I am not shocked to learn that the latest OECD Economic Survey of the UK is not convinced about the veracity of the UK's alleged incredible rise educational standards under the last Labour government. Here's some of their comments:
That's subjective but exam standards really rose under the Labour government, didn't they:
So educational standards have not risen and pupils are not any better taught or more intelligent than they were in the 1980s. So when teachers and government ministers said that any questioning of exam standards was disrespectful to hard working pupils, they were hiding the truth; shocking.
I turned to the BBC, after all they have an education news section on their website expecting to find an angry piece decrying the lies that they and we had been fed by the last Labour government. Imagine my surprise when as at 8pm on Thursday 17 March I can find not a word about the OECD report; are they trying to hide the truth from the British public?
Here are the screen dumps to show that the BBC are not reporting this relevant news story...
'Despite sharply rising school spending per pupil during the last ten years, improvements in schooling outcomes have been limited in the United Kingdom.'Limited improvements but Labour have boasted for years about how education standards have improved under their increased 'investment'.
That's subjective but exam standards really rose under the Labour government, didn't they:
'Official test scores and grades in England show systematically and significantly better performance than international and independent tests … The measures used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) … show significant increases in quality over time, while the measures based on cognitive tests not used for grading show declines or minimal improvements.'How can that be? Surely the last Labour government and the teaching unions would not have conspired to artificially boost exam result, would they?
'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years... independent surveys of cognitive skills do not support this development.'This is shocking news and a damning indictment of the last Labour government, although to be fair the OECD do also say that 'The share of A–level entries awarded grade A has risen continuously for 18 years and has roughly trebled since 1980'
So educational standards have not risen and pupils are not any better taught or more intelligent than they were in the 1980s. So when teachers and government ministers said that any questioning of exam standards was disrespectful to hard working pupils, they were hiding the truth; shocking.
I turned to the BBC, after all they have an education news section on their website expecting to find an angry piece decrying the lies that they and we had been fed by the last Labour government. Imagine my surprise when as at 8pm on Thursday 17 March I can find not a word about the OECD report; are they trying to hide the truth from the British public?
Here are the screen dumps to show that the BBC are not reporting this relevant news story...
The logic is "They met their targets, and each year's target were harder that the previous, so there must have been an improvement."
ReplyDeleteThe trouble is, that unless the targets are set by real experts, they can easily be fiddled.
When I was working, we had targets to meet regarding the time for the repair of electronic equipment and we lost "Brownie Points" if we missed them. So if it was clear that a target was going to be missed, it was easy to pull staff off that job and work on ones where the target could be met. This was totally regardless of the actual need. The same is done with teaching. All subjects count equally, so why bother with maths and science when you can teach less rigorous subjects?