MEEF M1 December Homework assignment feedback.
I know that you MEEF M1 people are now hurtling through
the second semester and not necessarily thinking back to what happened in your
homework assignment at the end of 2023. Nevertheless, this is one of the first
times you have attempted an exercise in the format of the CAPES exam, and it is
important to identify key errors, in particular in methodology.
I should first say that I very
much enjoyed working with you. You were my last MEEF students. Due to my great
age, I am retiring in the summer. I will continue doing a little history (which
you might find from time to time here or on my YouTube channel « The History
Fellow ») as well as several other activities (which are easy to find via
Google if required). I am always pleased to hear how you are getting on.
A few of the main points
concerning this assignment.
I have preferred to write here
about the main weaknesses of student work, rather than write comments individually.
This allows me to deal with weaknesses at greater length. It also allows you to
think about weaknesses or mistakes which you did not display in this particular
piece of work but might in a future piece, or at the actual CAPES exam.
The main danger is paraphrase -
simply repeating in your own words what the documents say (this is how to fail
a CAPES).
Many people need to listen again
to my excellent lecture on the history of the UK school system :
Just click here
https://johncmullen.blogspot.com/2023/11/m1-meef-uk-education-system-explained.html
So, to the present exercise :
These three documents all deal
with conflicts and difficulties in the history of UK education. The first gives
a general picture of the post-war reform, and then of changes made forty years
and more later. The second illustrates the anger and resistance of the biggest
teachers’, union faced with neoliberal reforms and competition between schools.
The last compares private schools and state schools and speaks to the
difficulty of giving equal opportunities to every child, and the political
conflicts, in particular between the Conservatives and Labour, connected with
how private schools should be treated by government.
The objectives of the people who
produced the three documents are quite different. Documents one and three are
journalistic in nature : their main aim is to explain to readers facts and
processes (although one can certainly see the opinions of the first journalist
in his writing). The second document, produced by a trade union, has an
agitational objective. It aims at encouraging teachers and headmasters to
refuse to cooperate with the evaluation body OFSTED, since this organization is
considered not to be working in the interests of schools, children and
teachers.
Each of the documents contains
several references to events or actors in the history of UK education. You
would not have time to explain them all, and there are probably some you do not
understand. Nevertheless, you must explain quite a few of them.
Obviously, you get points
for ( among other things) understanding the history and organization of UK
schools. So, you would obviously get points for :
-
Showing you
know what OFSTED is and does, and why many teachers oppose it.
-
Showing you
know what a GCSE is, how the system works, and the difference with the French
baccalaureate system.
-
Showing you
know exactly what the eleven plus was, and why it disappeared. Most
importantly, what kind of ideas were behind the eleven plus system, and why
these ideas are not accepted today.
(Read here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-plus )
And this article recounts the
history of debates about the eleven plus back in the 1940s and 1950s
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30180127.pdf
(You will find here a rather
right-wing documentary about the history of the eleven plus, but which includes
a lot of useful information).
https://youtu.be/6WEHIKAuYto?si=NTx4l5KfD51LDq_Ox
-
Showing you
know something about the 1944 Act which is not mentioned in the documents ( e g
its establishment of the tripartite system, with the eleven plus, and the idea
of innate intelligence which was behind this decision).
-
Showing you
know *how* church schools fit into the national system.
-
Showing you
know the importance of Local Education Authorities in the history of UK
education, and why this influence declined in the 1980s.
-
Showing you
know that the 1988 reforms were part of Thatcherism, and how they fit in with
the rest of Thatcherism, indeed showing you know what Thatcherism is.
-
Saying who Rab
Butler is, what political party he comes from, etc.
-
Showing you
know what kind of newspaper The Guardian is and what sort of people read it.
It is important to refer immediately, at the very
beginning of your work, to the intentions of each author, and to
structure your work around what the documents are trying to do.
Most students quote too much. The
examiner has read the documents. Line numbers are enough.
Remember to only include details
which help us to understand the document, and the history of education. If you
say that Rab Butler was a Conservative politician, this is important since it
might show that the need of the British economy for educated workers pushed the
Conservative Party to partly abandon some of their traditional elitism. This
detail helps us understand the history.
On the other hand, the fact that
Toby Helm worked for a few years in Berlin is not relevant to this set of
documents. If Mr Helm’s article had dealt with the relationship between the UK
and Germany, it would have been relevant to mention his link to Berlin.ç
One of the biggest dangers is
paraphrase. If you summarize the documents in your own words, instead of
analyzing what the document is trying to do or how it reflects historical
situations and changes, this is not good. You need to show you know things *which
are not in the document*.
Note that both the introduction
and the conclusion should concern how the documents help us to understand
British society and its education system. Your conclusion should not be
advice about what the governments*should do* or about what the education system
« really needs ». Your position is one of a student of British
society, trying to explain how a situation came about and how it is changing.
Your position is not advisor to the British government.
At the very beginning, try to be
as precise as possible. « These three documents all deal with aspects of
education in Britain » is weak, because it is so obvious. Noone would
expect one of the documents to talk about dolphins! What do they have in common
which is more precise ? No doubt conflict. They show how different ideas about
education - egalitarianism, elitism and neoliberalism in particular, have been
in tension as they produced a modern education system.
