John Clare in the Telegraph gets it right about the Ofsted report on primary schools. Yes, the report painted a devastating picture of gross failings by teachers, with many of them unable to teach maths or English properly because their own grasp of these subjects was too weak. Just think about that for a moment -- teachers who don't know enough about language or maths to teach even primary school children the basics -- and you get a fair picture of the extent of our education calamity.

But what Clare picks up on is the fact that the Ofsted report itself betrays a belief in some of the ludicrous assumptions that have become the education orthodoxy and caused the very problems it is identifying. Key passages:

'Firmly aligning itself with the theories of the education establishment - which permeate all teacher training institutions - Ofsted blames poor progress in the classroom on "chalk and talk", a traditional approach that requires teachers to teach and pupils to learn...In place of such antique heresies, Ofsted prescribes "lively debate", "buzz groups", exercises in "empathy", "scope for pupils to make choices", working in groups, and "drama techniques" such as "hot-seating" in which teacher and pupil exchange roles...Presumably the inspectors will have noticed - I certainly have - that these techniques in the wrong hands (much like formal teaching in the wrong hands) commonly lead to classroom mayhem and a total absence of learning. But if they did, they don't say so.

'They do, though, record where an emphasis on "creativity" can lead. Examples included board games that contributed nothing to pupils' counting skills because they couldn't understand the rules; cutting out instructions for baking gingerbread men that they couldn't actually read; taking so long to word- process their work that they scarcely wrote anything; composing a poem about the rain forest that taught them nothing about geography; and designing a "wanted" poster for a suspected poacher that added nothing to their understanding of the history of the enclosure movement.

'And yet the inspectors lament that "too many schools are not convinced that more creative work will really make a difference to standards". Can they be serious? Not only is there a strong possibility that Ofsted has got it completely wrong - that the "old-fashioned" teaching methods it condemns are not the problem at all - but it also fails to consider the likelihood that the methods it does recommend are principally responsible for the steadily widening gap in the performance of boys and girls'.

Exactly the same conclusions jumped out at me when I read the Ofsted report (plus the fact that, bafflingly, teaching that it labels 'satisfactory' is by its own standards not satisfactory at all). Yet another example of how immensely difficult it is to reform a culture that has rotted from within, from within.

Posted by melanie at December 10, 2003