More on Peter Harvey, the science teacher who snapped.

At the time of the incident where Peter Harvey attacked **** ********** I wrote this.

Well, his trial has started, for Attempted murder. The BBC has this.

Firstly I am surprised he is not claiming diminished responsibility. He is merely pleading guilty to GBH.

From the trial it really does appear as if his class was a living hell for him. Given that he had been off sick because he feared he might hurt someone, you do really have to ask what support he was given. Many of these points I made in the original article.

One thing this does draw in to sharp relief though is school discipline. Clearly this needs fixing.

I feel very sorry for all those involved.

Update 14th of May 2010 to reflect a section 39 order I have been made aware off.

On Education

I watched the second in the dispatches series on children and maths. I was pleased to see much progress in the school, with many of the children improving considerably.

I do hope the head teacher, whom I regard as brave takes note that there not only is nothing wrong with his pupils, but there never was, only an issue with the teaching provided. When it improved so did the children's maths.

It seems to me that primary education is overlooked, yet by the end of primary school many of our children's futures are set. If we were to make the right investments in primary education however, secondary education would be much easier, the children would get more out of it and in fact, we could spend less on it if that was desirable.

Do not get the idea though that I am advocating spending more cash. I am not. Far from it. One thing that this Labour government have tested to destruction and proved to be entirely false is the idea that if you throw cash at it, it will improve. They have also tested to destruction, and proved sadly wrong, the idea that some gibbering idiot in Whitehall can teach a child 50 miles away by bothering their teachers with endless bits of instruction.

We need to find a better way. It starts with teaching the teachers, and frankly some of them need it.

Education! Education! Education! What chance have our children got?

What chance have our children got when the primary school teachers can't do maths?

I have just watched Dispatches on Channel 4, Kids Don't Count (Part 1 of 2), and did the test that they set 155 teachers here. Apparently only 1 out of 155 got what I would regard as the minimum mark required, 12 out of 12. Something like half got 50% or less.

Do we seriously expect children to get anywhere when the teachers can't do the maths?

Lets be clear here, a primary school teacher does not need to be maths geniuses, but they do need to be able to do the sort of questions their students are expected to do in their sleep. (The test above is aimed at primary school leavers).

The head teacher who allowed dispatches in was very brave, if useless at maths. Clearly we have a problem, and we need to test teachers on the basics and where they fail, they will need remedial training. If they still fail, they need replacing.

Ed Balls and Michael Gove were asked to take the test. Both declined. Pathetic. I took the test and got the 12 out of 12. That means I can do primary school maths. One would hope primary schools teachers could, and also that those who seek to run education could as well.

Labour Spending cuts, Ed Balls speaks!

Having gone from the ridiculous position of "Labour investment verses Tory cuts" to admitting that Labour will have to cut spending Ed Balls announced that he thinks he can save £2 billion in education. (The BBC has this here)

He does have some good suggestions, like cutting 300 staff in Whitehall who issue curriculum advice. This will have more than he thinks as well, as the rubbish they write has to be read by teachers and consumes an enormous amount of time for very little gain.

However where he is wrong is thinking that one head master can run several schools. The rational is there, because secondary head teachers used to be fairly well paid and are now ridiculously well paid, but the problem is a school needs a figure head and that is its head master/mistress. Having one super head over several schools and then a series of deputies will make a lot of schools feel rudderless.

Still, on the plus side, at least Labour no longer see our pockets as bottomless pits of cash that they can raid.

Government Education cuts!

After all the waffle and lies from Labour about "Tory cuts" and calling David Cameron Mr 10% now at least we have some truth!

Labour is cutting the funding of university teaching by £65 million.

The BBC has this!

Still, certain course can recruit more students, particularly ones teaching technology, they just can't have any more money!

Peter Harvey, the teacher who snapped

Peter Harvey was a popular and well respected science teacher at All Saints' Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, then one day he attacked 14 year old pupil **** ********** with a 2kg weight and injured two other pupils.

The incident happened because he was being taunted by the physics class he was teaching, with them singing man in the mirror changing some of the words to psycho.

He will appear before magistrates today charged with attempted murder.

Peter Harvey had just returned from sick leave having suffered a stress related stroke. Then someone thought it would be a bright idea to throw him back in the classroom on his own.

To me at least, this seems like lighting the blue touch and standing well back. If the stress of teaching was so bad it caused him a stroke he clearly was not coping before he was ill and so needed much more support which he did not appear to have. You do have to wonder if the duty of care the school owed to him and his pupils was properly discharged. Personally I suspect not.

The BBC has this.

Update 22:53

Having read some of the comments, I offer this from the Daily Mail.

I would point out that we have no reason to believe **** ********** deserved anything. According to the Daily Mail article, he may well have been a nice lad.

What appears to have happened is that a class got seriously out of control with a teacher who should have been better supported.

Update 14th May 2010, to reflect a section 39 order I have been made aware of.

Education: I despair! A Tale of Two Essays.

On the front page of today's Telegraph is a story about a tale of two essays, about someone called Pip Davenport, one which got 8 out of 12 and one which got 7. The former is littered with spelling and grammatical errors, the latter not. The former is less coherent than the latter. The Latter is, needless to say more comprehensible. You can read both here.

The head teacher of the children's school was shocked.

Alas I am not. The reason why exams results are going up is not because children are any better but that the exams are getting so much easier. Well, at least for those not capable of coherent writing.

Before any one whinges at my comments, saying I am discriminating against people from certain backgrounds, I would point out that both universities and employers certainly will. They will do so my binning the CV's of the illiterate, interviews and increasingly there own exams.

Labour are simply letting down everyone in state schools by failing to ensure proper marking and a proper education. This will also destroy our economy.

F*ck Off!

Sorry, just practicing for GCSE English.

If you do not believe me, read this in the Times and weep, or this on the BBC.

They say exams are not being dumbed down.

Alas I remain to be convinced.

University Degrees dumbed down?

Professor Geoffrey Alderman will be giving a lecture later in which he will argue that university degrees are becoming easier as the marking schemes are becoming more lenient.

This article in the Independent broke the story last night, whilst the BBC carries this.

The allegations fall into several categories. Firstly plagiarism is not punished, secondly badly written answers are not penalised and thirdly there is a wild growth in the number of first class degrees that are being awarded.

Having spoken to university and other higher education lecturers over many years I can tell you that the standard of the input to university and higher education has been in decline. That is that A level students and their equivalent are less well versed in their subjects than they used to be. This trend started in the late 1980's but has accelerated. That the input should be declining whilst the output is rising in simply untenable.

The reason for the selling short of degrees? League tables. Brilliant.

So are we in for more exam chaos?

It seems the managing director of Edexcel, Jerry Jarvis has expressed some concerns over the preparations for the new diploma system which is due to start in September, in this article in the Guardian.

Apparently the IT system that it relies on has not as yet been fully tested, and teachers have received limited training. Also it seems the establishments which are to teach them have not as yet got the guidance they need on how to teach them.

On the other hand we have had Mike Tomlinson, the former inspector of schools, and the schools minister have been on the radio saying that all is well. Firstly they say that the scheme is small, not across the whole country. Colleges who are to teach them have been vetted and teachers have been organised into self help groups.

Well, it is difficult to tell what is right. We will only know it two years time though once people start sitting exams. Experimenting in this way with children's education does concern me though.

The BBC also has this.

Diplomas to replace 'A' Levels?

That old chestnut has come up again. Are diplomas going to replace A levels? It seems that the prime motivating factors are that some people are just no good at A levels, so don't get them and then do not go to university and some people are concerned that A level standards are dropping.

Well, some people want to, and indeed would benefit from a vocational education whilst others want to, and will benefit from an academic one. One size does not fit all!

The real problem is that there has been massive grade inflation in A levels. The students who now turn up at university with the supposedly required A levels to do a course now have to do remedial studies they did not used to have to do. If you don't believe me ask a university lecturer, particularly in engineering and the sciences.

I am not sure a diploma system will help. What we actually need to do is have some rigorous courses that are harder to pass.

The BBC has this.

GCSE Science to be dumbed down?

The Times yesterday carried this article on how GCSE science exams are being dumbed down.

I have read the example paper and some of the questions are good. Most are asinine whilst some are based on subjective criteria where the question setter does not understand the subject matter enough to be able to make a comment let alone set a question and some of the multiple choice question's have the potential for all answers to be correct.

Utter stupidity.

I will Fisk some of the government comments and the paper at a later date. It does however break my heart. It is clear that science in this country is not being dumbed down. Clearly it has been already.

If we double the spending on schools will our children learn more?

It appears to be the governments plan to raise spending on education to the same level as the independent sector.

I scratch my head when people talk like this. For a start, which part of the independent sector? Eaton? The average? Who knows what the target actually means.

The next problem is this, is this not the most facile target you have ever seen?

If I go out to buy a weeks shopping and spend £100, would my children be better fed if I spend £200?

The answer is, it depends. You can buy a given product at all sorts of prices. If I buy a box of corn flakes for £2 are they better than the one I brought for £1 last week.

This issue is really important because throwing money at a problem, and then being proud of it, is not the answer. Holland and Sweeden (along with most of the rest of the developed world) spend less than us on secondary education, but neither country has sink schools. Why? Because schools are easy to set up, and sink schools don't get parents sending their children there so improve or close.

Fraser Nelson on what David Cameron should have said

I have to agree with Iain Dale that this is a must read. David Cameron was being interviewed by John Humphrey's on Monday's BBC Today Program.

Fraser thinks he should have said this, I agree.

You can listen to the original interview here.

I will write more on the subject later.

And as if by magic, the Physics teacher appeared!

Earlier I wrote about the Civitas report into the dumbing down of education including the sciences. Well thanks to Dizzy Thinks, here is an open letter from a physics teacher to the "AQA" Board which sets the curriculum. The teacher, Wellington Grey has his blog here.

The letter starts:

I am a physics teacher. Or, at least I used to be. My subject is still called physics. My pupils will sit an exam and earn a GCSE in physics, but that exam doesn’t cover anything I recognize as physics.

Depressingly the letter continues with some examples of which this is one:

On topics that are covered by the specification, the exam board has answers that indicate a lack of knowledge on the writer’s part. One question asks `why would radio stations broadcast digital signals rather than analogue signals?’ An acceptable answer is:

* Can be processed by computer / ipod [sic]

Aside from the stupidity of the answer, (iPods, at the time of this writing, don’t have radio tuners and computers can process analogue signals) writing the mark scheme in this way is thoughtless, as teachers can only give marks that exactly match its language. So does the pupil get the mark if they mention any other mp3 player? Technically, no. Wikipedia currently lists 63 different players. Is it safe to assume that the examiner will be familiar with all of them? Doubtful.

And here is another:

Lastly, I present the final question on the January physics exam in its entirety:

Electricity can also be generated using renewable energy sources. Look at this information from a newspaper report.

• The energy from burning bio-fuels, such as woodchip and straw, can be used to generate electricity.
• Plants for bio-fuels use up carbon dioxide as they grow.
• Farmers get grants to grow plants for bio-fuels.
• Electricity generated from bio-fuels can be sold at a higher price than electricity generated from burning fossil fuels.
• Growing plants for bio-fuels offers new opportunities for rural communities.

Suggest why, apart from the declining reserves of fossil fuels, power companies should use more bio-fuels and less fossil fuels to generate electricity.

The only marks that a pupil can get are for saying:

• Overall add no carbon dioxide to the environment
• Power companies make more profit
• Opportunity to grew new type of crop (growing plants in swamps)
• More Jobs

None of this material is in the specification, nor can a pupil reliably deduce the answers from the given information. Physics isn’t a pedestrian subject about power companies and increasing their profits, or jobs in a rural community, it’s is about far grander and broader ideas.

This simply is not physics, nor is it science. What is more the people "responsible" (though irresponsible would be a better description) The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (or rather the lack of any real assessment and no qualifications alliance) seem to think this load of drivel will "provide work related learning" for pupils.

Are they serious? Do they really think that employers want people who know nothing about a subject like renewable energy to sit around all day discussing what a journalist who also knows nothing about renewable energy has to say about it? You just couldn't make this up.

Daniel Finkelstein has this.

Update, Wellington also has another blog here, and you can read the comments on his article here.

Is Education being Politicised?

Yesterday the Telegraph ran a story on a think tank document by Civitas, (the Institute for the Study of Civil Society) entitled "Corruption of the Curriculum" or "School curriculum corrupted by politics". You can read Civitas's full press release here, though the full report will cost you £12. (These think tanks need to get with the Internet age, and publish it online for free!)

It has to be said the press release makes interesting reading, but then so did the BBC's rebuttal piece (surely that should be the Labour parties, or governments?) on Radio 4's Today program.

They wheeled on someone who used to be a number 10 advisor but now teaches history who went on about how he still taught dates, and history in chronological order. To some extent this rings true, because I went to my sons new secondary school last year (he will be there from September) and one of the subject areas I noted was history and how different years covered different date ranges in history so that all seems chronological. Obviously it is no good just teaching events, dear boy with out some background on why they may be significant.

It has to be clear that it is not clear when the curriculum of which Civitas complain is being brought in. (Some research needed, as I ain't paying £12, normally think tanks invite me for drinks and nibbles to discuss their ideas, he hinted!)

The press release makes even grimmer reading when it comes to science which is to be amalgamated into one subject. Again according to the press release they want to get pupils to discuss things like GM crops, and abortion, it seems from an ethical point of view. The ethics of science is an interesting an indeed important subject, but it is a philosophical subject rather than a purely scientific one, and tends to be something taught at universities as part of degrees in science rather than as a replacement to it.

As a physicist, and possibly a chemist I strongly object. Firstly science is about many things but it has to be about scientific method, that is looking at observations, coming up with a hypothesis and then testing them by experiment. It's fun as well! Then there is learning how theories fit together. One of the most fascinating facts I learnt at A level (from a Dr of Chemistry who could not write! Well, with a pen, I always made a point of asking what his illegible notes in the margin said which usually was about being tidy and clear in writing!) was how the man who came up with the periodic table, or at least a version of it, John Newlands noticed a musical octave spaced quality to it. In fact there is a reason for this, and it boils down to quantum mechanics, but I won't bore you with the details, but the next time you listen to a really good piece of music it's the maths in it that makes it sound good.

It has to be said that maths, physics and chemistry became more understandable together, and set in some useful context such as the things and machines we see about us when I was at school.

If we want to build a knowledge based economy, it is not peoples ability to debate the ethics of abortion or global warming that will count. It is the ability to produce technology to produce clean energy and the like that will, and you don't get the knowledge to do that from discussing the ethics.

The Telegraph also has this attack on what is being put in our curriculum by politicians. It does not make good reading.

Day 19 of the Great Grammar School debate, and Graham Brady shows that his education was worthless

Yes we are now in day 19 of the Great Grammar school debate, and Graham Brady, who went to a grammar school has demonstrated that his education does not stop him saying things which are patently untrue.

In this article for the News of the World, where he clearly seeks to do yet more damage to the party he says this:

"People are frustrated by a political establishment that talks about choice but won't let them choose a grammar school."

No, Graham, parents don't choose a grammar school, unless their children pass the 11+.

"Instead of telling working-class families to put up with the schools they're given, we should be angry so many children are being let down. "

Well, Graham, if you had read past the bit on Grammars having a relatively low percentage of people with disadvantaged backgrounds the policy is to allow parents to choose any school, and what is more to allow them to set up their own if they don't think there are any good ones locally.

So do us all a favour and stop damaging our poll ratings.


You can read more of Graham Brady's "thoughts" in the News of the World here. (Please note that they will break the link next week.)

The Great Grammar School storm in a teacup?

Look, existing grammars are safe, and not only that the grammar school system where it still exists is safe.

However I have found no appetite in Conservative circles for extending it to where it does not exist at the moment.

People seem to be getting very hot under the collar about what amounts to a non debate. What is there to discuss? Are we going to impose a grammar school system where the electorate don't want one? No.

What we are going to do is to put a grammar school in EVERY school, in EVERY subject so that someone who shines in maths and is rubbish at say German gets to fly in maths to the top, whilst he (or she) gets help in foreign languages to keep him (or her) up to speed.

I will be writing an article on the one key issue on public service reform on another day.

I was I have to say quite pleased that there was no disagreement at the wine tasting on the grammar school issue, though some people did feel that it had not been well handled which is certainly true.

The Damascene conversion of the Conservative party?

George Osborn gave a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank today, in which he said that the Conservatives are the true "heirs to Blair" on public service reform, whilst Gordon Brown is the road block to reform.

He was of course not talking about a lot of the things this Labour government has done or is about to do, like ID cards or scrapping grant maintained schools and fundholding GP's.

What I found exceedingly funny was watching and listening to David Milliband wittering on about how for the last 10 years the Conservative party have been voting against Labour policies and calling Tony Blair all sorts of things and so on.... so who is going to believe in this Damascene conversion?

The reason why is that we of course opposed reversal of the public service reforms we put in place. We could hardly keep on opposing when this government brought our policies back, like for example allowing some schools to opt out of LEA control.

Johnson's Independent School gaff

Alan Johnson currently the Education Secretary and deputy leadership candidate gave an interview to the Telegraph which ended up with the headline "Private Schools must share teaching "expertise".

For example novelist (and leftwinger) John O'Farrell, who chairs the governors of Lambeth Academy in South London, seemed to be upset at the implication that teachers in the independent sector are better teachers than those in the private sector.

As usual the headline has obscured some interesting ideas to sell the story both in the Telegraph and indeed other media that has carried the story.

I am not sure if lending teachers is a good idea.For a start I can see it causing even more morale problems in the state sector. Alan Johnson seems concerned about the fact that the independent sector does have enough maths, music, science and language teachers that the state sector seems to lack. That to some extent is true, but the reasons for that are varied. For a start we are not getting the graduates in these subjects in the first place which is a result of science and the like being undervalued in schools in the first place. The reason for that is in essence the way that school league tables work. You get bonus points for pupils passing exams at grade 'C' or above but no reference made to the type of subject. As a result whilst the number of pupils who get 5 GCSE's is up, the number who get 5 good ones is down since 1997, good ones being defined as including Maths, a science and a language. Then of course the independent sector can and does pay what it likes to teachers and can pay more to get a science or maths teacher if they need to.

Universities are being told they have to get more students in and indeed through, again without reference to whether the course studied are useful. The net result is that science and engineering departments are withering and dying in may places. This is a problem because if we are to build the knowledge economy we do need people with technical knowledge.

We clearly need to go back and think about this. There are a number of problems to solve in schools but there are also things which need to be done in our university system.

The next thing that Alan Johnson wants to do is to get the independent sector to share their science labs. Why has the state sector not got science labs? Why is there a problem with teaching sciences in state schools?

Firstly it is not a universal problem. Many state schools can and do have the facilities and teachers. Secondly where there is a problem it is because either the facilities have not been built or more likely they have now been used for other things. There is also a lack of teachers (discussed above). Also the way that risk assessments work make it hard to teach science as well. As a practical subject it needs experiments. There is nothing quite so dull as a theory only science course as there is nothing quite so dull as lumping all the sciences in together so you don't get at the meat of any of them.

There are some good ideas though, for example getting independent schools to set up city academies. This will only work of course if they can apply their own discipline. This tends to be one of the big separators of state and private education, along with class sizes.

The BBC also has this.