CHOOSING A SECONDARY SCHOOL

Around this time every year thousands of families complete their secondary school choices. The lucky ones can send their 11 year olds to a good local school that, like a house purchase, just feels right. There’s lots of sound educational research showing that most kids do well when their parents support them in schools (and many do badly when their parents don’t.) Parents who make sure their kids read, do a bit of homework, talk with them occasionally and make sure that phones and games machines are nowhere near their bedrooms, these parents may enjoy the secondary school experience more than they had feared.

For those who are struggling to make the choice – and often this is limited by postcode and income – here’s my 3rd Choosing A Secondary School blog.

In East Hertfordshire some people will choose to send their children to private schools because they have more money than sense and/or they want their neighbours to know that they are better than them. My money is a measure of my worthiness and if I have struggled to pay then my sacrifice is my justification. 7% of children are in private schools, many in the low achieving hippy-rich mickey mouse institutions we have in the shires.

Many private schools are still entering children for iGCSEs rather than GCSEs. The Department for Education said that iGCSEs are sub-standard and not fit for purpose. There are no league tables, national curriculum, SATs or Ofsted inspections for private schools. Just give them your money; tell your friends.

In most areas of the country private schools rank no higher than state schools. I have taught and reared children who have done better in exams than every private school child in our nearest, snobbiest, £34,000 a year, most esteemed private school.

The slouching, silver-spooned Rees Mogg didn’t like the bedclothes at Eton so nanny came every week to change them for the 11 year old.

Some parents make a conscious, rational decision to get rid of their kids for as long as possible by sending them to boarding schools and paying up to £40,000 a year.  It’s like being in care without the stigma and children do mess with one’s social life. Young people’s prisons cost at least double per inmate and the food isn’t nearly as good. Private school will possibly teach your children the manners parents should have instilled but, as the short story writer Saki said, “if you truly want a boy to be vicious you have to send him to a good public school.”

So, on to more practical advice on how to choose a secondary school.

Go Local

I want to see local schools which welcome all children who can access the curriculum. I want everyone in our area to have a good school where their children can be safe, happy and successful; a school that unites people in a community, regardless of race, religion, gender or wealth.

Sort of, a school high on morality, community: an equal opportunity meritocracy.

If your child is in a local school they can walk in with their friends, attend before-school and after-school clubs, go for tea with their friends, make friends for life and just be normal. Much of what we offer children is the social interaction with other children and being ferried in and out by parents does not help anxious children develop confidence. Local families with a local school at the centre of their community.

Schools are better now

If you are choosing a new school for your children, please understand that the vast majority of our schools are much better than when you went to school yourself. Teachers are better teachers and lessons are fuller, better resourced, supported by online software and carefully planned.

Talk to People

Your neighbours and their children know a lot about their school.  It’s best not to accost stray children for interrogation as our CCTV and Safeguarding procedures are really good.

Selection by Religion

I have written many times about my concerns for faith schools. They are by design separatist and divisive and encourage social segregation. However, faith schools can now admit 100% Catholics, Jews or Muslims and will safely prevent your children coming into contact with people with different ideas on the meaning of life, relationships and gods.

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 characterised by largely irrelevant SATs in Year 6 and Year 11 GCSEs that measure very little. I was taught the Catholic view of many things, which included virgin birth, resurrection and the chastity of priests.

Take care with Ofsted

One of our local outstanding schools was last inspected 8 years ago – a school lifetime – staff, children, headteacher and governors have changed. I have previously reproduced research showing that many of our “outstanding” schools have the highest pupil scores on admission in Year 7. The correlation between Year 6 attainment of a school’s intake and Ofsted rating is stunning. It is statistically harder for mixed comprehensives to satisfy Ofsted than for a fat man on a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

I wonder if the point of secondary admissions is to stop the children most in need of a good education actually getting in to the best schools. And, inviting approbation and condemnation from my colleagues, some headteachers seem actively engaged in turning away these children.

Selection By Grammar School

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.

However, real school achievement is the progress made by students in the time between joining the school at age 11 and leaving at age 16.  Progress 8 tells parents how well bright kids did and grammar schools are not always the best at this.

Rather than taking a small proportion of bright poor kids and sticking them in grudgingly benevolent grammar schools let’s 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. Admire and emulate virtually all of Scandinavia.

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

Comprehensives Selecting Too

If the school has a test – usually looking for musical or linguistic ability is that your good school? How can comprehensives select their students?

If a school, “tries hard with kids with special needs but is not very good at it,” is that a sign of excellence?  Look out for the schools that tell parents that the school is jolly good with exceptionally bright children.

Schools defend themselves:

Why should schools admit kids who need a little extra help, children who should flourish in an outstanding school, if there is a risk that Ofsted will criticise, league tables condemn and parents choose elsewhere?

NHS hospitals could prosper by turning away sick people as unsuitable.

Some of the “outstanding” schools find educating children who need a little help the equivalent of climbing mountains in ankle length skirts, which brings us to,

Selection By School Uniform

For some parents the uniform rules can be a tremendous signal of a school’s worth: if it is unfashionable and expensive and can only be bought in one shop there’s your good school? I was speaking with a parent whose son’s blazer cost £130, and very pretty it was too. They may be acting illegally but who’s going to tell? I bet his blazer has never been a goalpost.

Selection by Income

Some schools expect an annual “voluntary contribution” from parents – a useful message for families struggling to survive on low incomes at a time when wages have fallen behind prices. I know of a school where the USA football trip – already out of many budgets – demanded that each player’s family bought a £1000 Quiz Night table. Another school requires every student to have their own iPad. Helps keep out the riff raff.

Beware Open Evenings

My imaginary, “How to be a Headteacher” course tutors us in how to describe our schools. On Open Evenings we are all unique, have a special ethos where moral values are important and teaching and learning are at the heart of what we do.(I love that bit) Emphasise that, “We teach a traditional academic curriculum and have the highest standards.” One must state, “We have many gifted and talented students,” and then the truisms, “We have the highest standards of behaviour,” and “We aim to help all students fulfil their potential?”

Can you imagine a Headteacher suggesting, “Our standards and expectations are low; we tolerate ill-discipline, kids are scruffy on purpose, our curriculum is useless; we don’t care if they progress or do well?” Quite obviously, the opposite of what we say at these events is unimaginable – “the law of the ridiculous reverse” (Simon Hoggart quoted in an excellent “Choosing a secondary school” article in The Guardian 23rd September 2014)

Emphasise Latin if you’ve got it. My daughter achieved a very good Vocational Latin grade that would endear her school to the pariah, Michael Gove.

As I approach my 20th Open Evening as a Headteacher I am aware that these events are proof that every science lesson contains explosions or volcanic actions and that PE teachers wear suits. One must never consider how many children, on how many occasions, contributed to the building of a wonderful car. The Headteacher, my friend, Kit Car Steve has retired; the car lives on.

The money a school has in its accounts was allocated to schools to educate children. Thousands of pounds are spent on glossy brochures, designer websites and superfluous adverts. Pose the children carefully by the nice tree; blonde girls with ponytails most prominently.

School facilities may well be very good but say, “state of the art,” “the envy of others” or even “the finest in the country,” and pray that no-one asks for the evidence. A few computers in a library can be state of the art to some of us older people.

Tour the School During the Day

Are the children happy, busy, silent, occupied, interested, active, co-operating? Is the school well resourced, warm, well heated, ventilated, safe? Ask about extra curricula matters, staff turnover, pastoral care and watch the interaction between staff and students and between the students themselves.

Choose your own criteria and be very upset by girls’ skirt length.

Finally...

Tell schools your Level 6, gifted daughter plays violin for England and watch them fall over themselves to form a disorderly queue for her admission.

Dennis O'Sullivan

Wouldn’t it be funny if headteachers marched on parliament

Wouldn’t it be funny if headteachers marched on parliament. 

Perhaps carrying Father Ted’s placards demanding, “Down with this sort of thing.” 

In the UK I voted Remain but backed Brexit to win. In the USA I would have voted for just about anyone rather than Donald Trump but I took “new customer” odds of 16-1 on his victory. I was convinced that white working class people in Europe and America feel abandoned by politicians. The system has failed them, they’re not, “Just About Managing.” They are increasingly disenfranchised and angry. 

The good news about Brexit is that politics is in such a mess that schools have been recently spared the constant meddlings of the latest career building Education Secretary. The bad news is that the government is patronising us with “Brexit means Brexit” doublespeak whilst our public services are crumbling. 

Am I alone in finding it rather unnerving that Jeremy Hunt has said it is bad that A&E waiting times are lengthening? He is after all, Secretary of State for Health since 2012. 

I suggest that headteachers are voting Trump-like and Brexit -like whilst maintaining our middle class educated status – and comfortable lifestyles . We have elected Geoff Barton as our general secretary, against our union leadership’s advice. 

There is a recruitment crisis (There are more teachers than ever before – DfE) as pupil numbers soar: “The pupil population is currently expected to rise by 450,000 from 6.45 million in 2016 to 6.9 million in 2020” (Institute for Fiscal Studies 21-10-15) 

Teachers take-home pay has been reduced year on year for the last 7 years (Schools are free to pay teachers more says the DfE.) With cuts in school budgets how can schools cover any pay rise? 

4 out of 10 academies are in deficit and the rest are heading there (We have maintained real terms money to schools - DfE ) whilst grants have been cut and government- determined cost rises leave a school like mine with an extra £300,000 to find this year. And I can’t put prices up. 

Are we really to be abused by government language? Guess the single one word they removed from the “National Fair Funding Formula.” 

The curriculum is a Gove-inspired return to Victorian times. A doublespeak notion that kids learn more if the content is too difficult and telling 47% of 11 year olds they have failed is somehow a good thing. 

But we all know all this: the many headteachers who left their jobs this year knew it. A colleague who has his stopwatch counting the seconds to retirement knows it. In this – the Armageddon Year of state education – a “good” North London school had three applicants for their vacant headship, and only two turned up on the day. 

The ASCL – the secondary heads’ union of choice usually chooses its new General Secretary according to an etiquette ensuring unopposed candidates. ASCL has now had its leadership’s chosen candidate opposed for the first time. And beaten. 

The new man is no raging leftie. He is a midlands comprehensive school headteacher, sometime “advisor” to the government and a writer on literacy. 

I hope it was Max Weber who wrote that the central task of a bureaucracy is to protect itself. 

I think myunion’s bureaucracy has suffered from the broadening of its membership. Including Independent schools, free schools, multi academy trusts and business managers in an already conservative school leaders’ association has led to a frustrating and destructive inertia. The ASCL “call to action” email this week suggested we write to MPs about the dire state of school finances. 

As if our MPs care. 

Personally. I think they have been bored by my airing concerns about an inappropriate school curriculum, politely waiting for me to shut up. 

Two years ago 31 Hertfordshire heads lobbied our 5 Tory MPs in the House of Commons. We gave them our financial facts and they said “Secretary of State Morgan says you have plenty of money.” 

This was before Trump’s “alternative facts.” 

Everyone agrees that our costs have risen by around 7.5%. That’s close to £10 million across those 31 schools. 

DfE advice seems to be that we can save that by bulk buying toilet paper. Not by sacking teachers, employing unqualified (cheap) staff, cutting subjects like music, drama and geology, closing school libraries and ending support for children with special needs. The Institute for Fiscal Studies: “ … we forecast that school spending per pupil is likely to fall by around 8% in real terms.” (IFS October 2015) 

In West Sussex, Oxfordshire, North Somerset and no doubt an increasing number of areas around England, headteacher groups are vocally opposing government cuts to education, the decimation of SEN provision and increasing grammar school selection. 

We were assured that Mrs May’s sop to UKIP voters would address the tiny numbers of “disadvantaged” children in existing grammar schools and was about offering all parents a choice of good schools. 

In a search for elegant language to describe how we are once again being disrespected and misled I came up with this: 

Lies are Lies. 

It was revealed on Wednesday that ministers had invited grammar school leaders to apply for £150m for new selective school places. Existing grammar schools left their meeting with education ministers Justine Greening and Nick Gibb smugly briefing that new grammars will not need to worry about kids on free school meals and will be able to select the top 10%. 

Out of touch, conceited politicians in awe of outdated and failed old tory ideas divert money from children’s needs. Frightened civil servants in the DfE collude to lead us back to the 1950s. 

The heads in West Sussex have warned that schools will have to cut hours, increase class sizes or stop teaching some subjects. 

They have told MPs that "throughout our campaign school leaders have sought to be 'relentlessly reasonable'; now we are simply furious". 

I see the vote for a new General Secretary of the ASCL as a Network (the film featuring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch ) parallel. Open your windows and shout into the night – “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.” By the way, watch Finch’s stunning 101 second performance on Youtube. 

Good luck, Geoff Barton. I hope you can lead us into more meaningful opposition to the deliberate destruction of our children’s education. I hope the ASCL council realise why we voted. 

I’ve got my marching boots ready. 

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.