If, as I suspect, Zoe Williams is correct, and
there would be a need for 17,000 new headteachers by 2017 if the Tories are
allowed to wage their "war on illiteracy and innumeracy", the damage done to
schools would be enormous.(It is time ministers realised that teachers do want
to teach,02/02/15) Presumably these new leaders will currently be deputies or
high flyers in the classroom, so their promotion would leave gaping holes in
staffing, in need of urgent filling, and yet more recruitment problems for the
profession. Forcing some less successful schools to academise also seems
ludicrous when the evidence suggesting academies have the best results is as
dubious as Morgan`s "misleading" remarks about "one in three" being unable to
"read or write by the age of 11"; however, being reprimanded for misleading the
House of Commons seems to be a prerequisite in this government for ministerial
posts!
Increasing the number of tests at the age of
eleven sounds extremely suspicious, coming as they do from a political party
with an ideological agenda to return education back to the 1950s; it`s only a
short step to using these test results to determine the nature of secondary
education each child should follow.
Developing educational policies on the basis of
very spurious "international comparison tables" should be a last resort for any
government, especially as these Pisa tests are themselves flawed, not even based
on a common test, but on different students in different countries answering
different questions! They have as much value in determining the success of
education in a country as asking each country`s chancellor of exchequer, or
equivalent, what eight times seven are!
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