The Mail gets it wrong – twice!

Janet Downs's picture
 2
The Daily Mail claimed that English maths teachers were the worst in the world based on a selective reading of a recently published international comparative study in maths teacher training. The study looked at nine countries chosen because they were strong in maths. One of these was England. Nine countries hardly encompass the world, or even that part of it described as developed. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the Mail from saying English maths teachers “languished” at the bottom of an international league table. It’s true that England was outperformed by most of the other countries but the comparative study made it clear that England was not disgraced.

The Mail also took the opportunity to repeat the story about UK tumbling down international league tables in maths by using the discounted OECD PISA 2000 results.

A few days before the Mail had distorted the OFSTED report about history teaching by cherry picking any negative remarks.
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Comments

Adrian Elliott's picture
Sun, 27/03/2011 - 15:19

'A few days before the Mail had distorted the OFSTED report about history teaching by cherry picking any negative remarks.'

If it did it was in good company. I am more concerned that the Observer headlined its article about the report 'poor marks for history teaching' and the Guardian online headline referred to schools' 'failing in history'. I wrote to the Observer about this distortion.It wasn't published (not surprising with Libya et al) but I also wrote privately to the editor complaining about the increasingly anti-state school bias. I haven't received a reply and don't expect to get one.

Janet Downs's picture
Sun, 27/03/2011 - 16:20

It's rather worrying if the Guardian and the Observer start publishing misleading reports about education. They should know better.

I've now started giving points for any education article in the Mail which uses the following words and phrases:

"languishing", "tumbling down league tables", "travesty", "savage indictment", "plummeted down rankings", "shame", "stagnated", and "damning indictment".

Extra points if the article uses the discounted 2000 PISA figures for the UK, if it says a survey of a small number of countries encompasses the whole world, and writes "Britain has now fallen behind (insert name of any Eastern European country irrespective of whether its league table position is above or below the UK).

My reward is modest: one slab of Divine dark choc for 5 points. My husband is wondering where all the chocolate's gone.

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