Expert post: The language of learning

Tim is an educationalist with more than 20 years of teaching experience. He is the author of several school textbooks and is Ready for Ten's educational expert.

Have you ever been to a meeting at your child’s school and wondered what on earth is happening? Or sat across a table at your son or daughter’s parents’ evening bewildered by the jargon? If you have, you’ll probably recognise some of the following questions:

Q: What’s happened to homework? My child seems to come home with something called 'Extended Learning’ tasks. Are these the same?

A: Yes. Extended Learning is a term that was intended to make it clear to parents what purpose homework serves, but it seems to have done more harm than good and many schools have abandoned the term completely. Whatever it’s called, homework or ‘EL’ is there to consolidate and extend the work done in schools, and shouldn’t involve learning anything new. 

Q: My child’s school no longer has a library. There’s something called the ‘Learning Resource Centre’ instead. 

A: Again, this was an exercise in re-naming that didn’t go down too well, although school libraries are now much more than a collection of books. With PCs and other audio-visual resources, school libraries fulfil all their traditional functions but in an up-to-date environment.  

Q: I’ve heard my child’s teacher talk about something called Assessment for Learning. This sounds like an excuse not to mark work. What purpose does it serve?

A: Assessment for learning is a strategy introduced a few years ago to ensure that pupils get useful feedback on their work. Instead of saying ‘well-done’ a teacher will now be specific about what was well-done, and how the work could be improved. All should be done in pupil-friendly language that children understand and appreciate. One element of this strategy is called peer assessment. This is where pupils assess each other’s work and offer constructive feedback. If you’ve tried this yourself you’ll know it isn’t easy, and that’s the point. Expecting pupils to mark some work not only helps them help each other, but it gives them an insight into their own work which is difficult to gain any other way, hence ‘Assessment for Learning’.  

Q: Is that what my child’s teacher means when she talks about ‘formative’ assessment?

A: In a way, yes. Having a friend suggest improvements can be less threatening than hearing the same thing from a teacher. For a start, pupils are more likely to ask their peers for clarification, or even question each other’s judgement. And there’s the added benefit of hearing something from somebody who not only speaks their language but has done the work for themselves. Formative assessment simply means giving a child information that helps them make further progress, rather than allocating grades and levels. 

I must admit that, as a teacher, I’ve sometimes picked up on things when marking work I hadn’t thought about when planning lessons. That’s another reason why regularly marking work is so important. But the most powerful learning tool is the one thing schools, the workplace, everyone has traditionally been a little reluctant to acknowledge, still less celebrate: our own mistakes. Provided we don’t repeat them, mistakes can be the most powerful learning tools there are and children are sometimes a little more happy to experiment, to be creative and, yes – to make mistakes – when they know that their work isn’t being ‘judged’ by the class teacher. 

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The new coalition government's plans for education explained.