Status Updates From Exam Nation: Why Our Obsess...

Nice jolly reading to start the holidays

-“we need to stop thinking that grades are equivalent and comparable - a disadvantaged pupil who gets a B may have done vastly more to achieve that grade, and be far more capable than an advantaged pupil who gets an A.” P220

-“‘Flow’- Psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi- happiness comes from being in a state of flow. The level of difficulty and your own skill are calibrated so it is difficult but you can do it.”
“Education enriches us by teaching us the joy of skill and challenge.” P214

-“rather than employing or selecting on the basis of being the best why not choose on the basis of being above a threshold: being in the group of people who would be capable of making the most of this opportunity.” P74

-“Oxbridge are not picking between one student with three Cs and one with three A*s. All of them will have combinations of As and A*s. Really the process of selection is one of trying to make the most fine grained judgements, when that simply isn’t possible. It’s like choosing the best fish at the fishmongers when they all weigh the same. I mean one might be better but you won’t know until you eat it.” P74

P69 the marshmallow test

-“the hidden curriculum. The term was coined by Philip Jackson in 1968 .” The idea that the national curriculum is responsible for the transmission of explicit knowledge. But there are also a separate set of skills, norms and assumptions that are implicitly taught by the wider environment the child is in. P52

40-43 Robinson
-“factory model that educates kids in batches and destroys individuality.”
-Rousseau’s Emile- “crystallized enlightenment views of children as ‘little scientists’” -child-centered approach, discovery learning

- “And somehow we all accept that’s okay. It’s okay to have your education blighted by the chance assignment of social privilege- but not for it to be held back by ‘rogue algorithm’. P5