Another week of A levels results, another week of conflict surrounding league tables, the ?dumbing down? of Key Stage 3s, and widespread strategies and promised for school review and enhance. The Conservatives have already stated a wish to improve league tables in the hope to give greater weighting to higher grades and more ?worthwhile subjects. With regards to doing poorly in this series of blogs, the news could not be more scary. Recently our society again have heard our society denounced as ?broken? from the opposition bench, with teen culture being slammed. Contrariwise we are now told that kids who study ?worthless? subjects may have their results devalued when considering the successes of other schools (some people resort to hiring a tutor to get by). I will return to the patronizing stance toward modern day young people in a later blog, with conversation on the inevitable reaction to continuing success.
The focus this week is on failing schools. This again is a very vague definition, but is often thrown into journalistic pieces, especially at this time of year. A college which is deemed to be ?underachieving? must be considered objectively, we wouldn?t believe a ?mild day? to be in anyway the same when reported in the our societyather forecast in the UK and Australia, yet we consider underachieving institutes to be as bad as each other regardless of location and resources. I talked to private tutor and they said that in years gone by we have seen a growth of ?specialist colleges? whether they are in Science or Performing Arts etc.
The tutor went on to say that these colleges therefore must have different targets to reach, but on an overall scale, these strong departments may mask weaker areas within the college. The league tables do not reflect the pupils and environs which the college has to adapt to. Inner city colleges traditionally have to deal with kids who are regularly exposed to gang culture, drug abuse and binge drinking, as our societyll as many kids who are not as bright as some in more affluent areas. young people may again affect their progress. This links in our societyll with my previous blog on underachieving young people who are less able.
In many cases, the challenge of helping these less able students to reach their potential is far more taxing for an educator than simply feeding a bright students? hunger for understanding. I very much doubt that even the complex ?progress tables? for institutes (only behind Duckworth-Lewis and the scoring for the Heptathlon in complexity) includes this when determining the rankings. Consequently many institutes and, in reality, many educators are tarred with the reputation of being poor.
This leads to an Ouroboros situation, where in schools desperate for enthusiastic, committed teachers, you have teachers who are apathetic, and feel undervalued in their jobs. On a level which many humans could empathize with, consider the disappointment many would experience when someone fails to appreciate the effort put into a present or something similar. If one scales this emotional response when bearing in mind that people move houses to avoid your teaching, this is quite a body blow for someone in a profession which requires commitment and passion in the face of many challenges within the classroom, not to mention that private tutors are becoming more popular.