The Emperor's New Clothes


More than anything else, it's a country's educational system what should ensure equal opportunities for all citizens, regardless of whether they are born in Chelsea or in Blackpool. The human mind is a marvel of nature and it works the same for everyone. But the British education system does exactly the opposite. By means of a huge deception it perpetuates class differences and the lack of equal opportunities for everyone. Add deep rooted corruption into the mix and things get as bad as they actually are in the UK. But nobody does anything about it. No one dares to say that the emperor is naked.

According to some it may still take a few decades for the situation to touch bottom. In the meantime whole generations will find themselves let down by the education system, and their futures jeopardized for ever.

This blog will show you how British state education is flawed and corrupt. Beware: the evidence is brutal. Stop reading if you don't want to change your high opinion of the UK's educational system.

If you are new to this site I recommend reading first the 4 unnumbered and/or the numbered entries in their chronological order using the TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Thursday 5 July 2018

Apartheid in UK schools: CLASS-ification and the sabotage of widening participation


For tourists and occasional visitors, one of the most attractive features of the UK is that atmosphere of the ancient that one can find in so many beautiful corners of our cities and villages. One could almost see and hear a carriage with Sherlock Holmes sitting inside when walking in certain areas engulfed by an early morning mist. What these visitors fail to see and the local population is not aware of, is the great extent these appearances can be true when it comes to class differences. The rhetoric about class is, in all modern countries except the UK, something everyone associates with the past, with the times of Marxism and the post-industrial-revolution era. In the UK, however, it is still “normal” to hear about “working class neighbourhoods” and “middle class jobs”; people being labelled according to their “class”; and politicians addressing voters from one or the other “class”. For any person regarding this from the outside, this is as strange as a pink cow. But here no-one questions the very reality of this. Many, of course, struggle against class differences, and aspire to climb the socioeconomic ladder, but just in order to be in the “upper” class and start behaving as such as soon as possible. Very few do actually achieve this, but they soon will forget that there are others in that struggle, and will begin to enjoy the privilege of having jumped the gap.  This is the only possible goal of anyone in the lower classes. Because they have been shown that class differences are part of life, this is how society works. No one from “below” and of course no one from “above” questions the existence of this weird anomaly in the world of the 21st century.

This can easily be understood when one sees that this segregation becomes part of life from the earliest years in people’s lives. The education system is designed to perpetuate the class differences in the UK. Yes, it is designed this way. Segregation in schools is not something that happens in pockets of bad practice, it is built into the system. “Good” teachers are the ones who will be most effective in applying the disgraceful system of targets, by which children from the youngest ages are CLASS-ified according to those targets, solely based on socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. Not only through the use of postcodes to set these targets (so as to ensure that in low achieving areas the same outcomes are obtained as in the past), but even under the disguise of previous attainment – who do you think would be the low attainers other than those who do not live in wealthy, stable neighbourhoods with parents who can afford private tuition?

Young children are very permeable to quickly pick up things about how society works. CLASS-ification is part and parcel of their time in school, which is where they spend most of their time. All that time in school there will be those who are offered to attempt the more advanced questions while others are told to not even try, just be satisfied with the more basic ones, “you are not bright enough for more”. When they reach secondary schools their final scores in primary – already conditioned by the targets set initially – are automatically converted into GCSE targets and pupils are grouped according to the CLASS-ification of their targets and segregated into “higher tier” and “foundation”. So, CLASS-ification is now materialized in actual groups within a school year. There are the bright ones who will be entered to the “higher tier” exams. As these are the only ones that count for the assessment of the quality of the school, the teachers (individuals unworthy of this name) will ensure no one will be included who poses the least risk not to get high grades. Then there is the “middle class”, whose targets are to barely pass the GCSEs, and the “lower class”, whose targets are Ds, Es, Fs or Us (or their current equivalent numeric grades), and whose parents will be deceived as long as possible, hopefully until it is too late to do anything, with reports saying that their children are doing well because they are “on target”. In other words, they will be great assets to maintain the current socioeconomic class divide by ensuring that their families stay where they started.

It is hardly surprising that this apartheid is then transferred directly into society when they leave schools. They will be sold nice leavers’ hoodies and even have a prom, so they can live the dream for one night, with those suits and ties, but the morning after the CLASS-ification will continue its course. The high achievers with their triple As and A*s will go to university, the “middle class” children will have access to “middle class” jobs or further education courses that require about three Cs, and the lower class pupils, being totally on target and therefore having done fantastically well according to school reports and headteachers (“he is such a lovely boy”), will go where they belong, which is where they came from.

Then we have the laudable yet pathetically ineffective efforts to promote “widening participation”. Millions of pounds are spent by government agencies and institutions of higher education to go out to recruit students for university degrees and other courses of tertiary education from among young people who have just left school after being told for about 15 years that they are not worth to be considered for anything but low targets. Every day for about 15 years apartheid in schools has chiselled into their brains and their self-esteem that they belong to a lower class, that they are second- or third-class citizens. Is it surprising in any way that the “widening participation” efforts are mostly wasted? I once attended an academic talk on research about widening participation at postgraduate level. I commented that by then the damage has already been done, and that the widening participation target population had already been filtered out by the education system at school level. While some academics who obviously are very proud of the current education system looked at me with horrified faces (how could I even dare to put this nearly perfect education system into question?) the speaker admitted, jokingly, that maybe the best way to invest in widening participation is to take all the money and pour it into tackling the problem at school level. He may have said this as a joke, but I truly believe that this is the case. Money alone, of course, will not do the job: we need to start challenging this apartheid, which introduces CLASS-ification in society at its roots, and so stop it from sabotaging true “widening participation”.

There are even more reasons why the British education system is wrong

Tim Oates on why levels (and therefore targets) are inappropriate even for what they created for, how the UK is falling behind because it is the only nation using levels, and why they should be dropped as part of the changes national curriculum (but aren't):

Note that he mentions equity as one of the aspects where the level system and its assessment strategy is wrong.

If you have time and interest in this profoundly important issue you can watch this longer video and check out the links below.


http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/insights/national-curriculum-tim-oates-on-assessment-insights/ 



And here is his policy paper on why textbooks (currently banned from schools as they are considered not to allow for "adaptation to learners", read discrimination and segregation) are important:

http://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/181744-why-textbooks-count-tim-oates.pdf



Monday 23 October 2017

Excellent Analogies of the British Education System

First, watch this video. Below I will explain how this is a very adequate metaphor of the British Education system.



Let's go back to the moment of the aerial view of the race (https://youtu.be/BgdtUfzwLig?t=3m15s): as expected, the differences between all runners are mostly maintained, and those who started further behind are left behind. In other words, in the time it takes the most advantaged runners to reach the finish line, the disadvantaged only reach half, or two thirds, or three quarters of the way.

A country's education system should acknowledge the differences between runners at the start of the race and offer all students the means and opportunities to reach the same finish line by the end of their time in education. Instead, the British education system, acknowledges and puts a huge effort into measuring and quantifying the initial differences, only to make sure they stay the same by the end of their time in education.

How? If you have read or followed this blog you will have come across the answer in many different forms and examples. Here goes one more time: the willing executors of this Machiavellian classist system, known as teachers (but certainly not worthy of that name), set targets to the students that mirror and perpetuate the initial differences. Then they measure their progress against these targets and deceive the students and their parents with reports that they are doing well because they are working to target. 

This other video comes in handy: we have see it on TV before the May 2016 elections in the UK and it plays at the expected and understandable indignation anyone would feel when told that they are not allowed to do something others are. How come it is so obvious for voting and no one says anything about the identical situation, but with worse effects, that this perverse education system is putting all children into?


Setting targets is exactly the same as telling the student that he/she can't do better, and that he/she won't be allowed to have the same opportunities as the others.

Friday 28 July 2017

Dear Teacher, listen and learn, and then...

Dear Teacher

Yes, I'm here again. I'm not done yet. There's lots more I have to tell you.

For example: if you, teacher of the British Education System, were not so focused  on being a "good employee" of a school which in turn is so focused in fulfilling the predictions of those who make a misguided (or deliberately crooked) use of statistics, regarding the grades of your pupils, you might, just might, have time to actually show some care for them (the pupils).

Here's some good advice. Listen and learn (yes, you, too, have still things to learn).


Now take your damned targets and shove them...

Dear Teacher, you are not excused

It is quite interesting to see how a wall half way around the globe is creating such a stir over here, while we have, tolerate and even cherish far worse walls right at our doorstep. Trump's wall will be huge and made of brick and mortar, or concrete, and clearly visible to all. Our walls are invisible, much more impenetrable and right in our neighbourhoods. These walls are in every school, in every classroom where a teacher sets targets for the pupils and then sends reports home saying that everything is fine because the child is working "to target".

Targets in education are far worse than walls made of concrete. They are much more difficult to demolish. Trump may build a wall, and it may later be demolished. By then it will have affected the lives -then and there- of those who would otherwise made it across the border. Targets in education condemn people for the rest of their lives to stay in their disadvantaged socio-economic class. Trump's wall will stop anyone from crossing the border, but targets in education are selective in the worst possible way, because they make things worse for those who are already worse off.

Dear teacher, in conversations about this topic I used to excuse you, saying that, after all, you have been trained in this system, and even led to believe that using targets is a way to "adapt to learners", which in principle is something good to do. I even used to excuse you allowing for the fact that you are so young that you never experienced any other system, so you do not even know there is another way of doing things. But unfortunately, having dealt with many teachers over the years, seeing how you all embrace and actively defend the system even when challenged by numerous parents who find it outrageous to be told that their children are doing well by working towards a D in their GCSEs, I can no longer excuse you.

Let me tell you: every single time you set a child a target other than 100% of the marks, or the maximum possible grade, you are judging that child and telling them: "you do not deserve to even attempt more than this target, you are unable to understand anything above this target, you are worse than the other children in your class who get higher targets, and I judge you this way because you are black, or Muslim, or Latin american; or because you live in this low-class neighbourhood for which statistics predict that the majority of children will obtain low grades; or because you had a problematic family in your early school years, in which going to school or doing homework was low priority while you had to live in fear of abuse, or helping out to get food on your table.

Dear teacher, every single time you set a target other than 100% of the marks or the maximum possible grade, you are behaving like a bigot, a racist or a classist. If or when you have kids of your own you will certainly make sure they get the best education, you will support them at home, and in the bottom of your heart you will know that the right thing to do is to give them the opportunity to be exposed to the full curriculum and work for the best marks. They may not achieve them, but you will have your peace of mind because you have given them the opportunity - that same opportunity you are knowingly and willingly denying the children of other parents who love and care for their children as much as you do.

So please do not expect me to carry on excusing you for this - you are not excused: you are a knowing and willing accomplice of a system which has built and actively maintains walls far worse than Trump's.

Watch the video below that has recently gone viral. It is a great speech against walls like Trump's - but you should be able to see how the last 30 seconds of her speech (direct link here: https://youtu.be/46w13vjfUoI?t=325) could just as well have been said about the British education system, word by word. If you are not able to see this, then there really is no hope for education in this country.




Other voices denouncing the appalling state of British education

For a long time I really thought I was completely alone in this - a lone stranger seeing the naked emperor in the midst of a crowd praising his new clothes.

Luckily, for the benefit of my own sanity, I was shown the following links, of others who share some of the views I have expressed so far on this site:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3207435/PETER-HITCHENS-British-education-haven-t-learned-yet.html







http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11745098/German-expat-banker-tells-countrymen-dont-send-your-kids-to-disappointing-British-private-schools.html









 http://www.bruceonpolitics.com/2015/03/03/what-is-wrong-with-uk-education-and-how-to-fix-it/
























Thursday 27 July 2017

Point 28 of the "Robbins Report" (1963)

Excerpt from the "Robbins Report":


"28. Finally there is a function [of education] that is more difficult to describe concisely, but that is none the less fundamental: the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship. By this we do not mean the forcing of all individuality into a common mould: that would be the negation of higher education as we conceive it. But we believe that it is a proper function of higher education, as of education in schools, to provide in partnership with the family that background of culture and social habit upon which a healthy society depends. This function, important at all times, is perhaps especially important in an age that has set for itself the ideal of equality of opportunity. It is not merely by providing places for students from all classes that this ideal will be achieved, but also by providing, in the atmosphere of the institutions in which the students live and work, influences that in some measure compensate for any inequalities of home background. These influences are not limited to the student population. Universities and colleges have an important role to play in the general cultural life of the communities in which they are situated."
[bold face is mine]

Not sure whether to lough or to cry. What would Robbins think if he saw how the British Education System does exactly the opposite from what he assumed is its purpose?

Full report: http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/robbins/robbins1963.html