Have you ever seen one
of those cop shows where someone tried to bribe a detective without
mentioning the bribe by saying something like; ‘How about we talk
about this over free lunch?’ Or, ‘is that a lump of cash in your
pocket or…?’ And the whole thing is so awkward and awful that you
just want to escape the room you are in and throw the DVD/TV/Talking
Box out of the window and watch cars run over it until it all goes
away.
Over the past week I
have been walking around with a reasonably-sized yellow folder in
which is contained all of the year eleven coursework that is to be
sent off (probably to Cambridge) to be moderated because apparently
if you put an extra lowercase letter in front of a qualification then
you can apply some utterly stupid ideas to them, such as telling the
teachers which bits are going to be moderated before the students
have even written them. I assume that their moderation process is
also run by mice. Maybe stoats. This folder has traveled, backpack
wrapped and back-muscle snapped from school to train to home to room
to train to school ad infinitum over the past week because we, as a
department, pride ourselves on our exceptional levels of paranoia and
accountability learned the hard way- through prior ineptitude. I,
having been nominated as department gremlin for this particular task
have turned my weary eye again and again over low-band, high-band and
should-have-been-banned idioms and grammar errors until I nearly
stripped naked, painted myself with war paint and danced around a
massive coursework bonfire chanting I G C S E I G C S E until,
thankfully for everyone involved, I would have been taken away.
Unfortunately, It is pretty difficult to find war paint of any
quality these days so I just moderated them myself and neatly
organised everything ready to be sent away before I celebrated with a
couple of glasses of single malt before rocking back and forth in a
darkened room, crying, and listening to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
on repeat.
It appears that what I
have written is the introduction to the wrong article followed by me
lamenting over how hard my life has been for the past week (really
hard.) But, in all honesty, I just had two paid weeks off so one
grimy week isn’t unforgiveable. What is unforgiveable is an event
on the day that the folder was due. SLT had asked for the grades and
had been duly given them by the little Pavlovian dogs that we are.
Having looked at the data they came back with a response. I was not,
at the time, aware that a response was needed. Their response: Can
you take a look at the essays of those on the D side of the C/D
borderline and see if there is anything that could be done?
(Awkward pause)
Perhaps I am far more
cynical than I ever thought. Perhaps that cynicism has spread way
beyond just my concerns for Star Wars VII. Or, perhaps, what the
department was being asked to do in the final hours before submission
was, without actually using the words, improve the incidence of C
grades by hunting down marks that did, and would never, exist.
If you feel physically
sick at this point then I would like to assure you that this is
natural. It merely proves that you are human.
There is an unspoken
acceptance that if a student’s figures are likely to ruin a
school’s data then they should be adjusted through any means
possible. Now, of course, we weren’t told to change the figures,
and no member of any senior leadership anywhere would admit that they
ever said anything that would even insinuate this but I believe that
I am right in my reaction and that this is not confined to a lone
school. The pressure on the C/D borderline encourages foul play,
especially in subjects where there is coursework or speaking and
listening elements where, for the most part, the marks are taken on
trust. What is one mark here and there between friends, especially if
it happens to knock a student over the predicted C boundary?
This is appalling,
surely, but what can normal teachers do? They are screwed worse than
a bottle of vintage Cabernet at the hands of a tired, undertrained
and barely functioning Sommelier. They are taught to preserve their
integrity and uphold teaching standards but they are also judged on
their data and, especially in the case of academies, this is what
determines pay rises. I know teachers who could not do more in
schools being denied pay progression because the pass rate or C rate
of their department is not good enough.
My Head of Department
and I held our resolve. I firmly asserted that every mark in the
folder was correct and that all had been done and I am right. I
stated to my Head of Department that I was ethically opposed to any
further re-marks. Hundreds of hours of teaching, revision classes,
extra intervention and support went into that year group’s body of
work and in one implied instruction it may have well been turned to
toilet paper. The constant assertion that, regardless of effort,
mitigating factors or expertise, a D is never enough is a dangerous
corruption of our profession that damages everything that we should
stand for as teachers. It is also prejudiced against students who
have worked very hard. There is no parity in provision because there
is no equal waiting in the importance of results. I am sure that I
am not the only one to have been put in this situation.
There are huge
curriculum reforms on the horizon of secondary school teaching and
one hopes that this fabricated win/loss scenario will fall slowly
into history under one of those boxes in textbooks headed with
something like: Can You Believe They Did This? But,
realistically, there will always be this line because people just
can’t resist. They can’t keep their little minds out of the
concept that schools should compete with one another because, in the
end, that is all that this comes down to. Why did our leadership want
this done? Because they want to look like the best school. Why do
they want this most arrogant of appearances? Because by extrusion and
association they themselves look really good. This is not education
because education is childcentric and not egocentric. It is not about
proving what a bloody good chap you are it is about proving what
bloody good kids they are and it is accepting that some years it is
just not going to happen. You will not climb the podium; you will not
get the medal or kiss the Queen’s foot or get a framed portrait of
yourself put up in the Vatican because, simply enough, this isn’t
about you. Forcing others to hunt through an essay to ‘find’ two
extra marks to push your average over doesn’t make you good at your
job. Go teach instead.
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