Anna Scher, Learning, Pacifism and Depression

Anna Scher

I have just listened to Desert Island Discs. I love listening to DID; always have done so, and I know I have commented on this blog before about the competence and compassion of the current presenter.

Kirsty Young comes across as a thoughtful and empathetic person who puts her guests at ease and enables them to discuss some often painful experiences in their lives.

Today was no exception.

Her castaway this week was Anna Scher, a drama teacher who has incorporated a pacifist philosophy into her teaching, a women who seemed to have the real interests of her individual students at the forefront of her mind, a woman who wants young people to learn that their own glory and career is nothing in comparison with the need for a peaceful world order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Scher_Theatre

She has had a string of successful students passing through her doors, and I am sure there are an equal amount of struggling thespians who have not hit the heights of the likes of Kathy Burke, for instance (who incidentally was on Marcus Brigstocke’s “I’ve Never Seen Star Wars” this week).

However, there have been successes and Anna Scher appears to be one of the reasons for these actors prosperity, in the widest sense of the term.

A theatre school is a strange place, I have always thought. The hoards of folk to emerge from the Sylvia Young School or the newer version of the Fame Academies all seem to have one thing in common; a complete belief in themselves. However, as I said before, we only hear about the successful ones, and some of them are clearly good enough actors to make us think that they have a total belief in themselves. There must be plenty who do not make it, and if they are not good enough at acting and have only really been trained to do that one thing from an early age, I wonder what happens to these young people and what sort of state of wellbeing they are in at the end of it.

This is an all too familiar theme. It is not really very different to the sort of schooling that Michael Gove is trying to create, i.e. that we expect our young people to be proficient in academic studies and those who do not make the grade, literally, are deemed as defunct, lesser people, failures – by the age of sixteen.

What a tragedy, what a criminal act of indifference, what an assault on the rights of each and every child.

What I found interesting about Anna Scher was her approach to teaching that seemed to have the child at the centre. She was, and is, concerned about preparing them with the skills of the trade but she also seemed to be equally determined to ensure that many of their other needs were met too. Her final track, for instance, was one that she uses at the end of lessons to ensure that the students depart on a high note with positive criticism from the peers.

“Compliments on your kiss” – Red Dragon.

That is precisely the sort of thing we ought to be complimenting people on; not just their ability to cram facts into their heads and regurgitate according to the doctrines of academia but to concentrate on the things that actually mean something to our young people, and adults alike.

“So, you have a Baccalaureate full of A stars but my, you can kiss!”

Which of those compliments would satisfy you the most?

Her starting point for every lesson was also upbeat, encouraging, willing. Her chosen record for this was “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. I cannot remember her exact words but she said it was melodic, full and uplifting. It gave her students energy and vivacity.

That has to be a good way to start anything; a day, a lesson, whatever.

But the most striking thing about Anna Scher’s schools that appears to be different from other within the genre is her determination to insist that all students should partake in Peace Studies.

At one point, when she had had to take some time out of her role through illness, the governors of the school appointed a new principle or head teacher. With Anna out of the way, they disregarded this notion of peace lessons, claiming them to be unnecessary. This was theatre school and that is what they should be concentrating on, not this purple patch of pacifism. Where did that fit in to the greater goal of refurbishing the cast of Eastenders?

Anna Scher was resolute. She felt that the peace lessons were an absolute necessity and now she travels the world with her lessons, ensuring that people consider the words of people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and that they don’t just listen to these great speeches but incorporate them into their lives, their thinking, their philosophy.

What Anna Scher seems to be saying is that whilst her aim is to support young people into the world of stage and screen, there has to be an underlying learning about the world too. There has to be, in any curriculum in any school, whatever their supposed primary purpose, the desire and function of educating children and young people to be empathetic whilst simultaneously developing their own passions, creativity and wellbeing.

Now that is an intelligent sort of approach to teaching and learning, in my opinion.

My final comment about Anna Scher is regarding her debilitating illness.

She suffers from depression.

She described its symptoms with horrifying accuracy. Anyone who has suffered from depression or has been close to someone with this illness may well have shuddered as she explained the lead weight that hangs around obtrusively, determining whether you will yourself out of bed or not. Anyone who has known depression will have empathised with what she said about how all-consuming depression can be, often without any obvious determining factor.

When there is a determining factor and the sufferer is faced with knowing what the cause is and the inability to do anything about it, then the depression can spiral into something deeper and more tragic, and it is only the person at the centre, the one who is suffering the illness itself that can draw themselves out of this void, though help from others is usually gratefully received.

Depression is awful.

And yet, in the most bizarre of ways, there is something that I personally find comforting about listening to others describing their experiences. It makes one feel less alone, for certain, but it is greater than that. It makes one realise that there are possibly some positives for those who are susceptible to this illness.

This may sound strange and hardly a comfort when you are at your lowest point, but I do wonder whether those who suffer from depression do so because their levels of empathy are such that they can see the problems of the world before many others have got up to draw the curtains.

I am not suggesting that all depression is the same and I am certainly not suggesting that all depressives are full of empathy. Sadly, that is one of the qualities that so frequently disappears with the onset of a bout of the illness but perhaps the incidents of depression in these cases are the body’s response to an overload of empathy!

Anna Scher appeared to be an extremely empathetic person who has episodes in her life where the extent of woes subsumes, so that for all her empathy and for all her self-knowledge, this illness creeps in and whacks her where it hurts the most.

There are many who suffer from depression who have plenty of knowledge of what to do when it comes upon them and yet still fall foul of its effects. It is not a simple illness and it cannot be eradicated or placated simply either.

We all hope that we can live in the now and accept our world and our ways and be demonstrative in doing something positive for the world and for ourselves, but sometimes, just sometimes, everything seems a little impossible.

And sometimes it is good to hear that successful, empathetic, creative and passionate people understand and experience that too.

So, back to Desert Island Discs. Robert Hardy next week. I hope that is not going to be a disappointment. I wonder if that particular thespian will demonstrate the kind of empathy and thoughtfulness that this week’s castaway has implied.

.................................................................................

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

                    When You Are Old

    WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
    And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
    And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
    Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

    How many loved your moments of glad grace,
    And loved your beauty with love false or true,
    But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
    And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

    And bending down beside the glowing bars,
    Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
    And paced upon the mountains overhead
    And hid his face among a crowd of stars

Gove and his Building Fund

Is it any wonder that people are put off politics when they have to try and decipher through the playground nitpickings of its leading characters?

He kicked me first, but she bit me first, but he called me a name first but she gave me a funny stare!

Politicians – this is what you sound like. You are so egotistical and determined that you are right that you forget to look at the facts in front of you. Playing tit for tat games with statistics is bad. Playing tit for tat with statistics when it is affecting the state of our education and thus dramatically affecting our children and young people is just plain abhorrent.

Mr. Gove today stated that his party was providing more capital spend over the next four years than New Labour had provided over eight years. So there! And, he added, he was doing that even though there was a 60% drop in funding.

Now as I have stated before, I ain’t too good at numbers. So when Mr. Gove says that in four years he is going to spend £15.8bn compared with Labour’s £20bn over eight years, then even a numerically challenged person like me can see that there is a shortfall of £4.2 bn.

Is that right or do I need to go back to class?

Obviously, there is the issue that if they then spend an additional amount of money subsequent to that should they get re-elected, then there is every possibility that they will indeed match the figure that New Labour spent. However, as it stands, that is not the case. They have not spent the money, and meanwhile, there are overcrowded schools and dilapidated buildings throughout the country that are not fit for purpose, let alone being creative environments in which our children should be allowed to learn.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-goves-schoolboy-error-on-funding-for-school-buildings/8312

The fact that Gove looks like an overgrown school child who has just returned to class from a playground tiff makes the whole of this political ball-play even more amusing, if only it weren’t for the fact that once more, the poorest in our society are taking the blame, the suffering and the neglect.

Having read the article with the link above, there is only one real statistic of note within all this tittle-tattle, and it is this. In 2014/5 the capital budget for education will be about the same level as 2002/3 in real terms. Added to this, there is the fact that the Department of Education’s capital spending decrease is far more significant than other governmental departments, and Mr. Gove cannot talk his way out of that one.

It is as it is.

It is at it is and there is still a huge programme of school structural redevelopment to take place.

Just because there were different phases of the Building Schools for the Future initiative, whereby some schools were selected to be prioritised, did not mean that other schools not in Round One, Two, Three or Four were fit for purpose.

All it meant was that their needs were not quite as dire as the needs of those who went forward in Phase One.

Of course, that is before we even get onto the issue of Academies, and I am not sure where all the funding came from for some of the spanking new schools that rose from the proverbial ashes.

Well actually I do.

However, I do know that these institutions managed to spring up pretty quickly when both governments were trying to sell the Academies policy to voters and parents alike, irrespective of whether this was the right thing for the children involved.

Capital spending on school buildings has been atrocious for many years. The audacity of the Conservative party to stand there and announce how generous they are being is stupefying when it is clear that the demise of many a school’s physical structure was largely due to the gross lack of funding between – let’s say 1979 and 1997.

And New Labour should not be patting themselves on the back too strongly. Their policy on education with its disregard for the holistic and progressive view of education misplaced far too much money on initiative after initiative in the holy mantra of raising standards. They didn’t rush immediately to address the buildings or the wider purpose of education.

In the eighties and henceforth, important buildings that represented the development of education were left to rot; from the School’s Board buildings of the 1880s to the modern flat roofed 60s style.

The school where I taught managed to get some local authority funding in 1983 in order to build a new school hall but the incompetence within the design left a huge void of unused space below this spanking new room. The cold that came from below on many a wintry day meant that you could not possibly do physical activity in there or hold an assembly without putting loads of floor mats down – which would probably not be allowed now due to health and safety regulations.

And talking of which, this design built a set of stairs that were so steep and dangerous, it was a miracle that no child ever fell down them and cracked their head open.

But no amount of money poured into the school hall development was going to compensate for the rest of the building, which remained a Victorian masterpiece of draft-ridden rooms and ceilings that bulged worryingly.

We survived. We did our best but this building was not fit for the purpose and style of teaching that we chose to adopt.

This particular school was not in Phase One, Two or Three of the Building Schools for the Future. It remains as it is with a few alterations; plugging the gap or possibly sticking a finger in the dyke waiting for the water to eventually break the bank.

According to the catastrophic financial forecast from Mr. Gove, with or without his inflated suggestions of expenditure, this school will remain, in essence untouched since its construction nearly 130 years ago.

There are such wonderful examples around the country of schools that are fit for purpose and have been built specifically to consider the needs of the 21^st century child and the type of pedagogy that we know is the most appropriate for their needs.

It is just a crying shame that all schools cannot be rebuilt in this way, by thoughtful architects and teachers working together, to create the type of environment that is particularly conducive to learning, both inside and outside the actual building.

Our children deserve more and the politicians should keep their immature and ill-thought mouths shut until they have worked out how to stop bickering and get on with doing something to support the development of quality education in the 21^st Century.

Jsut Palin Dfat

There was a little passage doing the rounds on Facebook a couple of years ago. It went like this.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

I don’t think I have met anyone who has not been able to read this almost as quickly as if it had been written with the correct spellings all the way through. It concludes with the notion that “I always thought spelling was important!” But clearly that is not the case, well not once you have mastered the main strategies of reading. This research from Cambridge University certainly indicates that letter order is not as significant as some might like to think, if indeed it did take place at Cambridge University because a recent article that I found implied that it might not have done so.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

However, in the above link, despite the academic suggesting that this meme does not work in all situations, there is a valid point that words do not have to be in a given order in order to give meaning to the reader.

Matt Davis cited a few sentences that proves another point in the skills of learning to read.

1) A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir

2) Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs

3) A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

He suggests that these sentences get progressively more difficult. Why? Because they are not using simple, everyday language which implies that certain words need meaning or understanding to decipher their ‘code’. Take the word “seezueqd” in the second sentence. When I was reading this word, I had to read the rest of the sentence to decipher the anagram in front of me. The same applied to the word “magltheuansr” in the third sentence. It needed me to decipher the word “deid” “durg” and “blender” in order to realise that the missing word was “manslaughter”.

Guess what folks? This is exactly the way children learn to read; deciphering meaning.

They also learn a few key words that become familiar by default due to their frequency. Some bright spark, during the development of the National Literacy programme called these words “frequency words”. Original eh?

And they also learn by looking at a whole word rather than breaking it up into counterparts. And they learn these words.

http://www.highfrequencywords.org/first-100-high-frequency-word-list-precursive.html

They also learn the shape of words through memory and familiarisation so that they can see a physical linear pattern developing. The cursive up and down of the sentence provides meaning for them in conjunction with what they have learned about the shape of the letters, the familiarisation of words and the meaning of the sentence as a whole (to fill in the missing unknowns).

They also learn to read by breaking words down into sounds. Small children can begin to read simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words for themselves such as c-a-t, or h-o-t. Or s-e-x. Yes, children of a very young age somehow manage to spell that word perfectly well, often before they can even spell their own name.

And so it goes on. Children and indeed adults who are learning to read for the first time use all manner of approaches to this learning which may or may not include phonics, meaning, grapheme, memory, pattern etcetera, etcetera.

Let us return to the original passage of “if you can raed tihs”. It works in this simple form where there are not indecipherable words. You can read this, and read it very successfully without having the letters in the correct order. So, I ask myself, where precisely does phonics fit in with the reading of this text? Can you actually apply phonics to such reading and furthermore, if you were to give this text to a seven year old who has only learned to read through, oh I don’t know – let’s say synthetic phonics for instance, would they be able to determine the meaning of the consecutive words in that passage or would they be completely flummoxed or should I say fxmemluod or should I say flummucsd – the phonetic version?

Perhaps I ought to send this little passage to Mr Gove or Mr Guv has he may need to be phonetically known as. I wonder what he would make of it.

As with most things in life, there is no easy response or solution to a difficult scenario. If you choose to do something one way you may be ruling out help from other sources. This is exactly the way it is with learning to read. There is no ‘one way’. Individuals learn in different ways. My own children are a classic example. One child did learn to read with a heavier emphasis on phonics because that was the way he was. The other used meaning as his primary source but clearly developed his use of phonetics and word building as he came across words that he was unfamiliar with, and let us just remind ourselves that the English Language is not an automatic bedfellow with phonics. There are many, many thousands of words in English that do not adhere to a straightforward phonetic structure.

Which is why it is complete and utter contemptible madness to structure an entire mode of learning on one single method, which is precisely what the government, together with the likes of Ruth Miskin is trying to do. It cannot and will not work, and according to recent articles in the newspaper, there is insufficient evidence to thrust so much value behind this one method of learning to read.

I taught a child once who had learned phonetically to the detriment of all other learning strategies. She came from a very traditional background where her father coached her before she had entered the school gates. On first appearance her reading was brilliant, as was her computational skills. But when you asked her about the books that she was reading, when you asked her to tell you something about the subject matter, the meaning of the words, whether she could predict what was going to happen next in the story, she hadn’t got a clue. The reason for this was that she was totally controlled in her reading by the phonetic structure. All she was doing was functionally going through the text, not taking on board anything to do with the meaning of what she was reading.

It was a tragedy that I sought to put right.

The government now wants to introduce phonic tests for children at the end of Year One to identify which ones need additional support with their reading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/04/national-phonics-test-primary-pupils

What the ****? If I was teaching a group of Year One children, which indeed I have, and it took me to the end of the year by means of an imposed test of forty words to discover that there were certain children within my class that needed additional reading support, I’d hand in my resignation immediately. I would want shooting if I had allowed one single child to slip through unnoticed in this way, and that is before you even get onto to the whole subject of teaching reading purely through synthetic phonics, robbing children of the utter delight of real books that they can share enthusiastically with their parents, developing a love of reading for its own sake rather than a mechanism for finding facts or reading labels or instructions.

This test is an absolute nightmare. It is a total waste of time, if people are doing their job properly, i.e. that they are listening to children read regularly, that they are opening all strategies of reading learning to their pupils, that they are regularly tracking their progress without keeping ‘score’, that they are giving them a wealth of opportunities to demonstrate their reading, that they are giving them a wealth of opportunities to transfer their reading skills to writing. A single, bloody useless test is not going to make a difference.

Now, if, within a special needs department, there is a test such as this that is used as a diagnostic tool, or to determine whether a class teacher was correct in referring a child for additional support, then that is a different matter altogether. As a Special Needs co-ordinator, I might find such a test a useful tool but only as part of a package of diagnoses. I would still use other things to try and ascertain the best method of support for a child in such circumstances like picture impetus, like trying to ascertain whether they can recognise a cursive style of writing, like looking at some “frequency” words to see if they have any idea what they are – ad infinitum of diagnostic tools until I got to the bottom of the child’s learning difficulty.

There is never just one solution and this test would not tell me anything that I did not already know.

The government have even had the audacity to cite professors of education and their research to back up their claims that this test is required.

See their responses in the following clip.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/05/children-need-more-than-phonics

But if you don’t want to read it, let me paraphrase by saying that these professors have been mis-cited. Their work has been taken out of context for the political whim of a man who has NO IDEA how to teach reading, or for that matter any other subject judging by his views on the teaching of history and English Literature for instance.

Even those academics who believe in the positive possibilities of synthetic phonics have a problem with this testing approach.

“What the research evidence shows is that systematic phonics teaching within a broad and rich language curriculum enables children on average to make better progress in reading words than unsystematic or no phonics teaching.

There is not yet enough research evidence to show that synthetic phonics is superior to other phonics approaches, though both theory and classroom experience suggest this.”

This is from a supporter of synthetic phonics, who I actually disagree with because of the things that I have already stated. However, each to his own, and if he continues with his research, then maybe he may come to a different view. However, he clearly advocates that phonics is just one aspect of learning to read, not – to coin a phrase – the be all and end all of learning how to read.

The government are wrong, plain wrong in all sorts of ways. Please note, I am actually still talking about the teaching of reading but interpret the previous sentence as broadly as you wish. (See, meaning requires context; something that no amount of phonics is going to provide).

It seems that I am not alone in this conclusion.
As reported in the Guardian this week, there is a group of MPs that has suggested that phonics learning and this stupid test is going to de-motivate children and even prevent them from picking up books for the enjoyment of the fabulous stories that are out there for them to read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/07/report-phonics-children-reading-test

MPs have criticised government plans to test pupils on their reading ability at the age of six, warning that it will put children off reading for pleasure.

The report criticises the government's focus on phonics – in which children learn individual sounds and then blend them to read words – as a "mechanical" approach and warns that it will contribute to a decline in literacy.

Fabian Hamilton, who chairs the MPs' group, said: "If there is a central theme to this, that is, reading must be a pleasure. Of course children need the tools to understand what sounds the symbols make, and what those sounds mean. Phonics is only one way of doing it, there are others."

The rest of the article talks about the “whole word” approach to reading and the combination of reading strategies that most teachers employ. Schools minister Nick Gibb hold the didactic message that synthetic phonics is the only way and that this strategy is the only way to open up a lifelong love of learning.

Believe me Nick, you will have turned many a child off through unnatural, imposed and even made-up words of synthetic phonics before they ever get a chance of becoming familiar with the great authors of the day.

This is a tragedy; a real tragedy and it is time for teachers once more to stand up and fight for what they know is right, i.e. that reading cannot be taught in one way for all, and that the emphasis on phonics is jsut palin dfat.

What a Load of Koob

No sooner had I written about the desire for a proper education system where reading and writing enables free thinking and pupils to find a voice that the government comes up with their next method of madness in formalisation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12509477

Read this and weep. Or more constructively, get angry and do something about it.

According to the link, the government is now going to introduce a new “reading” test which includes non words such as “koob” and “zort”. This test is to ensure that the factory fodder of six year olds have understood the synthetic phonics to such an extent that they can interpret meaningless manufactured words. Hey, there’s some real irony here that Mr. Gove hasn’t quite managed to appreciate.

Or should I say Mr Gov. – the man from the ministry whose name, as the President of the UK Literacy Association quite rightly points out, definitely does not rhyme with “love”. So explain that one Mr. Gooooooove. Perhaps you ought to put your name on the “reading” test to see just how well your plastic phonics system is teaching our children how to read without any context whatsoever.

Another irony is the words chosen for this list as “meaningless”. I once taught someone whose surname was “Zort”. I wonder how he would feel to see that his surname is classified as a pointless word. But then again, he was not from Anglo-Saxon origin, so he doesn’t real count according to Mr. Gov.

His sidekick proclaims to know all about education despite the fact that significant academics and those who teach in schools tell him that this is not the only method that should be employed in teaching and indeed learning how to read. Mr. Gibb (he with a silent B – would children spell his surname correctly on hearing it?).

"Too many children leave primary school unable to read and write properly - we are determined to raise standards and the new phonics-based reading check for six-year-olds will ensure that children who need extra help are given it before it is too late, and then can enjoy a lifetime's love of reading."

So says Mr. Nick Gobb.

Pray, do tell me how children are going to enjoy a lifetime of reading when they have been put off by a gross lack of understanding by the time they are seven years of age.

This experiment was done many years ago with synthetic phonics. It works for some people but others are completely flummoxed by it because they quickly realise that the English Language is not constructed with due regard for phonetic consistency. In order to make a real sense of the language one needs to be able to look at the structure of words, their placing and meaning within a sentence, how they physically take shape on the page, where they fit with other words, how they give meaning to the reader.

I am fed up to the back teeth of people taking on these so-called miracle initiatives at the expense of children’s learning, at the cost of their enjoyment – all because someone somewhere has prioritised the need for mechanical learning in a language that does not comply with such regulations.

I think back to the children that I have taught to read, and there have been many, so I guess I am speaking from experience. For some of them, the phonics worked but it was mainly those who had no problems with reading or indeed mathematics. There was already a willingness to learn and possibly an already established relationship with books.

For others, the phonics system was as complicated as learning Arabic. The formulaic process passed them by. They did not comprehend the structures and then, when they were led to real books, there were simple words that did not fit with the rules they had just been taught. Can you begin to imagine how frustrating that must feel like to a child who already knows they are not achieving in the way of their peers? No wonder some of those children sought to release their frustration with inappropriate behaviour.

I used phonics with these children but never as a stand-alone mechanism at the exclusion of other reading strategies. There were times when my little ones were taken off by the Special Needs teacher to work through a laborious list of words and phonics. I am really not sure whether it made a difference, for I think their ability to read was far more down to the hours sitting down with the child and pouring over a book both at home and in school.

When I first had the dubious honour of being placed in a Year One class, I decided that I would like to have a corner of the room that was dedicated to free play; a place that was the children’s place – the Home Corner. Unfortunately, my head teacher at the time disagreed and banned me from creating this special place when SAT preparation needed to accommodate every single moment of the day. I argued that the Home Corner would develop their speaking and listening skills and that communicating and cooperating with one another was an essential element of all learning as well as language learning, but she decided that other rules needed to be adhered to.

That was bad enough but when she told me that my children could only read with me in guided reading time, I had to rebel.

She thought that it was the job of the parents to read daily with the pupils who could not read, not mine. I was there to teach CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant). I was there to teach the “ee” sound and the “ea” sound and make the children automatically know which one was the right one to include in their writing. I was the one who should teach the letter sounds with the Letterland characters that had no meaning whatsoever to my children. I was supposed to rush them into the 250 key English Language words that they had to learn despite the fact that a handful of the kids couldn’t even write or read their own name. But what I was categorically not to do was read daily with them.

As I said, I rebelled, and the only time I had in the day, like so many of my colleagues across the country, was to take every assembly time (well, the ones where I wasn’t required), every dinner time apart from Friday, and many break times, trying to help these poor little mites who were struggling so desperately with this difficult language.

And guess what? I don’t think I ever used unreal words to get them to learn because one begs to ask – what is point?

Surely, the whole point of reading is to get meaning from the collection of letters and words on a page. Otherwise, what the hell is the point? Our language is not constructed in a clear code. There may be 44 clear phonemes but there are thousands of words that do not follow this construct and I know that my children learned to read through many different methods, such as interpretation through the picture, memory, graphemes, the works.

The thing that most upsets me about synthetic phonics is this idea that children should not look at “real” books until they have learned this formulaic approach, thus robbing children of some of the very best literature known to mankind! Is the government therefore saying that you can only read to your child if you cover up the words so that their synthetic phonics system is not diluted by the other spurious methods of learning how to read? Or is Waterstone’s and the likes now going to be full of our favourite books being syntheticised? Heaven forbid!

I make no apologies for getting angry about this because it is something that is dear to my heart. I can still see some children getting restless and frustrated as they battled with this structure that was supposed to help them but merely led them further into despondency as they just didn’t get the phonetic rules, and even if they had managed to learn in the construct of a planned programme, they could not make the transition from using this in either their reading or their writing.

It was so hard to see this, and I would sit happily for hours working time and time again, to ensure that they learned to read by my methods.

I can safely say that no child left my class without being able to read.

I would like to say that I hope the government and Mr. Gov. would reconsider their ideas about these silly words, but there is no point in wasting my breath, just as there was no point arguing for my Home Corner. My only hope is that the teaching profession refuse to administer these stupid tests and get on with really helping their children to read by creating an environment that gives meaning, purpose and enjoyment of reading both collectively and individually.

I do hope my children read for enjoyment now too.

Where Playing the Game Doesn't Work

When a decent school has to play the game

People outside education think that league tables aren’t such a bad thing. They give an indication as to how “successful” a school is, how many pupils it churns out with the right grades, how these kids have attained.

We all know the rest of the story. It doesn’t really explain progression for all the value added stuff. It doesn’t explain anything about the state of the children when they first come through the door and the problems of hopeless social injustice that many an institution has to contend with before you can even get the children to sit long enough to experience decent teaching and learning. It doesn’t explain how children and young people flourish or decline emotionally or socially as an outcome of the schools ineptitude to create a holistic education

But that is another story.

I want to tell a short story about a school who appeared to get things right.

Academically, the baseline was low – a mere 35% of pupils getting 5 A-C grades when the present head teacher took the reins. For a mixed, multi-cultural school with a mixed socio-economic intake, that might sounds like a relatively reasonable percentage - but not really. The school should have been doing better.

Along came a good manager. He addressed the behaviour issues in school with a two pronged attack or rather a multi-pronged attack. Rightly or wrongly, he believes that ensuring the young people respect their uniform is one means of addressing behaviour. He insisted that all pupils had what some might describe as a slightly archaic uniform; blazer, tie, grey trousers, skirts below the knee, black socks only – all very conformist. In addition to this, he had strict codes of discipline around the school. He manned the corridors himself, commandeering with his very obvious presence. He insisted that the young people had to behave a certain way in the classroom and abuse to the teachers would not be tolerated. He looked at the ethos of the school, got rid of some staff that did not like to play his game and generally turned the place around.

Once he had sorted the behaviour and attendance, he then tackled the attainment. He states quite categorically that he did it this way round, and bore the consequences of little movement in the league table for the first year or two of his appointment.

Within four years, the school had gone from a relatively lowly point to having a pass rate of 75%, increasing year on year until new rules came in about achieving Maths and English which put things back a little.

Ofsted found that the school was outstanding, which it was and it wasn’t. The head teacher had played the game to an extent. He’d held onto his basic educational values but he had played the game too. He’d had a keen eye on the league tables, he’d introduced some questionable methods of developing decent behaviour and trust between staff and students but he had managed to get this “outstanding” grade.

What he did next was brave but in the knowledge that he had this Ofsted grade, he felt he could do so. He got all of his staff together a few months after the inspection and told them that what they were doing was not quite good enough. He didn’t want his school to be an examination factory. He believed fundamentally in the arts and the media, in creativity, in values, in exciting and stimulating teaching and learning. Yes, he wanted his students “to be the best we can be” but he meant it in a broader way. He told his staff he wanted to look at values; he wanted to prepare a curriculum that meant something to young people living in the 21^st Century in a multi-cultural city. He wanted them to consider the emotional intelligence of the child as much as the knowledge based curriculum.

It was exciting times. The staff were incredibly stimulated by this strike for freedom, and they planned the curriculum accordingly. Days off timetable were introduced to ensure that the “Every Child Matters” agenda was not just given lip service as well as ensuring that the main thrust of this was imbedded in all lessons taking place in school.

The children were stimulated, the work was exciting and things were looking up.

A further Ofsted graded this progression as “good” not the “outstanding” from before but the head teacher was undeterred knowing that what he was doing was for the greater good of the young people. In effect, he was encouraging a lifelong learning rather than just passing exams.

And here is the slight problem because however good a school is, however committed they are to ensuring that they excite and energise children into learning, they are slightly caught out because many things are still beyond their control. Total autonomy for schools is but a pipe dream and the Toby Young’s of this world who think they are going to get it with their Free Schools are in for a nasty shock!

This school tried hard to ensure the curriculum was exciting. This is all fine in KS3 when there is more flexibility. It becomes slightly more problematic in KS4 when exams have to be sat.

The school has worked hard in ensuring that the curriculum is as stimulating as possible but it is still constrained.

For example, the history curriculum for KS4 is relatively contemporary. It still has the ubiquitous WW2 studies but it also looks at the Cold War and the emergence of the USA as the Super Power that it is. Not bad and certainly more interesting than the perpetual discussion about the goings on in Henry VIII’s bedroom. However, they still don’t have the flexibility to teach and discuss a history that the children and young people may choose to do. How about a child who wants to look at the history of photography, or how such pictures can tell a story that no words will ever do, or the child who has an deep interest in Eastern Cultures who would quite like to study the Emperor-led system of governance adopted in Japan, let alone the potential to explore the depths of Eastern philosophy?

No chance of that in the near future either with Mr Gove hovering over schools with a diktat of facts and figures that have no place in the development of a historical mind!

So, despite the fact that they have chosen examination boards wisely, there is still a straitjacket around what they can and cannot teach.

And then there are those league tables.

And this is the real reason I am writing today.

The league tables are madness. They are insane. They have created didactic teachers out of people who never intended to teach in that manner. They are constantly nagging at the back of people’s minds as they put their lesson plans together. I suppose Gove would welcome the “healthy” competition between subject departments to get the highest number of A-stars but whilst some teachers play this pathetic game, where are the children? These are human beings we are talking about.

And if we mistakenly think that this will all stop when the league tables disappear, we are sadly mistaken because a mode of teaching and a dirty rationale has crept into the profession over the decades of nationally imposed curriculum, and it may take a generation or more to get out of this mindset that grades and tables are the most significant part of education.

This is not new. I, as have others, have long discussed these issues so why am I so concerned about it today?

Yesterday, my son, who is in his GCSE year, had to go into school. According to him, he had to complete a piece of work for his GCSE IT that was not taught properly in Year 9 (when the accelerated into the KS4 coursework). In retrospect, and with an incompetent teacher dismissed, the department realised that if they left things as they were, these children were not going to get the results that they deserved. So on a reasonable Saturday in October, they called a cohort of children into school and asked them to repeat this piece of work to the standard and maturity required.

The kids duly and dutifully complied and spent five hours of their weekend in school, as of course, did the teachers, and thank you for their commitment in doing so because here is the rubbish, the real rubbish, and the legacy of league tables and of the previous government’s inertia.

Teachers are so used to having to cram and get the children “to be the best we can be” at achieving A grades, that this has completely monopolised their teaching and their rationality. The law of ratio has escaped these teachers. Not everyone, bizarrely, can get A-stars because it is proportionate to the numbers taking the exam not the similarity of responses (allegedly).

And the real rubbish? These teachers are not actually thinking about the league tables any more. The head teacher has made it clear that he doesn’t care about them. It is the kids that he is concerned about, and sadly, ironically, this is why they were brought into school yesterday – not because of league tables but because these teachers know that the only chance these kids have is if they have as many A grades as possible.

Due to the league table method of teaching, everything has been placed in one area of learning, i.e. that of academic attainment. Even if the league tables didn’t exist, the philosophy of education behind them does, and this is why my child has to forsake his weekend to go and play ball with a school that has tried not to play the game but is restricted in doing so because it knows the rest of the school is still playing.

Those teachers gave up their weekend and will do so from now until exam time because they want to give a leg-up to their students. They want to push them into grades that may be beyond their natural reach, putting all sorts of untold pressures on them because they think this is the best thing for these pupils. This is their way to success.

I know that some of the teaching staff are still interested in league tables, despite what their head teacher says, and I am sure that he pays more than a curious glance at them but essentially, they are working these young people hard now because they know that this world will be easier for them if they are equipped with the biggest grades possible.

And it is not going to get any easier.

Andrew Rawnsley makes that clear today in the Observer, as does Will Hutton. Catherine Bennett comments on it too.

If these children want to go to university then they are going to have to get super-dooper grades to do so. With tuition fees floating into a new region of fiscal nightmares, it will only be those who have high grades and a wad of notes in their pocket who are going to succeed, and with a spending review that Hutton describes as what historians will see as “one of the great acts of economic folly”, the situation is getting graver and graver.

These teachers know this. The ardent pursuit of academia has led us to this. The current government can only implement the harshness of Lord Browne’s ideas because the previous ones left the garden gate open and guided them up that particular path.

When people ask me about the previous government and why I had “concerns” they expect me to come out with the usual diatribe about Iraq. Whilst this is always at the forefront of my mind, what with the hundreds and thousands of unnecessary deaths, it is the lack of affordable higher education that really narks me.

Education, education, and indeed education should all be free and the money should be found elsewhere. Without this fundamental point being acted upon, I am not sure that you can ever have a liberty in society. You certainly cannot have equity and the fraternity is pretty dispersed if some can and some cannot pay.

If my child wants to go into school on a Saturday because he loves learning and enjoys sharing that learning with others, then fantastic. If his teachers are so willing to facilitate that learning to the point that they gain a sense of wellbeing from doing so, then that too is pretty spectacular.

Going in because both student and teacher knows that this is the only way to succeed in life is dismal. Going in knowing that the only way to succeed in life is through an academic route is pitiful (and obviously one that I do not believe is correct).

Toby Young will be okay because he wants to play the stupid league table game, as does his followers who epitomise everything distasteful about that side of town!

He won’t care that there are compromises in learning that are unforgivable.

As Catherine Bennett pointed out last week, Gove loves Dickens and yet still cannot see the irony of the Hard Times character who announces to the world that in his pupils he wants to see,

“A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.”

Mr Gove – see that quote, that’s you, that is and it’s not a compliment!

And where does Mr. Gove think that story writing skills come from? If he loves Dickens so much, shouldn’t he be thinking how another great writer should be allowed to flourish?

It is all utter madness.

So, we are back to a good school that is trying to do the right thing, that is trying to broaden its curriculum and its opportunities for all pupils, that is trying to stand by its values in the widest sense, that understands that examination passes do not make a person, and even knowing all of this, they still have to play the game, not because of league tables any more but because they know that under the current situation, their kids do not stand a chance unless they have been given the utmost support in playing the bloody game, the wrong bloody game at that!

One day we will stop messing with these young peoples’ futures, open our eyes and see what an utter disservice we have practiced upon them.

I’m actually looking forward to the first case of litigation setting out the argument against a series of governments who had no idea how to free the mind and encourage learning.

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And a footnote; bless good old Windows spell-check!

I am sure others have found this but I do find it rather amusing that when checking “Ofsted” it comes up with the alternative “ousted”.

If only!