There is another unfairness that I recently discovered, and probably because I have been naïve. A friend's daughter, an English speaker, said how easy the LOG is and that her whole class (of English Speakers) got 100's. I asked her how they did that and she said well how hard is it when your teacher checks your work and rechecks it until it is perfect! That is not how it works in my school. The grade is the grade and so far we have not had pupils get 100's, not even the English Speakers. We have some 98's, 97's but if you grade your work as you are told to, it is unlikely that anyone will get so many perfect scores in the LOG. In fact as a staff we have said that our English Speakers used to do better (as if 98 isn’t enough!) on the old F bagrut because they used to get 100's. The concept of the LOG is not objective marking at all, and even with the random sampling, the Ministry cannot possibly know what is going on behind closed doors! Gilly Solomon Beit Shemesh -----Original Message----- From: David Graniewitz Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:36 PM To: etni.list@xxxxxxxxx ; etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [etni] The inherent unfairness of the log. A few weeks ago, I went to test orally a class of English speakers. The pupils had done a bridging task in lieu of the project and with several of them the conversation got around to discussing what they thought of the literature programme. Their teacher had opted to create her own literature syllabus as opposed to choosing the set-pieces. I was very impressed by the thought and work that had gone into it, as well as more than a tad jealous of the fact that she had been teaching pupils who were of the level of coping with something a little more stimulating than the poem “Grandmother”. However, it seemed that some of the pupils were not happy with the pieces that she had chosen and with the fact that they had had to work very hard to complete their logs. Later, the teacher told me that she had had a hard time getting pupils to hand in all of the assignments and that some would be getting low grades for their logs. One mother had phoned her to complain that her daughter had only been given 70 as a final grade. Her son who was in another school where the set-pieces had been studied had not had to work as hard as his sister and had got 90 for his log. I commented that the point was that the harder that a teacher works, the harder the pupils will have to work. However, they will do so, in general, without the enthusiasm that accompanies the teacher’s efforts. And, in the case of the log, when they realise that there was a way of doing less work and attaining the same or even higher grades, they will feel, quite understandably, annoyed about this. One of the selling points of the log at first was that teachers could teach the literary pieces that they want to teach rather than the worn-out stories that have been staples of the syllabus for decades. It seems though that in many places this isn’t being done for several reasons. Firstly, it turns out that it is not so simple to get approval for stories. Having looked through the list of pieces that have been given approval for the 4 and 5 point exams on the TLC site, I was unable to find much consistency in the decision-making process. Secondly, many teachers simply don’t have the time to start from scratch and build their own syllabus. It is far easier to take the ready-made one-size-fits-all pieces and their accompanying exercises in the text books. Also, building your own syllabus is a risky business. There is no guarantee that the pupils will be inspired by the stories and poems you have selected. When a pupil complains that he doesn’t like “A Summer’s Reading”, what better answer can there be for a teacher than to give a shrug of the shoulders and say “That’s the syllabus. You want your Bagrut, you’d better study the story, no matter what you think of it.” But therein lies the rub. The new literature programme was enacted in order to amend a previously untenable situation. When literature became an internal component of the Bagrut and was only assessed as part of the school grade, it was inevitable that some schools would not do the required syllabus in its entirety or not at all whilst others stuck to it religiously. In other words, not all pupils were doing the same amount or level of work, but were receiving the same grades at the end of the day. The purpose of the new programme was to standardise the teaching of literature as much as possible. The irony is, though, that now the situation has become more inequitable with some teachers building challenging and demanding syllabi whilst others are just going through the textbooks that have been published over the past couple of years. In the old days, the literature component was less weighty as it was part of one of the school grades given on a module so it could be argued that doing it properly or not made little difference in the end. Nowadays, it counts for almost a third of the final grade. The only fair solution in my opinion would be to get everyone to do the log based on the set-pieces. I know that this was not the point of the log in the first place; however, I believe that it is nigh on impossible to have standardisation when a third of the final grade depends on what the teacher wants or doesn’t want to teach. Perhaps when pressure is brought to bear from parents and principals, even the most enthusiastic teachers will realise that it is their own interests to go along with the set-pieces. This is, of course, an unfortunate situation, but if the powers-that-be want to encourage teachers to teach literary pieces that they feel comfortable with then the whole idea of the log has to be rethought. Two suggestions have sprung to mind; a) reduce the weight of the log in the final calculation of the Bagrut exam or b) offer a 6-point Bagrut in which teachers could build their own syllabi which would give pupils the feeling that if they work harder for their Bagrut, it will be worth more than those who are just doing the set-pieces. David Graniewitz Jerusalem ************************************** ** Join ETNI on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/31737970668/ ** ETNI Blog and Poll http://ask-etni.blogspot.co.il/ ** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org ** post to ETNI List - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** help - ask@xxxxxxxx *************************************** ************************************** ** Join ETNI on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/31737970668/ ** ETNI Blog and Poll http://ask-etni.blogspot.co.il/ ** Etni homepage - http://www.etni.org ** post to ETNI List - etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** help - ask@xxxxxxxx ***************************************