Fatal Flaws of CCEA’s Revised Curriculum exposed by TIMSS data
January 11, 2013
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As pointed out in the letter the DENI's Schools Inspectorate has indicted "failing" primary schools in terms of its inspections, levels-based measurement of attainment and classroom observations. The findings of Trends in Mathematics, Science Survey 2011 tells a different story. Who do you believe has an international reputation for evidence based research?
The North Eastern Education & Library Board continue with their anti-selection and anti-grammar school agenda.
When you receive AQE test results for your child in the coming weeks the natural response to this news will be to avoid Cambridge House Grammar since it is designated to become Bi-Lateral (code for comprehensive)
“Cambridge House Grammar School will continue as an 11-19 Bi-Lateral school, selecting a proportion of its intake on the basis of academic ability, of 1030 pupils up to the year 2014 and will then reduce in stages to a maximum enrolment of 935 pupils.”
Notice that no information is provided on the percentage of pupils to be selected by academic abilty nor any indication that parents were consulted prior to the NEELB proposal
Contact the school principal and the NEELB to register your objection to the destruction of a controlled grammar school. Also contact your political representative and tell them you will note vote for them unless they reverse this proposal.
So much for the representation delivered by John O’Dowd’s Sectoral Support Body for the Controlled Sector. Antrim Grammar School principal, Stephen Black, a member, will be aware of this attack on controlled grammar schools but has remained silent. Perhaps he thinks the NEELB won’t come for his school too or perhaps he was too busy with his Gangham-style video production to notice.
The Rev. Trevor Gribben a TRC representative and avowed anti-selection man told members of the assembly education committee that the churches did not want anything in legislation that gave any particular sector particular rights. His concerns did not extend to denying the NEELB the opportunity to remove a grammar school from Ballymena without the consent of parents. Gribben was quoted telling Mervyn Storey and Danny Kinahan;
“The controlled sector has suffered long enough by being the Cinderalla. It has educated the vast majority of children from a Protestant background. Those schools must be treated with equality.”
Parents alarmed at an urgent meeting between ESAIT, CCEA and the BELB chief executives……
March 24, 2012
Gavin Boyd posing as Chief Executive of ESAIT, CCEA and BELB
The Belfast Telegraph announced Friday March 23rd, 2012 that Gavin Boyd was “good value” for taxpayers’ money.
A meeting of the Chief Executives of ESA, CCEA, the Curriculum and Exams body and the BELB, the Belfast Education & Library Board would effectively mean Gavin Boyd in a mirrored room talking to himself. Instead of outrage at the very idea of such nonsense, the Belfast Telegraph promote such extravagance in a time of austerity as “good value”. Perhaps they may wish to pick up the tab for this inefficiency. No matter how Gavin Boyd slices up the bacon on this porker the most he dedicate to each job is one third of full-time – an indictment which even our political representatives have been forced to address. Will the Belfast Telegraph now apologise to all those politicians they tried holding to account?
If there was ever a need to answer the persistently wrong and ideologically failed attack on academic selection by 11-plus testing carried out by the DENI, an answer to an Assembly Question by a Sinn Fein MLA gives a resounding response.
The Question
| AQW 6202/11-15 | Mr Daithí McKay (SF – North Antrim) |
|
It is little wonder that there were no press releases, planted media articles or angst-filled human interest stories obediently spewed up using words and phrases such as child abuse, stress-laden, difficult, morally wrong, scandalous. The DENI have known since the Household Survey of 2002 that the majority of parents want valid and reliable transfer testing at 11. Their miserable decade long campaign has resulted in failure but the DENI promote failure by denying the taxpayers their right to regulated testing and then object to and hamper those who suceed in doing their work for them. If an example of promoting failure is required then linking the ending of regulated transfer tests to the promotion of the multi-jobbing ESA Chief Execuive may be a good place to start.
Also note that there has been no effort by the unionist parties to highlight the response to AQW 6202/ 11-15. This may be explained by their secret desire to see the issue of transfer testing disappear or perhaps they don’t read answers that don’t refer to themselves.
The Answer
One written complaint was received by the Western Education and Library Board in the last three years in relation to a primary school in that area preparing its pupils for unregulated transfer tests. No written complaints were received by any of the other boards during that period and records are not kept of any verbal complaints.
Gavin Boyd of ESA & CCEA given a 5 year contract
February 16, 2012
Why has a five year contract to lead The Education & Skills Authority (ESA) been awarded to Gavin Boyd, a man shrouded in failed initiatives and questionable spending decisions?
No mention made on the Department of Education website yet published in Irish News.
INews090212 click to view.
How exactly do the DENI press office communicate?
One year on the Irish News catches up on massive ESA costs scandal
November 11, 2010
Last December The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education published an article highlighting the costs of the Education And Skills Authority (ESA). http://paceni.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/esa-the-real-costs/
On Saturday November 6th, 2010 the Irish News ran the front page headline;
£2 million waste of schools money on ESA staff.
Two million pounds is a mere fraction of the waste incurred by this stealthy body. No use by Simon Doyle, the Irish News Education Correspondent of the term “double-jobber” to describe Gavin Boyd the ESAIT chief executive and chief executive of the problem ridden exams board, CCEA.
Frank Bunting northern secretary of the teachers union INTO rushed in to create a heirarchy of losers.
” Yes it’s a waste of money but the bigger waste of money is that ESA has not yet been established…Everyone is a loser.”
Frank Bunting INTO
Perhaps Frank has forgotten his script to the Stormont Education Committee from March 25, 2009 when he said;
“in the interests of efficiency, establishing the ESA is basically a dream come true.”
Frank Bunting may need some remedial numeracy training and careful teaching of accounting principles.
Frank Bunting INTO
Gavin Boyd and CCEA fails Education (NI) Order 1998 on examination standards; again.
August 30, 2010
Once again Northern Ireland’s exam body has failed to deliver on the Education (NI) Order 1998 awarding body standards and will slickly seek to reassure the public by conducting an investigation on itself. CCEA’s remit is to “conduct and moderate examinations and assessments, ensuring that standards are recognised as equivalent to standards of examinations and assessments conducted by other bodies or authorities exercising similar functions in the United Kingdom”.
One again CCEA failed to deliver. CCEA only became aware of the wrong results issue after contact from 2 centres through the Enquiry About Results process. When CCEA staff investigated these enquiries they discovered that incorrect grades were awarded to 151 students. So much for standards.
Parents and pupils may ask themselves how ” a unique educational body” can claim that the qualifications and examinations offered by CCEA, the unnecessary and expensive awarding body in Northern Ireland are of an appropriate quality and standard when on the one hand they fail to spot their own errors and then immediately reassure the same parents and pupils that their revised efforts are perfect. Self assessment means that the assessor is always in control. CCEA is an expensive luxury costing the taxpayer close to £30 million per year.
It will be recalled that CCEA was mired in another recent controversy over the inaccurate results given to schools over their use of the Incas Pupil Profile. Incas was Gavin Boyd’s pet project when he was last chief executive of CCEA before leaving to become ESA chief execuive (designate). The Education Minister also had to issue an apology for that expensive failure of Gavin Boyd’s effort to replace objective measurement of attainment in numeracy and literacy with a “diagnostic” tool.
CCEA’s interim chief executive Gavin Boyd said: “Staff at CCEA are very disappointed by this failure and we apologise unreservedly for any distress this has caused to students, their families and teachers. He neglected to mention that it is teachers who mark the exam papers.
“On this occasion CCEA’s quality assurance procedures did not ensure that the correct grade was issued for the candidates. This is unacceptable and it falls far beneath the standards we set ourselves as an organisation.”
“A formal internal investigation is under way to discover how the incorrect marks were awarded on this occasion.”
As opposed to the informal manner in which 151 pupils were given wrong results.
Mr Boyd is clearly the man to lead the Education and Skills Authority.
Next time check the facts…
October 29, 2009
Next time check your facts
Perhaps the Education Minister for Northern Ireland, Caitriona Ruane will have a meeting with Gavin Boyd of the ESA to discuss the failures of the CEM Incas assessment system that she assured had parents was quality assured. Mr Boyd build his publicly financed business on claims of quality assurance. Those assertions are now in tatters with parental confidence in CCEA-approved assessments destroyed. Mr Boyd would now benefit from a dose of his own advice given when the pseudo-science of the enriched curriculum was criticised… “Next time check the facts”
http://www.rewardinglearning.org.uk/newsroom/press/2006/press_170506.asp
In a poor attempt to convince parents of their effectiveness the DUP have misinterpreted the significance of a statement by Father Ignatius McQuillan recently published in the Irish News http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/561/2009/7/20/622952_388069193305Exambanw.html
and the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8159283.stm.
In a mandatory coalition executive dependent upon mutual cooperation to avoid collapse the DUP must be seen to be outdoing their Sinn Fein partners. As history has revealed the DUP’s effectiveness in tackling anyone with their own developed strategy is virtually non-existent. Sinn Fein’s destruction of grammar schools has been aided and abetted by token opposition and slick slogans.
While the conflicted anti-academic selection position of the Catholic Bishops in Northern Ireland has been sold to the media on social justice and moral grounds that is clearly not the disclosed position for Catholic schools in England where two very high profile campaigns to save Roman Catholic grammar schools have been initiated by headteachers and parents working together.
There is no evidence of ”growing opposition” to non-selective schooling. Such opposition has been constant since the first attempt to remove the 11-plus. If academic selection is to be ended it must be applied to non-Catholic schools at the same time as Catholic schools lest Catholic parents move their children to non-Catholic grammar schools. Unfortunately there won’t be enough room for all the applicants. Social selection will replace academic selection. Perhaps Mr Storey should consult his East Antrim MP friend Sammy Wilson about the parental pressure group STOP. This pressure group petitioned the Catholic bishops to restore the regulated “interim” CCEA test abandoned by Caitriona Ruane in February. The campaign resulted in a complete failure to change the minister’s and the bishops’ position yet not a meaningful cheep from the loud and vociferous MP.
Mr Wilson will know of Mr Storey’s involvement as a member of the Board of Governors at Ballymoney Model Primary School. Despite his senior position in the DUP and access to communication tools Mr Storey was unable to prevent a teacher led plot to convert the school to integrated status.
If Mervyn Storey, Sammy Wilson and the DUP had been fully involved in opposing Sinn Fein’s strategy to remove grammar schools they would have been aware that Ignatius McQuillan, like the late Monsenior Denis Faul, has always opposed the anti-11-plus, anti-grammar position of the hierarchy. Unfortunately the Catholic Church is not a democratic organisation and the power rests with the Irish Catholic bishops. The DUP were made aware of the loss of social mobility when grammar schools were removed in large portions of England but choose to keep silent on the issue. The DUP were made aware of the negative impact of the revised curriculum project inflicted on Shankill Road primary schools but stayed silent. Diane Dodds MEP was the DUP’s representative for the Shankill. The DUP were made aware of the potential disaster that ESA would bring under the former CCEA boss, Gavin Boyd, but predictably did nothing to prevent his rise to power.
Perhaps Mervyn Storey will now disclose the results of his meetings with Cardinal Brady and contrast the Cardinal’s position with that of the stated DUP position on the 11-plus and academic selection to grammar schools. Perhaps they are not too far apart?
Stanley Poots and the ESA
March 6, 2009
While Stanley Poots is fronting yet another campaign against academic selection to post-primary schools he remains quiet over his role with the Education and Skills Authority.
Mr Poots was appointed to Gavin Boyd’s ESA Working Group for Children’s Services.
The Terms of Reference can be found here.
http://www.esani.org.uk/docs/childrens_services_terms_of_reference.pdf
Nowhere does it state that Mr Poots was to evangelise for Gavin Boyd’s anti-selection manifesto.
Mr Poots gave an interview withe local media in which he stated:
“All schools – primary, secondary and grammar – agreed that the 11-plus test was flawed and should be abolished”
Parents can only speculate as to when Mr Poots came by his now publicly expressed views.
So whose frustration are you expressing Stanley? It wouldn’t be Gavin’s would it?
