HEADLINES
By James Saunders
HAPPY FRIDAY
We have reached the halfway hump and it’s now a clear run to the half term finish line - three weeks to go, followed by a very short five week half term ahead of Easter. There is much to do. This week I would like to talk to you about competition and results. Specifically, athletics and the 100M final. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics Jesse Owens completed the final in a gold medal winning time of 10.03; the first of four wins. Fast forward to 2009, still in Berlin, where Usain Bolt took to the track for his own 100M final. He set the world record with a time of 9.58about half a second quicker than Owens. If you ran both races simultaneously Owens would have come in joint last in the Bolt race. Does that make Owens a loser by modern standards? No. You would never make that comparison. Owens is still a gold medal winner and in the context of the 1936 race he was the best. To compare him to Bolt is to ignore the progress that has been made in the world of athletics over the last eighty plus years. But imagine if he were to race alongside Bolt and achieve that time. It would be foolish of him to state that he is still a gold medal runner with that time and has put in a performance equal to that which achieved gold. Why? Because the bar has been raised over that time. Progress has been made. Athletes across the globe have got better whilst the performance of Owens would have stagnated or stalled. This brings me to the exam system that our learners are faced with as I think that the government have created something similar to the world of athletics.
Our learners are now entering a world where two of them could gain an identical mark in their English paper but because they took it a year apart the grade boundary shifted and gave one of them a grade 5 and the other a grade 4. Will the person looking at their CV and interviewing them know this? Unlikely. Will they formulate a preconception of academic ability and think one is better than the other? Possibly.
However, what the system does is acknowledge the context that learners take their exams in. To compare Bolt and Owens is to say they are both gold medal winners in the context of their day. Is the time really that important? I will leave that for you to decide. What it does do is highlight the progress that has been made in that time period.
Progress is a key measurement of education systems today. This is the system our learners have to face and whether we like it, agree with it, dislike it or disagree with it, it is how we are judged. It is a system with many flaws but one that has raising standards, raising the bar, making progress (in the broader economical, social and physical sense) at the heart of its intention. Each year is another 100M final for our learners that is taken in a different context.
If we took a race from last year and ranked the contenders and then reran the race this year we might find that everyone improved. However, fifth place from last year may now be first - making excellent progress. First place from last year may drop down to fifth but, like Bolt, may turn in a faster time. That does not mean that the runner has failed in any form, however, they have made less progress than their peer runner due to their starting point.
Learners and schools for that matter are rarely judged or graded independently but as part of a collective set of runners. Their ranking or grade is based as much on how the other runners did as it is on their own race. And because the system is like this our learners, like all good runners, must keep training to better their personal best. However, we must acknowledge that in any race someone will be fastest and someone will be slowest and there will be an average time. That means that fifty percent of the runners will be below average no matter what. That is the unfortunate legacy of this system. It does not however mean that there have been no improvements. When talking
about below expected progress it may be that with the same diets as their peers a runner may not improve at as fast a rate.
My aim in telling you about this is not to be all doom and gloom but to be realistic about the system our learners are facing. I will not offer up excuses about the system being broken or corrupt or somehow at fault for our performance as a school or for any of our learners. Just like an athlete training for the next race we must all focus on constantly improving our performance and not worrying about the system or how others are performing. Only on race day (exams day) do we find out if it is enough to secure gold. As long as we continue to strive to beat our personal best then that is all we can ask for.
I wish you all a lovely weekend.
James Saunders
Well done to Ivy in C10 who participated in the Jack Petchey Glee Club Challenge semifinal in London with her performing arts group the Frederick Douglas Performing Arts group.
They got through to the final, which is being held on the West End stage at the Shaftesbury theatre in April! They will be competing against the best performing arts groups across the nation.
A fantastic acheivement for Ivy and her dance group. Well done Ivy!
Essex County Council have recently launched a new app aimed at helping residents learn how to reduce their carbon footprint. The app is free and offers money-saving hints, as well as opportunities to earn points to win prizes for themselves and help local charities and organisations.
We have registered Honywood School as a participating secondary school on the app and we would like to make a plea for you to consider donating points that you earn on the app to our school. Our progress can be tracked in a league table and in a couple of months’ time, the school that has collected the most points will be awarded a sustainability pack, which would provide much-needed resources and really give our learners a boost with their efforts!
Download the app here:- https://www.greenredeem.co.uk/cce/
Tuesday 27th January
Wednesday 28th January
Monday 2nd February
Thursday 5th February
Dates for the Diary
Jack Petchey Awards Evening
C11 Macbeth performance
Disneyland Paris trip departs
C11 Whole Cohort photo - 8.45am
5th - 10th February Book Fair
Tuesday 10th February
Wednesday 11th February
Friday 13th February
16th to 20th February
23th & 24th February
Tuesday 24th February
Thursday 26th February
Thursday 26th February
Wednesday 4th March
C10 Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge
C7 Parents Evening
Ski Trip Departs
Half Term holidays
C11 Learning Group photos - LS5
C9 RS trip to Walsingham
C11 Media Studies trip to British Film Institute
C7 Smashed performance
C8 Guided Choices Evening for parents