Don’t Fear The Reaper; Send Your Kids To Private Schools

11th December 2013


Christmas is sadly a wicked time of fear, dread and despair for many. It’s not just for those with inbred hatred and distrust of their own families where reaching for a dinner knife puts everyone on edge, remembering that unfortunate slip when granddad and grandma were eternally parted. It’s not just for the 6.7 million working families who are living in poverty according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Shed not a piteous tear for them this Christmas. Nor for the West Country badger-cullers who failed to meet their government approved kill targets when the badgers, “moved the goalposts,” and, “went underground.”

Public sector workers with their 1% rise might weep when they see the predicted 6% rise in food prices next year alongside the 10% rip off electricity and gas prices increase. They may applaud the decision to award our members of parliament an 11% pay rise if only because it makes it even more clear that MPs are not in “public service.”

Our smug chancellor and his self-congratulatory cronies whooped and Oh yahed (pronounce it ‘yard’) in parliament last Thursday as Baron Osborne declared that he had managed to manipulate a house price boom to give the impression of economic growth whilst we have a massive burgeoning of food banks. To add to the gloom and shame our welfare state now has “social supermarkets” where those on benefits can buy discarded supermarket goods that would otherwise be landfill.

 Let’s not mourn the 24,000 pensioners who died of the cold during the mild winter of 2012 according to the National Office of Statistics. We can beat that record this winter.

 Please do spare many thoughts for those who made a conscious, rational decision to get rid of their kids for as long as possible by sending them to private boarding schools. Surely if you pay 30 grand a year (and the rest) you should expect year-round peace. But, no, the kids return for Christmas.

 Some clarification about private education in England: our private schools are called public schools even though entry is by payment; stranger still they are registered charities for tax purposes. Ex-Prime Minister, John Major finally noticed social inequality, "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking." The privately educated cabinet ministers chorused an “OK Yah” (that’s ‘yard’ without the‘d’) in delight. Mind you, the grey enigma Major is the only person ever to run away from a circus to become an accountant.

In this Land of Opportunity I admire the successes of our great private schools. They are truly independent. No left wing enemies of promise undermining their drive for standards. No nasty trade unions, no national pay agreement, none of that pesky qualified teachers only stuff. Headmasters can employ whoever they want to do whatever they say. I'd embrace the freedom to pay our staff less but the enemies of promise (wreckers, Trotskyists, vegans and Daily Mail readers) won't let me.

 Unlike our selective and increasingly backdoor selective state schools many private schools don't turn your kids away because they are weakish academically. Given the long history of public schools looking after the dim sons of the inbred inherited nobility many private schools can gratefully give them places, take your money, keep the kids quiet, educate them a bit and exclude them from their exam statistics. There are no league tables of private schools exam results. I know of a school which achieved 101% passes a few years ago. Yippee, let’s go private.

The state system is encouraged by the elfin Gove to lose Drama, Sport and Music whilst public schools love these subjects and anything else that keeps the kids occupied in the long evenings and weekends of boarding school idleness.

The clown Boris Johnson (Eton) says that we are born unequal. He claimed that his chums were born dead clever and the rest of us should know our place as we are not of his calibre. Most prime ministers and cabinet ministers went private much to the delight of the proud “mps” Gove (minor public school in posh talk) and I want our kids to aspire to run the country without needing the inherited wealth of most cabinet ministers – including Cameron, Osborne, and Clegg. Likewise the public spirited judges and barristers. I want our kids to aspire to such wonderful service to their communities.

Many BBC people went to private schools and it obviously helps you get a job there and our kids should be able to aspire to BBC respect, except of course for Savile, Hall and possibly all the other bearded, star-following wannabes from the 60s whose public school bosses knew how to turn a blind eye.

So let us all become private schools. There is no Ofsted inspector blindly belching data. The unNational Curriculum does not apply and we could do what we jolly well want. There are no league tables of GCSE and A level results. Public schools publish what they wish and this allows weaker students to avoid the humiliation of being publicly recorded as a failure and bringing into question the good name of their schools.

 I know where we can get the money, too. To live his dreamworld of inequality Mr Gove pays the new almost empty, unregulated University Technology Colleges twice per student what other state schools get. Around £10,000 per UTC student matches many minor public school day student fees. To make up for the Saturday school attendance – there to stop the boarders rioting but now imbedded to keep the kids away from parents. In return there are the lovely long holidays, which, you may recall was the start of this blog about 700 words ago...

Remember how rarely you got to go out when the kids were young, and babysitters were hard to find, and you couldn't stay out too late? Well send the little blighters to boarding school, and you can go out and forget about them, and have as much to drink as you want without having to explain yourself, wear clothes or keep the noise down. House parents in boarding schools are great babysitters - they don't necessarily have teaching qualifications but they are checked for dodgy pasts, I believe.

And whilst on this subject there is no evidence to suggest that children in boarding schools are any more likely to be sexually abused than if they have served as altar boys in the Catholic Church. No evidence at all, allegedly.

Mind you I went to a catholic grammar school for boys where my form tutor chose to put boys across his knee for a quick spank rather than use the established procedures for a documented beating with a bone shaped piece of leather. You bad, sanctimonious man, Joe Tora.

 And you know how stroppy teenagers can get? Well you don't need to bother about that, look on private school boarding as like being in care without the stigma. Give em enough cash and the school will keep your naughty kids locked up at night. I remember about 8 years ago when the biggest local drug bust was of a student locker in a well-known private school, more drugs than ever seen in a comp. Private schools go better with coke.

Actually the best reason to send your kids to private schools, even the low achieving hippy-rich mickey mouse institutions we have in the shires, is for every fee paying parents to say to their state educated peers: I am better than you. My money is a measure of my worth. I know very well a 14 year old girl who was doing brilliantly at state school. She had firm friends and was involved in all the extra-curricular activities on offer. Mummy wanted the status of private school, granddad paid for the school and the girl was never again to talk to her state school friends. Everything to climb the social ladder at age 11.

It’s not about exam success, either. PISA has a statistical tool for stripping away advantages brought by social advantage or funding levels, so that countries and sectors within countries can be compared fairly. When applied to private and state schools in the UK there is almost no difference in their performance. PISA claim private schools only appear more effective because they are better funded and because they have more advantaged students.

I know to my cost the enormity of the condescension showered on our comprehensive children by teacher-parents of private school kids, doing their social conscience bit with a deficit model of working class achievement that should have been permanently inserted in a manner that would never be forgotten. “Oh, look how well that child sat down today; let’s give him an award; I know children in my child’s private school who can’t sit down that nicely…”

 Returning at an angle to the notion of service the traitorous Cambridge 5 – Philby, Burgess, Mclean, Blunt and possibly John Cairncross were all educated at “good public schools” where they learned so much about service that they repeatedly betrayed their country. Oddly all were members of an elite secret Cambridge University society – the Angels. A bit like the Eton Boys at Oxford.

Cameron, Boris and Osborne were all members of the exclusive Bullingdon Club whose dining exploits perhaps suggest some potty training problems embedded by being away from home too long, too early.

 Andrew Gimson, biographer of the mad-even-then Boris Johnson, reported "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man.”

Oh yes, public school will teach you manners. As the short story write Saki said if you truly want a boy to be vicious you have to send him to a good public school. I went to Harrow, by the way, only to get kicked off their football pitches which, even on a Sunday, were not for the likes of me.


Dennis O'Sullivan

I Am Michael Gove

I am Michael Gove

Last week’s absence of food may be responsible for some strange dreams and delusions, convincing me that I am another life altogether. I had the song, “I am John Wayne” by my beloved John Martyn reverberating and wanted to name-check John. I thought I’d check that he was talking about the big, tough, drink your milk and get on your horse, western hero actor. Imagine, after 40 years discovering the song may be about John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. Imagine also how little self-confidence one would have being a not-notorious serial killer. Identity issues through a fever.

In many of these blogs I have tried to “play the ball and not the man,” but I’ve had enough, now.

I was dozing through a Dylan song and I heard the word of Michael, “It aint no use talking to me; it’s just the same as talking to you.” The words of a liberal sort of guy seeing himself as no better than anyone else by right of birth or circumstance. Michael has just published his post consultation plans for new GCSEs, astonishingly identical to his initial announcements. Having read his pronouncement I followed the link to the consultation details to find not a single reference to a thought or idea from anyone. And I can assure you I contributed. With just 5% of teachers feeling that this government has made a positive impact on education it would appear there wasn’t any point in him noting what we thought. After all, “I would like to give professionals more freedom but I know what’s best.” There really hasn’t been a time in his rule that he has listened to anyone and as he said to his DFE advisors, “I don’t need you to tell me if I’m right, I know I’m right.” And when they resigned he didn’t care.

If you seek out people who know me they might tell you I was quite often rude to people. I think a hearing problem made this more fearsome than might otherwise be the case and that I am, more recently, very nearly giant like in stature frightened some gentle folk. The admittedly diminutive Gove, rejects all-comers, perhaps by his physical resemblance to various less exotic species of fish but more by just being rude. I speak as one of his “enemies of promise.”
Govespeak. You will remember, the profound, “I agree with Nick.” Well, Michael has given us rigour. A rigorist is an obstinate person, a tyrant and rigorous means severe, fastidious pitiless, ascetic. Rigour is hardness, severity, excessive, amongst other things, of course. Ooh, you are tough; I bet you took them all on in Peebles as a lad.

So I was in front of St. Peter and I'd already paid £15 to change my name. I said, “I am Michael Gove. St. Peter, old chap, I did destroy education and condemn millions of children to drudgery, rote learning and failure, whilst trying to equip them for uncritical acceptance of their role in an underclass I have cemented into place. Let me in.” Or flipping religions would he just settle for a go as a meerkat, a decidedly higher species than contemporary politician, and requiring less makeup.

The reason I have become Michael Gove is because it looks like it really is all over for education. The Labour Opposition has gone from nice ineffectual Twiggy to lost pretty boy Hunt; the unions accept their impotence and the liberal media repeats itself to a despairing powerless country and an empty auditorium of policy makers. Teachers, parents and kids are truly fed up, worried, confused and leaderless. Gove’s treachery has won the day and teachers will eventually run away. Napoleon said that you should never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. If my enemies had enemies we could afford this silence.

I have spent 35 years trying to make an impact in education. Gove has done far more in four years than I could dream of. Whereas I just tried to help children learn, understand, think and achieve, and encouraged colleagues to have the highest expectations, to work the extra hours and to meet occasional failure with a smile, knowing that their efforts would be rewarded for their righteousness, Gove just dismantled everything in one very foul swoop. I am envious of his demolition power.

Everything had to change and he transcended my political dreams from earlier years, when I wanted to change the world. I never knew that one demonic little man could destroy so much. We are testing kids at 5, cramming them at 11 and 16, and A levels have been condemned as useless. Students’ communication, social, musical and artistic skills are relegated to irrelevance. The man says PE can be done in “prep.” State education has been replaced by corrupt free schools, inept UTCs, desperately not coping studio schools and privately run expense account sponsored academies. Ofsted join him in a surely humorous assessment of free schools: apparently 70% of them are at least good. Bravo, without levels of progress and exam results these schools cannot be judged by Ofsted criteria, and they have none. 

Can anyone help me here, which other men who have achieved destruction on a grand scale dressed up in some nationalist rhetoric about needing to be better than other countries?

Gove said, “We are going to get rid of levels and not replace them.” Now, hot off his own press, Level 4b at the end of Year 6 means you are "secondary ready" and oh my, are we far away from labelling kids as unready? And isn't the level 4b exactly what we have now. Spin him round a few more times and he may come up with ideas like rote learning, studying the romantic poets and Jane Austen, learning the kings and queens of England, O levels, more selective universities with no cap on university fees, changes to SEN funding so there isn't any and the denationalisation of the education system. When I was younger I proposed libertarian socialism with little regard to contrary views. In 2013 100 leading professors and education experts warned that forcing children to learn "endless lists" of facts and rules "will severely damage education standards." Gove called them “bad academics.” Were we separated at birth?

At the squeakingly dull tory conference we had Gove parading a black American trade unionist in front of the bemused blue dyed elderly. Gove applauded the guy with his trademark seal-like slapping hearing how performance related pay had worked in some American schools.

What George Parker actually says is that PRP can work if everyone has a clear job description, lots of professional training and there's extra money to pay the best. Bugger me if you haven't been a bit selective there Michael. Bit like when we occasionally score a goal at Tottenham and the crowd sing, "We are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen." See how my life is morphing into yours.

I remember with considerable affection watching Suzanna Hoff singing “Walk like an Egyptian” and the thrill as she froze to look sideways with big brown eyes. I have a chilling clip of Gove doing just the same at a tory conference. Go on Michael, tell me you’re modeling your public persona on The Bangles.

Gove loves the American Charter Schools and says that “their results are extraordinary.” According to a Stanford University study of 16 US states 46% of charter schools made no difference to results and 37% actually had worse results than public schools in their area. But 80% are for profit schools and that’s what he loves.

In 17 long months we will have a general election and, with justice, you will be gone, Michael, leaving behind a legacy of destruction, insult, half-truths, lousy stats, errors that can only be lies, inaccurate comparisons, academic foibles, misquotes, bad maths and distrust. Will anyone stop to rescue your political career or will you be back as a Murdoch sycophant?

When Gove first arrived at Westminster in 2005 Murdoch topped up his wages with a £60,000 a year salary for his column. He was given an advance for a still, unwritten book on an obscure 18th century Viscount Bolingbroke. No book by 2013 and Collins say they haven't asked for the advance back. Payday loans could be a thing of the past if we borrowed the Govey way.

The medical man gave me some drugs to enhance my health and I reckon me and Michael merged some more. You know how “tea” actually meant marijuana? And horse, speed spliff, charlie and whizz are euphemistically used by drug users. Well Michael talks about his “Urgency Pills.”

Here’s a thing: People get addicted to drugs and will do just about anything to get them. Is this how it is with your urgency pills, Michael? Do they make you sweat with cold when you haven't come up with another ill thought out attack on teachers, kids and their schools? Do you crave the drug in a drooling frenzy even though you know it is the pill, the need to do something, anything no matter how destructive? And then there's the rush, isn't there? The mad speeding along on the adrenaline highway, gives you a buzz, no matter what you've done to the victims of your need. Lou Reed wrote the magnificent Heroin, "when I'm closing on my run and I feel just like Jesus’s son." Too many drugs for Lou I'm afraid. When I spoke with him in 1975 no matter what I said, he really didn't seem to be hearing a damn word. Is that what it’s like for you, Michael? Do you get so high on your own unilateral pronouncements that spell harm for others that you feel somehow connected to your god? Or is it worse than that, if you know better than everyone else, if they are all bad professors, bad academics, bad headteachers, enemies of promise and you know that you are right, are you claiming omnipotence? Are you David Icke’s twin, another son of god?

If you could just come down, lay off your drugs and listen to the cacophony of well-reasoned sense that's deafening the rest of us.

Michael, given that it’s all about me, why not start trying to emulate my recent years and I’ll stay away forever from attacking yours. Put some effort, time and thought into listening to teachers, parents and children, spare a moment for those who have more experience than you, who have been to schools that haven’t been specially treated for your visit. Other than that apologise for your sins and find something more appropriate for your skills lounge lizzarding for example, fly fishing using only your own face or writing tedious memoires.

And you know don’t you that you are already a best seller. “The thoughts of Michael Gove,” 96 pages of blank pages, emptiness, subtitled “Everything I know about teaching,” is in the Amazon Top 20. And I can think of no clearer, more honest representation of a minister’s knowledge and expertise. I have a copy and I have studied every word. One reviewer has said “the man who has done for education what the Titanic did for pleasure cruising”.

I wonder though, does a democratic society need Michael Gove. As Tennessee Williams elegantly wrote, “If I get rid of my demons I might lose my angels.”

Secondary Heads Unite in Condemnation of Changes to Early Exam Entry that Disrupts School and Pupil Plans

Members of the country’s  school leadership unions, NAHT and ASCL, have today prepared a letter to parents on behalf of secondary heads expressing their concern and frustration with the government's lack of planning and direction for GCSEs.

The secondary heads say the latest announcement of changes to reporting mechanisms for early GCSE exam entries – just weeks before students were due to sit them – is the latest in a series of disruptive, unplanned changes rushed in by the Department for Education that have left schools and pupils in disarray.

The letter reads:

Dear Parents,

For the third time in the last two years, we have had to alter our plans for GCSEs because of a sudden announcement from the government. We know how important these exams are to you and we are frustrated we cannot focus all our energies on raising results.

Without any notice and with immediate effect, the government has limited schools' ability to enter students early for GCSEs - after we had already planned entries for the year. Early entry can serve many good purposes, including vital 'live' preparation for later exams.

It seems that barely a term goes by without another sudden change to GCSE examinations. Worst of all, these changes are often made in the middle of students' courses of study, making it impossible to plan properly or to focus on learning rather than constant administrative change. They changed grade boundaries between exam sittings; they dropped the vital skills of speaking and listening from English mid-course; and now this latest announcement.

These changes are often timed to coincide with party conferences or similar events, leading us to fear that students and schools are just collateral damage in party political squabbles.

Head teachers are ambitious for every child in their school. They are the first to admit that our education must constantly improve. We have achieved much - our schools are unrecognisable compared to 10 years ago - but we have far to go. We see no reason, other than the date of the next election, why change needs to be rushed without consultation or planning. Ultimately it is students who suffer.

We wanted to explain to you our position on these reforms: we believe they are disrupting your children's education and undermining their hard work. We wanted to let you know that we will continue to help students navigate the system as best we can. And we wanted to encourage you to contact politicians and let them know how the changes are affecting you and your family. Ministers are distant from the front line and the realities of teaching. They cannot see the confusion and chaos being created; nor do they have any respect for the views of the profession. They may listen to you.


Yours faithfully

Leaders in Secondary Education

Reproduced in full
9th October 2013
Dennis O'Sullivan

If You Want To End Wars and Stuff, You Gotta Sing Loud

If You Want To End Wars and Stuff, You Gotta Sing Loud.

 I have 4 hours to complete this blog before our Education Secretary of State declares me “an enemy of promise.” My, how he would have loved to be a petty official in Stalinist Russia where being an enemy of the state had direr consequences than splutterings at the “Kick ‘em out and Hang ‘em Conference”

My policy on exam entry makes me a “cheat…gaming the system” – a particularly inelegant attempt at modern computer jargon I fear. Michael, someone should have told you about blowing, and other verbs, in the wind.

Away from mea maxima culpa(s) for a moment, I want to celebrate the world of business. I had a terrible moment last week when the new Iranian President Rouhani, was suggesting peace and conciliation at the United Nations. Fear shot through our impressively large Arms Industry that we may lose sales usually based on the fear of foreigners. It is essential that we support our businessmen selling weapons to potential enemies. When we joined the Dutch, French, Germans and Americans in selling chemical weapons to Sadam Hussein, the British economy profited from such brave business ventures. 5,000 Kurdish people died but we need a thriving economy at all costs. And like the guy who sells dodgy designer drugs to young people, if he doesn’t do it someone else will. Personally I want to cut down on imports by selling flick knives and fireworks to our children before they go on school trips to France.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, instructed his delegates not to attend the Iranian guy’s conciliatory  address to the United Nations with a none too cheery, “None of that, we don’t believe you.” This at a time when the world so wants to believe that the Israeli government is seeking long term peace in the Middle East. But if no-one listens to anyone I guess the arms dealers will have a field day. Ironically perhaps, we sold the chemicals Iraq used in their war against Iran, too.

In October 2013 a parliamentary body (CAEC) reported that Britain, “has sold industrial materials to Syria that could have been used to make sarin.” MPs questioned more than 3,000 UK government endorsed export licences worth over £12 billion to 27 countries on the government’s own list of nations “of human rights concern.” £7.8 billion of these sales were to Israel with the Saudis coming in for £1.9 billion. It is important to sell weapons to countries free of political bias. Hey ho , hey ho, it’s off to work we go, just as our Home Secretary promises to withdraw us from the international Human Rights Convention.

We need a vibrant, creative business community to create greater wealth for the people of the UK. It’s a shame that our previously adored finance sector made a few minor errors leading to an international recession. Thankfully the EU’s attempt to limit bankers’ bonuses to 200% of salary has been condemned by our Chancellor Osbourne. Limit their bonuses for wrecking international finance and the bankers will all go a long way away. That would be bad, wouldn’t it?

As an aside: We are at that time in the life of a parliament when the preening, romancing , blaggarding and bribery begins in earnest. Red Ed Milliband announced a 20 month energy price freeze. Mr Osbourne has offered a 20 month petrol price freeze. The Lib Dems are secretly planning a real life fluffy rabbit whilst the free “UKIP like doing it on their own” sticker may sway us all.

Every August when news is sparse I hear the denunciation of our young people by the  unanimously adorated sector of society: employers, aka businessmen. Now these people know everything and they are very moral, very fair and incredibly wise. All of them. The views of employers should be taken as ultimate truth as they live in “the real world.”  It is a well known fact that employers are infallible.  Before anyone thinks I’m not  entirely serious here, I have to point out that I, too, claim omniscience, and omnipotence.  I am a businessman with a turnover of £6 million , employ 130 staff and managed capital projects of £3 million in the last 3 years. I may also be omnivorous just for fun.

But! I have been summarily dismissed by a pet food deliverer, a flip flop seller (going for £1 as I speak), a drunken builder, a seller of cheap music tapes in East Ham Market, a masonic pub manager in Wales and a drugged up security consultant in Ware for being out of touch with the world of business. All have claimed residence in the real world and condemned me to a Narnia like fantasy world where marshmallows trees and lemonade skies populate my brief working day.

Employers say kids are leaving school at 16 unready, ill prepared and lacking the skills to seamlessly enter the job market and they want us to do something about it.  I think this is disgraceful and I want to launch a campaign to rectify this. I want to call this campaign, “An End To This Sort of Thing,” hoping Father Ted wont mind whilst I end all employment based training, reducing labour costs, increasing profits and giving customers more realistic expectations of quality.

If you go to a garage for an MOT, tyre change or estimate on repairs insist that all work is carried out by someone straight from school. If they offer a trained, experienced employee walk away. Insist on bread baked by a 16 year old who has not had any on the job training; only buy a house, sign employment contracts or agree a divorce settlement if the legalities are guaranteed by a 16 year old. Brain surgery by a kid in July of Year 11 may shorten waiting lists as well as life expectancy. Plumbers, bus drivers, fireman, police officers….you see where this is going. The only job I know of where you do not need on the job training is The UK Parliament where MPs generally show that they require few skills and have had very limited training.

Kids leave school with lots of skills and, if we are lucky, an enthusiastic positive outlook on the next stage of their lives. Employers always needed to train workers in every single job. The only change is that employers would like to reduce labour costs by getting someone else to do the training.

I do realize that employers and businesspeople have a massive amount to contribute to society but are they all the purest creators of individual and national wealth? 

A friend of mine worked as Chief International Lawyer for a massive building company and drew up contracts for a number of multi million pound schemes in Africa, shafting developing countries on maintenance contracts.

When I was lucky enough to be on a senior management training week with a major international bank, my question as to priorities was answered, “We will do everything legal to earn a profit. Money is our sole consideration.” Plain speaking is great.

One employer I worked for instructed my brother-in-law to work unprotected in an asbestos ridden subway and me to climb out a 2nd floor window to stand on a ledge and paint the windows. Mind you, they were well into sharp practices, those brothers.

I have been told that it’s good policy to avoid tax and that the guys doing the books at Starbucks, Amazon, Google et al should be applauded not condemned for paying very little tax.

I know employers who have said they will not employ women of childbearing age, that they need to pay less than the minimum wage, that zero hours contracts ensure employment opportunities. All white companies are not a rarity; companies where the workforce is female and the directors are male are not unique.

I have heard of businesses that go bust, renege on redundancy payments and then start up again, owing other businesses the vital money to survive.

I have read of businesses both large and small that pollute our air, rivers and seas. The sainted Lord Sugar declares that, “There’s no room for sentiment in business and the blessed Branson laid off one of his best mates at a moment’s notice. Employers care so much about their compatriots, neighbours and communities that they will buy stuff in any country in the world if there’s even a few pence extra profit. Mind you they give us what we want: why didn’t anyone think Primark’s cheap clothes were made by Bangladeshis in a firetrap building?

So, to education. Employers want us to produce kids with better communication skills; Gove has abolished speaking and listening as examined skills. Gove wants everyone to get a C or better in English and Maths and says those who fail will have to keep taking the exams until they pass. At the same time he has ordered that more young people fail to reach these grades and he abhors resits. I am an enemy of promise if I give them a second chance.  At a time when the jobs of the future have not been invented he wants us to instill more and more facts by rote learning. If all you want to do in life is recite facts you might as well be a signpost at the side of the road.

We need enterprise; we should respect investment, praise entrepreneurs and recognize that we need creative risk takers at the forefront of our society. We are materialistic and we want a higher standard of living. Our lifestyles are unrecognizably better than 50 years ago and it would be great to have more wealth creators creating wealth for the people of the UK, if not the world. Thing is though, I’m liberal to a degree and I’m not sure I want prosperity by selling bombs and stuff to kill other people's children.

Dennis O'Sullivan

October 1st 2013

Rote Learning Frees the Mind and Humankind , allegedly

Rote Learning Frees the Mind and Humankind , allegedly

There is no limit on the domineering Gove's pretentions towards supremacy yet it is sometimes hard to credit his frequent bleatings. In a speech, “In Praise of Tests” he declared rote learning to be responsible for the advancement of Jewish people in America.

The opportunist Gove is The Great Liberator. He will create a society where young people are judged by their ability to remember things he thinks important, rather than think for themselves or be judged by the content of their character. Learn poetry by rote, he says, and you understand how to be a poet. Copy great artists and be a great artist – pass the tracing paper someone. How hard can it be?

The advancement of Jewish people, and all ethnic minorities I guess, goes like this. Learn old poems by rote, learn the 12 times tables and recite a list of British monarchs and you will be good at exams. Exams are culture neutral (really?) are a pure test of intelligence (gulp) and examiners are free from the bias shown by teachers who mark coursework. Obviously, Mr Teacher inadvertently discriminates against Saul Ezra when this student writes history coursework on the Rise and Rise of the British Empire. He terms this, “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” However, they can’t show this prejudice when marking the same student’s exam script. Not like the exam marker can read the names of examinees? Exams will set you free, Monday is Tuesday, Peace is War, Freedom is Slavery and other stuff like that, apparently. This week in the UK parliament Gove wanted to bomb a tyrant in Syria. Colleagues who disagreed with him were, “a disgrace” and according to Mrs Gove, “cowards.” Best not to argue with soft bigotry, especially when there’s two of them.

Only the very safe are certain of right and wrong, who’s to blame and who to bomb.

 I write endlessly about the decimation of education that Gove is driving. This summer some of our schools show record exam results; results we developed by simply not lying down in front of Gove's runaway dogma. When he said that, "more children will fail exams,” he failed to realise the consequences. He just thought kids would fail, know they deserved to fail and submissively take their place on zero hours contracts, aware that education and opportunity is for their betters. He had a dream all right, but how patronizing to equate his class driven nightmare with the US Civil Rights movement. All the “driven” references allow me to repeat that the myopic Gove failed his driving test on six occasions, spurring no doubt his opposition to exam resits.

Gove didn’t allow for the tenacity of teachers. We plotted and planned in cadres of like-minded counter-reactionaries, many connected to the twilight force that is PiXL We entered kids up to three times for Maths exams. Yes we changed some of their courses from modular (which he hates) to linear (which favours the seat-of-the-pants students) Yes we took up the private schools’ IGCSEs, and yes we entered some kids a year earlier. The students came in for extra evenings and holidays and we practised and practised.  Our school sued the government and signed up for the Us and Them oppositional pugnacity. We gave them chocolate and the kids done great.

At the same time (see previous blog: “This is not education this is potty training...”) education is in free-fall.  Practise for tests and learn by rote, whilst stamping on creativity like some state-centred tyranny. Nationally results went down again this year, driven down by the regulator, Ofqual whose job it is to see that each year’s results can be compared and valued against each other. What, even when you artificially alter pass rates?

Now to the subject of this blog: Furry Animals of the Less Than Super Variety.

I am certain that some of you can recall the childlike self-satisfied grin of the inoffensive, anonymous, but sort of cuddly Stephen Twigg when he beat the widely tipped future Tory leader, Michael Portillo in the election of 1997. Did anyone think this seemingly nice man would be an effective opposition leader on education? Would he be the man to refute tenaciously, reject and condemn the attacks on education we now face? There are two possible reasons why he couldn’t fulfil the role. Either the Labour Party has no interest in protecting and nurturing our children and teachers or Stephen Twigg is a squirrel.

While the vandal Gove rampages there is a Labour Opposition in parliament presented with fantastic opportunities to stand up for children, families and education. So when Gove promotes Free Schools with enormous unnecessary indecent waste, Stephen Twigg will not allow any new Free Schools. Instead Labour will encourage parents to open their own schools.

When Gove meandered into the quagmire of fast tracking army disciplinarians into our schools, Twigg will open military-style schools. When Gove endlessly drools, rigour, rigour, rigour…. like some self-flagellating metronome,  Twigg mumbles, rigour is good and we will be rigorous, perhaps mistaking it with the rigor mortis of his thinking. Labour gave up the debate on education because their sole concern, therefore an obsession, is the pursuit of power. They forget that Tony Blair was elected on a mission called, “Education, Education, Education.” He was savvy enough to know that it does win votes, but only if you have a clue what you believe in. Twigg will be sacked soon and we will get policies from Labour next year because there’s an election in 2015. But do they know anything about education, or care?

A clever little employment scheme is afoot in  the UK, called Zero Hours, and it has mainly young people sitting at home waiting to be called into work by their employers. They are employed, without contracts, without hours and therefore they may get some work and pay or they may not – sort of depends if your face fits I suppose. When my neighbour recalled the London dockers lining up to be selected to work, or not, I remembered the lines of Irishmen waiting outside The Crown in Cricklewood in the hope of a day’s work. Who would have thought we would put the Shadow Education Minister on Zero Hours? Or is he squirrelled away in some year round hibernation.

As a Londoner  I used to take my daughter to Valentines Park where we would feed grey squirrels. They seemed inoffensive, guileless and harmless and they didn’t seem too demanding. That image of Twigg at his election victory returns, as a squirrel given nuts by kind, unthinking London voters. The original Labour Party embraced socialism and were called “reds” by more conservative critic. The lefties have been driven out to be replaced by a bunch of grey men in suits. Just like the red squirrels in England were eradicated by the grey squirrels I used to feed.

I feed them no more. When the squirrels squatted in my loft, making a mess and scratching hideously a nightly pandemonium, I poisoned them.

We feed birds here in the countryside but the squirrels are too lazy to find their own food and steal from the little green and yellow things. So I have a gun now.

I am not advocating assassination of Labour Party politicians but unless they get off their backsides and start protecting working families, they will remain fecklessly in opposition.

 Dennis O'Sullivan

The New National Curriculum Will Only Damage The Youngest Children.

Posted Thursday 18th July 2013

In my imagination, a frightfully jolly meeting took place last weekend. The setting was possibly the country retreat of Douglas Hogg MP, the ex-cabinet minister who claimed parliamentary expenses of "about £2,000" for cleaning his moat. A select group of the 20 millionaires on the government front bench turned up. Labor’s Shaun Woodward, the country’s richest MP, may have popped in with his butler in tow. Shaun has 7 properties valued at close to £20 million but still manages to claim a second home allowance. In 5 years he claimed £98,079.63 in mortgage relief on his £1.35 million Thames-side flat. His parliamentary expenses also showed regular purchases of family circle biscuits at £7.18 a tin and Tetley’s tea bags at £3.85 a bag.

This is not about class envy or knocking the rich. Just wait and see how generous these public service people are when they see child poverty and food banks in England- or am I deluding myself?

It’s a big estate so some of the practising barristers, alongside some of the directorship holders and paid speech makers, turned up at Hogg’s for tea. Sipping  no doubt demurely were  Tory barrister Stephen Phillips (£740,000 income for 1700 hours legal work) MP Geoffrey Cox, an extra £417,000 on top of his MP’s pay.  Soames earned an extra £305,000,  Riffkind £276,000, Redwood £238,000,  Labour’s Alastair Darling £263,000 and Jack Straw £183,000 because being an MP is a part time job.

They may have been talking about the imposition of an11% pay rise on MPs (elected public servants) at a time when all public servants - teachers, nurses, council employees, police, have been granted a 1% rise. Our Teaching Assistants have had a pay freeze for 3 years. MPs will be forced to accept the 11%. The vote-for-me, populist Gove says they should, “stick it!” which is quite crude and a bit rich coming from yet another millionaire. He claims for a second home, neither one being in his constituency, and the cost of his child’s cot against his MP’s expenses.

Splitting into groups based on which public school they attended, and a smaller group for the oicks, they decided on a radical plan for children's nutrition. Cameron's Eton and Bullingdon Club mates, owners of the Leon restaurant chain were appointed by Gove during an expensive posh nosh to look into the take up of school lunches. They decided parents are evil and lead chaotic lives. Packed lunches are not about expensive school dinners they are about bad parenting. Schools ought to search children's lunch boxes for crisps and anything that might feature on a desert menu. I think we are then meant to incinerate the bad foods. Mind you, I have been in school canteens where the incinerated food was the tastiest offering.

The MPs could hit upon a radical, vote catching policy. If kids are not eating school dinners, make them entirely free for everyone. The cost of administering the existing free schools meals kids, plus the cost of managing payments for the others would be eradicated and the cost of the cooked food could be partially offset against one of the rich men’s parliamentary perks. They might decide to forego their £4,000 a year receiptless dining allowance to make school dinners free for all kids. Gove drooled at the possibility of free compulsory scotch broth, only slightly misreading Dickens.

Chancellor Osborne, heir to the baronetcy of Ballentaylor in Tipperary and Balleymon in Waterford, doggedly aristocratic in his view on this nation’s economy repeated,   "I have never studied economics." Fair play, he threw in another class eroder with let's give every child a free school uniform too. He had heard of the schools selecting their kids by insisting on £50 kilts or £80 pound blazers although that's been illegal for some years.

And then the flying pigs flew by. The rivers froze over, blood oozed from the earth and dinosaurs walked again. None of the above happened.

But this is a blog about the new national curriculum!

I'm not a fan of Simon Schama although I liked his History of Britain trilogy. Strangely, I find him too controversial and as a populist historian the man was a natural to be asked to advise King Gove on his new history curriculum. He was peeved that his advice was ignored.  Schama said the final draft was, "insulting and offensive.... pedantic and utopian" He said the new curriculum is, "essentially memories of A Levels circa 1965, embalmed in aspic and sprinkled with tokenism." And made up, “by someone who has never stood in front of a class of 12 year olds.”  I guess that means he didn't like it.

Rebecca Sullivan Chief Exec of the 6,000 strong Historical Association added," It's a shame that Gove chose not to listen to the top historians invited to contribute, or the evidence that the Historical Association provided."

The design technology curriculum was designed without consultation. “There was no advisory group and it clearly takes us back to the 1950s by introducing sock darning and flower arranging at the expense of 21st century skills.” (According to the Design and Technology Association on April 13)

The design technology curriculum was then changed to include 3d printers which none of us can afford. Someone had heard an echo of a Radio 4 article about these things.

Earlier in 2013, 100 leading professors and education experts warned that forcing children to learn "endless lists" of facts and rules "will severely damage education standards." Gove says these were bad professors.

Gove was asked why he insists children learn the 12 x tables rather than to 10. He answered that there are a myriad of other computations children need to memorise.

I reckon he believes computations around the number 10 to be European and therefore anti-British. But Michael, it seems it’s not the European community you want us to leave but the basis of arithmetic.

Let us return to the memorable computations of pounds, shillings and pence as follows:

There were 4 farthings in one penny (shortened to 1d) also two halfpennies. There were 4 pennies in a groat (later this became worth 8d and then 12d), 3d was a threepenny bit for which my sister Cathy was hospitalized after she swallowed one. We had tanners (6d) shillings (12d) florins (2 shillings) half crowns and crowns (the latter sometimes known as a dollar) ten bob notes, pounds, fivers, and the gentleman’s guineas.

The sooner we get away from the over simplified decimal system used throughout the world, the better.

Our children need more complex measuring systems to be able to compete internationally. Let’s give them sums involving inches (12 of them in a foot) and yards (3 feet), 22 of which made a chain, whilst 10 chains were a furlong and 8 furlongs made a mile (1760 yards, of course.) 3 miles made a league and this was used in some poems our children should be able to recite. Gove knows we ruled the world when we knew these things therefore it’s time to learn them by rote, just like he did.

A hide was a taxable unit of land according to the Domesday Book from nearly 1,000 British years ago. A plough is the length a horse could plough in a day assuming it had had its oats and a penny had the buying power of 4 blackjacks in 1960.

Returning to the new national curriculum. It does not apply to private schools; it does not apply to academies, or free schools. University Technology Colleges will not follow it, nor will studio schools. In fact about 80 per cent of 11-16 year olds will be in educational institutions which do not need to follow the new national curriculum. So Gove spends time and money on a curriculum he calls national and destroys the national system of education so we don't have to teach it.

Most primary schools will have to teach the new curriculum to 5 year olds so that we compete with the often compared Finland and Singapore. Children there not only don't learn the tables, phonics and science Gove is insisting on, they don't even attend school at that age.

And the answer to, “What the hell are you talking about now?” is that we have to be better than the countries with which he unfavourably compares us. We have to be better than them at everything because British is best, like Bovril.

 Memorable computations: 7 out of 10 MPs think they are worthy of an 11% pay rise.

 Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

That Education Secretary? He’s not on the Level you know.

Posted Thursday 27th June 2013

You know how it is when you have a constant pain, a toothache perhaps, and it hurts so much you don't notice that your arm has fallen off? Well we’re all so intoxicated by the daily flatulence from the DfE that we sort of overlooked yet another bad smell. Maybe this one is a bit more like an itch that is so, so thrilling to scratch even though you end up bloody and sore.  When I spoke with 12 primary heads about this week’s latest noxious news they all giggled. Because, Education Secretary Gove, your thinking is so messed up  we now have to laugh.

At the moment, children are assessed on an 8 point scale starting at Level 1 and generally hitting levels 6 and 7 by age 14. In a well taught school students know what level they are at and what they need to do to get to the next level. There are level descriptors on walls showing what knowledge, skills and understanding are assessed at each level and we praise their effort and ambition and applaud attainment of the next level.

Gove is doing away with assessment, at levels 1-8 because, “Parents don't understand them.”

Apparently, the abolition of levels, "Will help to ensure that schools concentrate on making sure that all pupils reach the expected standard, rather than on labelling differentiated performance." (June 6^th 2012) I haven’t a clue what he means.

By June 13^th 2013 Gove recited a little speech abolishing levels, just as 11 year olds had sat his new Level 6 tests, demanded by Gove, to test the most able. And just as Ofsted has recommended expectations of secondary school attainment be raised to 4 levels of progress – for next year – there will be no levels to measure.

So how will we hold schools accountable? And how will we hold the government  accountable without levels? Oh no, Michael, people might see a plan here: Wreck the education system and remove the measures for showing your demolition. Your Year Zero figures will doubtless impress.

Gove says, “Schools will be able to introduce their own approaches to formative assessment.” We can make up our own system of notlevels and Ofsted will inspect us using our assessments which will be in non universal notlevels. Every school may use different systems. Honestly, I am not making this up.

As  Headteacher I now have to think of new ways of measuring, testing, recording and reporting.

Could we use the music scale EGBDF. I can see a weakness in that this scale allows a mediocre middle grade (B) and might encourage expectations of an average, and as the mathematical genius Gove told the Select Committee, all schools have to be above average.

How about we measure children on the likelihood of making it to Oxbridge: measure their ability on family income, private health and education, house price and model of car. The USANDTHEM scale, simplified to US for a straight pass/fail, like the old 11+ separating the elite at age 11.

With all scales one needs to work out where it starts and ends. With the DONKEY scale for measuring common sense from politicians it really doesn’t matter which end of the donkey we start with.

I think Gove has decided he invented and now owns the universal system of numbers and counting. Only last month he smugly announced the replacement of our GCSE grades A*-G with the numbers 1-8. They must be different 1-8 numbers to the ones he’s abolishing for 14 year olds.

So, Gove’s new number scale at 16 is 1-8 with the potential to make it 1-9 or 1-10. The now abandoned A* worth, say, 96% but when a student achieves 100% he can give them a 9 or 10 and of course, Spinal Tap fans, I bet Gove’s scale can go up to 11.

We know that Gove likes anglocentric history, where we jolly good britisher chaps taught the foreigners to play cricket in our benevolent empire. His new history curriculum, devised by him, will make sure children tackle history chronologically. In junior schools we could measure progress on the Henry Scale: Henry I, Henry II, Henry III up to Henry VIII. Or if we want to tie in with the new curriculum and go further than roman numerals we could follow the scale Conquer, Rape, Attack, Pillage, based on the Iceni Queen Boudicca family experience of the Romans and, of course, easy to recall as an acronym.

Yr 7 will be doing Ethelred the Unready, Tom the Small-minded, Billy the Kid,  Harry the Longdrawnout and Macavity the Mystery Cat. Will parents really find this less confusing than the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4?

By Year 13when they might get to study contemporary history everyone can be measured on the great man scale – the OMICHAEL scale, with O being finally the ultimate achievement – maybe called an O level?

I quite like the idea that we should use the Mr Men Scale for assessment. I’m unsure of the correct order but Mr Self Denial, Mr Having a Laugh,  Mr No, Not me Guvnor, Mr 3 wise Monkeys, Mr Failure and Little Miss Perfect will be in there.

Achievement could be measured by organs in any order appreciated by our education secretary. Dear parent, Mary has achieved a lung grade in Biology, an Ear grade in Music….and an Eye grade overall. (I Levels!)

This is getting very silly, I know but how about the Small, Bigger, Very Big Indeed, Bloody Enormous scale for intellectual capacity?

Finally, I reckon I have the Gove-friendly scale

Dim
Rather average
Jolly good
Spiffing
A mickle above a muckle (because many a mickle makes a muckle)

Dennis O'Sullivan

Stop Press:

Looking for what next to abolish or destroy Michael turned to his wife and purred , “Shoes, shoes…..” He had read that in some countries some kids walked miles to school without shoes and one of them went on to Oxford University. Sorry about the image of Gove purring. I hope you don’t have to sleep with that.

We don’t need Arts Education in schools; what we need is rigour, lots and lots of rigour

Posted Friday 14th June 2013

We don’t need Arts Education in schools; what we need is rigour, lots and lots of rigour 

With 460 blog pages read from USA based computers I am told some people abroad fear their governments taking a lead from UK educational reform. They may have been bemused by this week’s stage-managed announcement of “rigorous” new exam grades. Government-friendly newspapers have given the impression that we are all happy with yet another attempt to destroy our exam system. New “rigorous” GCSEs were leaked to the press last week.  Gove subsequently launched them in “The Times” (for whom both Mr and Mrs Gove have been very generously paid to write articles of little consequence) and then praised in “The Mail “(UKIP territory) The Telegraph (politically Conservative) and The Times (paymasters as above).

The intent, dressed in deliberate misrepresentations is to tell our students that they are failures and to ensure more of them fail.

From his own unique mouth: “More students will fail their GCSEs.” (21-02-12) Clear enough? But then: “Exam success boosts children's happiness and encourages them to learn.” (13-11-12). Also quite clear, but contradictory.

To show off intellectual prowess, Gove told parliament that he makes decisions following “Hegel’s notions of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.” Unfortunately Hegel never used the phrase, nor is contradiction Hegelian. Wonderfully, it was Marx who first used the phrase in his “Poverty of Philosophy” so Gove has quoted the Number One Communist (ever) and did it without due academic rigour or accuracy.

As part of the demolition plans, Arts Education will be impoverished. For the internationalists I will hurry through 50 years of student exams and school comparison and show how the education system has managed anomalies without smashing everything up.

In the 1960s 5 O Levels including English and Maths were the passport to jobs in banks and entry to 6th Forms. I got 5 O Levels in a narrow range of subjects at what people mistakenly thought was a good school.  ‘Passport’ grades achieved, I went on to A Levels, degrees and professional qualifications.

In the late 1970s success was 5 CSEs at Grade 1 or 5 O Levels. The CSE Grade 1 was too easy and quite rightly it had to go.

GCSEs came in 1987 and 5 of these, at A*-C made you a success. Schools were measured by the numbers getting these grades. League tables comparing unlike schools came in at this time.

In the late 1990s schools were compared by “value added” measures – the progress above expectations based on prior attainment by each student. Some selective schools were criticised for “coasting” and were instructed to improve.

From 1960 to 2013 the brightest kids used to get 8 O levels or GCSEs and more than that meant you were probably a bit odd. From around 2000 schools spotted a statistical game and played it so that with some inflated courses kids regularly achieved 13 or more GCSEs. This was silly and needed to change, and it did. Employers still went for 5 GCSEs including English and Maths.

For 20 odd years we have had league tables and some parents think they are very important. There has been a floor target regularly raised by which ‘failing’ schools get in trouble. It was Under 25%, then 30, then 40 and is soon to be 50 %.A*-C grades. There are so many measures in schools league tables that no-one looks at many of them. And yippee, we have a new one coming very soon. We will be measured by students’ top 8 GCSE grades. That’s OK, but the ministry vandals want certain things destroyed.

Some newspapers like to pretend that school students get grades in Bong Design and Budgie Grooming. These should not count as school exams, nor do they because, like government consultation exercises, they do not really exist.

I can understand why The Level 1 Diploma in Performing Arts cannot be counted alongside the Level 1 Certificate in Performing Arts. It makes sense that the AQA exam in GCSE Chemistry cannot be counted alongside the NEAB exam in GCSE Chemistry. The minister is opposed to students taking exams at 15 rather than 16 so we can’t count GCSE French alongside AS French which our brightest linguists take. It doesn’t seem to matter that the students were ready to progress nor has he remembered that early entries were a standard feature in grammar schools.

Under new rules we can only count one of the GCSE courses in Art, Photography and Textiles. We can only be credited with one of Drama and Dance, I guess because having the ability to simulate a right strop, which I can, is identical to my stumbling interpretation of contemporary and classical dance.

I am so, so pleased that Latin Language GCSE can be counted separately to Latin Literature GCSE so that all those Latin speakers are treated fairly. Surely it is a mistake of numerical understanding to allow Maths, Further Maths and Statistics to count as 3 separate GCSEs in the 8. They do sound a bit similar. When he writes his brainstorms on the back of a fag packet Gove ought to consider smoking king size cigarettes, firstly for his long term health and secondly so he can develop his numerous, ill thought out ideas in the greater space available.

What is likely to happen, delightfully, is that Mr Gove will get his “I” Levels ,the Welsh and Northern Irish  will retain GCSEs, the Scots will be keeping  their  Standard Grades examinations (SGEs anyone?) and the private schools will  retain iGCSEs. Many employers still refer to all exams as O levels – 25 years after their abolition so perhaps one may predict a little confusion.

My school is a government approved Specialist Art College and we attract some students because of this. Our Top 8 ranking will reduce our League Table points by 5% next year, possibly dissuading a few parents unimpressed by Ofsted saying this is “an inspiring and exciting place to be.”  Schools will be driven by what is measured as success; schools are competitive and people’s jobs depend on student numbers. If it isn’t to count in the league tables it wont be taught. Bye Bye, Arts specialists: you can do one or none. It will be much easier and cheaper to offer just one of the Arts subjects so we will not be winning The London Fashion Show National Award again….. if we are sensible.

In a post industrial age, with computer technology handling much labour intensive work we need to appreciate that employment is no longer factory, mine or dock based. There are jobs in Media, Music, Photography, Fashion, Film and Computer aided Design.

Do I have to make a case for Arts Education.? I believe that the arts offer intellectual stimulation, use parts of the brain other subjects cannot reach, lift our souls, make us smile and cry, cause discussion, dreams  and consideration, strengthen our unique species status and are a jolly good thing, Harry Chapin fans might recall the instruction to a creative child that, “flowers are green and red,” although impressionists, expressionists, surrealists, Dadaists, cubists, futurists and my departed friends amongst the situationists might think there was a little more to Arts Education than this.

Our curriculum will be determined by stealth, manipulating a subtle change in league tables. I am in favour of accountability, of targets for individual and school success, of schools explaining themselves to parents and students.  I will not reduce our arts curriculum. Our school will suffer the drop in league tables and our parents will enjoy this. Like their offspring, they are not stupid.

P.S. My next blog is called, “The Sins of Michael Gove.” Contributions whose truthfulness I can verify can be emailed to head@chauncy.org.uk or posted on the blog comments page.

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)