Saturday 10 September 2016

Grammar Schools Promote Inequality and Injustice


Post 1945, working class children left school at 14 and went into unskilled jobs and apprenticeships . In the new secondary modern schools working class children were destined for working class jobs. They sat few if any exams and school expectations were low. Grammar schools educated a quarter of our 12 year olds – depending on availability - and these children were destined for jobs in offices. The privately educated were our MPs, doctors, lawyers and senior civil servants. Everyone knew their place.



Unless we reopen the factories, shipyards and mines secondary modern schooling will not provide the skilled workforce we require, unless Sports Direct and McDonalds take over more workplaces.


Apparently (they got consultants in for this) if you select the kids doing best at tests at age 11 and put them in one school, that school will have the highest achievers in GCSE tables five years later. Stunning. Apparently, it is also hotter near the Equator.

All schools should be good schools. We have the best teachers ever and more parents are happy with their child’s school than ever before. Government claim “parent choice” as their goal – well you can’t have selection and parent choice.

Here’s an email I received on Wednesday: ”Do you only accept children who live in your area? I live in X and there is one school I like but both my children are below average and worried they will fail the entry test.”

From the parents of her friends to my Year 6 granddaughter, “You should go to school P rather than the excellent local school S because you’re academic.”

Meanwhile 12 miles away, “We wanted her to go to school H but it is too academic for her,”

Half way between the two, “The Headteacher told me that if my daughter’s reading age was one iota below her chronological age she cannot come here, it is not fair on my staff.”

We have schools, Ofsted “outstanding” schools, which claim they are, “not good with special educational needs.” School M made its TAs redundant and then claimed to be unable to admit kids with SEN due to lack of staff.

In a colleague’s primary school one parent confronted the head with, “I do not want him doing these art things. Just make sure he can pass the entry test to school D.”

Welcome to Hertfordshire, where each year the county proclaims Watford Girls Grammar School as a top comprehensive, alongside Watford Boys Grammar . They must be great schools: the head of one was made a dame and the other is a schools commissioner…..fancy that.

Mrs May is keen for Faith Schools to select all their kids on the basis of religion. Has she tried getting a non-believing family into a Jewish or Catholic school where the admission criteria starts with attendance at a particular place of worship and then to siblings? In encouraging division amongst the population and in promoting isolation amongst our minorities Mrs May is an ideal candidate for a visit from the Prevent people.

She is keen on new parent-sponsored single faith grammar free schools. Well, seeing as parents are not opening free schools but faith organisations predominate, she knows this is not going to happen. Perhaps somewhere like Leeds can have a Muslim Grammar School, a Jewish Grammar School, Hindu, CoE and Catholic grammar schools alongside a non denominational boys grammar, and a girls grammar nearby. Imagine the school run in Leeds.

Mrs May wants all schools to have, “an element of selection.” If grammar schools select the brightest are other schools to select the dimmest?

Her supporters say introducing more selective grammar schools is not going back to the days of selective grammar schools. Oh,my!

They say that the selection of the most academic 11 year olds will not create secondary modern schools and certainly not “sink schools” where expectations of exam success are non existent. Yes it will.

Grammar schools must be good because their students do well in exams, therefore we need loads of grammar schools. In fact, if these are the best schools let’s make all schools grammar schools.

What we could do is select all the academically able kids and put them in schools with thatched roofs. Then, when they achieve their good GCSEs we can call for the impositioin of thatched roofs throughout the country.

May pretends that children will move between the selective schools according to individual student progress, as if there is no limit on how many kids you can fit in a classroom.

Apparently, lots of parents who are in select, expensive catchment areas fear the imposition of grammar schools. But, Mrs May says, new grammar schools will not be forced on areas that don’t want them. Can we do the same with capital punishment ? Maybe impose it in Scotland only?

The chief inspector of schools says the pro grammar school argument is “Tosh and nonsense” and just about all the evidence points to grammar schools increasing social inequality. But what did we expect from a government which has introduced tests at 11, 16 and 18 designed to fail more students. 47% of English 12 year olds are classed as failures by their performance in tests -perhaps we could stamp this on an appropriate part of their anatomy, so they don’t forget their failings.

Each day I watch the girls come off the train from outside the catchment area of the oversubscribed selective/non selective school P and I wonder how they got places.

We don’t have to worry about the 11+, in Bishops Stortford 3 of the 4 secondary schools have Saturday morning entry tests and all claim to be comprehensives. I know of five schools that select up to 10% of their intake on aptitude for music or languages. Howzat!

Theresa May is right about selection by house price – you can get a 3 bedroomed semi for £500,000 in the catchment area of one of our highly praised schools. The children of educated, midlle class parents score highly on their primary school tests, usually with private tutor support. Of course, Ofsted say they are outstanding. Ofsted claimed my nephew’s white, middle class, catholic school with lower than average frees school meals, EAL students and SEN kids was, “highly inclusive,” and “outstanding.”

One of my part time staff coaches 18 boys from one school; money helps.

Of three agreed housing projects: School A is in an area of architectural splendour and the project had “no affordable housing.” School B has 145 houses planned and “no affordable housing.” Hertfordshire – one of the biggest in the country makes sure that its entirely Conservative MPs are not troubled by social integration.

Disgraceful Gove started the drive to put working class kids back in their place. Mindlessly, vacuous Morgan continued the slide and now the unsuspecting puppet Greening will be charged with driving even more teachers into other jobs, more children ringing Helpline in despair over their grades and more families accepting that education and British society is not for the likes of them.

Mrs May says that new grammar schools will have to accept poorer children. Does this mean that the 163 existing grammar schools don’t already pursue this sort of social justice? According to the Sutton Trust, in selective school areas 3% of the children in grammar schools were on free school meals. In the same locality18% of non grammar school children received free school meals.

The education system can encourage social equality. Rather than taking a small proportion of bright poor kids and sticking them in grudgingly benevolent grammar schools lets put massive resourcing into the schools in poorer areas. Get the best teachers with higher salaries and subsidised housing and create the infrastructure and local economy to employ the high achieving youngsters.

Watch them shine.

Wednesday 13 July 2016

Whilst politicians cheat and deceive half our kids are failures



Supermum Leadsome and the adulterer Boris decided being ‘leavers’ was advantageous to their ambitions and manipulated the electorate. That the good people of Sunderland and Grimsby weighed up the likelihood of a fall in stock exchange values against the promise of £350 million a week for the NHS is admirable. The immediate 42% increase in race hate crimes is no-one’s fault.(BBC 08-07-16)

The sneaky duplicitous Gove says it is his, “privilege to serve,” but loyalty to Shaggy Boris was a step too far. I hope his love of classical education will comfort him as he descends Dante’s Hell, through those levels reserved for the greedy, the fraudulent and finally settling for eternity with the most treacherous. He may well meet 172 Labour MPs down there.

The politicians’ lack of care, understanding or interest ensures that teachers bore, alienate and fail our kids in homage to a romantic past, an education ideal that never existed. We witnessed dishonest, opportunistic slogan chanting in the referendum where they seduced the electorate they despise, only to reject within moments of victory their own promises on the NHS and immigration.

That hundreds of thousands of children are being falsely labelled failures matters not one jot compared to MP’s thirst for self-promotion.

Dodgy Dave, never tires of telling us about his blessed family, and tearfully used his affection for his dad as the reason he lied to parliament. If your underpants are too tight stop wriggling.

Last week one of Gove’s dwindling underlings, Pointless Morgan, tried desperately to explain that telling 47% of the country’s 11 year olds they had failed the new version of the 3Rs was nothing to worry about.

It is deliberate policy to instil failure into the majority of children and to identify the schools they attend as unworthy. It does take us nearer to the Tory dream of grammar schools – the good old days before working class families got uppity and their kids found ambition in schools that valued their achievements.

The first part of the failure game was to test the children at age 5 so that schools’ performance could be judged by progress at age 7. Incompetent officials discovered that their three measures were incompatible and the tests had to be abandoned. Amusingly, headteachers had been busy finding the hardest tests for 5 year olds, so that the children would score hardly anything and the school could show tremendous progress later on.

How long before teachers have to literally get into bed with pregnant mums to chant subordinate adverbial clauses at embryos?

Now we have tests at age 7, giving children three separate marks out of 100. The DfE has said it’s OK for schools not to pass the results to children or their parents. Well, what are they for, then? Here’s a test question for 7 year olds that some found ambiguous:

“There were some people on atrain.
19 people got off at the 1st stop.
17 people get on the train.
Now there are 63 people on the train.
How many people were on the train to begin with?”

(The answer: comes from x-19+17=63; so X=65.)

Recently Morgan decided there would no longer be parent places on school governing bodies, relegating them to tea making at school bazaars. Did the DfE officials – the experts – advise ministers that this might alienate parents who some of us see as vital to the success of the education process. Or is this a “jobsworth” situation

We do not need a knowledge based curriculum with an exam system designed to fail more kids. We do need a skills based education where children discover, discuss and decide, alone and in groups, in writing and orally, using ICT programs to present their solutions, able to evaluate and target their own success.

Tests at age 7 and 11 are taken by children who have spent months preparing, revising and relearning material solely relevant to the tests. The rest of what should be a creative, stimulating curriculum of discovery and mastery is cast aside because the tests are used to batter the primary schools.

We heard of previously happy children driven to tears of frustration and self-harming fear of failure by the mind numbing repetition of practising for the tests. The schools are blamed and dammed. Morgan told headteachers at a conference in May that she expected many more schools would see fewer pupils hitting expected scores. However she said the results would be “manipulated” to ensure the number of failing schools would be in the hundreds, not thousands.

Publicly' shamelessly and with no sense of irony the Secretary of State for Education announced that she will fiddle the results.

Weary teachers giggled when Gove told the Commons Select Committee that, “all schools must be above average.” Chancellor Osborne could not do a times table sum and Education minister Gibb failed a test question for 11 year olds. Nicky Morgan to refused to answer test questions. “…there will be one where I get it wrong and that's the one that everyone's going to be focused on.” (Daily Mirror 13-1-16) All the ministers were worried they would make mistakes if put under test conditions.

I've written books on English language. I reckon I can write to be understood, or wrap in camouflage and metaphor when the desire for obscurity appeals. Can I do the 11 year olds’ grammar test? How much use have we had for ‘determiners?’ Here’s guidance on how to teach them:

“The class may participate in a discussion about which words are determiners; for example, a child may be given the phrase 'happy girl' and suggest that the word 'happy' is a determiner. Class discussion could then lead to the teacher explaining that 'happy' is in fact an adjective.” (Schoolrun.com.)

Teacher assessments, coursework, resits, oral exams and controlled assessments have been abandoned because some kids in Shanghai take lots of tests. So we will test children against national standards at age 5, 7, 11, 14, 16 and 18 to emulate societies that we do not wish to mirror. Morgan says that the harder the test, the more they have learned. Thus we have GCSE Maths, now with A Level content so that it is inaccessible to around 50% of students. .

Back in 1980, Biology teachers at Little Ilford School set an exam where 3.5% was, “a really good mark.” What was the point? Then Biology, Chemistry and Physics teachers started to compete for kids to choose their subject. 98% became a fairly common score. Where was the learning?

There is a relationship between students, their parents and their teachers which praises effort, encourages progress built on self- belief, great teaching and respect, showing students what they can achieve by working hard. Show them that there’s no point in trying and things are going to get tough in our schools.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the civil servants working in the DfE. Those with principles fled into other jobs. Think for a moment of those who had to remain because of mortgages, access to stationery and their dreams of pensions and possibly a mention in the queen’s honours list for time serving. As they scurry around pleasuring the ministers, carrying out any number of contradictory tasks and producing nonsense like our assessment system remember that the bright ones left. Those with experience and understanding of state education left years ago. Gove told his senior staff I don't want your advice I want you to put in place what I say.

Out of DfE staff bonuses last year, the top civil servants received up to £17,500.((Schools Week 05-07-16) Do they still get luncheon vouchers?

Perhaps the DfE is full of Trotskyist cadres waiting for things to get so bad that they can step forward as the new leadership of an education revolution after which we will be freed to be creative, inspirational and sane.

Or will they mindlessly do exactly as they are told and excuse their compliance with, “I was just following orders?” Where did I hear that before?

Little more than a production line worker alienated from the product of his labour, the DfE officials are plodding along, “Yes Gove, Yes Gibbs, Yes Morgan,” as an alternative to unemployment.

In the last few days we have watched the parliamentary debate on Arts Education, where 12 MPs and Nick Gibb responded to hundreds of thousands of us in petitions. He dismissed the facts and that’s the end of debate. Such is democracy now. I wonder how heavy is the hand of history on Iraq-War Blair’s unaccountable shoulders this week.

Despite appeasing Tory MPs by publicly abandoning forced academisation Morgan was advised that Local Authorities will be forced to academies all schools due to a lack of money to keep open primaries. Dissembling is nothing but lies.

Stupidly, and he must know it, minister Gibb said that market forces will drive up teachers’ pay at a time when schools have deficit budgets .Let’s hope he’s been thoroughly tested; spouting nonsense might be contagious.

And if he or the Morgan-Gove folk think that I am going to make 50% of our kids waste their precious learning time on cramming, again, for the insult that is resit SATs on their first term at secondary school….

Wednesday 27 April 2016

The Last Thing That Teachers Need Is A Politician With Vision - As Tory education policy unravels, we can but hope


Jeremy Hunt employs the negotiating psychology of putting fingers in both ears and chanting La, La, La at the junior doctors in the dispute over imposed new contracts. I would be saddened to hear that he picked this up in his schooldays at Charterhouse (current fees £35,529) as my understanding is that such schools are tip top on their “soft skills” of people management, team building and problem solving. The numbers from abroad - an admittedly large place – are rising and 38.5% of the students whose parents live abroad travel from China and Hong Kong to study in our private schools. (Independent Schools Council 2016)They come from education systems we are told we must emulate. In the words of Michael Gove, Oxford educated like Hunt, Osborne , Cameron, Johnson and Morgan, “Yada, yada, yada.” Unlike doctors and teachers Cameron and his crew remain unburdened by integrity.

Listening to Nicky Morgan is painful and sometimes confusing as, for example, when she explained the Chancellor’s overnight reversal on cuts to Disability allowances saying that the Budget cuts were merely a “suggestion” (BBC Question Time March 2016). More worrying was her latest chilling performance :” As secretary of state, people expect me to set out my vision for the education system.” (BBC Question Time April 2016). Schools Minister, Nick Gibb used the “vision” thing three times in a minute on “Daily Politics” last week. Vision is a powerful word and spinning it at will presents a veneer of goodness and insight, unique and perhaps spectacular.

The result of our last General Election (24,3% of registered voters voted Conservative)) is that the Conservative Party claim a mandate to carry out all their manifesto promises. The academisation of all state schools was not in that manifesto. Nicky Morgan claims it as her unique vision. The Chancellor tried to hide his poor maths , announcing in his March 2016 budget the forced academisation of 17,000 schools. Last week, Cameron and Gibb proclaimed it as a no-surrender policy. Then this week we have the novel compromise, in response to vehement opposition from parents, teachers, councils and MPs, that the way to end the powers of the elected Local Authorities is to get those LAs to run multi academy trusts. All this might seem to be hurried, illogical and ill thought out but it was precisely the advice given by the Gove/Gibb created Policy Exchange Think Tank in September 2014.

Whose vision?

I have no desire or need for politicians’ vision or their “passion” and I want them to shut up and get on with their job: supporting teachers in their schools as they continue to provide what is generally wonderful teaching. “Let’s spend a billion pounds on changing school ownership,” is ideology in practice and evident waste. I want them to manage an education system based on evidence rather than their passionate visions. A scheme is not a vision.

Nicky’s vision has the consistency of a plate of overcooked spaghetti hastily discarded by the deposed Michael Gove who is currently busily vying with Boris and Dodgy Dave for the Enoch Powell role in politics.

Here’s a sign of hope for the future: The government ‘s dictat on academisation is looking foolish and the opposition to it has been powerful and immense. Three teacher unions have offered possible strike action to oppose this fag-packet policy and, ironically, been told to keep politics out of education.

Can we all do some more opposing, please.

Schools struggle to find suitable recruits in all subjects, bar P.E. Having a choice of candidates is now quite rare and we are considering abolishing the need to be a mammal as a qualification to teach science. There are lots of statistics around:

18,000 teachers left schools in the UK to teach abroad in international schools in 2014. (SchoolsWeek 24-09-15) 17,001 student teachers joined UK PGCE courses.

Nearly 50,000 teachers quit the profession in the last year – the highest number since records began (Sky News 26-02-16)

38% of teachers left by the end of their first year. (Guardian 31-03-2015)

53% of teachers are thinking of resigning within 2 years (Guardian 04-10-15)

The government’s target for recruitment has not been met in any of the last 4 years and we are short 3,400 teacher trainees in 2016 (ASCL)

Many headteachers are looking to leave their jobs.

Ministers are in talks about funding a new school-leadership college that would parachute graduates fresh out of university into headteacher, deputy and assistant headteacher positions after just two years of training. The college is the brainchild of three of education’s most high-profile figures: Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw (surely part of the problem) Sir Anthony Seldon, former master of the expensively private Wellington College and now vice chancellor of the UK’s only private university; and free-school pioneer Toby Young, whose school has had 3 headteachers in 4 years. (TES 22-04-2016)

Headship is, after all, an unskilled job.

At least the glaringly obvious crisis in teacher retention is acknowledged.

There are various reasons why teachers leave teaching and workload is a major headache, trying to meet the expectations of Ofsted and school managers at the same time as preparing excellent lessons. In response to 20,394 teachers substantive statements, Morgan set up three working groups on planning, marking and data management. I’m sure we told them to take a joined-up sort of holistic approach but they must have thought there was too much work for one group.

Each individual group agreed that workload was problematic and each concluded that school leaders ought to do something about that. It’s almost like they talked to each other.

We have masses of government data and simultaneous initiatives in every aspect of education, often last minute and sometimes retrospective. We can be dammed and sacked according to annually stiffened new Ofsted inspection criteria.

The working parties could have said, “Let schools implement the last 100 government demands and initiatives before new policies are announced, possibly with a little more consultation and planning.”

I think we all know that using on-line resources and electronic marking would strip away hours of tedium. Could we have a vision of this from the DfE, please.

We know that schools can be driven by fear of Ofsted. Look at what is said in a 2016 Ofsted Report on a school they judged as “Good”. The report is typical and explains why teachers work so hard outside the lesson:

Teachers do not always use the information they hold on students’ prior achievement to plan interesting activities that are of the right level of difficulty for all groups. This has limited the progress of some students over time, particularly in science.

Sometimes, students continue to make mistakes because feedback on their work does not make clear how they can improve, or because they are not given the opportunity to make the changes needed.

In response to the workload reports, Ofsted’s chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, says, “It is very important that schools maintain a sense of proportion when preparing for an Ofsted inspection. If they are devoting their energies to getting things right for pupils, then an Ofsted inspection will take care of itself.”

Oh yeah, that’s all right then.

I want to thank Geoff Barton for permission to use his school’s job description – is it still like this, Geoff?

King Edward VI Rules for staff in 1550

They shall abstain from dicing, gaming and tippling. They must not keep their family on the premises. Women like deadly plagues shall be kept at a distance. The masters shall not be excessively harsh or severe or weakly prone to indulgence. They shall teach a little at a time, with plenty of examples. They shall never advance to fresh subjects ... until the earlier ones are thoroughly understood. The teachers shall appoint two boys called censors to note offences. The teachers shall secretly appoint a third boy to watch the other two and report to the master any offences overlooked or not noticed. Shouting, quarrelling, noise, thieving, lying coarse language and the impertinence of boys leaving their proper places shall be repressed by the teacher. When it is thought fit to allow some relaxation to unbend the mind and sharpen the wits the boys shall amuse themselves in decent sports such as running races, the use of the javelin or archery. They shall not play dice, knucks (knuckle bones) or chuck farthing (tossing coins). These games are unworthy of a well bred youth. The privilege of recreation shall only be allowed on Thursdays and only then if the weather is fine and the work of the scholars justifies it. It’s a little different in 2016 and perhaps my themes of workload, academisation and teacher recruitment combine to reside in the Harris academy chain.

More than 1,000 teachers have left schools in the Harris Federation over the past three academic years. The data shows 465 teachers leaving Harris schools in 2014-15, 422 in 2013-14 and 375 in 2012-13. Latest DfE data records that Harris schools employed 1,116 teachers as of 2013-14. Harris reject the claim that this shows an annual teacher turnover of about 30%. (Guardian 30-10=2015)

The government respect the OECD and tell us we must perform at least as well as the best schools in the world. Here’s some help from them

An OECD annual report has revealed that teachers in England taught for roughly one hundred hours longer than the average for OECD countries.

The average UK primary teacher to pupil ratio is 1:21 (6 pupils above the OECD average) and the average secondary teacher to pupil ratio is 1:18 (5 pupils above average). (BBC News 25-11-2015)

UK teachers’ pay has declined in real terms from 2005 to 2015

A DfE spokesman responded, “Great teachers are at the heart of this government’s commitment to delivering educational excellence everywhere”

I told you there was hope.