British Values - I'll Call You What I Like

As 500,000 upright British people sign a petition to prevent the madly powerful Trump from visiting the UK we trumpet the great British Value of Free Speech.


Our Prime Minister has his own take on this. If you do not unequivocally support his war, and he has tried four times in as many years, then you are a terrorist sympathiser. My free speech bit goes like this: Islamic State commit atrocities so publicly in order that the west responds by bombing Syrian towns and villages. Syrian Muslims will then see how the evil western powers are killing men, women and children and they will join the war against the west. Mr Cameron is pimping for Islamic State.


Then Mr Cameron, perhaps seeking his own decisive weapons of mass destruction, invents 70,000 soldiers from the numerous Syrian factions who are apparently ready to join us in anti ISIS action. No other source has seen these people but no-one would accuse a British Prime Minister to twist the truth in order to bomb the Middle East.


Our Chancellor joined the fun by declaring, “Britain has got its mojo back,” now that we are bombing people. A mojo used to be some sort of charm or spell and now usually means stuff to do with sex, in Osborne’s case seeing war as a test of male virility and the dimensions of his cojones.


The BBC has been calling the ISIS terrorists “militants.” I know I shouldn’t trawl the press on such matters but I came across some criticism of this in the comments page of the Daily Express.


“Time to get rid of the British Bolshevik Corporation, It’s a hotbed of pinkoes who love anything except their own country. It needs a Stalinist purge.” And “…the Biased Brainwashing Club – it is run by foreigners anyway.” I have corrected the punctuation and spelling and removed the angry capitals because freedom of speech surely involves correct use of the language.


Britain has been keen on getting involved in Libya,Kuwait, Iraq and Syria, nobly to protect the innocent. I am at a loss as to what the Yemeni people have done to be ignored in our attempts to spread peace even though they do have some oil. Saudi Arabia bombs, ISIS blows things up and the USA drone bombs terrorist suspects in the The Yemen. Oxfam states that more than 10 million Yemenis did not have enough food to eat, in addition to 850,000 half-starved children. Come on Cameron and your mojo boys, go sort that out.


Whilst changing boats in midstream, spare some sympathy for the free speech of our new Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, Tyson Furey. Rapidly nominated for BBC Sports Personality of The Year until he aired his views on women’s place in the kitchen and “on their back,” abortion and homosexuality at which point the clamour for him to be banned almost deafened those praising free speech in Britain.


On a parochial note, I recently put myself on the butcher’s block of a town planning meeting. The elderly and their parents greeted my standing to speak with howls of, “Liar” and, “Why do we have to listen to him!” If they had been given knives and forks they would have eaten me. However, in these times of old people being hoaxed by conmen I would advise them to be wary of saviours calling themselves Dazzer and Supergazza. Don’t trust them to change your world by inclusion on Facebook “Spotted In” sites , the modern day stocks. It is a universal value that we respect the elderly and it is a British Value that we do this no matter how badly behaved they may be.


Our schools have now to encourage or inculcate, inject or demand adherence to British Values. Some British Values seem to be rather stereotyped: we drink tea, have a stiff upper lip, are rarely roused to passion and like queueing and then complaining about the queue. Others, less kindly, add that the British value class, snobbery, elitism and emotional retardation. Many universal, common and British Values can be summed up as doing the right thing, contributing to society, paying one’s taxes, picking up litter and working hard for example.


In Northern Ireland every year British values are shown by burning flags, building massive bonfires, singing sectarian songs and throwing bricks at policemen. Until recently it involved bombing or executing one’s religious enemies – both lots being devout Christians.


As a Spurs supporter I cheerily hummed along to La Marseillaise in international solidarity . If only I had known the words (translated, of course, as it is a British Value that we do not learn other languages)


Arise, children of the Fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody banner is raised
Do you hear, in the countryside
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your women!


No wonder that the French liberals had our admiration, until many then voted fascist in their elections.


To schools and schooling: where does our free speech thrive. In our faith schools perhaps? Trinity Christian School, “will seek to view everything , in every area of the curriculum, from a biblical worldview,” and would not be, “driven or constrained by secular values in society.” I think this could have easily come from an ISIS website, if you substitute “Quranic” for “Biblical.”


This brings me to some biblical instructions, from which we can pick and choose, or simply obey.


Dr. Laura Schlessinger an American dispensing radio advice said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. End of debate.


But what of these?


I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7 and I wonder what would be a fair price for her?


I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Leviticus.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.


Most of our teachers seem to be working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 states they should be put to death.


Leviticus has a lot of advice:


Eating shellfish is an abomination. I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. A farmer must not plant two different crops in a field nor can a woman wear garments made of a cotton/polyester blend.


Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the town together to stone the miscreants? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws?


Today in Bejing blogger, Pu Zhiqiang, is on trial accused of "inciting ethnic hatred" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," having been in prison for 18 months. Mr Pu posted comments mocking the ruling Communist Party and questioning policies towards the country's minorities.


An Egyptian military court has reduced the jail term of Maikel Nabil a hunger-striking blogger imprisoned for two years on charges of criticising the military.


In Saudi Arabia blogger, Raif Badawi got 10 years in prison for "insulting Islam" and setting up a liberal web forum. He was also sentenced to 1,000 lashes.


Amnesty International has recorded a growing number of cases of people detained or imprisoned for disseminating their beliefs or information through the internet, in countries such as China, Syria, Vietnam, the Maldives, Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe.


I guess it’s good I live in Britain.


Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

It's Time for Headteachers to Don Balaclavas and Take To The Streets

Where’s the union ballot on “No confidence in this government?” Heads sit behind late night office doors worrying about Ofsted, recruitment, dire finances and exam results treating this as an individual school problem. Our timidity in the face of attacks on our students, staff and teaching principles is an embarrassment.

Under rehashed arrangements, children in high income areas will be encouraged and those in low income areas will just plod along, and know their place. Sensible school leaders might be wise to marginalise the ordinary but unique, hard working kids who earn their C grades. Following well practised methods: select and be praised

We used to say, “Every child matters.”

Nicky Morgan is a very poor education secretary. She sees the children’s future as a self promotion tool, a short stay on the way to more important matters.

Morgan has a rigorous geography that can create a grammar school annex in Sevenoaks, 10 miles from the main school and not break the law that forbids new grammar schools. As an office joke her advisors told her that important people were saying she was prime minister material. She regurgitates old, failed policies as part of an incoherent shambles designed solely to replace Princess Diana in the eyes of Daily Express readers.

Even Gove’s Policy Exchange group present evidence that the grammar school system does not work for the middle class she yearns to entice but Morgan prefers to decide our children’s future on the recommendation of a Daily Mail editorial.

There is a teacher recruitment crisis – we can’t get teachers. PGCE training places have been cut. 220 more teachers left teaching in 2014 than joined - enough to fully staff 20 primary schools. 18,000 experienced teachers left the UK to teach abroad. Step forward Morgan to announce that she is going to drop 1500 of the very best teachers into the lowest performing areas. To go to Ramsgate or Knowsley teachers will be given money, money and management jobs. Just where does she think these 1500 elite teachers are working and living? How much would it cost to get you to leave your family and home to live in a bedsit in Margate? And who replaces them in their current schools? If this policy sees the light of day I will eat the blinkers through which Nicky Morgan pursues mediocrity.

Morgan wants to instruct that 90% of all kids will take GCSEs in the EBACC subjects, up from 39% in 2015. Her party said that heads and governors have the freedom to choose the right curriculum for their schools, because these are the people who know and understand their communities. Apparently not.

Here’s my consultation response: I’m not inflicting an artless curriculum on 90% of our kids precisely because I do know better than you.

Health professionals are alarmed by the problems of unreasonable expectations a rigid exam system imposes on children. Measure school success by exam outcomes and schools will teach to the tests. 11 year olds frustrated by endless SATs practices will be joined by the nation’s 7 year olds as we will have compulsory SATs at age 7. She believes that constant testing improves learning. Young kids are stressed out by desperate teachers and sleepless heads. Childhood, school and education should be fun, creative, enquiring, progressive and life enhancing. Tests are just tests.

Morgan says heads will devise the tests, so that they will be responsible for the mess. Primary schools have boycotted tests before and parents admired your courage. NAHT, oh go on! Tell me how I can help.

School budgets are being cut whilst our costs have risen. Of the 1,069 heads polled by the NAHT 82% claim that “budget cuts will have a negative impact on standards.” That’s nearly 900 primary schools where heads know they are set for a deterioration in how well we teach our children.

In July 31 Hertfordshire secondary school headteachers lobbied MPs on the impending financial disasters. So why don’t we all go on a headteachers’ demo through our city centres? How about the bloggers and tweeters write something together and circulate all parents? Or are we just individual egos? The government rely on our feeble, well-mannered silence.

When Free Schools were first promoted we were told to follow the Swedish success story. Sweden now claims this experiment failed, Stubbornly, Pigshead Cameron ploughs on with determination to imitate Scandinavian failure whilst waiting to bomb someone in the middle east.

To compete with Shanghai we have been told to adopt their approach to schooling. China rightly, concentrated on the needs of a developing economy.

Now, they intend to replace an emphasis on facts and testing with the “soft skills,” our CBI claims we need: problem solving, decision making, team work and communication, as required in a mature economy.

The Tories created a massive mess in society in the 1980s: an under educated, alienated youth made to feel hopeless and worthless, responsible for their own lack of prospects. When the mines and the shipyards closed unemployment was the workers’ fault.There were riots on British streets. At least now our school leavers can look forward to low paid, zero hours, prospectless jobs, some with fries, in areas of neglected and abandoned working communities.

Perhaps our best headteachers will be Morganed into steel towns as those jobs are lost forever. She says one teacher can turn round an entire school ethos – more fanciful nonsense from someone who has never spent a day as a teacher.

I am sure employers are unaware that it is impossible to compare any set of GCSE results between 2011 and 2019. As grade boundaries are manipulated, content doubled and papers mismarked by amateurs, a C grade in Maths from 2011 would be a D grade in 2015 and a 4 in 2017. This means they passed in 2011 but failed thereafter. Morgan calls it volatility; the independent OFQUAL head calls it volatility.

To the 1300 school leaders in Westminster for PIXL conferences, let’s cross the road and sightsee parliament, I’ll even make mild mannered placards.

Schools need to ensure that every effort a child makes to improve is recognised. Progress from one grade to another should be standardised. We use the alphabet to move from d to C to B. Nice and simple. Using numbers how about 4 to 5 to 6?

On new official Perfomance Tables the movement from grade a C to a B grade is worth 1½ points, From a B to A and from an A to A* is worth 1½ points. The movement from F to E is worth ½ a point. To score highly in the e published tables our school should concentrate resources on the C-A*end and let the others have the coloured pencils.

Perhaps we could reintroduce mines and chimneys.

I don’t know Russell Holtby, General Secretary of the NAHT, but I will invite him and Brian Lightman (ASCL) to join me to handcuff ourselves to the DFE’s front door as an initial protest against government attacks on a generation of schoolchildren and the best teachers I have ever known.

Or else pay lip service to the old lie “every child matters.”

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

We Need More Radicalisation in our Schools

In his novel,“1984,” George Orwell wrote,“First they steal the words, then they steal the meaning,” reflecting the manipulation of public opinion by those in power.

Beheading a man on video for the propaganda purposes of a military, religious or ethnic cleansing agenda is obscene, immoral, irreligious, barbaric and dreadfully wrong. They are not alone in committing atrocities but the most notorious go under the name ISIL or ISIS.They carry out ritualised, monstrously filmed acts of barbarism to attack the west, promote their political agenda and to provoke our governments’ response. They seek our disgust and anger.

Jihadi John, Kuwaiti born but London educated, is the face in front of a number of beheadings.

I expect the odd nutter to be ringing LBC when the subject is the possibility that Jihadi John will be captured, not executed, and put on trial in Britain. On Sunday lunchtime the host, Petrie Hoskin was that nutter. If arrested on terrorist charges Jihadi John would be interrogated in the British manner – "tickled with a feather whilst being fed cream cakes," and then would be imprisoned, "to watch Sky TV and play pool." Rather, "We should leave him in the desert to rot……wiping his backside on sand." Wow!

One of the ways countries garner opposition to enemy regimes is to engage in atrocity propaganda.The New York Times wrote that the vast numbers of civilian casualties from drone attacks by the USA, “has replaced Guantanimo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.” (29th May 2012.) Imagine being in a village observed by one of the UK’s 10 armed Reaper drones regularly in flight and failing to distinguish this drone from the hundreds of American drones dropping bombs and sometimes killing your neighbours.

The FAA testified to congress that there were 7 times more aviation accidents involving drones than the average for aircraft. (15-07-2010) They sometimes crash on unintended targets but try telling this to the accidentally bereaved.

Then the atrocity propaganda goes to work with ISIS claiming the western governments are deliberately murdering women and children. Apolitical, non-violent, good people see evidence of what they are shown as war crimes and perhaps some are radicalised by the visual confirmation of ISIS rhetoric.

The queues outside Provisional IRA recruitment centres were longest after the civilian deaths on Bloody Sunday and the death of the hunger strikers.

There is nothing new in propaganda vilifying one's enemies as a tool to aid recruitment and to make sure we knew who to hate. In World War One British people were fed stories of the Germans raping nuns and walking around with a string of bayonetted babies. The Hun was a barbaric savage and needed to be killed

Before he slaughtered thousands of ordinary Irish men and women Cromwell received reports of the rebels ripping open the wombs of pregnant women.

Russians did not drop toy-shaped mines on Afghan villages in the 1980s and there is no evidence that Jews drank the blood of murdered infants in 15th century Europe either.

The Serbian photographer who admitted he fabricated the report of 41 children butchered by Croatian soldiers in 1991 only confessed after Serbs executed Croatian soldiers in revenge.

Voltaire: “Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Jihadi John feeds potential sympathisers atrocity propaganda about the west and we add some truth to this by drone attacks and what some see as invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. US drones have killed hundreds of civilians furthering anti American sentiment and destabilising the communities that are bombed. There are videos of our soldiers torturing Iraqis and a recent conviction for executing a wounded Afghan enemy.This is how we radicalise.

In England we are looking out for young people who may be radicalised to leave this country in order to join ISIS in their war against us.

ISIS murdered 31 British tourists in a despicable, cowardly attack on unarmed tourists in Tunisia. The civilised amongst nation states need to oppose and defeat ISIS and similar terrorist groups.

We do not do this by demonising our own British Muslim population.

Young men have always been up for a spot of battle. They bravely signed up to fight in WW1, to fight on both sides in the Spanish Civil War and they were eager to join up for WW2 as well. When I spoke to a squaddie’s mum she told me that her son wanted to be in battle and that he signed up to fight not to learn how to drive lorries in peacetime.

Some young Muslim men listen to a demagogic orator who offers a way forward, anger at being considered worthless, and even a place in some sort of paradise. If we create the idea that all young Muslims are dangerous we reject them and we may claim some credit for their radicalisation. If British society was fair and non-discriminatory and if we looked to give every child a crack at achievement and employment the calls to radical action would be negated. Racist attacks on Muslims doubled last year; we abuse and disenfranchise at our peril

I want schools to be able to discuss radical ideas. Not for the first time, I want to say that encouraging single faith schools leads to a lessening of open discussion and logical, moral thinking amongst our young. Surely the refusal to insist on secular state schools means we tolerate faith schools praising and proclaiming their own religion just a bit. Allow and encourage faith schools and we must accept that elements of separatism will pervade. Faith schools may create an ‘us-and-them’ opportunity, a call to separate life in Britain and an allegiance to other countries and practices.

Email me if you’d like a young Catholic London Irish view from the 1970s.

We ought to offer more challenges to accepted morality so that maybe our young people will adopt a righteous life, caring for others in an unsentimental way and believing that, whatever our racial origins, life in Britain does include us. And we ought to be giving our school students the opportunity to discuss the crises facing the UK, to debate war and peace, freedom and barbarism, right and wrong. To have young Muslim boys taken away to quiet rooms for interrogation after they have uttered some pro ISIS sentiment is not the way to defeat terrorism or the misconceptions on which it is based. Drive free speech underground, force questioning children to be silent and that’s the end of democratic society. Free speech – is that too radical?,

Am I still “Charlie” or have we forgotten so quickly?

Let's be radical. Let's work out what we want society to look like and put the ideas up for open debate in schools without fear of arrest.

I know that may be difficult with food banks, working tax credit cuts and Dave hankering to have his war. Cameron disgracefully condemned the new Labour leader as a “terrorist sympathiser” because he is posing a radical alternative to Blair and Cameron conservatism.

Yesterday, our prime minister announced that he has banned convicted terrorists from working with children. I bet he knows that any criminal conviction- for vandalism, car theft or drunkenness - can bar you already.

What’s the real alternative to an inclusive society?

Killing in the name of a god who never asked us to do anything of the sort?

Dennis O'Sullivan - Headteacher 

Tories advice to teachers: Shut up, shut up, shut up

Hard as it must be to be Michael Gove’s plaything, Nicky Morgan has reached new levels of mediocrity as Secretary of State for Education. Poor Nicky always looks bewildered and a vacuous presence in her occasional pronouncements.

At a time when there is a teacher recruitment crisis, massive spending cuts in schools, government decreed falling GCSE results and school leaders preparing to retire en masse in 2017, Nicky is our education leader. On GCSE results last week she said not a word. Her plan to solve the recruitment problem is to ban evening emails in order to ease teacher workload. On funding: silence. When proclaiming the success of academies she cannot understand that some fail; and she repeated the same rote evasion, over and over. Nicky claimed that Ofsted could inspect academy chains when they can’t. Statistically inept, she went public to chastise all schools with less than 60% GGCSE success as coasting and therefore in her big bad books, ignoring prior attainment, selective schools and normal distribution curves. By definition, no grammar school can be coasting, so that’s a relief.

She tried to appease school leaders, proposing their own policy to them on January 19th, “a school led self- improving system where teachers, school leaders and governors make the decisions about what’s best for their schools,” then added that decisions about the curriculum are best left to politicians.

It is this politician who calls cocked-up exam marking and results ”volatile” and “transitional,” blankly unaware that it is children who are being manipulated, insulted and failed.

Gove destroyed the meritocracy in his DfE, telling senior staff to implement his ideas, not to offer advice. When they suggested decision making based on research he thundered that it would be solely based on ideology.

We have Nick Gibb in a position of power as Minister of State for Education. Proof that hell is full the Gibb colossus of progressive education believes that fancy talk about teaching literacy should be replaced by all secondary school children being made to read the works of Jane Austen. As the remaining blindfolded civil servants praise his naked dogma we have tests for 5 year olds, rushed, unfunded new curricula in every subject in a mess of unproven academy chains and unnecessary free schools put together in a sort of Woolworth’s pick n mix.

So who is running things for Mr Gove and who is going to fulfil his Free School obsession?

The DfE itself has released figures to show that free schools received 60% more funding than state schools in 2014. Academies Minister, that’s another politician in charge of education matters, Lord Nash runs the Future Academy Chain with his wife. One of their schools, Pimlico Primary, was given £17,615 for each of its 26 pupils. Parents didn’t want the school , if they had, they would send their kids there.


Keeping faith schools in business to segregate our children, St Andrew The Apostle Greek Orthodox School has 73 pupils, receiving £18,507 for each of them. Parents didn’t want this school either.

So back to the decision makers. Mr Gove and Mr Gibb set up the Policy Exchange think tank –which is what you do when you want to pretend neutrality, intelligence and wisdom. Current Head of Education is Jonathan Simons, also Chair of Governors at the Greenwich Free School, a position he will be less publicly extolling now that the school has failed its Ofsted inspection,. According to Her Majesty’s Inspector (HMI) the problems were with the quality of teaching, and learning, and marking, and target setting, and student achievement and management. It does have nice buildings. This school has a no mobile phone policy and students are encouraged to provide “intelligence” on suspects who are then searched. Nicky Morgan says mobile phones should be banned. Wonder where she got the idea.

Deputy Head of Education at Policy Exchange –a £2.5 million a year anonymously funded charity – is Natasha Porter whose claim to fame is August 2015 radio declarations that secondary schools should be fined £500 for each student who fails to achieve GCSE grade C (soon to be 5) in English or Maths. So you can see she’s well up on special needs, value added, levels of progress and all that education-reality sort of thing. Perhaps next time she’s looking for publicity she will demand that primary schools are paid by nurseries if 5 year olds cannot read and write.

Dare poor Nicky announce this fine soon to divert attention from the massive money problems in colleges and to innocently amuse her masters?

Gove’s former assistant, the very bright and ambitious Rachel Wolf, appointed aged 25 to be head of his New Schools Network is now in the Downing Street Policy Unit where she is the much admired driving force on education.

Policy Exchange advise Nicky Morgan, The Policy Unit instruct her. Gove pulls the puppet strings, Gibb stomps around in DMs and Nicky will do as she’s told.

Policy Exchange Head of Education sat three feet from me and explained Tory policy: we got elected, we will ignore headteachers and their ilk , do what’s in the manifesto, regardless of education opinion, and you should shut up . Indeed, stop moaning but if something works in our schools, “give the government credit for it.”

So what do they plan to do?

Watch as schools spend all contingency funds, cant set budgets and have to cut teachers jobs. 5% of teachers will lose their jobs at a conservative (sic) estimate.

Massively fund free schools and open lots more, particularly faith schools.

Close school 6th forms of under 300 and lose minority courses like languages, and expensive ones such as technology and sciences.

Force us all into academy chains.

Reintroduce grammar schools by stealth.

Fail more kids than pass GCSEs and A levels.

Raise university tuition fees.

A proper Tory education system.

So what do we do? Sink into one or more of sadness, madness, melancholy, despair, resignation and retreat?

Or see that what teachers do is about young people learning about the world and their place in it and possibly even changing it; about real children and their families.

See that teachers in their schools are not just the daytime guardians of the young but the only hope for a moral, just and prosperous society?

Remember to shout, loudly at politicians when they take away the opportunities for our children to aspire, achieve and progress to greatness.

But carry on because allowing this lot to win, and to gloat, will not lead to a restful, contented retirement. You will still be bloody angry, but without a voice.

Funny though, if Nicky was in our schools as a student we would look after her, encourage independent thinking and help her to develop the social and personal skills to stand up to bullies and manipulators. That’s what we do.

Pity her plight; she’s just lost in a world beyond her understanding, She has never known the incredible joy of teaching, the rush, the buzz when children “get it.” Watching children grow as young adults and return to thank us years later, whether it is thanks for exam passes or being patient and listening.

When Nicky fades away all that will be left is a thin layer of dust, easily swept away by a whiff of intelligent understanding. However, I think she is well suited to be Minister for the Armed Forces.

Dennis O'Sullivan

Headteacher

Why have I never taught a Jewish child?

Teaching British Values is now compulsory in our schools and we are drawing in on ourselves, into Little Britain, because of a fear of the actions of a tiny, tiny minority of so-called radicalised British Muslim youth.

As we clamour for restrictions on immigration, alongside a liberal’s fear of talking about race, we label some communities as dangerous and not very British. Fear of Islam is irrational but encouraging Muslims to retreat as some sort of alien breed is counter to our democracy and the values we claim as our national identity. And it alienates Muslims.

Faith schools are marching towards segregation and the creation and strengthening of racial barriers between communities. The government adores free schools and plans to open another 500, many of them single faith schools.

In 2014 there were 6,848 state funded faith schools – about a third of the total and around a 3% increase in the last decade. Jewish and Muslim faith schools, a tiny minority of these, increased from 37 to 48 and from 7 to 18 respectively over the last 7 years. 1.8 million students are in faith schools. (House of Commons Library 08-09-2014)Most of these are Catholic or Church of England primary schools.

In 36 years in multi-cultural East London schools and a largely mono-cultural Hertfordshire town I have taught around 7,000 children aged 11-18. I have known many churchgoing Christian children, active Catholics, practising Hindus and Sikhs. Muslims studied alongside other faiths and we had small numbers of Baptists, Buddhists and at least 8 Jehovah Witnesses. But never a Jewish child.

I spoke to a London headteacher about the number of Jewish children in his 1000 strong school. The school had many Jewish children until the opening of a nearby Jewish Free School at which point all Jewish children left. If we segregate children by religion are we surprised they become segregated socially and that elements of separatism will pervade?
As more Jewish kids are taken into faith schools and fewer are taught alongside non Jews should we be surprised that the horror of anti Semitism is prospering in Britain, with more attacks in 2014 than for decades?

There is a video of the Muslim IQRA Primary School in Slough which starts with a boy doing morning prayers in Arabic with the other assembled children. This faith school was created because, “the community wanted it.” The allocation of community status is an interesting one: is there just one Muslim community; just one English community? Despite support for our school’s planning application people living within 100 metres of the school have designated themselves “the community.” And really did expect their views to take prominence. It seems we can all claim community support if we narrow our constituency sufficiently. In theory, non Muslims could attend the IQRA school but they don’t. My understanding is that at least some Muslim schools ban stringed instruments, singing, dancing and figurative art because they conflict with the teachings of the Koran which suggests they can lead to sexual arousal and idolatry.

The Catholic Church has refused to open further academies until the government changes its policy on a 50% cap on the control of admissions. This cap on single faith control of admissions upset Jewish community leaders, too, but the government says that, “new faith schools established with taxpayers money in areas where there is a shortage of good places will be available to all who need them.” (Telegraph 15-11-2013)Why wouldn’t faith schools, all built upon such positive principles want to attract others to their moral outlook?

I worry about the curriculum in all schools, with the drive in reverse gear to the artless, toneless mind-numbing rote learning, speed writing and endless test-practising menu. However, what do faith schools teach? I was taught the Catholic view of many things, which included virgin birth, resurrection and the chastity of priests. I was 18 before I dared tempt hellfire by entering a non Catholic place of worship.

In July 2013, a state-funded orthodox Jewish girls' school in north London was admonished after it was discovered that students had their GCSE exams censored, with questions about evolution deliberately blacked out of science papers. The OCR examinations board found that 52 papers in two GCSE science exams sat by pupils at Yesodey Hatorah Senior girls' school in Hackney had questions on evolution obscured, making them impossible to be answered.

When we separate from others we allow gossip, exaggeration and ignorance to take hold, playing into the hands of those who want to divide people. David Green, chief executive of the think-tank Civitas, said, ‘Some Muslim schools in Britain have become part of a battleground for the heart and soul of Islam. Their aim is to turn children away, not only from Western influence, but also from liberal and secular Muslims.’Mr Green says that children in some of the Islamic schools are not being prepared to live in a free and democratic British society. Indeed, they are being made to despise our culture. (Daily Mail 1-10-2013)

It is wrong to go down the Daily Mail’s one school does it so they all do route in condemning the new government sponsored free school, Islamic Al-Madinah school in Derby. Here, allegedly, girls have to sit at the back of classrooms, boys and girls are segregated at meal times and there is a strict dress code even for non Muslim staff. Sensibly, Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, declared: ‘We are not living in rural Pakistan or a Taliban-run region of Afghanistan. Such superstitious, divisive nonsense should have no place in a British school.’ Whose voice will be considered typical?

We don’t know what goes on in religiously separated schools so I guess we have to believe the Mail when they add, using anonymous sources, “Growing Government worries over what is being taught in the quickly rising number of private and publicly-funded Islamic schools has led to reports that the home intelligence service, MI5, is to send in undercover agents posing as teachers to check if children are being brainwashed in Islamic radicalism.” By ‘eck.

Might the reality be that some or most faith schools develop thoughtful, tolerant, responsible and caring young citizens as Ofsted reported on the JFS (Jewish Free School). Their, “religious outlook is orthodox, and one of its main aims is “to ensure that Jewish values permeate the school”. Jewish Studies is a core subject for all students all of whom take the GCSE examination in Religious Studies. Ivrit and Israel Studies are included as part of Jewish Education. (http://www.findajewishschool.co.uk/jewish-secondary-schools/jfs-school.php#)

King Solomon High School in Ilford also highlights the importance of Israel, wanting to teach “a positive and proud sense of Jewish identity built upon a sound knowledge of Jewish practice and observance and an appreciation of the centrality of Israel in Jewish life”.
(http://www.findajewishschool.co.uk/jewish-secondary-schools/king-solomon-high-school.php#sthash.ghFJWwDZ.dpuf)

I do worry when I see so many children waving the flag of Israel on a school website; we might all be expected to worry if Muslims were pictured with the Saudi flag enthusiastically paraded. We worry anyway if the English flag is given prominence.

We should live, work and study side by side in mutual respect of different traditions and cultures. We should celebrate and proclaim the characteristics that can bring us together. Let’s promote acceptance of others, both within the school community and in the wider world, incorporating values such as caring, kindness and charity. Study together in secular schools for a better world.

Dennis O'Sullivan

A Letter To Our Prime Minister

Dear Mr Cameron, Try a little Tenderness. 

As you form a new government you may find a letter in the Department for Education offices: “Sorry, Schools have no money left.” 

Your civil servants will tell you the detail of how a school like mine needs to find £500,000 in savings on an income of just under £6,000,000 in each of the next three years.

• Your government cut 16% off our 6th form funding (around £500 per student) at a time when you said education funding was “ring-fenced.”
• We have to put an extra 2.38% into teachers’ pensions.
• The government has taken away a National Insurance rebate of 3.4% and looks likely to award the 1.3 million school employees a 1 or 2% unfunded pay rise.
• This adds up to a 7.26% increase in our wage costs and wages makes up around 80% of school spending.
• The Institute for Fiscal Studies shows a 12% cut in funding during your second term.

Your reappointed chancellor will tell you that any business where costs outstrip income could pass on some or all of the increased costs to the consumer. Tony Little, the head of your old school, Eton, has said that families on £80,000 can no longer afford boarding school as fees have risen at four times the rate of other goods and services. Most of our parents do not earn £80,000 and we cannot charge for education in state schools. We can’t pass on costs.

Mr Osborne will say that we should reduce costs and ex minister David Laws said we should reduce back office costs.

• If we cut half our office staff we could save £160,000
• stopped all spending on our school library and dismissed the librarian £35,000
• reduced our caretaking staff to one person £23,000
• and stopped cleaning the toilets so often £7,500,
• saved 50% on our gas and electricity bills £45,000
• stopped absolutely all staff training £27,933
• Sacked 7 teaching assistants £200,000

We would save the £500,000.

The following year, in our dark, smelly, cold school, we could cut all building and grounds maintenance and cleaning; cut all individual support in English and Maths and abandon all extra curricular activities. We will need to sack 6 teachers and would have saved the £500,000. Class sizes will increase to 35 in many lessons. Teachers will teach 5% more lessons.

In Year 3 we find £500,000 by dismissing 10 heads of department and a deputy headteacher. Class size is now over 40 everywhere and we have unqualified, cheaper, staff “teaching” all core subjects.

Schools are cutting Art, Drama and Technology to reduce costs and allow the children to study more Maths, English and Science. It is vital that we get the basics right but we are heading to a Brave New World of dull repetitive, test dominated, rote learning for the mass of our children in state schools. Creativity will be confined to parent led weekend and evening privately paid for activities. We are a creative people, music and media exports show our talent. Please don’t restrict a broad education to those with wealth. And let’s all beware of bored children in our schools and society.

There’s two linked aspects I ask you to look at, prime minister:

We have had spontaneous, sometimes backdated, disjointed curriculum innovation during your last term in office. Mr Gove, your Secretary of State, was on a mission and we have struggled to keep up.

Let’s have a period of calm, to embed his initiatives. I know that your latest minister, Nicky Morgan wants politicians to remain in charge of the curriculum but she should do this with an advisory body that includes teachers. The best change is considered and measured, thoughtful and then decisive.

You’ve said there will be no major tax increases for 5 years; how about no major curriculum changes for five years?

Do away with league tables. Gove believed that testing equals learning, so we now have a concoction of disconnected assessment procedures. Testing children in English and Maths at age 4 to judge their progress at age 7, and to publish that progress in league tables, may have us hunting around for some really difficult tests to administer to 4 year olds, with a scowl on a winter’s afternoon in our darkened, cold classrooms. These tests will not help children progress. Why not trust reception and Year 1 teachers to assess what these very young children can do by observing and working with them?

SATs at age 11 now mean that kids of all abilities are practising, practising and practising tests whose sole purpose is to praise in league tables schools with the brightest kids, and to condemn those schools with a lower ability intake.” Glenys Stacey at OFQUAL explains that the new GCSEs cannot be compared with any other year because of “volatility.”

Mr Cameron, get someone who understands to look at an assessment system that encourages and rewards learning. Exam data is not the same as standards in education. Would you believe that schools who take in the lowest ability children are penalized for this in DfE statistics and by Ofsted?. It’s a bit like your beloved Aston Villa starting each football season with -20 points whilst big spending Chelsea start with +20 before a ball has been kicked.

Many schools are driven by the fear of Ofsted and the domination of data in their judgements.

Our “Good” school had one white working class boy, from a single parent family, on free school meals, with low scores from junior school and a history of trouble in his head, his home and his behavior. He negatively affected 11 different Ofsted figures. Maybe we should have shot him, rather than try to include and teach him.

There’s lots more to tell you, Prime Minister, but make a start somewhere. You can help every school to be a good school and every child to have a chance to excel.

Mr Cameron, we are scared

Because you didn't mention money in a national financial crisis in education.

We are fearful

Because you promised major education reform “within 50” days

We are demoralised

Because we have the best teachers and the best teaching in the last 40 years and you may not recognize this.

We are despondent

Because we fear a Secretary of State wanting to forge an ideological legacy for himself

Because you named all your major ministers yesterday but not the education one, it seems our role in society doesn’t matter to you

Because we dread you bringing back Michael Gove to insult us again.

Please leave the passion to teachers in their classrooms and give us thoughtful, knowledgeable, experienced people leading education in your cabinet.

We don't know that you value us at all

So show a little care,

A little love,

Take your time,

Woo us and treat us with respect.

You can help us get better.

Otherwise damn us

And sod the children

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

Education, Education, Education? Not this election

With electioneering in the UK hitting some remarkably cynical, free spending lows one searches in vain for the “Education, Education, Education” mantra that helped elect Tony Blair in 1997. Late in the game, as we build to a tumult of voter indecision and disbelief the Lib Dems have decided that “nothing is more important than the education of our young.” Of the 1.3 million of us working in schools how many will welcome Cameron’s promised “major education reform within 50 days.” Every time I hear a politician talking, “passionate” I shudder in anticipation of ill advised, ideologically driven meddling and tinkering from career politicians who show as much passion as a formica table. (“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance”) 

Young teachers are fleeing our exam factories and ten year olds are being turned off by SATs practice after practice to secure schools’ league table status. 2017 marks the exit plans for many school leaders: new memory-testing exams, an ever deepening crisis in teacher recruitment, unmanageable finances and the SEN malaise combine as these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse drive us to breakdown. 

Here’s an election nutshell: the Conservative Party will open 500+ more Free Schools, whilst Labour will open new schools that are “parent-led academies.” Apart from competing and vague rhetoric on apprenticeships, literacy, vocational routes and regional commissioners that’s it for content. School funding will be cut. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (26-03-15) Conservative, Labour and Liberal pledges, “all suggest a real-terms reduction of 7% per child by 2020.” TheTories claim they are “committed to delivering a good deal for schools.” Labour just say they have, “a better plan” and the Lib Dems say protecting funding in schools is a “red line” issue – a deal beaker in any coalition. The IFS go on to claim that the cut in funding will be nearer 12%. 

National Insurance, pension contributions, a 1% pay rise for teachers, 2% for non teachers and some incremental progression gtotals a 7.26% increase in our staff costs in 2015-16. Staff are 80% of our total costs. Our income per student has already been reduced and will be reduced further. My school budget for 2016-17 shows a deficit of £550,259. And the next year we will be another £900,528 short. By 2018 staff will cost 100.4% of our income so no lights will be turned on. Can someone, please, donate some toilet roll. (This isn’t life in the fast lane. This is life in the oncoming traffic.”) 

Private companies will experience some of these costs and they will put prices, and inflation, up. 

To transcend dread, I imagined that the late Terry Pratchett wrote specifically about the 2015 election. Quotations from his novels are presented in brackets and italics; I hope many of you will know why I couldn’t use capitals. So if you can read on with an open mind…(“the trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”) 

All three of the big parties, and the Lib Dems may not qualify for this status after May 4th, seem to have abandoned any notion of austerity and instead adopted a series of promises to “spend, spend, spend” and to give us all cash. 25 hours (Labour) 30 hours (Conservative) free childcare (£6,000 a year in Ware) tax breaks, savings bonuses and stamp duty exemption for first time buyers by parties pledged to build up to 1,000,000 houses. Conservatives will sell off Housing Association properties to whichever of the 1.3 million tenants is willing to accept a massive bribe. 

The last time we sold off our public housing had some interesting consequences. A GMB investigation into the “right to buy” scheme in Wandsworth found that of the 15,874 dwellings sold under right to buy 6,180 are now owned by private landlords. Tenants took the subsidy, bought their council house and then sold it on at a massive profit as soon as possible. 

The GMB claim that taxpayers, through the government’s housing benefits scheme, paid £9.300,000,000 to private landlords in 2014. We are being asked to put monetary self-interest first and last, a bit like animals putting their need for food as their sole task. Should there be a wider agenda for us? (“Personal’s not the same as important.”) 

During this frenzied period of political cross dressing all parties are promising up to £8 billion for the NHS, which is reeling from the latest £20 billion of cuts and expensive, unnecessary reorganisation. Labour promises minimum wages will rise by a third and Electricity, train fares and rents will be as good as frozen. All parties say that fewer people will pay tax. Some are giving tax breaks to the poor, others to the rich and, regarding inheritance tax, to those approaching death. 

Ken Clarke, the previous Tory Chancellor has warned against “silly” giveaways that will cost £20 billion by 2020. Austerity has faded in return for votes, and there’s still a week to go. How will you decide between parties? (“You think there are the good people and the bad people. You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.)” 

My union, ASCL, spent a year on “The Great Education Debate” culminating in a splendid, visionary self-improving school–led system for promoting excellence. All sorts of politicians have signed up to the vision. I can imagine our ASCL leader Brian Lightman saying, “I told you they were listening,” until, Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan agreed 100% …and added, “control of the curriculum is best left to politicians.” Oh dear, Brian. (“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish”) 

Our Prime Minister is so convinced that voters do not believe politicians’ promises that he will pass a law so that his own party cannot raise Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance contributions over the next five years, becoming the first ever government to give up this power. 

A general election that offers us everything if we have money, food banks if we don’t. (“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools – the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans – and he summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”) 

Dennis O’Sullivan 

30th April 2015

SPECIAL NEEDS PROVISION IS IN CRISIS, A CRISIS OF ASSESSMENT, PROVISION AND LEADERSHIP

Special Needs Provision is in Crisis, a crisis of Assessment, Provision and Leadership.

There must be something terribly wrong with the way we care for our children in Britain: 19.8% of our children have a special educational need. This is five times higher than across Europe. Sweden has 1.5%, Italy 2%. SEN kids make up 5% of the school population in Denmark and 6% in Germany. Could it possibly be that we are too ready to allocate one of the labels to explain behaviours that could be managed without recourse to meetings, paperwork and expert advice?

I know children who have low reading ages yet never read at home; children with “social and emotional difficulties” who have no boundaries at home. Is it sometimes the case that the label exonerates all involved from putting things right? An American DJ was picketed and hounded a few years back for proposing that many special needs may be specially in need of decent, reliable, caring and steady parenting.

I cannot fathom why we have had just 3 students in wheelchairs during my 16 years in a school with designated status for accessibility. I suspect there are children in special schools who would happily access the mainstream curriculum, indeed I have two such students in our 6th form who are off to university next year having spent years in special schools.

Because a child with special needs may qualify for extra time in exams, or a reader, or rest breaks there may have been a temptation for schools to register the children with special needs. My daughter’s school registered its brightest middle class girls as having dyslexic tendencies and this earned the girls extra time, and the school a number of A grades. The late, unlamented Michael Gove stated that much SEN provision was led by low school and teacher expectation.

There is no more committed, determined, knowledgeable and demanding parent than one who sees their child as having special needs. They come armed with test results, doctor’s advice, internet knowledge and their rights. If they have the money to pay for private assessments these are  likely to prove the special need that they have paid to be assessed. We have seen identical reports where only the name of the child is changed. I believe local authority SEN practitioners and their managers, collectively, rarely challenge determined parents even at very long, indecisive meetings.

Our inclusive school is overcome with applications and requests from parents for children with special needs. I strongly suspect that we are recommended by professionals whilst parents are actively discouraged from applying for other schools.

How is it that Ofsted “outstanding” schools have so few SEN kids? Evidence for this is visible on DfE School Performance tables. Alarmingly, the percentages on the Free School Meals Register, a measure of class, disadvantage and deprivation, show even more startling differences.

SEN people at the top of the hierarchy should be in active discussions with “outstanding” schools, calling on them to use their excellence to help kids with special needs. And, dead easy, Ofsted should go into their designated “outstanding” schools and ask why they do not help the children with most need. Then fail them. That’ll bring about greater access overnight.

I have written about this elsewhere reproducing Trevor Burton’s respected worrying academic research http://chauncyhead.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/i-love-ofsted.html

Clearly, schools with a low average point score at age 11 really struggle to let Ofsted see them as Outstanding. Schools with the highest point score on entry, miraculously, seem to find it a matter of near certainty to be given an Outstanding Grade.
The brighter the intake the easier to show progress.
If progress is outstanding, teaching must be outstanding.
If progress and teaching are outstanding behaviour and management must be outstanding.
QED.

Ofsted Grade by Prior Attainment as of 30 April 2014

A few notes of explanation:

• These are the 2,684 secondary schools in England with both a KS2 prior attainment score and a current Ofsted grade.
• 85% of these schools have a KS2 average point score (APS) of higher than 26, but lower than 30 i.e. the four columns labelled 26, 27, 28, 29 in the chart.
• The number of schools in each APS “bucket” is shown at the top of the bar so there are 748 schools with KS2 APS of 27 or higher, but less than 28.

SEN officers should be signposting outstanding schools to families because everyone wants the children to have the best education. I believe it is a legal requirement that schools provide for these children, but that sometimes translates into, “We are so good with gifted and talented students.”

Many schools can no longer cope with the numbers we are expected to manage. Perhaps another school with one tenth of our SEN numbers might do a wonderful job; especially if Ofsted claims they are an outstanding school.

Level 1 is the standard one’s children might be expected to meet by age 5; secondary schools start at age 11. Officers must stop suggesting that Level 1 students come to our schools because these officers are setting up the children to fail. We cannot teach Level 1 students, yet we have 7 such children and it is an act of cruelty to inflict humiliating failure on them.

In DfE figures students cannot be in secondary school on Level 1. The DfE marks them as level 2 and use this as the baseline to their progress. Schools with shese children are then shafted in the tables. It is a fallacy that having taken 6 years of education to make one level of progress these children will soar through the next six levels to GCSE success in 5 years.

In a cost cutting exercise, and cuts do need to be made, local authorities have stopped sending very disturbed children to secure accommodation that can cost more than £100,000 a year for one child. These children are put in LA Special Schools – themselves much reduced – and less needy, but still needy, children are sent to mainstream. The fantasy of integration for all becomes a tyranny for some of these children.

I have been “consulted” on admitting violent children who swear, spit, hit and bite When I oppose secondary transfer applications for children whose behaviour would ensure permanent exclusion my reasons are denigrated. I have been told on one recent occasion that my rejection will be referred to senior officers, presumably for a special slap. And yet the Children's Commissioner found that children with special educational needs were 9 times more likely to be permanently excluded than other students.

I have also had experience of an officer unfavourably reporting to parents my rejection of a child who would not cope. This is not helpful nor professional and hints at officer cowardice.

We receive bulky documents for statemented children and now for those with EHCPs. (A massively expensive initiative: Education and Health Care Plans, supposedly to support children up to their 25th birthday). The advice to schools on what we should do is invariably expensive and unfunded, unrealistic and misleading. I once had a physio who treated all injuries the same regardless of the nature of the problem. It seems to me that there are incredible similarities in the advice to schools regardless of the child’s precise problems. And, of course, parents are misled by this advice as everyone knows that schools cannot deliver on unfunded additional needs. Why present the fantasy to parents? I am not alone in telling parents that we will not be providing the specialist, one-to-one support an SEN report has declared appropriate.

The advice to classroom teachers often discredits the report writer in that they suggest the individual child will receive lots of repeated instruction, individually broken down tasks, praise for everything, frequent rest breaks one to one support, a guide around the school corridors and supervised quiet rooms at lessons Perhaps more frequent classroom observation will evidence class size greater than one, perhaps even 30.

The bureaucracy of SEN means that schools can meet and decide between them at democratic, “cluster meetings” which children have exceptional needs. Their decisions are passed on to another meeting of SEN professionals who often reverse these decisions. One boy needs 34 hours a week one to one support from a Teaching Assistant because others might have been hospitalised without this level of support. However the wise SEN team knew that his needs were not “exceptional.” At least there were lots of meetings, reports and discussions. Oh, and we took the funding to support him from the education of other children.

And the leadership on all this?

Dennis O’Sullivan

Headteacher Chauncy School
Wednesday 1st April 2015