SCHOOLS OPEN, TEACHERS SACRIFICED, BORIS OK

Let’s get straight to it: If we reopen our schools some teachers will catch the covid-19 virus and some will die.

We know that Boris cares for state education. I remember he mentioned it on the eve of the General Election. He also said something about increasing funding. Schools have now been told that they will have to fund any government awarded teacher pay rise  out of existing budgets. Cuts, therefore continue.

We know he cares about teachers because he read out a list on Sunday where we were placed in the appropriate alphabetical order.

Scientists of different varieties say:

• Children do or don’t get the covid-19 virus.

• Kids don’t die much from the virus.

• Students may or may not transmit the virus less or more than adults.

But the government has a road map.

Some schools are to re-open from June 1^st. The least sensible option would be to call in those children who can’t socially isolate, like to play with soft things and occasionally need a plaster. The least vital returnees would be those who can’t now do the inessential post SATs work. Oh dear, the road map signals Reception, Year1 and Year 6 to start first. Their unions don’t agree. Do you think primary teachers would have prioritised these children?

Do you think they were asked?

When it comes to opening schools, whilst the virus rules and there’s no vaccine, it’s just a suicide mission for some of us; maybe just a few, dozens, hundreds.

I want no-one to worry about this: if you fear for your own or your family’s health I am not in the business of signing death warrants, or attending any more children’s or teachers’ funerals. Be aware of your family’s health, yes, be alert to the possibilities and stay home to stay safe.

Let’s not worry about the radio phone-in whingers who say “You’re being paid; go to work. When I was a boy…”

Let’s smile sweetly at those who say we’ve been on a long holiday these last 8 weeks. I’ve seen the amount of work set, phone-calls, emails, video/google/zoom lessons and meetings. I’ve seen all the data that shows how each student is working in every subject and yes, I know, a third of them (in my school)  haven’t been doing much if anything. I’ve seen the predicted grades \ rank order deliberations and rewrites and I’ve heard the disappointment from teachers who have worked really well with Year 11s and this was going to be a record breaking year. No teacher wants to work from home – we’ve always been in it for the kids and this home schooling lark is dull for teachers, too.

Many of the younger staff live in flats without balconies or communal gardens. They, too, are stir-crazy and have been clamouring to be put on our care of key workers rota so they can come to school. Many are struggling with reticent children of their own and trying to get them off one tablet and on to a laptop, once they have finished setting on line lessons themselves. Their children, I hope, are not amongst the 170,000 children classed as homeless in the UK.

We’ve delivered goggles and gloves to a hospital and I’ve been released to drive thousands of masks to care homes, special schools, paramedics, hospice and surgeries in and around Ware. A 4^th teacher joined the 3 who have spent weeks making these masks, another has been making surgical gowns. Parents and friends donated almost £3,000 so that we can make up for some of the deficiencies in a NHS condemned by 10 years of cuts by Boris and his mates.

When this virus passes, fades or ends let’s make sure no government ever abandons the NHS, its workers, or our health without us doing a little more than clapping.

Our staff are desperate to get back to working with children. As a preliminary, do I get staff and parents to sign a waiver in case they get seriously ill?

As an employer of around 130 people I have a duty of care to each of them and I cannot deliberately put them at risk. Some politicians and the DfE say we don’t need PPE and we must not wear surgical masks because that will reduce the supply to the NHS. These giants may offer some Turkish gear, cheap. However 8% of teachers in a recent TES survey agreed that they do not need PPE, the other 92% were wrong of course.

I don’t expect to see anyone with asthma, diabetes or epilepsy in school. I will not be chasing, admonishing or failing kids and staff who are frightened to come to school – or should I force them? You see, schools are recognised as hubs for the transmission of diseases in normal times and I doubt this virus will back off knowing this return to school is an attempt at herd immunity by stealth.

Because we really want to teach, see our shared role in saving the economy and teaching the kids who will have to mop up this disaster for years, this is how my school could start when we welcome any secondary school students in a pandemic, and that might not be for months yet:

• The current year 10 only will be taught Monday - Thursday only. We will do lots of cleaning on Fridays as well as having site staff cleaning anything that doesn’t move, all day long, every day.

• Half of the year group will come in from 9.00am - 12.00pm. The other half will do 12.30pm - 3.30pm (No calling for your mates, getting on a bus, walking with anyone, giving friends a lift).

• Kids will line up 2 metres apart in the playground.

• Groups of 12 maximum will be escorted to a room where they will stay.

• Instead of hour long lessons we will “teach” 40 minute classes.

• Classes will have subject specialists but probably not the teacher who has taught this group since September.

• I will be on corridors wearing one of our visors and I will bark at children getting close.

• In those rooms kids will be seated 2 metres apart.

• The teacher, in a visor or own mask, will not get closer than 2 metres to a student.

• There will be no handing out of books or equipment after initial distribution. 

• The teacher will not be able to look at your work, do any marking as you write, nor will they collect in work.

• Kids will be escorted out of the building for breaks where they will stay 2 metres apart or receive a piercing blast on a deputy head’s disposable whistle.

• There will be no drama lessons and no PE involving changing rooms.

• At 12.00pm students will be able, by prior appointment, to enter the canteen (two metres apart) and take a previously purchased (by Wisepay not cash or cheque) packed lunch from a long table. Then leave the building and go home.

• The 12.30pm attendees will start in the playground and be escorted……

• Teachers and Teaching Assistants will work according to a rota; admin as required and cleaners a lot more. We will be cleaning surfaces all day, if we have enough disinfectant now that Mr Trump has reduced availability.

We have written a timetable for this scenario. Staff with existing conditions, pregnancy, illness,  screened or sick relatives at home cannot be called upon. I’m 67 and fat and the doctor says I have asthma – do I go in?

So lots of cover work. Those kids who benefit from closer help, a bit of live marking or even a pat on the back will have to get used to formality.

The teachers will go home and set work for the other 800 kids on line.

That’s week one for Year 10. What do we do in week two?

There’s no way these students can be judged by exams alone, is there?

So Year 7, 8 and 9 keep doing the work at home. Year 6: We have a plan to help you visit us in small groups before September. You can’t come until the shops open to sell you a school uniform.

We want to teach, to care and nurture our young people, to help them see how important and valuable each of them is and how every last one of them has a part to play in creating a fairer society and world. Politicians should listen to us.

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

Why You Shouldn’t Think of Teaching

Has there ever been a more obvious time when UK politics uses “The Joker” as its theme, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.” Whatever else is true in these politically desperate times, Corbyn and Johnson pay little heed to education. There are 10.2 million school age kids in the UK but they don’t have a vote so they don’t matter. And, unlike many of the countries held up as examples of excellence, UK parents don’t always prioritise education when voting. An exaggerated pre-election spendthrift budget and we’re meant to forget the last decade of austerity?

We have a teacher recruitment crisis in our schools. Look at the number of unqualified, supply or overseas teachers employed in any school you know.

An 8% cut in school funding over the last 9 years (Institute for Fiscal Studies) and year on year below inflation pay deals ensures potential, budding and experienced teachers look elsewhere. The phrase, “Come on if you think you’re hard enough,” may aptly apply to some teachers’ lives in some London schools and there is a recruitment crisis in London as everywhere else. Today the government announced that new teachers will start on £30,000 in 2023. That’s sort of ignoring the fact that London teachers already start on £30,479.

It will help recruitment if teachers are better paid but this year’s unfunded 2.75% with inflation at 2.0% is hardly going to turn heads.

The most recently sacked education minister, Damian Hindes, told us to teach older students how often to change their bedsheets. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48926535) There’s a man with his finger firmly on an alternative reality button – maybe it isn’t just Johnson, Stewart and Gove on various marching powders.

The new unelected (brief?) prime minister, Boris Johnson has privately, and expensively educated all his legitimate children. He has committed to “levelling up education,” which is a profoundly misleading and potentially meaningless term. (https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/analysis-the-prime-ministers-promise-to-level-up-school-funding/) He will ensure that our kids are funded to £5,000 which is less than 14-16 year olds already.

It’s a wonder that his eldest daughter survived school costing him £33,000 a year or his eldest son at the £27,500 a year Westminster School. His commitment to state education is only in the state schooling of his youngest daughter, Stephanie, but then he fought a court case to deny her existence. Boris does not understand nor want to understand the lives of working families or the challenges to their schools .

Recently, on my favourite 3 Counties Radio I was surprised to silence the presenter discussing teacher’s pay. I have a pay slip, dated October 2010 for one of our teachers and also his payslip in June 2019. His take home pay had gone up, in 9 years, by £5.52. Inflation was 17.7% for that period.

State funding of special needs is in crisis and there are so many SEND kids now. We have experts telling us that kids have SAD (Separation Anxiety Disorder) ODD (Opposition Defiant Disorder) ASD, ADHD, BAD (Behavioural Affective Disorder) EBD, MLD and SLD as well as a host of others requiring every adult in school to understand the condition and enact individual teaching programmes for maybe half the class.

My school receives not a penny extra to teach these children, and the increasing number of state schools refusing to admit or teach these children receive not a penny less. How can parents send their children to state comprehensive schools which routinely refuse to admit children the school considers ‘not good enough.’

I wonder how we plan for a child with Intermittent explosive disorder (IED) The disorder is typified by hostility, impulsivity, and recurrent aggressive outbursts. People with IED essentially “explode” into a rage despite a lack of apparent provocation or reason.

And she did!

Of the secondary school headteachers aged under 50 who were appointed in 2013, 31 per cent had left by 2016. One in five primary school headteachers quit their posts over the same time period, data from the Department for Education (DfE) reveals.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/05/05/almost-third-headteachers-now-leave-within-three-years-official/

If we had 30% of train drivers leaving within 3 years there would be an outcry and few trains. Who has ever shown that they care whether there’s a shortage of nurses or teachers?

At a time when parents are very busy and their kids are entrenched on social media and / or computer games, there are growing reports of stroppy parents displaying what I like, now, to term PPP (answers on a postcard please).

For politicians and Daily Mail journalists there is a simple solution to every problem in society : Schools should fix it.

We are responsible for Sex.

Ask your kids how much they enjoy their teachers delivering Sex Education and you can see why they don’t always think we are telling the truth. We employ a theatre group, Tip of the Iceberg, to work with our students on all sorts of Relationships, Expectations, Cyber Safety, LGBTQ+ awareness matters right at the centre of adolescents’ lives and worries.

Or I could do it and maybe teach them some of my catholic Irish prejudice and guilt.

We are expected to look out for Extremist Tendencies amongst our students and we have a legal duty to report children we fear are prone to extreme ideology (That’s EDL and Isis type groups)

In 2017/18, a total of 7,318 individuals were reported to Prevent , exactly 33% by schools and colleges (A fascinating government report:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/763254/individuals-referred-supported-prevent-programme-apr2017-mar2018-hosb3118.pdf)

Schools have to be on the lookout for cases of Female Genital Mutilation and we were instructed to talk with an African girl returning from holiday to check for signs of FGM. Thousands of teachers have done online training on this and we are happy to embrace women’s safety and it is shocking to read an official estimate of 137,000 women in the UK having suffered FGM (https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/resources/free-courses/recognising-and-preventing-fgm)

Our staff have raised over 1,000 Records of Concern about safeguarding, neglect, poverty, self-harm, eating disorders, depression, isolation, domestic abuse, drugged and drunk parents, bereavement, crime, bullying and violence in just 12 months. We work with numerous under-funded, hamstrung agencies to try to help the children and we employ as many support staff as our budget can bear.

We really do want to educate the child about the world and themselves and we would love to be able to point troubled children and parents to where they will receive practical help.

But, our jobs depend on the pointless KS2 SATs where 28% of our 10 year olds had extra help on top of the endless revision and there are 6 categories of underachievement with “Below, Below, Below, Below, Below, Below (age related expectations) now replaced by PK6. The kids need help not labels. The schools need to be let teach Art, Music, Geography, History, Technology. PE and the children need to be learning about problem solving, teamwork and resilience whilst enjoying being 10 years old. Or schools may hammer the subordinate adverbial clause, because SATs demand it (the last 4 words forming, of course a subordinate adverbial clause – look how useful that is.)

We are happy to do what we can and want to see the world a better place.

Knife crime is killing our children and we teach about knives, show stark videos , have police officers explaining to assembled kids, reformed gang members talking to parents and we stay vigilant. I permanently exclude anyone with a weapon in school but I’m not sure we can allay the fears of teenage boys outside our buildings.

We are also being asked to sort out

Gangs, Drugs and County Lines

Mental Health issues including anxiety, depression and self-harm

Obesity

Sexting and Access to Pornography.

We have been asked to identify children at possible risk of succumbing to Violent Crime. The Home Secretary has threatened teachers and nurses with arrest if they don’t notify the police of suspicions of children at risk. (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/teachers-and-nurses-could-be-responsible-for-not-spotting-youth-violence-warning-signs-a4106481.html?

As the curriculum grows in content and narrows in scope; we watch the arts relegated to lunchtime clubs and technology decimated by funding crises.

We have so, so many accountability measures, some imposed by over zealous ambitious assistant headteachers justifying their position and others by government departments almost clueless in their assumptions. Recently they demanded we fill a spreadsheet showing that all 172 children in Year 10 were studying Textiles at the same time because one group of 12 was so doing.

But our own school leaders seem obsessed with plans, meetings, targets, evaluations and allocating blame when they should be reducing the layers of management, clamouring for resources and celebrating their teachers’ work.

Is managing student behaviour getting any easier? Are the support services – like youth workers and mentors – in place to help disaffected children prosper in our areas of high unemployment and poor schools? Do we see signs that Mr Johnson wants to dedicate resources to building self-esteem, ambition and hope, or does he want to build prisons?

We are teaching more, better than ever before and teachers overcome government attacks as best they can. So when Michael Gove promised that more students will fail exams, we just worked harder. The proportion “passing” has got to stay the same each year and there will always be the artificial, harmful and unscientific 66-34 pass- fail figures published no matter how much better we teach and the kids learn.

Oh, for goodness sake, teaching is not worth the heartache.

So why on earth do they do it? Why Do Teachers Teach? I asked teachers and made notes of direct quotes:

• Within moments of entering the school a kid smiles hello.
• I come back in September and the children are so pleased to be back in school and they’ve all grown.
• Adults come up to me on the street to thank me.
• I’ll never forget the boy who 10 years later called at my home to thank me for saving his life. All I’d done was spend some time encouraging his ambition when everyone else was just frightened by his solvent abuse.
• There’s a rush of seeing the results for my exam classes.
• The realisation that I have helped them achieve and move on in learning.
• Sometimes I can be the only person who listens to a child, who cares what they think and wants them to develop as people.
• Being trusted by the students.
• I love it when they challenge preconceptions.
• Being around young minds.
• I love my subject; I think it’s really important and helps young people grow intellectually.
• It’s amazing when a student opts to study my subject when they have a chance not to : GCSE, A Level University.
• Seeing kids enjoy learning, particularly when it’s in my subject.
• When a student achieves what she thought she couldn’t.
• Seeing kids learn and knowing - I did that.
• Watching children’s knowledge , skills and understanding develop over time.
• Kids are so funny.
• Teaching is never boring.
• Every day is different, every class changes according to the time of day, a wasp or the wind coming from outside the classroom or from inside a child.
• Making a difference to students’ lives.
• Sometimes helping break a family cycle of underachievement, unemployment and poverty.
• I love having the freedom to teach, trusted by SLT and free of bureaucratic restrictions and petty criticism.
• Being able to try different things in the classroom, to experiment and keep trying to improve.
• Nothing, anywhere in my life beats the lightbulb moment – when a child “GETS IT”
• I work long hours in term time and have great holidays.

Our teachers have risen above the political interfering, insults from Michael Gove, apathy, ignorance and condescension from the Eton Boys. Teachers will be upset by the odd shouting parents and rarely suggest the cause of dispute is really the parent’s own problems, issues and struggles. There are troubled kids – we didn’t create social inequality, unemployment, drug, alcohol and domestic abuse – and we try to help them as best we can. That half the people in prison were excluded from school is a result of social problems and awful support, not caused by teacher indifference. Our teachers love what they do and they do it with all their energies and commitment. In happy schools we are cult-like in our obsessions to help children learn about the world and their place in it. Some of us have done decades hoping that we will help develop the changers, leaders and good people of the near future and yes, there is no more moral or political job in society. We are missionaries and agitators, challenging conformist ideology. Outside of family, our students learn post 16 that they never meet anyone, anywhere who cares more about them than their teachers.

So, why teach?

You still don’t know?

Reducing Teacher Workload

 

Ofsted reported that I look for ways to reduce teacher workload. I didn’t contribute to either of the government’s two working groups on teacher workload nor have I asked staff to fill in the three surveys recently received. I did present to a group of headteachers but we really need teachers to put pressure on heads.

So, a blog on Teacher Workload with just a little bit of invective to moisten the readers’ way.

Like, how much over £200,000 does the Headteacher of a West London school get paid, and how many of the 29 Chief Executives of academy chains questioned by the minister, Lord Argyle take £150,000+ from already depleted budgets?

Our government has collapsed under a torrent of incompetence. All non-Brexit business has been relegated to insignificance as MPs manoeuvre to be leader of hopeless political parties. Real cuts in schools, prisons, care homes, police, youth and social work and probation services are hurting and working families are queuing at food banks. Is this what a return of sovereignty looks like? Can you vote for a party whose major achievement is to perform the unlikely feat of shooting itself in the bottom?

There is a shortage of teachers as the number of children grows. Many teachers cite workload as a reason for their intended departure from teaching. School budgets have been cut and teachers’ take home pay is less now than it was 5 years ago. Teachers are paying more towards their pensions, the benefits of which have been slashed.

In a recent blog I reported that the government includes in its statements on schools funding the amount parents pay to private schools and the money borrowed as student loans. Spending is down and costs are up.

Cutting workload may increase some costs, admin for example and certainly online resourcing. So my first “Reducing Workload” suggestion asks:

What are Chief Executives for?

The game for ageing, tiring or superior-being headteachers is to form a multi academy trust with one secondary and a couple of primary schools. Each school has a headteacher and you also have the Executive Headteacher – four heads where there used to be three, and at considerable cost.. Some of these schools are now doing less well than before executive heads. Abolish Executive Headteacher Posts and spend the money on reducing teacher workload.

Hertfordshire headteachers had their residential conference at a very nice hotel last week and a local school took its 9 strong management team there as well. I bathe in beatific righteousness as my school took 98 staff on a residential to the same hotel. Maybe we should spend less money on headteachers’ bonding and dedicate the money to the professional development of our teachers.

Every act by school managers should support the teaching of children.

I know of a local school that now has 3 deputy heads, 3 assistant heads and 2 associate heads joining the headteacher and Business Manager on their senior management/leadership team. That costs masses – around £800,000 including add on costs and the school isn’t doing very well.

Every time a school appoints a new manager they have to have people to manage, and work schedules, targets, working parties, accountability structures and whatever else justifies the job. Reduce the Size of the Senior Team, reduce the teachers’ workload and reduce spending on SMT. Spend the money on teaching resources, buns or air conditioning.

Of course, the main benefit of cutting management roles is you can also have Fewer Meetings.

I was once part of a Staff Development Working Party looking at providing good training for teachers. All the meetings produced agendas, apologies for absence and minutes explaining why nothing had been achieved. Oh, and setting the date of the next meeting which involved tedious diary discussions about their cats’ appointments and other working parties. Here’s some stuff on meetings:

The best way to kill an idea is to take it to a meeting.

Most meetings are as valuable as Snapchat post: people talk, ideas disappear into the ether with no outcomes or chance of follow up.

There are 25,000.000 million meetings every day in America (I have the source).

If you must call a meeting know what you want the result to be in advance (and make those attending put their phones away)

Read “The One Minute Manager” (Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson) which tracks an idea from first airing to eternity. An idea is mooted. The manager listens and gives the initial OK, “Set it up and come and see me in a week.” Then,“Run with it and come and see me at regular intervals to announce progress and suggest the next step.” The one minute manager as a concept gives ownership, responsibility and accountability and motivates.

I know another local school where there is an absolute “No Meetings Tuesday.” Wow! Our teachers have one meeting a week, two if they’re on SMT. At the end of the school day teachers should use our fitness suite, talk to each other, plan lessons or go home to pursue wine tasting, talking with their families and other hobbies.

I know an incredibly talented Head of Science who has to report to 3 different managers.

School leaders should Reject Directed Time and the number 1265. Be grateful if you don’t know what this means; ask why you need it if you do. A system that counts the hours teachers work in school makes no sense when most teachers spend hours working at home. It was a Tory Party creation to demean teachers and modern managers should get together in their big teams and have some meetings to discuss a possible future date for a focus group to make recommendations about its abolition. Or Take a minute...

Kenneth Baker decided that teachers should give up 5 days of their holidays to do Inset (Training) Days. With a little imagination it is possible to Do Twilight Inset where teachers spend two-hour after- school sessions replacing one whole day. Then teachers can stay at home on the same day the kids are already off school.

A short while ago I volunteered to cover 3 lessons for an absent teacher as long as I could do what I liked and did no marking. I spent hours trying to find the perfect clip to accompany my exuberant delivery of poetry ranging from WW1 to “Why do men piss on the floor?” I think the poem is called “Bogerell.” I had songs and Youtube to accompany Vietnam war politics and I was well pleased with myself. Hours and hours planning for perfection only to be shot to pieces by lesson 3 when the students asked if they could get on with their written assignment.

Don’t waste your precious time looking for the Perfect Lesson, the cascading colourful graphics of the Perfect Powerpoint, and Share / Steal / Borrow Resources from colleagues, forums and the internet. Someone really has already done it better.

Lesson Plans are a guide for teachers, not a bureaucratic power tool for headteachers eating up their time on busy work.

As an English teacher I brought home my own height in exercise books every weekend and I wrote unread comments on hundreds of pieces of work. I used to enjoy the kid who was absent and produced no work and I loved writing “Finish please” in obvious places. Today, I tell teachers to get written work done in class and to mark as they walk around. There are loads of ways of reducing marking whilst helping the students do better.

This is brilliant: http://chauncystweb.co.uk/marking/

In 1967, Butch Hurrell took delight in correcting my essay on Sweden. 54 times he circled my incorrect spelling – Sweeden. If only he had done In Class Marking he might have read the rest of the essay.

A few final thoughts:

We have abolished all words on our termly School Reports and, apart from being better written, they are easily understood.

Publicly castigate any teacher who sends Evening Emails, unless they are funny.

I know that some of these things are done in all schools, much in many and some in all. Teaching should however, be too exciting, stimulating, rewarding and fun to be left to the knackered teacher and the weary teacher cannot inspire for long. Children need them alive.

Dennis O'Sullivan

Ofsted Will Listen To Any Old Rubbish

Someone has anonymously informed Ofsted that I keep a flock of sheep on our school playing field. This is easily checked and is untrue. That surely will be the end of the story.

Ofsted have told me, with certainty and repeatedly, that they will take note of malicious, anonymous, complaints no matter how bizarre, blatantly untrue or malicious. “We follow procedures,” their unhelpful staff will tell you, and they will repeat these words over and over until you tire. The complaint about our non-existent sheep will be used as evidence by our next Ofsted Inspector.

Another complainant has told Ofsted that I only employ people with beards and that all classroom walls are painted black. I know the person who has made this complaint and he has done so for devilment. Of course, Ofsted can look up our various social media and clearly see this complaint is not worthy of consideration. But, no, they will put the complaint in our evidence file and an inspector will look my shaven face in the eye and question my obsession with beards.

If you feel we put a child at risk, contact the police. I want to react if there is a complaint about safeguarding at our school and I welcome policing on children’s safety. But beards and sheep?

Ofsted very recently judged our inclusive school to be outstanding. Having experienced seven inspections since their creation in 1992 I have had concerns over various aspects – one lead inspector told me that she would haunt me for the rest of my career – and I still believe that the individual lead inspector can cover us in glory, damn us with faint praise or condemn us to mediocrity.

But now I am writing to complain about Ofsted. Here’s the story:

On 16th May 2017 Ofsted wrote to me about an anonymous complaint. The complaint said that I had employed an unqualified teacher of (something like) Sociology.

I was notified that a complaint had been made against the school exactly five months previously. Having kept the complaint for 22 weeks Ofsted immediately sent a copy to our funding agency - the EFSA.

The EFSA use the word “safeguarding” four times in their interpretation of the letter and demanded a four day turnaround on an action plan. Our funding was under immediate threat.

The complaint itself, “concerns a teacher has been employed with no qualifications or experience working with children.”

As Ofsted know, schools have the legal right to employ unqualified teachers. This is no grounds for complaint nor investigation. The government created First Direct and Schools Direct programmes which specifically attract adults who have no experience working with children. So where’s the safeguarding issue if we had employed teachers who were unqualified or student teachers inexperienced in working with children?

Ofsted would not allow me to see the actual complaint but we were told that it would be included “for consideration in the evidence base of your next inspection.”

Ofsted retain secret complaints and use it when inspectors come to the school. Will they discuss it? Will they give us more information? How could we respond in such a way that satisfies Ofsted?

Ofsted gave us so little information, we could not investigate, but we could be judged, despite an unblemished safeguarding record. By stealth, I did find out that the anonymous complaint was from the Sociology teacher’s litigious, malicious, permanently stoned ex- partner, written in terrible, semi -literate scrawl.

Oh, and the Sociology teacher has a degree, qualified teacher status and experience working with children. This is so easily checked but Ofsted will not do so, any more than they will use Google Earth to check on the status of the 200 foot slave galley dominating the tennis courts.

So I complained about Ofsted.

Guess who you complain to? Ofsted, of course. And they will respond “within 28 days” which means “on day 28,” and they stuck to their line: Ofsted will listen to, act upon and damn anyone they like based on anything anyone throws to them.

So I complained about the Ofsted process. Guess who you have to do this to? Ofsted, of course, and how long will they take? 28 days.

When our outstanding report was in draft form I was able to speed up its publication by contacting a national officer who wrote on our behalf so that the report was published on the afternoon of the 27th day – Ofsted being obliged to publish within 28 days. I did phone a few times to offer to help proof read our report. I had this image of three old men sat in a poorly lit room, poring over appropriate punctuation as gore dripped from worn out eyes. Ofsted turned down my requests, gracelessly I might unnecessarily add.

From the draft report to the final report two words were changed: “much-loved” became “well respected” and it took 27½ days.

Once upon a time the Fureys were playing New York when an American superstar asked to join in on an Irish ballad. The band played really, really fast and the star asked why. The answer suits Ofsted, ”Because we can.”

I have written previously about my belief in the concept of Ofsted http://chauncyhead.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/what-will-we-teach-our-children.html and I have no doubt that Ofsted has improved the quality of education in schools.

However, their procedures are clumsy, bureaucratic and unhelpful. Their equivalent of customer services would close most businesses and the staff dealing with phone calls are ill suited and disinterested in their work.

Parents and others must have the right to complain about headteachers, governors and schools. The DfE give clear advice on the procedures (https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-school/state-schools)

Under the heading, “Making a Complaint” the first words are: Follow the school’s complaints procedure.

Follow these steps in order:
Only move on to the next step if your complaint is not resolved.

1. Complain in writing to the headteacher.
2. Complain in writing to the school’s governing body.

You can complain to the Department for Education if you’ve followed all the ‘Making a complaint’ steps.

If you google “Complain about a school to Ofsted” you will be led through the same procedures:

• you think a school isn’t run properly and needs inspecting 
• you’ve already followed the school’s complaints procedure, and have approached the DfE or EFA. 
• If you are the parent or carer of a pupil at an academy, the academy must by law offer you the following stages to resolve your complaint:

1. The academy should give you an opportunity to resolve the complaint informally, for example by discussing the issue with a senior member of staff. 
2. If you are still not happy, the academy should allow you to make a formal complaint in writing. 
3. If you remain dissatisfied, the academy should organise a hearing with a panel made up of at least 3 people not involved in the complaint, one of whom must be independent of the management and running of the academy. 

“We (the DfE) can only look at complaints that have followed all 3 steps. If you did not go through all these stages with the academy, you must go back to them to complete the process.”

So it is very clear that people wanting to make complaints must, must, must, go through the school’s complaints process and the government department will not, not, not, take on board a complaint that is outside these procedures.

But Ofsted do what they want.

In our case, Ofsted told the Funding Agency of the maliciously nasty complaint. Why? The ESFA’s rules are clear and transparent on what they can investigate.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/557407/Complain_about_an_academy.pdf

What the ESFA will investigate

We will look at complaints about academies that fall into the following areas:

• undue delay or non-compliance with an academy’s own complaints procedure 
• an academy’s failure to comply with a duty imposed on it under its funding agreement with the Secretary of State 
• an academy’s failure to comply with any other legal obligation, unless there is another organisation better placed to consider the matter as set out in the next section 

My career is exalted by an outstanding judgement. I couldn’t have predicted the wild staff celebration when the result was announced. Our parents and students are thrilled beyond my expectations and our financial future is secure. And we owe this, in part, to Ofsted being able to properly judge our work.

The DfE, ESFA and Ofsted itself, say that complaints must first be referred to the school. Ofsted break their own rules and wrap up their failings in their own special complaints procedures, guaranteed to support malpractice. Ofsted recently bragged that there were fewer complaints against them. When they investigate and justify their own failings headteachers see little point in complaining. I have no qualms in criticising Ofsted for their outrageous handling of complaints.

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