Secondary size
pete quentin, 14 August 2008
This week has been the first week at secondary school for some – how will they have coped in a new secondary environment? Gathering from the an article in today’s Times Education Supplement magazine, many will find the adjustment hard. Why? Because of the large size of many secondaries.
Statistics show that since 1997, the average secondary school is near 1000 pupils – and almost 1 in 10 secondaries have more than 1,500 pupils. Whilst, as the article argues, research on secondary school size is inclusive as to when a school is too large, a good size is thought to be between 500 and 800.
All so true. How about this really difficult idea:
1. Start with the assumption that the distribution of pupils’ abilities is constant. Because it is far more sound.
2. Award child mark out of 100.
3. Those in (e.g.) the top 10% get A’s, 11%-25% get Bs’, 25%-50% get C’s 50%-70 get D’s and 70%-90% get E’s – then the bottom 10% fail
4. Do this each year.
5. Each year, also carry out international benchmarking between the standards demonstrated by the average pupil and range of abilities measured in a host of world countries – and use this more qualitative evidence to assess whether British standards are going down. But make this an issue for the educationalists, not the youngsters.
Mr Ball’s comment says nothing about the issue, nothing about the comments, but everything about Labour and him: How dare people criticse Labour. All their policies are all so virtuous and good, don’t you know!?…