The Eyes Have It

Wednesday 21st May 2014

Have you ever noticed that characters in novels look deeply into other’s eyes? I don’t know how often you make direct eye contact with people – personally it seems a bit seedy to me - but apparently there’s a lot to see there, and hard boiled detectives see more than most. In Dennis Lehane’s latest, quite good ”Live by Night” a character attacks some men because, “ they’d come upon him with a threat in their eyes so clear wasn’t no point in waiting for it to leave their mouths.” I think that’s brilliant.

At another point the hero is robbing some gangsters of and comes across a waitress,“ Her eyes left the pistol and rose up his forearm in such a way he could feel the hairs parting. She sculled across the centre of his chest and then up his throat and over his chin. When she found his eyes, hers were fuller and sharper, lit with something that had entered the world centuries before civilized things.” Heck!

Later, before the sex started, “She stared at him the way she had in the payroll office, like she could see the intestines curled inside him, the pink of his lungs, the thoughts that journeyed among the folds of his brain.”

So, can you spot a liar, a fraud, a charlatan? Can you see the blankness of the apathetic, the indifferent or the bored? Le’ts check the eyes of Mickey Gove, the DfE tweeters, our national press, the BBC and politicians of all hues. Their eyes were ablaze and their scorn plentiful when dubious analysis from the OECD gave birth to the headlines that we were “plummeting down “ international education tables. (December 2013)

On the 8th May news was released that contrary to this we are apparently 6th in the world and 2nd in Europe.Time for righteous praise from our leaders or even ruefully, apologetically smiling eyes?

These rankings are based upon an amalgamation of international tests and education data - including the OECD's Pisa tests, and two major US-based studies, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls).

Triangulated no less.

Well, well, well.

I waited, for the deafening applause, the beaming smiles, from a corrected media; front pages splashed with congratulatory messages to teachers, the call for a national day of joyful celebration bannered across news bulletins, tears of relief and possibly a letter from the grateful Queen of All England to be read out in classrooms. I waited.

I turned on the BBC News. Halal meat is prepared in halal style; Scunthorpe United finish 2nd in Division 3 and Mavis the cat has been found in a shed in Wycombe. The new education tables, the results, the international comparisons, came and went quicker than a passing glint in a regretful eye.

So, the news should have proclaimed: “Gove jumped on dodgy data to wreck our schools.“ Perhaps admitting to using incomplete, corrupt and incorrect information: Gove Is Well Sorry.”(The Sun)

So, surely, the next headline, after the glassy-eyed apology,

                                                          “Gove Resigns In Shame”

Well what would you expect from an honourable man, from a scholar of heroic deeds, a man with a fearsome supply of urgency pills who compares himself to brave “Horatio at the gate?” Of course he will resign.

Opus Dei style self flagellation and heavy grade barbed wire underpants for Mickey for the rest of this parliament, and Shakespearian banishment beyond. Of course, he will do the honourable thing because now he can see that our education system needs nurturing and developing, not wrecking.

He misled everyone. He proved incapable of rationale thought and balance supported by expert advice, instead, sweeping away the foundations of a world class education system for his own jaundiced, ideology, sacrificing millions of kids to perpetual practice for SATs, GCSEs and other dull repetitive tests.

Of course he will resign. For Govey is an honourable man who read about the age of chivalry and falling on one’s sword.

No doubt he will be round my house, in sackcloth to do my garden as penance for his anti-childhood sins. Sadly, for a man so immense in his own refection Gove now becomes the forgotten man, a bit like the once admired Gary Glitter - confined to the hidden pages of popular culture, an example of mistakes to be punished. An insecure man with so much to be insecure about, and no, I don’t want to be in your gang either.

Having worked in three schools in the last 35 years I can shamelessly, categorically state that we are doing so much better now. But we are being driven backwards by Gove’s stuff. Back to the 80s

…when many kids were failing, their schools couldn’t recruit decent qualified teachers. Mining, car plant, shipyard and docks jobs disappeared and it was students’ fault. The lack of ambition was endorsed by the state. Unemployed people were counted on disability lists to be statistically hidden. My first act as a Head of Year in 1983 was to bury a 14 year old gas sniffer called Mickey. There were riots of the disaffected, by the disillusioned in the cities.

With Gove’s nonsense, unopposed by all political parties, “more students will fail more exam,s” and this will show the students, struggling to pass demanding exams now, that there is no point. He’s also talking about quotas for each grade, so no matter how hard students work with their teachers there will be no criteria for success. As much as we improve our teaching normal distribution curves will screw the students and the schools.

Primary schools have year 5 children doing SATs practice papers a whole 12 months before their tests from fear of public comparison tables. Secondary school English and Maths teachers and headteachers are leaving the profession, driven out by the unrelenting attack on state education: the weekly backdated changes to assessment, the drive for pass marks rather than standards, the wholesale dumping of the curriculum for 4-18 year olds and this centralised, dogmatised, unscientific and frankly incorrect interference reflecting almost complete ignorance of the great things students and their teachers have been doing. Together we have been raising standards and achievement, encouraging hope and ambition, creativity and responsibility, communication and fair play and even suggesting that hard work will be rewarded – you know, all the things employers say they want.

So, back to the eyes. Somewhere in Chelsea, where the mickey-taker conducts his morning ritual, “Mirror mirror on the wall…” and the usual sneering snigger now unmasks a salivating pestilence as he celebrates his victory over a three quarters way decent education system. His hands rubbing together so rapid in their glee that the skin flakes in clouds of foulness, and as he searches his own eyes skin peels away from rotted eyelids, gore drips from the scales beneath,
and he stares, between the tiny slits of membrane at his own reflected eyes, grunting, “Education education education, I’ll show them bloody education!” as the reptilian metamorphosis completes.

Gove casts a damp deformed shadow obscuring the progress we have seen in the last three decades. Our system needed tidying and developing, not unseeing vandalism, and we should be encouraging the best teachers I have ever known.

The voice on “Alice’s Restaurant” resonates, the original 1967 version now. Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody, complains joshingly that the audience don’t sing along loudly enough. He says, “I’ve been singing this song for 25 minutes now, I can sing for another 25. I’m not proud, or tired.” Well, I’ve written nearly 40,000 words in the last 22 blogs and by tomorrow morning I will have been metaphorically hit 15,000 times.77 USA people reading, “How to choose a secondary school this month” makes me wonder if I’m on Michael’s reading list over there at Concordia College.

Feel invited to post a comment, maybe a suggested future topic. Or if you are my local MP and you don’t like my politics or you are the Hertford Headteacher who told my friend, “Dennis is mad,” there’s an all encompassing invite to post a few words.

And next time you see Gove on TV look into his eyes, look deep into his eyes.

Dennis O'Sullivan

To parliamentarians on the occasion of Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday: A Pox on Both your houses.

April 26th 2014

I have to give you bad news today and it is an unsweetened pill.  You will know that Mr Gove (an early blog appearance as usual)is very, very opposed to students taking their exam qualifications before the age of 16. He is likewise against what he calls “gaming” when schools enter children more than once for an exam or resit to get a better mark. Ofqual admit to “several thousand” mark changes on appeal but we are to be stopped appealing.  So he has announced that schools will be barred and penalized for such wrongdoings. Bravo, Brave Gove, to stand up and tell off the private schools, who have been gaming forever, with such unequivocal bluntness is worthy of admiration, adulation and a new job. Or can it be that these new rules are going to apply only to the public sector, can it? That would be obscenely beneath the “all in it together” mantra our prime Minister declares. When aliens took the life form of Michael Gove, the 21^st century bogeyman getting away scott free with destroying our schools they avoided both glamour and shame.
The identikit Tory-Labour parties have ignored the electorate, effectively promoting the nauseating, dangerously divisive UKIP offering answers to voters real concerns – wrong answers, ill thought out and contradictory answers but nonetheless populist nasty stuff which appeals to people losing hope as their standards of living continue to decline.

I was recently asked to write something for a magazine and they are publishing the blog-type ranting leaving me to find an alternative to the quiet piece which ended quite hopefully:

“..the terrible beauty of learning, the textures and belief in teaching, the joy and delight in achievement… transcending baffled incredulity and wounded self-belief. Lotta continua, Mickey, that struggle continues.”

I explained last month how Gove became Mickey and I also mentioned Ukrainian blog readers. Well, Mickey hasn’t bothered replying but 30 Ukranians read my stuff one day last week. Worryingly for Farage they mainly hit upon “How to choose a secondary school,” so maybe they have plans to visit. If I really want to wind up the bucolic UKIP –there’s been 83 blogs read in Poland, 219 in Germany and, please explode Nigel, 139 in France. What if all these literate discerning adults descended on us with their fancy skills and bilingualism?

Our symbol of democracy, The House of Commons united in eloquent opposition to the abuse of one of its members. Apparently, Christian Torres (Chelsea South) had not claimed expenses for the bus ride to his constituency party's fete. The ever so thorough MPs’ committee for looking into MPs’ expenses regretted that his claim was two years out of date. “It was an innocent mistake,” he chimed, “and now I am being victimised. That I overlooked the rules should not penalise me… I forgot to claim the £2.20… I was only on the dammed bus as part of a publicity stunt… and even though my mum paid the fare I want the money… and I don't get paid enough…. and bigger boys made me do it, one of whom may have been my partner but I was afraid to mention that, so I want to claim his fare too. Anyway, when did we start having to submit genuine, timely expenses claims?”

Fancifully creative writing, of course.That didn’t really happen; the next lot did.

Culture Secretary, Maria Miller with a trifling expenses difficulty, was ordered to repay £45,000 by the Commons Watchdog. The MPs own committee reduced her repayment to £5,800. Having obstructed the investigation she was ordered to apologise and did so with a teenage petulant 32 seconds of the tiniest, most begrudging,“ I’ve been told to apologise.” Her fellow MPs hurried to her side whilst she spoke. Yes, they said, “Were certainly in this together!”

Prime Minister Cameron has gone all religious (vote for him wont you) and declared us a Christian country as he spouted beliefs and values based on god stuff, admitting he is a somewhat occasional Christian. Every man needs a creed at election time.

There’s something fishy going on in Birmingham. It may be a big fat hoax of a letter left lying around in an editor’s intray or a real attempt by some Muslims to take over the management, curriculum and pastoral care in some schools.

There are at least three enquiries being done in Birmingham today and Gove (really having a laugh) has set his own underway, naturally led by a supremely unqualified guy, Peter Clarke, fresh from running the counter terrorism unit at Scotland Yard. Google the investigation and The Telegraph have it under “terrorism.” May I offer a “for God’s sake!” here as Gove equates Muslims with terrorism.

I was a victim in  catholic schools where we went to benediction  and mass in  school time; we mimed hymns in assembly, were taught that we would go to hell if we attended another faith’s ceremonies, whilst priests and nuns beat us with equanimity. It’s dead easy to be a Catholic school headteacher as the talent pool is restricted to those who can produce a priest’s certificate of attendance. Herabouts you also have to take pledges like “veritas” and “caring for all children” with a pinch of salt.

 Sikhs, Jews and Hindus have their own schools proposing their own way out of reality and Church of England schools contain more kids than churchgoers. Isn’t it all right for religious groupings to run their own schools, with divisive admissions policies, prayers and interesting curriculum bias financed by the state? If Muslims are doing so is it really any of Gove’s business?

Gove recently allocated funds for five free schools, obviously free from terrorist associations. They are Jewish free schools: Etz Chaim (Mill Hill) Eden (Muswell Hill) Rimon (Golders Green) South London Jewish(Wimbledon) and Alma (Finchley)all recently generously state-funded.

“Faith schools make a fantastic contribution to our education system and none more so than Jewish faith school,” Education secretary Michael Gove said in December 2010.

I’m going to believe in pixies and leprechauns, rainbows and pots of gold supplied by Mr Gove to those he chooses.

 I am so liberal that I have nothing religious against Jewish schools and accept that there is probably a Jewish flavour to the ethos, where Jewish governors are possibly a majority and they espouse a Jewish way of life. Nothing against Jewish schools at all. I’m just against all religion inspired schools and in favour of a “we’re all in it together” secular education system.

So Muslims up to no good in schools? Must be a terrorist issue or is it just a good old fashioned anti-foreigner alternative to UKIP in next month’s election?
To sink so low name-checking Christianity. Can we have blokes on horses crusading in the name of St George. George by the way, ironically, never set foot in England, good Turkish lad that he was.

When the deputy speaker gets cleared of serious sexual charges politicians united to bleat about "high profile people” being protected from such prosecutions, giving anonymity in trials to "people like him." All 3 parties moved to bully the CPS, protecting each other from the deserving consequences of their own venal stupidity, dishonesty and complicity. Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans’ confessed drunken bloke’s groping behaviour is apparently common in the House.

40% of House of Commons employees claim they have been sexually harassed at work. Imagine the fuss if it was a teacher drunkenly groping the people around them at work?

 UKIP leader Nigel Farage proclaims his politics as a break from the corruption of British politics. But here’s an oddity. Mr Farage is incessantly against foreign workers coming to the UK to take jobs that can be done by britishers. He employs a German as his secretary, OK, he says, because she’s his wife and just one of the “26 million European workers” coming to Britain in UKIP publicity.
Farage is against the EU parliament wasting money on expenses. The £60,000 he can't account for was not expenses it was an allowance and how dare we ask how he spent it. That’s almost like the rabidly anti EU and virtually everything else, Dail Mail editor Paul Dacre taking EU grants of 300,408 euros for his Scottish estate.

You may think that I am creating a stereotype, partying in urban myths. Stereotypes are sometimes thick ugly plaster over a framework of truth and our leaders really are a dodgy bunch of opportunists.

This week David Laws announced that its time to stop changing everything in education, lets settle down. If you vote us back in we will stop meddling. Could Lib Dem Laws be trusted, after all he is in the government, he is working with Gove in the DfE. Listen Honest David, I'm not the only one who's been taking notes: remember you got kicked out for a £50,000 illegal expenses claim.

Let’s trust our betters and breed a generation of the silently insulted. There is some perverted poetry that it is Mrs Fox who is leading Gove’s unrelenting hunting down of accessible qualifications. so that most students fail. And when our kids realise that the point is to stifle their ambition and aspirations I am sure they will sit quietly in rows. The rule changes on vocational courses are backdated to affect kids who started the courses 9 months ago, cos really, who cares? Not the disgracefully clueless silent Labour Party that’s for sure.

Just now I read that Gove has cancelled his speech at a headteachers’ union’s conference. He’s too busy. My own union leader asks me to believe that the government is listening. I admire your perseverance, Brian, but  you’re wrong.

Gove, Laws, Truss, Hunt and all you parliamentary abusers you don't know what you're doing. The exam-practising stress on our kids is growing – 9 two hour science exams in 2016 will be more than for a final university degree.  And just how much bloody Maths do you want them to do? What’s wrong with childhood and childish things, of a bit of creativity?  Don’t they have the right to be a 16 year old average ability kid working hard, doing well and getting recognition for that?

And the adults in education, if they’re  Maths or English teachers or headteachers in non selective schools will pack it in or get shafted. Gove has declared a 9 point scale for his new tougher GCSEs;. Well, Mickey, my anger at your machinations goes up to 11.

So my homework is for schools, its teachers, parents and leaders who know our students and families and understand our own communities to set the education agenda. 1.3 million school employees plus just under 10 million parents should swing any election, so

Seize the time.

Shout at politicians.

Shout loudly.

Dennis O'Sullivan

Modern Education Reality: The Trouble With Fat Kids Is They Can’t Get Up Chimneys.

 My computer adopted a luddite approach to this 20th blog, eating whole sections of text in an instant and repeating single letters forever. Glancing at the screen showed what I had hoped to be literary, incisive, somewhat cross, incredulous and frustrated prose to be complete incomprehensible nonsense.

I am grateful to Mr Gove for inspiring me to write. In the four decades since I graduated with a decidedly unearned degree in politics I have rarely encountered a politician capable of spouting such garbage. I remember yawning at rabid Trotskyists declaring themselves the new leadership of a soon to be grateful working class, encountering racist nationalists who were as thick as they were wrong and the scariest of all, a group of animal rights activists who showed me a gun. As a committed anarcho- syndicalist with a penchant for individualism and a spot of libertarianism I attended an international conference of Wicked Messengers. We drank and some smoked to enhance clarity and decided Liverpool’s renegade Big Flame, would no longer be welcome in our thoughts. A little later my own group, Southampton Solidarity, stayed up all night to make sure we were able to greet the gasworkers’ change of shift to show them our support. We couldn’t find the gasworks.

 I was sort of affiliated to an even stranger international group – The Situationist International who were fantastically and artistically creative, slogan heavy and quite odd. “The Revolution in Everyday Life” by Raoul Vaneigem seemed such a brilliant anti blueprint from the barricades of Paris in 1968 alongside “The Society of the Spectacle,” decrying the template of life in a goldfish bowl watching 50 inch TVs. Unfortunately the situationists were big on expulsions and they swiftly expelled each other. In my version, Guy Debord, the other founder ended up in a supposedly drunken row with Vaneigem and they expelled each other in 1972. The SI died, except that in a typical twist one member had never been expelled because he was a long term resident in a mental hospital.

Why did I associate with such people? Debord made a lengthy film of nothing much: blank screens, incoherent dialogue and occasional static ending in 30 minutes of silence. He wanted to “problematize reception.” Intellectuals watched the film at the trendy ICA cinema in London, possibly in 1968. As the first audience left they passed the queue for the second sitting and not one mentioned the nothingness. This brings me back to British politics and education in 2014 – I have to keep blathering on about the nothingness, the lack of coherent thought and the obscene and real indifference to children’s education.

 By the way, I would like to thank the 11 readers from Ukraine diverted into my prose. I have to warn that I have recorded over 100 visits from Russia, meaning they outnumber you by about 10 to 1. Just like their army, I fear.

 Gove drops subjects he thinks are useless. Media Studies is rubbished and only partly because The Family Gove were and will be paid well by the corrupting Murdoch empire. As Churchill might have said, never has so much been paid to so few for so little. Politics is out so that students can't contextualise his preening selfish pursuit of unwarranted glorification. RE doesn't count either as the pope never beatified the man who sees himself as more saviour than saint following a visionary chat with Satan. PE has to go to ‘prep’ as the chances of anyone considering the younger Gove to be an athlete is probably limited. You know how cruel people can be to new recruits. In Laurie Lee’s “Cider With Rosie a child spent a considerable time on his first schoolday following the instruction, "Wait there for the present." Go get a rubber hammer, striped paint or dooberry firkins are anecdotedly frequent instructions to apprentices.

Can you believe Gove’s cruel peers had him sign up to the inter house gurning competition telling him he was a natural. Those privately educated wags foresaw his future as an amateurishly created plasticine recreation of alien life form using selfies to frighten miscreant babies.

 A shock announcement from @toryeducation where Gove’s “Special Advisors” (Henry de Zoete and Dominic Cummings) are definitely not the authors: Gove to be New England football manager. A gurning Michael swooned, “I have nothing but admiration for the young fellows who daily kick a ball around a field of grass mowed so brilliantly by fabulous groundsmen, of whom I am forever in awe. I must apologise again to Mr Smithies my old PE teacher for I fear I was a total washout on the footie field. running around and that sort of thing. But of course I can manage the England team. I am humbled to be in the same changing rooms as the chaps whose names I will soon commit to memory. I believe in the 2 3 5 system that worked for a month in 1966 when Britannia ruled the goals and a brave Britisher, Pickles the dog, saved the world cup. I will answer my country's call and issue instructions on how to header the ball, how to get mud off one’s shorts and where to buy dubbin for cleaning boots. Always cross with the laces pointing inwards, don’t you know.

In his powder blue polyester tracksuit Gove expanded his sporting nouse, “Low expectations have been the cause of society's ills. Autistic kids just need a firm push from better teachers, better doctors cure cancer and everyone can be an opera singer. Insults from recently exposed members of The Blob (anyone anti Gove’s way of thinking) that our boys may be affected by Amazonian heat is another attack by the enemies of promise.” Mickey, as he likes to be known now he’s earned a reputation for taking it, has hastily summarised his team tactics for victory in Brazil in a " Everything I know about footie" short tome likely to emulate his blank paged “Everything I know about Education,” number 9 in the 2013 Amazon chart. It was the Amazon chart which got Michael energised....Amazon, Brazil, footie; had god summoned after a game of word association?

2nd minister for approbation, Elizabeth Truss, has been to China and learned how to be good. Use chopsticks, that's what they do in top of PISA League Shanghai. (Children will struggle to learn to use chopsticks, will get thinner and be able to clean our chimneys. QED.) Despite the fact that the Shanghai education experts cannot account for 200,000 of their child population in their school results, we have got to, got to be like them. Embrace the rule that migrant workers in Shanghai are not allowed to have their kids educated in the area. Fancy a spot of apartheid anyone?

Minister Truss’s policy seems to be that school age kids should stay in school during daylight hours and only go home to sleep. Despite opposition from The National Day Nurseries Association and the Pre School Learning Alliance, sort of experts I guess, Truss says we can raise the contact ratio from 1 adult for every 8 four year olds to 1 to 30 because that sort of work, well, how hard can it be? It doesn’t need teachers either – just “sufficient numbers of staff.” None of it is skilled. None of it matters, Let’s cheapen it. The reason for childcare and early years teaching? We need mums at work, in flexible part time jobs. Mums must go to work but must be at home to welcome the kids at the end of the day; it’s bad parenting if not. Schools must open 8-6 and in the holidays with no mention of quality provision, control or inspection; schools are buildings of containment. We need to give employers greater flexibility in managing the female dominated, part time, zero hours, minimum wage, labour force and schools should play their part in keeping the kids off the street while mum’s at work. At the same time ministers are sympathetic to term-time holidays, it’s not like the kids will miss anything important. I needed four professional qualifications to do what I do; Truss just needed a desire to succeed Gove.

One of the big anti-immigration arguments is that we should force British workers to do unskilled manual jobs when the schools have trained them as demoralized, uneducated, drearily dull, ambitionless, unskilled workers, used to spending longer days in schools, where Gove’s desired pedagogy relies on a daily grind of six one hour lectures and recitation of facts. As economies move from the Industrial Age to the hyper connected digital age with 3 billion people connected via the net, we want to graduate automotons. On such a cruel sea do we float, where our masters are stuck in a golden age of worker servitude.

 The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reports that the UK “has a higher proportion of low-skilled jobs than any country in the OECD, except Spain….30% of workers were overqualified for their jobs, and there were far fewer graduate jobs than graduates…..22% of UK jobs required no more than a primary education compared with less than 5% in Germany and Sweden.” It is hard to blame our schools for this lack of economic progress. The briefly insulting then ingratiatingly creepy Vince Cable says teachers know nothing about the world of work. Minister No 3 should get out of the way. Think on this, Mr Cable: We have increased the supply of skills now we need to improve demand for those skills by increasing the number of higher skilled roles available. Supporting Gove’s stated aim to have more students failing more exams is not enough.

 We are deskilling our workforce and again this is shown in our free schools and UTCs where unqualified people are put in charge of children’s futures. I watched on TV a British employer whose factory make models of fighter planes from the time when we won the war all on our own. Chinese labour costs have gone up, British labour costs have plummeted. There were a group of very young white men walking around a big table, picking up tiny model bits, one by one as they walked round and round and round, filling the bags to be put in a box in a way that we now do more cheaply than chinese workers. A fifth of UK jobs need only primary school education? In the words of Luka Bloom, “Take me now God that I’m almost ready..”

 The government’s own Social Mobility Commission has found that “private school alumni were 7% more likely to gain an elite job in the media or law than those with the same degree who went to state schools.” Just who are the enemies of promise here?

I want to speak with optimism of teachers’ love of our subjects and missionary zeal for learning, sometimes dormant, afraid to speak their names in a cynical materialistic daytime TV world. Our job is to summon the howls of anguish and to take that torment into the educational transformation of the lives of young people and their communities. It really is better than just waiting around to die.
Dennis O'Sullivan

Taking the PISA

I know that the car boot death mayhem on Eastenders and the laughably blood-rich Hollyoaks is the reality of life in London and Chester. MPs know that Benefits Street is the reality of poor people's lives because they assume everyone's a thief. They base this insight on themselves having a higher rate of convicted criminals than the country as a whole and an impressively inclusive honour role for those caught innocently, they say, fiddling their expenses. So it’s empirical, scientific, intellectual and justified nonsense, based on soap operas.

The insulting Michael Gove believes that schools don't teach the poetry of Sassoon, Brooke and Owen, nor do we read the diaries of the soldiers, nor did I ever teach “All Quiet on the Western Front” for a German  point of view. Trips to The Battlefields? Look at the First World War as a “world war” including the world-changing three years of Russian anti Austro-Hungarian imperialism? Nah, I just shoved on the telly and said that Blackadder is the absolute truth.

Gove admires the leadership of, “great patriotic heroes,” generals struggling in an industrial war.

Ignoring the millions of dead already sacrificed, he doesn’t understand satirical TV either. Looking at WW1 and the pity of war makes us, “left wing undergraduate academic cynic(s)” and in his education fiefdom Gove will determine how his history is taught.

Gove has now claimed hero status. Faced with leftie teachers, he felt like “Horatio at the Bridge,” a reference to the pro empire Macauley’s poem where Horatio, holds off 3,000 enemies, and is remembered as the lone warrior against the hordes.( Radio 4 January 2014) Will a statue do, Michael?

Moving on:

Imagine two goalposts so far apart that you have to build a wider stadium to contain them. You have the ball at your feet such a tiny distance from this gaping gap that it is quite impossible not to score . Step forward the Labour spokesman on education, the public schoolboy from the telly,Tristram Hunt. A mere tap and he would score vital election points. With his unnecessary, bureaucratic anti Teacher Licensing Scheme, in one clumsy move, Hunt missed the goal, fouled the spectators and sent the ball into his own goal.

Labour have got nothing to say on education: no leadership, no policy, no charisma and no ears. Because if you can't score against Gove with virtually the entire education crowd roaring you on you deserve historical anonymity. Mind you, Labour seems to be doing better at the “Mine is Bigger than Yours” game on immigration, benefits and public spending cuts.

Last month, the results of the OEDC’s Pisa tests were announced. Labour and Tory politicians played the blame game, The Daily Mail howled whilst teachers worried and wondered. The BBC’s usually thoughtful  Reeta Chakrabarti presented her analysis which pretty much went: I talked to four Korean boys and they found the test easy and then I spoke with two English kids and they said it was hard. Therefore we are thick.

While all sorts of press people inaccurately recorded the UK “plummeting” we stayed in the same mid 20s position. We can do better.

Headteachers did not necessarily take the tests seriously and administered them grudgingly.  I heard from a head who gave no preparation time, did the tests on a Friday afternoon with no preparation with a disgruntled student group. Germany, Switzerland and Spain all reacted to previous poor league standing by prioritizing the content and conduct of the tests - what Gove calls “Gaming” when he doesn’t like the results. Let’s hope a Reading position of 19^th satisfies the Germans.

We have no way of knowing which schools took the tests. About 4,000 15 year olds in each of the 65 reporting countries sat the tests. I know only of two secondary modern schools who took part. Secondary moderns are for those kids in places like Kent who have failed a selection test at age 11. Those who pass go to grammar schools and are at the wealthier end of our society, “those who are eligible for free school meals are less likely to secure a place in a grammar school.” (The Sutton Trust 2014)  Could it be that the selection of schools to be tested is skewed academically according to desired outcomes?  We know that public (private) schools take bright kids on scholarships, to bolster their results as their paying intake involves wealth not brains. These kids are barred from Pisa tests but in the high tabled Finland, without private schools, testing their population might be more representative of the country as a whole. Pity Kyrgyzstan who were bottom in the 2011 tables, tested during a prolonged strike by their impoverished teachers.

 Pisa tests 15 year olds so if some15 year olds are not in the school system the results will be skewed, and if you have a high dropout rate they will not be there for the tests either. Who is going to do better at the tests: those who have no secondary schooling or those staying on past the end of compulsory schooling? China will do well in the 2015 tests if it continues to educate around 60% of rural students – with the poorer  children out at work and out of tests.

The tests themselves, the results and their interpretation are riddled with unacceptable weaknesses.

Each Pisa test is not taken by all the 15 year olds tested.  By Pisa’s own admission, it would be impracticable to do the full 4 ½ hour test with all kids. Some countries have a Reading Result when no one took the reading test. The Rasch statisical model used extrapolates from the actual answers how each student would have done in questions they were not asked.

Not surprisingly this model is questioned - Professor Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University: expressed “considerable uncertainty” about the model. Svend Kreiner of Copenhagen University added. “I don’t think it’s reliable at all.”
 
Defending his work Pisa guru, Andreas Schlecher says, “The model is an approximation  of reality.” “Large variations in single country ranking positions is likely,” and “people shouldn’t pay too much attention to the precise country rankings.”

There is much criticism of the model   concurring that  Pisa’s administrators work out what the scores would have been if all the students in all the countries answered the same questions.

If the questions asked in one particular country were switched with another, league standings vary bizarrely, “with the UK finishing anywhere between 14^th and 30^th, Japan between 8^th and 40^th and Denmark between 5^th and 37^th .”(TES Dec 2013) 

In the 2006 tests, half those tested were not asked any questions on reading and half were not tested on Maths, although full rankings were issued for both subjects. Kreiner says “this in itself is ridiculous.”

8 of the 28 reading questions were deleted in some countries  because the OECD itself considered them ”dodgy,” but only in  some countries.  Little wonder that Dr Morrison of Belfast University deems the model, “valueless,” “utterly wrong,” and stated, “it will never work.”

As worrying is the attempt to ask the same questions in different languages. An article on Cloning, “A Copying Machine for Human beings,”  became incomprehensible translated word by word into Norwegian.” I wonder how particular metaphors and other linguistic nuances translate accurately in and out of the various languages of the Pisa test.

Kreiner, a student of Georg Rasch the creator of Pisa’s statistical method condemned the tests in 2011, “I am not actually able to find two items in Pisa’s test that function in exactly the same way in different countries…Therefore you cannot use this model.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

Gove has called Pisa delivery man Schleicher, the most revolutionary post war educationalist. What a laugh if all the world’s education politicians get us to teach Pisa style, teach to the test until every country scores brilliantly, whilst their kids can't shake hands or smile with feeling, appreciate art, drama and music or  kick a ball correctly. You may recall the chilling image of the 5 year old Koreans trying to clamber onto the bus taking them to their extra evening schools, which 80% of them do.

The very dangerous Goveite Schools Minister Elizabeth Truss, bound as Gove’successor, as I desperately pun her name, has said that individual schools could take the tests “to compare themselves against the world’s best education systems.” (Nov 2013)The government-friendly NFER is offering trials of this. Soon, we will all be doing these tests as yet another flawed accountability measure, and yet another bloody test.

With a nod of thanks to those in America making 1851 blog hits, I thought I’d mention USA  performance – like ours it’s stagnated with position 24, 28 and 36 in Reading, Science and Maths respectively. Like everywhere, the middle class schools in wealthy areas did better than average and many of my UK doubts apply to the USA. However,  despite such poor Pisa performance America has more millionaires and the highest GDP in the world, scores highly on creativity – the odd film, book and musical item, entrepreneurship and industrial patents  granted and, of course, has more Miss Universe winners than any other country.  

Back to the tests.                                                                                                                       

If you were born in 1983 you were the first year guinea pigs, for tests at the end of KS1 (aged 7), KS2 (11), KS3  (14) new  GCSEs (at 16) and new A Levels at 18. The school was judged by your success in these tests so you were taught to these tests, practised for these tests and judged by them. And, before my 30 year old daughter revisits her, “I was so bored,” rants, the teachers were too. So if we are going to be judged by Pisa testing I will personally guarantee we move above other countries

We get the Department for Education to choose a fair cohort of schools who take the tests seriously, prepare the kids for the sort of approach required, set mocks, give each kid a banana and decent air conditioning and tell them the tests are really important.

With scientific integrity I tested Diane Carey on the easily available Sample Pisa Reading questions. At first she struggled, then, when she saw model answers she soared to total success. And as a Maths teacher she said that an hour’s preparation of her 15 year olds would lead to a 20% increase in scores. It’s like a cryptic crossword: easier once you know the style.

There is nothing inherently wrong with tests: like an MOT car test they can show you what needs improving. However, Goodhart’s Law is instructive: “Once a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure,” and the danger is that Gove finds true love with Pisa: diagnosis, judgement and imposition on flimsy evidence.

Politically, the tests are a ball to be kicked in the direction your team faces. We should kick our way, teach the curriculum that’s best for our students, whilst doing a little prep for the international tests by which they will be judged.  

But if you really want, I can train sheep to answer your questions.                                                                                                          

 

Don’t Fear The Reaper; Send Your Kids To Private Schools

11th December 2013


Christmas is sadly a wicked time of fear, dread and despair for many. It’s not just for those with inbred hatred and distrust of their own families where reaching for a dinner knife puts everyone on edge, remembering that unfortunate slip when granddad and grandma were eternally parted. It’s not just for the 6.7 million working families who are living in poverty according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Shed not a piteous tear for them this Christmas. Nor for the West Country badger-cullers who failed to meet their government approved kill targets when the badgers, “moved the goalposts,” and, “went underground.”

Public sector workers with their 1% rise might weep when they see the predicted 6% rise in food prices next year alongside the 10% rip off electricity and gas prices increase. They may applaud the decision to award our members of parliament an 11% pay rise if only because it makes it even more clear that MPs are not in “public service.”

Our smug chancellor and his self-congratulatory cronies whooped and Oh yahed (pronounce it ‘yard’) in parliament last Thursday as Baron Osborne declared that he had managed to manipulate a house price boom to give the impression of economic growth whilst we have a massive burgeoning of food banks. To add to the gloom and shame our welfare state now has “social supermarkets” where those on benefits can buy discarded supermarket goods that would otherwise be landfill.

 Let’s not mourn the 24,000 pensioners who died of the cold during the mild winter of 2012 according to the National Office of Statistics. We can beat that record this winter.

 Please do spare many thoughts for those who made a conscious, rational decision to get rid of their kids for as long as possible by sending them to private boarding schools. Surely if you pay 30 grand a year (and the rest) you should expect year-round peace. But, no, the kids return for Christmas.

 Some clarification about private education in England: our private schools are called public schools even though entry is by payment; stranger still they are registered charities for tax purposes. Ex-Prime Minister, John Major finally noticed social inequality, "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking." The privately educated cabinet ministers chorused an “OK Yah” (that’s ‘yard’ without the‘d’) in delight. Mind you, the grey enigma Major is the only person ever to run away from a circus to become an accountant.

In this Land of Opportunity I admire the successes of our great private schools. They are truly independent. No left wing enemies of promise undermining their drive for standards. No nasty trade unions, no national pay agreement, none of that pesky qualified teachers only stuff. Headmasters can employ whoever they want to do whatever they say. I'd embrace the freedom to pay our staff less but the enemies of promise (wreckers, Trotskyists, vegans and Daily Mail readers) won't let me.

 Unlike our selective and increasingly backdoor selective state schools many private schools don't turn your kids away because they are weakish academically. Given the long history of public schools looking after the dim sons of the inbred inherited nobility many private schools can gratefully give them places, take your money, keep the kids quiet, educate them a bit and exclude them from their exam statistics. There are no league tables of private schools exam results. I know of a school which achieved 101% passes a few years ago. Yippee, let’s go private.

The state system is encouraged by the elfin Gove to lose Drama, Sport and Music whilst public schools love these subjects and anything else that keeps the kids occupied in the long evenings and weekends of boarding school idleness.

The clown Boris Johnson (Eton) says that we are born unequal. He claimed that his chums were born dead clever and the rest of us should know our place as we are not of his calibre. Most prime ministers and cabinet ministers went private much to the delight of the proud “mps” Gove (minor public school in posh talk) and I want our kids to aspire to run the country without needing the inherited wealth of most cabinet ministers – including Cameron, Osborne, and Clegg. Likewise the public spirited judges and barristers. I want our kids to aspire to such wonderful service to their communities.

Many BBC people went to private schools and it obviously helps you get a job there and our kids should be able to aspire to BBC respect, except of course for Savile, Hall and possibly all the other bearded, star-following wannabes from the 60s whose public school bosses knew how to turn a blind eye.

So let us all become private schools. There is no Ofsted inspector blindly belching data. The unNational Curriculum does not apply and we could do what we jolly well want. There are no league tables of GCSE and A level results. Public schools publish what they wish and this allows weaker students to avoid the humiliation of being publicly recorded as a failure and bringing into question the good name of their schools.

 I know where we can get the money, too. To live his dreamworld of inequality Mr Gove pays the new almost empty, unregulated University Technology Colleges twice per student what other state schools get. Around £10,000 per UTC student matches many minor public school day student fees. To make up for the Saturday school attendance – there to stop the boarders rioting but now imbedded to keep the kids away from parents. In return there are the lovely long holidays, which, you may recall was the start of this blog about 700 words ago...

Remember how rarely you got to go out when the kids were young, and babysitters were hard to find, and you couldn't stay out too late? Well send the little blighters to boarding school, and you can go out and forget about them, and have as much to drink as you want without having to explain yourself, wear clothes or keep the noise down. House parents in boarding schools are great babysitters - they don't necessarily have teaching qualifications but they are checked for dodgy pasts, I believe.

And whilst on this subject there is no evidence to suggest that children in boarding schools are any more likely to be sexually abused than if they have served as altar boys in the Catholic Church. No evidence at all, allegedly.

Mind you I went to a catholic grammar school for boys where my form tutor chose to put boys across his knee for a quick spank rather than use the established procedures for a documented beating with a bone shaped piece of leather. You bad, sanctimonious man, Joe Tora.

 And you know how stroppy teenagers can get? Well you don't need to bother about that, look on private school boarding as like being in care without the stigma. Give em enough cash and the school will keep your naughty kids locked up at night. I remember about 8 years ago when the biggest local drug bust was of a student locker in a well-known private school, more drugs than ever seen in a comp. Private schools go better with coke.

Actually the best reason to send your kids to private schools, even the low achieving hippy-rich mickey mouse institutions we have in the shires, is for every fee paying parents to say to their state educated peers: I am better than you. My money is a measure of my worth. I know very well a 14 year old girl who was doing brilliantly at state school. She had firm friends and was involved in all the extra-curricular activities on offer. Mummy wanted the status of private school, granddad paid for the school and the girl was never again to talk to her state school friends. Everything to climb the social ladder at age 11.

It’s not about exam success, either. PISA has a statistical tool for stripping away advantages brought by social advantage or funding levels, so that countries and sectors within countries can be compared fairly. When applied to private and state schools in the UK there is almost no difference in their performance. PISA claim private schools only appear more effective because they are better funded and because they have more advantaged students.

I know to my cost the enormity of the condescension showered on our comprehensive children by teacher-parents of private school kids, doing their social conscience bit with a deficit model of working class achievement that should have been permanently inserted in a manner that would never be forgotten. “Oh, look how well that child sat down today; let’s give him an award; I know children in my child’s private school who can’t sit down that nicely…”

 Returning at an angle to the notion of service the traitorous Cambridge 5 – Philby, Burgess, Mclean, Blunt and possibly John Cairncross were all educated at “good public schools” where they learned so much about service that they repeatedly betrayed their country. Oddly all were members of an elite secret Cambridge University society – the Angels. A bit like the Eton Boys at Oxford.

Cameron, Boris and Osborne were all members of the exclusive Bullingdon Club whose dining exploits perhaps suggest some potty training problems embedded by being away from home too long, too early.

 Andrew Gimson, biographer of the mad-even-then Boris Johnson, reported "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man.”

Oh yes, public school will teach you manners. As the short story write Saki said if you truly want a boy to be vicious you have to send him to a good public school. I went to Harrow, by the way, only to get kicked off their football pitches which, even on a Sunday, were not for the likes of me.


Dennis O'Sullivan

I Am Michael Gove

I am Michael Gove

Last week’s absence of food may be responsible for some strange dreams and delusions, convincing me that I am another life altogether. I had the song, “I am John Wayne” by my beloved John Martyn reverberating and wanted to name-check John. I thought I’d check that he was talking about the big, tough, drink your milk and get on your horse, western hero actor. Imagine, after 40 years discovering the song may be about John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. Imagine also how little self-confidence one would have being a not-notorious serial killer. Identity issues through a fever.

In many of these blogs I have tried to “play the ball and not the man,” but I’ve had enough, now.

I was dozing through a Dylan song and I heard the word of Michael, “It aint no use talking to me; it’s just the same as talking to you.” The words of a liberal sort of guy seeing himself as no better than anyone else by right of birth or circumstance. Michael has just published his post consultation plans for new GCSEs, astonishingly identical to his initial announcements. Having read his pronouncement I followed the link to the consultation details to find not a single reference to a thought or idea from anyone. And I can assure you I contributed. With just 5% of teachers feeling that this government has made a positive impact on education it would appear there wasn’t any point in him noting what we thought. After all, “I would like to give professionals more freedom but I know what’s best.” There really hasn’t been a time in his rule that he has listened to anyone and as he said to his DFE advisors, “I don’t need you to tell me if I’m right, I know I’m right.” And when they resigned he didn’t care.

If you seek out people who know me they might tell you I was quite often rude to people. I think a hearing problem made this more fearsome than might otherwise be the case and that I am, more recently, very nearly giant like in stature frightened some gentle folk. The admittedly diminutive Gove, rejects all-comers, perhaps by his physical resemblance to various less exotic species of fish but more by just being rude. I speak as one of his “enemies of promise.”
Govespeak. You will remember, the profound, “I agree with Nick.” Well, Michael has given us rigour. A rigorist is an obstinate person, a tyrant and rigorous means severe, fastidious pitiless, ascetic. Rigour is hardness, severity, excessive, amongst other things, of course. Ooh, you are tough; I bet you took them all on in Peebles as a lad.

So I was in front of St. Peter and I'd already paid £15 to change my name. I said, “I am Michael Gove. St. Peter, old chap, I did destroy education and condemn millions of children to drudgery, rote learning and failure, whilst trying to equip them for uncritical acceptance of their role in an underclass I have cemented into place. Let me in.” Or flipping religions would he just settle for a go as a meerkat, a decidedly higher species than contemporary politician, and requiring less makeup.

The reason I have become Michael Gove is because it looks like it really is all over for education. The Labour Opposition has gone from nice ineffectual Twiggy to lost pretty boy Hunt; the unions accept their impotence and the liberal media repeats itself to a despairing powerless country and an empty auditorium of policy makers. Teachers, parents and kids are truly fed up, worried, confused and leaderless. Gove’s treachery has won the day and teachers will eventually run away. Napoleon said that you should never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. If my enemies had enemies we could afford this silence.

I have spent 35 years trying to make an impact in education. Gove has done far more in four years than I could dream of. Whereas I just tried to help children learn, understand, think and achieve, and encouraged colleagues to have the highest expectations, to work the extra hours and to meet occasional failure with a smile, knowing that their efforts would be rewarded for their righteousness, Gove just dismantled everything in one very foul swoop. I am envious of his demolition power.

Everything had to change and he transcended my political dreams from earlier years, when I wanted to change the world. I never knew that one demonic little man could destroy so much. We are testing kids at 5, cramming them at 11 and 16, and A levels have been condemned as useless. Students’ communication, social, musical and artistic skills are relegated to irrelevance. The man says PE can be done in “prep.” State education has been replaced by corrupt free schools, inept UTCs, desperately not coping studio schools and privately run expense account sponsored academies. Ofsted join him in a surely humorous assessment of free schools: apparently 70% of them are at least good. Bravo, without levels of progress and exam results these schools cannot be judged by Ofsted criteria, and they have none. 

Can anyone help me here, which other men who have achieved destruction on a grand scale dressed up in some nationalist rhetoric about needing to be better than other countries?

Gove said, “We are going to get rid of levels and not replace them.” Now, hot off his own press, Level 4b at the end of Year 6 means you are "secondary ready" and oh my, are we far away from labelling kids as unready? And isn't the level 4b exactly what we have now. Spin him round a few more times and he may come up with ideas like rote learning, studying the romantic poets and Jane Austen, learning the kings and queens of England, O levels, more selective universities with no cap on university fees, changes to SEN funding so there isn't any and the denationalisation of the education system. When I was younger I proposed libertarian socialism with little regard to contrary views. In 2013 100 leading professors and education experts warned that forcing children to learn "endless lists" of facts and rules "will severely damage education standards." Gove called them “bad academics.” Were we separated at birth?

At the squeakingly dull tory conference we had Gove parading a black American trade unionist in front of the bemused blue dyed elderly. Gove applauded the guy with his trademark seal-like slapping hearing how performance related pay had worked in some American schools.

What George Parker actually says is that PRP can work if everyone has a clear job description, lots of professional training and there's extra money to pay the best. Bugger me if you haven't been a bit selective there Michael. Bit like when we occasionally score a goal at Tottenham and the crowd sing, "We are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen." See how my life is morphing into yours.

I remember with considerable affection watching Suzanna Hoff singing “Walk like an Egyptian” and the thrill as she froze to look sideways with big brown eyes. I have a chilling clip of Gove doing just the same at a tory conference. Go on Michael, tell me you’re modeling your public persona on The Bangles.

Gove loves the American Charter Schools and says that “their results are extraordinary.” According to a Stanford University study of 16 US states 46% of charter schools made no difference to results and 37% actually had worse results than public schools in their area. But 80% are for profit schools and that’s what he loves.

In 17 long months we will have a general election and, with justice, you will be gone, Michael, leaving behind a legacy of destruction, insult, half-truths, lousy stats, errors that can only be lies, inaccurate comparisons, academic foibles, misquotes, bad maths and distrust. Will anyone stop to rescue your political career or will you be back as a Murdoch sycophant?

When Gove first arrived at Westminster in 2005 Murdoch topped up his wages with a £60,000 a year salary for his column. He was given an advance for a still, unwritten book on an obscure 18th century Viscount Bolingbroke. No book by 2013 and Collins say they haven't asked for the advance back. Payday loans could be a thing of the past if we borrowed the Govey way.

The medical man gave me some drugs to enhance my health and I reckon me and Michael merged some more. You know how “tea” actually meant marijuana? And horse, speed spliff, charlie and whizz are euphemistically used by drug users. Well Michael talks about his “Urgency Pills.”

Here’s a thing: People get addicted to drugs and will do just about anything to get them. Is this how it is with your urgency pills, Michael? Do they make you sweat with cold when you haven't come up with another ill thought out attack on teachers, kids and their schools? Do you crave the drug in a drooling frenzy even though you know it is the pill, the need to do something, anything no matter how destructive? And then there's the rush, isn't there? The mad speeding along on the adrenaline highway, gives you a buzz, no matter what you've done to the victims of your need. Lou Reed wrote the magnificent Heroin, "when I'm closing on my run and I feel just like Jesus’s son." Too many drugs for Lou I'm afraid. When I spoke with him in 1975 no matter what I said, he really didn't seem to be hearing a damn word. Is that what it’s like for you, Michael? Do you get so high on your own unilateral pronouncements that spell harm for others that you feel somehow connected to your god? Or is it worse than that, if you know better than everyone else, if they are all bad professors, bad academics, bad headteachers, enemies of promise and you know that you are right, are you claiming omnipotence? Are you David Icke’s twin, another son of god?

If you could just come down, lay off your drugs and listen to the cacophony of well-reasoned sense that's deafening the rest of us.

Michael, given that it’s all about me, why not start trying to emulate my recent years and I’ll stay away forever from attacking yours. Put some effort, time and thought into listening to teachers, parents and children, spare a moment for those who have more experience than you, who have been to schools that haven’t been specially treated for your visit. Other than that apologise for your sins and find something more appropriate for your skills lounge lizzarding for example, fly fishing using only your own face or writing tedious memoires.

And you know don’t you that you are already a best seller. “The thoughts of Michael Gove,” 96 pages of blank pages, emptiness, subtitled “Everything I know about teaching,” is in the Amazon Top 20. And I can think of no clearer, more honest representation of a minister’s knowledge and expertise. I have a copy and I have studied every word. One reviewer has said “the man who has done for education what the Titanic did for pleasure cruising”.

I wonder though, does a democratic society need Michael Gove. As Tennessee Williams elegantly wrote, “If I get rid of my demons I might lose my angels.”

Secondary Heads Unite in Condemnation of Changes to Early Exam Entry that Disrupts School and Pupil Plans

Members of the country’s  school leadership unions, NAHT and ASCL, have today prepared a letter to parents on behalf of secondary heads expressing their concern and frustration with the government's lack of planning and direction for GCSEs.

The secondary heads say the latest announcement of changes to reporting mechanisms for early GCSE exam entries – just weeks before students were due to sit them – is the latest in a series of disruptive, unplanned changes rushed in by the Department for Education that have left schools and pupils in disarray.

The letter reads:

Dear Parents,

For the third time in the last two years, we have had to alter our plans for GCSEs because of a sudden announcement from the government. We know how important these exams are to you and we are frustrated we cannot focus all our energies on raising results.

Without any notice and with immediate effect, the government has limited schools' ability to enter students early for GCSEs - after we had already planned entries for the year. Early entry can serve many good purposes, including vital 'live' preparation for later exams.

It seems that barely a term goes by without another sudden change to GCSE examinations. Worst of all, these changes are often made in the middle of students' courses of study, making it impossible to plan properly or to focus on learning rather than constant administrative change. They changed grade boundaries between exam sittings; they dropped the vital skills of speaking and listening from English mid-course; and now this latest announcement.

These changes are often timed to coincide with party conferences or similar events, leading us to fear that students and schools are just collateral damage in party political squabbles.

Head teachers are ambitious for every child in their school. They are the first to admit that our education must constantly improve. We have achieved much - our schools are unrecognisable compared to 10 years ago - but we have far to go. We see no reason, other than the date of the next election, why change needs to be rushed without consultation or planning. Ultimately it is students who suffer.

We wanted to explain to you our position on these reforms: we believe they are disrupting your children's education and undermining their hard work. We wanted to let you know that we will continue to help students navigate the system as best we can. And we wanted to encourage you to contact politicians and let them know how the changes are affecting you and your family. Ministers are distant from the front line and the realities of teaching. They cannot see the confusion and chaos being created; nor do they have any respect for the views of the profession. They may listen to you.


Yours faithfully

Leaders in Secondary Education

Reproduced in full
9th October 2013
Dennis O'Sullivan