CPE-PEN: Flotsam and Jetsam – Special Measures Extra!

US Exams Company to be put into Special Measures?

“… schools have to revolve around the demands of simplistic little tests made on their pupils; where those tests can be marked by people who have no qualifications or experience in education; and where these people can be employed for a pittance by a US company ETS …The results we do have are clearly flawed, and teams of ETS employees are searching for thousands of test papers that have been apparently been lost.  We know of incomplete marking, of pupils wrongly marked as absent, of pupils’ work being left outside in the rain, and much more. Any school putting in this kind of performance would be in special measures, and righly so.”
Francis Beckett in The Guardian, July 19 2008

Ofsted to go into Special Measures?

Given the steady trickle of suicides said to be caused by Ofsted, perhaps it should go into special measures too? Members of the Scottish equivalent of Ofsted were said to be “arriving at schools dressed like characters from the film Men in Black, intimidating teachers and frightening pupils.”
Janette Owen in The Guardian, July 8th 2008

Ed Balls to go into Special Measures?

“Minister, you failed the test. Ed Balls has still to accept a crucial lesson from the Sats fiasco: that he should be held to account for it. … It was ministers who designed he Sats regime; it was ministers who overloaded the testing and examination system with huge additional complexity this year; and it was specifically the secretary of state, Ed Balls, who ignored the warnings signs over Sats … Balls is keen on accountability when it suits him ”
Michael Gove in The Guardian, 22nd Jily 2008

Chris Woodhead to go into Special Measures?

Chris Woodhead’s education department rated as just ‘satisfactory’, Melanie Newman reports.  Ofsted has given Buckingham University a ‘grade 3’, just above ‘inadequate on a four point scale , after an inspectoion of the department – which trained just three secondary schoolteaschers last year.
melanie.newman@tsleducation.com

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