Educating Ruby by Guy Claxton Read Free Book Online Page B

them.
    We’re creating a fear culture within education – if you don’t achieve results you have failed . Teachers working in that fear culture narrow their curriculum to achieve that one objective. Leaders working in that fear culture hammer the creativity out of teachers if what they do doesn’t lead to that one objective. And the people in charge then look for culprits in terms of school leaders who aren’t doing what they want. I’m not the only head who’s resigned; there are lots. This fear culture is preventing people from developing children and staff to full capacity. If you create fear in a culture, people will do what the people above them tell them to do – nothing else.
    Neil, primary head teacher, Manchester
    Some traditionalists are very strongly attached to the fixed mindset view. They are likely to think the previous paragraphs are so much ‘wishy-washy liberal nonsense’ and sneer at the research – because it is inconvenient for their world view. They like the idea that intelligence is fixed because it justifies a segregated education system, traditionally based on IQ. They will say that we need to sort out the sheep from the goats, those who have what it takes from those who don’t. Schooling is expensive so, of course, there needs to be a separate stream for ‘the brightest and the best’ – thus defined – that runs from grammar and independent schools through to Oxford and Cambridge. But the static, fixed view of intelligence or ‘ability’ on which this reasoning rests is wrong. Children’s apparent intelligence varies hugely from context to context, and depends on all kinds of factors– like their beliefs about intelligence – which have nothing to do with any innate ability. 10
The lure of Big Hard Data
    To get to where schools need to go, we have to question the importance of standardised tests and the numbers they generate. Although they give the appearance of objectivity and reliability, these kinds of tests can hold back innovation if important things that cannot easily be quantified are discounted. One set of figures, produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is especially influential at the moment. Let’s have a look at them.
    The OECD was set up in 1948 to run the Marshall Plan which was designed to rebuild a Europe ravaged by war. Today, more than 60 years later, it promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. In terms of education, it is perhaps best known for its PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests. Every three years it tests 15-year-olds across a range of subjects to see what they know and what they can do. (Remember the ‘what they can do’ part of this sentence because we will be returning to it, and it’s very important.)
    Politicians across the world are scared of PISA results because they operate as a very public examination of every country’s education ministry. Countries are ranked according to their performances. Here are the top three countries/cities in each test followed by the highest ranking European country followed by the UK’s position using the 2012 results:
    Maths
    1. Shanghai, China
    2. Singapore
    3. Hong Kong, China
    9. Switzerland
    26. UK
    Â 
    Reading
    1. Shanghai, China
    2. Hong Kong, China
    3. Singapore
    6. Finland
    23. UK
    Â 
    Science
    1. Shanghai, China
    2. Hong Kong, China
    3. Singapore
    5. Finland
    20. UK 11
    Newspapers love these league tables too because it makes for easy journalism to print numerical rankings such as these. Journalists from countries whose students appear in the top 10 write pages of copy praising their country’s educationsystem and schools. Those who feature much lower down the list like the UK (and the USA) scratch their heads and criticise teachers and schools and incumbent politicians. Employers use the PISA results as