Quality: questionable guides
Anastasia De Waal, 13 November 2009
The issue of quality assessment in relation to education has come up twice this week in two quite different arenas. Firstly, Ofsted, the schools’ inspectorate, has been accused (again) of over-reliance on exam and test results in its judgements. Secondly, the teaching union NUT has orchestrated a revolt against the introduction of Ed Balls’ ‘licences to teach.’
Generally when quality measures are being called into question, so too, is quality per se. Ofsted’s inspection regime has come under fire from the chief executive of one of England’s largest exam boards, OCR. Greg Watson has accused Ofsted of relying too heavily on performance data when determining the inspection outcome. This is a criticism which has been voiced by many, including a wide range of contributors to a Civitas report published last year. A cross-section of practitioners and ‘stakeholders’, including a practising Ofsted inspector felt that exam and test data over-shadowed deeper investigation of the school. The problems with this over-reliance on assessment data are manifold: from the fact that the results are known to be potentially unreliable (case in point inflated primary Sats’ results) to the pointless duplication – at great expense – of what is already available in the league tables. The bottom line is that parents have great faith in Ofsted – a faith which is not warranted by a regime which is based on a myopic focus on questionable data. The novelty in the story is the fact that an exam board which ‘sells’ a large number of questionable but high value qualifications is criticising this emphasis on exam performance. Many schools feel under significant pressure to nudge their lower performing students into qualifications which they do not necessarily see as beneficial to their students, but which are potentially highly beneficial to the schools’ performance. In the current scenario this is not only good for league table position, it’s also good for inspection outcome. From weak IT courses to theoretically ‘vocational’ courses (literally so as they tend to entail learning about work rather than practical skills), OCR is a key architect of these qualifications. Though of questionable value to the student, to the school these courses can accrue up to 4 A*-C GCSEs.
The second problematic quality gauge under the spotlight this week is the proposed ‘licence to teach’. A plan announced by the DCSF a couple of months ago and to be detailed next week, the license will require teachers to undergo check-ups every five years. In response 11,000 members of the NUT have written (via the union) to Ed Balls. NUT members are arguing that the licence will simply undermine and demoralise teachers. Not so, says another large teaching union, the NASUWT. In their view the license to teach is welcome in that it will finally bring ‘long over-due recognition’ to the teaching profession.
The depressing reality however is that the licence to teach will not fulfil NASUWT’s vision because the bar for entry into teaching is not being raised. And it is rigorous entry criteria, we know from both international evidence and those professions with a higher public status, which lead to higher standing. The DCSF’s proposal offers not this but instead the licensing of low standards. With very low requirements for teaching, denoting a low view of the importance of teachers, a ‘licence’ is merely tokenistic.
Finally an unrelated postscript on the subject of quality: the recently unveiled ‘Fourth Plinth’ statue of Sir Keith Park in Trafalgar Square.
The ‘quality’ of the statue is under fire by Guardian art critic, Jonathan Jones. Straightfordness seems to be the problem. The statue is simply Sir Keith Park – neither conceptualised into an abstract piece, nor requiring instructions for interpretation. To my (apparently philistine) eye, precisely what is appealing about the statue is that the simplicity of the concept – conveying the man at face value – has allowed for the human warmth which often seems to evade contemporary art. Or if Jones is to be believed, less evades it than is de rigueur.
Were the statue not to Jones’ taste, did he deem it sloppy or sentimental even, then that would be one thing. But that it does not qualify as modern art, as he claims, because it is ‘figurative art’ is plain pompous. ‘Modern art was called into being by modern life…’, Jones tells us, and the ‘know-nothing’ artistic conservatism displayed on the Fourth Plinth doesn’t qualify. It seems fair to say that the human figure remains rather prominent in modern life; but ostensibly because it’s ‘been done before’, Jones sees it as ‘regressive’ and ‘hackneyed’. If this must be so, perhaps contempt might be redirected from such plebeian pleasures as the human form, to contemporary art itself.