60% of parents opposed to Teacher Assessment JC

Mrwhite1970 wrote: »

We all know cases of Teachers being unprofessional. ie Practically writing or doing projects.

If you have continuous assessment (coursework worth a large percentage of a grade) then students are going to receive considerable and varying assistance depending on their abilities.

For example - In JC Science the coursework A/B element (worth 35%) is quite difficult for some students and considerable teacher help is required. Now is this classified as "unprofessional" . . . I don't think so but it seems pathetic to me that there are some on here who adopt a holier than thou attitude to assisting students.

CA creates problems everywhere and leads to inequality between those students who have access to extra tuition and those who do not. For instance in LC History a project component worth 25% of the final examination is included. If you're a history teacher/graduate does your son or daughter doing the LC get preferential treatment. . . Of course they do. Is that teacher unprofessional? Nope - Absolutely not.

So less of the labels as a teacher who adopts an indifferent attitude to a student clearly struggling to understand what they're doing could also be labelled unprofessional

Peter Flynt wrote: »

The most interesting part of the JC reform is on how Quinn keeps talking about exams and of the need to remove exams blah, blah, blah. . . .

Every teacher on here knows that the whole purpose of these "reforms" is to save money - roughly 30 million a year - by getting secondary teachers to supervise and mark the examinations themselves (without paying them of course).

Rather than admit that this is the real policy Quinn has been fudging the issue with "children are not learning" in secondary schools as they're "preparing for exams when they should be having fun, play groups, discussions [anything which involves them having to work basically]

Yet every JCSA subject has a 60% TERMINAL examination component. . . . Is Quinn trying to infer that these are not exams at all . . . Only students sitting in an exam hall writing down stuff on paper?

The assessment criteria is not changing dramatically but Quinn is using the media to state that this new JCSA is some sort of revolutionary course that will transform Education (this is to appease parents and it is nothing of the sort).

You are completely right here and it's a point I've made at union meetings and it's a crucial point that needs widespread recognition. All this spin by Quinn that 14 year old boys disengage and that the new programme will be so much more student friendly is horseshyte in the extreme!

For example,take the present JC English course which is not "fit for purpose" according to Quinn. Let's say you've got a good class.You push them, you do a Shakespearian play,you do maybe six poems in detail and a smattering of others. You do a novel.You spend a lot of time developing their imaginations and their writing skills in different tasks.Plenty oral discussions take place as well. The teacher has the freedom to choose the texts.

Now let's say you've a fairly weak class,maybe full of the said 14 year old boys who're disengaged. They still want to try the higher level though. Now these young lads and lassies are disengaged,as you'd expect to varying degrees with 14 year olds. Do you foist Romeo, with the proverbial hots for the virginal Rosalind, upon them and expect them to engage with Petrarchan love poetry and learn a rake of quotes? Not, if you've a whit of sense, you don't. You do something like The Field,with the Bull roaring around the place and you act that out with them.Huge engagement.Great craic. Everyone is happy. Now you'll get those with all sorts of arguments that all higher level JC English should do a Shakespearian play,but that's another argument.

Now fast forward to Quinn's "ground breaking" reforms. Higher and ordinary still there but the choice of texts is now removed from the teacher, as it will be a prescribed course.A Shakespearian play will now be compulsory at higher level, as well as a hugely increased number of poems and also more novels. Does that sound much more enjoyable and more "fun"?? You'd want to have a very strange sense of "fun" to think so. And is that more student friendly?? People have to see that this is a high handed way of getting "more for less" from teachers,while actually making the course harder,more pressurised and in reality, much less student friendly.

And folks, that's just one subject,that's only the start!

Have a great summer everyone! Because we've a lot of work to do in September to resist this farce which Ruari Qunn,from his nearly redundant Labour Party,calls "reform".