The poet John Betjeman wrote a celebrated book of memoirs in verse, Summoned by Bells, taking as his theme his various experiences of being called to school-room or lecture hall by the ringing of bells - not to mention to church services. Over the last three weeks your correspondent has been at various secondary schools across London, in an exam invigilating capacity, and the sound marking the school day can only be described as 'pips': short bursts of noise as if from klaxon or loud hailer but put out across a tannoy system that reaches everyone on what is referred to as 'campus'. The word campus is used to describe schools as well as undergraduate colleges and the word 'student' seems to have replaced 'pupil'. With an environment, in some places, more akin to further education establishment than high school, the overall effect is one of democratisation of the school experience, albeit an illusory one.
Another innovation, and sign of the times, is that there are now members of staff dedicated to running the exams system. Such is the variety and number of exams these days that the Exams Officer is often occupied with the job full-time. Some schools recruit specialist administrators and some are drawn from the retired teachers ranks, often depending on the size of the school and its catchment area, which may determine the number of pupils with English as a second language. Administering exams in one language is challenging enough but with Asian, African and European languages as mother tongues of students increasingly the norm, particularly in London, the pressures on time and staff attention is that much greater.
From entering high school aged 11, the average pupil faces a seemingly ever-growing list of examinations. There are SATs; GCSEs; AS-Levels and A-levels with the usual provision for mocks and those taking exams early. The exam boards range in difficulty and what is called 'stretch' and schools choose different boards for different subjects - Edexcel for Maths and the WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Council) for RE as an example. A modern variation on the theme of eliminating disruption in the examination hall is the problem posed by that ubiquitous communication instrument of modern times - the mobile phone. The rules laid down by most of the public exam boards is as clear as it is uncompromising - if a mobile rings during the course of an exam the owner can be disqualified from the paper forthwith. Most schools have a system of mobile hand-in beforehand and hand-out afterwards. They are sometimes 'tagged and bagged' in envelopes. One pupil's mobile phone went off during a GCSE art exam causing upset and consternation - the phone had switched itself on so as to activate the alarm whilst it lay in its brown envelope. A case of functionality not having its uses!
The endless debate of the state of education generally and examination standards particularly rumbles on and is as regular as Summer downpours. From personal observation in the last few weeks of this year's season, the papers seem to be as they always were in subjects as English, History and Maths and a little more modular in languages. What does not change is the anxiety, worry and general tense atmosphere in exam halls up and down the land and the accompanying reactions of pupils undertaking them ranging from pyschosmatic illness, through to tears and high-jinks horseplay. Midsummer madness in all its manifestations accompanies examinations, for pupils, parents, teachers and invigilators alike.
Wednesday 28 May 2008
Friday 2 May 2008
Reflections on a London journey
The standing joke about travelling in my home country of Wales is that few people realise that we have a Welsh sub-continent, which takes up most of the middle of the country and consists mainly of two counties - Powys and Montgomeryshire - where rolling countryside gives way to small towns and country miles wind their way through hedgerow and field. All this bisected by the Welsh version of the M25, the A470 which runs north-south and is the major arterial route. Thousands of words have been expended on the inadequacies of this road in the form of reports, discsussions, debates, political manifestos. Plans come and go, elections are fought and lost, the talk goes on and still very little happens in the way of change to this enormous piece of tarmac which is literally at the centre of motor travelling life in Wales, apart from the highways in and out and surrounding Wales - the M4 and M5.
Travelling in and around London is a very different experience. Since I have been living in Kent I have cause to undertake journeys into the capital more and more. Yesterday was a case of car, tube and bus out to the East of London via the delights of a the Jubilee line and the DLR (docklands light railway) to Stratford (not the Warwickshire town and birthplace of Shakespeare although it would have been an interesting diversion) and thence to Leyton on the Central Line (did not feel that central at the time as the underground became the overground). The destination was as yet some way off and required a bus from tube station to somewhere near the road I had to walk down to arrive at the street which harboured the school I was visiting at its end. The school building was a revelation, all new architecural design and opened at the turn of this century by the then-Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris. Set in a borough of London that has been the recipient of government largesse and increased state funding for services such as education, the Lammas School at least has a modern building to serve the needs of a catchment area which reflects our modern wider community life: a high number of pupils with English as a second language; a sizeable provision of free school meals; special needs coverage (of all kinds).
The infrastructure of education is linked with public policy in a very direct way. In towns, cities and villages all over the UK there are school buildings which are still standing and in use from the 19th century, when the era of state involvement in the provision of public education began with the various Education Acts of the 1870s. Indeed, I had encountered a typical example of swhen I stopped for directions at a primary school bearing all the hallmarks of a 19th century school build: red bricks; iron railings and the separate exits and entrances for boys and girls. A very twenty-first century group of school children, filled with the faces and languages of a dozen countries, played in the yard built by the burghers of Leyton and Walthamstow who had been mindful of their public duty to encourage 'useful lives' among the citizenry when Victoria was Queen Empress of India and Britain had an Empire (run from Whitehall and managed by a few hundred servants of the Crown). If those same men of affairs took a walk past the school they financed they would find that the Empire had come home to the mother country in all its variety, colour and diversity. I crossed the road and travelled over a hundred years in a few hundred yards, to a shining new building proclaiming the same endeavour in pursuit of the virtues of public education of a century ago. A long way to travel in so short a time. The challenges may be different but the ideals of education for all are the same.
Travelling in and around London is a very different experience. Since I have been living in Kent I have cause to undertake journeys into the capital more and more. Yesterday was a case of car, tube and bus out to the East of London via the delights of a the Jubilee line and the DLR (docklands light railway) to Stratford (not the Warwickshire town and birthplace of Shakespeare although it would have been an interesting diversion) and thence to Leyton on the Central Line (did not feel that central at the time as the underground became the overground). The destination was as yet some way off and required a bus from tube station to somewhere near the road I had to walk down to arrive at the street which harboured the school I was visiting at its end. The school building was a revelation, all new architecural design and opened at the turn of this century by the then-Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris. Set in a borough of London that has been the recipient of government largesse and increased state funding for services such as education, the Lammas School at least has a modern building to serve the needs of a catchment area which reflects our modern wider community life: a high number of pupils with English as a second language; a sizeable provision of free school meals; special needs coverage (of all kinds).
The infrastructure of education is linked with public policy in a very direct way. In towns, cities and villages all over the UK there are school buildings which are still standing and in use from the 19th century, when the era of state involvement in the provision of public education began with the various Education Acts of the 1870s. Indeed, I had encountered a typical example of swhen I stopped for directions at a primary school bearing all the hallmarks of a 19th century school build: red bricks; iron railings and the separate exits and entrances for boys and girls. A very twenty-first century group of school children, filled with the faces and languages of a dozen countries, played in the yard built by the burghers of Leyton and Walthamstow who had been mindful of their public duty to encourage 'useful lives' among the citizenry when Victoria was Queen Empress of India and Britain had an Empire (run from Whitehall and managed by a few hundred servants of the Crown). If those same men of affairs took a walk past the school they financed they would find that the Empire had come home to the mother country in all its variety, colour and diversity. I crossed the road and travelled over a hundred years in a few hundred yards, to a shining new building proclaiming the same endeavour in pursuit of the virtues of public education of a century ago. A long way to travel in so short a time. The challenges may be different but the ideals of education for all are the same.
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