Why the testing always?

Why do politician seem obsessed with audits, and getting 'Little Johnny' to sit exams, have you ever wondered why?....I was wondering why when I was looking at a Estyn Report into the state of Education on Ynys Môn back in 2012, and .....they started to talk about 'outcomes' which in my book can only mean one thing - economists, you know the people that try to turn the 'real world' into a 'model' based on 'rational decisions and thoughts.'

So I can imagine at some time in the past Estyn will have organised a seminar, and at that seminar Professor Posh Name Loads of Titles will have been invited

And Professor Posh Name will have studied some schools in a thesis which allowed him to reach a conclusion..and suppose...they just happen to agree with your already preconceived ideas. You know the 'bloody hell I knew I was right all along' moment.....And you might forget to question the validity of what Professor Posh Name is saying, you assume his conclusions are correct - take for instance the Nobel Winning Economist Milton Friedman whose ideas are in the large now discredited. So there is a possibility that might say policy was determined on preconceived ideas and a flawed model.

Now further in the report they also talked about costs per pupil, and that means 'accountants'. They are the Auditors and they measure everything. And Terry Pratchett has them spot on in his Discworld series of books.

Let me give you an example: think apple trees - Auditors will ask how does your apple tree compare with the neighbours apple tree. And they'll invent the juice ratio - how much juice per apple. Whereas we might ask how do the apples taste?

And in the world where we measure things, to justify the monies we all are spending 'Little Johnny' needs to be tested, so we can all clap yourself's on the back and say look how good they did....aren't they clever. In a way we are measuring 'success' how successful a school was compared to the 'average' success of all other schools.

But how can you quantify success? - especially if it's a common measure of success for kids, all of whom will have different abilities, who also will have different ideas what success means. It shouldn't mean that just because all the clever kids go to the clever school, the other schools are somehow less successful.

In say a world where success is quantified by height and one day a year they measure height of kids, and have the height model, to compare against to see how much the kids have grown, does is make sense that a school is said to be failing because on the day of the test the tallest kid was off ill. Not forgetting that as Head Teacher it makes sense only to encourage the tall kids to come to my school.

To me it makes no sense putting pressure on primary kids to sit exams, for us to find out something that in the real world is meaningless, you know what's the saying one size doesn't fit all. If I had kids (I don't by the way before you ask) and wanted to know how 'Little Johny' was doing I'd ask the teacher, I'd trust them more than some auditors who visit the school once a year. Or dare I say I'd actually ask 'Little Johnny'. And we know this approach works because it works in Finland, where the key to success is trust in teachers.

For the record of the subjects I talk about above, education and economics I'm an expert in neither - which to some is probably stating the 'bleeding' obvious..

We need investment in state schools.

It's not rocket science, we have been here before, following a recession most private companies will try to consolidate debts - and those already stretched will find it hard to gain additional monies from banks.

The affect of this can be seen most sharply in the construction industry. For many 'SME' construction firms public contracts are their bread and butter, that kept them going, whilst private jobs was the jam.

I'm talking about local firms here, with long and successful histories of employing local people, whom are part of the local community and by their presence make the community better.

Of course the current thinking within the public sector is 'bigger is better'. Rather than say Jones of Amlwch repairing schools in Amlwch or Jones of Holyhead repairing school in Holyhead, no they say we need a big contract and a big firm (excuse used as ever the EU).

This is an idea that has come from the private sector, for example a local convenience store of mine had their door handle broken for some time. The spring had broken, it would have taken a local company ten minutes to fix, but no the manager informed me they had to wait till the 'maintenance company' sent and 'engineer' from Manchester to fix the door, 'cause that was company policy.

Things it seems are pretty bad at the Ynys Môn Council when you read (as I mentioned in a previous post)  "No budget allocation is available to cover other categories of maintenance, for example painting and decorating."

Think what we know about education on the island, firstly there is far too many surplus places, ideally the council would build new primary schools to merge and replace existing schools, that are not only expensive to keep, but not really suited to the needs of modern education.

And the islands secondary schools wont last for ever, take Ysgol Bodedern, the last new secondary school to be built on the island, that was in 1977, that's over 35 years ago.

So what can we do? - well may I be so humble and suggest that we need a 'big plan' to invest for the future. And this means borrowing money, and I'm not talking about some expensive PFI scheme or an equity swap with the private sector, I'm talking of council's being allowed to borrow money to invest in new infrastructure. Can't be done you say, then I refer you to monies made available in an attempt to clear the backlog in the maintenance of our highways see:  £60m boost for maintenance in Wales.

After all not all debt is bad debt, especially with the interest rates at a historic low. We need to invest in education and the future needs of the islands children, we need to repair old schools, better still build new schools. Above all we need timely support for our local building firms and provide a boost to the local economy.

Of course this is not something the Council can do alone, and this is where the Welsh Government should step in. It's all well and easy pointing fingers and saying things should improve following an Estyn report, but you are either part of the solution of part of the problem.

Is a collapsing education system really the legacy a Welsh Labour Government wants to be remembered for?