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I was a high school ICT (computer) teacher in the UK for five years. Unless there are some serious changes to the political climate, programming will never fit

by AlexC04 15y ago

I was a high school ICT (computer) teacher in the UK for five years. Unless there are some serious changes to the political climate, programming will never fit well in schools. The biggest reason being that programming is hard... which means that some students won't do well. There is a very serious problem with the politics of the UK education system because of the results-oriented culture. Firstly, OFSTED publishes a list of the best schools in the UK. These results are based on inspections, but the inspections are just a sham/cover to allow them to rank schools based on their test results. You see, kids who get graded in the UK school system all write the exact same exam, in the exact same hour globally (accounting for timezones). This standardized testing, allows for students and schools to be compared against a single "fair" yardstick. Now schools that have the students who get the highest average score are declared "the best" (after a cursory, sham inspection) the ones that score lowest are declared "the worst" and sometimes closed. So... student performance is suddenly directly related to teacher income. So teachers start teaching kids how to pass the test. Administrators guide their students into classes that have higher averages... you know, the ones that are easier to pass? That's part of the reason why the GNVQ in ICT became so popular - the least able students could get 4 "A" grade credits easily. I mean, students who sometimes had to be reminded to breathe could walk out with 4 "A" credits. Some schools who learned how to exploit that system found themselves "vaulting" up the league tables ... bonuses all arround! Headteachers were suddenly being classed as "Superheads" ... silly crap like that. Anyways, trouble with a comprehensive "proper" programming course... it's hard. Nobody is getting a knighthood in education for doing it the hard-way. I tried teaching a group of 12 year olds how to write video games in flash. They not only loved it, but it wasn't that hard. One or two got as far as a working PONG. Unfortunately, I was so far off curriculum at that point it wasn't funny. I could only give programming lessons as a special treat. The rest of the time it was where to click in Microsoft office. If we were able to do programming at the High School level, maybe I wouldn't have left teaching. The politics of OFSTED would probably have driven me out anyways the UK education system is actually doing a huge disservice to kids. HOWEVER* politicians can "look tough" by spouting bollocks about how strict they are with respect to educational standards. Truth is they're light years behind places like Australia and Canada. Worst part is the politicians of the world all seem to be scrambling to match the UK system (because it gives them something to look tough about).

anon1385 15y ago
The reason is quite simple: zealous adherence to the religion of free-markets. According to the government parents are forever demanding 'choice' (actually I think what most of them want is for the local school to be decent, and not to have to ship their kid 50 miles a day to some distant school…). So of course parents must be provided with some way to compare schools, no matter how statistically meaningless it might be, and thus league tables were given great significance. The current government plan to take this even further by allowing private companies to run state school for profit. Thus further incentivising cheating, manipulation of test results, pushing students into easy subjects, teaching to tests, not allowing entry to students who won't perform well, not allowing students to sit tests if they might not get top marks, underfunding of 'hard' subjects and so on. Parent's power to actually complain about a school is reduced as well: schools will no longer be run by democratically elected local authorities, but by the largely unelected board of governors. If you have a complaint they won't deal with (most schools won't even tell you the names of the governors), you have to go directly to the secretary of state and, as this submission demonstrates, getting an answer from Mr Gove is very difficult (no doubt you would be fobbed off with a "we don't interfere with the running of individual schools" response).
- AlexC04 15y ago
  Excellent points and I agree completely. They're also already in pretty deep with respect to privatization. Since (at least one of) the curriculum publishers and standardized testing boards (eg: Edexcel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edexcel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edexcel) is privately owned. That leads to tremendous investment in lobbying and special interest type stuff, but actually takes away an individual teacher's ability to tailor the curriculum to the interests of the students.

by AlexC04 15y ago

anon1385 15y ago

The reason is quite simple: zealous adherence to the religion of free-markets. According to the government parents are forever demanding 'choice' (actually I think what most of them want is for the local school to be decent, and not to have to ship their kid 50 miles a day to some distant school…). So of course parents must be provided with some way to compare schools, no matter how statistically meaningless it might be, and thus league tables were given great significance. The current government plan to take this even further by allowing private companies to run state school for profit. Thus further incentivising cheating, manipulation of test results, pushing students into easy subjects, teaching to tests, not allowing entry to students who won't perform well, not allowing students to sit tests if they might not get top marks, underfunding of 'hard' subjects and so on. Parent's power to actually complain about a school is reduced as well: schools will no longer be run by democratically elected local authorities, but by the largely unelected board of governors. If you have a complaint they won't deal with (most schools won't even tell you the names of the governors), you have to go directly to the secretary of state and, as this submission demonstrates, getting an answer from Mr Gove is very difficult (no doubt you would be fobbed off with a "we don't interfere with the running of individual schools" response).

AlexC04 15y ago
Excellent points and I agree completely. They're also already in pretty deep with respect to privatization. Since (at least one of) the curriculum publishers and standardized testing boards (eg: Edexcel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edexcel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edexcel) is privately owned. That leads to tremendous investment in lobbying and special interest type stuff, but actually takes away an individual teacher's ability to tailor the curriculum to the interests of the students.