Time For A Change

After 41 blogs where I have ranted about the government drive to show ordinary kids that they are as good as worthless; 80,000 words suggesting, demanding and crying out for headteachers and political opposition parties to stand up for comprehensive education, I stopped writing.

I have nothing left to add.

A friend of our comprehensive secondary school said I should say it all again.

We have a staffing shortage across the system – Oh no we don’t (DfE)

We have seen our budgets cut and many of us are heading towards redundancies, larger classes, fewer subject choices and deficit budgets (MPs and DfE: There’s lots of money)

Close your eyes and ears and pretend we will not see a mass exodus of school leaders in 2017.

Under AOB at my union’s information conference in 2015 I said that the new curriculum, including tougher exams, end of coursework and bigger subject content will fail the majority of the young people in my school. I was met with polite silence from the leadership.

When I said that junior school kids are being driven away from creativity, teamwork, problem solving and personal resilience by the obsession with SATs and that this is a bad thing, some people waited for me to shut up.

I have been an ASCL member for 19 years. Our previous General Secretary, Brian Lightman, was kind enough to engage in debate with me – in person and by email. I respected Brian as he kept telling me that the politicians were listening to the ASCL, even though we have watched their attacks on state education. They did not listen, Brian, but a million thanks for your work.

My local ASCL rep has written to us explaining why we should consider voting for a sitting ASCL Council member. I propose doing nothing of the sort.

If there is to be a change in policy to secure a brilliant education for our children, one where they are individuals with their own talents to be developed, a system where state schools are recognised for the amazing successes already achieved and the opportunity to achieve even more, where teachers are esteemed and admired for the fantastic commitment to learning, achievement and fairness, if we are to be optimistic about our children’s future, it is time for a change. It is time for courageous union leadership. The ASCL Council nomination for General Secretary has never been a headteacher, has been a civil servant and is a consultant. He has experience of for-profit education provision, is now with an academy chain and probably ideally placed to understand the government’s priorities.

I have just discovered that Geoff Barton is standing for the position of ASCL General Secretary. I have watched his work for many years, I have borrowed from his school’s website, I have read his stuff on literacy and I have listened to him speak at PIXL conferences. I am sure he is not as oppositional or militant as me and he may not thank me for my support. However, I think we should all look at what he stands for (Google is a start) and hope he is the sort of leader that will commit to the membership and times changing for the better.

Dennis O’Sullivan (Headteacher)

Grammar Schools Promote Inequality and Injustice

Post 1945, working class children left school at 14 and went into unskilled jobs and apprenticeships . In the new secondary modern schools working class children were destined for working class jobs. They sat few if any exams and school expectations were low. Grammar schools educated a quarter of our 12 year olds – depending on availability - and these children were destined for jobs in offices. The privately educated were our MPs, doctors, lawyers and senior civil servants. Everyone knew their place.

Unless we reopen the factories, shipyards and mines secondary modern schooling will not provide the skilled workforce we require, unless Sports Direct and McDonalds take over more workplaces.

Apparently (they got consultants in for this) if you select the kids doing best at tests at age 11 and put them in one school, that school will have the highest achievers in GCSE tables five years later. Stunning. Apparently, it is also hotter near the Equator.

All schools should be good schools. We have the best teachers ever and more parents are happy with their child’s school than ever before. Government claim “parent choice” as their goal – well you can’t have selection and parent choice.

Here’s an email I received on Wednesday: ”Do you only accept children who live in your area? I live in X and there is one school I like but both my children are below average and worried they will fail the entry test.”

From the parents of her friends to my Year 6 granddaughter, “You should go to school P rather than the excellent local school S because you’re academic.”

Meanwhile 12 miles away, “We wanted her to go to school H but it is too academic for her,”

Half way between the two, “The Headteacher told me that if my daughter’s reading age was one iota below her chronological age she cannot come here, it is not fair on my staff.”

We have schools, Ofsted “outstanding” schools, which claim they are, “not good with special educational needs.” School M made its TAs redundant and then claimed to be unable to admit kids with SEN due to lack of staff.

In a colleague’s primary school one parent confronted the head with, “I do not want him doing these art things. Just make sure he can pass the entry test to school D.”

Welcome to Hertfordshire, where each year the county proclaims Watford Girls Grammar School as a top comprehensive, alongside Watford Boys Grammar . They must be great schools: the head of one was made a dame and the other is a schools commissioner…..fancy that.

Mrs May is keen for Faith Schools to select all their kids on the basis of religion. Has she tried getting a non-believing family into a Jewish or Catholic school where the admission criteria starts with attendance at a particular place of worship and then to siblings? In encouraging division amongst the population and in promoting isolation amongst our minorities Mrs May is an ideal candidate for a visit from the Prevent people.

She is keen on new parent-sponsored single faith grammar free schools. Well, seeing as parents are not opening free schools but faith organisations predominate, she knows this is not going to happen. Perhaps somewhere like Leeds can have a Muslim Grammar School, a Jewish Grammar School, Hindu, CoE and Catholic grammar schools alongside a non denominational boys grammar, and a girls grammar nearby. Imagine the school run in Leeds.

Mrs May wants all schools to have, “an element of selection.” If grammar schools select the brightest are other schools to select the dimmest?

Her supporters say introducing more selective grammar schools is not going back to the days of selective grammar schools. Oh,my!

They say that the selection of the most academic 11 year olds will not create secondary modern schools and certainly not “sink schools” where expectations of exam success are non existent. Yes it will.

Grammar schools must be good because their students do well in exams, therefore we need loads of grammar schools. In fact, if these are the best schools let’s make all schools grammar schools.

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

May pretends that children will move between the selective schools according to individual student progress, as if there is no limit on how many kids you can fit in a classroom.

Apparently, lots of parents who are in select, expensive catchment areas fear the imposition of grammar schools. But, Mrs May says, new grammar schools will not be forced on areas that don’t want them. Can we do the same with capital punishment ? Maybe impose it in Scotland only?

The chief inspector of schools says the pro grammar school argument is “Tosh and nonsense” and just about all the evidence points to grammar schools increasing social inequality. But what did we expect from a government which has introduced tests at 11, 16 and 18 designed to fail more students. 47% of English 12 year olds are classed as failures by their performance in tests -perhaps we could stamp this on an appropriate part of their anatomy, so they don’t forget their failings.

Each day I watch the girls come off the train from outside the catchment area of the oversubscribed selective/non selective school P and I wonder how they got places.

We don’t have to worry about the 11+, in Bishops Stortford 3 of the 4 secondary schools have Saturday morning entry tests and all claim to be comprehensives. I know of five schools that select up to 10% of their intake on aptitude for music or languages. Howzat!

Theresa May is right about selection by house price – you can get a 3 bedroomed semi for £500,000 in the catchment area of one of our highly praised schools. The children of educated, midlle class parents score highly on their primary school tests, usually with private tutor support. Of course, Ofsted say they are outstanding. Ofsted claimed my nephew’s white, middle class, catholic school with lower than average frees school meals, EAL students and SEN kids was, “highly inclusive,” and “outstanding.”

One of my part time staff coaches 18 boys from one school; money helps.

Of three agreed housing projects: School A is in an area of architectural splendour and the project had “no affordable housing.” School B has 145 houses planned and “no affordable housing.” Hertfordshire – one of the biggest in the country makes sure that its entirely Conservative MPs are not troubled by social integration.

Disgraceful Gove started the drive to put working class kids back in their place. Mindlessly, vacuous Morgan continued the slide and now the unsuspecting puppet Greening will be charged with driving even more teachers into other jobs, more children ringing Helpline in despair over their grades and more families accepting that education and British society is not for the likes of them.

Mrs May says that new grammar schools will have to accept poorer children. Does this mean that the 163 existing grammar schools don’t already pursue this sort of social justice? According to the Sutton Trust, in selective school areas 3% of the children in grammar schools were on free school meals. In the same locality18% of non grammar school children received free school meals.

The education system can encourage social equality. Rather than taking a small proportion of bright poor kids and sticking them in grudgingly benevolent grammar schools lets put massive resourcing into the schools in poorer areas. Get the best teachers with higher salaries and subsidised housing and create the infrastructure and local economy to employ the high achieving youngsters.

Watch them shine.

Whilst politicians cheat and deceive half our kids are failures

Supermum Leadsome and the adulterer Boris decided being ‘leavers’ was advantageous to their ambitions and manipulated the electorate. That the good people of Sunderland and Grimsby weighed up the likelihood of a fall in stock exchange values against the promise of £350 million a week for the NHS is admirable. The immediate 42% increase in race hate crimes is no-one’s fault.(BBC 08-07-16)

The sneaky duplicitous Gove says it is his, “privilege to serve,” but loyalty to Shaggy Boris was a step too far. I hope his love of classical education will comfort him as he descends Dante’s Hell, through those levels reserved for the greedy, the fraudulent and finally settling for eternity with the most treacherous. He may well meet 172 Labour MPs down there.

The politicians’ lack of care, understanding or interest ensures that teachers bore, alienate and fail our kids in homage to a romantic past, an education ideal that never existed. We witnessed dishonest, opportunistic slogan chanting in the referendum where they seduced the electorate they despise, only to reject within moments of victory their own promises on the NHS and immigration.

That hundreds of thousands of children are being falsely labelled failures matters not one jot compared to MP’s thirst for self-promotion.

Dodgy Dave, never tires of telling us about his blessed family, and tearfully used his affection for his dad as the reason he lied to parliament. If your underpants are too tight stop wriggling.

Last week one of Gove’s dwindling underlings, Pointless Morgan, tried desperately to explain that telling 47% of the country’s 11 year olds they had failed the new version of the 3Rs was nothing to worry about.

It is deliberate policy to instil failure into the majority of children and to identify the schools they attend as unworthy. It does take us nearer to the Tory dream of grammar schools – the good old days before working class families got uppity and their kids found ambition in schools that valued their achievements.

The first part of the failure game was to test the children at age 5 so that schools’ performance could be judged by progress at age 7. Incompetent officials discovered that their three measures were incompatible and the tests had to be abandoned. Amusingly, headteachers had been busy finding the hardest tests for 5 year olds, so that the children would score hardly anything and the school could show tremendous progress later on.

How long before teachers have to literally get into bed with pregnant mums to chant subordinate adverbial clauses at embryos?

Now we have tests at age 7, giving children three separate marks out of 100. The DfE has said it’s OK for schools not to pass the results to children or their parents. Well, what are they for, then? Here’s a test question for 7 year olds that some found ambiguous:

“There were some people on atrain.

19 people got off at the 1st stop.

17 people get on the train.

Now there are 63 people on the train.

How many people were on the train to begin with?”

(The answer: comes from x-19+17=63; so X=65.)

Recently Morgan decided there would no longer be parent places on school governing bodies, relegating them to tea making at school bazaars. Did the DfE officials – the experts – advise ministers that this might alienate parents who some of us see as vital to the success of the education process. Or is this a “jobsworth” situation

We do not need a knowledge based curriculum with an exam system designed to fail more kids. We do need a skills based education where children discover, discuss and decide, alone and in groups, in writing and orally, using ICT programs to present their solutions, able to evaluate and target their own success.

Tests at age 7 and 11 are taken by children who have spent months preparing, revising and relearning material solely relevant to the tests. The rest of what should be a creative, stimulating curriculum of discovery and mastery is cast aside because the tests are used to batter the primary schools.

We heard of previously happy children driven to tears of frustration and self-harming fear of failure by the mind numbing repetition of practising for the tests. The schools are blamed and dammed. Morgan told headteachers at a conference in May that she expected many more schools would see fewer pupils hitting expected scores. However she said the results would be “manipulated” to ensure the number of failing schools would be in the hundreds, not thousands.

Publicly' shamelessly and with no sense of irony the Secretary of State for Education announced that she will fiddle the results.

Weary teachers giggled when Gove told the Commons Select Committee that, “all schools must be above average.” Chancellor Osborne could not do a times table sum and Education minister Gibb failed a test question for 11 year olds. Nicky Morgan to refused to answer test questions. “…there will be one where I get it wrong and that's the one that everyone's going to be focused on.” (Daily Mirror 13-1-16) All the ministers were worried they would make mistakes if put under test conditions.

I've written books on English language. I reckon I can write to be understood, or wrap in camouflage and metaphor when the desire for obscurity appeals. Can I do the 11 year olds’ grammar test? How much use have we had for ‘determiners?’ Here’s guidance on how to teach them:

“The class may participate in a discussion about which words are determiners; for example, a child may be given the phrase 'happy girl' and suggest that the word 'happy' is a determiner. Class discussion could then lead to the teacher explaining that 'happy' is in fact an adjective.” (Schoolrun.com.)

Teacher assessments, coursework, resits, oral exams and controlled assessments have been abandoned because some kids in Shanghai take lots of tests. So we will test children against national standards at age 5, 7, 11, 14, 16 and 18 to emulate societies that we do not wish to mirror. Morgan says that the harder the test, the more they have learned. Thus we have GCSE Maths, now with A Level content so that it is inaccessible to around 50% of students. .

Back in 1980, Biology teachers at Little Ilford School set an exam where 3.5% was, “a really good mark.” What was the point? Then Biology, Chemistry and Physics teachers started to compete for kids to choose their subject. 98% became a fairly common score. Where was the learning?

There is a relationship between students, their parents and their teachers which praises effort, encourages progress built on self- belief, great teaching and respect, showing students what they can achieve by working hard. Show them that there’s no point in trying and things are going to get tough in our schools.

It's hard not to feel sorry for the civil servants working in the DfE. Those with principles fled into other jobs. Think for a moment of those who had to remain because of mortgages, access to stationery and their dreams of pensions and possibly a mention in the queen’s honours list for time serving. As they scurry around pleasuring the ministers, carrying out any number of contradictory tasks and producing nonsense like our assessment system remember that the bright ones left. Those with experience and understanding of state education left years ago. Gove told his senior staff I don't want your advice I want you to put in place what I say.

Out of DfE staff bonuses last year, the top civil servants received up to £17,500.((Schools Week 05-07-16) Do they still get luncheon vouchers?

Perhaps the DfE is full of Trotskyist cadres waiting for things to get so bad that they can step forward as the new leadership of an education revolution after which we will be freed to be creative, inspirational and sane.

Or will they mindlessly do exactly as they are told and excuse their compliance with, “I was just following orders?” Where did I hear that before?

Little more than a production line worker alienated from the product of his labour, the DfE officials are plodding along, “Yes Gove, Yes Gibbs, Yes Morgan,” as an alternative to unemployment.

In the last few days we have watched the parliamentary debate on Arts Education, where 12 MPs and Nick Gibb responded to hundreds of thousands of us in petitions. He dismissed the facts and that’s the end of debate. Such is democracy now. I wonder how heavy is the hand of history on Iraq-War Blair’s unaccountable shoulders this week.

Despite appeasing Tory MPs by publicly abandoning forced academisation Morgan was advised that Local Authorities will be forced to academies all schools due to a lack of money to keep open primaries. Dissembling is nothing but lies.

Stupidly, and he must know it, minister Gibb said that market forces will drive up teachers’ pay at a time when schools have deficit budgets .Let’s hope he’s been thoroughly tested; spouting nonsense might be contagious.

And if he or the Morgan-Gove folk think that I am going to make 50% of our kids waste their precious learning time on cramming, again, for the insult that is resit SATs on their first term at secondary school….

The Last Thing That Teachers Need Is A Politician With Vision - As Tory education policy unravels, we can but hope

Jeremy Hunt employs the negotiating psychology of putting fingers in both ears and chanting La, La, La at the junior doctors in the dispute over imposed new contracts. I would be saddened to hear that he picked this up in his schooldays at Charterhouse (current fees £35,529) as my understanding is that such schools are tip top on their “soft skills” of people management, team building and problem solving. The numbers from abroad - an admittedly large place – are rising and 38.5% of the students whose parents live abroad travel from China and Hong Kong to study in our private schools. (Independent Schools Council 2016)They come from education systems we are told we must emulate. In the words of Michael Gove, Oxford educated like Hunt, Osborne , Cameron, Johnson and Morgan, “Yada, yada, yada.” Unlike doctors and teachers Cameron and his crew remain unburdened by integrity.

Listening to Nicky Morgan is painful and sometimes confusing as, for example, when she explained the Chancellor’s overnight reversal on cuts to Disability allowances saying that the Budget cuts were merely a “suggestion” (BBC Question Time March 2016). More worrying was her latest chilling performance :” As secretary of state, people expect me to set out my vision for the education system.” (BBC Question Time April 2016). Schools Minister, Nick Gibb used the “vision” thing three times in a minute on “Daily Politics” last week. Vision is a powerful word and spinning it at will presents a veneer of goodness and insight, unique and perhaps spectacular.

The result of our last General Election (24,3% of registered voters voted Conservative)) is that the Conservative Party claim a mandate to carry out all their manifesto promises. The academisation of all state schools was not in that manifesto. Nicky Morgan claims it as her unique vision. The Chancellor tried to hide his poor maths , announcing in his March 2016 budget the forced academisation of 17,000 schools. Last week, Cameron and Gibb proclaimed it as a no-surrender policy. Then this week we have the novel compromise, in response to vehement opposition from parents, teachers, councils and MPs, that the way to end the powers of the elected Local Authorities is to get those LAs to run multi academy trusts. All this might seem to be hurried, illogical and ill thought out but it was precisely the advice given by the Gove/Gibb created Policy Exchange Think Tank in September 2014.

Whose vision?

I have no desire or need for politicians’ vision or their “passion” and I want them to shut up and get on with their job: supporting teachers in their schools as they continue to provide what is generally wonderful teaching. “Let’s spend a billion pounds on changing school ownership,” is ideology in practice and evident waste. I want them to manage an education system based on evidence rather than their passionate visions. A scheme is not a vision.

Nicky’s vision has the consistency of a plate of overcooked spaghetti hastily discarded by the deposed Michael Gove who is currently busily vying with Boris and Dodgy Dave for the Enoch Powell role in politics.

Here’s a sign of hope for the future: The government ‘s dictat on academisation is looking foolish and the opposition to it has been powerful and immense. Three teacher unions have offered possible strike action to oppose this fag-packet policy and, ironically, been told to keep politics out of education.

Can we all do some more opposing, please.

Schools struggle to find suitable recruits in all subjects, bar P.E. Having a choice of candidates is now quite rare and we are considering abolishing the need to be a mammal as a qualification to teach science. There are lots of statistics around:

18,000 teachers left schools in the UK to teach abroad in international schools in 2014. (SchoolsWeek 24-09-15) 17,001 student teachers joined UK PGCE courses.

Nearly 50,000 teachers quit the profession in the last year – the highest number since records began (Sky News 26-02-16)

38% of teachers left by the end of their first year. (Guardian 31-03-2015)

53% of teachers are thinking of resigning within 2 years (Guardian 04-10-15)

The government’s target for recruitment has not been met in any of the last 4 years and we are short 3,400 teacher trainees in 2016 (ASCL)

Many headteachers are looking to leave their jobs.

Ministers are in talks about funding a new school-leadership college that would parachute graduates fresh out of university into headteacher, deputy and assistant headteacher positions after just two years of training. The college is the brainchild of three of education’s most high-profile figures: Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw (surely part of the problem) Sir Anthony Seldon, former master of the expensively private Wellington College and now vice chancellor of the UK’s only private university; and free-school pioneer Toby Young, whose school has had 3 headteachers in 4 years. (TES 22-04-2016)

Headship is, after all, an unskilled job.

At least the glaringly obvious crisis in teacher retention is acknowledged.

There are various reasons why teachers leave teaching and workload is a major headache, trying to meet the expectations of Ofsted and school managers at the same time as preparing excellent lessons. In response to 20,394 teachers substantive statements, Morgan set up three working groups on planning, marking and data management. I’m sure we told them to take a joined-up sort of holistic approach but they must have thought there was too much work for one group.

Each individual group agreed that workload was problematic and each concluded that school leaders ought to do something about that. It’s almost like they talked to each other.

We have masses of government data and simultaneous initiatives in every aspect of education, often last minute and sometimes retrospective. We can be dammed and sacked according to annually stiffened new Ofsted inspection criteria.

The working parties could have said, “Let schools implement the last 100 government demands and initiatives before new policies are announced, possibly with a little more consultation and planning.”

I think we all know that using on-line resources and electronic marking would strip away hours of tedium. Could we have a vision of this from the DfE, please.

We know that schools can be driven by fear of Ofsted. Look at what is said in a 2016 Ofsted Report on a school they judged as “Good”. The report is typical and explains why teachers work so hard outside the lesson:

Teachers do not always use the information they hold on students’ prior achievement to plan interesting activities that are of the right level of difficulty for all groups. This has limited the progress of some students over time, particularly in science.

Sometimes, students continue to make mistakes because feedback on their work does not make clear how they can improve, or because they are not given the opportunity to make the changes needed.

In response to the workload reports, Ofsted’s chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, says, “It is very important that schools maintain a sense of proportion when preparing for an Ofsted inspection. If they are devoting their energies to getting things right for pupils, then an Ofsted inspection will take care of itself.”

Oh yeah, that’s all right then.

I want to thank Geoff Barton for permission to use his school’s job description – is it still like this, Geoff?

King Edward VI Rules for staff in 1550

They shall abstain from dicing, gaming and tippling. They must not keep their family on the premises. Women like deadly plagues shall be kept at a distance. The masters shall not be excessively harsh or severe or weakly prone to indulgence. They shall teach a little at a time, with plenty of examples. They shall never advance to fresh subjects ... until the earlier ones are thoroughly understood. The teachers shall appoint two boys called censors to note offences. The teachers shall secretly appoint a third boy to watch the other two and report to the master any offences overlooked or not noticed. Shouting, quarrelling, noise, thieving, lying coarse language and the impertinence of boys leaving their proper places shall be repressed by the teacher. When it is thought fit to allow some relaxation to unbend the mind and sharpen the wits the boys shall amuse themselves in decent sports such as running races, the use of the javelin or archery. They shall not play dice, knucks (knuckle bones) or chuck farthing (tossing coins). These games are unworthy of a well bred youth. The privilege of recreation shall only be allowed on Thursdays and only then if the weather is fine and the work of the scholars justifies it. It’s a little different in 2016 and perhaps my themes of workload, academisation and teacher recruitment combine to reside in the Harris academy chain.

More than 1,000 teachers have left schools in the Harris Federation over the past three academic years. The data shows 465 teachers leaving Harris schools in 2014-15, 422 in 2013-14 and 375 in 2012-13. Latest DfE data records that Harris schools employed 1,116 teachers as of 2013-14. Harris reject the claim that this shows an annual teacher turnover of about 30%. (Guardian 30-10=2015)

The government respect the OECD and tell us we must perform at least as well as the best schools in the world. Here’s some help from them

An OECD annual report has revealed that teachers in England taught for roughly one hundred hours longer than the average for OECD countries.

The average UK primary teacher to pupil ratio is 1:21 (6 pupils above the OECD average) and the average secondary teacher to pupil ratio is 1:18 (5 pupils above average). (BBC News 25-11-2015)

UK teachers’ pay has declined in real terms from 2005 to 2015

A DfE spokesman responded, “Great teachers are at the heart of this government’s commitment to delivering educational excellence everywhere”

I told you there was hope.

British Values - I'll Call You What I Like

As 500,000 upright British people sign a petition to prevent the madly powerful Trump from visiting the UK we trumpet the great British Value of Free Speech.


Our Prime Minister has his own take on this. If you do not unequivocally support his war, and he has tried four times in as many years, then you are a terrorist sympathiser. My free speech bit goes like this: Islamic State commit atrocities so publicly in order that the west responds by bombing Syrian towns and villages. Syrian Muslims will then see how the evil western powers are killing men, women and children and they will join the war against the west. Mr Cameron is pimping for Islamic State.


Then Mr Cameron, perhaps seeking his own decisive weapons of mass destruction, invents 70,000 soldiers from the numerous Syrian factions who are apparently ready to join us in anti ISIS action. No other source has seen these people but no-one would accuse a British Prime Minister to twist the truth in order to bomb the Middle East.


Our Chancellor joined the fun by declaring, “Britain has got its mojo back,” now that we are bombing people. A mojo used to be some sort of charm or spell and now usually means stuff to do with sex, in Osborne’s case seeing war as a test of male virility and the dimensions of his cojones.


The BBC has been calling the ISIS terrorists “militants.” I know I shouldn’t trawl the press on such matters but I came across some criticism of this in the comments page of the Daily Express.


“Time to get rid of the British Bolshevik Corporation, It’s a hotbed of pinkoes who love anything except their own country. It needs a Stalinist purge.” And “…the Biased Brainwashing Club – it is run by foreigners anyway.” I have corrected the punctuation and spelling and removed the angry capitals because freedom of speech surely involves correct use of the language.


Britain has been keen on getting involved in Libya,Kuwait, Iraq and Syria, nobly to protect the innocent. I am at a loss as to what the Yemeni people have done to be ignored in our attempts to spread peace even though they do have some oil. Saudi Arabia bombs, ISIS blows things up and the USA drone bombs terrorist suspects in the The Yemen. Oxfam states that more than 10 million Yemenis did not have enough food to eat, in addition to 850,000 half-starved children. Come on Cameron and your mojo boys, go sort that out.


Whilst changing boats in midstream, spare some sympathy for the free speech of our new Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, Tyson Furey. Rapidly nominated for BBC Sports Personality of The Year until he aired his views on women’s place in the kitchen and “on their back,” abortion and homosexuality at which point the clamour for him to be banned almost deafened those praising free speech in Britain.


On a parochial note, I recently put myself on the butcher’s block of a town planning meeting. The elderly and their parents greeted my standing to speak with howls of, “Liar” and, “Why do we have to listen to him!” If they had been given knives and forks they would have eaten me. However, in these times of old people being hoaxed by conmen I would advise them to be wary of saviours calling themselves Dazzer and Supergazza. Don’t trust them to change your world by inclusion on Facebook “Spotted In” sites , the modern day stocks. It is a universal value that we respect the elderly and it is a British Value that we do this no matter how badly behaved they may be.


Our schools have now to encourage or inculcate, inject or demand adherence to British Values. Some British Values seem to be rather stereotyped: we drink tea, have a stiff upper lip, are rarely roused to passion and like queueing and then complaining about the queue. Others, less kindly, add that the British value class, snobbery, elitism and emotional retardation. Many universal, common and British Values can be summed up as doing the right thing, contributing to society, paying one’s taxes, picking up litter and working hard for example.


In Northern Ireland every year British values are shown by burning flags, building massive bonfires, singing sectarian songs and throwing bricks at policemen. Until recently it involved bombing or executing one’s religious enemies – both lots being devout Christians.


As a Spurs supporter I cheerily hummed along to La Marseillaise in international solidarity . If only I had known the words (translated, of course, as it is a British Value that we do not learn other languages)


Arise, children of the Fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody banner is raised
Do you hear, in the countryside
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They're coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your women!


No wonder that the French liberals had our admiration, until many then voted fascist in their elections.


To schools and schooling: where does our free speech thrive. In our faith schools perhaps? Trinity Christian School, “will seek to view everything , in every area of the curriculum, from a biblical worldview,” and would not be, “driven or constrained by secular values in society.” I think this could have easily come from an ISIS website, if you substitute “Quranic” for “Biblical.”


This brings me to some biblical instructions, from which we can pick and choose, or simply obey.


Dr. Laura Schlessinger an American dispensing radio advice said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. End of debate.


But what of these?


I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7 and I wonder what would be a fair price for her?


I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Leviticus.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.


Most of our teachers seem to be working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 states they should be put to death.


Leviticus has a lot of advice:


Eating shellfish is an abomination. I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. A farmer must not plant two different crops in a field nor can a woman wear garments made of a cotton/polyester blend.


Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the town together to stone the miscreants? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws?


Today in Bejing blogger, Pu Zhiqiang, is on trial accused of "inciting ethnic hatred" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," having been in prison for 18 months. Mr Pu posted comments mocking the ruling Communist Party and questioning policies towards the country's minorities.


An Egyptian military court has reduced the jail term of Maikel Nabil a hunger-striking blogger imprisoned for two years on charges of criticising the military.


In Saudi Arabia blogger, Raif Badawi got 10 years in prison for "insulting Islam" and setting up a liberal web forum. He was also sentenced to 1,000 lashes.


Amnesty International has recorded a growing number of cases of people detained or imprisoned for disseminating their beliefs or information through the internet, in countries such as China, Syria, Vietnam, the Maldives, Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe.


I guess it’s good I live in Britain.


Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

It's Time for Headteachers to Don Balaclavas and Take To The Streets

Where’s the union ballot on “No confidence in this government?” Heads sit behind late night office doors worrying about Ofsted, recruitment, dire finances and exam results treating this as an individual school problem. Our timidity in the face of attacks on our students, staff and teaching principles is an embarrassment.

Under rehashed arrangements, children in high income areas will be encouraged and those in low income areas will just plod along, and know their place. Sensible school leaders might be wise to marginalise the ordinary but unique, hard working kids who earn their C grades. Following well practised methods: select and be praised

We used to say, “Every child matters.”

Nicky Morgan is a very poor education secretary. She sees the children’s future as a self promotion tool, a short stay on the way to more important matters.

Morgan has a rigorous geography that can create a grammar school annex in Sevenoaks, 10 miles from the main school and not break the law that forbids new grammar schools. As an office joke her advisors told her that important people were saying she was prime minister material. She regurgitates old, failed policies as part of an incoherent shambles designed solely to replace Princess Diana in the eyes of Daily Express readers.

Even Gove’s Policy Exchange group present evidence that the grammar school system does not work for the middle class she yearns to entice but Morgan prefers to decide our children’s future on the recommendation of a Daily Mail editorial.

There is a teacher recruitment crisis – we can’t get teachers. PGCE training places have been cut. 220 more teachers left teaching in 2014 than joined - enough to fully staff 20 primary schools. 18,000 experienced teachers left the UK to teach abroad. Step forward Morgan to announce that she is going to drop 1500 of the very best teachers into the lowest performing areas. To go to Ramsgate or Knowsley teachers will be given money, money and management jobs. Just where does she think these 1500 elite teachers are working and living? How much would it cost to get you to leave your family and home to live in a bedsit in Margate? And who replaces them in their current schools? If this policy sees the light of day I will eat the blinkers through which Nicky Morgan pursues mediocrity.

Morgan wants to instruct that 90% of all kids will take GCSEs in the EBACC subjects, up from 39% in 2015. Her party said that heads and governors have the freedom to choose the right curriculum for their schools, because these are the people who know and understand their communities. Apparently not.

Here’s my consultation response: I’m not inflicting an artless curriculum on 90% of our kids precisely because I do know better than you.

Health professionals are alarmed by the problems of unreasonable expectations a rigid exam system imposes on children. Measure school success by exam outcomes and schools will teach to the tests. 11 year olds frustrated by endless SATs practices will be joined by the nation’s 7 year olds as we will have compulsory SATs at age 7. She believes that constant testing improves learning. Young kids are stressed out by desperate teachers and sleepless heads. Childhood, school and education should be fun, creative, enquiring, progressive and life enhancing. Tests are just tests.

Morgan says heads will devise the tests, so that they will be responsible for the mess. Primary schools have boycotted tests before and parents admired your courage. NAHT, oh go on! Tell me how I can help.

School budgets are being cut whilst our costs have risen. Of the 1,069 heads polled by the NAHT 82% claim that “budget cuts will have a negative impact on standards.” That’s nearly 900 primary schools where heads know they are set for a deterioration in how well we teach our children.

In July 31 Hertfordshire secondary school headteachers lobbied MPs on the impending financial disasters. So why don’t we all go on a headteachers’ demo through our city centres? How about the bloggers and tweeters write something together and circulate all parents? Or are we just individual egos? The government rely on our feeble, well-mannered silence.

When Free Schools were first promoted we were told to follow the Swedish success story. Sweden now claims this experiment failed, Stubbornly, Pigshead Cameron ploughs on with determination to imitate Scandinavian failure whilst waiting to bomb someone in the middle east.

To compete with Shanghai we have been told to adopt their approach to schooling. China rightly, concentrated on the needs of a developing economy.

Now, they intend to replace an emphasis on facts and testing with the “soft skills,” our CBI claims we need: problem solving, decision making, team work and communication, as required in a mature economy.

The Tories created a massive mess in society in the 1980s: an under educated, alienated youth made to feel hopeless and worthless, responsible for their own lack of prospects. When the mines and the shipyards closed unemployment was the workers’ fault.There were riots on British streets. At least now our school leavers can look forward to low paid, zero hours, prospectless jobs, some with fries, in areas of neglected and abandoned working communities.

Perhaps our best headteachers will be Morganed into steel towns as those jobs are lost forever. She says one teacher can turn round an entire school ethos – more fanciful nonsense from someone who has never spent a day as a teacher.

I am sure employers are unaware that it is impossible to compare any set of GCSE results between 2011 and 2019. As grade boundaries are manipulated, content doubled and papers mismarked by amateurs, a C grade in Maths from 2011 would be a D grade in 2015 and a 4 in 2017. This means they passed in 2011 but failed thereafter. Morgan calls it volatility; the independent OFQUAL head calls it volatility.

To the 1300 school leaders in Westminster for PIXL conferences, let’s cross the road and sightsee parliament, I’ll even make mild mannered placards.

Schools need to ensure that every effort a child makes to improve is recognised. Progress from one grade to another should be standardised. We use the alphabet to move from d to C to B. Nice and simple. Using numbers how about 4 to 5 to 6?

On new official Perfomance Tables the movement from grade a C to a B grade is worth 1½ points, From a B to A and from an A to A* is worth 1½ points. The movement from F to E is worth ½ a point. To score highly in the e published tables our school should concentrate resources on the C-A*end and let the others have the coloured pencils.

Perhaps we could reintroduce mines and chimneys.

I don’t know Russell Holtby, General Secretary of the NAHT, but I will invite him and Brian Lightman (ASCL) to join me to handcuff ourselves to the DFE’s front door as an initial protest against government attacks on a generation of schoolchildren and the best teachers I have ever known.

Or else pay lip service to the old lie “every child matters.”

Dennis O'Sullivan (Headteacher)

We Need More Radicalisation in our Schools

In his novel,“1984,” George Orwell wrote,“First they steal the words, then they steal the meaning,” reflecting the manipulation of public opinion by those in power.

Beheading a man on video for the propaganda purposes of a military, religious or ethnic cleansing agenda is obscene, immoral, irreligious, barbaric and dreadfully wrong. They are not alone in committing atrocities but the most notorious go under the name ISIL or ISIS.They carry out ritualised, monstrously filmed acts of barbarism to attack the west, promote their political agenda and to provoke our governments’ response. They seek our disgust and anger.

Jihadi John, Kuwaiti born but London educated, is the face in front of a number of beheadings.

I expect the odd nutter to be ringing LBC when the subject is the possibility that Jihadi John will be captured, not executed, and put on trial in Britain. On Sunday lunchtime the host, Petrie Hoskin was that nutter. If arrested on terrorist charges Jihadi John would be interrogated in the British manner – "tickled with a feather whilst being fed cream cakes," and then would be imprisoned, "to watch Sky TV and play pool." Rather, "We should leave him in the desert to rot……wiping his backside on sand." Wow!

One of the ways countries garner opposition to enemy regimes is to engage in atrocity propaganda.The New York Times wrote that the vast numbers of civilian casualties from drone attacks by the USA, “has replaced Guantanimo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.” (29th May 2012.) Imagine being in a village observed by one of the UK’s 10 armed Reaper drones regularly in flight and failing to distinguish this drone from the hundreds of American drones dropping bombs and sometimes killing your neighbours.

The FAA testified to congress that there were 7 times more aviation accidents involving drones than the average for aircraft. (15-07-2010) They sometimes crash on unintended targets but try telling this to the accidentally bereaved.

Then the atrocity propaganda goes to work with ISIS claiming the western governments are deliberately murdering women and children. Apolitical, non-violent, good people see evidence of what they are shown as war crimes and perhaps some are radicalised by the visual confirmation of ISIS rhetoric.

The queues outside Provisional IRA recruitment centres were longest after the civilian deaths on Bloody Sunday and the death of the hunger strikers.

There is nothing new in propaganda vilifying one's enemies as a tool to aid recruitment and to make sure we knew who to hate. In World War One British people were fed stories of the Germans raping nuns and walking around with a string of bayonetted babies. The Hun was a barbaric savage and needed to be killed

Before he slaughtered thousands of ordinary Irish men and women Cromwell received reports of the rebels ripping open the wombs of pregnant women.

Russians did not drop toy-shaped mines on Afghan villages in the 1980s and there is no evidence that Jews drank the blood of murdered infants in 15th century Europe either.

The Serbian photographer who admitted he fabricated the report of 41 children butchered by Croatian soldiers in 1991 only confessed after Serbs executed Croatian soldiers in revenge.

Voltaire: “Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Jihadi John feeds potential sympathisers atrocity propaganda about the west and we add some truth to this by drone attacks and what some see as invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. US drones have killed hundreds of civilians furthering anti American sentiment and destabilising the communities that are bombed. There are videos of our soldiers torturing Iraqis and a recent conviction for executing a wounded Afghan enemy.This is how we radicalise.

In England we are looking out for young people who may be radicalised to leave this country in order to join ISIS in their war against us.

ISIS murdered 31 British tourists in a despicable, cowardly attack on unarmed tourists in Tunisia. The civilised amongst nation states need to oppose and defeat ISIS and similar terrorist groups.

We do not do this by demonising our own British Muslim population.

Young men have always been up for a spot of battle. They bravely signed up to fight in WW1, to fight on both sides in the Spanish Civil War and they were eager to join up for WW2 as well. When I spoke to a squaddie’s mum she told me that her son wanted to be in battle and that he signed up to fight not to learn how to drive lorries in peacetime.

Some young Muslim men listen to a demagogic orator who offers a way forward, anger at being considered worthless, and even a place in some sort of paradise. If we create the idea that all young Muslims are dangerous we reject them and we may claim some credit for their radicalisation. If British society was fair and non-discriminatory and if we looked to give every child a crack at achievement and employment the calls to radical action would be negated. Racist attacks on Muslims doubled last year; we abuse and disenfranchise at our peril

I want schools to be able to discuss radical ideas. Not for the first time, I want to say that encouraging single faith schools leads to a lessening of open discussion and logical, moral thinking amongst our young. Surely the refusal to insist on secular state schools means we tolerate faith schools praising and proclaiming their own religion just a bit. Allow and encourage faith schools and we must accept that elements of separatism will pervade. Faith schools may create an ‘us-and-them’ opportunity, a call to separate life in Britain and an allegiance to other countries and practices.

Email me if you’d like a young Catholic London Irish view from the 1970s.

We ought to offer more challenges to accepted morality so that maybe our young people will adopt a righteous life, caring for others in an unsentimental way and believing that, whatever our racial origins, life in Britain does include us. And we ought to be giving our school students the opportunity to discuss the crises facing the UK, to debate war and peace, freedom and barbarism, right and wrong. To have young Muslim boys taken away to quiet rooms for interrogation after they have uttered some pro ISIS sentiment is not the way to defeat terrorism or the misconceptions on which it is based. Drive free speech underground, force questioning children to be silent and that’s the end of democratic society. Free speech – is that too radical?,

Am I still “Charlie” or have we forgotten so quickly?

Let's be radical. Let's work out what we want society to look like and put the ideas up for open debate in schools without fear of arrest.

I know that may be difficult with food banks, working tax credit cuts and Dave hankering to have his war. Cameron disgracefully condemned the new Labour leader as a “terrorist sympathiser” because he is posing a radical alternative to Blair and Cameron conservatism.

Yesterday, our prime minister announced that he has banned convicted terrorists from working with children. I bet he knows that any criminal conviction- for vandalism, car theft or drunkenness - can bar you already.

What’s the real alternative to an inclusive society?

Killing in the name of a god who never asked us to do anything of the sort?

Dennis O'Sullivan - Headteacher