Does anyone in the education system actually believe Gove knows anything?

Francis Gilbert's picture
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Michael Gove's latest attack on teachers and school governors is unprecedented for an Education Secretary. Sure, we've had Secretaries of State who have enjoyed taking pot shots at the unions and at teachers at times, but Michael Gove's aggressive assaults on the profession are unique, not only in their wide-ranging nature, but also in their wrong-headedness. His latest barrage of criticism not only attacks the unions as being full of Trotskyites (this from the man who expresses admiration for Chairman Mao) but also denigrates governors and teachers who are members of professional associations. Throw in his well known, if off-the-record, jibes at civil servants, and you begin to think: is there anyone in the system that he actually approves of? Basically, the only kind of person in education he appears to have any time for are: not members of a teaching union; not members of a professional subject association; not a governor; not a local authority bureaucrat; not a supporter of a local authority school; and not a civil servant. But, of course, it has to be someone who agrees with everything he says.

Er Michael...there aren't many left, are there? I hate to tell you this, but many private and grammar school teachers are members of professional associations like the National Association for the Teaching of English, which you attacked in such an ill-informed fashion in your latest speech for failing to support your catastrophic dictats to teach what you call "grammar" -- although I'm not sure you really know what "grammar" is judging from the complete mess of the your new National Curriculum for primary schools. I attended NATE's conference in York last week, and I'm familiar with the exhaustive research that has gone on within NATE concerning the teaching of "grammar"; the serious examination of what we mean by the word, the search for a meaningful 'meta-language' to describe the processes that happen within language, the careful consideration of how we might best teach the multiple facets of the subject. You said in your speech that the leader of NATE described the teaching of grammar as oppressive; this is a complete mis-representation of his and NATE's perceptions of the matter. If any professional group of people were more concerned about the teaching of grammar, it's NATE! They have resources galore to help teachers with this very tricky curriculum area; their approach is not prescriptive, but it's eminently sensible. NATE researchers and teachers like Helen Lines, who has conducted fruitful research on the teaching of grammar for the government and produced numerous resources for NATE on this area, have shown that "grammar" can be taught well, but teaching it requires training, patience and plenty of critical reflection on the part of teachers. Being a member of NATE myself, I know that the association embraces a wide range of views; that's the whole point of the organisation, it gives a voice to English teachers and their diverse opinions.

Then, there's governors. Your attack on them was not only gratuitous, it was actually very puzzling given the fact that you have encouraged schools to become academies, where it's largely only "local worthies" who are running the show, particularly in the unsponsored academies. Local authority bureaucrats -- actually paid professionals -- have no place on the governing bodies of academies and free schools in the way they are entitled in local authority schools. You appear to be attacking the very people you are expecting to carry out your own "revolution"!

If there are any people in the education system who actually support Michael Gove, could they put up their hands please? (No, not you Toby Young -- you don't count, you're a governor now!)
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Rebecca Hanson's picture
Fri, 13/07/2012 - 16:30

Thank you for the complement John. I've taken care to distill out the elements of how I worked with Erica to help anyone who is facing a similar situation achieve the same end and that blog is here: http://mathseducationandallthat.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/ten-hours-with-er...

The problem with Nick Gibb is not in the speech - it is that the stuff he's actually doing bears no relation to anything, including his speech. It's just garbage. His real views become much more obvious in Q&A sessions and sadly that hasn't been published.

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Wed, 11/07/2012 - 10:23

Meanwhile me must, of course, teach huge content by rote to KS1 children in direct contradiction of all the evidence ....

You mean he said kids should learn their times tables up to 12 by part way through KS2.

Could you point me to the evidence that shows learning multiplication tables is a bad thing?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Wed, 11/07/2012 - 12:51

No I don't mean he said kids should earn their times tables up to 12 by part way through KS2. Here is the draft curriculum we were discussion - which has a huge amount of learned content in KS1 including abstract algorithms like column addition and subtraction which depend for their understanding on students having a secure grasp of base 10. http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/d/draft%20national%20curr...

"Could you point me to the evidence that shows learning multiplication tables is a bad thing?"
Treating this as a separate question, it depends on how they are taught Ricky. So for example with my son who will soon be starting year 4, I have not expected him to lean multiplication facts by heart yet - I always expect him to puzzle them out through working around the problems. He's becoming more and more fluent, so when his class are chanting tables in year 4 I know he'll be doing what I did and doing rapid repeated addition and so on to get the answers which he understands which will make him always fluent and always confident in his tables.

But in the same class it is very likely that other children won't be this fluent so they will start to memorise facts to keep up instead of practising rapid number work and building their answers from understanding. And the teacher won't notice and it won't be a problem at the time and the students will show the right progress for that year but all sorts of problems are set up for the future - some of which may be corrected by natural experience or by good teaching but the evidence of the children and adults who come to hate maths and lose the ability to do it confidently shows that many aren't.

If your really interested in what's going on her read LiPing Ma's book 'Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics'. Chapter 3 gives a brilliant illustration of how we teach algorithms and methods for getting maths done in the West while in the Pacific Rim they focus on axioms, structures and fluency.

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