Added Value in Schools

I don't normally get wound up by things on the news (Yeah right) but when I heard this one it really got to me. The madness of targets, figures and statistics is getting dangerous.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7464842.stm

If the people are really using skewed figures to try and prove they are being tough on "failing schools" this is effecting kids education, and teachers jobs and all of their lives. 

I think it's pretty much common sense to judge a school by the amount of improvement a child has gone through since joining the school.  This is known as "Value Added", i.e. a child is tested when they first enter the school and this is used to measure their progress when they finally leave.  GCSE's and other exam results are a poor measure of a schools success, say for example a child joins the school at 11 without a reading age (which is more common than you'd believe), then "only" manages 3 GCSE's has the school failed? I think not..

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August 21. 2008 00:05

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