Tag Archives: politics

A rose by any other name

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One of the interesting things about language is that it has the ability to be both precise and vague at the same time. As a wordsmith, the Secretary of State, who always seems more comfortable within the literacy domain than the numeracy world, has made two interesting statements this week. As already reported in an earlier post on this blog, he told the House of Commons on Monday that Osfted inspected Academy Chains. This fact was news to many who thought that Ofsted inspected only the schools in such chains, and that although the Funding Agency could look at the books of academy chains, Ofsted didn’t have the power to inspect their overall performance as they can with local authority support for school improvement orChildren’s Services.

And then, yesterday, the Secretary of State was interviewed by pupils experiencing the life of reporters as part of the BBC’s annual School Report exercise. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport/26768138

During the interview the BBC reported that Mr Gove said:

“Teachers should definitely be paid more than they are at the moment,” But he added that his department paid off the debts of some teachers at the start of their careers in the form of bursaries or additional support – particularly those teaching key subjects such as maths, physics or chemistry.

Now the idea of using bursaries to pay off student debt – at the same time as requiring the trainee teachers to take on further student debt as part of their PGCE or Tuition Fee School Direct course – is a curious one. In fact they could only voluntarily pay off existing student debt using the bursary if they were allowed to: it seems pretty unlikely that the Student Loans organisation would be able to offer a new loan with one hand will taking payment on an earlier one with the other. Perhaps the Secretary of State meant that the bursary allowed those trainees not to take out further loans (and thereby increasing their debt) to study to become a teacher.

He may, of course, have been mixing up what happens on Teach First with the situation faced by the much greater number of trainees on the other routes into teaching. In my view, working towards a salary for all trainees, to encourage the best in all subjects to become teachers, would be a positive policy development. After all, graduates that enter most private sector training programmes are now normally paid a salary and don’t have to pay for their training. Most employers recognise that making possible entrants pay for training puts off some applicants.

So, using the phrase ‘paid off the debts of some teachers’, if indeed the transcript shows that those were the words used by the Secretary of State, seems like a somewhat loose use of language. Perhaps Mr Gove could explain both what he actually meant about paying of the student debt of teachers and the inspection of academy chains, so we can all be clear.

He might also like to elucidate on the statement about ‘paying teachers more’, perhaps in his next remit letter to the Pay Review Body.

 

Ofsted inspects academy chains

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Until Monday afternoon I was under the illusion that Ofsted didn’t inspect academy chains. I knew that it did inspect the schools that were under the control of academy chains, but not, I believed, the management of the chain responsible for the schools. This was unlike the situation with local authorities, where Ofsted has the power to inspect, and has exercised it regularly over recent years.

However, the Hansard record of Education Questions in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon shows how wrong I was. In answer to a question from a Labour member, as to whether it was time to inspect academy chains, Mr Gove, our literary mastermind masquerading as Secretary of State for Education, replied with the statement that:

Michael Gove: Ofsted already inspects academy chains. It has inspected both E-ACT and AET.’

Now assuredly, Mr Gove already knew when taking Education Questions that Ofsted would be publishing a damming report the following day on the standard of education at many schools in the E-ACT chain; and would put several of the chain’s schools into special measures. Possibly the most damming feature of the Ofsted report was the assertion by the heads of at least some of the schools inspected said that the academy chain had required them to top-slice their Pupil Premium cash and remit the top-slice to the administration. This was the very policy that local authorities were castigated for and the reason why budgets were taken away from them and handed directly to schools. In this instance, it wasn’t even apparent to the school leaders how the cash top-sliced had been used to further the aims behind the Pupil Premium scheme of helping with the improvement of the education of disadvantaged pupils.

As Ofsted put the fact in their letter to E-ACT that: During the inspections, senior staff informed inspectors that E-ACT had, until 1 September 2013, deducted a proportion of the pupil premium funding from each academy. It is unclear how these deducted funds are being used to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

You can read the Ofsted letter to E-Act here: file:///C:/Users/John/Downloads/E-ACT%20Multi-Academy%20Trust%20inspection%20outcome%20letter.pdf

If Ofsted has also inspected the academy chain, as the Secretary of State said, then no doubt there is another report waiting to be published that will clear up the issue of what happened to this Pupil Premium money, and how large the transfer of cash actually was over what might have been a two or three year period. Should the chain be expected to repay this cash to the schools concerned, and also, in this present litigious culture, are lawyers already looking to see whether pupils whose education was regarded as unsatisfactory have a legal case against the chain under some aspect of the civil law that they might not have against a public authority undertaking the same duty?

Normal service has been resumed

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The technical difficulties replying to comments made to me have been resolved. The issue was with my internet browser. I was using Chrome but have switched to Firefox through which I can access all parts of my blog again, including updating posts and replying to comments. My apologies for the down time. The rest of this post still remains relevant

However, I am not the only one to have had difficulties. The DfE seem to have pulled the research and priorities document from their web site that featured in my post of earlier this week. If anyone downloaded a copy before it was removed, I would welcome a copy. You can email me via the comments page, and once WordPress is fully functional again I will be able to access it.

The suite of DfE documents that emerged, and in some cases disappeared, today did seem to lack coordination, and it is tempting to wonder which Minister gave approval for their release?

The whole saga might merit a footnote in Private Eye.

No role for local authorities in education

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NOTE: This document appears to have been removed from the DfE’s web site shortly after this post appeared. There may, of course, be no connection between the two events.

A report on research priorities and questions published today by the DfE under the title ‘Accountability and governance’ makes it clear that there is no role in the new national schooling world for local authorities. The document can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/288118/Accountability_and_governance_research_priorities_and_questions.pdf and within it the government makes clear that:

Our vision is for an accountability system which is challenging, fair and transparent – one in which school level governance and national arrangements hold autonomous schools and colleges to account for the education they provide.

So there is seemingly no role there for local authorities.

The document also states that:

where children are at risk of being failed through poor providers, central government will intervene swiftly – primarily through Ofsted. High-quality Ofsted inspection will challenge all schools and Colleges to strive for excellence in achievement, leadership, teaching and behaviour (schools only). (sic)

Local authorities risk being relegated to little more than educational trading standards watchdogs, having to report concerns to big sibling in Whitehall or their regional Commissioner Representative. For the document concludes that:

There are now many types of governance structures, including standalone and federations of maintained schools, single academy trusts, sponsored academies, multi-academy trusts and umbrella trusts. We want to understand the factors that lead to the most robust governance arrangements and hence the most effective school-level accountability, particularly for education standards.

Again there is no mention of any local accountability other than through governing bodies since multi-academy trusts are not required to have a geographical coherence, although many do in reality.

The absence of mentions of diocesan responsibility might provide the faith communities with pause for thought were it not for the fact that they have seen a local elected body replaced by one at Westminster that is far more remote to most of them. The challenge will come when Ofsted, having obtained powers to inspect academy chains, as it surely will, then asks to inspect diocesan education arrangements where faith schools are under-performing, and some undoubtedly are  not doing as well as they might as schools.

Startling for its absence from the document is any mention of teachers, their training and employment. Who is concerned about the governance of that process, so vital for any achievement by schools? I have expressed concern before about the lack of supervision of the National College now that its Board has been abolished. Presumably, it is good enough that the DfE Board can monitor its performance;: but who sets standards for success and failure in say, recruitment into the profession, and what are the sanctions?

The 2015 general election will mark the passing of local education services, whatever the polite fiction that is maintained. Sadly, none of the main political parties were prepared to stand-up and fight for local political involvement in education. It may be self-seeking, since I am an elected county councillor in Oxfordshire, but I regard the change as likely to be detrimental for our education system.

Free Schools now account for around 1% of all schools

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The DfE has just published updated lists of existing and proposed Free Schools. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/free-schools-successful-applications-and-open-schools-2014 There are 296 schools in the two lists. Of these, 112, or some 38%, are located within one of the London boroughs. Once the Home Counties regions of the East of England and the South East are added to the London figure the percentage increases to 62% of the national total. By contrast, there are just seven schools in the North East and 12 in the East Midlands. Birmingham, with 13 schools, is the local authority where the largest numbers of schools are located, although Enfield, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Tower Hamlets, three much smaller authorities than Birmingham: each have seven schools located or to be located with their borough.

The majority of the schools, some 232, are mainstream schools, but there are 49 either SEN or alternative provision schools, with 15 schools (sic) listed as 16-19 establishments – 7 of these are in London. Traditional primary (109) and secondary (93) schools dominate the age groupings. However, there are some 43 all-through schools, a number of which are in the special school sector. Personally, I am not yet a fan of such schools in the mainstream sectors where grouping all primary schools that feed a secondary school seems a more enlightened proposition than giving some pupils the opportunity to be part of the school for the whole of their careers while adding others later. Avoiding newcomers being seen as second class citizens seems like a wasteful and unnecessary use of resources. But, no doubt there is some research that shows such schools perform well for all pupils.

Free schools are still contentious with some groups, so it is interesting to see that 7 of the schools are ARK schools, already a large provider of academies in London, and 10 are under the Harris umbrella that has extended north of the river with its free schools, including into Tottenham, the most deprived part of Haringey. There are also three Oasis schools, and a number with E-Act in their name featured in the list.  The DfE don’t provide a faith analysis of the schools, but a number are clearly linked to faith groups of both the Christian denominations and other faiths.

This DfE report also doesn’t say anything about the size of the schools, both on opening and in terms of their future maximum numbers. There is no doubt the primary schools will help, especially in and around London, in providing places to cope with the boom in pupil numbers. The presence of some secondary schools in areas of falling rolls or adequate provisions seems rather more wasteful of scare resources. Once the Studio Schools and UTCs are added to this list, the shape of schooling will have changed more between 2010 and 2015 than at any time for a generation. Now might finally be the time to question the continued presence of selective secondary schools? How diverse a school system do we actually want and need? And is diversity and choice being put before the provision of a good school for all pupils?

Footnote

Since I wrote this piece last night Channel 4 News have carried a report of another school that has failed its Ofsted inspection. Unlike other free schools that have failed, where the promoters were new to education or offering a type of education not previously recognised within the state funded system, this is a school run by a group with extensive mainstream school experience, albeit overseas. Perhaps, this goes to show that running schools in England isn’t as easy as some might have thought and that some local authorities of all political persuasions should have been given more credit for their work.

Stick to the day job Vince

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Early in the 1990s I once spent three-days on a placement at what is now BMW’s Cowley works in Oxford, where the mini is produced. I was on a scheme was designed to help those of us in education, at all levels from the classroom to senior leaders in universities, understand more about how industry and commerce ticked. Indeed, there are still such schemes around today, most notably for school leaders.

It was, therefore interesting to read in today’s Independent newspaper that Business Secretary Vince Cable apparently had some unflattering remarks to say about secondary school teacher’s knowledge of life outside the schoolroom. During my Cowley visit what struck me forcibly was the lack of reciprocal knowledge on the part of those working in industry about what was happening in schools. For instance, many businesses have been caught out in recent years by the growth in the numbers of young people attending university, and have in some cases struggled to make better use of the extra knowledge and skills that graduates bring to the workplace compared with those that leave school after ‘A’ levels.

Still, where I do agree with the Business Secretary is that much more needs to be achieved on the careers education front. I suggested in a recent post that the large recruitment agencies might help with this task. I confess to chairing one of the education panels for the Recruitment Employers Confederation, so I am not a totally unbiased or objective observer. Nevertheless, far more than say the CBI or Institute of Directors, REC already has links with schools through the supply teacher market and could use its expertise in the wider employment scene to work with government on developing a new approach to careers education and work experience. The short section in ‘Tough Young Teachers’, shown recently on BBC3, was an interesting cameo of how a pupil benefitted from even an effectively developed placement in a high street opticians shop.

But, it is time to return to Mr Cable’s remarks. While it is true that the majority of graduates that apply for teaching are below 25 when they decide on a career in the classroom, there are a sizeable minority of career changes that have in most cases had experience of the workplace.

In 2012, the latest year data are available for, of the 55,000 or so graduate would-be teachers, and virtually all would-be secondary school teachers, nearly 20,000 were over the age of 25 when they applied for teacher training according to the figures produced by the GTTR arm of UCAS. In addition, there were around 5,000 direct entrants to teaching that year through the Graduate Training Programme that largely will have come from the wider workforce. This is before you consider any other teachers whose partners work outside education and can discuss the differences between the work of commerce and that of education over the dinner table.

Characterising teachers as ignorant of the world of commerce may have raised a laugh with Mr Cable’s audience, but it doesn’t really convey the whole picture of how schools and business interact. There is room for improvement, but it certainly won’t come about by creating mutual distrust and antipathy.

Schools still hoarding cash

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Figures released by the DfE yesterday at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/264737/SR54-2013Text.pdf suggest that the dwindling band of maintained schools are still not spending all their revenue income. With the revision of the national funding formula yet to see the light of day, these figures might suggest that the current method of funding schools isn’t achieving its key aim of improving teaching and learning as much as possible.

According to the DfE, in 2012-13, the total revenue balance across all Local Authority maintained schools was £2.2 billion, a decrease of £0.1 billion (5.0%) over the 2011-12 revenue balance figure of £2.3 billion. This equates to an average surplus in each maintained school of just over £113,000. However, according to the DfE the total revenue balance of £2.2 billion is 7.5% of the total revenue income across all LA maintained schools. Because of the schools becoming academies that have dropped out of the tables, this is an increase of 0.4 percentage points in revenue balances compared with the 2011-12percentage of 7.1%. So, not only are many maintained schools hording even more cash than last year, but roughly one pound in every £14 the average school receives isn’t spent in the year it is received.

With almost totally devolved budgets, it is legitimate for schools to maintain balances, and the DfE looks at 5% for secondary schools and 8% for other schools as being a reasonable level. There were apparently 464 schools that exceeded this level of reserves. Interestingly, 73 of these schools were in London. Together the London schools were holding in excess of £12 million pounds in reserves above the recommended limit. £2 million of that was apparently held by just four schools in Tower Hamlets: an excess of more than half a million pounds at each school.

By contrast, the average excess reserves in Newham, the next door borough, amounted to just £19,000. Because academies have a different financial year to maintained schools they are excluded from the figures, so comparisons between authorities may not always be helpful, but they do raise questions about what is happening to money lying idle for several years. One Tower Hamlets schools has apparently had over £1 million in uncommitted balances for the past five years since the 2008/09 financial year according to the DfE figures, and appears in the latest table with an uncommitted revenue balance of nearly £1.5 million.

Of course, there are also schools with deficit budgets, but the number has been reducing. According to the DfE, there were 1,111 maintained schools with a revenue balance deficit compared to more than 18,000 schools with a surplus. The total deficit across all LA maintained schools that had a deficit was £81.2 million, a decrease of £28.7 million (26.1%) over the 2011-12 total revenue balance deficit figure of £109.9 million. This equates to an average deficit in each school with a deficit of just over £73,000. The average figure for balances among primary schools in surplus was £93,000 and for secondary schools in surplus it was £405,000.

Last year, I suggested that some of the reserves should be used to create work experience for unemployed young people. In some of the London boroughs with high youth unemployment that might remain a good idea.

Education Quiz

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Regular readers of this blog will know that each year I set an education quiz for the Liberal Democrat Education Association annual conference. As the conference is taking place this weekend, and delegates were offered the opportunity to take the quiz last night I am happy to post it here for anyone that wants to have a go. Good luck, and most answers can be found with a half-decent search engine.

1 How much will the Pupil Premium be for

A] primary

B] secondary school pupils from September 2014?

2 Who was the Chief Inspector before Sir Michael Wilshaw?

3 Name the Lib Dem that sits on the DfE Board

4 What % of pupils gained A*-C GCSE grades in science in 2013?

5 Mr Gove has talked of some educationalists as blobs. Where did the term blob come from?

6 Apart from charming coastlines popular with holidaymakers, what linked Norfolk and the Isle of Wight last year?

7 Why might 5 that used to follow 10 now possibly come after 4?

8 What continent doesn’t feature in the new geography curriculum after Key Stage 1?

9 A new teacher in London could earn more than £36,000 on appointment?

10 Who said ‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’

11 How much money will schools receive for every infant meal served?

12 Which former permanent secretary at the DfE resigned from the board of an academy sponsor after links between the sponsor and its parent organisation in Turkey were revealed in the national press? Bonus mark – where was the school seeking to become an academy using that sponsor?

13 True or false – only 410 trainee design & technology teachers were in training at the November 2013 DfE census date.

14 Although the participation age for education has been raised councils still only have to provide free transport for pupils to the end of the academic year in which their 16th birthday falls. True or false?

15 Name the 2 Free Schools that closed in 2013

16 Who said:

‘I’m pleased to announce today that the Government will be setting up a programme to get outstanding leaders into the schools that need them the most. …. But what I can say is that there will be a pool of top talent within the profession, a Champions League of Head Teachers, made up of Heads and Deputy Heads, who will stand ready to move to schools in challenging circumstances that need outstanding leaders.’ Bonus mark where?

17 Who thought he had proposed a motion to the 2013 Lib Dem Spring conference, but actually hadn’t?

18 What placed West Berkshire in the same group as Enfield in December and Cumbria with Sunderland?

19 All new state-funded schools have to be academies. True or false?

20 In the PISA rankings for mathematics Eire was ranked ahead of the UK but Sweden was below. True or false?

Should women teachers wear trousers?

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Is Ofsted’s latest desire to remove scruffy teachers exhibiting poor standards of behaviour real or just another part of the inter-nicene battle currently being fought within Whitehall? I mentioned in my last post that the revised Ofsted framework would consider issues of dress among trainees and new teachers. Interestingly, I have yet to see any evidence from Ofsted to justify this change in the inspection regime. Given that inspectors carry out more than 9,000 visits to schools each year that are regarded as inspections they probably already know what dress standards are like. Backing the need for change with evidence would have provided more credibility for the decision as well as perhaps identifying what is acceptable. Can women still wear trousers or do the fashion inspectors want a return to either dresses or jumpers and A-line skirts? Must men wear ties along with jackets? Will exceptions be made in both cases on the sports fields and in the gym, workshops, and kitchens?

Based upon views from TV documentaries, and not just of the main characters, is how teachers dress really an issue in secondary schools. So, is it the primary sector Ofsted has in mind? Does the HMCI of Schools want formal dress for those teaching five-year olds, and will it extend beyond the teachers to classroom assistants? Is the policy really about distinguishing teachers from others working with children so that they stand out in a crowded assembly hall as the formally dressed adults? Trainee teachers need to know the standards they will be expected to be judged against. What does ‘neat and tidy’ mean, and is it different in West London to say Northumberland?

I went back and reviewed the findings of a survey I conducted for ATL in 1996 that included a question about spending on clothing by trainee teachers. 80% of trainee teachers that completed the survey claimed to have had to buy suitable clothes for the school environment during their training. I observed at the time that perhaps the expenditure was necessary because the casual attire worn by many students on campus wasn’t acceptable elsewhere, presumably including in the classroom.

Personally, I have always taken a relaxed view of these issues, as I always did when discussing whether pupils should stand up when an adult enters the classroom. There are occasions when it is appropriate, and times when it isn’t. Now both fashions and times change, but whether Ofsted monitors or sets the standards is a key question? We have a profession where around half of teachers are below the age of 35, so how does that age gap between many classroom teachers and those that inspect them affect attitudes between the generations over these issues?

Is the issue of dress among trainees in the classroom really a chimera created by Ofsted for its own purposes or does the HMCI have the evidence to justify the change to the framework? How strict will inspectors be, and will it deter some creative and divergent thinkers from becoming teachers if applied too rigidly? Without the evidence we shall never know.

Am I a blob revisited

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At the end of March last year Mr Gove attacked those who opposed his views as being ‘blobs’. I wrote a blog about whether or not I fell into that category on the 25th March in case anyone is interested in seeing how the debate has moved on during the past year.

I was at one with the Secretary of State in believing in high standards of education for all, and still am. State schools cannot, and generally do not, aspire to produce second class citizens. Although, in the era of secondary modern schools, before the abolition of selection at eleven became the norm, around two thirds of secondary age pupils were in a system that wasn’t especially interested in their abilities. That should have changed, but we still see the greatest under-achievement among our less able pupils. If the message from Mr Gove is ‘educate these pupils’ and stop them disrupting your school then, so long as he recognises the key role of the classroom teacher in achieving this end, he may have the right idea.

If a focus on quality stops the time-wasting, and indeed, money-wasting, emphasis among Conservative, and some Labour politicians at Westminster seemingly determined on creating a nationalised and centralised school system, and recognises the need for local involvement in education, especially primary schooling, the present debate might even achieve a new understanding about how schools should be led: but I doubt it.

On the issue of the day, I might have more respect for David Laws position on Baroness Morgan’s contract as Ofsted chair if I wasn’t aware that alongside Theodore Agnew on the DfE Board sits Paul Marshall as the lead non-executive member. Now Paul helped set up ARK, and has both written books about education, and helped sponsor the Lib Dem leaning think tank CenteForum, as well as once being a researcher for an SDP MP. He was also involved with David Laws in the publication of the controversial Orange Book that upset some Lib Dems a few years ago. I am sure as a financier he and Theodore Agnew each brings financial discipline to a government department often in need of such skills. But, I doubt if he has suddenly become politically neutral. So, perhaps David Laws really wanted a Lib Dem in the job of chair of Ofsted. There are a number of possible candidates in the House of Lords that would fit the bill nicely as a replacement for Baroness Morgan. But, the row is now so political that I am sure it will be the Prime Minister that will make the decision helped by the independent commission on appointments.

Any way the row won’t have done the Lib Dems any harm among teachers and educationalists that Gove sees as blobs, even if it hasn’t fundamentally changed any Lib Dem policy on education. In the short-term it may have enhanced David Laws’ credibility, but, longer-term, his reputation may rest on ensuring there isn’t a teacher supply crisis between now and the general election.