WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
BBC News and the EducationGuardian report that Alan Johnson, the education secretary, wants to do away with some of the ‘threshold targets’ that are currently in vogue in English education. He has - quite rightly in my opinion - pointed out that measures such as 5 A*-C grades at GCSE are too narrow. It also highlights a push towards more personalised learning, which is always a good thing. A discussion document is to be published in the next two weeks which addresses these issues. I, for one, will be reading (and probably blogging) about this! 
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I know of a school that focusses entirely upon those figures, positioning thier students for best results. Maybe the students would benefit from focus instead of spreading themselves too thinly. That shouldn’t be governed by the schools aim for maximum points on the benchmark, and the whole thing is anti learning IMHO.