Statistics and Lies

Now that I'm coming to the end of the school year, I've had to do some 'jumping through hoops' at school.  It is evaluation and observation time in the UAE and we've all been madly getting portfolios of evidence of our work together, ready for the formal evaluation of our teaching performance for 2012. This is of course to occur while we teach our 30 lessons per week, while our local colleagues do on average 12 -15 lessons and get paid three times as much (do I sound envious?).

I certainly acknowledge the importance of some of what is being asked of us.  To be able to provide evidence of our planning; how this is linked to assessment and classroom activities and the curriculum is a given in a good appraisal system.  And having studied in this area, and of course worked in this area, I do appreciate many of the things being asked of me.

So why the title of this blog?

Well, the problem with the 'hoops' we've had to jump through is that these should really have been set up in the first and second term, not in the last few weeks of the third term.  We've had to do graphs comparing the first two terms results from the girls' academic performance.  Then we've had to write a document establishing what we will do to support the students underachieving and those performing well.   It is not difficult to do this - we've got loads of 'grades' to pop into graphs that Word and Excel help to spit out.

So why is this a problem?  Well it is the fact that the girls cheat in exams, they cheat in their assignment work (mum, Nanny or tutor does it for them) and they cheat by copying straight from the internet (even leaving the words from Wikipedia underlined, in blue and accompanied by a number!!).  They have a well-established history of no-one ever stopping them from doing this...and so they wonder why these western teachers get so upset about it!  They even have local teachers who come into their exams and go over the answers with them! There is no school structure to support a teacher with underachieving and misbehaving children.  And, then there's the fact that some of the grades may be changed to reflect a higher achieving school...

And finally, the problem lies not in the difficulty, but in the relevance of it. What added value can we hope to add with four weeks until exams?

Then of course, there's the expectation that the girls will all get above 70%...


I even get girls who cry and beg me to change their marks when they get 85%...


And the girls and their parents who are upset with me when they get 99%...

I rest my case.

So that's enough of the serious part of this whole process.

Instead of sharing the statistics that I DID write (all truths, really...) in my graphing document, I thought I'd share some of the statistics I SHOULD have submitted as a way to represent the improvements that have been made this year at Jahili School for Girls.

Miss Jacqui’s real statistics 2012...

Teaching Issue	Term One	Term Two	Term Three
How many local teachers know my name?	0%	20%	30% (I'm still known as Gaki)
How many of my students in my classes know my name?	2%	20%	60%
How many times I’m bumped into by people who walk straight through me?	30 times a day	15 times a day	1 time a day (now they bump right off me!)
How many times my class is interrupted in a lesson?	10 times in a lesson	8 times in a lesson	5 times in a lesson
How many times I’m lied to while a child says “Wa’allah” (I swear on Allah) in a day.	50 times in a day	40 times in a day	30 times in a day
How many times I’m told off by a local teacher in front of my students?	5 times in a day	3 times in a day	2 times in a day
How many girls are on time to my class each lesson?	10%	10%	10%
How many times I wish I could have a stiff gin by 9.30am?	Always	Always	Always

So the conclusion?
Things are getting better, don't you think?