Comments on: An Incentive to Cheat

By: An Incentive To Cheat (Part 2) « Education Watch

An Incentive To Cheat (Part 2) « Education Watch — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:53:16 +0000

[...] highly unlikely that it was read by Government ministers. Which is a pity because if they had read this they migt not have come up with this bright idea - financial incentives for schools to [...]

By: coatgal

coatgal — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:16:59 +0000

I understand how the problem can be ’solved’, I was simply making the point that I do not believe that teacher ‘over-assistance’ is simply the product of financial incentives, as suggested by para 5 of your post. I think teachers – who frequently attach much of their self-worth/image – to their jobs, are more pressured by the fear of having been seen to have ‘failed’ than by fear of losing their positions.

And, on a side-note, I long for the day that I can assume that mum & dad will provide assistance in a redraft.

By: kelvinthroop

kelvinthroop — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:06:15 +0000

coatgal, I daresay our HODs are getting pressure from the SMT re C/D borderline pupils but the league tables put this pressure on them.

The course work problem is solved by allowing students to submit “first drafts” which are the “commented on”. These comments are then incorporated into the text of the re-submission (probably with some help from mum & dad).

In the Twenty-first century Science syllabus, course work is replaced with a “case study” which in many cases will be cut and pasted from the internet.

By: coatgal

coatgal — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:05:35 +0000

I don’t think it is just financial incentives that lead to this kind of behaviour. At my current school the level of pressure put on departments and individual teachers for ‘not achieving’ the grades desired by senior management is shocking, and difficult to cope with. I am made to feel that any students achieving below a C are an indication of ‘my poor teaching’ and nothing else.

The SMT also openly enquire – with little subtlety as to the subtext – as to what is being done for C/D borderline pupils and as this is in no way disguised, I can only assume that Ofsted and the other powers that be support them in this.

And added to all this, the lack of ability to string a sentence together (let alone a coherent essay or entire piece of cousework) demonstrated by many students means all work must be closely guided if they are to produce anything at all markable.

By: valueaddedwater

valueaddedwater — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:08:37 +0000

Shinga, know what your Brother is going on about. Used to know a headmistress of one such school, who never got credit from the educational establishment, but was widely applauded by the local community for turning a hell hole sink school into somewhere that the parents were proud to send their kids, who went on to make a future for themselves rather than being a statistic for the “Sociologists” to crow about.
I’ve seen what league tables mean for the school in our catchment area. Bullying of staff and pupils is rife, and those not quite good enough are thrown on the scrapheap so they don’t effect the league tables. Surprisingly enough Ofstead regard this as a top of the league table school.
Madness

By: kelvinthroop

kelvinthroop — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:56:44 +0000

Shinga – I reckon there’s a lot of people like your brother slogging away in “sink” schools. The old system, where state schools were all run by the LEA and inspected by same might not have made his school any better but at least his and his students’ achievements would have been recognised.

nicholasmarsh – you’re right about the exam boards, they get paid by the schools so as a result of the competition for contracts they have a financial incentive to deliver what the schools want: good grades.

Isn’t the free market in public service provision wonderful?

By: nicholasmarsh

nicholasmarsh — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:41:22 +0000

It’s not just the teachers who have an incentive. Parents want their kid to do well, and devaluing exam results is someone else’s problem. How many of them will offer ‘assistance’ on assessed coursework etc. The kids want to get good grades, especially if they don’t have to work too hard. School administrators want everyone to get good grades. Exam boards are in competition with each other. The problem is that everyone has an incentive to massage the results. And no one involved in the system has a direct material incentive to prevent small scale but widespread cheating (notwithstanding personal integrity and professional ethics).

I remember that I was in the first class to do the new GCSE. I’m that old. In chemistry I recall that we all had to do an experiment of some sort as part of our assessed work. We weren’t that good so the teacher explained where we went wrong and next lesson we all did it again. Unsurprisingly our performance had improved.

By: Shinga

Shinga — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 15:23:47 +0000

My brother used to teach in a fairly notorious inner-city school. They took the pupils that had been expelled from every other school in the city; they were nowhere in the School League Tables. Within 2 years of his arrival, my brother had taken several pupils through GCSE French which might seem unimpressive but no-one in the history of the school had ever succeeded at even CSE French. Pupils actually went on, with his help to take several foreign languages that enabled them to study for vocational qualifications. Huge achievement for the pupils and the school – no reflection of this in the tables etc. This is how you destroy both students’ and teachers’ morale.