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25.08.20 Darrell Priestley
I saw the front page of this Tuesday’s YEP, a paper I often admire, and even though nowadays I don’t read it as often as I might, today I absolutely had to buy a copy. The page features a plea to the Chancellor, on behalf of the region’s economy, and near to home is always very close to my heart. The message does the YEP credit, and I wanted to share it with you. It simply says:
Dear Chancellor,
Our region's leaders are looking to you to help kick start our economy's recovery.
Their £750m plan could create nearly 70,000 new jobs.
If you ignore their pleas you risk a £12bn hit to the region's economy.
You do the maths.
Yours sincerely The YEP
This resonated with me because I strongly believe that, in terms of the local economy, the fight back has to start locally, and focus most on need close to home. At a time where there is need everywhere, local jobs matter. The sum involved is not actually as big as it sounds, when compared with some of the contracts the government has handed out to private companies recently, and it really pleased me to see the YEP put itself forward as a local champion for local people, jobs and enterprise.
This message cheered me up enormously. I think it would fit in rather well with the government’s stated aims of leveling up, so there is nothing not to like. I can only hope this message will be well received. I guess time will tell?
Calm down, everyone, not long now!
As of now, we expect to open for lessons around mid September, in just a few weeks time. Between now and then, there is extensive plastering and redecorating to do, plus a few more changes inside. But you can be sure, no one is looking forward to resuming lessons in person more than we are. It won’t be long until we are welcoming the first students back to the Academy. Yipee!
Oh, and pip says ‘Hi!’ by the way! (What he actually said was ‘Woof’, but I translated).
Back in August 1980, I received a shock A level result in Geography – massively below what I’d expected, several grades down in fact. My teacher and I were equally gobsmacked, as it was so far from what we expected. I had several options: i) Have the mark checked (fee, payable by yours truly, fee £moderate); ii) Have the results analysed, (fee £substantial); or iii) Accept it and move on. Those who know me will be unsurprised to learn that I chose option ii), and in fact can still remember writing the cheque for what at the time seemed a considerable sum. Fast forwarding to the outcome, I learned from my teacher a couple of weeks later that the result was wrong. The marker had failed to add up all the marks, and suffice to say that the result was a whole lot better. The fee was refunded, (although oddly no apology was received). Still, in a flash, my 1st choice University place was now open to me, and life could proceed. But the experience was something of an education of itself, if a salutary one. I can still remember my teacher’s eyes beaming as he said, “You knew!” It was a formative experience, and I guess that is how you build a life, a step at a time.
I know quite a number of students who are troubled by the way results have been awarded this year, the method of allocation having skewed the results. Downgrading has been widespread, and has disproportionately affected both students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from schools in economically challenged areas. I don’t think we ever fully appreciated before quite how important actually sitting the exam is, where the output is directly related to a student’s input. Awarding grades by algorithm can never be the same, and the output is shaped by the particular method chosen. This year, the decision to require the teacher to rank every student in order, with no joint placings allowed, has produced some extreme distortions. Accurately ranking students is a near impossibility, painful for the teacher and potentially heartbreaking for the students most badly impacted by it. One glaring example of the limitations of this method is provided by a student taking A level Spanish, who had one English and One Spanish parent, whose result was downgraded under the system used from an A* to a C.
One exam board, aqa, says on it’s web site:
We’d like to congratulate everyone receiving results in summer 2020. This summer’s resultsdays are a bit different because of the effects of coronavirus….
www.aqa.org.uk
This year, students’ final results are based on a centre assessment grade and rank order. Centre assessment grades and rank orders were provided by teachers, and signed off by heads of centres. They were then sent to us to be standardised, and became calculated grades.
https://www.aqa.org.uk/summer-results
Congratulations or no, you may not be feeling so much like celebrating. There is deep concern that this year the results process will favour students attending schools with a recent history of good results, including many private schools. If you have worked very hard, as I know many students have, and set your goal on proving yourself and what you personally are capable of, this assessment method may offer a poor reflection of what you would have achieved in taking the exams.
The problem gets worse, though, as any appeals process can only be made via the school; presumably the exam boards feared being inundated if they had allowed an individual appeal. Your school may or may not decide to intercede on your behalf. Leaving aside the inherent unfairness for a moment, this falls under the category of a significant life test, which as these things so often do has come along just when you were not expecting it. As in other such tests, there can sometimes be an advantage for the individual, though granted it may not be easy to see this at first.
Challenges in life are the norm, and they are never easy. To get lower grades compared to others, especially when you strongly believe you could have achieved much better, is a slap in the face. But as with any challenge, the real result comes from how you respond to it. Do you give in, and accept that life decided early on that your luck was going to be bad, that your chosen career path has been snatched away by fickle fate, and so set lower expectations for your whole future? Or do you rally, and show your true mettle, by setting out to prove that the system that has effectively dumped on you was not only wrong, but not even up to the task of finding your measure.
I hope you will take strength from this, and learn to fight, because no great future awaits us if we simply accept that the system is always right, especially if that system should dare to suggest that we ourselves have nothing to offer. I truly believe that we do all have something to offer, and it can be something wonderful. It is a creed that I live by. Typically, great things do not happen to an individual, but that same individual can make great things happen.
Decide for yourself to take the future in your own hands, and to live up to your expectations for yourself, and who knows, you may actually exceed those expectations. Expecting things to come easily is not how great individuals are made. To reach even half of our potential is going to require some adversity. The trick is to tackle adversity head on, and navigate your way through to a better outcome.
I wish you well with your results, but in the lottery of life it would be a mistake to allow bad luck to shape your view of yourself. Tough luck is simply a necessary part of the training process every winner has to go through.
05.08.2020 – Darrell Priestley – Principal, Northern Music Academy
Amid great concern, the debate rages over how safe it is for children to attend school. Actually, if you listen to the debate, especially among politicians giving interviews, you may begin to detect a whiff of something other than objectivity, as they jostle for position, making claims that rely more on oppinion than empirical fact.
Education right now is a key political battleground. Still, those of us working in education who believe in the benefits of learning may prefer to distance oursleves from the simply political, having more interest in getting the job done, however that may be achieved. I might say, if you care, you teach.
No one seriously doubts that lockdown has had an effect on childrens’ education, and in many cases may lead to an adverse effect on life outcomes. Be that as it may, it is for all of us to do whatever we can to mitigate this. Learning is not only something you do in school, nor is it simply dependent on school attendence. At it’s core, learning is about openness to ideas, which is merely a state of mind.
Learning stems from a state of interest, based on a desire which grows as our curiosity is spiked. We can all do a lot to foster that desire in those around us, children especially, to be actively learning, by using encouragement at every opportunity, and showing appreciation and approval when students make the effort to acquire further understanding and to think for themselves.
Especially now, in the internet age, most students have vast resources at their disposal to help them learn, and keep on learning for all of their lives. Even without the internet, libraries can do what libraries have always done: pique our interest and supply both answers and further questions that inspire investigation.
We can also increasingly see each other as a resource. No one knows everything, but each of us has knowledge to share. Even by discussing topics with children, we can train critical thinking, the ability to analyse a situation and derive interesting solutions, develop a rational approach to problem solving, and unearth deeper understanding.
Done right, education is always ongoing, and an every day experience. When our children return to school, their education may in some ways have skipped like a record. But on the other hand, they may have taken the time and the opportunity to develop deeper faculties and improved critical thinking, so that when they arrive at the classroom they do so equiped to learn differently, and crucially better, than before. This would be my hope. What do you think?