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

I Love Ofsted

Jed slept soundly. He had arrived late and I had guided him to his seat and given him the materials being used in the lesson. There weren’t many; it was 1979 and the queue for the banda machine was not unlike the Black Friday rush for TVs in ASDA. It was a well heated room up three flights of stairs and I understood that Jed may be tired; after all who knows the daily experience of others prior to our lessons. I let him sleep quietly on and the class soon forgot he was there. It wasn’t a bad lesson as I recall; I was probably doing something personal with a poem but regardless, Jed slept on. At the end of the lesson the class and I connived for them to leave really quietly, sharing the joke.

It was my first year of teaching in an interesting East London comprehensive so I woke the LEA advisor for English and newly qualified teachers and asked how he rated my lesson. Jed must have offered something but it wasn’t memorable. I was promoted 4 times in 9 years at that school and Jed’s dreamy assessment was the only time I was ever observed teach.

School management teams did not observe us; teacher tutors were yet to be invented and LEAs were weak on monitoring. We needed someone to observe good teaching and disseminate good practice rather than leaving each teacher in an island, and each school in a desert. Standards of teaching, discipline and management were poor in many schools. It would be another 13 years until Ofsted was created in 1992.

I was first observed by an Ofsted Inspector in the mid 1990s. Our head managed to successfully challenge 30 judgements made by lead inspector Valerie  and the report ended up as nonsense with half complete sentences. I passed her in the car park and for some reason I still don’t understand, the inspector told me that she would stalk me throughout my career. She left Ofsted soon afterwards.

Mynext inspectors, at Chauncy, were a local authority team who criticised a languages carousel that the deputy lead inspector, the local authority’s Languages advisor, had himself helped create.

The next team was led by a tweedy, bejewelled Lady Joan and a gentleman who was distraught to come across a tomato ketchup sachet that a child had stamped on. His emotional  upset was decisive.

Ofsted team number 4 told us we would need a value added up around 1030 to get an outstanding grade. When questioned at national level about a local school receiving the outstanding grade with a value added of 998 I was told that school had shown progress. A nearby school got Grade 1 overall seemingly because the courteous male head charmed the lead lady inspector. I’ve never charmed an Ofsted inspector in what is now 5 inspections.

“Chauncy is an exciting and inspiring place ,” declared lead inspector of Team 5. We benefitted from her background as an English teacher even if she didn’t like my repeatedly quoting the John Lennon title, “How do you sleep/”

Here’s a thing. You stand a better chance of a good written Ofsted Report if the inspector is an English graduate. Some of them can’t write and at least two have been found to have used the “cut and paste” technique (Academies Week 06-09-14)

A friend has  abandoned his own Ofsted Training in disgust when his school was unfairly inspected  last month. The lead inspector steadfastly refused to follow Ofsted rules and advice. Whatever the Ofsted guidance it is the lead inspector who interprets and can destroy.

Guess who you complain to if unhappy with  Ofsted nspectors? Well, Ofsted, of course.

A nearby Headteacher was told to shut up by an inspector shouting at her as he dismissed the school’s achievements. No less than Wilshaw himself invited her to his office so he could apologise for disgraceful Ofsted behaviour. Like bullies everywhere the brave Wilshaw didn’t turn up – at his own office.

I have two local colleagues upset by a Grade 2 (Good) Ofsted and mealy mouthed, semi- literate, negative prose . Their conduct on inspection had left a bitter taste and thoughts of alternative employment.

Teaching is such a joyous fulfilment for most teachers but just how powerful is the unjustified, data driven misrepresentation of a lifetime’s work that one can receive almost at the whim of an inspector.

Teachers all over the country are hounded by flapping headteachers preparing them for Ofsted. Meeting after endless, distracting, tiresome preparation for Ofsted meeting forcing teachers to worry about looking good to Ofsted rather than helping children learn. Teachers walk away from their vocation over Ofsted, and many headteachers have been sacked on poor reports.

It might be easier if the Head of Ofsted wasn’t’ a bully himself. I well remember visiting Wilshaw’s St Bons in Newham in the 1980s.  A school characterised by teachers on corridors shouting at point blank range at students. Discipline was very tough. Expectations of academic achievement were high and the school made great strides up the new league tables. There are those who think the ends justifiy the means.

Mossborne Academy was created for and by the now knightly Wilshire and expectations are fantastically high. The uniform is one of those nice expensive ones, students may not gather in groups larger than 3 and parents failing to attend admissions interviews have had their children’s school place declined. Illegal of course,  but the message is clear: you will do precisely what we say or you will leave.

Strangely the only employee from Mossborne I know, a teacher highly rated by the head  is almost useless. Maybe the ethos and student compliance can carry the weakest teachers.

I have many stories about Ofsted and even though my inspections have always given us “Good” you might think I just don’t like other people’s rules, measures of success or inspectors themselves. And you would be right: anarcho syndicalism is a state of heart and soul

HOW TO SUCCEED WITH OFSTED

Expel difficult children.

Don’t take weak kids into school.

Select at age 11.

And now to expand:

Billy was a troubled Year 7 child.  We worked with him until it was clear that we were doing nothing for him and he was spoilng others’ chances. We could easily have expelled him and he would be gone from all accountability measures. We knew that expulsion would druin him  so we found expensive alternative provision. Billy came back at the end of Year 11 to thank  us.

RAISE is the official booklet showing how different subjects and groups of students have achieved. Ofsted use Raise to condemn or praise schools, regardless of other aspects of education. In Raise, green is good; blue is bad.

Billy was the defining factor in turning 13 different categories blue. A more sensible Headteacher would have expelled him for the sake of Ofsted. I am fond of quoting songs and poems at inspectors, so when faced with the news that our success as humanitarians with Billy made us failures in their terms I gave them  some Owen:

“Was it for this the clay grew tall?

Oh, what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?.”

Ofsted thought I was speaking in tongues. The poem is called “Futility”

Google  “School Performance Tables” and you will see that secondary schools are measured on the ways different groups of children perform. How do SEN, Free School Meals, white boys with Level 3s at age 11 achieve in the school at age 16. Schools fail inspections if they don’t “close the gap.”

Wander round your local schools’ performance tables and wonder at the inclusion of SUPP (for suppressed)  This is where there are so few low attainers on entry at age 11 that the school has no significant gap to close.

Look at the most selective schools and you will see that they also have very few kids on Free School Meals, so no gap to close.

Look at Grammar schools and be in awe of how few disadvantaged kids are allowed in. The myth of  grammar schools aiding the escape from poverty of bright working class kids is borne out by their Raise, their government Performance Tables and their Ofsted reports.

Well done you schools.

Able children make more progress than the less able – controversial? To say that a child who has managed a Level 2 by the age of 11, having made 2 levels of progress in 6 years will be able to make 3 levels of progress in the next 5 years does not hold up mathematically and certainly not in practice. For a Level 5 child at age 11 to make 3 levels of progress in the next five years is comparatively easy. Ofsted will measure your school against levels of progress so I suggest you do what so many high achieving schools somehow, accidentally, manage – keep ‘em out.

And now, in colour for the first time in 28 blogs and  50,000 words ,in graphical form, the work by @JTrevorBurton taken from his” Eating Elephants” site.  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..

Seems simplistic? Ofsted rely massively on data.

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.

Ofsted has been criticised for knee-jerk reactions to the latest scandals. Thus they descended on Birmingham last summer  and suddenly two schools rated, by Ofsted, as Outstanding, were now, after all, Seriously Weak. Ofsted never explained how their inspections failed to notice the serious weaknesses. But they certainly hammered the schools when the world was watching.

The tragic case of Baby P in North London throws up another Ofsted oddity. In 2007 Haringey Social Services, inspected by Ofsted, was given a “Good” grade. When the poor boy was murdered and the case took over national news, the record of the Good grade had disappeared to be replaced by an Inadequate ruling. And Ofsted ducked all criticism whilst damming those it had inspected..

This isn’t nice is it? The head of social services got her day, and payout in court, but she was destroyed by the press.

I know it is going back a way but the Head of Ofsted 1994 -2000, Chris Woodhead who created the bullying regime, making  headline , announcements like, “30,000 bad teachers in our schools,” never liked the question about his full relationship with a sixth form girl whilst “teaching” her and then lying on oath about it when challenged It was legal back then. He said teachers didn’t deserve a payrise whilst demanding, and getting, a 30% rise for himself. (New Statesman  26-04-99)

Academies run by a government approved superhead, Rachel de Souza, were so well informed of the date Ofsted would visit that they imported star teachers to perform on the inspection days ( Guardian 17-08-14) Accurate to the day emails from De Souza saying “only 3 weeks to go until Ofsted visit” are a mite embarrassing but I guess it’s OK to look after your mates in these matters.

The Academy Chain, AET, really really, really can’t rest easy now that their trustee, David Hoare, has been appointed Chair of Ofsted. So good is AET that it was barred from taking on more schools amid reports of falling standards (Guardian 12-08-14)

The underperforming AET chain of academies could tell staff that Ofsted had given notice that it would inspect 12 of its schools in June  2014.And they were spot on.

The National Union of Teachers – a voice rarely heard by Wilshaw – claims, “Ofsted no longer has the confidence of the teaching profession.”

They are Gove’s enemies of promise so how about Primary School headteachers:

“The NAHT can no longer work with Ofsted’s adversarial approach.”

The Logal Government Association, again in 2014, said that  a series of u-turns and leaks had “undermined Ofsted’s credibility.”

School management and local education authorities failed to promote the highest standards in schools. This does not mean that the imposition of an aggressive regime dominated by data and fear is the way to treat teachers and school communities. We need a fair and impartial professional view of what makes a good school and this is certainly not a perpetually Ofsted- ready school where we justify actions on what Ofsted want. 

On Wednesday of this week Wilshaw addressed the nation in ways that allow the press to believe that we are in a perilous state. We are not. Teaching and achievement in schools is light years ahead of where we were when Ofsted was created in 1992.

Ofsted has not complained that the political interference of the last 4 months means that GCSEs are now harder to pass. Ofsted did not comment on the 10% national decline in pass rates that resulted. The bar below which schools are said to be failing has been raised again by another 10%. So more schools are bound to fail Ofsted’s GCSE driven inspections.

What a pity that the Chief Inspector of Schools has to impose guilt to get on the radio.

If only Ofsted’s ideology had progressed beyond bullying in those 20 years . If Ofsted leaders could see a way towards constructive conversations with schools packed full of professionals working their hardest we would welcome their help – maybe in a loving embrace. 

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

End of Term Report: Go Now Michael Gove, Make Haste, But Quietly Please

End of Term Report: Go Now Michael Gove, Make Haste, But Quietly Please


I have been struggling with what seems to me to be a mightily appropriate metaphor but it is one so brutal it may offend; unless one sees it as a metaphor of course.

              “And I hope that you die

               And your death’ll come soon

                I will follow your casket

                In the pale afternoon

               And I’ll watch while you’re lowered

               Down to your deathbed

               And I’ll stand over your grave

             ‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.”

I use Dylan’s angriest song, "Masters of War," to show my anger at the destruction of state education.

The news that Gove has been sacked as Education Secretary rushed joyfully around our schools. He had done his job, smashing a state education system that he despised and his fellow privately educated ministers ignored. He’s off now to be Chief Whip, flattering Cameron and telling fibs about Theresa May whose job he coveted. His wife, the barely readable Sarah Vine, hides his underwear (The Times 04-05-11) so there’s a more useful way he can while away the empty hours - searching for his knockers. He owes Murdoch money but he may join The Daily Mail, editing the newspaper that should not speak its name, cobbled for people that share his fantasies and challenged lifeform.

http://games.usvsth3m.com/slap-michael-gove/

 So end of term, how did it go Michael?

You introduced many new exams, the most dangerous at age 16 and 18 where you return us to speedwriting memory tests which will mess up children’s opportunities, and the silliest at age 5 when teachers interview tots for 30 minutes – a sort of viva, I guess. The private schools threw out your new exams and carried on with iGCSEs. Now that many of us have copied, “from the very best the independent sector has to offer,” (Gove in My Academy Spring 2014) you are finding all sorts of ways to stop us as they are not fit qualifications. Goodness knows what will happen to all those Eton boys whose qualifications are rubbished at university and job interviews when up against comprehensive graduates.

 You rewrote the History Curriculum. Your own view of history is unique, biased and unsound. We do not understand history by starting at Year zero at age 5 and progressing chronologically through Ethelreds and Caesars, great men of each century, until we reach the benign misunderstood First World War generals at age 16. To you history is unconnected great British men and there are no themes and certainly no lessons to be learned studying the development of state education.

State schools have no money because you cut us to pay for your toys. With increased costs, government capital funding diverted to your toy schools and 6th form funding slashed by at least 20% in the last 3 years you have sent us all to the brink of financial disaster. A 6th Form college has just replaced lecturers with unqualified facilitators. The Education Funding Agency has now decided that a 6th Former doing 3 A Levels is part time and therefore lower funded. Call it theft and be done.

 Teachers have been insulted and their unions ridiculed. You raised the retirement age, gave us new pay policies, pay structures, performance management and a 1% pay rise for the next 4 years, if we can meet your exam only targets.

Your childhood must have been miserable for you to believe our children should learn by rote. Drama, Art and Music are relegated to “prep.” You seek control of our schools directly from your untutored office. You have been the most interferingly unlistening, unadvised political ideologue in the history of state education. You may rewrite history, but we will remember you.

 You spent £2 million insulting teachers by prattling on about what skills the 200,000 redundant ex-military men could bring to our classrooms. You managed 42 and the DfE added injury, “Entry requirements were deliberately high to ensure top-quality recruits…(they will need) GCSEs at Grade C in English and Maths.” Nothing more?

And just this month there is the idea that retired people could fill the gaps in our staffing. Perhaps a sacked politician could teach a lesson a week of KS3 Maths. Continuity means nothing to you.

                     “You that never have done anything but build to destroy

                       You play with my world like it was your little toy”

 You sent the anti terrorist squad to investigate possible political interference by muslims in Birmingham and then your mate at Ofsted, announced no notice Ofsted inspections. First visiting, surprise, surprise a 95% African Caribbean school in North London. You’re anti European Community anti some religious groups running schools and very pro some others – Christian and Jewish religions – running theirs. You put down multi-cultural society and integrated communities and lecture us on British Values. Values like fair play, equal opportunity, honesty and integrity?

It’s only school dinners, nutrition v obesity, but you dropped school meals standards for academies in 2010, and after lunch with the Leon restaurants sent them, pals of Cameron from schooldays to investigate in 2012. Now you attack school meals standards in 2014. Opportunity knocked, Michael?

You rob our students of their earned exam success and your mate, Glenys Stacey, last seen howling at a departing, mocking audience of school leaders, “I am independent of Gove, honest; we never meet, believe me…” Michael says he doesn’t want kids studying great American literature at GCSE and it immediately disappears from the syllabus. Great independent minds thinking alike?

 Gove and Stacey reckon there’s too much preparation of students (state school only, not those doing “prep” of course) She wants teachers to tell her, anonymously when we engage in bad practice: teaching to the syllabus, counselling, coaching, study skills, mnemonics, mind maps and mock exams. Some schools warm up the kids before an exam, give them a banana and a bottle of water and then have professional invigilators in air conditioned well lit halls. Halls with clocks. For exams to be fair, “ungamed,” state school students take exams in the dark, wearing blindfolds and mittens. They should not be told what the exam is about or how long it is.

You brutally condemned people who disagree with you, “Yada, Yada!” you chanted on Question time, “bad academics” you called the professors who told you to stop meddling. And the rest of us,? Seems we are, inelegantly, “The Blob.” Your special advisers tweeted @toryeducation against all counter Gove views. You denied knowledge of them and then obeyed orders to tone them down. Oops! You refused freedom of Information requests for your files on spurious grounds and were ordered to comply. Lying, Cheating and Dissembling is not very British, Mr Gove.

 Do you remember when that Parliamentary Select Committee mocked you for saying that all schools have got to be above average. Liz Truss ordering us to do better than the Shanghai selective schools. Schools which do not admit the sizeable local servant class. Around 95% of the Chinese school system is years behind us with an early leaving age, massive truancy and illiteracy all conveniently discounted from the results published by the OECD as PISA.”

You deliberately misled about international exam tables and you were mugged in every country you visited. When they took you to their model schools you slathered and salivated and told us to better them. When you visit English schools they send the bad boys on a trip to “a long way away” (Secret Teacher, The Guardian 20-06-14) and you must think we paint walls freshly every day. A week ago, your staff wrote your congratulatory speech on a visit to my friend’s school four hours before you arrived.

 Enough of your past; here’s your legacy

Four University Technology Colleges, triple funded, have been inspected by Ofsted. One is Outstanding (well done you) two have orders to improve (that’s a 3 they got) and the 4th achieved a mighty 4 (Special Measures.) 1 out of 4 is embarrassingly awful.

 The Bedford Free School head, Mark Lehain you paraded at conference, strutted your stuff to blue rinse applause, NUT are on strike today, he gloated, so we have sent recruiting leaflets to families telling them we don’t strike. Clap, clap, clap. Ofsted came; they got a 3 and he bleated that it was too soon to be judged.

When Gove visited a UTC last week he had to talk about the failure to open the Fulham Free School. A very cross headteacher, Alun Ebenezer, felt let down. I swear he did say, “This is an outstanding school.” It hasn’t even opened.

Lord Toby Young, darling of the Free School, founder of the West London Free School cannot keep a headteacher; I guess we aren’t necessary, but three heads in two years? And when,Toby, will you need the publicly funded 2nd building?

Academy chains are so admired by Gove as they are in perfect position to introduce the Tory dream grammar schools. 14 such chains, yes 14, managing over 170 schools have been barred from taking on more schools because of concerns over, “education standards and financial mismanagement.” (Daily Telegraph 19-03-14). The 34 strong E-ACT chain has been ordered to relinquish control of 10 schools following Ofsted inspections found serious weaknesses in the quality of education. Kids being failed, Michael.

 Grace Academy, which runs three schools in the Midlands and was set up by the Tory donor Lord Edmiston, has paid more than £1m to companies owned by the governors and their families. Lots of shocking figures in this article including one family member earning, “£367,732 from Grace Academy over the last six years for consultancy work.” (The Guardian 12=01-14)

The TKAT chain boasted to the parliamentary select committee, they had dispensed with,“within weeks of conversion, 26 out of our 40 headteachers and many other senior staff.” ((BEN 29-01-14)

The Prospects Academy chain was forced to close (BBC News 20-05-14) after 2 of its 6 schools were deemed inadequate. More public money squandered on another ill-thought-out gamble with children’s education.

 Tory Party darling, Katharine Birbasingh (Gove calls her “often”) had had many jobs in her 10 year teaching career when she wowed conference with disturbingly disloyal pictures of her failed students. Lost her job for that but has been given her own free school in Wembley. Joy of joy, to see the very attractive and happy children’s faces on the school’s website. Oh dear, they have no school, no site and no students. Stop using photos of kids Burba and stick to writing your who to shag, “Singleholic” nonsense.

Finally, almost, and briefly you will appreciate, Free School funding – a.k.a. diverting money to open free schools. “Free schools budget trebled to £1.5 billion” (BBC 11-12-13).The average cost per free school is £6.6 million – twice what the DfE claims, according to the National Audit Office (NAO December 2013) The NAO says there have been problems, “financial mismanagement claims at 3 open free schools… More than a quarter of all spending on school buildings – £241 million has been on free schools in areas with no need for extra places” the NAO claims. The Public Accounts Committee claimed, “one in four desks at free schools were empty.(POA December 2013. In May 2014 Gove raided the education budget for another £400 million to shore up his free school lunacy.

But are they any good? “The percentage of free schools given Ofsted’s lowest, ‘inadequate’ rating is now nearly twice as high as the rest of the state sector.” (Observer 14-05-14) and this means that 11% of kids in frees schools are badly taught. Children are being failed.

By Tuesday of last week I had read 470 students’ reports of ambition nurtured by their teachers. I spoke with 200 parents and awarded 650 prizes on Wednesday. On Thursday I welcomed 166 nervous children for their first day at secondary school and that evening I was moved by Facebook praise, smiling children, relieved parents and our tireless, uncomplaining staff at the end of another 12 hour day. The following day we welcomed 1058 children aged 4 – 11 to our school, Beverley cooked with 245 of them in one go! Bag packing at Tescos for our Air Ambulance charity; a carwash in the rain for Peacechild International and sponsorship of many walkers to treat Children’s Cancer raised £1600.This is our community and we are proud of it. That evening we danced, sang, wigged out as 40 or so acts at our rock concert filled the halls. Our Art Exhibition wowed hundreds. This is what we do, and another 16 hour day ended as parents and staff mopped the floor.

 You can never and most certainly will never be part of this, Michael. You wont ever see it and your imagination, stuck in yourself and your dreamless machinations, will never, ever enjoy what we do.

If unbridled optimism is all we've got, if spirit is all we have to oppose the devil then I’ll settle for that.

I want to do this forever.

You can't stop me .

 Bye, Mickey.