Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Faith SchoolsIn the name of “diversity” the government are giving huge amounts of money to religious groups to establish schools – part of their agenda to marginalize democratically elected Local Education Authorities. Since 1997 112 applications have been submitted by faith organisations to take over local community schools, 103 of them were supported and many more are being considered as part of the academy programme.
You might well ask – what is the relevance of religion in western societies? Are they actually a good role model for schools? The Church of England is tearing itself apart over the issue of gay bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams twists in the wind between the African churches who believe homosexuality is an “abomination” and the more liberal North American Anglicans who provide most of the funding. The Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by child abuse scandals involving its priests and bishops (this has nearly bankrupted some dioceses in America) and affairs between priests and women parishioners. I’d also like to know how democratic is an organisation that does not tolerate elections (except for the papacy), believes in the infallibility of the Pope and refuses to allow women any meaningful participation. Alternatively I wouldn’t be happy with mosques controlling schools; even the more mainstream have questionable attitudes on homosexuality, evolution and women’s dress codes.
So these organisations that give out the aura of crisis are being allowed an increasing influence in schools. This is despite the fact that in our increasingly secular society organised religion is disappearing at an exponential rate. According to the Church of England’s own research, based on declining attendances, it will cease to exist in 2050, at the moment over half of the congregations don’t have anyone in the 18-34 age group. For non-conformism the picture is just as bleak, by their own projections the last Methodist will attend a chapel in 2037. The Roman Catholic Church is struggling to staff its churches with priests; in 2005 just 31 men were in training, a slight rise on 2004 when only 27 started. According to some researchers the mosques have an equal attendance compared to the Church of England. Do we want hundreds of schools controlled by the immams? I’m not raising this from the point of view of Islamophobia – I don’t believe any religious organisation has a place in education.
Faith schools cement divisions in society and exclude the poor. The Institute of Research in Integrated Strategies carried out research in Inner London, they found that 41% of children in the immediate proximity of Church of England primary schools received Free School Meals, yet only 32% of them attended the schools, for Catholic primaries 42% received FSM but only 28.3% found their way into the playground. The ‘Guardian’ revealed a starker and disturbing example close to former Education Secretary Ruth Kelly’s constituency in Bolton. Canon Slade Church of England took in 258 children from 87 different primary schools; one quarter of them lived outside Bolton. However, the eight closest schools geographically sent only 39 children, Castle Hill the closest primary (only 10 minutes walk away) didn’t send any children and the next closest Tonge Moor sent only three. In an ethnically diverse area the school is almost 100% white, it has only 6% of children with Special Education Needs against a Bolton average of 27%. There was a telling quote from one of the parents on the “economically disadvantaged” estate where the school is sited, “We can’t go to that school… it’s not for the likes of us.”
Children are usually chosen to attend faith schools based on their parents involvement and attendance at church. Every year there are miracle conversions as parents who want their offspring to attend a socially selective school begin to worship at an appropriate church, as soon as their children are accepted they drop the church like one of the hot cakes they used to bake for them. Some clergy resent the time and effort they are forced to expend in writing references for parents they know will abandon their church at the first opportunity.
I don’t have a problem with churches involving themselves in education, as long as it is on a voluntary basis, again they need to get their own house in order first; in 1905 56% of children attended Sunday Schools in 2000 it was estimated that only 4% chose to attend. According to another survey by the Christian Research group, there are now 700,000 children under the age of 15 attending Sunday schools, compared to 1.4 million in 1979.
Every time I see ‘Church of England’ or ‘Roman Catholic’ on a school board I have to smile because that’s probably one of their only financial contributions, over 95% of the funding for faith schools comes from the state in other words from our taxes. There’s also the blatant discrimination where governors can stipulate that the candidate must be as “active communicant” yet these same teachers will have the pick of jobs in community schools as well.
Britain is a fairly tolerant secular society without any anti-clerical tradition, more the Vicar of Dibley than the Da Vinci Code. Yet this tolerance is being stretched by the increasingly bizarre organisations emerging to gain state funding. The local diocese controlled most Catholic and Anglican schools and the governors came from the local church. The new breed of faith schools are being fronted by unelected unaccountable trusts or foundations. Sir Peter Vardy, the wealthy entrepreneur behind the Reg Vardy chain of car dealerships, sponsors the Emmanuel Foundation. It became the subject of controversy when it was disclosed that pupils in its schools were being taught the Old Testament belief that God created the world from nothing in six days.
The history of faith schools reveals some interesting examples; in the early nineteenth century the Anglican, Catholic and Non Conformist churches competed against each other to educate the children of the poor. In the latter part of the century the state played a more prominent role. The Conservatives attempted to regularise and involve the churches through the 1902 Education Act, this created voluntary aided religious schools where the government would pay 95% of the costs. Only the wealthier Anglican and Catholic churches were able to bear this cost, the non-conformist churches complained that their children would be forced to attend a school and be indoctrinated by a faith they did not support. The Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists organised the Passive Resistance Movement, by 1905 over 50,000 summonses had been issued for non payment of rates, 150 people were imprisoned including 61 ministers of religion. The failure of the 1906 Liberal Government to repeal the Act helped the emerging Labour Party to win non-conformist voters with their espousal of secular education.
Most research shows that faith schools make little (if any) difference to test results or children’s life chances. If you’d have said twenty years ago that a Labour Government would fund fringe religious organisations to teach creationism to school children you would have been regarded as a fantasist. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland world of education.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
A man arrives home…The Conservatives really do have a problem with education. It’s not so much that New Labour has stolen their clothes – league tables, SATs, Ofsted, academies. I see it more as a kind of Kafkaesque drama.
A man arrives home and goes to put the key in the door, it won’t fit. He knocks on the door, his wife answers it but she stares blankly at him, she doesn’t recognise him. Hearing raised voices the children come to the door but see him only as a stranger. He rushes into the house, there is the old familiar furniture and ornaments. He picks up a photograph, who is that impostor with his wife and children? Running up to the bedroom all his clothes have been removed. In this weird parallel universe someone has completely stolen his identity.
The Conservatives have resorted to barmy ideas dreamed up on the back of a cigar packet, the latest - keep children back in Year 6 if they don’t achieve Level 4.
You can just imagine the consequences of having some embittered 12 year olds constantly being reminded, ‘you’re ‘ere cos you’re thick’. The impact on class sizes of thousands being kept back? Er… we haven’t quite worked that one out yet.
Labels: Schools
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Why phonics are dangerousMy blog on phonics attracted some interest from the Reading Reform Foundation, these people really are the swivel-eyed zealots of the phonics movement. Here’s a sample from their web site of their intemperate, intolerant approach,
“People need to ask themselves whether they would choose PREVENTION over intervention. They need to choose what kind of teaching they would prefer for their boys and whether they want to risk their children becoming dyslexic. Quite simply, if you are a parent, to which type of school would YOU most confidently send YOUR children?”
I don’t know all the details about the initiative in West Dunbartonshire, but maybe it came about in Scotland because local authorities still have a measure of autonomy and aren’t completely subject to ruthless central dictates. When the Scottish Executive cut funding for their programme they carried on anyway. Also in Scotland there is no high-stakes testing, no league tables and no Ofsted.
What was also interesting about West Dunbartonshire was that they’d not only used phonics but involved parents and tried to create a “literacy community”. Crucially they’d also recognised that some children don’t progress by phonics alone and the Toe-by-Toe programme gave intensive support to those older children who had fallen by the wayside.
So what are the dangers of phonics that emanate from the Rose review?
1) If you introduce some children to formal education at too early a stage they aren’t ready for it, this particularly applies to boys. The Rose review proscribes when and how to teach, it doesn’t leave it to the judgement of teachers to decide.
2) English is not a phonetic language, sorry to literally spell it out but how do you cope with those inconsistencies like soft ‘c’ and hard ‘c’; magic ‘e’ at the end; soft ‘g’ and hard ‘g’; silent letters at the beginning and end of words? Then there are all those little words - like, one, once, was, only, the, your, you, she, do, sure, what, who, out, does, come, want, busy, are, two.
3) Why do 20% of children find it difficult to read? Phonics leaves those children to struggle. Reading Recovery is an intensive and expensive programme delivered by trained teachers, peer reviewed international research has shown that it works. Albeit that even then one-fifth with global learning difficulties will also fail here, so again there really is no ‘magic bullet’.
4) Phonics fit well into the ‘back to basics’ agenda, phonics teaches children the mechanics of reading, but it doesn’t create a love of books. As the new Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen commented,
“I also reject the notion that you can teach reading without books: there has been a huge push to create an environment in nursery and reception where books are secondary to the process of reading.
“If you are just given a list of words, then the emotional impact is that reading is dull. For example, we care about the mouse and the Gruffalo when we read The Gruffalo.”
5) The notion that every child who doesn’t reach Level 4 is ‘illiterate’ is really dangerous nonsense. We had one special needs child in our school who came into nursery unable to speak, after making tremendous progress in the Juniors she got a Level 3 in her SATs. Yet she is branded an ‘illiterate’ failure and the school is dragged down in the league tables.
One of the much-quoted experiments in phonics was in Clackmannanshire, a small study of 300 children. Under pressure to introduce this ‘magic bullet’ scheme, Ruth Kelly did put out a circular to councils pointing out that by their own figures comprehension levels for 11 year-olds were no different from other councils. Later, in full retreat from an onslaught from the Daily Mail and the phonics lobby she instituted the Rose review.
Schools under central direction are now crudely introducing phonics but without the other features of West Dunbartonshire like the Toe-by-Toe programme.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Magic Bullet?Phonics is an important building block in the process of children learning to read. Just in case there’s any doubt I’ll repeat it - Phonics is an important building block in the process of children learning to read. But phonics alone is not a ‘magic bullet’. I’ll repeat that again - phonics alone is not a ‘magic bullet’.
There was an interesting article in ‘The Guardian’ today about a literacy programme in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. They claim they are in the process of ‘eradicating illiteracy’. In 1997 only 5% of children had very high scores on word reading, today the figure is 45%. Synthetic phonics has been at the core of the scheme.
But it has not been the only factor. A 10-strand intervention was set up, featuring a team of specially trained teachers, focused assessment, extra time for reading in the curriculum, home support for parents and the fostering of a “literacy environment” in the community.
There is also an early intervention system from nursery upwards and those who do fall through the net are given the intensive, one-on-one Toe by Toe programme. Synthetic phonics has been only one strand in the West Dunbartonshire approach.
This is a far cry from the Rose inquiry and the subsequent edicts that all primary schools must teach phonics, the so-called ‘magic bullet’. Why doesn’t phonics alone work? Because unlike Finnish or Welsh, English is not phonetically consistent. Every study since the sixteenth century has found that 20% of children have difficulties in starting to read. In my experience the poorer readers usually rely on phonics alone, they can’t read in context and have poor sight memory of words.
Phonics has been thrust down the throat of schools, without the sophisticated and expensive programme that was adopted in West Dunbartonshire. Phonics alone will not help the poorer readers and those who can already read will be bored to death, some of them need to engage with real books, not scraps of text. In one international study England scored highly in reading but low on interest in books.
The most important thing is to inculcate a lifetime love of reading not just the mechanics of the process.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
The BluesI know it’s getting near the end of term… it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks and I’ve just started reading Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ (A father and his young son walk alone through burned America, heading slowly for the coast. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind) the start of ‘doom lit’; the cat’s gone to the vets again (he routinely gets beat up by the other cats and his face has swelled up with an abscess, yes, we have got pet insurance and they only pay out when the bill is more than £50), but I’ve really got the ‘What-The-Hell-Am-I-Doing-In-Teaching-Who-The-Hell-Invented-All-This-Useless-Useless-Planning… Blues’
The staff meeting was on the new ‘Standards Planning Framework’ for literacy and maths. At a recent meeting for coordinators the local authority consultants gave out the message, ‘It’s Compulsory! You Have To Do It! No Exceptions! No Excuses!’
We dutifully trawled through the web site with reams of objectives, targets and assessments. For anyone who didn’t have Doctor Spock’s ability in speed-reading, it would take hours to plough through it all.
Who exactly is planning for? Consultants? Ofsted? Certainly not teachers or children. Time spent on detailed, irrelevant planning is time that could be spent preparing an interesting lesson or reading books.
The grey bureaucrats at the DfES probably believe that creativity and imagination is something that can be achieved by measured, incremental steps, all directed by them from their office in Central London.
Writing results at Key Stage 2 are still way behind government targets. Why can’t children write well? There are all kinds of complex reasons, partly to do with cultural questions and the influence of television and videos. But one truism is that a ‘good reader is a good writer’ (I’d qualify that – an engaged, interested, questioning reader is a good writer, too many children are good mechanical readers, they can decode text). Get them reading good books and not the scraps of text doled out by the ‘Literacy Strategy’ - today children we’re looking at this boring, turgid piece that I’ve been instructed to teach you.
We really have become mere technicians mindlessly regurgitating this dull, prescriptive curriculum overloaded with targets, levels and tests.
In September we’ve got two days training on ‘Planning Using The New Frameworks’. I’m breathless with excitement.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
‘Do One!’I love writing, but school reports really are a chore. You try to avoid any controversy, trim, use terminological inexactitudes, resort to eduspeak and employ the services of ‘Copy and Paste’. Finally I’ve finished. Phew!
In the English and Maths sections we had to write whether the children were above, at or below ‘national standards’. At the staff meeting there was talk about the ‘grid from the consultants’. Anything from these androids I normally bin or file away at the bottom of a pile of papers, just in case I might need it for the purposes of self-preservation.
Digging it out from underneath all the other junk about planning, standards, unit plans, spare socks, paracetamol, pliers (here’s an interesting thought get teachers to empty their bags and would you find anything to inspire children? I’m as guilty as the rest), it prescribed a ‘Range of Abilities’ for report writing for all years – Below, Average, High.
At the end of Year 6 the average was 4B, not just 4C, but 4B, another case of the consultants ‘raising the bar’. At the end of Year 4 the expectation was 3B. Now I know that my 3Cs will all get Level 4 but under this crazy system I’d have to say they were ‘below national expectations’.
So there we have it, the consultants are now telling us what to put in our reports. Maybe we should e-mail them our test results and they can churn out reports on a computer and mail them out to parents.
I’m not changing my reports. The consultants? As they say in Liverpool, ‘Do One!’
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Working towards…It’s hard keeping up with the blog at the moment because I’m engaged in that Labour of Sisyphus writing the end of year reports.
Some children it’s easy to write the report – excellent, outstanding, brilliant, well done, etc.
For other children there is the extensive use of the euphemism and the impenetrable eduspeak…
Working towards… = hasn’t got a clue
Is beginning to… = still hasn’t got a clue
Has knowledge of… = that’s about it
Labels: Schools
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Halton School ClosuresThis piece is from Ronnie in Halton.
When in 1996 Tony Blair was asked what his three priorities were, he gave the now famous quote "Education, education, education!" After eighteen years of Tory education cuts, this must have been music to the ears of teachers who had seen their workload increase as they pay decreased.
In its 1997 Election Manifesto, the Labour Party announced "Labour will never force the abolition of good schools." Parents and teachers could have been forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief that stability was about to be given to schools and that the education of children was about to be restored to its rightful place in society.
Enter Labour-controlled Halton Borough Council, covering the towns of Runcorn and Widnes on opposite sides of the River Mersey. In 1999, it was decided to close down and merge several schools in Runcorn including a secondary school. There followed a period of so-called consultation involving public meetings addressed by the Director of Education and the Chief of the Education Directorate. It soon became clear that this was a `done deal' and that any consultation was nothing more than window dressing. Demonstrations, including blocking the Mayors car with a huge sign and presenting him a petition came to nothing.
Two secondary schools, Norton Priory and Brookvale were merged, staff being presented with a blank envelope containing a note informing them they were to attend a job interview the following day. Almost the entire Maths department found other employment and several staff took early retirement. Despite the council mantra that the closures were about raising standards and not saving money, the new school, Halton High, was a disaster. It was too small and millions of pounds had to be spent extending existing buildings, the council appointed head had to be removed and the school was placed in Special Measures. Staff morale and parental confidence plummeted and the school was only saved by the dedication of staff and determination of pupils and parents. There is a new regime at the school, but the very active and large PTA has disbanded and it is almost impossible to recruit and retain parent governors. Parental involvement is treated with suspicion. It is Blair's Britain in microcosm where statistics are everything and content nothing.
Given this recent experience of an enforced amalgamation, it is easy to imagine the shock teachers, pupils and parents felt when they discovered from a local free newspaper website that further closures and amalgamations were in the pipeline.
The new proposals involve amalgamating The Grange and The Heath secondary schools (or `federating' them in council speak as `amalgamation' conjures up memories of the dismal Halton High School experience) in Runcorn, and amalgamating Wade Deacon and Fairfield secondary schools in Widnes. St Chad's Roman Catholic secondary school will become a joint Roman Catholic – Anglican School in Runcorn as the birth-rate is falling among Roman Catholics and those Anglican families who wish to have their children educated in a denominational environment send them to Chester.
The unfortunate Halton High School is to be razed to the ground and rebuilt as a Specialist Academy. There is some craftiness in this proposal as parents on the nearby well to do area of Sandymoor are reluctant to send their children to the working class area of Murdishaw where the school is currently situated. Instead, they send their children to Bridgewater School in Warrington. Building a specialist academy nearer to Sandymoor would encourage those pupils to be educated within Halton and at the same time local statistics for five A-C grades no harm at all.
All of this will involve hundreds of pupils travelling about both towns on what is an inadequate bus system. Runcorn has a pioneering busway which encircles the town in a huge figure-of-8. The original idea was that no one should be more than a few minutes walk from a bus stop and a frequent bus service would whisk commuters about the town free from the interference of private cars and commercial vehicles. Needless to say the planners did not foresee Tory bus deregulation and each evening the busway is virtually deserted. What parent wishes their child to have to wait in the gloom of a November evening for a bus which may or may not turn up?
At a recent consultation meeting it became clear that permission for the joint faith school had not been sought from the diocese and councillors were reluctant to say where the new academy would be sited. Staff felt LEA representatives were "evasive and ill-informed" and that these proposals were a "fait accompli" decided months ago by councillors mesmerised by the £80 – 100,000 million offered by the Government to push ahead with the plan. Most people believe the prime building land left vacant at The Grange and Fairfield also helped focus the minds of Labour councillors.
Not content with lumbering young people with a mountain of debt for having the temerity to attend university, Alan Johnson now wishes to cause as much disruption to their secondary education as possible. Blairite puppet Johnson is rapidly becoming as unpopular with teachers and students as he was with the postal workers he regularly sold out in his previous existence as right-wing General Secretary of the CWU.
The population of Widnes and Runcorn should unite to stop these closures and not fall into the same trap of 1999-2000 and think "thank goodness it's not our school which is affected!" They must put down a clear marker to Halton Borough Council on this issue not least because early in 2008 a review of primary schools within the borough is due to take place, the outcome of which will see more schools closed with more teachers looking for jobs outside of the borough and more anxiety for parents. They must pressurise Labour councillors (especially those who had their own children educated outside the borough while passing resolutions to close down local schools) and both Labour Members of Parliament, Derek Twigg, Halton and Mike Hall, Weaver Vale.
Labels: Schools
Thursday, June 14, 2007
‘Has anyone got an INTELLIGENT question?’School visitors are usually welcomed with open arms, a break from the daily grind, a chance to chill, relax and watch other people perform, although you’re always thinking, ‘can they cut it?’
For some visitors this doesn’t necessarily apply, most of the so-called Literacy Consultants resolutely refuse to teach, but of course they’re quite happy to watch and then carp and criticise. They’ll spend hours showing you how to plan lessons in minute detail (9.38 a.m. turn page 125 with your right hand and ask the following question…). If the test results aren’t in line with the targets then you as teachers just aren’t up to the mark. After years of these intrusions LEAs finally realised that they were about as popular in some schools as the Black Death was in medieval villages.
Increasingly poets and authors are invited into schools, some of them teachers who have made it as writers and they actually try to inspire and enthuse teachers and children by communicating and transferring their love for writing. We had the poet Ian Bland in teaching the children limericks and how to use rhythm and rhyme. It was also cross-curricula because we got the atlases out to find exotic place names, or the mundane, ‘There was a young woman from Ealing…’ no on second thoughts he didn’t missed that one out.
The children’s writer Alan Gibbons has written some edgy books on controversial topics like bullying, racism and religious bigotry. He got our children writing in shorter ten-minute slots. He’s also pioneered ways to engage boys with literacy through sport, factual writing, gore, snot and other unspeakable bodily functions.
With Jamie’s School Dinners, the battle against obesity and the impending London Olympics millions of pounds is being poured into sport. The Schools Coordinators project has allowed schools to meet together to organise events, it’s also helped by freeing secondary specialists to teach in primary schools and whenever Mark from our local secondary comes in the female members of staff always seem to manage a stroll through the hall.
We’ve had different sports that our children would probably never get the chance to try. The best was a judo taster, Terry the instructor was so gentle and patient, he got some of the real problem children bowing and using faultless Japanese, and there was never any hint of aggression but only Eastern calm. Only at the end of the six weeks did we discover that he is totally blind.
The only problem is that every agency, trust or charity is involved with sport; we seem to get a phone call every week. One day an ex-professional footballer arrived, he was setting up his own training company, he brought in a huge bag of full-sized footballs booted them all over the field and got the children running after them… and that was it, a load of balls. The worst was the cricket coach who was teamed up with one of the less sporty members of staff, he started belittling him in front of the children, “Can’t you catch? ‘ow can you teach them if you can’t do it?” Then he started insulting the children, “Hey dozy, come over here!” After a couple of weeks we rang up to say thanks, but no thanks.
Some visitors just disappoint, the other week we had the Safari Park in and I’ve got to admit I was winding the class up by saying there was a huge trailer outside with a hippo in, that the giraffes would only fit in the hall and the chimps had escaped, were there any volunteers to find them? I was still expecting though a hint of the exotic an African land snail, a giant stick insect or huge beetle perchance? Instead we had a long lecture on life cycles and just to confuse everyone she threw in parthenogenesis in aphids, no males appear in summer until the weather gets colder and eggs need to be laid to survive the winter (a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle). Finally we were promised some eggs to hatch out, an exotic butterfly or endangered species? No, it was the cabbage white! Could do better.
You always get the regulars and we have two lovely old boys who introduce classical stringed instruments from violins to double basses. It’s based on a comedy double act with rude jokes and innuendo the only problem is that after ten years they haven’t changed the jokes or the routine (I know this was the principle that music hall was based on, but look what happened to that). You can telegraph every joke and they must be saying them in their sleep.
There are the one-offs never to be repeated or invited back. Mr Cuddles dressed up in a clown uniform and mimed to songs, prancing up and down the rows of children, the music blasting out from an ancient cassette recorder. He started getting mobbed by the children and disappeared at one stage under a pile of Year 2s. It was all we could do to stop a full-scale riot, the children were so hyper we had to abandon lessons for the rest of the afternoon. Still at £130 an hour there was a queue to join Mr Cuddles.
The one we all remember was “Crabby” Crabtree, he acquired this title due to his attitude, demeanour and sociability. He’d announce his presence by opening the door of the staff room at dinnertime with the imperious command, “You need to move your cars I’ve got to get my equipment in!” No “Hello, how are you, would you mind…?” Bill the caretaker would always make himself scarce and “Crabby” would spend ages staggering in sideways through the doors with his projectors and slides. From his shows you could tell he had an affinity with barnacles, prawns and those vicious eels that hide in holes.
It was always a slide show of the animals he had encountered on his latest holiday. Now I know that in the era of chap books and blackboards the magic lantern shows were bound to be a hit, but when you’re competing against ‘The Blue Planet’ and ‘Natural World’ there just isn’t much of a contest. The whole school would file into the hall, there you were in a dark stuffy atmosphere with hundreds of sweaty children, “Crabby” droning on for ages. On one occasion, much to the amusement of Year 6, I did begin to drop-off, I had to walk about and get a strong coffee, match sticks on the eyes, anything to stay awake. After an hour or so he would see that children’s attention was flagging, glower at them and ask, “Has anyone got an INTELLIGENT question?”
The only thing I can remember was that there was one species of gull that would protect its nest by projectile vomiting the entire contents of its stomach all over its hapless victim, ensuring that you would smell of oily fish for days. Somehow I know where that gull was coming from.
Of course it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning theatre groups, we’ve had some excellent ones that have involved the children, by getting them to dress up, putting messages over through songs, allowing the children to laugh and shout at the tops of their voices. Oh, and embarrassing the teachers as well. The difficulty community theatre has is the skit by the League of Gentlemen with their ‘Legs A Kimbo’ group of primadonnas and thwarted thespians, who constantly argue bicker and squabble. There are also a limited number of actors attempting to portray a mass of bewildering and perplexing characters. One group we had into school attempted the whole of the Old Testament in one hour - with three actors. They raced through Daniel in the Lions Den in two minutes, a whistle stop tour of the Ten Commandments and rushed through Joseph and his Coat of Many Colours. There were numerous baffling costume changes, everything delivered at full volume, slapstick used at inappropriate moments and no attempt to involve the children until the end. “Sir, we’re getting bored.”
School visitors – from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Grammar SchoolsNormally, I steer clear of personal anecdote because it isn’t a great guide to analysis. The great ‘grammar school debate’ is usually polarised into either, ‘my grammar school was the best thing since sliced bread, now it’s a ‘bog standard’ comp’ or ‘I failed my 11-plus and it ruined my life’.
To make an exception on this occasion, I went to school in a small town, there was the grammar school, my ‘alma mater’, and then the two secondary moderns. The children who didn’t pass the 11-plus viewed themselves as failures and the only prospect was leaving at 15 for a low-paid job.
Grammar schools picked the ‘brightest’ 20-25%, well, how could they fail? In truth many coasted along without having to try all that hard. The problem is that when you say ‘grammar school’ you also have to say ‘secondary modern’. There were some pretty awful secondary moderns, a large proportion of the teachers viewed their charges as ‘thick’ just waiting for the monthly pay cheque as compensation, yes, there were many dedicated teachers but the perception was that ‘the best’ teachers were in the grammar schools. Ah yes, the good old days when 50% of children left school without any qualifications whatsoever. There was a 1 in 8 chance of a pupil at a grammar school attending university for those at secondary moderns it was about 1 in 20,000.
Why comprehensive schools? In many rural areas it proved difficult to administer the selective system, children had to be bussed over long distances, easier to put all the children in one school. As the middle class grew larger there weren’t enough grammar school places to accommodate their children, councils came under pressure from irate parents who knew what an inferior education the secondary moderns offered. The Robbins Report in the early 1960s recommended ambitious targets for expanding higher education and as white collar jobs increased employers needed a more skilled workforce. An education system that divided children at 11 into academic or vocational routes wasn’t fit for purpose.
Some of the grammar schools were pale imitation, faux public schools (captured very well in ‘The History Boys’) with masters in tweed jackets, house systems and plenty of rugger. Working class boys in particular found it difficult to assimilate into this type of culture. Even swots like Alan Bennett were embarrassed at inviting children home for tea.
As Education Secretary in the 1970s Margaret Thatcher was the nemesis of countless grammar schools. In many rural areas there was a genuine comprehensive system where all children attended one school. However, in most large cities selection through the remaining grammar and faith schools lived on. Caroline Benn and Clyde Chitty in their book ‘Thirty Years On’, published in 1996, estimated that only a quarter of comprehensives had a balanced ‘comprehensive’ intake.
Fifteen local authorities are still fully selective with around a fifth of their pupils in grammar schools. A further twenty-one have one or more grammar schools. An estimated 60,000 children sit the 11-plus every year. A report in the TES in April 2006 quoted a head teacher in Kent, “We’ve had children in Year 3 whose parents are paying tutors to make sure they pass… around Year 5 the pressure for children is, for some, unbearable. They really do crack.” Another secondary head commented how siblings were divided, “A student comes here and they may be perfectly right for the first couple of years. But then little brother or sister comes along, sits the 11-plus and passes. We then start getting all sorts of behaviour problems, because every morning they get up and come downstairs for breakfast, and they are in their uniform, and little brother or sister is in their grammar school uniform.”
Selective schools also impact on schools across local authority borders, children from Kent who have failed the 11-plus or whose parents want to opt-out of the selective system transport their children to the comprehensives in West Sussex, coming the other way are the parents who want to get their children into Kent’s grammar schools.
This year’s league tables showed that seven out of the 10 worst performing schools on the new index were in authorities with selective schooling. Less than 10 per cent of their pupils achieved five top-grade A*-C passes including maths and English. The authorities with the largest number of schools in the bottom 100 in the country were Kent and Lincolnshire. Kent and the Medway Towns - which were part of the Kent authority until the 1990s - had 10 schools in the worst 100.
One of the main arguments for grammar schools was that they gave ‘bright working class children’ a step on the ladder of social mobility. Even the Conservatives have had to acknowledge that this is fantasy, only 2% of children at the 164 grammar schools qualify for Free School Meals against a national average of 14%.
Labour came into office in 1997 promising ‘no more selection’, although David Blunkett did qualify it later by claiming it was ‘a joke’. They introduced a system of local ballots to scrap grammar schools that was Byzantine in its complexity, the only ballot in Ripon produced a large majority in favour of retaining selection. Secondary schooling has become far more complicated as ‘choice’ has expanded, apart from ‘bog standard’ comprehensives there are foundation schools (the former grant maintained schools) which are free from local authority control, the ever expanding faith sector, academies and trust schools, which will also have more autonomy.
A recent study by the Institute for Public Policy Research compared the progress of pupils in 3,000 secondary schools in England with the social make-up of their local area. It found that faith schools were the least reflective of their local area. They were nearly 10 times more likely to have a higher proportion of able pupils than their local area might suggest. Meanwhile state foundation schools, many of which select a proportion of their pupils by ability and aptitude, were six times more likely to have a higher share of high-ability pupils than were in their local area.
In the small town where I was educated there are now three comprehensive schools all with fairly similar results, they do specialise in some subjects and sixth formers take ‘A’ levels at different schools. Children from all three schools go on to higher education. A triumph for the comprehensive system? Apart from the public schools there aren’t competing selective schools, also the town has become fairly prosperous. Some comprehensives have struggled, the most notorious failure The Ridings in Halifax competes against grammar and selective faith schools.
Every survey shows that the overwhelming majority of parents want to send their children to a good local school. The problem is that schools will reflect society. Who wants to send their children to the ‘sink school’ in the ‘sink estate’? You only have to visit America to see ‘how not to do it’, the white middle class have fled from the cities and send their children to private schools leaving under funded crumbling ghetto schools for the under class. One section of society has retreated to the security of their gated communities. That other ‘gated community’ is the two million people in the prison system.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tesco vouchersIt’s that time of year, that activity which has almost become a fixture in the school calendar – counting the Tesco ‘Vouchers for Schools’ (if you spend £310,500 you’ll earn enough vouchers to buy a £720 RM computer, so for every £100 spent you get 24p in vouchers). It’s known in the trade as ‘cause-related marketing’. Seemingly a win-win situation for both the company and the recipients of their largesse. In fact for only a small donation (Tesco donate less than 0.5% of profits) firms are able to advertise their products in schools and convince parents of their ‘social responsibility’. It’s estimated that £300 million is spent every year on advertising directly aimed at schools.
Why do companies want to advertise in schools? Catching them young is the best way to build brand-awareness and loyalty. Companies also count on pester-power when children pressure parents to buy particular brands. Of course if it’s ‘for school’ it makes even greater sense.
One of the most successful cause-related marketing scams was Walker’s Crisps ‘Free Books for Schools’, which ended after five years in 2003. Vouchers were printed on those healthy snacks – Quavers, Monster Munch, French Fries, Squares, Footballs, 3Ds and Wotsits. I fondly remember the hours that children and staff spent cutting out those vouchers from the greasy packets and the laborious counting. Some schools were almost evangelical in promoting this scheme sending out letters, with the Walker’s logo prominently displayed, extolling its virtues. It was also heavily promoted in the ‘Sun’ and ‘News of the World’ – naturally this was entirely unconnected with the fact that all books had to be ordered from Harper Collins (proprietor R Murdoch). As the head of Walker’s advertising agency admitted at the time, “The goal is to drive sales, but there is a degree of altruism involved.”
Fifty packets of Walkers crisps were required to obtain the cheapest seven books on the list – an outlay of £15 for a £4 book. But half of the 157 books required 200-250 purchases - a spend of over £60. A child would need to eat a packet of crisps every day for six months to obtain a book worth just over £5. After five years 6.6 million books had been given away - worth £35.4 million.
With more companies attempting to jump on the bandwagon a serious blow to cause related marketing came with Cadbury’s ‘Free Sports Equipment’ campaign. It was scrapped after it was revealed that pupils would have to eat 5,440 chocolate bars, containing 33kg of fat and nearly 1.25 million calories, to qualify for a set of volleyball posts.
It’s not just schools, in other parts of the public sector companies are queuing up to sponsor organisations. In the NHS Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital has been the recipient of considerable corporate donations. However, would this be the same for the local mental hospital or geriatric ward? Our local children’s hospital allowed one of its facilities to be named ‘Ronald McDonald House’ with a large picture of this gentleman on the front of it.
Advertising in American schools can be found on book covers, half of their students received free exercise books with covers advertising Frosted Flakes and Lays Potato Chips. There are also branded menus in school canteens; coupons from fast food companies as rewards for reading; sponsor’s logos on schools buses, websites, sports fields, gyms, libraries and playgrounds, also school events can be paid for by corporations. There was one infamous case where a school signed a sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola where the donation depended on the amount consumed from the school’s vending machines. As the deadline arrived the principal was reduced to writing letters to parents encouraging their children to drink more Coca-Cola. To celebrate the sponsorship a ‘Coca-Cola’ day was held, when a boy was discovered with a ‘Pepsi’ T-shirt he was suspended for the day.
Where will this sponsorship end? Probably with the same situation that cash-strapped public services face in America, they depend on donations for basic funding. Bill Clinton’s former legal adviser Joel Klein is currently running New York’s schools and he managed to secure a $52 million donation from the world’s richest man Bill Gates. Klein boasts about his connections and ability to tap into ‘Big Philanthropy’ or as he put it, “the swells I hang out with”. Of course there is another way to fund schools it’s called taxation. The elected government decides how to allocate resources.
I’m not arguing against wealthy philanthropists donating money, before he died in 1919 Andrew Carnegie funded the building of 3,000 public libraries (380 in Britain) and donated $350 million to his charitable foundation. The problem is that Carnegie was and is the exception.
Some schools have asked parents to go into Tesco stores to collect ‘Vouchers for Schools’ - they’d be better employed sitting at home with their children reading to them. Cause-related marketing really is the thin end of the wedge parents and teachers have to think, ‘where will it end?’ Like America?
Labels: Schools
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Knowsley – Building Schools for FinanceWho could oppose Building Schools for the Future (BSF)? Brand new shiny schools with state of the art facilities, classes of eager pupils engaging with learning through cutting edge information technology. As ever, the devil is in the detail. Let’s put it another way, badly designed schools built by penny-pinching private contractors who will be paid back at extortionate rates of interest over 25 years, education services sold to rapacious low-cost private firms and teachers marginalized with an over reliance on ICT.
Knowsley Council on Merseyside is part of the ‘first wave’ of twelve councils implementing BSF. They plan to close all secondary schools between 2008 and 2009 and re-open them as ‘Learning Centres’, all teachers will have to re-apply for their jobs. Given Knowsley’s poor results the Blairite ‘newspeak’ is, ‘doing nothing is not an option’.
Knowsley is one of the poorest boroughs in the country, it is in the top ten for child poverty and 17% of adults claim either Job Seekers’ Allowance or Incapacity Benefit. When local government was reorganised in 1974, Knowsley was cobbled together from the district councils (Huyton, Kirkby, Prescot, Halewood, Cronton) that nobody quite knew where to place.
Labour has always had a thumping majority on Knowsley Council (current composition 49 Labour and 12 Liberal), some wards return Labour councillors without a contest. It regularly features in Private Eye’s ‘Rotten Boroughs’. Most of its councillors are close to, or over retirement age and critics accuse them of being more interested in claiming expenses and locating the nearest free buffet rather than representing the interests of the electorate. The turnout at elections is 20% and falling.
When league tables for primary and secondary schools were introduced Knowsley was firmly anchored at the bottom. In 1999 Ofsted inspected the LEA and they produced a highly critical report. In response Steve Munby was parachuted in from Blackburn to ‘turn the LEA round’.
Munby made an immediate impact, the school advisers were replaced by School Improvement Officers with a remit to ratchet up results – “poverty is not an excuse”, “zero tolerance of failure”. Primary advisers in foundation subjects were also shown the door and Literacy and Numeracy Consultants targeted schools with low SATs results for “intensive support” – blanket surveillance of teachers, centralised planning of lessons imposed.
In 1999 only 23% of Knowsley students gained five GCSE passes at A-C level, one of the lowest in the country. By 2005 the pass rate had shot up to 43%. Steve Munby was fond of saying that, ‘Knowsley is the future’, starry-eyed academics like Michael Fullan lauded him for creating ‘positive power bases’ and he was getting rave reviews in ‘The Guardian’.
How did he do it? Ruthless pressure on primary head teachers and intensive coaching saw Year 6 SATs results rise. In secondary schools with an eye on the main chance Munby was an early convert to vocational GNVQs, which counted as 4 GCSE passes. The cost? Subjects like history, geography and foreign languages were sidelined. Teachers became fixated with exam results and students were ‘assisted’ with course work. Interestingly, Knowsley still has one of the lowest rates for pupils staying in higher education after 16.
With results increasing exponentially Munby left in 2005 to become the chief executive of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). A few months after he left the government reconfigured the GCSE tables to include passes at English and Maths, Knowsley plummeted to the bottom, behind the DfES’s favourite whipping-boy Kingston upon Hull.
At ‘consultation’ meetings on BSF the line from the council is, “it’s either us or a private contractor”. A bit like suffering 100 lashes as opposed to 110 lashes. The rumour is that Lord Adonis felt Knowsley was a small enough morsel to offer to a private company as an “experiment”. Either that or the component parts of Knowsley would be farmed out to other authorities – Prescot to St Helens; Cronton to Halton; Kirkby to West Lancs and Halewood and Huyton to Liverpool.
After wasting thousands of pounds on consultants who drew up unpopular re-organisation plans for schools (they were swiftly amended by the council - loss of seats concentrates the mind) they employed more consultants to produce their BSF plans.
Recently secondary school teachers were treated to a slick presentation about the new ‘Learning Centres’. With soft focus camera shots and soothing music in the background they watched as a child awoke, opened her lap top and began to communicate with e-pals from around the world, she tripped merrily into her bright new shiny school and went to lessons in the computer pod. The Knowsley model is based on one in Kent where over 100 pupils are given a lecture and then work with teaching assistants.
Questioned about absenteeism or discipline trouble the consultants (none of whom are thought to have ever taught in Knowsley) reassured them that with bright new shiny schools this would no longer be a problem… cue laughter.
The preferred supplier for ICT is RM, not exactly a by-word for reliability. This dream of an ICT-enabled future? Some consultants have even enthused about bookless schools. However, the Knowsley Internet system crashes with alarming regularity. Thousands was spent on a one-stop-shop ‘Content Stream’ for education web sites, depending on teachers level of ICT use, the reaction to the words ‘Content Stream’ will range from a cynical smile to hysterical laughter.
All secondary schools will close either in 2008 or 2009, with six schools merging into three, two relocating and one closing outright. Despite pressure for one common date, Knowsley are ploughing ahead with two dates a year apart. For teachers, who all have to re-apply for jobs in the new ‘Learning Centres’ there’s the question do I jump now or wait?
Already there is an exodus of experienced staff and there is a fear that in the run up to 2009 schools will be left with temporary supply teachers. Knowsley’s unspoken logic is that poor results = poor teachers. In many schools moral is low, if you tell people they are rubbish eventually they will believe it. However, will teachers be flocking to Knowsley schools? “Welcome! We got rid of the last lot!”
Knowsley’s BSF not only hands council services over to private contractors it is a ‘Fresh Start’ scheme writ large, close the school, sack the teachers and re-open it under a new name. Watch Channel 4’s documentary about Firfield School in the northeast for details on how it doesn’t work. School mergers? Research shows that this can be highly problematical (The Ridings one example).
The constant mantra from Knowsley Council’s officials is that, “no change is not an option.” No one could disagree with that on the other hand “chaos” is not a good option either. In the name of “change” during the Chinese Cultural Revolution all the schools and universities were closed down and the teachers and professors were sent to work in the fields, it took years for the education system to recover.
So what’s the alternative? Spending money through targeted programmes like ‘Excellence in Cities’ has raised achievement, alongside behavioural support and mentoring schemes. Excellent nursery provision and early intervention at Key Stage 1 with Reading Recovery has a proven effect. Lastly, investing money to train and motivate a confident, innovative group of teachers can be a real ‘agent for change’, not top-down bureaucratic centralised programmes driven by consultants and ambitious here-today-gone-tomorrow council officials.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Well done Ken!Not being an avid Daily Mail reader I missed this. On Thursday Ken Boston the head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) called for the scrapping of all Key Stage Tests and for good measure the league tables as well. As a method of assessment tests would be carried out on a sample 3% of children.
This is significant because the QCA is one of the important education quangoes. Ken Boston has also made a specific demand - end Key Stage testing.
This is far better than Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green's measly, 'tests are nasty'.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
School 'Choice'I found an interesting article on the BBC web site by Mike Baker that compares the English and Scottish systems of secondary school transfer. The point he makes is that Admissions Day has become another traumatic time for many parents and children.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Blog Exclusive!Who are Proclaimers International? They are an evangelical, Pentecostalist group based in Norwich. They have put in a bid with the Church of England for an academy to replace Heartsease high school. Proclaimers International are backed by car dealer Graham Dacre the millionaire founder of the Lind Automotive Group. The proposed academy will have a “Christian ethos”.
Go on to the Proclaimers International web site and there’s lots of pictures of enthusiastic, smiley young people clapping and singing. They claim it’s a church “without the boring bits!” Their statement of faith tells us that, “Proclaimers is a Pentecostal Charismatic church. Pastors Tom & Denise have their ordination through the Australian Assemblies of God and are in good standing with the AOG of Australia. They are in good fellowship with the AOG of the UK.”
The Assemblies of God is one of the largest Pentecostalist churches in Australia and is linked to the Families First Party that elected a Senator to the Australian parliament. The AOG is affiliated to the World Assemblies of God Fellowship. The church claims 52.5 million members worldwide. Its roots lie in the Pentecostalist revival in America during the early twentieth century.
Unsurprisingly, given the circumstances, there is no link from the Proclaimers International web site to the “mother church” in America. Once you examine the AOG’s “Fundamental Truths” it becomes clearer.
Homosexuality – “Christians should do all they can to assist the person who has struggled with homosexual behaviors to find deliverance. Change is not always easy but it is possible. It may require the help of others in the body of Christ, such as counselors and pastors, as well as a supportive church fellowship. Christian organizations are also available to help those who seek to change their lifestyles.”
Abortion – “The Assemblies of God views the practice of abortion as an evil that has been inflicted upon millions of innocent babies and that will threaten millions more in the years to come.”
Evolution – “[The] Bible record of creation rules out the evolutionary philosophy which states that all forms of life have come into being by gradual, progressive evolution carried on by resident forces. It also rules out any evolutionary origin for the human race, since no theory of evolution, including theistic evolution, can explain the origin of the male before the female, nor can it explain how a man could evolve into a woman.”
The academy programme (46 already open – target 400) has had to contend with a critical report from the National Audit Office and claims that the Grace Academy in Solihull gave contracts to organisations linked to its sponsor, millionaire Christian evangelist Bob Edmiston.
So where exactly do Proclaimers International stand on homosexuality, abortion and evolution? Why is the Church of England proposing to jointly sponsor an academy? Why is the state giving this organisation £25 million to run a school? Would you be happy if your children were going to this academy with its “unusual” sponsors? I wouldn’t.
Jimmy Swaggart
Sunday, March 04, 2007
It Could Be You!Brighton Council’s attempt to introduce a lottery system for secondary school transfer has produced howls of outrage with rival groups lobbying council meetings – cue children thrust to the fore by pushy parents holding banners and looking sad.
In large towns and cities the process of secondary school ‘choice’ has become traumatic with the numbers of appeals set to rocket. Where does the system work well? In the small towns and rural areas where there isn’t a vast choice and schools tend to have a balanced ‘comprehensive’ intake.
In Scandinavia social class has less influence on educational achievement, how do they do it? They have excellent nursery provision, high investment in education and teaching is a valued job. Also there aren’t the same extremes of wealth and housing ghettos that you find in Britain and America.
Ten years ago when my daughter was trying to find a school there was a child in her class who had the pick of six schools-
· The local school
· A single-sex secondary
· The parents sudden conversion opened up the Catholic sector
· A school that still selected by examination
· The grant maintained school
· An assisted place at a public school
Under New Labour the choice factor has become even more complex – faith schools, grammars, academies, trust schools, specialist ones and finally the “bog standard” comprehesives. For those without a car to transport their children, who aren’t prepared to push their children through countless exams, can’t fill in the bewildering array of forms, aren’t prepared to bake cakes for the local church, or haven’t got those sharp elbows that get you to the front of the queue, more choice for some does indeed mean less choice for the rest.
I’m not arguing for a return to rigid catchment areas, because that is just manna from heaven for the local estate agents. You have to give people some element of choice, schools will always specialise in some areas of the curriculum and if your only choice is a crumbling school run by a dictatorial head where you know your child will be miserable, that’s no choice either.
Predictably there’s been calls to ‘bring back the 11-plus’ - it was fairer because it was based on ability and gave a chance for ‘bright working class children’ to better themselves. There were some excellent grammar schools and many truly awful secondary moderns. As for social mobility in the 160 remaining grammar schools only 2% claim Free School Meals against a national average of 14%.
Schools reflect society. In America white flight from the cities and segregated housing policies left schools with an intake skewed towards one racial grouping (it’s not uncommon for inner city schools to be 95% black and suburban ones 95% white).
In Britain the booming property market and the sale of the best council housing stock has left some estates without any social balance, they’re mainly composed of the unemployed or the elderly. Walk round the peripheral council estates in the large cities and you can pick out the failing schools, 90% of schools in special measures are in areas of extreme social deprivation.
The process of selection by secondary schools creates a Darwinian game of natural selection, there are winners and losers. Ten years ago The Ridings in Halifax was Britain’s most extreme and well-publicised school failure. It’s now set to return to special measures, but it is competing against two grammar schools and a faith school.
Across the Pennines at the opposite end of the spectrum you have Canon Slade Church of England School in Bolton. In 2005 it admitted 268 children from 87 different primary schools, the eight primary schools within easy travelling distance sent just 39 children. Canon Slade is almost completely white in an area with a large black and Asian population. Only 6% of its children were SEN against a Bolton average of 27%. Parents at the nearest primary school admitted that they didn’t even bother to apply, “It’s not for the likes of us.”
The attempt to use a lottery for school places is a crude attempt at social engineering, bussing children didn’t work in America. We need to take a long look in the mirror and think about the type of winner takes all society we are creating. What the overwhelming majority want is the choice of a good local school. What we have at the moment is an unseemly scramble for the nearest lifeboat.
Thanks to MPN for this Janice Turner Times Online
Monday, February 26, 2007
Keeping a secretThere was an interesting letter today in The Guardian about academy schools.
The judgments of the National Audit Office (Watchdog criticises academies over costs and exam results, February 23) are likely to have been made without access to key secret information about the curriculum provided by academies. The published exam results mean little without knowing the subjects taken. By entering large numbers of pupils for easy subjects with ludicrously generous equivalences to GCSE it is relatively simple to inflate results. The poor results when English and maths are included (22%) suggest that this is taking place. Unlike all other state schools, academies are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
On December 13 I made an FOI request to the Department for Education and Skills requesting the full 2006 examination results subject by subject for each academy. This was refused without giving a reason. In a telephone conversation with the DfES on February 22 I was told that it intended to use a statutory FOI exemption to bar release of these results. These exemptions range from "prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs" to "commercial interests". I await with interest the excuse the government will use to keep secret the subjects taken and pass rates in these publicly funded schools.
Roger Titcombe Ulverston, Cumbria
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Eternal SunshineA few years a council was given a damning report by the Audit Commission, virtually every service or department was savaged, social services was “poor”, education was “under-performing”, the housing department was “chaotic”, refuse collection didn’t happen and care for the elderly was “non-existent”. However, they singled out one service for praise.
When the council spinmeisters crafted their reply it was along the following lines, “We welcome the fact that our excellent traffic cone replacement service has been acknowledged and given national recognition. Some deficiencies have been highlighted, we have a new management team who are aware of them and are implementing changes to rectify the faults.” Accentuate the positive, blame the previous managers and claim it’s all in hand now.
The National Audit Office and Ofsted reports on academies weren’t as damning they concluded that they gave “value for money” and had improved overall results but they also highlighted - cost over runs; poor ‘A’ level results; problems with recruitment, retention and inexperienced staff. It made for sombre reading. Academies were based on American “Charter Schools” where private companies like Edison were allowed to run state schools (although the contracts were only for 3-5 years). However, even their most zealous supporters have had to admit that their results are “patchy”.
The academy test figures (GCSE results well below the national average) are even more unflattering given that most of them are joyless exam factories where the curriculum consists of three things - ‘testing, testing, testing’. Schools in deprived areas that had extra money under Excellence in Cities achieved comparable results with academies, so why sell off state assets to dubious religious organisations?
Alan Johnson’s response was, “I am delighted it is such a positive report.” He reminds me of one of the characters in the film ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, where all bad memories have been erased from their consciousness. The problem with spin is that if you live in a state of delusion and self-denial no one will believe a word that you say.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The RidingsTeachers at the Ridings in Halifax have voted to take action over problems with school discipine and the head’s failure to deal with disruptive pupils, this will almost certainly propel the school into special measures.
In 1996 the school, fell into ‘near-anarchy’ with the media camped outside the school amid allegations of pupils running amok, smoking in class, and fighting in front of inspectors. Teachers threatened to go on strike and Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, sent in a “hit squad” to rescue the school.
The Ridings’ fate was seen as a critical test of the incoming Labour government’s ability to rescue failed schools. The government put in place a rescue plan led by two “super-heads”, which eventually cost some £6m. In 2001, Tony Blair visited it during the general election campaign and praised its achievements as “truly uplifting”. He cited it as an example of how failed schools could be turned around.
But since then, results and discipline have collapsed. The state of the comprehensive, which has 740 pupils, was highlighted last month by league tables which ranked it fourth worst in the country on its GCSE results and third worst for truancy.
Of course Ofsted claim that by giving some schools a good beating it helps to straighten them out – a similar argument is advanced for corporal punishment. However, the House of Commons Education Select Committee noted that failure could send schools into a spiral of decline. Some 43 schools judged to be in serious weakness in 2001/2 had declined further and were placed in special measures the following year. They noted that some schools were, “unable to attract high-achieving pupils or well-qualified staff, making improvement more difficult.” Of those schools placed in special measures between 1995 and 1997, 40% subsequently closed.
In 1997 Peter Clark was parachuted in as temporary Head to try and ‘turn round’ the Ridings, as now they were competing against two faith schools and a grammar school. The intake of children was unbalanced, 75% had below-average reading levels and 40% of Years 7 to 9 had reading ages three years below their chronological age.
This year's league tables show that seven out of the 10 worst performing schools on the new index - which records GCSE maths and English passes - are in authorities with selective schooling. Less than 10 per cent of their pupils achieve five top-grade A*-C passes including maths and English. The figures are all the more stark when set against the fact that only 15 councils in England still have fully selective education systems. The authorities with the largest number of schools in the bottom 100 in the country are Kent and Lincolnshire - both of which have a fully selective education system. Kent and the Medway Towns - which were part of the Kent authority until the 1990s - have 10 schools in the worst 100.
There were some ‘wonderful’ grammar schools but many awful secondary modern schools - in the 1950s 1 in 8 of children from grammar schools went to university but only 1 in 22,000 from secondary moderns.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Ofsted and the psychosis of failureAn incurable optimist who harboured the illusion that the new head of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert, would usher in a new era of peace, love and understanding would have been shattered by her presentation of Ofsted’s annual report. It inspired the grisly tabloid headlines that 40% of schools (including over half of secondary schools) are now deemed to be ‘inadequate’.
Previously those schools in special measures or serious weaknesses were judged to be failing. Now Ofsted in seeking to ‘raise the bar’ have combined them together with ‘satisfactory’ schools to create the new category of ‘inadequate’. So in Ofsted ‘newspeak’ satisfactory is the new rubbish.
What does this do for the morale of dedicated teachers who spend their careers in tough schools with difficult classes? After all that investment of time, emotional and intellectual energy they’re branded as ‘inadequate’.
The only way to escape this tag is to jump through the hoops, vault all the hurdles and negotiate the assault course of an Ofsted inspection and emerge as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
Ofsted’s main judgement is by utilising crude test results, yet I know some ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ schools that are dull, lifeless exam factories staffed by stressed-out automatons who could squeeze out any love of learning from the children who enter the school gates.
And just to prove that their relentless focus is on failure for ‘outstanding’ schools Ofsted has introduced a ‘light touch’ inspection. An early example of this was at William Allitt secondary school in Derbyshire where one inspector visited for one day and some of the lesson observations lasted for only ten minutes.
Ofsted rarely make any concessions to social context or deprivation. Research by the London School of Economics found that out of 180 schools deemed to be failing in 1999/2000, 90% were in disadvantaged communities. Schools in the leafy suburbs rarely, if ever, fail.
As the Local Education Authorities shrink into virtual invisibility and obscurity there is no outside agency to give continuing support to schools. We have the ‘falling off the cliffs’ scenario, where only spectacular failure will bring monetary investment or outside assistance.
Of course Ofsted claim that by giving some schools a good beating it helps to straighten them out – a similar argument was advanced for corporal punishment. However, the House of Commons Education Select Committee noted that failure could send schools into a spiral of decline. Some 43 schools judged to be in serious weakness in 2001/2 had declined further and were placed in special measures the following year. They noted that some schools were, “unable to attract high-achieving pupils or well-qualified staff, making improvement more difficult.” Of those schools placed in special measures between 1995 and 1997, 40% subsequently closed.
It’s no surprise that hundreds of schools have to re-advertise or struggle to find a head teacher. Is there a sane person or anyone with an instinct for self-preservation or survival that would want to be a head teacher of a school in “challenging” circumstances?
Ofsted justify their inspections by claiming that they are ‘thorough’ and ‘rigorous’. But they completely failed to spot Bromley’s Imelda Marcos – Colleen McCabe. She embezzled £500,000 from St John Rigby College between 1994 and 1999. She spent the money on shoes, exotic holidays, cosmetics and a Crystal Palace season ticket. Yet 18 months after she began to use the school funds as a personal bank account Ofsted reported that McCabe provided “strong, sensitive and skilful leadership”. Financial planning was “good” and the auditor’s report was “excellent”.
Just to prove that this wasn’t an isolated example in 2006 the General Teaching Council found head teacher Mark Braine of Avon Valley School, Warwickshire guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and of abusing, bullying and humiliating staff between 1992 and 2005. However, an Ofsted report in 2004 was extremely complimentary about his leadership skills.
It’s a legitimate question to ask – how have Ofsted got away with it for so long? The paradox is that teaching is one of the most highly unionised professions – over 90% of teachers are members. Yet there has been a collective failure to deal with this 800 lb gorilla rampaging through our education system, trashing schools and demoralising teachers. Apart from passing the customary vacuous conference resolutions what have the leaders of the teachers’ unions actually done to stop Ofsted in its tracks? Answers on a postcard to Chris Keates, Mary Bousted and Steve Sinnott.
Labels: Ofsted, Schools, Testing, Work
