A Letter To Our Prime Minister

Dear Mr Cameron, Try a little Tenderness. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

We would save the £500,000.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Cameron, we are scared

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

We are fearful

Because you promised major education reform “within 50” days

We are demoralised

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

We are despondent

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

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

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

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

We don't know that you value us at all

So show a little care,

A little love,

Take your time,

Woo us and treat us with respect.

You can help us get better.

Otherwise damn us

And sod the children

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

Education, Education, Education? Not this election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dennis O’Sullivan 

30th April 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ofsted Grade by Prior Attainment as of 30 April 2014

A few notes of explanation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the leadership on all this?

Dennis O’Sullivan

Headteacher Chauncy School
Wednesday 1st April 2015

What Will We Teach Our Children?

What Will We Teach Our Children?

John Harmon entered, brylcreamed hair, shoes shined army standard, the Senior Service cigarette stubbed out. A small man, the birthmark that covered one cheek throbbed and we feared. Harmon’s frequently foul mood was clear and the first to fall was Mulkearns who put up his hand in the timid manner of the hungry Oliver Twist to stutter that he felt sick. Harmon gave him the waste paper bin, waited a few moments and asked him to spell circumlocution. It's an easy word but Mickey messed it up. Harmon summoned him to the front and belted his backside with the whack - a bone shaped piece of leather. The alphabet took over. Oakley was beaten next; O’Gorman got the same, followed by O'Neill and now the room was spinning. I doubt I could have spelled my own name as I became the 5th 12 year old in a row to get whacked in front of the class. I was never aware of how many followed me that day but I do know that I have never used the word circumlocution in any other context than this.

John Harmon was a bad man. 

Three years later he gave us a poem to read - and my life changed forever. Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” gave me my first insight into the beauty of words, although those words describe the horror of soldiers in a gas attack in World War One:

“Dim through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” 

An education leader who has given hope to hundreds of schools hounded by the current government, and probably the next one too, Sir John Rowling, asked me to write, “Something, anything you like using poetry.” Hours later the world was thrown into turmoil around intolerance, fanaticism and freedom of speech. I came into education in 1978 to empower children through literacy and the “Je suis Charlie” response to the slaughter of journalists endorses the vitality of language. This blog is an expanded version of the article published in PiXLis ((January 21st 2015) as “The Beauty of the Word.”

This time I get to use some rude words.

In search of the beauty of words, targeted at those obscuring faith with murder, perhaps for discussion in a multi-cultural classroom if one is allowed to discuss Jihadi John:

“You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a God.”

Leonard Cohen “Story of Isaac”

Harmon called me “Thick Irish” around the time I discovered Yeats questioning in “An Irish airman Foresees his Death” why his friend’s son fought for the British. 

“I balanced all brought all to mind
The years to come seemed waste of breath
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.”

I was beginning to learn a bit about other people from poetry. Much later I found Yeats’ love poem, “Aedh Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” on a scrap of paper. Sadly, the lady was quoting it to the next in line. I hope he was impressed.

“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

One day in 1991 I was transfixed by WB’s brother, Jack Yeats’ painting, “Men of Destiny” in the National Gallery in Dublin. I was forced to travel with a previously unfelt hunger to Sligo to look for more of his work. With a curriculum obsessing on correctness, chronology, rote learning and interminable practice for timed tests of memory, poetry, music and art have little place in meddling politicians’ ideology of education. But the beauty of words will stun, challenge and change the way children learn and understand the world. With 80 days of dull electioneering ahead, and at least one world leader afraid to debate his policies:

“I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you.”

Bob Dylan, “Positively 4th Street”

I giggled when Polonious was stabbed in “the arras” and I came across “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours” in “Hamlet” and then advice on decision making in “Macbeth,” “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” I have taught Shakespeare to thousands of children – sex, drugs, murder, revenge, greed all done better than Eastenders. What’s not to like?
I hope you all have at least one song that stops you functioning for a few moments. Mick Jagger wrote, “Wild Horses” to stop Marianne Faithful leaving him. I still can’t listen to “Leaving Nancy” by Eric Bogle nearly three decades after my mother died. Many will know him for, “The Green Fields of France,” so dreadfully mauled for Remembrance Day, alongside that bloody Sainsbury’s football nonsense. “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” on the terrible Galipoli battle tells of the ship carrying the wounded home:

“I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve, to mourn, and to pity.”

I see our work as teachers as a snub to the ideology of working class failure lazily embraced by seemingly all our political parties. Labi Siffre was happy that his “Something Inside So Strong” was used as a rebel yell beyond its original South African context. So simply,

“The higher you build your barrier
The taller I become.”

With Mr Cameron declaring major reform of education within 50 days of a new conservative government there must be teachers everywhere wanting to adapt Dylan’s,

“Stand upside down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I’ve had enough, what else can you show me?”

(It’s all right Ma I’m only Bleeding)
Taylor Dupree’ s "Who Do You Think You Are?" adds over-confident bite as we tackle the next mess of promised educational reform:

"You do not scare me, mistake me not for weak
You can dig a hole for me, but that doesn't mean I'll sink."

But with young teachers leaving teaching because of the tedious insanity of exam factory life there will need to be, in the words of Father Ted’s placard of protest:

“An end to this sort of thing.”

I'm not sure that the teaching profession, and particularly its headteachers, is up for any sort of fight.

Who would teach English today? I watch young, talented idealists building careers on the conversion of D1 grades into C passports, needing to build upon accurate use of highlighter pens rather than a deeper understanding of words, thoughts, feelings and ideas. If they don’t, of course, the headteacher that I am will move them from teaching these students. Careers now built on sand.

All alert assembly-givers see that glazed look on the silent faces of compliant, disinterested students when we rise to tell them how we won the war, the runs we used to score and other dynamic autobiographical wonders. I read Mo Foster’s poem “Boggerel” to Year 11s one sleepy afternoon:

“I wonder why men piss on the floor?
Is it down to aggravation?
Neglect or lack of concentration
Are they lost in such abstractions
That they lack mundane reactions?
Is it simply they don’t see
In which direction that they pee?
Do they do it to annoy?
Do they practise when a boy?”

There is more, of a feminist slant, to the poem if you wish to look it up.

Free speech, the right to offend and the use of succinct language to express oneself – the poet’s license – and you can do this in a lesson. In “This Be The Verse” the childless Philip Larkin spat :

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”

I suspect Seamus Heaney may have been merely full of fine nationalist rhetoric, but when the BBC announced in 1982 that a British poet had won the Nobel Prize for poetry my heart sang as he replied:

“Be advised my passport’s green
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast the Queen.”

One does not need many words to provoke thought; here's a few found on a pedestal by Shelley amongst ruins and decay:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

A lesson for history: all become dust, even the grandest, the mightiest and the most powerful and not necessarily in strict chronological order.

Ted Hughes’s “Hawk Roosting” isscarey, but I loved watching realisation spread across a classroom possibly discovering a dictator’s love song to himself?

“There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.”

Auden’s “I have no gun but I Can Spit” could be a clarion call for free speech, perhaps in opposition to Al Capone’s,” You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” I am worried, now, that the government say that radicals should not be left with children, unsupervised. Bloody hell, do I count?

Should those of us disgraced by politicians in education, rage with Dylan Thomas against inevitable defeat, although he was literally bemoaning blindness:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

How about teaching the wonderful, “Warning” by Jenny Joseph?

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

Or if one fears age and death as Dennis Potter’s “Singing Detective” one can cry along to the Charles Aznavour Song, “Yesterday when I was Young” with the searing,

“I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out
I never stopped to think what life was all about,
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerned itself with me, me, and nothing else at all.”

I can sit for minutes beside Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken:”

”Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Was Stevie Smith lamenting or declaring:

“I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.”

Decades ago, I taught alongside some awful English teachers who wouldn’t recognise a semi colon or an extended metaphor no matter what shade of highlighter was used. Teachers are better by far today but increasingly denied a part in a wonderful, joyful journey of discovery and enlightenment, of provoking children to look at their world through others’ eyes whilst discovering the beauty of words, of pictures and of music.

None of this seems to be in any part of our new curriculum for a tedious age of insular nationalism and British values.

Blog 30, 55,000 words in, a very different piece of work. But don’t blame me, if Sir John can help “failing schools” succeed with young people whose dignity and ambition are then kindled I can at least try to show that there is a little more to school, English and learning than the times tables school of education.

But, Dylan again:

“Ain't no point in talking to me
It's just like talking to you.”

Dennis O'Sullivan
Sunday 8th February 2015

Stop this attack on private education. Let's all do iGCSEs.

As Nick Gibb sits naked in his Department of Education office the remaining officials bow and praise his new clothes. From the people who brought you tests for five year olds we have untested curricula, untested, untrialed exams, academy chains and free schools put together like a pick and mix from the lamented Woolworths. On Monday of this week Mr Gibb decide, on a whim, to withdraw the new exclusions guidance after all the consultation, redrafting, training and cost.

If you look at Nicky Morgan, on the BBC website speaking about the new, “transitional league tables,” pause and look into her eyes. There is a terrified stare which suggests that she is insecurely in her office hiding during the DfE zombie apocalypse lockdown. She's been a good girl so far and done what was asked: as little as possible without slipping into a political coma, but she's now clearly pleading for help.

On January 19th, Nicky proclaimed that we need, “ a school led self- improving system where teachers, school leaders and governors make the decisions about what's best for their school. “ That’ll do us. 

Then the intellectual wannabe that is Gibb went for the private schools. Their favourite iGCSEs won't count in league tables because they are inferior qualifications and they represent a “race to the bottom.”

Nicky agreed, in instant contradiction of herself. And as this year’s league tables are unanimously a nonsense she wants young people to know that they need not fret – they are only transitional failures. In a couple of years students may get the results they earned. But not this year.

I have to say that those of us who have been entering students for iGCSEs have been wondering for years how the government would stop us from doing them. We know that the DfE minions were searching for an alternative to their blunt desired, “This isn’t for the likes of you so you can’t do them.” When Gove addressed the independent schools headteachers on what are now called “reformed GCSEs” he was saddened by them saying they would stick with their iGCSEs. (The “i” stands for international, as these qualifications are recognised and acclaimed across the world, including the countries with whom we are told to compete and excel.) I think there was also some other sticking advice offered with reference to his new exams.

According to a highly esteemed, private school, Haileybury College, they find,

“iGCSE a better preparation for sixth form academic study and less prone to government modification.”  £34,000 a year plus extras will get you a place there and you may study seven subjects at iGCSE and the remainder at GCSE.

The English Language “reformed GCSE” consists solely of written exams. The English Language iGCSE  tests Speaking & Listening, the ability to draft  and improve one’s work as Coursework and a final written exam. These are the so called “soft skills” businesses are calling for. Might government ministers be better communicators with more attention to speaking and listening and redrafting their work prior to presenting it to an electorate bored by their dissembling, dull waffling and inability to answer a question?

Gibb and the trailing Morgan say that we will not be allowed to satisfy the One Nation Tories by taking the best practice of the private school and integrating it into our state schools. No, we will not be able to have state and private schools working together on developing and improving the curriculum and assessment offered to our children. Labour claim to want this but they haven’t yet worked out how to formulate a sentence of any clarity on any education issue.

Our politicians are dumbly flailing in a descending spiral into contradiction and doublespeak, with the “race for the bottom” being their own inept slogan. Prime Minister Dave says that he benefitted from an excellent education and he wants all our children to benefit from such excellence. He claims we should not need to send our children to his old school, Eton, to get a first class education.

Why, therefore, Dave, can’t we teach our students to the Eton standard and have them compete against the private schools, on their tests. We are not asking for condescending charity; we want to show our success against your esteemed educators. Let us do the iGCSEs and give you an accurate comparative measure.

A general election, gives the chance for fundamental policy direction, a time for statesmanship, after the party speech writers have plied their trade in search of great vision and import. What do we get from our government at this time of decisive policy making?

Children must learn their times tables by age 11 and they must spell properly, There will be a war on literacy, or was it illiteracy?  Anyway, there’s a war and all kids must reach the required level by age 11. All kids must reach the old level 4 – which they abolished last year but you know what they mean.

This morning when Cameron was asked, “What’s 9 x 8?” he eased his way out of trouble. “I’ve learned only to do my tables in the privacy of my own home,” he said offering hope for all 11 year olds. Nicky Morgan also refused to be tested on her tables and Chancellor Osborne asked a seven year old child for more time to answer 7x8 live on Sky News last summer.

The DfE soundbite specialists have come up with a snazzy up-to-the minute catchphrase for the very temporary Education Secretary: “I like to call it the Culture of Can,” Unless, of course, you are a government minister who cannot do their tables when tested. I somehow doubt that our 11 year olds will be able to avoid the questioners preferring to answer in the privacy of their own homes?

Doing my 13 times tables it seems we have 90 days witnessing these people stumbling over each other to say so little in a triumph of mediocrity. (That’s 7x13-1 by the way)

Dave tells us he believes in state education and he sends his children to the 16th nearest primary school to prove it. Like Gove and Blair he seems to be able to bypass admissions procedures to get into the nicest, most selective state school.

His maths was questioned this week and he had to admit that maintaining funding per pupil  meant that funding for schools would be slashed if the conservatives return to power, Dave wants all children to reach the required standards and he’s on about zero tolerance again.

I don’t usually write about politicians’ kids but you will recall that Dave spoke frequently about his respect for the NHS because he had a severely disabled child with complex medical needs. Sadly, the child died before being of the age to undergo literacy tests. The prime minister put his child in the public eye as an example. Well Ivan’s needs were likely to prevent him getting to the required standard, like 70%of the 220,890 statemented children (DfE stats on 10 year olds in 2010). So that’s zero tolerance for 98% of the student population (70% of 2.9% of kids statemented = near on 2%.)

But 21% of our 10 year olds in 2010 – 1.69 million were credited with a special educational need, though not a statement. How many of these must be treated to Cameron’s zero tolerance, like discarding damaged fruit from a bowl.? Can we maybe target 90% reaching the “required standard” so that some medically unwell, neurologically or physiologically impaired kids or those with speech, language and communication needs don’t get the big red stamp of failure on their 11+ replacement certificate?

Some children will never reach Level 4, and it’s not all about teacher low expectations. Watching Nicky Morgan trying to explain that the new Progress 8 measure will show what children achieve beyond mere timed exams was frightening – Progress 8 is her department’s measure of success in GCSE timed exams. Sadly , she will never be a Level 4 spokeswoman, thinker or communicator. The standards for entry to the House of Commons are lower so she may be given a certificate there.

Cameron may have been speaking about inherited wealth when he told his Enfield audience, “I won’t settle for less,” but apparently he was, instead, demanding that, “Every school should be  outstanding.” Making it stand out against who or what? If everyone is tall, Mr Cameron, no-one is tall and no-one is short. It’s like when Gove told the Select Committee that all schools should be above average. Sadly, again, neither has shown Level 4 ability.

Cameron went to Eton, Osborne to the relatively minor St Paul’s, Clegg at Westminster and all of these schools do iGCSEs.

Is this the reality of the private schools iGCSE :

• Are they too easy?
• Do Eton graduates have trouble getting jobs?
• Do Winchester sixth formers get rejected by all the universities.?
• Are they not internationally recognised?
• Do the exams confuse parents?

If this is the case we ought to end this discrimination against privately educated youngsters. But if they are unable to join us in our “reformed GCSEs” let’s have a show of state school solidarity so that we can stand together in Cameron’s one nation big society. Let’s all do iGCSEs and make it fair. 

There is a mathematical aspect to the reformed GCSE v iGCSE decision. The new GCSEs will be measured on a 1-9 scale with around 7% of students reaching Level 9 – whether there are other suitably high achievers or not there will be a quota. For iGCSEs the quota is around 21% earning an A* on the A*-G grading. Obviously this is a little confusing but far more worrying is that there will be three times as many private school leavers with the highest grade than state school GCSE graduates. Employers and universities will interview top grade achievers, thus discriminating against state school students. Maths Level 3?

In our ambitious state schools we want to work with others to promote choice, challenge and excellence, aspiring to be the best we can. Gibb and Morgan have said that iGCSEs will not count in secondary school league tables. Well, that’s a blow with which we will courageously have to live. Reportedly less than one third of parents choose a school on their league table standing.

Seeing that many state schools are going to continue to strive to compete with the best private schools, our masters have another sly trick to outwit us. The DfE has declared that state schools will not be paid any money for any student joining the 6th Form with an A* grade in iGCSE Maths or English. These students who have reached the highest attainment level in the internationally recognised GCSEs will not have reached the entry requirement and should be sent away until they have an A*-C  (or will it be 6-9 grade) in the reformed GCSEs. 

Students will have to enrol on a reformed GCSE course, when they have already excelled at iGCSE. State schools and colleges attract thousands of previously privately educated students into their 6th forms each year. It is often the case that students only qualify for a 6th form place with five or more GCSEs at grade B or above. These 6th forms and colleges surely would have to reject candidates with iGCSE results because the Secretary of State says they are “not as challenging.” I suppose they could break their own admission rules in sympathy with private school students’ plight.

Gibb and Morgan, your victimisation of your boss's old school is nasty. Eton scored 0%'in your league tables and you think parents should use these tables. Surely Ofsted should be given a special dispensation to swoop on this terrible school, and on Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow and hundreds of others. If they are taking decent, hardworking parents’ money under false pretences you should close them down.

Otherwise let us all try to compete equally and as they are determined to continue iGCSEs let’s batter down the barriers against this old class war and join them.

Dennis O’Sullivan

5th February 2015

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)