This England

Miranda Rose Smith

These people will put Monty Python completely out of business. If this is reality, what will the satire be. Do they know the boy CAN spell the so-called "f word?" If he writes f*** off, maybe he thinks its spelled "face" or "fake" or "folk" or "foke" or....

john miller

Allow me to convey some basic meaning to the chief examiner...

Shy Guy

Miranda Rose Smith
June 30th, 2008 6:53am:

These people will put Monty Python completely out of business.

I'm imagining the skit as I type: "Ministry of Silly Marks".

For those of you who know not what I'm waxing nostalgic about, here's Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks clip.

Roll on the floor and laugh - even at work. It's good for you.

Geoff Miller

‘It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling.’

It also shows up some other "skills" which should have been rewarded by withdrawing marks.

They just dont get it do they.

Basically the push is on to mark kids up so that the attainment level is fiddled.

I suspect 20 years ago the paper would have been torn up and the child punished.

But we cant have that can we.

Instead he/she is rewarded.

What messge will this kid take from the experience?

Do it again? Over and over?

Perhaps a slot at the Hay on Wye Festival?

Roy

"It would be wicked to give it a zero ...". Surely it is more wicked than wicked to give it marks. This is the absence of all truth and common sense once again coming into the lime light. Not just the dead-beats but a chief examiner employed in the education system! Will questions be asked in parliament, I wonder?

phil

perhaps these people are indeed the aliens from the sighted space craft -who allows people like this loose on our children ?

JS

I had to check my calendar to see whether it was April 1. Sadly, no.

Terry

Peter Buckroyd should be told to "f*** off" out of the education system. Indeed, all papers marked ounder his watch should be remarked by a competent regime seeking to educate kids rather than to impose Buckroyd's lack of cvilised standards on society.

Paul

It seems like every day is now 1st April in the UK.

EC

Antonio Gramsci anyone?

Ann

This is a storm in a teacup by people who don't understand the GCSE system or how papers are marked. The pupil would still fail, being awarded (say) 5 marks for spelling but failing to gain the other 95 marks.

john doe

Forget the spelling and meaning. How about a mark for audacity and unpretentiousness, not to mention mastery of at least one lexical item from Middle English or pseudo-Latin. Then expel them.

Charlie

Education is largely dominated by those from an arts background. What they do not realise that in certain parts of engineering, sloppy design can lead to an accidident and fatalities. Who wants to fly in an aeroplane where calculations made by an engineer are wrong which lead to it crashing and killing hundreds or thousands of people? A major problem with people entering the engineering profession is that people have major gaps in their knowledge of physics, chemistry and mathematics. The arts maffia in the education establishment believe it is possible to achieve an education and be bereft of any facts.This attitude is positively dangerous when approaching the training of engineers.

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Shy Guy: My favorite was "The Penguin on the Television." How about a skit in which the need to reward "the basic skills of conveying meaning and some spelling" clash with the sexual harassment and/or racism laws?

TDK

In years gone by, no marks were awarded for correct spelling. On the contrary marks were deducted for incorrect spelling. Positive marks were awarded for comprehension and content.

I can envisage an exam question wherein marks are awarded for correctly quoting Kenneth Tynan. Getting the quote right would deserve marks and getting the spelling wrong would warrant deductions.

I also think that putting the words into dialogue might be appropriate for say creative writing.

However, if the writer used the expression merely because they cannot think of anything more appropriate, then it would be foolish to award marks. No one should pretend that poverty of imagination should be recognised as merit worthy.

Michael B

I have the impression Buckroyd is more concerned about awarding himself high marks for being so very non-judgmental, open-minded and above trifling, repressive, moralistic concerns. This is about Buckroyd, not the pupil.

Peter A

Peter Buckroyd would be failing both this child and society as a whole with his stingy marks and lack of lateral creative thinking.What he should do is treat the F*** O** as art(claiming on behalf of the child that it always was),give it top marks,frame it,offer it to those experts in making something out of nothing,Serrota and Satchi, and turn this obvious child genius into a multi-mullionaire and pop culture celebrity.

Chris

This comes as no surprise whatever. I left a 20 year career in education in 2002 because this kind of thing had become the norm. I no longer felt that I was helping students by being part of a corrupt and corrupting system.

Some exam boards also indulge in a practice known as 'border lining'. Examiners are ordered to remark any script lying a few marks from the borderline into a higher grade to see if they haven't 'missed' a few marks which would push the candidate up into that higher bracket.

It will come as no surprise that no such practice is in place for candidates a few marks from the bottom of a grade boundary, to see if they have been over-marked. The movement of grades is incessantly upward.

And we are all expected to applaud the ever increasing achievements in education.

To use the vernacular, (and to achieve 7.5%) - educational achievement my a**e'.

Thinkster

I have read in various surveys and articles that compared to other nations, the British / English treat their children appallingly. The tragedy here beyond this gentleman's idiocy is the betrayal to his student. Children trust their superiors and are supposed to look up to them with a combination of fear and respect, the respect earned from an intuitive sense that their mentor is doing the right thing. What this terrible man has done is sink low rather than create standard for his students to aspire too. No wonder we cannot win at sports, the Eurovision song contest or really earn any respect across the globe any more. Surely the time has come for some level of revolution before yet another generation of flawed children 'grow up' to become parents and 'educators'? On what grounded foundations is this country going to build an economy and contribute to the world a decade from now? Revolted? So revolt! Don't just sit their blogging and commenting! (Am working on something, so am doing my part towards a long term solution.)

Andy

In more enlightened times this pupil would have got a stick across his arse and made to re-take the exam.

d1carter

Holy S**t!! Do I get an "A" for conveying a meaning and correct spelling?

Jo

This is how far the maggoty, Marxist acid has burned - down to the bone. There's no solution for decay so terminal.

Once you send out the signals of non-judgmentalism, who knows where it will lead. If you're lucky, it leads to your child swearing in front of auntie Vye because she didn't buy a Playstation for the brat's birthday. And if you're unlucky, it leads to children so selfish, self-obsessed and up themselves they think they can pull a knife.

If you don't nip this sort of stuff in the bud, it's a recipe for disaster.

What a wicked, spiteful betrayal of all our children. And we're all paying for this buffoon Buckroyd in our taxes.

Charles

'Buckroyd' - unfortunate name, under the circumstances.

Verity

Michael B 12:18 - Well observed, sir!

Searcher

If "f*** off" was a correct answer, what was the question?

john doe

"If "f*** off" was a correct answer, what was the question?"

"What would you consider the most appropriate greeting if you met the chief examiner?

phil

Andy I might think that but I could not say it (lol)

Roger Thornhill

Do I get marks towards my medical degree if I stab someone in the belly?

GaryL

Eight out of five teachers think that no child should be below average.

Frank Pulley

Verity

"Michael B 12.18 Well observed Sir."

Yes indeed, and that probably accounts for the student's answer, regardless of the question, Michael B (and Searcher).

Rob-NY

I look forward to this lad's contribution to this comments thread.

Herbert Thornton

What next - Peter Buckroyd's appointment as Minister of Education?

The references to Monty Python, not to mention the Ministry of Silly Walks, remind me that Canada is on a similar track.

In Canada's case, we actually have what, in effect, amount to Ministries of Silly Complaints - http://ezralevant.com/2008/06/did-you-hear-the-one-about-the.html

Neil Saunders

What is truly "wicked" is to permit children to write obscenities in examinations and then to compound this by rewarding them!

But this is not happening by accident. The poster who mentioned Antonio Gramsci (EC) had it right, I think.

Ron Todd

There is something I don't understand. Why are children like that allowed to enter exams?
When I was at school 30 years ago I had to sit internal school exams in the spring to prove to the school that it was worth while putting me up for the external exams in the summer.

I needed extra tutoring in English to get through. If I had written f*** off on the paper I would have been given six of the belt (I saw one boy put into hospital by an over eager maths teacher)

My parents would have been told and I certainly would have not been allowed to sit the external exams.

logdon

When on that fateful day an out of touch judge asked, 'is this a book you'd wish your servants or wife to read', little did he know the elephant trap he'd set himself. Subsequently this previously little known book flew off the shelves in unprecedented numbers, sold to the prurient for a bit of cheap titillation. How many of those who bought it, then actually read it right through to the end? I'd say the same about Ulysses, but infinitely more so. This shows the disconnect between words used in an appropriate literary context ie the language Mellor would have authentically reached for and pornography. If these pupils had used an expletive in context that at least would show some sort of ability to choose words for impact and meaning but even so I'm uneasy when there are many other words which will do the job. And is it right for schoolchildren to have a sort of tacit approval when using this speech? If a pupil subsequently told a teacher to eff off who could blame them when it's seemingly OK in an exam? Do these clodhoppers in dandy libertarian clothes know what they're doing or is anything allowed in our shiny new Britain?

David Lindsay

The replacement of O-levels with GCSEs was the work of the same Prime Minister who refused to recognise the Muzorewa-Smith Government, instead clearing the way for the Chinese-backed Robert Mugabe by holding out for one so much better, the Soviet-backed Joshua Nkomo.

Among much else...

Kennybhoy

Alas, this particular rot goes back a long way. There is a splendid passage in C S Lewis' "That Hideous Strength", published in 1945, describing one of the main characters in the following terms.

``It must be remembered that in Mark's mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical -- merely "Modern". The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.''

Guess what Mark's vocation was...?

Mark Smith

When I was at school in the 1960s I remember the deputy headmaster washing a boy's mouth out with soap and water for swearing, and on another occasion the headmaster warned us that any boy caught swearing would get the hiding of his life. How times change.

john doe

"When I was at school in the 1960s I remember the deputy headmaster washing a boy's mouth out with soap and water for swearing, and on another occasion the headmaster warned us that any boy caught swearing would get the hiding of his life. How times change."....Mark Smith.

I was caned twice, once for smoking and again for missing a cricket match. Those were not times to get nostalgic about. They were sadistic methods that either crushed the free spirit out of a boy or turned him into an incorrigible rebel.
And now we have the the opposite extreme.An almost total loss of authority.

What happened to a middle way? Wisdom and balance.

JohnA

The examiner should have failed the child for not writing a capital letter for the first word of the sentence.
And the examiner should be sacked for being unaware of this basic spelling rule.

Adam B.

I met a headmistress who declared that grades are forever going up because "children are becoming more intelligent." It makes you weep.

Adam B.

Why not award marks for applying the pen (the right way round) to the paper? It shown an understanding of implement usage.

F***k Pulley

There does seem to be a rather sanctimonious air about this thread that I feel obliged to disperse a little. To all the above above commenters (and indeed, Melanie): put you hands on your hearts and tell me that you have never expressed frustration with that well known phrase or saying, either by mouthing it, writing it, or thinking it. Two words: one is 'off' - which we all use daily in all sorts of ways. The other has been in use for many centuries if not indeed millennia and has become one of the most frequently used verbs in myriad metaphors, as well as in its functional description as both noun and verb. So what is actually wrong with the honesty of the student who is being admonished hereupon? I think probably the Chief Marker has a sense of humour, which is sadly lacking in general on this thread.

And Melanie ... you used the expression yourself within your post, even though the you bleeped three letters from it (which we all do to from time to time when we are trying to make allowances for the tender susceptibilities of the reader).

With that I shall say Good f***king night! (in either a metaphorical or the literal meaning - take your pick, but I hope it's the latter).

Markedoff

Kennyboy asked: Guess what Mark's vocation was...?

An examiner?

Fabio P.Barbieri

EC: Antonio Gramsci was a highly educated man, and his "hegemony" agenda depended on the mass education of the working classes, to break the bourgeois stronghold on the most valuable social good of all - education. He would regard this kind of thing as the latest petty-bourgeois strategy to keep the working classes down, by encouraging them to wallow in a kind of culture and communication that is inherently inferior. And he would not be wrong; how many of NuLab's decision makers and camp followers are public school educated? How long has their attempt been to level downwards the whole state educational sector, while leaving the independent sector intact and indeed thriving? If there is one thing that our social leadership, from the BBC on down, clearly shows, is that they love to see the lower classes stay low - as low as they possibly can; The Royle Family is their notion of what they should be like. A really educated son of a single mother or of a long-term unemployed couple would upset their preconceptions, poor darlings.

Jo

Yes, Frank, we have all used the expression, but if you let it go unchallenged at school it sets the signal that you can do it anywhere. That's a recipe for upping the ante among schoolchildren themselves and when they become adults among adults.

It's one thing to speak like this in the playground but another to condone it - that's the point.

Do I really want my kids swearing at me in my house on a regular basis? Or would they like me to swear at them every day? Doesn't that just make for an aggressive society?

I reserve swearing for when I'm very angry and right now I'm angry at that ****wit ****royd for telling kids that this is OK in a formal part of life.

Tried getting a job interview and saying **** in it lately?

Frank Pulley

Jo

Yes, I know, love. It's terrible; but I don't suppose the kid in question was granted a doctorate on the strength of his impertinent scatology and there are a lot worse things being pumped into their heads from Gramsci's notes than tolerance to childish outbursts with the pen or the vocal chords. In fact when I first entered the infant school playgound in the 1930s the phrase was in regular currency then, both in the children's lexicon and indeed that of the teachers in their occasional ripostes to the cheekier of the urchins wot I was dragged up wiv, so you can't pin that on either Antonio or his disciples (much as I would like you to).

As for job interviews ... I've already retired five times, how many more f***king times do you want me to return to the grindstone? :-)

Btw Rod Liddle got employed by this Magazine - so foul- mouthery can't be all that much of an obstacle to getting a job!

john doe

You've hit the nail on the head there Fabio. TV is controlled by those with exactly those intentions in mind. Dumb the plebs down and then they are no threat to our privileges.
Trouble is the trivialised, uneducated masses are also no defence against Islamic Jihad because they know no other world beyond football, Big Brother and Pop Idol.

Frank Pulley

Perhaps the the child's two word answer was to the question: "What single thing do you think Gordon Brown could do to improve Britain as a nation?"

In which case he should have been given full marks, rather than a token mark-up for correct spelling.

Robert Wood

Well, being able to spell f*** correctly will be of assistance to those who create entire sentences out of various forms of this word.

Gavin

Is the photograph illustrating this article a model of a desired return of the kind of punitive education which once scarred children for life - and failed to educate them? Well, judging by the banality of the responses here, I guess so.

Frank Pulley

Slumming again Gavin? Getting down n' dirty among the hoi polloi in the cause of research? Or are you getting lonely in your superiority and just dropping in for a quick sneer?

Jo

Gavin, anyone with an ounce of common sense took the picture in a jokey vein because it was an image of someone in a dunce cap doing the teaching, which fitted perfectly with the laughability of the Peter Buckroyd’s behaviour. In the form of Buckroyd, a buffoon now runs our classrooms.

If you gave a damn about cruelty to children, you’d be worried about the fact so many of them are being stabbed to death or bullied to the point they self-harm or are committing suicide thanks to a culture in which everyone is afraid of setting boundaries to them and in which bullying and violence thrives.

But then that would bring us back to the focus of this debate, something you seem keen to avoid, especially since you proffer no alternative yourself to what you call “banal” responses here.

Gavin

Jo - using the horror of childrens' suicide or of getting stabbed to try to guilt-trip someone who disagrees with you or in order to claim some kind of moral superiority you is, I'm afraid, pretty squalid.

OK - arguments. I teach in an institute of teacher education. What I see there, as a fairly detached part-time employeee, is trainers far removed from the stereotype of Gramsci-intoxicated marxists addle-headed with trendy theory, but rather, decent, pragmatic people who have dedicated their lives to education and whose sole aim is to equip trainees with the skills neccesary to teach. What I've seen with the student teachers, year in, year out, is a body of similarly pragmatic, level-headed and dedicated future teachers whose sole aim is to equip school children with the skills, knowledge and spirit of enquiry they will need in adult life.

The only thing which frustrates this process is the narrow and reductive nature of the national curriculum,and its Gradgrind nature, so that for example in the teaching of English, whole texts (plays, novels) are no longer studied for their themes, structures and poetic power,, and have been replaced by the soulless dissection of selected passages - a kind of Gradgrind attempt to quantify everything into measurable facts and figures.

My objection to the responses on this blog is that the responses are a knee-jerk reaction, born of ignorance, and a sort of group massaging of dull prejudice, rather than intelligent debate. But then, I guess that is its true purpose!

As for slumming it, you said it!

Jo

Must reads:

Melanie's piece on this subject in today's Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030975/A-examiner-awarding-pupil-marks-writing---leaves-verdict-education--expletive-deleted.html

Plus her piece in the Wall St Journal on British judges licking the toenails of terror suspects.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=595

Plus her piece in Standpoint magazine on the al Dura 'killing'.

See the right hand side of this page for links to these features.

Incidentally, the Standpoint website carries comments on the al Dura story

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/faking-a-killing-july

and if you get a chance to see the magazine in hard copy, it has photos showing the hammy acting of the 'victim'. The 'corpse' keeps changing position. Hmmm... was someone corpsing for their big take?

It's the sort of thing that lends itself to a TV documentary considering the coverage the 'killing' generated, but, of course, that would mean that if a British mainstream channel commissioned such a show it would mean eating humble pie over the way they carried it on their news programmes.

And that just wouldn't do, would it?

Jo

There’s nothing squalid about it, Gavin. The only thing that’s squalid is you using learnt-by-rote Guardianista sanctimony to cover up the loss of control of our classrooms and, it then follows, our children’s behaviour.

The levels of self-harm among young people are simply without precedent and I’m afraid I simply don’t accept that it’s pure coincidence that it has arrived at a time when children have seemingly no restraint on them in the classrooms whatsoever.

The bullies know they can get away with tormenting other children and why wouldn’t they?

Anything ****ing goes, apparently.

Gavin

Not learnt-by-rote, Jo - I speak out of experience and what I have tried to learn from it.

As it happens I agree with you about bullying - again, from personal experience and observation of its practice on others in my private, old-fashioned boys' school many years ago. I feel passionately that teachers can often be reluctant to confront and deal with it - but this can be from a mixture of motives, including the good old-fashioned belief that a bit of toughening up is good for children. I would add in here another factor I didn't mention in my last post, namely the fact that teachers are overwhelmed by paperwork, born out of Thatcher's refusal to allow professionals to do what they are trained for, and perpetuated by the current government. Most teachers are hard-working, utterly deicated - and exhausted.

As for suicide, surely this is a complex and distressing issue,to which a number of factors can be attributed, including, to name but a few, role models of aggession and violence in popular culture, a confusing welter of mixed moral messages and a media onslaught in which children feel rudderless, homophobia, racism ... growing up in Britain today is surely a tough and bewildering experience, and yes, children are desparate for a sense of stability and a moral compass. I just cannot see how this would be provided by the punitive approach advocated on these blogs.

My main point is that what goes on in schools bears absolutely no relation to the stereotype so lovingly polished up here.This makes for a fruitless dialogue about a critical issue.

Jo

Stereotype? Look who’s talking, Gavin.

Of all the comments here – and there are more than 50 now – there are only two I can see that asked for the return of corporal punishment, one or two others have observed “how times have changed” but that was all.

In your warped imagination, that translates into “the punitive approach advocated on these blogs”, when you can see perfectly well it doesn’t represent the view of most of the posters – and certainly not of Ms Phillips’ original post.

Beyond that stereotype, you’ve also set about deviously trying to imply that most of the people here are out to rubbish teachers’ efforts: “Most teachers are hard-working, utterly deicated - and exhausted.” Er, no one has said they aren’t well-intentioned, hard-working people, so why pretend to be slapping down this argument when it was never put forward in the first place?

The point of Ms Phillips’ post – and indeed the bulk of her commentary on education – is the failure of leadership.

This man, Peter Buckroyd, is a chief examiner, a role that involves laying down standards. He has quite spectacularly failed children, teachers and parents with his stupid comments.

I’m not surprised that someone who earns a crust from one of these places that is supposed to provide leadership to teachers should be so defensive, but you could do a better job of it, especially since we have testimony from someone who gave up teaching thanks to what they called a “corrupt and corrupting system”.

That is Ms Phillips’ beef and the beef of the people here: the system. And blame lies with those at the top – with the politicians and leading educationalists – including chief examiners – who have led us to this mess.

Steve Lee, London

"Shy Guy" no need to watch the Ministry Of Silly Walks sketch - just pop down to Tottenham, Peckham or Brixton and see a live show free...

Ann

Oh yes, ranting about Zimbabwe is so very relevant ...
The other rants from the Disgusted of Tunbrudge Wells types -including MP - also show nil understanding of the GCSE system.

Chris

Further to my post on June 30th at 10.49:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/education/2281562/Government-blamed-for-%27exaggerating-Sats-test-marks%27.html

You read it here first!

BTW borderlining was going on at least 10 years ago.