#english levels

[amarsraidi]

شرح مستويات اللغة الانجليزية بالتفصيل الدقيق

تعتبر مستويات الانجليزي مهمة جدا لتقييم مستوى الطالب و معرفة مستواه في مايخص تعلم اللغة الانجليزية.

[moderatelyirritated]

Levelling Up

If you are a parent, and your kid is in primary school, or in the first part of secondary school, then you have probably come face to face with the confused and confusing world of Levels-as-grades.

The Numbers Game

Picture this scene: little Jane skips off the bus and into your waiting arms, her braids covered in bubblegum and toffee, clutching piece of paper that purports to be her report.  You open it, and find your eyes glazing over as a series of numbers from two to seven drift off the paper and across your itchy vision.

‘Jenny has achieved a level 2 in the application of her cognitive comprehension skills’, reads the report.  

Having googled the terms ‘cognitive’ and ‘comprehension’ you find that you are still frowning, and unsure of what it is your daughter did to deserve the high (or low?) score of 2.

‘I Dunno’

‘Jane,’ you call your braided offspring away from her doll house/Wii game/plotting against the cat.  ‘Do you remember taking a test in.... (you quickly scan the paper) cognitive comprehension?’

‘Dunno,’ she burbles absently, chewing on the biggest chunk of toffee in her hair.

‘Have you had any tests?’ You ask patiently.

‘I dunno,’ she replies, before oohing and aahing at a stray butterfly that has wandered in through the open window.

You are left scratching your head in increasing confusion while the fruit of your loins dances around the kitchen, about to engage in accidental infantile insecticide.

What does it mean?

Depends on who you are.

If you are secondary school teacher, then the levels of the child in front of you; fresh from their primary school prom (now that is a concept so unbelievably wrong that it deserves its own post); the levels mean nothing.

Zero.

Zilch.

Zip.

Nada.

How come?

It is a complete mystery.  At primary school a level 5 is an average of the class ability.  And the kid only ever has to achieve the level once.  So if a kid gets a level 5 (which apparently equals a C by the time they get to GCSE) just once, that score is entered on their records.

So if a kid did a good piece of work once, and by fluke, the secondary school is saddled with the wholly unrealistic task of pulling his sorry ass from the ontological state of blissful ignorance, to the epistemological state of getting a C at GCSE.

In other words, the systems and standards of grading between primary and secondary are massively at odds.  

The introduction of performance-related pay may prove to worsen the problem. 

Fishy Fishy Fisher

An un-named trust gathers this data and other data, puts it into a highly sophisticated program, and craps out predictive figures that children should aspire to.  When (and I say when, not if) the child fails to reach that target, then the school’s work ethic is questioned.  The dedication of the teacher is questioned.  The policy of the government is questioned.

Then you have the inevitable PR rows where some weasel-faced government flunky bad-mouths the teaching profession, and some union pariah (who left the classroom as soon he could manage) argue about how great/awful and disastrous/successful the school system is.

All based on a predictive system that, for all its complexity, always misses out the single most fundamental factor in the progress of british school children.

Whether or not the little bastards want to succeed.

Simples

It really is that simple. Some kid fresh off the boat with barely a word of English rocks up in an inner city school and proceeds to outperform every one of the local kids two years later in the exam results.

Why?  Because he gives a crap. If he doesn’t, his parents certainly do, and they will happily, and quite literally beat the importance of education into his backside.

Government policies and top down interventions can only do so much.  Real change, positive change will come when individual children are held accountable for their own attitude and effort towards their education.

Watch how quickly the educational landscape would then change.