A failing mark
James Forsyth 12:40pm
Liz Brockelhurst, who marked Key stage 2 papers for a decade, has done a great piece for the magazine this week on the marking process for Sats. She points out that the “marking process itself was also dictated by idiotic rules, designed to help children scrape through.”
Two of the examples that Liz gives, illustrate just how rigged the whole mark scheme is:
If these tests are to have any purpose, they have to be rigorous. Instead, we’re left with the worst of all words with children being taught for a test that the mark scheme renders meaningless.“And if the child wrote the correct answer, but then, on second thoughts, decided it was wrong and crossed it out, the crossing-out still gained the mark. On one paper this was carried to ludicrous extremes. A child had written an answer in pencil but then rubbed it out so I had not awarded any mark. My supervisor, however, insisted that because the slight imprint of the erased answer suggested it had been correct, I must award the point.Correct spelling was completely irrelevant — to the point of absurdity. I remember one question required the one-word answer ‘air’. But markers were instructed that even words such as ‘her’ must be accepted as worthy of the mark. ‘Well,’ argued one senior examiner, ‘the child might speak with a Liverpudlian accent.’”
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Comments
fulcanelli
July 24th, 2008 1:06pmWhat are we really teaching our children in this country, that excellence and attention to detail really don't matter?
I recently saw an entry examination for a public school from 1926, which was aimed at 10 and 11 year old boys. The questions focused upon history, English language, and verbal reasoning, and, quite frankly, would have challenged most average recent graduates. Surely the point of education is to prepare a student for the rigours of life to come, and to prepare them with the innate ability to adapt and develop skills that will be useful within a variety of situations. Cushioning the effect of education is no way to prepare a student. They should be challenged and tested in order to improve their understanding of academic material.
We are continuing to train a generation of idiots. Most current University students already fall under this category!!
Verity
July 24th, 2008 1:30pmGod, what the socialists have done to the once universally admired British education system is a crime against an entire generation of children - all of them intentionally rendered unemployable.
I'd like to Blair and the whole festering mess of them in the dock.
John
July 24th, 2008 6:12pmfulcanelli - yes, that's what they (not 'we') are teaching them.
Dock? What about a brick wall?
Wilfred
July 24th, 2008 6:21pmI agree with the spirit of your post, Verity.
But, what these wretches have done to our educational system is more akin to a tort, a 'civil wrong'.
Clearly the Labour government has a duty of care insofar as the education of our children is concerned. Equally clearly, they have failed in that duty.
All that remains to decide, is whether this failure is due to recklessness or negligence.
I think that conducting ideological experiments on hapless schoolchildren who would be irreversibly affected by those experiments, probably qualifies as recklessness.
Sadly no prison sentences, but perhaps bankruptcy would be a more satisfactory punishment anyway.
Fergus Pickering
July 24th, 2008 6:51pmI hate to say it but SATS were introduced by us - the Tories - and they ere just the same load of bollocks then as they are now. My seven-year-old daughter was judged satisfactory in SATS though she could neither read nor write. That was in 1991.