"The job of the exam system is to reflect performance accurately. Policy changes put extra challenges ... set different expectations to accountability systems ... but having clarity and certainty in the exam system is what we are trying to do.
She added: "Don't let curriculum thinking collapse into qualification thinking. Curriculum comes first."
However, her comments have raised a few eyebrows among teachers, who claim politicians are still placing too much importance on achieving the best possible grades.
Russell Hobby,https://www.travelfeeder.com/travel-destination/cny-2011-decorations-at-mid-valley-and-the-garden-shopping-malls#comment-317137cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, general secretary of National Association of Head Teachers, said: “I don’t think any headteacher would disagree with what she said. But it isn’t students or teachers that are hung up on grades they are being hung up on them by the government who put so much pressure on these outcomes.
“If you don’t get the grades, the future prospects to go on A-levels and university are limited. If a school doesn’t get pupils to get these grades,
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“,
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“They raise the stakes so high on the grades that they are narrowing the curriculum and distorting teaching.”,
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Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary of the NUT, said a general culture of placing too much important on grades was taking its toll on children.
Mr Courtney said: “We know that children in this country are amongst the most stressed and the emphasis on scores and tests is part of that. Even teachers own pay is being determined by grades.
“It is all very well for someone with power to say there is more to life than grades but many teachers and students would feel that life is all about grades,
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He called for wider methods of accountability that go beyond grades. “League tables are a method of accountability that only looks at grades, schools do a lot more to help young learn.”
According to Childline,
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The children’s helpline carried out 34,454 counselling sessions mentioning school and education problems with a 200 per cent increase in counselling about exam stress specifically. There were also more than 87,http://www.qdtongyun.com/qingdao/E_GuestBook.aspcheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg,500 visits to ChildLine’s webpage about the issue.
Earlier this month the Centre for Social Justice,http://www.yunshannongchang.com/guestbook.aspcheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, the think-tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, warned that seaside resorts had been turned into “dumping grounds” for the poor.
It highlighted the impact of collapsing property prices as a result of the decline in coastal tourism in Britain as the root of many resorts’ problems.
The report showed how the transformation of former boarding houses and hotels turned into bedsits and cheap rented flats has fuelled a cycle of decline.
Now, for the first time the ONS, has attempted to rank seaside resorts in England using a range of measures of deprivation.
The ONS used a national ranking system for deprivation in across more than 30,000 individual neighbourhoods across England and ranked the country’s main seaside towns by the average score for the neighbourhoods within it.
Although overall the larger seaside towns fared worse than smaller ones, deprivation levels in Skegness and Ingoldmells were highest on average among the 57 resorts included in the study.
Overall deprivation levels in the area were around two and a half times the national average for England using the calculation which combines measures of income, unemployment, health, education and crime.
Other smaller resorts scoring poorly included Seaham, Ryde and Fleetwood.
Blackpool topped the list of larger resorts, ahead of Clacton, Hastings, Ramsgate, Margate and Hartlepool.
Councillor Kenneth Milner, who represents Skegness South in East Lindsey District Council and is himself a former hotelier, said the heavy reliance on seasonal work from the tourist trade effectively skewed the local economy.
But he insisted that the town’s problems were less severe than those seen in many inner city areas.
He said: “I am surprised but I think one of the reasons is that everybody seems to come to the seaside – and Skegness in particular -for summer work.
“What happens is that once the season is finished many of them stay.
“We also have a lot of older people here,
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Cllr Milner, a Conservative member, said that average earnings in the resort tended to be close to the minimum wage which in itself made it more likely people would be claiming benefits.
He added that aside from tourism, the other main source of employment in the area is farming, which is concentrated further inland.
But he said he was surprised that the town had come out at the top of the list.
“I think people still have a good standard of living,” he said.
“I have been a councillor for 15 years in one of the supposedly deprived wards and I think ‘if that is deprived….’.
“I think probably the figures are affected by the fact that work is so seasonal here.
“When we had our hotel we used to close all winter because it wasn’t worth opening so we had to work like mad all summer.”
Christian Guy, director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), said: “It is a tragic fact that some of Britain’s seaside towns have gone from once flourishing tourism hotspots to areas that are gripped by poverty and social breakdown.
“As CSJ research showed earlier this month, a decline in domestic tourism had a devastating impact on coastal resorts and many communities have been left behind as a result.
“Instead of the thriving towns they once were, many are now home to high levels of worklessness, school failure, lone parenting and teenage pregnancy.
“We need to breathe new life into these towns – not just for visitors, but the people that live there.”
The most deprived seaside towns in England
1. Skegness and Ingoldmells
2. Blackpool
3. Clacton
4. Hastings
5. Ramsgate
6. Seaham
7. Margate
8. Hartlepool
9. Great Yarmouth
10. South Shields
11. Barrow-in-Furness
12. Ryde
13. Fleetwood
14,
Kicksokok.com. Sunderland
15. Bridlington
