Teachers will work the system as long as they are under pressure for results

There's no room for error now schools are businesses. We need to hire more teachers and give them space to try new ideas

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• • Phillip Easton
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 April 2012 18.29 BST 
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Teachers have been 'gaming' the system to get their pupils through exams. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

According to a poll by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, 35% of teachers say they could be "tempted to cheat". I've been a teacher for 10 years, and those figures hardly surprise me. I've seen everything from teachers openly rubbishing other subjects to ensure revision session attendance, teachers advising pupils to retake a whole year to improve performance in one module (thus ensuring their results don't drop), all the way to teachers encouraging pupils to annotate texts in the form of a shorthand lesson plan. I've seen teachers using exam spec answers and teachers becoming examiners for a year to steal good practice: in other words, we all work the system. What really worries me, however, is that there is no grey area left untapped and staff will feel pressured to go that extra inch into full-blown plagiarism.

Of course, gaming the system to relieve pressure from senior management is as old as the hills. But to get your head around around the whole truth of the ugly situation means unpicking a much larger problem with education in the UK.

Let me burst some bubbles, to start with: schools are businesses. All employees at the schools I have worked at are held accountable for their results. Residuals (how well your students have improved on predicted grades) A*-C pass rates, Alps scores, t-Scores, value-added – all are unpicked by a good management team, in a bid to improve the business. Better pass rates equals a more attractive school, and therefore more students. More students means more money. We are businesses.

The switch to academy status is to most parents confusing and pointless – to staff it means that now, you are officially working for a corporation. These are not your fuzzy, friendly government-run schools, with endless patience for slack teachers. The potential here is to swiftly get rid of staff who don't make the grade. "Good!" you might think. "Lazy teachers! They have it easy anyway, let's cut away the dead wood!" And, perhaps, there is an argument for that.

However, when a teacher sits down and analyses their results, they are set targets. The targets are "aspirational", but still meant to be achievable. Even when your pass rates are 90% and over, or your Alps results scores are a 2 (1 being the best possible, 9 being the worst) targets are put in place. And here is where the problems can begin. It is very easy (and I have known this to be the case) that a teacher's worth is questioned in line with results. Lazy pupils? That'll be your fault for allowing that culture in your classroom. Lack of homework or revision? Why didn't you call parents in to make them understand the importance of the revision sessions after class?

The result is a Mobius strip of a career, where you can feel constantly that you're running to stand still. I've grown pretty resilient to it, but I can empathise with the teachers who haven't. By and large, we all do our best. If you put in the hours, your teaching is focused, you have a keen bunch of kids and you lay on the revision sessions, the outcomes should be good. But when they aren't, there is no room for error. The school up the road had a better year. Raise your game – Bogwood primary sent twice as many kids there this year, and we need bums on seats. And if your results are good, well open a paper and listen to everyone tell you it's because the exams got easier, and it was harder in their day. It might well have been, but it doesn't help the hard work we are doing right now.

Our current school model is not fit for purpose. Schools are hamstrung by a lack of funds to develop teaching practice, the space to develop new ideas, and the confidence to try them out. We need to be attracting innovators with visions for the future, starting with training staff and ending with a flexible, skills-based curriculum that evolves every couple of years. Teachers need time. Look at the current dropout rates of new teachers: over a third leave the job in under three years. Why? Pressure. Hiring more teachers would create jobs and allow us to teach smaller classes, and could create more non-contact time in which to develop the craft. Yet this idea is often ridiculed. Since when did we all get so blasé about the future of our youth?

NGOs, Kiran Bedi, The Media: Who’s The ‘Farest Of Them All?

By Farzana Versey

27 October, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Kiran Bedi is indeed wrong, but when media persons sit to judge her it is a bit of a laugh. Clearly, they do not look in the mirror.

Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to question all sorts of voluntary agencies and their modus operandi, we have a situation where a person is pinned down for wrongdoing without a backward glance at how the whole NGO business works, often with the media’s involvement.

Kiran Bedi has been fudging her bills, where she charged inflated amounts from her hosts. The main source was airline tickets. She would travel by economy class, that too at a discount because of her gallantry award, and charge business class fares. We now have these sanctimonious NGOs tell us that they took it at “face value”. Most NGOs send the tickets themselves. So, why did they let her use her travel agent? And what sort of auditing departments do they run? The reason for keeping quiet is not that they were afraid of Ms. Bedi’s wrath – they obviously did not mind shelling out Business Class fares – but because their finances will lead to many question marks.

This is my point. The media and certain activists have taken a convenient yo-yo stand on the Jan Lokpal Bill campaign. They propped him up and were completely besotted by Team Anna. After they were done with the photo-ops of the caps and the fasting and dancing, they realised that there were chinks in the armour. No one was interested in the deeper questions – it came down to superficial put-downs.

Let us get this fudging business clear. Kiran Bedi has admitted to it and says she will return the excess money that she wanted to use for her own NGO. Where do the NGOs get this kind of money that they can afford to invite people from different cities for seminars? I have often posed this query when we rubbish other institutions. Do you know that most of the activists themselves travel Business Class, stay at fancy hotels, and order the best food – for what? To gupshup about the state of the nation, the homeless, female foeticide, dowry, terrorism, communalism?

Check out the number of people who have left their high-paying corporate and bureaucratic jobs to “serve the nation” or “become useful members of society” or, “fight communalism”. They could do all of these by continuing to work. The reason is that activism has become a paying proposition. Have you seen the huge ads put up in newspapers inviting you to attend some conclave or the other? Is it affordable or even appropriate to shell out this kind of money on overheads? Besides government grants, there is a good deal of foreign sponsorship and donations from industrial houses. While the international ‘intervention’ often comes with some amount of side-effects (pushing of substandard products and services clubbed with the do-good, feel-good stuff), some of the Indian business black money that is not stashed away in banks abroad is routed to charitable organisation, with income tax exemption.

Why does the media not raise a voice about this? Has the media ever questioned journalists who attend these same seminars? Oh yes, the same journalists who give inflated bills to their accounts departments for their travels and hotel stays and “related expenses”. Journalists who sit at the desk and make phone calls but charge taxi fare for the quotes. Journalists who try to get tickets and freebies because they think they are in a position to ‘arrange something’. Journalists who do not have to spend a paisa at restaurants and spas because they just might mention it, in passing, in their next column. Journalists who give us scoops that are fed to them by interested parties or who conduct sting operations that are again paid for by interested parties.

Of course, it is not only the media at fault, but also those who host such talks. Corporate India’s ladies who lunch get a big high when they invite a person who can indeed talk and add to their resume. They flash such people as trophies to display their own worth as ‘aware citizens’. That some media people are doing their evening show with this group should be an eye-opener rather than a can-opener.

If, as some commentators wish to know, why people from public office enter the fray late in the day to become part of NGOs, then one might wish to ask them why they have timed their queries now and not for all these years. Do they ponder about it when they go on government-sponsored junkets?

The problem is that this whole Anna Hazare campaign has been a sham, and revealed more shams both on the inside as well as on the outside. It showed us how the ruling party and the opposition got to pay politics; the arrests also reveal a lot about those who got away without a scratch to their reputations. It is rather disingenuous of Digvijay Singh to say that if Kiran Bedi can offer to return the money, then every bribery case can be closed by saying the bribe-taker will return the money, including, A. Raja.

This is some gumption. A minister in the government of India is caught in a scam of frightening proportions and another government person uses this as an analogy. He is also quite gung-ho about such a thing happening at the highest level. The 2G Spectrum scam is not just about bribes, but also about how the nation was taken for a ride with the government, big industrialists and lobbies involved. It is about how the government functions and not merely who took how much. This case has come under scrutiny; many others do not.

If political agencies get a chance, they try to co-opt the activist groups. Most are willing to go along because it is the easy option. In some cases where they need the government to act, it does become a crucial mutual involvement. Therefore, if a political party invites activists, and they fudge figures about travel expenses, then what will the political parties do? Why not question the complete lack of balance by media groups? One can understand individual commentators taking a particular position, but why do they blatantly follow the newspaper/TV channel line? Where is their independence? Those who talk about objectivity should really look in their own backyards. There is favouritism everywhere and the media indulges in it as much as politicians, and the ‘activist’ role of the media should also come under scrutiny.

Tavleen Singh, Indian Express columnist, while raising some important points, makes a rather shocking comment: “My own observation is that many NGOs working in India appear to be funded by organisations bent on ensuring that India never becomes a developed country… In order for India to become a halfway developed country, we need new roads, airports, ports, modern railways and masses more electricity. In addition, according to experts, we need 500 more cities by 2050. The odd thing is that the NGOs who oppose steel plants, nuclear power stations, dams and aluminum refineries in India never object to the same things in China.”

Is this the definition of development, and the only model? As I have already said, many NGOs do have an agenda, but not only if they are funded by organisations that do not wish to see a developed India. By this logic, Gujarat should have no NGOs. And why must Indian NGOs object to what happens in China? Has the Indian government opposed the self-immolation of Tibetan monks and nuns in support of the Dalai Lama’s return? Has the BJP done so? Has the media done so?

Forget the NGOs for a while. Think about how these plants were to come up, who was to be uprooted and how it would affect the environment. If this development is only for those setting up factories and making India technologically advanced, then why are we still the hub of western-powered outsourcing? Are the NGOs involved here?

Why absolve the fat cats of business only to hit out at the NGOs unless they are specifically playing dirty? How many media people have taken free jet rides, attended fancy wedding functions abroad and written glowing accounts of them? Will they be sanctified as the facilitators of development? Or do they need to get closer to the seats of such power or perhaps such development? These are trick or treat queries. Ask them we must, for there is much beyond Kiran Bedi, whose banshee persona was in fact given a boost by the media when they needed her sound bytes. They were birds of a feather, until she was grounded.

The still-feathered ones have taken wing and are giving us a bird’s eye-view.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer.

We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.

Think Of A Tank

George Monbiot

 

Nadine Dorries won’t answer it. Lord Lawson won’t answer it. Michael Gove won’t answer it. But it’s a simple question, and if they don’t know it’s because they don’t want to. Where does the money come from? All are connected to groups whose purpose is to change the direction of public life. None will reveal who funds them.

When she attempted to restrict abortion counselling, Nadine Dorries MP was supported by a group called Right to Know. When other MPs asked her who funds it, she claimed she didn’t know(1,2). Lord Lawson is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which casts doubt on climate science. It demands “openness and transparency” from scientists(3). Yet he refuses to say who pays, on the grounds that the donors “do not wish to be publicly engaged in controversy.”(4) Michael Gove was chairman of Policy Exchange, an influential conservative thinktank. When I asked who funded Policy Exchange when he ran it, his office told me “he doesn’t have that information and he won’t be able to help you.”(5)

We know that to understand politics and the peddling of influence we must follow the money. So it’s remarkable that the question of who funds the thinktanks has so seldom been asked.

There are dozens of groups in the UK which call themselves free market or conservative thinktanks, but they have a remarkably consistent agenda. They tend to oppose the laws which protect us from banks and corporations; to demand the privatisation of state assets; to argue that the rich should pay less tax; and to pour scorn on global warming. What the thinktanks call free market economics looks more like a programme for corporate power.

Some of them have a turnover of several million pounds a year, but in most cases that’s about all we know. In the US, groups claiming to be free market thinktanks have been exposed as sophisticated corporate lobbying outfits, acting in concert to promote the views of the people who fund them. In previous columns, I’ve shown how such groups, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, built and directed the Tea Party movement(6,7).

The Kochs and the oil company Exxon have also funded a swarm of thinktanks which, by coincidence, all spontaneously decided that manmade climate change is a myth(8,9). A study in the journal Environmental Politics found that such groups, funded by economic elites and working through the media, have been “central to the reversal of US support for environmental protection, both domestically and internationally.”(10)

Jeff Judson, who has worked for 26 years as a corporate lobbyist in the US, has explained why thinktanks are more effective than other public relations agencies. They are, he says, “the source of many of the ideas and facts that appear in countless editorials, news articles, and syndicated columns.”(11) They have “considerable influence and close personal relationships with elected officials”. They “support and encourage one another, echo and amplify their messages, and can pull together … coalitions on the most important public policy issues.” Crucially, they are “virtually immune to retribution … the identity of donors to think tanks is protected from involuntary disclosure.”(12)

The harder you stare at them, the more they look like lobby groups working for big business without disclosing their interests. Yet throughout the media they are treated as independent sources of expertise. The BBC is particularly culpable. Even when the corporate funding of its contributors has been exposed by human rights or environmental groups, it still allows them to masquerade as unbiased commentators, without disclosing their interests.

For the sake of democracy, we should know who funds the organisations which call themselves thinktanks. To this end I contacted 15 groups. Eleven of them could be described as free market or conservative; four as progressive. I asked them all a simple question: “Could you give me the names of your major donors and the amount they contributed in the last financial year?”. I gave their answers a score out of five for transparency and accountability.

Three of the groups I contacted – Right to Know, the International Policy Network and Nurses for Reform – did not answer my calls or emails. Six others refused to give me any useful information. They are the Institute of Economic Affairs, Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Christian Medical Fellowship. They produced similar excuses, mostly concerning the need to protect the privacy of their donors. My view is that if you pay for influence, you should be accountable for it. Nul points.

Civitas did fractionally better, scoring 1. Its website names a small number of the donors to its schools(13), but it would not reveal the amount they had given or the identity of anyone else. The only rightwing thinktank that did well was Reform, which sent me a list of its biggest corporate donors: Lloyds (£50k), Novo Nordisk (£48k), Sky (£42k), General Electric (£41k) and Danone (£40k). Reform lists its other corporate sponsors in its annual review(14), and earns 4 points. If they can do it, why can’t the others?

The progressives were more accountable. Among them, Demos did least well. It sent me a list of its sponsors, but refused to reveal how much they gave. It scores 2.5. The Institute for Public Policy Research listed its donors and, after some stumbling, was able to identify the biggest of them: the European Union (a grant of E800,000) and the Esmee Fairburn Foundation(£86k). It scores 3.5. The New Economics Foundation sent me a list of all its donors and the amount each gave over the past year, earning 4 points. The biggest funders are the Network for Social Change (£173k), the department of health (£124k) and the Aim Foundation (£100k). Compass had already published a full list in its annual report(15). The biggest source by far is the Communication Workers’ Union, which gave it £78k in 2009. Compass gets 5 out of 5.

The picture we see, with the striking exception of Reform, is of secrecy among the rightwing groups, creating a powerful impression that they have something to hide. Shockingly, this absence of accountability – and the influence-peddling it doubtless obscures – does not affect their charitable status.

The funding of these groups should not be a matter of voluntary disclosure. As someone remarked in February 2010, “secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics … it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”(16) Who was this leftwing firebrand? One David Cameron.

I charge that the groups which call themselves free market thinktanks are nothing of the kind. They are public relations agencies, secretly lobbying for the corporations and multi-millionaires who finance them. If they wish to refute this claim, they should disclose their funding. Until then, whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.

www.monbiot.com

Students name best (and worst) universities

By Richard Garner, Education Editor and Laurie Martin
Wednesday, 17 August 2011

 

A year is a long time in the world of higher education. A university that has been the most expensive in the country will become one of the best in terms of value for money next year.

The University of Buckingham is ranked third in a table of student satisfaction published today – but those above it will be charging the maximum £9,000 a year for a three-year course.

Professor Terence Keeley, the vice-chancellor, said "We're going from the most expensive university in the UK to the cheapest," he said yesterday, "and we still don't know how to handle that psychologically."
Buckingham, the UK's only private university, scores 93 per cent in a table showing the percentage of students sat each university satisfied with their courses – putting it in third place.

Top of the league table is the higher charging Brighton and Sussex Medical School followed by Cambridge University.

The table, however, would appear to show that if students are looking for value for money next year, they need to look outside of the traditional state-funded university you can go away to and study at for three years.
All those in the top ten that can charge £9,000 a year for their courses and those in England are doing so.
Buckingham University, who will be charging £7,500 a year for a three-year course, and the Open University, which is charging £5,000 a year, are the exceptions.

In Buckingham's case, courses are spread over a two-year period – so the actual cost is £11,250. However, that is still significantly less than the £27,000 for a three-year course at a university charging the maximum.
Professor Keeley is clear as to why students rate the university.

"That's straightforward," he said. "In every other university in Britain, the client is the Government – so they have to work to government targets. Here the client is the student."

Christina Lloyd, director of teaching and learning at the Open University – which has been in the top three for the past seven years, added: "As students become more focused on their finances, quality, value for money and the student experience are more important than ever."

Overall, 83 per cent of students who responded to this year's national student survey said they were satisfied with their courses, nine per cent were dissatisfied and eight per cent said they did not know.

Individual figures ranged from 95 per cent for Brighton and Sussex Medical school to just 67 per cent for Ravensbourne College, a university sector college specialising in digital media and design.

In the further education sector, the figures were more varied with 100 per cent satisfaction registered at Trafford College in Greater Manchester but only 39 per cent in Barnfield College.in Luton and Bedford.
Whilst universities were pleased that the overall satisfaction figures were a slight increase on last year, there was a warning of the impact cuts and rises in fees could have.