For fuck’s sake – 7% of graduates get thirds. 7. And they won’t be excluded from teaching, they will just have to pay their own tuition. Can we please stop saying that people with thirds ‘won’t be allowed’ to teach?*

What this is (and this was just slightly touched on in one of the other two threads on this subject today) is a classic case of ‘nudge’ politics. The Tories are trying to raise the status of teaching in the hope that this will attract better teachers.

At the moment, despite all efforts, the status of teaching is pretty low. If you can’t; teach. Couple this with the fact that most non-parents only see teachers on the news when the NASUWT and NUT conferences come round (which is not the most flattering portrayal of the profession…) and you begin to see the problem.

The Tories have been slagged off recently on education and on marriage for proposing changes that will have only presentational impact. But the idea seems to be that it is the message that matters. And that’s at least an interesting concept. Social mores can be a more powerful influence than anything.

*I know you’re not saying it – I’m just hoping to forestall others…

“So when Cameron then immediately decides that the most important thing which will decide whether or not a child succeeds is not their background, the curricula, the type of school or the amount of funding it receives but the person who teaches them, he’s on the verge of talking nonsense on stilts.

Chris links to some research which is in disagreement with that which Cameron quotes.”

This is very poorly argued. the research you link to dopes not suggest that good teachers make no difference it merely suggests their may not be a link between qualification level and being a good teacher.

1 – “At the moment, despite all efforts, the status of teaching is pretty low. If you can’t; teach.”

Not sure this is right – certainly the status of teaching is far higher than 10-15 years ago (when people used to talk about how there would be massive teacher shortages when the baby boomers retired).

For example:

http://www.axcis.co.uk/dn/2009/04/28/teaching-jobs-proving-attractive-for-oxbridge-graduates/

Labour’s failure was that they gave money to consultants and ideologue businessmen instead of to teachers and schools. Cameron seems to be setting up to try and do something I, like TimJ, support: agree with (I’ve argued before that teachers should be societally rewarded more than financiers are) but failing to understand the problem he’s trying to solve.

We have a pre-existing problem, a starting condition of the system if you like, which is that poverty is now generationally embedded. Paying (some) teachers more in isolation will not reverse the sociological effects of a dying social order. As indigenous peoples lose their way of life, they turn to alcohol, violence, despondency and ultimately social collapse. Britain’s industrial poor are displaying exactly the same progression; and just like with the indigenous peoples, its not their fault.

We do need to reward teaching better, much better; we need to make it equivalent to being a footballer or a banker in people’s childhood dreams. The mechanical age was built by children who dreamed of being a railway engineer; we need to create a generation of people who dream of being internationally well-educated. Part of that is making teaching attractive as a career option, but that’ll do damn all good if we don’t put some real money and real movement into fixing the underlying problem.

#1 How many people do you think can afford to pay their own tuition? (Other than people who went to Eton etc and probably didn’t get thirds anyway because they’ve had extra tuition from birth to make sure they got the right grades.)

Would you be happier with the phrase “financially excluded from teaching”?

Also how is it openly elitist and discriminating in favour of the middle classes? That’s an absurd claim.

If we have an education that ranks people’s performance and society tends to select people for the jobs on the basis of their edicational attainment then is that ‘openly elitist’ and discriminating in favour of the middle classes?

Come on!

yeah yeah Tim f I got a 2:1 at uni and I am sure that I have been discriminated against by employers in favour of someone who gets a 1st!

moreover I am discrimnated in favour of in comparision with some one who comes out of the education system with one GCSE.

Is that because I am middle class or because I have better qualifications?

You know what? I have no problem excluding people who get thirds from teaching.

The reason we have exams is to differentiate ability. If somebody can’t do better than a third (which is really quite a piss poor performance) they almost certainly dont have the ability to teach.

I KNOW that it doesn’t follow that a higher grade means being a good teacher. But I’ve no problem with setting a minimum academic standard. The faults with Tory education proposals lie elsewhere (and John q Publican is talking sense)

If we have an education that ranks people’s performance and society tends to select people for the jobs on the basis of their edicational attainment then is that ‘openly elitist’ and discriminating in favour of the middle classes?

But we don’t have such a system in the UK.

You’re confusing a meritocracy with a markthatcherocracy.

In a meritocracy the individual’s social and economic standing moves up and down according to their abilities.

In markthatcherocracy an individual moves up the social and economic scale on merit and then does everything humanly possible to prevent their idiot offspring from falling back down the social and economic scale despite the fact that said offspring as think as pigshit and possesses about as much intrinsic worth as a chocolate teapot.

In markthatcherocracy an individual moves up the social and economic scale on merit and then does everything humanly possible to prevent their idiot offspring from falling back down the social and economic scale despite the fact that said offspring as think as pigshit and possesses about as much intrinsic worth as a chocolate teapot.

Also known as ‘parenthood’ this.

However, to go back to the headline of the OP, Scepticilse is right to point out there’s a Tory Class War afoot.

Indeed, it’s also being waged through the tax system:

http://badconscience.com/2010/01/18/tories_tax_nonsense/

I’ve worked hard and done well and am doing my best to raise my children so they lead successful and happy lives.

Does that make me a bad person?

And I am just trying to get my head round if someone who views others as ‘think as pig shit” and lacking in intrinsic worth have much in the way of intelligence or intrinsic value themselves.

Maybe where the discrimination first arises is in the system of qualifications whereby people who have better ability and understanding in a subject tend to do better.

In essence : does the system of educational qualifications discriminate against stupid and lazy people?

I LOVE this statistic!

“In October 2009 it was predicted that just 12,000 households would pay death duties for the coming financial year. That’s out of c.25 million households in the UK.”

anyone see the teeny teeny flaw in it!

The odd things is that if there was such fierce competition for places, plus an interviews to get a place on a PGCE programme, a student with a third-class degree would have to pretty exceptional in other ways to counterbalance their degree result. Making them pay their own way isn’t really going to help. Likewise, any student with a 2:1/1st could simply screw up and be rejected. But then university education departments – you know, the people who actually decide who gets in – probably already know this…unlike Gove.

@10 “Also known as ‘parenthood’ this.”

Quite. It’s why we’ll never actually have a proper meritocracy – it’s not just hard to achieve, it’s impossible – because you just can’t take parentage out of the system.

The other thing that politicians will never dare say out loud is that most really big shifts in the class system have had bugger all to do with policy or leadership, but with broader economic change. If there aren’t middle class jobs being created then you can’t get more people into the middle class, no matter how good the education system is.

Unity @ 9

Yes Mark Thatcher isn’t the sharpest knife academically. He even failed his accountancy exams and got lost in the Sahara.

His dear ol’ mum might have done him the odd favour to keep the wolf from the door back in the 80s.

But for the past 20 years Mark has been thrown back on his own talents and his own devices.

Mark Thatcher’s personal net worth has been conservatively estimated at £60 million.

Not bad for a dunce.

Can you beat that?

Giles Bradshaw

Fair point. It should be compared to the number of estates being passed on each year, which obviously will be lower than 25million.

Pretty daft on my part. Have noted this in the blog.

Thanks for the sharp eye.

560,000 people die in the UK each year.

12,000 leave estates that are taxable above the £325,000 threshold.

So the Tories want to hand a tax break to the 12,000 richest estates in the country? When telling the rest of us that spending needs to be slashed to curb the deficit?

I don’t think my original sloppiness really undermines my core point.

19 – a more interesting stat would be how many of the 25 million households are potentially liable for IHT at any one time. Because all that the low number of estates that are liable to pay IHT at death really means is that people are really quite efficient at structuring their affairs in such a way as to avoid paying it.

I saw 30% bandied round a year or so ago, which seems high.

“But for the past 20 years Mark has been thrown back on his own talents ”

which largely seem to have been having the phone numbers of his upper class mates, and organising failed coups in African states

But for the past 20 years Mark has been thrown back on his own talents and his own devices.

Mark Thatcher’s personal net worth has been conservatively estimated at £60 million.

I’ve got this bridge I’m looking to offload to the right buyer – interested?

Mark Thatcher would be cleaning the bogs at Maccy D’s were it not for who his parents are…

Mark Thatcher would be cleaning the bogs at Maccy D’s were it not for who his parents are…

Mark Thatcher would not be Mark Thatcher were it not for who his parents are.

Unity are you saying that it is wrong for people to benefit from their parents and wrong for parents to benefit their children?

I’ve given my kids various advantages in life should I do my best to take them away again before it is too late and a social injustice has been committed?

I don’t recall taking any particular position here, other than that of pointing out that any claim to meritocracy on the UK’s part is founded on fallacious reasoning.

In regards to the whole business of parents conferring advantages (or disadvantages) on their children, there is at least one sense in which that is simply unavoidable.

If nothing else, your children will have inherited 50% of you genes and have no choice but to make the most of what they’ve got from you, whether that turns out to be advantageous or not.

Beyond that, we’re into making value judgement about the legitimacy or otherwise of any advantages a child might obtain from their parents and that, for the most part, will come down to a question of whether the type of advantage that a child enjoys is seen to have been obtained by fair means or foul.

And on what basis do you judge that fairness?

Also Is unfairness always undesirable?

#27

Yes. Please name one example where unfairness is desirable in itself (rather than being the by-product of some other good, which would make it undesirable but necessary)

Isn’t the point that it’s all well and good parents giving their children advantages in life, but when they are unable to do that (financially or otherwise) the point of the welfare state and education in general is to give everyone the same advantage? To even the playing field so to speak. Or am I missing something obvious here?

And on what basis do you judge that fairness?

Most people will inevitably rely on subjective judgements derived from their own position and experience such that if the advantage is one from which they have benefited, or from which they expect their children to benefit, then its likely to be judged fair.

If you want something closer to an objective method of assessing fairness then the nearest I can think of would be to consider the kind of choices you might make from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ as per Rawls’ theory of justice.

If a particular advantage is one you would willingly choose to have exist, even if you had no possible notion of whether it would work for or against you in your own life, then that would be considered to be fair (just) in relatively objective terms.

“Even after almost 13 years under New Labour, still barely 50% manage to get 5 “good GCSEs”, a record so appalling that it can’t be stressed often enough”

Being a little harsh there.

The 50.7% figure is for 5 good GCSEs *including English and Maths* – the unconstrained 5 good GCSEs figure is far high.

And in 1996-97, the equivalent figure was 35.9% getting 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths. That’s a 14.8 percentage point increase. Or – to put this more simply – a 50% increase in the number of children in a given Year 11 cohort who are achieving at this level.

In my view, this is not appalling – especially when you consider the long time period required for the full impact of education policies to trickle through e.g. it will be ~2020 before the big resource increase to fully filter through to GCSE results. Those currently sitting GCSEs were just starting school in 1997 – the funding increases generally came post-2001; early years policies will take even longer to show any impact

Of course I meant a 41% increase in the number of children (14.8/35.9) – shows what schools were like pre-1997…

@31

I apologise for being OT but reading Those currently sitting GCSEs were just starting school in 1997 makes me feel so old. And I was born under Thatcher…

Just to get back on topic: I’d get rid of private/fee-charging and religious schools (of any hue – Catholic, Muslim, CofE etc) as a first step towards better social cohesion.

” Please name one example where unfairness is desirable in itself”

I hadn’t used the words ‘on itself’

a certain amount of unfairness might be desirable if a completely fair system doesn’t work.

“Chris links to some research which is in disagreement with that which Cameron quotes.”

You might try actually following links rather than just assuming that anybody who agrees with you is honest.

One of the two pieces of research shows a mix of effects from well qualified teachers, including some positive ones but suggests that it depends on the pupils. The other one shows the exact opposite of what you are claiming and agrees with Cameron.

Sorry?

Neither of the two studies that Chris Dillow cited agrees with Cameron.

You might try reading what the studies actually say and not what you’d like them to say to fit your own agenda.

The original claim was that the studies were actually “in disagreement” with Cameron, not simply that they were not actually positively agreeing.

Anyway, the first showed a mix of effects from the cognitive ability of the teacher, some positive, some negative. It’s not clear what that says about Cameron’s claims but it does not disagree, and it certainly doesn’t give us grounds for ignoring teacher charateristics.

The second study observes that: “with respect to teacher licensure scores, a one-standard-deviation increase in scores increases predicted student achievement by 1 to 2 percent of a standard deviation” which would suggest that the level of a teacher’s qualifications *do* affect student results. Not a huge effect but a positive one and statistically significant. This is agreement, not disagreement, with Cameron.

FFS – go take a basic statistics course.

A difference of 1-2% of a standard deviation in test scores is worth, on a normally distributed sample of results from a test in which the maximum score was 100, amounts to something of the order of a tenth of a mark, i.e. next to fuck all in real terms.

Unity

You are mistaking Cameron’s motive for the 2.2 limit.

It isn’t because he thinks that teachers with a 2.2 will necessary teach better or obtain better results from children than teachers with thirds.

It is because he aspires to make teaching a high-prestige profession in order to make it attractive to the maximum number of talented people.

This move is a signal, or ‘nudge’.

“FFS – go take a basic statistics course. A difference of 1-2% of a standard deviation in test scores is worth, on a normally distributed sample of results from a test in which the maximum score was 100, amounts to something of the order of a tenth of a mark, i.e. next to fuck all in real terms.”

The claim was that the study disagreed with the idea that teacher qualification affected student outcome. It clearly doesn’t.

Admittedly, we don’t know enough about teacher licensing for the teachers in question to have any idea how big this effect is relative to the difference between teachers (one standard deviation in the scores of those who *passed* the test could be tiny) but the difference in student scores was big enough to show up in the data as significant. I wouldn’t put it forward as great evidence in favour of Cameron’s policy but it is clearly not, as claimed, disagreeing.