Raising standards - what does it really mean-_562

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Raising standards - what does it really mean?
Of course raising standards can be understood more generally, and the term is also used beyond the world of education. A quick look at the internet reveals references to raising standards in the fishing and construction industries, including an American building industry magazine entitled Raising Standards. The phrase is also used in relation to a wide variety of council and government services, being particularly favoured by government in referring to health and, of course, education.Ofsted and the DCSF inputMost obviously, Ofsted promises that it is ‘Raising standards, improving lives’, while the DCSF produces numerous guides and plans centred on raising standards. For example, there is a series, the Raising Standards Guides, aimed at basic skills providers working in a range of settings. Although Ofsted is more clearly concerned with standards at the level of schools,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the DCSF frequently mixes this understanding of raised standards with concern for the standards of individual children. So, for example, while the department worries about failing or improving schools, government achievement aims concern the percentage of individual children who are assessed as being at particular NC levels.It is in this latter sense that many claims are made about raising standards, since achievement levels in public exams and SATs have increased in the past decade. Particular attention has focused on the Key Stage 2 SATs. Although more children are now assessed as performing at higher NC levels, doubts are expressed, often by secondary teachers considering their latest intake, that performance has really changed.At this point, it might be asked whether it is possible to have a great impact on the learning of the nation’s children who, after all, were already benefiting from seven years of primary education, provided by trained teachers to the best of their ability. However, the architects of cognitive acceleration through science and mathematics (CASE and CAME), Phillip Adey and Michael Shayer,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], would argue that a clearly thought out and structured teaching innovation can improve students’ ability to learn, ultimately impacting on test results. In their provocatively titled 1994 book Really Raising Standards,and in a contribution by Phillip Adey to a recent issue of Learning and Teaching Update (issue 5, June 2007), they explain how the educational standards of individuals can indeed be raised by particular school input.If it is possible to raise standards, then, the question becomes whether this is currently occurring. There has been quite a lot of research, particularly into the apparent change in individual performance of children at the primary-secondary transition stage of schooling. In a 2004 article in the British Educational Research Journal, Peter Tymms of Durham University brought together evidence from a number of studies and concluded, for several reasons, that the marked improvement in mathematics and English suggested by SATs results may be largely illusory. It seems likely that change is due mainly to variation in how the tests have been set and marked over the years, improved test-taking technique and some teaching to the test, rather than much real improvement in understanding or skill. Worryingly, recent research by Michael Shayer suggests that levels of science understanding and reasoning in Year 7 students might actually have decreased over the last three decades.How research affects schoolsThese findings are concerning in their own right, but we also need to consider how the demand for raised standards affects schools. Publication of exam result league tables ensures that schools worry about their year-on-year results and how they compare to other local schools, which might distract senior managers from other worthy educational aims. Yet it is known that results inevitably fluctuate. John Gray of Cambridge University has written much about how hard it is to sustain apparent improvement and a recent article considers ‘evidence for the view that changes in schools’ performance over time are comparatively modest’.When invited onto Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour recently (26.11.07), Peter Tymms argued that the high-stakes SATs tests were systematically distorting education and that league tables should be abolished. Prof Tymms said that concentration on KS2 tests is skewing the whole system and, in particular, impoverishing early years education,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], as primary schools tend to concentrate resources on the later years and SATs preparation.A number of academics in the USA, where these sorts of tests have been in use for longer, also argue that high stakes tests damage education and ‘undermine achievement’. Gary Orfield and Mindy Kornhaber published an edited collection in 2001, which ‘makes clear the importance of high standards and accountability systems. But support for standards and accountability systems should not be equated with support for high-stakes tests’. Similarly, in the journal article referred to above, Peter Tymms concluded that ‘statutory tests must not be used to monitor standards over time’. If such monitoring was done by a separate body, he argues, it would be able to ‘generate data of considerable educational importance’.Then, perhaps, we would all be able to talk with more conviction about raising standards.Further reading: Tymms, P (2004) ‘Are standards rising in English primary schools?’ British Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 477-492.
The exclusionThe head teacher wrote to the parents of R and F telling them that neither R nor F could come back to school, but that they would be given help in completing their course at home. He should, of course, have told the parents immediately, ideally by telephone followed by a letter, of their right to make representations to the governing body.

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