Sunday 11 March 2012

Status Quo Unquestioned…

I’m in my second full week of teaching so I’m getting a clearer idea of what it’s like here. Many of my expectations have been confirmed but there’s been a few surprises. I’ll take it in chunks… first… the curriculum and the exams…


The Curriculum
It’s more challenging and broader than the equivalent in the UK. It’s a spiral curriculum designed to facilitate periodic revisits to previous material through the years. This makes planning difficult if you’re a foreign teacher with no experience of the previous years. You either have to go through all the text books to find out what not to teach from the textbook specific to the year in question, or you make friends with a physics teacher from a neighbouring school and trade hi-tech resources for inside knowledge. I opted for the latter.


When I say it is more challenging and broader, there is material in the GCSE equivalent textbook that isn’t encountered until A-Level in the UK. For example, skills-wise, exponentials are introduced in Year 10 and content-wise, buoyancy and upthrust are there. I have even seen some University level material (though admittedly not examinable). So, its harder. What are the exam papers like?


The Exams
The exams papers I’ve seen are hard. Compared to GCSE’s, they’re a whole world of hardness apart. I shudder to think how the kids back home would fair. We’re in the first examination year in this brand new school, so I don’t actually have any results to scrutinise here, but the nationwide average mark is 55% in the GCSE equivalents. The pass mark is 35%. I don’t know the statistics for the UK, but these numbers seem low to me. If the average mark in the UK is similar, then the Bhutanese students significantly outperform the UK students because the exams are so much harder here. Are the exams are too hard and the kids not up to the challenge, or is it a question of differing expectations on performance in summative testing?  


Everybody wants 70% in the UK, or 80%, or even 90%… 55% does not sound good, but shouldn’t the average be around the half way mark if the tests are functioning properly and are pitched correctly? When I went to University I had to deal with a downgrading of my normally good marks to the 40s, 50s and 60s I commonly scored. It was demoralising. But does the disconnect between secondary and tertiary examinations have its roots in the schools or the Universities?


Schools in the UK  are under intense pressure to deliver good statistics from summative assessments. It’s in every school’s interest to get those marks up higher, hence the widespread introduction of portfolio-based qualifications in the last few decades. Originally designed to offer an alternative pathway for those who were less academically inclined, they have been deployed by many as a means to improve results and have not always been suitable or useful for the candidate. Some schools dropped double award science altogether and shifted whole cohorts on to BTECs. Decisions like these were clearly made for the wrong reasons. The style of qualification may have been the product of the noble dream of useful school-based education for all, but their deployment has lowered standards in education. The students on many portfolio courses would be better served by apprenticeships or other forms of genuine vocational training, the success criteria being employment instead of minimal currency grade outcomes.  


I’m not sure what to call these courses nowadays – they certainly aren’t ‘vocational’. Nobody who does a portfolio-based science course will get a job as a scientist because they won’t have the required skills. They can make portfolios (sometimes), but they can’t solve equations or explain concepts or work out errors in the experiments they hardly ever do (unless you include making paper as a genuine science experiment). They can’t progress to A-Level science, never mind a career. I’m ranting, but with very good reasons. I think I’ll carry on…


Examination Boards
I was amazed when I found out that examination boards in the UK are private companies selling courses as products in a competitive market. The usual arguments for free market competition - innovation and a driving down of cost for the consumer - just don’t apply here. The regulatory bodies should not be monitoring examination boards – they should be the one and only examination board! The national curriculum should culminate in national exams. I don’t know when this function was privatised, or if it was ever under the public aegis to begin with, but the system in its current form is ludicrous. The schools and the students want good results, the examination boards want schools to use their courses, so they want good results too… isn’t there a conflict of interest? I’ve been to CPD with an Exam Board. The whole day was a sale’s pitch for their portfolio style of science course. The speaker performed a fine balancing act between declaring the merits of the course and convincing us that the work load was low and the results would be high.


To my mind, this state of affairs is an example of ‘status quo unquestioned’ – an absurdity in the way we do things that is not tackled because ‘its always been that way, therefore it must be right’. The worst kind of civil society is a complacent one that doesn’t question the institutions that govern it. Who would I direct such a question to? It’s like the debacle with my car insurance claim last year… everybody is responsible but nobody is accountable.    


Rant over…


Back to Bhutan…
As far as I know, it isn’t the same here. There’s no competition because there is no market for courses and the school statistics aren’t published (except for the top ten for celebratory reasons). Free from the influences of free market examining and publication of detailed league tables, the inflation of results does not occur and portfolio courses are not exploited as a means to raise perceived ‘attainment’. The government funds both academic schooling, monastic schooling and informal education for those who missed out (schooling itself is fairly new here). Entry to college by scholarship is by merit, though families can self-fund college education. 


The potential rewards of education cannot be understated in Bhutan, and I think people know this. Almost everybody I met from the government and national institutions in those wonderful initial two weeks in Thimphu received their higher education through scholarships in respected Universities abroad. There is a vibrant history of international education for those who perform well in this country. And a surprising amount of them come back. Harvard and Oxford educated economists who could be filling their boots with all the other morally bankrupt investment bankers are working here to help keep the country on the middle path of development. There certainly are some complex problems to keep them busy too; urban migration for one, and meeting the employment expectations of an increasingly well-educated work force is another. In a country of only 700 000 people, these well-educated, erudite and intelligent officials are very visible.


After a meeting with one such official in Thimphu I reflected on the importance of the interview he had when he was 16 yrs old. As a result of that interview (which was itself a result of high grades), he won a scholarship to Columbia University and progressed to a Masters in Oxford. Did he know back then what a difference it would make to his life? Did the other candidates have any idea what they had missed out on? Education can still open some really big doors here, and it’s all about the grades. Even if the big doors don’t open, there is a considerable gulf between a child’s education and the education their parents’ received. It’s some education over none, and that makes a big difference.


If the student’s here are outperforming their UK counterparts, it might be down to this – they value their education. This is most noticeable in their behaviour, of which I will say more next time when I talk about the classroom. Apologies for the slowing down of this blog. I’ve got 33 periods a week, I’m Head of Science, I’m in charge of all literary activities for the year, I’ve got a student teacher to coach and observe and I’m the chief timetabler for the school. I’m also a strange looking alien that everybody wants a piece of. And I’m trying to rewrite my first novel. 


As Beck famously said… my time is a piece of wax borne by a termite that’s choking on the splinters…  (are those really the lyrics?)

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