Another week of A levels results, another week of criticism surrounding league tables, the ‘dumbing down’ of Key Stage 3s, and widespread strategies and promised for college review and enhance. The Tories have already stated a wish to reform league tables with the intention to give greater weighting to better grades and more ‘worthwhile subjects. With regards to under achievement in this series of blogs, the news could not be more scary. Recently peers also have heard our society denounced as ‘broken’ from the opposition bench, with youth culture being slammed. Contrariwise our society are now told that kids who study ‘worthless’ subjects may have their results devalued when considering the achievements of other schools (some people resort to hiring a tutor to get by). I will return to the patronizing position toward modern day young people in a later blog, with conflict on the inevitable reaction to continuing success.
The focus this week is on rubbish colleges. This again is a very vague definition, but is regularly thrown into journalistic pieces, especially at this time of year. A college which is deemed to be ‘underachieving’ must be considered objectively, peers wouldn’t believe a ‘mild day’ to be in anyway the same when reported in the weather forecast in the UK and Australia, yet peers consider underachieving schools to be as bad as each other regardless of location and resources. I talked to private tutor and they said that in recent times our society have seen a growth of ‘specialist colleges’ whether they are in Science or Performing Arts etc.
The tutor went on to say that these colleges therefore must have different targets to reach, but on an overall scale, these strong departments may mask peersaker areas within the institute. The league tables do not reflect the pupils and environs which the institute has to adapt to. Inner city colleges traditionally have to deal with young people who are often exposed to gang culture, drug abuse and binge drinking, as our societyll as many students who are not as bright as some in more affluent areas. young people may again not receive as much support at home, which will as well as affect their progress. This links in well with my previous blog on underachieving kids who are less able.
In many cases, the challenge of helping these less able students to reach their potential is far more taxing for an educator than simply feeding a bright students’ hunger for knowledge. I very much doubt that even the complex ‘progress tables’ for institutes (only behind Duckworth-Lewis and the scoring for the Heptathlon in complexity) includes this when determining the rankings. Consequently many institutes and, in reality, many educators are tarred with the reputation of being poor.
This leads to an Ouroboros situation, where in institutes desperate for enthusiastic, committed teachers, you have teachers who are apathetic, and feel undervalued in their jobs. On a level which many people could empathize with, consider the disappointment many would experience when someone fails to appreciate the effort put into a present or something similar. If one scales this emotional response when bearing in mind that individuals move houses to avoid your teaching, this is quite a body blow for someone in a profession which requires commitment and passion in the face of many difficulties within the classroom, not to mention that private tutors are becoming more popular.
