November 2010

Tuesday, November 23rd OK, this is just a chance to round up a few articles which have touched on the effects of results pressures on schools in the last couple of months. I have gone back over national coverage since the start of October to highlight claims of alleged side-effects caused by accountability pressures, in line with the goal of this site to try to document as many of these effects as possible. Accountability pressures are likely to change following tomorrow’s white paper. Negative effects, however, are unfortunately unlikely to go away. In no particular order, then, here are these reports: -An article in theRead More →

Tuesday, November 2nd My instinctive reaction, on learning of research published today by Bristol University’s Centre for Market and Public Organisation showing GCSE results have improved faster in England than in Wales in recent years was “surprise, surprise”. And what, exactly, does this prove? Take two school systems. Imagine that, in system A, huge effort and political attention is paid to improving schools’ results, on a few centrally-designed performance indicators. League tables are published which centre on those indicators, inspection judgements centre on them, schools which do badly are repeatedly threatened with closure, heads at such schools are very closely monitored by their local authorities,Read More →