After returning from Oslo a few days ago, the cold winter weather has now taken over this part of the UK. Of course we don't have -4 degrees but when I left the house this morning the temperature had come down to 5 degrees. Finally it feels a little bit more like winter in this part of Europe as well :-) It's only 7 more weeks until Christmas!
I almost finished 'How to grow a school' while I was away and I am looking forward to talking about some more great ideas about school foundation in one of the next posts. Yesterday, I also started which Matthew Appleton's account of Summerhill, 'A free Range Childhood', which is now my new travel companion. After doing so much reading and writing about democratic schools in the last weeks I have decided to apply for a MPhil/Phd at the university! The only problem is the funding, but I am so lucky to have a good freind who is doing a phd in education at the moment and hopefully she is going to help me through the process a little bit. Phd sounds very posh indeed, but I am not really interested in the title at all- all I want to do at this point is learn more about democratic education :-)
On Monday at uni we were talking about gender equality and how boys statistically never do as well at school as girls. Since the national Curriculum was introduced in 1988 and GCSE results were analysed for the first time in 1992, there has been a constant concern about raising boys achievement. On average, 8% more girls than boys achieve 5 A* to C grades at GCSE and this has almost caused a moral panic! In my eyes, theorists are approaching this problem from the complete wrong point of view. Yes, it is very important that both of the genders are doing equally well at school, but should we not change the initial 'assessment' of children into something that is a lot fairer, rather than saying that it is the boys who can not perform well enough in the tests? Why pressure boys to do more work in order to do 'as well' as girls? Everybody learns at their own speed and, to voice a stroppy idea, maybe it is rather positive that boys are not quite as likely to please the system?
On the subject of testing, can you remember how we were discussing the abolishment of the Sat's tests in the last weeks thanks to the Alexander Primary Report?The National Union of Teachers are just preparing their next phase in the campaign against the exams and many other parents have voiced their concern about pressuring students much ttoo early into testing. This Saturday, the UK prime minister Gordon Brown said in the Times Educational Supplement that he finds Sats important to hold the schools accountable for their actions. What a reason to test children who are 10 years old!! So basically, the government is supporting exams to be able to see how not only children, but also schools are performing. Maybe they should rather send out a questionnaire to see how happy children are in the school? In my eyes the ultimate measure whether a school is successful or not is if children would also go even if it was not compulsory. Whenever I voice this opinion to other people, they look at me like I am crazy. What is so wrong with the idea of wanting to go to school? I am sorry, but is that an unrealistic expectation in today's society? (Sorry British Sarcasm there :-)
PS: Thank you for anybody out there who is reading! :-) Feel free to send me a mail or comment if you agree or disagree with any of the strong opinions I am voicing here all of the time!!
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