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We went to a meeting at one of the girls schools the other night to what was billed as a year 10 forum. It was to help our daughter “maximise her potential” in studying for her GCSE’s. There was no indication whether she had been “chosen” to attend because she had been identified as someone who was doing well or someone who wasn’t realising her true potential. It turned out to be the biggest load of twaddle I have ever had to sit through in an educational establishment and a total waste of 2 hours of our lives – two hours in which a significant amount of homework or revision could have been done.

I arrived about 10 minutes late because I had to go straight from work but according to Sarah “I hadn’t missed anything”. The first section was entitled “Who am I” and seemed to be a constant stream of random statistics. The first info we were given was a study by someone whose name I forget into the percentage of pupils at Grammar schools who gain 8 A/A* grades at GCSE according to the month of birth of the pupil. Apparently it goes from 45% for pupils born in September down to 37% for those born in August.

I’m not quite sure what the point of this info was especially as he admitted that the data was for both boys and girls and that the levels would be higher if only girls (it’s an all girl school) were considered. Given that she was born in October she probably has a 50/50 chance of gaining 8 A/A* grades. I felt sorry for anyone who was born in August who was there as it must have been a bit demoralising for them to be told they may not do as well simply because of bad planning on their parents behalf! But at least they could take heart in the news that the school usually gains a level of 100% in the national benchmark of 5 level A-C grades.

The next piece of information was a study by someone called Professor Jesson who looked at the achievement levels at keystage 2 and 3 and then divided the pupils into 5 groups 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. The survey showed that pupils in group 4, which our daughter is apparently in,  had an 87% chance of gaining 5 A/A* grades and a 69% chance of getting 8. We were beginning to wonder where all this was going! Curiously the session finished with some discussion about a study by the Fisher Family trust which took into account various factors such as sex, ethnicity, parental professions etc. It was odd to be built up by the first two reports to be then told that the fact we live in Gillingham and not Rochester and we aren’t Doctors or Lawyers will affect her chances of achieving!

The next speaker introduced himself as the school’s “Director of Individual Learning” and it soon became apparent that he was here to teach us how to think. All of the pupils had to learn to think the same way seemed to be the message – oh well so much for individuality then. The first exercise was to put the various types of thinking into order lowest to highest according to something called Anderson Taxonomy. In case you ever have to do this the answer is Remembering > Understanding > Application > Analysis> Evaluation > Creating.

He then went on to discuss the way to learn to think by using “Thinking Maps” – these were a series of diagrams which were used to help the children think. These ranged from a circle with pictures in it to group together things with similar characteristics such as living in water (like a list!) to a map which gave instructions on the steps to achieve something (or a flow diagram as we used to call it!). Another one was simply a Venn diagram by another name. Apparently without the use of these thinking maps the children will never pass their exams – by this point I was starting to wonder how I had ever managed to get a degree.

The next topic was called habits of excellence and was even more rubbish – apparently someone had studied the worlds most successful people and worked out there were 16 attributes that all of them had. These were then subject to 6 different levels at which they were operated – it was dashed through so quickly I didn’t get the hang of it completely – ask your kids I’m sure they’ve been brainwashed with this stuff.

This is of course all part of the business-ification of teaching. That is why he was the Director of Independent Learning and not Head of Independent Learning as he would have been a few years ago. The business world has long inhabited a space where jargon is king and being able to talk the talk is more important that actually being able to do something. This is obviously now being passed down to schools which is why you hear so many business terms when you speak to someone in a school.

It was quite amusing to hear the Deputy Head (or should that be Assistant Director?) say “This is what we would have referred to as brainstorming a few years ago”. This made me laugh because I thought the whole thing was about ten years out of date. This is the sort of crap that I used to see pushed at conferences ages ago. It always used to amuse me to watch companies sitting round discussing ways to improve performance when all they could trot out were meaningless jargonistic terms. I always used to think “if you spent more time doing stuff instead of talking about it you wouldn’t be in so much trouble”.

It’s obviously taken time to trickle down to schools, maybe all those personnel, sorry Human Resources, managers that foisted this sort of psychobabble on employees and ground industry to a halt have now moved on as they have been seen through and are now using their outdated techniques on our kids – same conclusion applies “Wouldn’t the time be better spent actually learning something?”

Having spent most of my life sitting through other people’s conferences I didn’t relish the idea of being forced to participate in this nonsense. I’m afraid in that situation all my bullshit detectors suddenly leap into position and I treat the rubbish that is being spouted with the contempt it truly deserves!

Foot notes:

1. There was a question on one of the slides underneath a roulette wheel which read “What is the probability of getting a “o” on a roulette wheel?” – I pointed out that it was zero as there aren’t any letters on a roulette wheel
2. I have since google’d Professor Jesson and found that he is quite critical of the Grammar school system and has criticised Medway Grammar schools in particular – this then makes him an odd choice to quote.
3. Refreshments has been promised but all there was was water – presumably because water is an aid to thinking (or so they told us) but to be perfectly honest a nice cup of tea (which lets face it is 90% water) would have had a much better effect!
4. And finally this blog entry was put together without the aid of any thinking maps!