{"id":5793,"date":"2014-02-21T08:23:46","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T08:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=5793"},"modified":"2014-02-21T08:23:46","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T08:23:46","slug":"pity-the-children-of-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2014\/02\/21\/pity-the-children-of-wales\/","title":{"rendered":"Pity the children of Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have written before about the poor quality of both the Welsh education system and its leadership, and about the potential for corruption when a minister of education moonlights as the school exams regulator. \u00a0See for example, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/12\/04\/pisa-uk-results-unequally-poor\/\">this<\/a> (UK PISA scores), <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/09\/19\/grade-corruption-in-wales\/\">this<\/a> (GCSE grade manipulation), and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/01\/25\/how-does-esdgc-make-a-difference-does-esdgc\/\">this<\/a> (PISA &amp; ESDGC).<\/p>\n<p>As such, the poverty of thinking about school education in Wales never really surprises me, but I confess to being just a little bewildered this week at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-wales-politics-26241058\">latest idiocy<\/a> \u2013 inevitably, of course, about PISA, the dismal (and diminishing) performance of\u00a0Welsh children in these international tests, and what to do about it.<\/p>\n<p>The latest hapless education minister, Huw Lewis, suggests that success in the PISA tests is vital if Wales is to have a successful economy, and that\u00a0what Welsh children need to do is practise sitting the tests, in the hope, presumably, that they will raise their game and get better at it. \u00a0Blaming children for the failings of schools and government is a new low, even for a Welsh education minister.<\/p>\n<p>What youngsters in Wales really need is better teaching. \u00a0If that materialises, then higher PISA scores might follow (and much else). \u00a0Better leadership would help as well, but there is no sign of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have written before about the poor quality of both the Welsh education system and its leadership, and about the potential for corruption when a minister of education moonlights as the school exams regulator. \u00a0See for example, this (UK PISA...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}