Mini-Blog 3: Destroying Aspirations like the Past

July 2010

Dear Headteacher of Monkseaton High School,

I am sorry, the money Labour promised you for you new building has been withdrawn. Those commies spent it all on a rainbow logo for the DCSF [spits] and they also caused the global banking crisis. Bastards.

Sorry,

Mr. Gove

_________________________________________

July 2010

Dear Headteacher of Monkseaton High School,

Yeah sorry, I forgot to actually check the list. Didn’t really think it was important. Hope you are enjoying the new school building. That Mr. Cameron opened. Looks great. Of course, I learnt perfectly well sitting on a concrete slab, reading of a dusty blackboard and shitting into a hole in the back yard. But that’s Aberdeen for you.

Sorry again,

Mr. Gove

Of course, I don’t have some secret access to Michael Gove’s personal correspondence, but I can imagine there was some serious hand-to-forehead action going on in the DCSF Department of Education when that proverbial hit the blades.

Was the money allocated to BSF too much? Yes probably. Was some of it being mismanaged? I am pretty sure it was. Should we just scrap the whole thing and refurbish some old houses and a Lidl and make them schools instead? Erm – maybe not. Whilst maybe there was overspend, what the government perhaps don’t realize is the power a building can have over those that use it – it can motivate, instill pride and engender aspiration as well as stop soggy books from holes in the celing and drafty corridors from missing bricks.

But the most important matter here is that the money that would go to rebuild our state secondary schools has been, for want of better words, brown-enveloped to Rachel Wolf and her cronies in the New Schools Network to dish out to school-fee-dodging middle-class types such as Toby ‘Die Fiona Millar, Die’ Young so that he can build a new school that teaches Latin and, presumably, about Miss Havisham.

I’ve said all  I can say on free schools without imploding. But  this experiment in privatizing our children’s education is wrong and will only make the rich richer and the poor poorer. We have to fight against this.

Mini-Blog 2: The Curious Case of Miss Havisham

I’ll let you into a secret. I bloody hate Charles Dickens. I can, despite my loathing, appreciate the wonderful craft and characterization of his storytelling, but do I like them? No! Would I be educationally the poorer if I didn’t know who Miss Havisham is? I doubt it. What Nick Gibb implied in his speech regarding knowledge in education is that traditional learning is better. Knowing this king and that capital city is what will fix the broken minds of the broken children of broken Britain. As an educator, I couldn’t disagree more. Indeed, there is a place for such knowledge and much of it is important and entirely necessary. But just because little Johnny can rattle off the counties of Ireland in alphabetical order, it doesn’t mean he is a, or is going to be a, good learner. Because that’s what we want. Young people with the capacity to and understanding of learning. I think that this is quite nicely summed up in the following quote:

‘There is only one twenty first century skill. And that is the ability to act intelligently when you are faced with a situation for which you have not been specifically prepared” (Seymour Papert)

Because this is what we need to help children form the most disadvantaged backgrounds to be able to do. Lists of presidents and characters from Dickens might help those who come from backgrounds where learning, culture, language and aspiration are already highly regarded and the skill and capacity to act intelligently might come quite naturally. But if all you know is that list because you don’t have the background of learning, then what do you do? No amount of Oliver Twists or David Copperfields will help you when you need to learn something new.

Indeed, E.D. Hirsch, the man who has written the bible from which Gove and Gibb preach, wrote:

“The children who possess intellectual capital when they first arrive at school have the mental scaffolding and Velcro to catch hold of what is going on, and they can turn the new knowledge into still more Velcro to gain still more knowledge” (E.D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them)

So it’s not necessarily do they know who Miss Havisham is, more, do they have the capacity, the Velcro as Hirsch puts it, to find out.

And ironically, I predict that about half of students leaving year 11 know who Miss Havisham is, seeing as the poem ‘Havisham’ by Carol Ann Duffy is compulsory study for the English Literature paper at GCSE.

Mini Blog 1: Scrapping AS Levels will only Benefit the already able

Funnily enough I was the first year to take the AS level in 2001. At that time they were an unknown quantity to my college lecturers and whilst we were allowed to do resits, we were wary of them. When I came to teach AS Level English Literarute for the first time about five years ago I realized that whilst there was certainly a degree of challenge and depth in terms of the literature, the focus was too narrow thus making it too easy for bright students to get the top grades. The new AS and A2 level introduced in 2008 is much broader, focused on teaching students the skills of being an literature scholar and, importantly, being much more challenging than before with the inclusion of an unseen text in the exam alongside the ‘traditional’ 30 poems, but also in the coursework, because as well as a comparative essay between two 1980s texts about post-modern identity, students have to creatively respond to a text and write in the style of an author. I think once results come out in August, we will see a a significant decline in the number of top grades.

Of course, I only really know the way that my subject has changed, but I think that the AS exams are rigorous enough in the vast majority of cases and scrapping them scraps the idea that we are testing students on their knowledge and skills as a geographer or mathematician and brings back an examination system that tests an ability to cope with a pile of papers all at once. Indeed, the scrapping of the AS level won’t affect those at the top of the educational food-chain, the 7% who attend private or independent schools. But it will disadvantage, deter and de-motivate those at the opposite end.

In summary, the scrapping of the AS Level is simply a symbolic and tokenistic move to appease the misconception that exams are too easy and that the ‘old fashioned’ way is best. It simply hasn’t be thought through and is soundbite-headline-grabbing politics at its worst.

Buzzwords Beyond Idealism: Freedom, Choice and Big Society

Apart from ‘cuts’, ‘deficit’ and ‘it’s all Labour’s fault’, three other political buzz-phrases have been knocked about the past couple of weeks – some of them not so new. Freedom. Choice. Big Society. They, of course, all sound exciting, positive and perhaps even solutions to the problems our public services face. But these catchphrases are beyond idealism. The reality behind each is that whilst some may reap the benefits, those for whom our public services are need, not just want, will suffer.

Take the first – ‘Freedom’. I am of course talking about the Tory’s proposed Free Schools Policy which I have lost all patience with now after it was announced that even shops and houses could be used as schools and that it was teachers who were the main interest groups clamouring at the chance to set up their own schools. I can guess which group of teachers it is who are interested – and that is a whole other post in itself. Of course this policy makes it plain that Michael Gove does not have a clue how schools operate. I to an extent agree when he says, ‘the most important aspect of education [is the] quality of teaching’ but if a child is sat by the checkouts in an abandoned shop freezing to death, they might not be able to learn. Makes sense, huh, Mike? Of course the connotations of the word free suggest that the independent school model of freedom from the shackles of the local authority, admissions policies, national curriculum, and in some cases I am guessing, the rational thought of education professionals, will be the basis of the Free Schools that will inevitably appear. This type of freedom may appeal to the fee-dodging, suburban, middle class intelligentsia who are desperate to set up schools for their children. But will this ‘freedom from’ really work for those whose families are not able to be involved in the school setting up process – the children and families who need the public service of schools so much? My guess – and this is no wild one – is no. They will probably be stuck with the LEA school that has had its funding and services siphoned off to the school down the road. Where is their ‘freedom’?

This brings me nicely on to the word ‘choice’. The idea that if we get to choose where we get our public services, the ensuing competition will drive up standards. Of course this is not a Tory invention – Labour, to my personal horror, was almost obsessed with the concept of choice in schools and hospitals. But choice is highly problematic. Choice only works if you are able to make one. Sure, if like with the free schools policy you are able to choose to set up your own school, choose to buy a house in the catchment area of decent LEA school or choose to travel 40 miles rather than four down the road to get your hip operation, then that is great. But what if you don’t have choice. What if you have to use the now understaffed hospital down the road? What if you have to attend the now underfunded school down the road because you don’t meet the admissions criteria for the Michael Gove Academy of Freedom? For those people choice is a myth. Choice is actually no choice at all. Choice is an exclusive concept that won’t fix the problems of public services nor close the gap between rich and poor, able and unable.

And the over arching theme connecting all of these is the Tory ‘Big Society’ model. In their pamphlet ‘Big Society not Big Government’ the concept is described as ‘a society where people come together to solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities’ and who can argue with that – a co-operative approach to society. Great. But does it really mean that? Both supporters and detractors of the Conservatives received the policy with reactions ranging from luke-warm and reluctant agreement to finger-pointed ridicule. The plans hand over responsibility and power to those who are able to take it on – the Toby Youngs of this world – and will ignore those who most need the public services – or those who simply do not have the time to run a doctor’s surgery, police station and post-office in the time between work, looking after the children and sleeping. The New Statesmen’s Mehdi Hasan summed it up best in his blog when he compared Big Society to a the self service checkouts in supermarkets. He concluded that ‘it’s quite nice having someone who is paid and trained to do the job for you. We have other things to be getting on with.’

Hasan is right – we do need paid professionals to do what they do best for us a lot of the time. But more importantly, if you hand over all responsibility to the people and let them run public services, it’s not the people who most ‘need’ that will benefit. It’s the people that ‘want’ that will gain. What our public services ‘need’ is to be operational, effective and well resourced no matter where they are based so that choice doesn’t need to exist and that everyone, no matter their starting point, is really ‘free’.

The Ofsted Problem: A narrow minded quango that exacerbates division and failure

This week Ofsted released their annual figures of failure, damning more schools as not being ‘good’ or ‘oustanding’ claiming that 47% of  the schools they inspected are either satisfactory or inadequate. There of course is a semantic debate to be had here about what the word ‘satisfactory’ means and why, for Ofsted and the government, being satisfactory is not good enough. But for me the argument here is about legitimacy. Is Ofsted still the best way for us to distinguish between good and bad schools? My quick answer is no. Allow me to explain.

I come to this argument from a background of working in one of the most ‘successful’ and recently Ofsted rated ‘outstanding’ schools in central London. Please note well the purposely place inverted commas. I’d place good money on the fact that its leader is chomping at the bit to get the school to become and academy – she knows Michael Gove well, I believe. You’d think that with such success to my name I might be here to praise Ofsted. Far from it. Ofsted is a narrow-minded institution that makes blinkered judgements about a school on criteria that for that is forever changing. This of course is half the problem. The relentless burden of Ofsted is made worse by the fact that the goal posts are forever changing and many schools fail to keep up with this. This year, for example, they have introduced ‘limiting factors’ – things that have to be in place for a school, area of an institution or individual lesson to be deemed satisfactory – and more importantly a forever changing focus from the attainment of students to progress and back again. In my previous ‘outstanding’ school, the headteacher paid an external consultant a (probably) gratuitous amount of dosh to help us keep abreast of these meandering alterations and to guide us in writing our self-evaluation forms. This is because a school is mainly judged now on it’s judgements about itself. The reduced amount of time that Ofsted spend in schools means they spend more time scrutinizing what the senior leadership team think about the place rather than what they see about the school themselves. That consultant came in handy then.

And here lies the big issue. The last school I worked in was rated outstanding but I believe that this hallmark of excellence means nothing. We were no better than the schools in our area that were rated ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’.  We just managed to tick boxes, cover up areas of complete failure and  present strengths in a way that Ofsted inspectors drooled over. The fact that the school has become an exam factory, that the provision for students who are EAL or SEN is criminally low and that whilst the number of students getting a C grade is high, the number of students getting top grades is poor show me that the school is far from the outstanding place the report calls it.  In some areas the school is failing the students who most need its support. An illustration of this would be to compare the SEN provision of a school of similar size and need. Ten minutes away, it has 30 LSAs and support staff who are deployed in an effective way that really help students to success– I have seen it in action on several visits. The school I worked in had just 6 support staff primarily supporting borderline C/D classes and not the most needy. This is just one example where Ofsted missed what was actually happening. Or chose to ignore it. Ofsted do not look for or see the most amazing work in schools where they work to bring about more than academic change and a bunch of C grades in Travel and Tourism BTec. They fail to recognize that in some circumstances teachers work tooth and nail to give their students the best they can. They demonize and demoralize schools, staff, students and the community which they live in and along with league tables, I think are the biggest barrier to real improvement in education in this country. The veil of choice and competition they create are the fuel for social division, staff shortages and the educational problems facing our most disadvantaged and needy students and their families.

I am not arguing that schools shouldn’t be monitored or that teachers should somehow be exempt from scrutiny. There just has to be a better way of doing it than this.

Why the Tories have got it wrong with Free Schools

When Labour first introduced academies back in 2000 I was extremely wary of them. The fact that anyone with enough ready money could take government funding without government control over how that money is used seemed ridiculous to me. Academies have had mixed results. Where the right people – education professionals –have been allowed to lead the academy and where real connections to the LEA remain, through co-sponsoring for example, academies have been successful. Where they have failed is when the professional judgment of experienced educators and stakeholders such as social workers has been ignored by businessmen and religious groups  who  choose to run schools by buzzword not substance, by the pretence of ethos without any understanding of how that ethos affects students.

The irony of all this is that I now work for a brand new academy in London. I considered working for the school carefully and I am comfortable with the fact that the right people are in charge in the right places and that links to the community and a real passion for changing the lives of the most disadvantaged is evident in every decision made. The academy will fill a much-needed gap in the ‘market’ for student places. What I have realized is academies, like LEA schools, can be awful places or amazing places. It’s the people that run them that make that difference in creating  an appropriate ethos; attracting and retaining staff and putting into place a curriculum that meets the aspirations and potential of its students.

But this is the key distinction between free schools and academies. Academies work in to key ways – either as a new school to supply places where there is a demand, or to act as way of improving ‘failing’ schools. There is much argument about whether either of these things need academies to solve the problems a lack of places or ‘failure’ (please note the intentional inverted commas) presents, but that is a different debate. Free schools are not about need. Free schools are about want. Choice.

The Tories want free schools to be set up by any parent, teacher or interest group.  In one town there could be fifty free schools offering 2000 places each when really the town only needs three schools. This may seem like an extreme illustration but it is useful in showing how ridiculous free schools are – and underneath that is the question of funding, especially when education has not been ring fenced by the Tories.

On the Conservative website says that they “will move to a national per pupil funding system, so that new schools get paid if they attract pupils.” This means that the more pupils you attract, the more money you get.  But when free schools are added into the equation, money allocated to often excellent LEA student services for students with special educational needs or a disability would go straight to the free school, meaning  LEA services would be underfunded and non-free schools would suffer. Further to this, and more importantly, money that would normally go to one school would go to another, depriving an existing school of funding. All this does is drive schools that are not meeting standards further into the ground.  What happens to the students who have no choice but to go to their LEA school that is underperforming?

But there is more than just an economic argument to be had here. The argument against free schools is an ideological one.  Free schools are presumed to be the answer to the educational problems in this country because schools in the independent sector do much better than state schools. If a school is ‘free’ to do what it wants, like an independent school, surely it must follow that it will be a good school. In fact the school Toby Young is setting up is very much modeled on independent schools, with Latin set to be a compulsory subject in year 7 rather than a modern foreign language (please, do not get me started) and the wesbite praising the grammar school system at every opportunity. What strikes me about this school and another Ealing charity, Free to Educate, is that they have a very narrow minded view of state school education, accusing state schools of poor standards, poor teaching and poor discipline. Indeed all of the ‘team’ behind Young’s West London Free School have no experience of working in state education. One might be led to believe that all this bunch of upper-middle class yuppies want is an independent school education for their darling children without the extortionate fees. But that would be a cruel digression. In reality, as a teacher of some of the children they so charitably want to help with their new school, I find their ideas for their school absurd and patronizing in the extreme. The real reason independent schools, and grammar schools to an extent, are more successful is because of the kinds of children that go to them and the funding they get. Applying the independent school model to the state school system is like trying to shove a triangular peg through a square hole. Yes, you might push it through, but you leave gaps everywhere. And those gaps are the most disadvantaged, the poorest and the most needy.

To finish, Eddie from Absolutely Fabulous once said “I don’t want more choice, I just want nicer things” and do you know what? She was right. The answer to education is not broadening choice and stretching and straining budgets in the process. The answer is making all schools decent so that choice doesn’t need to exist and that all students, no matter where they come from, can succeed.