‘Fit is quietly, modestly one of the best books about being young, beautiful, and damaged that you’re ever going to read. Sentence by sentence, it has a gaunt grace; cumulatively, it has the force of a dark, dark fairytale.’
7 yrs ago we started a new 6th form. I did an assembly, telling the kids that grades were like apples. Nice, but they don’t last. Look after the tree, then you get apples for life. 5 years ago, that cohort left, giving me an apple tree. Yesterday I picked my 1st apple.
“Explicitly teaching background knowledge is foundational to increasing pupils’ reading competence” say Ofsted. So why is the English GCSE and SATs reading based on tests of comprehension of unseen texts on random topics?
“You want social mobility?
Tax wealth. Tax inheritance. Build council houses. Fund schools. Pay proper wages. End the two-child benefit cap.
Anything less? Stop pretending you care.”
Being on the SMC taught me that no one in govt actually cares. The resource and attention given is tiny but the evidence is simple - equality leads to mobility. The concept of the SMC is laughable - no power, no money, just a high profile mask for inaction
On results day I like to think back to this. Well done to everyone - but well done for the work over the years, the things learned, the changes made, the moments you challenged yourself and moved forward. The tree is the thing, not just the apple.
7 yrs ago we started a new 6th form. I did an assembly, telling the kids that grades were like apples. Nice, but they don’t last. Look after the tree, then you get apples for life. 5 years ago, that cohort left, giving me an apple tree. Yesterday I picked my 1st apple.
I need a book. It needs to be capacious, plotty, propulsive. Just a proper class act of a book. You know, where you just sit back and think ‘fuck me that was good.’
So what should it be?
Brilliant results for so many. But the gap between disadvantaged and non disadvantaged has widened - more so than at A level. We need to support these young people now by increasing funding at 16-19.
@JolyonMaugham
@NickGibbUK
suggested on Wednesday that mock based appeals would be minimal. But in my school 51 out of 100 students would be eligible for one or more appeal.
Question: what exactly would be the problem with a massive increase in grade 4 passes in English and Maths GCSE? How many of the careers that those students now had access to would A) demand no further qualifications B) actually use skills that only grade 4 passes provide?
This is better. But it was all so avoidable. At heart is the belief that the teaching profession does not need to be listened to. The things we say are not because we are obstructive. They are because WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. Who knew?
This has been my first full term in charge of the pastoral side of my school. My heart breaks for how many kids have been damaged by the last two years - most of all those who were already troubled. It’s easy to discount them as ‘disengaged’ or ‘disruptive’ - but they matter.
Poetry is the bit that kids who normally disengage are unexpectedly moved by. Not only do they love it, but it provides the only spot of diversity in a literature curriculum that is otherwise overwhelmingly white and male.
“In the effort to maintain the line of schools being open… the DfE has not allowed the possibility of contingency planning.“
Social Mobility Commission's lead for schools and higher education
@SamuelWright78
says backup plans for home learning were not put in place
#Newsnight
If we made an automatic link between Free school meals and universal credit, you’d have a much better definition of disadvantage in school data and a much better coverage of kids.
Is there any reason extracts for the teaching of English language have to be so random? Couldn’t we have a curriculum - maybe matching and supporting history and geography - and teach inference etc by learning actual useful stuff?
ED Hirsch is the guru for this review - and yet he says explicitly that tasks like ‘find the main idea’ and ‘deduce the meaning of this word from its context’ are worthless, and the regular testing and teaching of unseen comprehension passages is actively destructive.
The English language exam can be filled with unconscious bias. Like the time my students from Sunderland were penalised for extrapolating the presence of lions and acrobats from an extract that mentioned Piccadilly Circus.
@KateClanchy1
@jessicacandrews
My last comment for today. Many people are saying students deserve better than to be judged by algorithm. But they are ALWAYS judged by algorithm. Our exam system is predicated on boundaries that shift every year to lock the numbers who pass and fail in place. Time to rethink.
I wrote this in June. It seems to me that the current moment is forcing us to look again at what school is for. We are used to thinking exams are the point - but of course, they are only the proof. What we should mourn is the idea that school is worth nothing without the grade.
@Miss_Snuffy
...which is why we have to focus on proper social care and support for families - decent housing, decent wages, family hubs, a welfare safety net - so they can provide the parenting their children need.
I have to admit, when I spoke to ofqual in May this was exactly what I expected they would do. While I queried the absence of appeals it didn’t even occur to me that they wouldn’t just use a ‘standard’ standardisation procedure (forgive me)
Ofqual has published guidelines on how it might revise grades based on “valid” mock results
Everyone knows this to be a bit of a panic response to the disastrous moderation exercise
Also entirely unnecessary if brains had been engaged earlier
1/
Actual physical copies. Real. With my name, and my words. I promised myself I’d get published by 30. I’m 42. I’ve written 6 full manuscripts before this. Fuck me, this is satisfying.
The report highlights an important story of underachievement but the language used is awful. These groups are economic not ethnic, and working class is not the same as disadvantaged. Using these terms interchangeably is wrong.
The full quote: “Give people money and they’re no longer poor. It’s not rocket science, actually: adequate welfare nets, good family hubs and good jobs in the area.” The money can come from jobs, and it can go to services - but without it we’re buggered.
Being on
@SMCommission
has shown me that people love the idea of
#socialmobility
in the abstract, but have a universal ability to ignore the parts of the problem they find inconvenient. Britain is unequal, top to bottom, and we need to change it.
📢 Cover reveal no 5! 🥁
💅 FIT💄
🍟
@SamuelWright78
🧑🎓
Winner of our 2020 Northern Book Prize!
The judges said: ‘Tender, tough, plainspoken and powerful.’
Ravishing cover by Jon Gray
Out 21 October
Preorder:
The issue we now need to address - which should have been the focus of energy all along, rather than the award of imaginary grades for exams not taken - is how to support students who have lost the most vital bit of their education and will start the next stage ill-prepared.
Minor point. When are we going to hear about the plan for exams? Or lost learning? Why have exam classes been left in limbo for two months now? Where is the contingency plan that we supposedly moved to at the start of Jan?
Went to Waterstones in Durham. Couldn’t see my book. Shamefacedly asked my wife to check with the assistant. She said it had sold out! Slowly coming to terms with the fact this book shit seems to be going quite well...
@andothertweets
Exam Nation is out today. It’s been reviewed in the FT, the Telegraph, the Times, and the New Statesman. I’ve gone beyond the nerves and now I’m convinced that we are at a turning point in education - everyone’s listening, and I believe change is possible.
This is why, instead of fussing round the edges, we need to use this moment to reassess what school is for. We have a deep hypocrisy in this country - every prime minister of the last 30 years has payed lip service to social mobility but has shied away from what that really means
Today is a day to celebrate student achievement. But as
@SMCommission
predicted, the gap has widened - because, simply, disadvantaged young people have suffered more. We need to support them.
Compared with 2019, 19 per cent more non-disadvantaged students received a top grade in 2021. Whereas only 15 per cent more disadvantaged students received a top grade. The gap in top grades grew by 4 per cent as a result.
Ok.
#teamenglish
#edutwitter
Some people say my book is good. It won a prize. It isn’t ‘for kids’ - but I want kids to read it, and I want teachers to read it. If you are interested in teaching it, I’ll send you a copy free - first ten DMs with teacher in bio get one.
I visited this brilliant school the other day - there is something wrong when school budgets drip away on patches up repairs, probably costing far more in the long term than decent investment. It’s the Vimes Boots Index all over again
@Framheadteacher
@michael_merrick
@KateClanchy1
This process has crystallised the point of the exam system. Ofqual have used the ranking but not the grades - because exams are a tool to rank kids. And so long as we have a baked in attainment gap between rich and poor, that ranking becomes a tool to keep the poor in their place
I believe in and strive for impartiality in my teaching. But I’m not really sure why the British empire is included in this list of contested things. It’s no more contested than any other historical event, surely?
A generation of young people are at risk of long term damage. We need serious, non-paritisan, expert, transparent planning for this. Not knee jerk sackings, nor angry ranting. We have seen the catastrophic muddle caused by defensive secrecy - please can we now work together.
Of course they don’t. Doesn’t mean they have no benefit! Just because grades are the easiest thing to measure and compare, doesn’t mean they are all that matters!
My heart sinks. Can’t we talk about this properly? Why does a very real problem with complex causes have to be co opted into this damaging and divisive discourse? Education is not a zero sum game - or at least it shouldn’t be.
My article in
@TheSun
this morning about how White working-class pupils have been neglected for decades.
This is a national scandal and we must take serious action to change it.
This maths thing - is the idea that the GCSE maths curriculum doesn’t provide enough numeracy for the average career? Have they *looked* at the GCSE maths curriculum? Maybe the issue is an exam that covers too much without structuring deep understanding.
This is not just about schools. In the least mobile areas, two kids with the same educational outcomes - one disadvantaged, one not - will have radically different life chances.
OUT NOW: our report identifies the ‘coldest spots’ in England, where those from disadvantaged backgrounds, entitled to
#freeschoolmeals
, have little chance of making a better life for themselves. They also earn much less than more affluent peers. Report:
I am an optimist. I like to give the benefit of the doubt. But I had a ringside seat, both as a school leader, and on
@SMCommission
, and I saw at first hand just how incompetent Williamson was. It has never been more obvious how morally diseased our public sphere has become.
@tombennett71
This is part of it, sure - and a few assemblies won’t cut it - but we also need the domain specific knowledge about media companies and structures and the flow of information. We can’t rely on the transfer of skills of critical thinking from one domain to another.
Disadvantaged young people in school and starting university are the most damaged by lockdown. The educational deficit they have experienced is huge: we must actively plan to support them
@SMCommission
I need to say this again. Twitter, you need to show more interest in my pond. It might look shite, but it will have frogs one day, and then you’ll be sorry.
@danbloom1
@GwynneMP
This is vile. It’s the philosophy of someone for whom the only yardstick of being “successful” is winning. Life as defined entirely by the kinds of careers you can earn large amounts in - and branding all those with broader conceptions of what life might be as “losers”
Why could we not have been listened to at the start. This whole mess was so avoidable.
@SMCommission
engaged with
@ofqual
in good faith, consulting on appeals as late as Friday, but we were ignored.
Honestly cannot express how weird this week is. Please read my guardian article, please come to my event, please buy my book. All seems a bit much, doesn’t it?
But please do. It’s been a long tine coming.
“Give people money and they’re no longer poor, it’s not rocket science”
Excellent interview with
@SamuelWright78
in
@guardian
. Don’t miss him here on Thursday discussing his debut novel FIT (
@andothertweets
) which draws upon his experience as a teacher.
Being at
@educationgovuk
tonight made me wake up to two things. One: this is a genuine moment of inflection - the sense of change is palpable. Two: Exam Nation, the book I have been nervously watching move towards the public, might actually speak to that moment.
Disadvantaged sixth form and college students are 3 A-level grades behind their affluent peers - in some areas, this increases to 5 grades, according to new
@EduPolicyInst
report
Ok. My holiday is dominated by this: my book on schools.I’ve just read through the whole thing to do the audiobook, and I’m torn between pride and fear. I feel like I’ve put the whole of my 22 years as a teacher in it. It’s out on 15th August. Pre-order at
Thread. When
@SMCommission
met with Ofqual in May we discussed a few things. First, I pointed out that these grades will follow different statistical patterns to normal years. The absence of exam cock-ups, funerals, messy breakups etc will mean inflation of some grades.
This was exciting. Dropped in to order The Woodcock by
@RSmythFreelance
and buy Absorbed by
@kyliesaysrelax
, casually pointed at
#TestSignal
and said *cough* I’m in that - and they asked me to vandalise some books!
So I’m having a moment. A new project is in the offing, and I realise that I have properly become a writer. And a kid started to idly read my book in detention, and was gripped for an hour and a half.
@BellaWallerstei
The issue isn’t taking a knee or not. It’s booing the people taking a knee. We don’t sing the Italian national anthem - but we shouldn’t boo it either.
So I finished the draft. And it was a process of thinking as much as writing. But the more you think about education today, the clearer it is that the answers are not just in schools - any more than the current crisis in the NHS is not just about hospitals
Either teachers systematically and specifically uplifted the grades of disadvantaged pupils, or the potential of those pupils is not measured accurately by the exam system.
@Lem_Exeter
@roy_blatchford
@profstig
‘He had a group of friends, male friends, and they would walk through town in neat shirts and sheepish bravado’.
A story by Sammy Wright.
Part of Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writers, out now
@DeadInkBooks
&
@BloomsburyBooks
Sometimes I step back and am gobsmacked by the sheer emotional energy one can expend as a teacher. I’ve had 7 or 8 conversations of fierce intensity today, and I feel beyond drained.
@Samfr
Absolutely - and the key issue was govt commitment to no moderation. It was a knee jerk and methodologically illiterate response to the “bad” algorithm of 2020. Once Gav had guaranteed no algorithm, instead of figuring out a better one, schools were screwed.
Just because there hasn’t been the public catastrophe of last year, doesn’t mean that this pattern of results is OK. This isn’t about the pandemic, or about exams vs TAGs. It is about basic fairness - and the failure of our system to offer an equal chance to all.
@SMCommission
@Miss_Snuffy
I think family is very important. But I don’t think it’s a problem specific to one community. And I’d question the idea of familial problems fitting one pattern. To be crude - what’s worse, no dad or a bad dad? I’ve seen wonderful single parents and toxic nuclear families.