As far as I’m concerned, using the internet in any exam designed and properly policed for its use, is an entirely sensible exercise, but the question the BBC reporter then posed in the video, is what connects the story to Dr Pike’s desire to fine exam boards. The reporter asks, “ So is the examination system in the UK, out of date?”

Cue the most pernicious and educationally damaging piffle at large in the UK educational world today. I’ve heard it voiced by a number of ICT zealots, at a number of conferences over the last two or three years and it has been gaining currency amongst techno-acolytes and minions so that you come across it on discussions and edublogs all over the place. No skilled or professional teacher who seeks and commands the respect of their pupils would of course give it kennel room but…that’s been the big problem for a decade or more now.

The argument goes something like this. Kids today are doing such cool, 21^st century things with technology, they are so amazingly creative and clever, why on earth are we still sitting them in an exam room with a paper and pen in an outmoded, nineteenth century fashion? Why are we testing them for range when we should be testing them for breadth?

This is just the latest manifestation of precisely the deceitful, egalitarian, social engineering that has led to Dr Pike having to demand exam boards are fined for failing to meet their fundamental educational responsibilities. The truth is that after years of bending over backwards in ways that would make a Chinese State Circus contortionist blanche, exams boards and many teachers have dumbed down things down to the point of utter irrelevance because they were far more interested in social engineering, than in educating the pupils to think and learn meaningfully for themselves. Behind that innocuous little word breadth lies an entire lifelong learning agenda that as Frank Furedi explains in his latest book, Wasted, undermines the notion of the teacher as expert, the value of formal education itself and I would add, actually despises the notion of schools. Never mind the quality...

Testing for breadth means it’s all equally valuable. Testing for range differentiates meaningfully, fuels competition and nurtures excellence. Things all the genuinely skilled teachers I have ever met, understand and value. 

So the US education department employed SRI International, to carry out some research into e-learning and K-12 students (our primary and secondary pupils.) The study, published in May 2009, was a meta-analysis, so not original research, which looked at other people’s research over 12 years, comparing the effect of e-learning to face-to-face learning. It's even titled coincidentally, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis of Online Learning Studies. The researchers wanted to answer these four questions:

• How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?
• Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?
• What practices are associated with more effective online learning?
• What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?

The researchers hit a bit of a problem which they openly acknowledge, An unexpected finding of the literature search, however, was the small number of published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students.

What of course this means is that because they couldn’t find much in the way of real research that met their strict criteria, (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size for K-12 kids, they had to look outside that age range. They did and the more than 1000 papers they screened covered career technology, medical and higher education, as well as corporate and military training. That was the only way they could find enough studies with older learners to justify a quantitative meta-analysis.

Again this is something they openly acknowledge when they state: Thus, analytic findings with implications for K–12 learning are reported here, but caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education). My bold italics.

So how does that all translate into the real world? This is what that bastion of academic objectivity Becta, had to say about this research.

A thorough US Government report comparing results from e-learning and traditional learning, mainly in non-school based studies. Systematic search of the research literature from 1996 to July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

So ignoring the illiterate, opening none-sentence, (no finite verb=no sentence I'm afraid guys!) my bold italics highlight the single sentence Becta quoted directly from the original research abstract. And they are far from the only ones who donned the selective spectacles. I suppose we should give them some credit for attempting to hint that the research might not be of much use, since it was in non-school based studies, but to leap from what the research actually dealt with, and the crystal clear reservations of the researchers themselves, to this huge claim that e-learning is best…well, as neat an example of policy based evidence making as Matthew could wish to find.

I guess the guys from Becta just never noticed that bit in the report (p. 51) which says, the findings of this meta-analysis...should not be construed as demonstrating that online learning is superior as a medium. 

However the dimensions are described, in almost every circumstance “ordinary” basic literacy skills are a necessary precondition for digital literacy.

You bet! And that leads me onto what I really wanted to write about. The news that the Conservatives are promising to expand the Teach First programme was accompanied by criticism from teacher union leaders. So in the interests of combining digital, with real literacy, I invite you to have a look at this quotation from a union leader on the story, and ask yourself what the speaker's choice of words tells you about them? 

Chris Keates of the NASUWT, said: "It is disappointing that the Conservatives plan to hijack schemes designed by this government to nurture teachers and leadership in schools in a bid to advance the Conservative Party vision of elitism in every aspect of education."

Chris Keates might also be interested to learn that Teach First was not a scheme designed by this government, but was the original brainchild of an American, Wendy Kopp, transplanted to the UK by the consultants, McKinseys. 

It’s important to add that Sir Terry is also an education adviser to the current Rump and so I guess schools ought to at least sit up and listen. But I wonder if he is aware of the fact that for well over a decade now schools have been bludgeoned, cajoled, bullied and harassed to educate children for the world of work (just look at the entire 14-19 curriculum for example) yet apparently without the kind of success that even a supermarket can value. Why?

Well one reason is because, as Terry Leahy stressed, teachers aren’t allowed to get on with their work without a busy, busy little gaggle of quangos undermining pretty much everything they do. And the world of educational quangos is not exactly replete with individuals who know anything at all about high educational standards. You have to have delivered them to recognise them for a start.

But a second reason is because of a rather unholy alliance between the ICT business and the quangos themselves, an unhealthy symbiosis which has done nothing for the children or teachers on the receiving end.

So amidst a constant demand for children to have 21^st century skills and be prepared for the information age and the world of work, and a whole raft of other clichés constantly pushed by the quangos and the businesses, the absolutely fundamental things employers say they need from employees get utterly neglected. The P21 organisation in the US, a prime example of this kind of symbiosis, itself states that when asked the question, Of the high school students that you recently hired, what were their deficiencies?

Employers said the following:

• Written communication 81%
• Leadership 73%
• Work Ethic 70%
• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving 70%
• Self-Direction 58%

I’ve lost count the number of times at educational conferences, when someone is prattling on about how vital it is that kids have ICT skills, I have said my experience of real businesses has been that the one thing they need above all else, is people who can write. And so, to demonstrate just how unholy this technology/quango alliance is, here is a paragraph taken directly from guidance that a UK A level examination board sends to schools for a course that P21 recommends as exactly the kind of new, 21^st century skills kids need.

Candidates should prepare there own coursework in the correct format for submission. It is the teachers responsibility to ensure that this has been done correctly and collate all the candidates work from their centre and burn it to disc (see below). They should also verify that the disc has burned correctly by opening it on another computer. (My italics and there’s plenty more where that came from!)

So my advice for any school keen to leap on the 21^st century skills bandwagon would be: teach them to write, teach them to behave, teach them to work together and teach them to be responsible. That might help. Needless to say, this is what all schools with genuine high standards do, and without ever having to put it down in a strategy paper for stakeholders anywhere. 

Something which completely bemused me when I first left the world of academic English teaching and the scholarship that goes with it, for the world of educational technology, was what that ICT world seemed happy to call “research.” Over the years I’ve still never got used to it. The idea that someone can scribble a few inarticulate pages online, drag and drop a few minutes of video footage showing some exploited child enthusing about the latest gadget, and call it “research” just doesn’t cut it for me I’m afraid. I wasn’t at all surprised when the archetypal example told me he was simply too busy to write any books. He had loads of great ideas, of course, just couldn’t find the time to write.

Even more worrying has been the growing trend for pay-the-piper research. The pharmaceutical industry was the leader in this field but it has slowly crept its way into education too. You know the kind of thing, leading mobile phone manufacturer discovers mobile phones just happen to be responsible for a 50% improvement in GCSE grades. I actually don’t have any problems with that kind of blatant approach, it’s just another form of marketing. But some organisations and commercial suppliers are a lot less honest and their web presence is often supported by what looks at first sight like genuinely independent research. A bit of research about the researcher however, often reveals that their work is anything but objective. 

In a period where a lot of energy, effort and money is being channelled into improving education, the least we should expect is that if someone cites research findings or evidence to back up their proposal or policy, it comes with a bit of integrity.

And on a different note. What a joy to find that John Donne was voted second best poet by the 18,000 people who responded to the BBC’s poll for National Poetry Day. In my view he was actually first because there is absolutely no way half the people who voted for T.S Eliot have read anything he ever wrote…just seen Cats. 

It was therefore quite a surprise to hear the articulate opposition, especially from Marc Rosenberg, whose rhetorical skills were extremely strong and I suspect really did swing the debate live in the hall. The Noes won hands down. Dr Rosenberg fundamentally rejected the vacuous promises made for e-learning and pointed out that the very same promises have been made about new technology all the time…and always without result. What was most impressive was his stance that no one was really suggested e-learning wasn’t useful, what he was interested in was a dramatic and fundamental rejection of the way it has been done to date: the tedious online courses; the deception of pretending something is learning when it is really merely training; the obsessive interest in the technology and not the content, but above all he called for e-learning to be done in a way that accepted the reality of human communications, schooling and work practices. Anyone who’s a regular reader will realise it was a fairly obvious choice for me to join the hordes of others queuing for the Noes exit!

The only contribution I made to the debate was to object to the proposition side’s assertion that e-learning was “safe” by pointing out that it is precisely through the combination of e-learning (Serious Games) and operant conditioning that we’ve produced the most effective infantrymen ever invented…and that many of them subsequently return home to find they have to be treated for trauma and depression using exactly the same e-learning applications used to train them! I wonder how many ex-soldiers suffering after effects would accept that the e-learning they received was safe?  

But Matthew’s blog also coincided with me doing some work revising my new book on Milton’s Paradise Lost and I was suddenly struck by the parallel between the explosion of self generated publishing on the web (blogging being by far the best example) and the outburst of pamphleteering which accompanied the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641 and the way in which Milton especially, exploited it. Anyone who has read any of the pamphlets or newsbooks published in vast numbers at the time, will know that they had little interest in fact or objectivity and are in contrast to anything like journalism, examples of pure invective at its most extreme. Milton himself was adept at this kind of writing, abusing individuals with precisely the same kind of ferocity and personal abuse that characterises such a lot of online writing today, though I imagine he wouldn’t have liked to have been told he was merely indulging in smack talk or flaming. 

The connection back to Matthew’s original question, the net: good or evil? is that one of the things which came out of the freedom to print what you liked in Milton’s day was…civil war. The great irony is that when this uncontrollable welter of opinion reintroduced censorship in a hypocritical act of self preservation, it wasn’t the pamphlet (or blog) that Milton turned to in his brilliant defence of freedom of the press, Areopagitica…it was the book...

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. 

...and not Facebook.

The one question I came away with was this: what is so great about innovation? I feel I can ask this safely because I can look back a career that has been built on innovation, from the small scale changes made in a house system, to involvement in the international award winning Scottish intranet, Glow, Teach First , or more recently success in the Entrepreneur of the Year competition with, RM, my last company. I’m so habituated to innovative thinking that I had to smile when Matthew Taylor assumed I was anti-progressive, and would therefore somehow naturally approve of rote learning in his blog some weeks back.

I can recall at a conference at the Serious Games Institute asking one of the speakers, a Canadian “innovator,” whether he thought innovation was always good and being not the least surprised when he had to think long and hard before saying, Gee, I guess I’ve never thought about it.

Just a quick look at the language used to describe the programme at a Guardian conference, coming up in November, ought to set alarm bells ringing for any skilled teacher. The Innovation in Education Conference, is aimed at exploring education systems to meet the high learning challenge of the 21^st century. The utilitarian assumption behind this and much of the programme, is just startling. And I have no personal axe to grind about Lord Puttnam, but just because he claims to be passionate about education, because his own experience of state education was so disastrous, is no reason whatsoever to seek his advice or advocacy for transforming education. Why on earth would you seek advice about how to design or run great schools from someone whose own experience of schooling was so poor? What concerns me seriously about so much of the innovative rhetoric surrounding education is that it masks an unspoken, anti-schools agenda for so many of the individuals front of house.

What’s needed is not just an awareness of this amongst the teaching profession widely, but a counter argument which asserts the undoubted value of stability and consistency. Values even more precious in the world of education where every single lesson counts…if you are the child on the receiving end. 

I left teaching some years before the classroom assistant emerged so I thought it would be only reasonable to give some thought to what one might do, or how I might have used one if they had been available. Apart from purely practical, mundane things like handing out books or collecting them in, and working one-to-one with children once they were carrying out an individual task, I could not think of a single worthwhile activity for a classroom assistant in any English class I ever taught. And even the one-to-one work would be pretty worthless unless they were educated to at least A level at English.

The entire dynamic of a great lesson (from the child’s point of view) depends on the relationship you establish with the class and children you are teaching and having an assistant there makes them part of your audience too, with the additional burden that they aren’t children.

I won’t repeat things I’ve written before about this, but if ever there was an example of why politics should be taken out of education, the origin and rise of the classroom assistant must be it.  

Before writing this, I did a bit of net research and found an absolute plethora of similar critical news stories dating right back to the earliest years of the programme and as I have just left my old company, where I have been heavily involved in BSF work since the very first bid began in Bristol, 5 years ago, I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect frankly on my experience.

I started by considering listing the things I have seen which have shocked me: the perfectly good, recently built buildings which are being demolished, for example and the way appointments at local and national level are driven not by educational experience or professionalism, but by politics; the Kafkaesque way PfS employees police the programme, sitting silently at the back of meetings, contributing nothing, like some irascible, mediocre school inspector. But the list expanded so quickly I abandoned the idea and instead have these few reflections to offer colleagues and others still involved in the programme.

Five years ago, before the programme kicked off, I was asked for my views on it at a company board meeting because I had already built up a some experience of the people and businesses who were positioning themselves to get involved. I made two simple points. One, I was pretty dismayed at the fact that some of these people thought you built a school for 20 years. All great schools have two things in common, stability and longevity, and if you don’t build with that kind of vision, you may well build a school… but not a great school. The second was that I felt the government’s professed aim at the time, to rebuild every secondary school in the UK, was likely to turn into something less ambitious quite quickly and that some schools were likely to get a lick of paint. At the time I was told I was wrong and there were “no weasel words from government.” Within months I was proved right and most schools are actually being refurbished: not rebuilt.

At the very first presentation I gave to building companies before the programme began, I stressed how important ownership of space was in a school not just for discipline and maintenance, but because it is perhaps one of the most powerful tools any secondary school teacher has. That is as true now as it was then.

But above all, if you want to build great schools, ask advice from people who run and manage great schools, not techno-zealots or local politicians. I was really delighted a few months ago when the German headmistress of a perfectly good secondary school, currently housed in dreadful seventies buildings told me and my colleagues, I'm not the least interested in building as change agent, because we could get A stars...in a shed.

As the film director Josef Von Sternberg said when he disowned his film, Macao, Instead of fingers in that pie, a whole bunch of clowns immersed entire parts of their anatomy.  That has been my experience of BSF.