will continue to exist with no one the wiser.

People might say school league tables are rubbish and yet the good schools always appear at the top! Even with GVA measures.

Teachers are always doing assessments of their pupils. Ask any teacher and they will be able to tell you about any child's attainments or lack of them.

The problem comes with people like you who seem to think eduction is some sort of football league or schools are education factories and by putting industrial methodology in charge then you will achieve results. The academies are one such symptom.

Children are not cans of beans!! You cannot run a school like a factory or a football league. Blair organised the current mess and Cameron is pushing it further. Thr results have been highlighted often on this forum by teachers and others. Grade inflation, teaching for exams .. rather than for learning, manipulating assessments.. the list goes on.

The worrying thing is that the current system is pushing through a generation of pupils graded above their abilities. Industry/further education have realised this in the past couple of years and our current political masters seem to think that everything is OK you just need industrialise education more by introducing a profit motive.

 

[No1newts]

Grading and assessment has it's palce but that place is not the forefront and driver of everything as it is now as it merely distorts the reality of teaching. I'm not much into huggy cuddly **** but with kids I have to agree, they need to be taught in ways they are best able to learn at whatever pace they need and not be force fed through exams. Some of the graduates at my place some of them cannot even carry basic arithmetic in their heads, they need calculators for anything that gets into double figures and these are supposed to be eningeering grads!

 

[muon]

Teachers are always doing assessments of their pupils. Ask any teacher and they will be able to tell you about any child's attainments or lack of them.

The problem comes with people like you who seem to think eduction is some sort of football league or schools are education factories and by putting industrial methodology in charge then you will achieve results. The academies are one such symptom.

Children are not cans of beans!! You cannot run a school like a factory or a football league. Blair organised the current mess and Cameron is pushing it further. Thr results have been highlighted often on this forum by teachers and others. Grade inflation, teaching for exams .. rather than for learning, manipulating assessments.. the list goes on.

The worrying thing is that the current system is pushing through a generation of pupils graded above their abilities. Industry/further education have realised this in the past couple of years and our current political masters seem to think that everything is OK you just need industrialise education more by introducing a profit motive.

These arguments were being made long before league tables. Industry and further education are always complaining. Further education wants pupils with better academic grounding whilst most businesses want people who have business experience.

League tables are a good thing and has forced poor schools to take real action rather than carrying on with the status quo.

The English Baccalaureate for example which has been introduced is more prescriptive so that children in rubbish schools are made to do subjects which matter. If it makes it harder for teachers because children find it more difficult then so be it.

Schools differ in standards and teachers have such differing abilities, the only way you can make sure children get a certain level of education is by being prescriptive at the lower end.

Grading and assessment has it's palce but that place is not the forefront and driver of everything as it is now as it merely distorts the reality of teaching. I'm not much into huggy cuddly **** but with kids I have to agree, they need to be taught in ways they are best able to learn at whatever pace they need and not be force fed through exams. Some of the graduates at my place some of them cannot even carry basic arithmetic in their heads, they need calculators for anything that gets into double figures and these are supposed to be eningeering grads!

That's what happens when you remove mental arithmetic exams which used to exist for Year 9 students. However, it was a good thing overall they were removed as teachers used to invest too much time into these meaningless exams. Good teachers didn't as the well rounded teaching they had was sufficient.