Gove ‘British values’, political prying

The ‘Trojan horse’ measures are nothing new – but never mind those at the chalkface when you need a quick soundbite.

How can one best manage a government fiasco in such a way as to appear decisive and in control? Shift the focus of public indignation on to a scapegoat or two, preferably figures of opprobrium already existing in the national psyche – it’s just much easier that way. This cynical line of thought best explains Michael Gove’s headline-grabbing “Trojan horse” measures.

Schools will now have no-notice Ofsted inspections and have to teach “British values”, both of which will strike those at the chalkface as decidedly customary rather than innovative, but who cares for details when soundbites are what you are after? The education secretary is being bullish after a bruising week.

Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, insisted on Newsnight last night that he had tabled the idea of no-notice Ofsted inspections two years earlier. One might be forgiven for thinking that schools are, as in the olden days, given a week or even a few days’ notice. The truth is that we are informed at midday that Ofsted will arrive for inspection the following morning. The idea that the majority of institutions can hide the true nature of teaching and learning within a 12-hour window is implausible.

Schools currently due an inspection exist in a state of high alert, with students routinely assessed in order to produce data that will attest to how good or outstanding their teachers are. Staff morale is, invariably, low as colleagues find their workloads unmanageable and relentless. Rates of burnout for both students and staff are unsurprisingly high.

As a teacher, I am for no-notice inspections if it means we can have an honest dialogue about what a manageable workload is for teachers, and that expectations are reassessed accordingly. The danger with Gove’s “snap” decision is that this will not happen. Instead, unrealistic demands will continue to be made. Outstanding is not possible for six lessons, five days a week; the meaning of the word becomes redundant if that were to be the case.

What is realistic is that a good teacher will veer on the continuum between outstanding to satisfactory to good and back again. This should be expected as we are not automatons, yet in our current climate it is sacrilege to state what is patently true. Ofsted’s own teaching judgments become a subjective and arbitrary guesstimation of a teacher’s capabilities.

Gove’s other show of strength was the apparent introduction of British values into our curriculum. For those wondering, British values are not weather-related moaning; neither are they the phrasing of commands as though they were questions. Instead they are focused on respect for fellow citizens, the rule of law and democracy. We might ask how these values are uniquely British rather than, say, Icelandic. Or why a government minister, aware of the staggering rise in Islamophobia, is happy to mouth empty nationalistic phrases. Shameful cabinet squabbling can always be defused with talk of saving Britain and Britishness from a mass of marauders. It is also, rather conveniently, well-worn Ukip territory. Hitting two birds must be a satisfying achievement.

Tough talk on having “all schools actively [promoting] British values” suggests that this is something not already in place. Yet it is exactly what the citizenship curriculum, compulsory since 2002, has been designed to do. Rather than admit that it is free schools and academies that are failing to teach British values because Gove gave them powers to “free” themselves from the very national curriculum he is now passionately invoking, he has instead chosen to lump all schools together.

Presenting this as an endemic problem serves to eliminate the need to confess that on free schools he may have got some things wrong. But then this is the same man who is happy to quietly raid £400m from a fund that guarantees school places for pupils in order to plug a massive financial “black hole”‘ in his pet project.

There’s nothing new about Gove’s major proposals – it’s the age-old tale of politicians playing politics with people as pawns.

GMA/NN

 

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/06/10/366400/gove-british-values-political-prying/

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