Do no harm

After recently reading some tweets from people I admire and would pay credit to for formulating parts of my coaching and teaching practice I thought I would write on the topic.

Relevance:

I am not going to lecture on the veratable virtue of sport or sports, or how teachers conduct themselves in a specific instance. I am going to reference the education system particularly KS4 and to do no damage.

With the system now in place that all individuals stay in education until the age of 18 years old. What place and to what extent do examinations in KS4 have a revelvance?

This is not a lambasting of learning at KS4.

This is not denigrating that some of the content and learning that goes.

This is not saying that certificating learning is inherently bad.

I am raising the question what place, the now accepted norm that students should sit, during high stress points of their lives, exams that on the large have become the collection of grades, based on knowledge recall in an almost completely decontextualized manor.

That this raises a question of do no damage? Does the lack of context and application bring in to question the need for assessment in its present from?

This is not a sweeping statement, there is segway between some learning areas. There is a necessity some may say for prior learning to bridge to other further and higher education.

Is the present system the best way? Or is it THEE way due to acceptance?

Assessment changes the nature of delivery.

If we are measuring something in KS4 and thus assessing it, surely it must be of value? Is the learning we imbue of genuine continued value? Beyond that of the certification itself? Does the learning engender the student to want to seek out more knowledge and impart that knowledge to others? If not are we not placing students under a the microscope "kosh" for two years to certificate, a certificate that no longer has genuine value that it once had when the leaving age was 16 and these could be the highest level of academic education?

The pressures placed on Students, teachers (the system) and the stressors felt iin the family unit may end up the system being endgame orientated, the certification is more valuable than the learning and the process in itself.

“..acquiring knowledge in school has to be the voluntary act of a learner. You can’t actually teach anybody anything; they have to learn it. You can help them, but they’ve got to have that desire to know.” Michael Young, about ‘powerful knowledge’.

The above quote taken from [Russian psychologist] Lev Vygotsky being quoted in the TES this Christmas when interviewing Michael Young. Are we missing an opportunity to have a genuine impact on the desire to learn, the ability to see learning as a lifelong aspiration. An opportunity to avoid a two year block where learning is turned into a means to an end.

A question I would posset, how many times have we heard, "they can't work independently", "they are unable to structure xyz", "they need to be spoon fed".

Is this merely a result of making a formative point in time a paper chase? Is the pressures felt by staff and schools to get "results" find that Goodhart's law become a self fulfilling prophecy? Are the perceptions of importance creating a false narrative to parents?

Is there another way? Is there a way to look at these formative years to create heuristic learners? Learners that want to continue, with a love of subjects and the thirst to discover and impart knowledge to others to the future and beyond? Will this create the stepping stone missing to HE and the FE, to individuals who will enter a work space where they can seek out the knowledge to progress and flourish?

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original" - Sir Ken Robinson