Education, Education, Education

The Best Bits of Ted Wragg

E. C. Wragg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134309153
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

When New Labour came into office in 1997, its commitment to 'education, education, education' captured the imagination of the public. This collection of humorous articles by Ted Wragg between 1998 to 2003 exposes the real state of education during this period, when educational policy was never far from the headlines.

No one escapes Ted's sharp-shooting wit: from the 'blamers and shamers' who try to turn teacher-bashing into a national pastime to the 'pale policy wonks' in the Department of Education, who issue regular hare-brained initiatives from the mysterious 'Tony Zoffis'.

Split into seven issue-focused chapters, this hilarious collection will be a tonic for anyone finding themselves unsure whether to laugh or cry about recent developments in the world of education.

three
Just testing . . .

One way of figuring out whether the education factory is producing enough sausage rolls is to apply tests. I use tests both in teaching and in my research, so I quite like them. But over the years I have also learned their limitations. It is a mistake to expect a single test to diagnose needs, sum up progress through the national curriculum, permit comparisons between schools, teachers or pupils, inform parents and employers, or tell the nation how we are doing this year compared with last year.

Unfortunately the national curriculum, and indeed the whole education system, are now tested to death. Five-year-olds are assessed on a 117-item profile. Voluntary or compulsory national tests are given almost every year of a child’s life. Some 17-year-olds take five public exams in a single day. Each summer 24 million examination scripts have to be marked within three weeks, a tenfold increase within a decade or so.

Small wonder that everyone is neurotic. Heads and teachers are terrified they may drop down the league tables. Parents fret that the quality of their family’s genetic capital will be questioned. Children themselves feel the stress, worried lest they in turn disappoint their parents. The nation is engulfed by tidal waves of guilt. Anxious fathers speak to unborn offspring though a tube pressed against the mother’s abdomen: ‘Two twos are four . . . Battle of Waterloo 1815 . . . two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen make one molecule of water . . .’ Babies listen to tapes of Shakespeare in their prams.

In this hothouse atmosphere, some children can easily miss out, especially those from a working-class background. As a former member of that group, until I drew my first salary check and bought a semi, I know the traditional response to adversity. It is short, Anglo Saxon, and consists of just two words.

We all know who to blame

Did you know that adults who are seven feet tall are three feet bigger than those who are four feet high? Moreover, people who are four feet tall are three feet shorter than those who are seven feet high. There, I knew you would be shocked.

But here is the rub. When those little grown ups were babies, were they three feet shorter than the big babies? Were they hell. They were probably only about six inches shorter. So clearly they have drifted further apart as they grew – a foot shorter, then eighteen inches, two feet. Were they not eating their wheatythings properly? I blame schools.

That was more or less the reasoning portrayed in press accounts earlier this month of a report stating that differences in the performance of the best and worst schools increased as children got older. Of course they do. It would be astonishing if it were otherwise. The older, bigger or cleverer you get, the more space there is to be different. A 16-year-old with serious learning difficulties may well be performing like an 8-year-old. It is pretty hard to be eight years below average at the age of 7.

The second criticism aimed at schools was that children at the age of 7 are ahead of ‘expected national standards’, whereas at later stages they are behind these expected standards. The assumption seems to be that the test benchmarks originally laid down are perfect measures, therefore any deviation is a sign of failure, or success. But is it?

At a primary school in Birmingham they once entered four of their 11-year-olds for GCSE in maths. All obtained a grade C pass. In other words, using that particular thermometer, they performed like above-average 16-year-olds, five-plus years better than ‘expected’.

In the Key Stage 2 national curriculum maths test, however, the same four pupils gained level 5, the supposed achievement of the average 13-year-old. On this thermometer they were a mere two years better than ‘expected’.

The scores on two national tests, therefore, varied by over three years. Yet we are not talking about two different schools, two classes or two year groups. It was the same pupils in the very same month.

The identical point can be made about preliminary figures for baseline tests given to 5-year-olds on entry to school. I am in favour of the sensible use of baseline testing, having recommended it for Birmingham when I chaired their Education Commission five years ago, but only for diagnostic purposes. However, the ‘norm’ and ‘average’ merchants are already out in force.

Baseline tests are best guesses at what 5-year-old children of different abilities and backgrounds might be able to do on entering formal schooling. Many will be able to count up to ten, tie their own shoelaces. Some will be able to write their own name, and the odd one will have translated Schopenhauer into Sanskrit. Others, sadly, will display less intellectual or social skill.

As soon as it was revealed that 60 or 70 per cent of 5-year-olds could not do some of these things, the ‘norm’ merchants immediately began to accuse them of being ‘below average’ or ‘failing to meet the expected standards’. At least they couldn’t blame schools and teachers.

I suppose one of the biggest failures in our educational system is the large number of people who have no comprehension at all of what the term ‘average’ might actually mean. When the first national tests were given to 7-year-olds, roughly 50 per cent scored at level 2, the supposed ‘average’, and 25 per cent at each of levels 1 and 3. It was the sort of distribution you would expect.

‘A quarter of pupils below average’ the headlines screamed (apart from those who wrote ‘a third of pupils below average’). Clearly the norm merchants will not rest until everyone is well above average, and the word itself finally explodes.

I could get to like the idea of blaming people for what is only to be expected, however. It is a really good wheeze. I must give more publicity to some little-known sins, and the villains who commit them. Did you know, for example, that:

• Most train drivers spend a third of their life fast asleep, yet they are supposed to be responsible for our safety.
• Stupid people have a much lower IQ than clever people.
• Daily newspapers must be poor, since 99 per cent of people simply throw them away, and some even use them as toilet paper.
• Thursday has never once managed to follow Tuesday; Wednesday has always got in first.
• Forty-nine per cent of all bishops are below average.

I blame schools. Might as well.

18 September 1998

A Plutonic truth is out there

In all those speculative treatises about whether aliens landed from outer space and built the pyramids at Giza, no one has yet pointed out that the working class came from Pluto. I know this for a fact, because my Uncle Ralph told me when I was a little Plutonian.

Apparently an interstellar space probe left Pluto aeons ago. On the way to Alpha Centauri someone realised there was no beer on board, so they stopped at Barnsley to try and find a pub. At that time there was no such institution and they had to move on. Unfortunately several of the pub hunters, pausing to relieve themselves behind a bush, were left behind as the starship took off.

We Plutonians have been marooned here ever since, waiting in vain for the spaceship to return, condemned in the interim to a lifetime of tin baths, chips and white sliced bread, consoled only by our whippets. Escape into the middle class, and your Plutonic origins are given away the minute you wipe your nose on your sleeve and ask for a pint pot of tea.

Our patron saint is Sisyphus, the legendary King of Corinth, whose eternal punishment in Hades was to roll a massive stone to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled back down again. Many Plutonians who have escaped from their humble roots work in public service, especially in education. The labour can sometimes seem equally fruitless, but at least you get to wear a suit.

There is permanent angst about the plight of working-class children in the education system. The facts are well established. If you are born into what nowadays are known as ‘D and E households’, as opposed to toffs’ palaces in social groups higher up the alphabet, the odds are stacked heavily against you.

Around three-quarters of students in universities come from the two highest social groups, the As and Bs. Most of the loot in our society belongs to a relatively small percentage of the population. The bright son or daughter of a professional parent is about twice as likely to go on to higher education as the equally talented child of a manual worker.

Plutonians can find school an alienating place. When I started infant school I could never understand why, in my reading book, ‘Daddy’ was always taking a spade into the garden to dig. My dad sometimes worked seven twelve-hour shifts and arrived home knackered. The last thing he wanted to do was dig up the concrete in the back yard.

One multiple-choice reading test invites pupils to complete the statement ‘Jimmy – – – – tea, because he was our guest’.The correct answer is ‘got the best cake at’, but many Plutonians choose ‘washed the dishes after’ and get no marks, even though they can read. It is not our fault. On Pluto you are taught that washing up is the least you can do if someone asks you for tea.

If you couldn’t get your child into your favourite Plutonian school, you popped round to the chairman of governors’ house and laid one on him. Here you have to put in an appeal and appear, tongue-tied, before a crowd of suits. There were no phones on Pluto either, you just shouted out of the window, which is why we are reluctant to phone the head if there’s a problem.

The biggest problem on Pluto was the two conflicting forces. One pulled you away from the planet, the other held you firmly on to its surface. Education is the rocket that takes you away. Tradition is the force that holds you down. Plutonian children must be given every possible access to the rocket. That way they can choose. Remove the rocket and you eliminate choice.

Escapees are often lost. I sometimes go to quite posh places nowadays, the occasional palace even. I always wonder what I am doing there and wait for the uniformed bloke, a fellow Plutonian, to call out,‘Oi, you! Clear off!’ Footballer Paul Gascoigne is marooned between his roots and the alienating Sunday supplement lifestyle that his wealth now offers him.

Deference is excruciatingly embarrassing to Plutonians, but fortunately fellow citizens rarely offer it. Years after I became an academic I bumped into a childhood friend.‘I saw thee on’t telly,’ he began.‘Is it true tha’t a professor?’ ‘Er, yes,’ I replied. He pondered. ‘Well, bugger me.’

It was always hard to be stuck up on Pluto.

30 October 1998

Ten years of laughter and tears

Did you know that it is the tenth anniversary of the national curriculum? Although it was introduced by the 1988 Education Act, it was actually in September 1989 that 5-year-olds stepped on to the eleven-year conveyor belt fo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION
• Introduction
• one The wheeze factory
• two Cogs in the machine
• three Just testing . . .
• four Blame and shame: teacher bashing
• five Inside the classroom
• six Keep taking the prescription: commandments from on high
• seven Problems, problems (aka ‘challenges, challenges’)
• Footnote