Birmingham is as much about governance as extremism

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There are at least two facets to the Birmingham story. One, mostly catching the headlines today, is about extremism; the other is about governance. Birmingham is our second largest city, with what looks like a generally centralised approach to governance from City Hall. Since most of the schools caught up in the row are academies, with only one apparently being a maintained school, Birmingham can claim ‘not our fault gov’ if you believe that academisation, started under Labour and pursued with vigour by Mr Gove, absolves a local authority from any involvement in the running of such schools. Personally, I don’t, but it shows what can happen when a system of education governance is systematically weakened over time by denigrating the role of one participant, in this case local authorities, and talking up the important of Whitehall.

When the discussions about how we educate our young people have subsided, and these discussions are important, especially when communities live in specific neighbourhoods, as I have known since a childhood being brought up on the borders of Stamford Hill and its orthodox Jewish community, the issue of effective governance will remain to be decided. Does education in London work better because education is divided between the different boroughs, whereas in our metropolitan cities of the midlands and the north there has been since 1974 one large local authority, and several relatively small ones, whether in Merseyside, Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire.

Realistically, the span of control is important; too small, and overheads become too expensive, especially without a geographical integrity common to local authorities: this is something some academy chains may well now be finding out. On the other hand, too large, and without sub-divisions, such as the divisional structure used before London was broken up into its boroughs, and there is a risk of a lack of oversight. This is especially true when resources for administration are seen as an unnecessary waste of money; a view strongly peddled by successive Tory administrations, and the last Labour government. In education, handling control of finance to schools just made certain most oversight would be neutered.

So why does all this matter? Well, apart from the mess the governance of education is in at present, there is the issue of eradicating illiteracy and innumeracy within a generation, highlighted by Mr Gove over the weekend, possibly as a diversionary tactic to his other problems. After all, what government doesn’t aspire to do so, and why hasn’t he, as Secretary or State, had a plan to do so over the past four years? Why has creating academies and free schools been more important? Governance matters in eradicating failure, such as illiteracy, because planning is involved.

Last week we celebrated one of the major events of planning in the last century; the ‘D’ day invasion of Europe. Imagine saying to a group of regiments, and a bunch of ship’s captains, just work out your own plan of attack and then get on with it. Planning isn’t something Mr Gove is good at; take the introduction of Computer Science instead of IT. Because academies don’t have to follow the National Curriculum, many may have just ignored the change because they already had staff teaching the subject, and no vacancy to recruit a different specialist. Where is the follow through from Whitehall?

Ideas are a start, but not enough. A good Department has ideas, knows what is happening, and manages the outcomes. Perhaps that explains why our education system hasn’t been world class. Too many ideas, and not enough effective action.

Fine the feckless?

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There are reports in the media that Michael Gove wants to deduct fines imposed on parents of those pupils not attending school from child benefits. This policy was suggested earlier in the coalition by a Conservative adviser, but blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Presumably, this revival of the idea could be designed to prevent UKIP announcing it as a policy ahead of the Conservatives.

As a headline it no doubt resonates with groups that feel you shouldn’t get something for nothing, and part of the contract in receiving state benefits is that you play your part; in this case ensuring your offspring go to school regularly. From the opposite perspective it looks like punishing the child by reducing family income, often already low in real terms, because of the actions of the parents. The sins of the fathers or in this case possibly even the mothers, being transferred to the next generation.

None of this is to underestimate the problem of children missing education, and the part parents play in conniving in their absence from school, but to seek to discover how best to deal with the issue.

I have never liked the idea of schools being able to fine parents. Recent governments have taken the idea that fines can be administered by public bodies without recourse to the judicial system to absurd lengths. This means that, unlike in court, those imposing the fines have neither the whole picture nor the means to compel someone to attend to discuss their means. As a result, fines are a very blunt instrument, and this often resorts in them eventually being written off unpaid. If fines are the solution they need to be imposed by a court with oversight of all State imposed penalties: as a form of punishment a community sentence to some form of parenting programme might well be a better alternative, especially if imposed early in a child’s record of unapproved absence. Personally, I think returning Magistrates’ Courts to local areas so that they can act quickly and decisively with the ability to understand the whole picture might be better than allowing head teachers to cut child benefit.

On the other hand, schools do need to consider how, especially in the early years, they can tackle those children that fall behind in their learning through absence. I am sure that the best schools do this as a matter of course, but some research into outcomes at the 20 or some primary schools with the worst attendance records might pay some interesting dividends. It would be an easy win to ask these schools that the DfE has already identified whether they are using their Pupil Premium to help these children?

Where the welfare of the child is in danger a local authority has the extreme option of directly intervening in the parenting of a child. Perhaps the Secretary of State should start by asking his colleagues in the Children’s Services part of his Department what they would recommend before targeting benefit cuts as the headline solution. Liberal Democrats were correct to block this policy last time it was mooted, and although they cannot stop Mr Gove campaigning to put it in the Tory manifesto for 2015, I hope that they will make clear their opposition to it by a definitive statement to that effect from their education minister, David Laws.

Teacher training transfer window opens

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As I hinted in a recent post, things are seemingly not going to plan in this year’s recruitment round for teacher preparation courses. If they were, then today’s announcement from the NCTL would not have appeared offering as it does additional places to providers with courses that are full. http://www.emcsrv.com/prolog/NCTL/Additional-HEI-places-available-for-2014-guide.pdf What is interesting is not so much the list of secondary subjects reproduced below, but the fact that places are also still up for grabs for non-specialist primary trainees.

According to the NCTL places are available in the following subjects:

  • biology
  • citizenship
  • classics
  • computer science
  • design & technology
  • engineering
  • geography
  • health and social care
  • modern languages
  • music
  • religious education
  • primary mathematics specialist and
  • all non-specialist primary

And the NCTL will continue to allocate places on request for all physics and maths courses, as it has done all year.

It remains to be seen how responsive schools and universities will be at this stage of the year to the invitation to top up courses that are full.

What this move by the NCTL will mean for the regional distribution of places is not clear. In the case of geography, often a bellwether subject in terms of charting recruitment challenges, most regions of England have six or seven schools showing no vacancies today on the UCAS web site and would thus be eligible to take on more places. Helpfully, there are nine such schools in London, and 12 in the south East where teachers are often needed in greater numbers.

Two of the four universities that would be allowed to recruit more trainees are in the North East, where there appear to be no schools with their full allocation. The other two universities that could bid for more places are one each in London and the South East according to the UCAS public site.

It is surprisingly to see primary places being offered in June as historically almost all courses are fully recruited by now; many with waiting lists.

What the announcement does to the government’s intention to transfer more training to schools will not become clear until the autumn, when it will become clear how many places have been taken up, and by what providers. If these places need to be filled, and are not, then next summer some schools may struggle to recruit new teachers in a wider range of subjects than I was predicting only a couple of weeks ago.

Ofsted changes ITT inspection rules again

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The latest changes by Ofsted to the inspection of initial teacher training announced today look interesting on the surface, but may be fraught with some interesting issues.

The two stage inspection process; Stage 1 in the summer term, and Stage 2 in the autumn following the completion of training assumes inspectors will visit many more schools to see NQTs teaching in their first term than has been the case in the recent past. Indeed, they may almost take on the role of the former LA adviser dropping in to see how an NQT is progressing.

The new process raises interesting challenges for providers. For instance, the reference will take on a new role. A trainee that has only been in mono-cultural school settings teaching a specific subject might warrant a more caution reference when applying for a post in a multicultural setting dealing with many students whose first language isn’t English. Similarly, it might lead to specific subject certification, such as ‘this NQT is has only taught history during their training, and cannot be deemed to be suitable to teach humanities without further preparation’. If the school appoints the NQT, and the HMI doesn’t like the RE lesson observed because of the material used, does that reflect badly on the ITT provider? The same issue might arise where a primary trainee was appointed to teach a mixed-age class having never experienced that situation in training: does the ITT provider bear the responsibility for the observed outcome? And what of undergraduate trainees that might not normally teach in the final summer term of their course? Will special placements now need to be arranged to satisfy Ofsted?

The summer term may also be too late to observe trainees effectively, especially those in UTCs, Studio Schools, or sixth form colleges where the majority of students might be on examination leave. At the very least, these students might have different timetables to those in 11-16 schools and their primary colleagues. I would personally favour a window between February and May for the observation phase, as ITT providers should by then be indentifying those students that are making good progress, and those that need additional help to reach the required standard. That is one of the benefits of HE and SCITT provision over some forms of School Direct in that the training provider can tailor the placements more directly to the needs of the trainee.

At the end of the day, we need to train enough teachers for all schools, and if the Ofsted process does not match outcomes to training, there is a risk that won’t happen.  Of course, since academies can employ anyone, it is difficult to see how Ofsted can judge training provision against teachers seen where the ITT provider has specifically stated that the trainee is not suitable for the post. That raises interesting questions for providers going forward, and for partnership agreements with School Direct. ITT providers will want to know how they will be judged on the part of a training regime they offer where they have no relationship with the trainee, and where they eventually work. Unless that scenario is discussed, the risk to HE and SCITTs will be greater than to the same training provision offered through School Direct: but perhaps that the logic behind the change.

 

 

 

 

Losing the teacher supply battle

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This time last year I raised the question of whether we would recruit enough trainees to become teachers in 2014, in a post dated 1st June 2013, and headed ‘Missing the Target is a Known’. Sadly, I have to make the same prediction for the 2014 round that now has but three months to run before the majority of courses start in September.

With schools so heavily involved, and would-be trainees needing to pass the Skills Tests before starting their course, anyone that hasn’t applied by mid-July, effectively at some point during the next six weeks, will probably struggle to find a course unless the NCTL makes it clear to providers that they should recruit right up to the wire, as many universities have always had to do when recruitment was challenging.

The auguries for recruiting new trainees are not good. Recently the Association of Graduate Recruiters said that nine out of ten graduate employers still have vacancies for this autumn, with businesses in engineering and IT particularly suffering. Recruiters, they added, ‘cannot find enough quality candidates’. So the golden years of the recession, when a surplus of good quality graduates flowed into teacher preparation courses at the point in the demographic cycle when rolls in secondary schools were falling, and demand for teachers was declining, is over. We need more teachers and they are becoming harder to recruit.

My current predictions based upon data released this week by UCAS from the unified application process is that the following  subjects may well miss the lower of their DfE Teacher Supply Model figure or their NCTL allocation:

  • Biology
  • Design & Technology
  • Geography
  • Mathematics
  • Music
  • Physics
  • Religious Education

The jury is still out on Chemistry, but science overall is likely to face some sort of shortfall, if only because of the serious shortage of physics trainees. Although English will meet its target, I still do not believe we are training enough teachers, and governors still tell me that they are facing challenges recruiting such teachers in some parts of the country. It is significant that the TES job site has around 250 main scale positions for teachers of English today, but only around 200 for teachers of Mathematics.

Many of the subjects in the list where I expect shortages of trainees this year, were also subjects where there was a shortfall last year, so the warning that I and others made this time last year may been heeded, but has not been dealt with, unless you consider hiring unqualified personnel as the solution.

This year, there is also some nervousness about recruitment to primary ITT courses in some parts of the country. A shortfall there would be a real disaster, especially as schools with cash reserves will undoubtedly start upping the salary they are prepared to pay in the new de-regulated world of teachers’ pay and conditions. From there, it is but a short step to abandoning the principle of free schooling so parents can top up school coffers to help attract teachers through better pay. How that will affect the notion of fairness and equity only time will tell.

 

Schools in chains or not?

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The DfE’s recent publication of some case studies relating to effective academy chains presents a useful contrast to the departure of an academy chain earlier in the week; the first such chain to effectively fold. The DfE research can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-sponsor-profiles

Both these events set me thinking about the issue of control of schools. For the past three years, the favoured solution, at least in terms of what has been happening on the ground, has been the converter academy model where in most cases a school goes its own way. This has replaced the sponsored academy model introduced by the Labour government, and now often reserved for either newly formed schools or school that are taken over after failure by Ofsted, or possibly groups of primary schools.

Of course, both chains, and individual schools within the State system, are nothing new in education. The dioceses that manage the large number of church schools might be described as the original chains, and it is interesting to see the Diocese of Wakefield as one of the DfE’s academy chain case studies. At the other end of the spectrum were those individual voluntary aided schools that traced their history back to charitable foundations. Many were, and often still are, selective secondary schools, but, for instance, around London there is a ring of schools linked either to the livery companies or to long-established charities. At one time there were many more, but the amalgamations of the 1980s, during the drop in pupil numbers, witnessed the disappearance of quite a number, including the final vestiges of three in Haringey alone.

Now that the remaining community schools are not very different from academies in respect of their control as local authorities have few powers left, even where they are able to retain considerable influence, the question of the span of control needs properly debating properly.

The chief officer for Children’s Services in Hampshire recently expressed concern to the Select Committee about a dip in performance in some converter academies, and the DfE recently released figures for the number of schools not opening an email about safeguarding. Both these incidents raise the question about effective span of control. The other key question is the place of education in the democratic process?

Put the two questions together and you essentially ask the question successive governments since the Thatcher era have ducked; town hall or Whitehall as the key player in education.

Despite my preference for the local, especially for primary schools, where most children attend their nearest school, and there must be key links to other community services such as health and welfare, I fear we are moving inexorably towards a Whitehall run system with un-elected local commissioners; and not even the semblance of a School Board as in the USA.

I predict that whoever wins the 2015 general election, assuming the nation isn’t in a state of legislative paralysis after a hung parliament when the notion of five year fixed term parliaments may yet come back to haunt the electorate,  any sensible government will take decisive action to make clear the policy and decision-making processes within our school system.

Hopefully, the system that emerges will be effective at continuing to raise standards. Certainly, it won’t be as democratic as what has been the position during most of my lifetime, and possibly it will be expensive in managerial overheads. Whether small chains will survive is still a matter for debate.

Slow start for UTCs

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Along with Free Schools, the Coalition, (well the Conservative section at least), is keen on University Technical Schools and Studio Schools. I don’t really know what my Party’s position is on these new types of 14-18 schools offering specialisms designed to help the local labour market, and provide youngsters will vocational skills.  I suppose we accepted them as part of the Coalition deal, and because we have always wanted better 14-18 education for those not likely to be heading straight for university at eighteen. But, I don’t recall any serious debate about the topic; perhaps I missed it somewhere early on in the life of the Coalition.

Whatever their purpose, it is sad to see that the 39 UTCs and Studio Schools open by the start of September 2103 have in some cases attracted only limited numbers of students. Perhaps not surprisingly, the UTC with the largest number of students is the JCB Academy, a flagship schools which opened in January 2013, and had 276 students enrolled by September of that year. As befits its flagship status, it also had the best attendance record of any of these schools.

Of the other UTCs and studio schools open in September 2013, 25 had an enrolment of 100 students or less, and 14 had enrolled more than 100 students. Now 150 students is a reasonable number for one year group in a 14-18 school, and would give a total of 600 when the school was fully operational. However, three of the schools with fewer than 50 pupils opened in 2012, and one that opened in 2011 with the first tranche of such schools still, apparently, only has 54 students on roll in September 2013. So, unless they increase enrolment over the next two years, they could be fully operational with little more than 100 students.

I am not sure how much capital for new buildings has been ploughed into this programme, but so far it is educating fewer than 2,500 students across the whole of England, or the size of one large comprehensive school. Hopefully, the new schools aiming to come on stream in 2014 will have fared better in the admissions round just completed; perhaps someone might like to file a few FOI requests to find out.

After the recent debate about funding for the 800,000 extra pupils entering the mainstream school system over the decade after 2010, it might be appropriate to ask whether many of the skills being offered in both studio schools and UTCs could have been taught more cost effectively in the further education sector. How far should the national taxpayer be asked to pay for a specialist local school that is often only of benefit to a small section of local industry?  This is especially the case when government is also championing the growth in apprenticeships: the two policies risk being at odds with one another.

As the decisions on where to place these schools seem more related to who wants to fund them, the opportunity to develop a coherent policy towards 14-18 education once again appears to have been lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coalition gets children back to school

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This post was based upon the original data released by the DfE. The data has now been reissued in revised form although the DfE say that main trends are unaffected.

Figures from the DfE released today show absence rates in the autumn term continued to fall in 2013 when compared with previous years https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england-autumn-term-2013 Overall, the national figure for those pupils missing 22 or more sessions during the autumn term has fallen from 8.3% of pupils in the autumn of 2009 – the last year of the Labour government – to 4.6% of pupils in 2013, the fourth year of the Coalition government’s oversight of education. In secondary schools, the decline has been from 10.3% in 2009 to 5.9% in 2013 or from just over one in ten pupils at risk of becoming a persistent absentee to just over one in twenty.  There are similar levels of improvement in the figures for all pupil absences over the same period.

Illness still remains the main reason for pupil absence, accounting for some 59% of all missed sessions, so the relatively mild start to the winter in2 013 may have helped reduce absence along with more pressure on parents not to take holidays during term-time despite the much cheaper prices available then compared with the peak holiday periods.

One interesting challenge for the coalition is that only 2 of the 26 UTCs and Studio Schools open last autumn had absence rates for that term that were below the national average, and three of the Studio Schools appeared to have had absence rates of over 20%. Surely, cause for a quick call from Ofsted to see what is happening here, and whether they are being used by other schools as a means of exporting pupils at age 14 with poor attendance records that might reflect badly on the schools they have previously been attending. The fact that two of the Studio Schools seem to belong to the same group might also merit attention. It may well be that they are working with particular groups of pupils, although, if so, that isn’t clear from their web site, and the schools are obviously doing good things for some pupils.

However, as nine of the 25 schools with the worst overall absence rates were Studio Schools or UTCs, and one was a Free School, this does suggest there are some questions to be asked. Interestingly, 13 of the schools with the worst absence rates are primary schools and it would be important to see whether they regularly appear in the worst 25 such schools, and if so why?

For the first time data has been produced for both Pupil Referral Units and for four year olds, and both will provide a baseline for comparison in future years.

Sadly, no school had a 100% attendance record for the autumn term, but a free school in the North West and a junior school in Hampshire recorded 99% or better attendance figures for the term.

Below I am repeating the blog I posted last year about studio schools that reveals I was concerned then about attendance rates. Clearly, the issue has not been solved.

Some Studio Schools encounter student attendance challenge

Are the government’s new studio schools getting off to a difficult start? Recent DfE figures for pupil absence during the autumn term of 2012-13 do at the very least raise questions about what is happening. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/200820/Main_text_-_SFR17_2013.pdf

Five of the ten schools with the highest absence rates, across both primary and secondary sectors, were either studio schools or in one case a University Technical College. As all five of these schools had relatively small enrolments, the behaviour of just one or two reluctant transferees may have unduly affected the outcomes. Nevertheless, against a national rate of 5.2%, or 5.7% for the secondary sector as a whole, absence rates of more than 14% do seem a little on the high side.

Although the majority of the studio schools in the list were in manufacturing centres, with school systems that have faced considerable challenges over the years, it does seem odd that despite the variety of different specialism in these new studio schools so many have these high levels of pupil absence. It might have been though that a fresh start in a new school with a definite vocational slant to the curriculum, and often backed by well known employers, might have inspired pupils to attend regularly. On that basis, it is important to identify what, if anything is going wrong? Indeed, although two studio schools are ranked better than 4,000 in the list of all schools for overall absence rates, the other three schools with studio in their title are in the 600 worst performing school for absence rates.

By focussing on vocational trades, it may be that the early studio schools that a skewed distribution of ability and it will take time to enthuse the pupils about the value of their education after nearly a decade when school has not been the most welcoming of places for many of them. What really must not happen is that these schools become dumping grounds for the failures of the mainstream school system. The new schools coming on stream in 2013 and 2014, including the space studio school in Banbury, need to learn the lessons, not least about transfer to a new school at age 14, that these schools have had to encounter in their early stages of development. It would certainly not be acceptable to either turn a blind eye to high levels of absence in these new types of school or to accept it as a part of the deal for the future of education in England.

As the responsibility for these schools lies with Ministers in Westminster, so officials in the DfE, as would any competent local authority, must ask these schools for the preliminary figures for term two. If these so no improvement over term one of the academic year, action must be taken now. Not to do so will reveal to the education community that while it is acceptable  for central government to castigate local authorities for poor outcomes, government schools are able to produce even worse outcomes with impunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘£56k’s being spent to give children a sandwich’

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The headline in today’s Guardian above an almost universally negative article about the Free School Meals initiative is indicative of the feelings of many educationalists about the policy: frustration at the funding, unhappiness at a lack of consultation, and too often an apparent unwillingness to look beyond the obvious tried and tested solution.

Firstly the money issue. Schools in Oxfordshire charge £2.00 at present for a meal, but will receive £2.30 per meal taken from September, so there should be a greater contribution towards serving costs than at present. As to a small chain of academies having to employ a catering supervisor, as mentioned in the Guardian article, this really demonstrates the dis-economies of scale of small academy chains. In 1974, the debate about local government re-organisation centred on whether an authority with 250,000 citizens was large enough to manage a school system. In the market-based world of the past quarter century this sort of debate about size and efficiency has been thrown out along with the bath water. No doubt the failure of an academy chain today, the first such failure, will be seen as partly due to economic rather than educational reasons, especially as it had no geographical integrity to the group of schools it oversaw. Perhaps this might re-open the debate about size and effectiveness of schooling.

Finally, on the money issue, many local primary schools once again under spent their budgets in 2013-14 despite locally submitting budgets showing that they would draw down several million pounds of reserves. It is in my view entirely appropriate to use some of this cash to introduce the free school meals policy.

Where there has been a failure is probably over the discussions between politicians and teachers’ leaders, especially the leaders of the heads associations and the governors. Confrontational politics makes for interesting times, but can inhibit the smooth operation of government. I don’t advocate a return to the days when a small cabal sat around a table and decided everything, but under the present approach a policy that needed to win the schools’ hearts and minds didn’t even attempt to do so; sadly, the leaders of my Party don’t seem to have fully understood that basic tenant of leadership.

The policy of free meals does have real benefits, they may not all be directly educational, but with the growth of zero hours contracts they will ensure no child loses out on lunch because of the form filling required of parents; and mothers, since it is they that usually either find the money or buy the packed lunch in many households, will see an extra £400 or so in their purses from September onwards.

I would like to see more of the ‘can do’, but after six years of economic hardship I suppose the present attitude is only to be expected. And to the head juggling building work, child protection issues, teaching  and learning, and the introduction of free school meals: that’s the reality of leadership.

Trojan horse or Zinoviev letter?

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As I understand the situation, part of the row in Birmingham, and now Bradford, over the targeting of several schools by those with a particular view of education, centers on the issue of the possible use of schools to radicalise young people. However, much of the public discussion appears to be around issues linked to more traditional educational debates, such as separating the genders in classrooms, and denying girls the right to some activities such as sport and physical education. Clearly, these educational points should be easily disproved or established, and dealt with.

Although academies are free to set their own curriculum under Gove’s reforms, I am not sure that barring certain groups from some activities was an intended consequence. But, it shows what can happen with freedom. There is also an issue about how governors are appointed in the new undemocratic education world. In local authority controlled schools there was generally some democratic oversight of governor appointments with ward councillors being told of vacancies, and reports to Council. There is no such obvious mechanism for what is happening in academies. However, not all the schools involved in Birmingham were academies.

The wider point of segregation on gender lines in education is more interesting as an issue. There are, after all, selective gender segregated schools in Tory controlled Kent and Buckinghamshire; in the London boroughs of Merton and Kingston; and in northern authorities such as The Wirral and Lancashire. Indeed, it is only within my lifetime that the last gender segregated junior schools in places such as Croydon were turned into co-educational schools. Many of the three-decker Victorian schools in London still have the reminders of past times with separate boys’ and girls’ entrances, inscribed in the stonework over the doors, now happily used by all. Indeed, Birmingham has had separate boys’ and girls’ selective and comprehensive schools within its education system for many years.

Personally, I prefer co-education, but there cannot be one rule for some and not for others. The DfE database record 232 state-funded schools just for girls, including selective schools run by faith groups, and slightly fewer for boys. That means up to ten per cent of secondary schools across England may be single-sex schools. There is an issue about how any group of parents or other community groups can alter the characteristics of an existing school, compared with the clear framework for submitting proposals for a new academy of some sort or other.

Up until 1997, there was an understanding that Christian and Jewish schools would be funded by the State, but not those of other religions. The Blair government changed the rules to make them more logical, with any group being able to seek to set up a school with a faith-based character funded from the public purse. However, it never really discussed what to do when communities change and there is an existing pattern of schools.

Nevertheless, the government should have been alert to the problems that can occur with the secular curriculum in schools run for particular religious purposes. The Ofsted report of an independent school in Hackney this January is evidence enough to have alerted anyone concerned by the issue. It also demonstrates that Ofsted was perfectly capable of inspecting such schools, and reporting on their education functions. Why a former police officer needed to be sent into Birmingham ahead of Ofsted, only the Secretary of State can explain, as no doubt he will do so when the various reports have appeared.

The role of religions in education has always been complicated in England because of the manner in which the State replaced the churches as the main provider of schooling. The issue was discussed before the 1902 Education Act was passed by the then Wesleyan Methodist Church. The question they discussed was: were Wesleyans teachers of children or teachers of Methodist children. They opted for the former point of view, and as a consequence there were no Methodist state funded secondary schools, but many Methodist have become teachers. Other faith groups took the contrary view, and there are such schools. Where does the modern State want to go in a multi-faith community where schooling is a key factor in the lives of young people? Birmingham may present an opportunity to decide what type of schooling system the State should fund. A debate now joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in favour of faith schools.