Tag Archives: schooling

Pause for thought on rural schools

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The number of rural primary schools appears to be falling. In the 2015 list published by the DfE there were 4,906 such schools. This year there are just 4,151. However, before anyone rushes to the barricades to defend the remaining rural primary schools against a policy of wholesale closure it is worth remembering that the 2006 Education and Inspections Act that required the government to keep the list of such schools was passed before the programme of mass transformation of our schools to academy status was dreamed up by Mr Gove and more recently seemingly ratified by the White Paper issued this March. Regular readers will recall the resulting furore the idea of compulsory academisation caused, including within the ranks of the Tory party.

With rising rolls in the primary sector, I speculated in my post of the 6th October 2014 on this blog whether it was worth the expenditure on the part of the DfE to continue to produce this list, but so far there hasn’t been any attempt to repeal the relevant section of the 2006 Act. I suppose it was because officials thought once all schools became academies it would automatically fall by the wayside. Now it won’t, at least for a few more years, so it might be worth either bringing all rural schools into the compass of the section or removing it from the statue book since it may offer one more reason why a school shouldn’t become an academy if in doing so it loses this protection against a review against closure.

Scanning the list I am glad to see the two Enfield primary schools remain among the five rural schools within Greater London; two in Enfield; two in Hillingdon and one in Bromley. The location of these schools in the Green Belt does stretch the definition of rural a bit, but I can quite see why they are included.

In am not sure whether Kielder First School in Northumberland is still one of the smallest primary schools in England, but with just 15 pupils according to Edubase it probably remains one of the most expensive on a per pupil basis and shows the challenge facing those wanting to introduce a National Funding Formula. Without a significant block grant element to such a formula, an element Mr Gove once wanted to abolish, such schools as this would close because they would not be financially viable. The cost of transporting the pupils to school each day would then fall on Northumberland County Council. With 78 such rural schools, this cost could be significant but would have to be met by cuts elsewhere in the County’s budget, even without adding in any academies not counted in this list.  However, North Yorkshire, with 227 rural primary schools in the DfE’s list would be hit even more if their schools were affected by a National Funding Formula that didn’t somehow take account of their importance of our rural primary schools for many small isolated communities.

The complex inter-relationships between the government at Westminster and local authorities over the supply of education really does need to be thoroughly considered before and policy changes are made. Not to do so, risk unintended consequences not just for pupils but also for their parents as council tax payers.

Some light on entry to the teaching profession

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The NCTL issued an interesting set of reports yesterday. At present they aren’t on their main web site, or at least I couldn’t find them, but they are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=all&topics%5B%5D=all&departments%5B%5D=national-college-for-teaching-and-leadership&official_document_status=all&world_locations%5B%5D=all&from_date=&to_date=

Regular readers of this blog may find some of the Report linking ITT and workforce data somewhat familiar, but none the worse for that.

Here are the key findings that the authors believe stand up even though they have issues with the quality of the data.

  • Three regions of England – North East, North West and South West – appear to have large numbers of new qualified teachers who do not join a state-sector school immediately after achieving QTS.
  • Those studying on undergraduate with QTS courses have low initial retention rates in the profession, though we cannot know whether this results from subsequent choices made by the individual or recruitment decisions made by schools.
  • Teach First has very high two year retention rates, but thereafter their retention is poorer than other graduate routes.
  • Ethnic minority teacher trainees have very low retention rates.
  • Individuals who train part-time or who are older have much poorer retention rates, which may simply reflect other family commitments that interfere with continuous employment records.

The first point is no surprise given the official policy of allocating places by quality of provider rather than by labour market need. As the Report uses School Workforce data it largely predates the big shift into School Direct.

I am not sure whether the authors qualify the second point in relation to the first; too many primary trainees in the big four providers might have made a difference especially as the difference between HEI-led FT (I assume the graduate routes) and Undergraduate with QTS that is largely primary courses is only around three percentage points by Year 3 and in for the 2010 entry undergraduate routes were higher in terms of retention after three years than HEI-led. (Table 1).

EBITT did very well on retention and the early years of School Direct were above university courses rates, but below the former EBIT retention rates that they largely replaced. Teach First had the worst retention rates after three years. This isn’t surprising since its original raison d’etre was as a short-service type programme with the hope some would become career teachers: disappointingly less than half, even of those that entered during the years of recession, chose to do so. The exit of this group pushes up demand for replacements especially as Teach First expands.

The news about ethnic minority teachers isn’t surprising and reflect the study I did for NCTL a couple of years ago. While the last bullet point may be true, it could also reflect their location and job opportunities and the decisions schools make about the cost of teachers and the age profiles of their staff. Without more geographical information linked to TeachVac data on where the jobs are we can only speculate.

Finally, it would have been interesting to have had some contextual information such as the state of the economy and of the teacher labour market and whether the TSM numbers were over or under-recruited to for each cohort. Too many trainees against predicted demand can lead to wastage at the point of entry.

Stupidity and criminality: a fine line?

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The news that a teenage boy has been placed on the police national database for sharing a photograph of himself unclothed via an app he expected to destroy the photograph within seconds of its receipt raises interesting questions. Firstly, there is the issue of what is indecent? Had he taken a photo using the app on a nudist beach and shared it with someone else on the same beach would it have been indecent. Secondly, was the school suffering from large numbers of pupils sharing such photographs of others in a manner that was disrupting the life of the school, even if the photographs were taken outside of the school? If this was the case, were pupils told that taking and sending such photos, even on a self-destruct basis, was a breach of school rules?

Even if all the above were true, the boy seems to have been stupid. The person who stopped his photo self-destructing and then passed it on to others gratuitously seems to be much more culpable, as was anyone then passing it on to another person. However, what if the boy had painted an image of himself in a life class and then photographed it? Would that constitute a representation of art or an indecent image, even if forwarded to a third party?

The fact that the police officer appears to have said that she had been told by her superior to take action suggests this might not have been an isolated incident. Even so, did it merit what appears to be a deterrent sentence of inclusion as intelligence on the police computer with all that entails for enhanced DBS checks? Without knowing the full facts, it is difficult to answer that question other than in the abstract.

There was a suggestion during the coalition government that all of these teenage transgressions be wiped from the record at eighteen if there had been no further mis-behaviour. After all, most teenagers do silly things, some of which are not legal.  I would support at least right the of an individual to have the ability to ask a court to take such action as a way forward. Presumably, the school will have to decide whether it includes reference to this event in any support it provides on an application form for a job, apprenticeship or university place?

The law does seem to be bearing down hard on teenagers at present even though I suspect that deterrent sentences have less effect on teenagers that on adults, as young people often act before thinking. In this case it raises the question of where does the criminal law operate in relation to institutions? I suspect the answer is that the rule of law is paramount and must always take precedence over the rules of an institution. However, there seems to be an issue of what happens with cases that fail to meet the charging threshold and are left to junior police officers to decide the outcome and consequences for the individual in such circumstances where they cannot have either a jury or a bench of magistrates decide on guilt or innocence. That seems to me to pose big risks as we have seen with the use of unfettered police bail in the past. It is why I have never favoured district judges sitting alone to decide on the issue of guilt or innocence except in the most clear cut motoring cases.

Grammar schools do not have a monopoly on good order and discipline

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The piece by Sir Michael Wilshaw in today’s Daily Telegraph goes a long way to explain why I started life as a Liberal and became a founder member of the Liberal Democrats. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11828052/Sir-Michael-Wilshaw-Any-head-worth-their-salt-should-stand-up-and-ban-mobiles.html

It is not that I am against his basic tenant that schools needed to be places of order and control, where every student is both encouraged and able to develop to the best of their abilities. Indeed, I do think that the degree of order and control expected in schools should be ingrained in pupils so as to extend beyond the school gates to include the manner in which young people go to and from school and I would certainly ban mobile phones from any classroom where I was a teacher.

Rather, my concerns are that the Chief inspector seems to equate the ideal standards of behaviour with grammar schools and by inference at least that teachers in other state schools have lower standards that Ofsted must inspect out of existence.

I am not sure what the business editor the Daily Telegraph thought if he read the piece over his cornflakes, but I wonder if he will get a call from the CBI on Tuesday asking where the skills businesses want such as self-reliance and confidence are to be found in the Wilshaw world of pupils sitting in serried rows and bowing and scraping whenever an adult enters the classroom. As a teacher I never saw the point of that unless the person entering was a really distinguished visitor. As the doors were at the back of the room, any class I was teaching didn’t notice a visitor until they were well into the room anyway, by which time standing up waste just a waste of time. Presumably Michael Wilshaw would make the wearing of academic gowns mandatory to distinguish teachers from teaching assistants and other support staff, even though they are all vital members of the team in a school.

In the grammar school I attended there were lots of examples of behaviour Michael Wilshaw won’t accept. At one point the sixth form excluded a teacher from a lesson by lining up the desks between the window and the door to prevent him entering; leaving him stranded in the corridor. At another time pupils set fire to waste bins in the playground. On the other hand the school had an outstanding record for drama and sport. I don’t know what HMI thought of the school because in those days reports weren’t made public; publication only started in the 1980s.

In my experience, as a pupil, a teacher and teacher trainer, it is the quality of the staff that makes a school. That is the reason why I spend so much time worrying about teacher supply. We need teaching to be a profession of choice that attracts high quality staff at all levels. It is in schools with poor quality staff that the invisible line between order and chaos edges ever closer to chaos. The same happens when teacher turnover in a school rises too quickly, as often happens when there are teacher shortages and plenty of job opportunities.

Mr Wilshaw is right to remind us that not all learning is fun, but wrong to select the examples he chooses. I recall a great lesson by one of my students teaching tables with a beanbag being thrown around the class. Answer the question and you got the chance to ask the next one to another pupil. I guess you can do the same with computers today and monitor where pupils regularly don’t give the correct answer. It was a stimulating learning experience and the pupils knew their tables.

If the Daily Telegraph piece is part of the Tory attempt to bring back grammar schools, then they should think again. The world has moved a long way from that of the 1940s, even if the Conservatives haven’t. Education is a right for all and not the privilege for the few.

Welcome Back

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So we have the same Secretary of State. Will it be the same Department or will the Prime Minister seek to abolish the Business department and return FE and HE to Education, while sending Children’s Services to Health or somewhere else?

Regardless of any organisational change, there are a number of policy issues to be resolved over the next few years.

As I hinted in my last post, teacher supply and probably training, need urgent ministerial attention. Splitting the teacher training part of the NCTL away from CPD and Leadership might be a smart move, even if in the short-term it means bringing it back in-house in London. At least it would be close to Ministers.

Then there is the future governance of education. The small band of Commissioners aren’t enough to deal with all the issues in both the primary and secondary sectors. So, further reform will be needed here. As many Labour councils won’t embrace the academy programme, primary schools in these areas will grow larger as Councils strive to prevent a loss of control. A firm hand is needed, not least because in those Tory authorities that did embrace the academy agenda and created Trusts over which they have no control, are still left holding the blame when anything goes wrong. I suspect Kent will have something to say on this matter after the arbitrary closure of an academy in the west of the county just before the announcement of the allocation of places to pupils.

If the Conservatives want more UTCs and Studio Schools for 14-18s then they will have to solve the leadership issue. In recent weeks I have had several journalists and researchers contacting me about how bad the leadership crisis is at the present time? Since I gave up that research some time ago I don’t really know, but it seems sensible to ask the question; if we create more schools, do we have enough leaders in waiting? There may be more of an issue in the primary sector where lack of career direction and encouragement, as local authorities saw the cash for this disappear into schools, may have lasting effects until the governance issue is sorted out and a new middle-tier can take responsibility for the career development issues schools aren’t interested in.

Pay and conditions will remain a concern, as the Liberal Democrats were prepared to recognise during the election campaign. Motivating the workforce may also be a major concern for the Secretary of State in the coming months; here a good appointment of Schools Minister will be vital as someone the profession can work with on a day to day basis.

Regardless of whether the Department is re-structured, Ofsted will need reform. If there are no advisory services to do the positive things in changing schools a totally negative inspection regime, or even one that looks that way, risks not only resentment but also loss of authority if the profession refuses to take it seriously.

Then there is the issue of selective schools.  The Secretary of State will need to make it clear whether she agrees with selection at eleven or whether she considers that is an idea that has passed its sell-by date now everyone stays-on to eighteen. At the same time she will need to make clear where she draws the line with regard to the profit motive? Can schools now be run for profit; if so, should she signal that she expects the fee-paying schools to all be run for profit and to abandon their charitable status. It would, seemingly be odd to have three classes of schools; for profit state funded schools; non-for profit state funded schools; state supported charitable institutions that can also charge fees for the education component of their work.

Now that apprenticeships are firmly back on the agenda, there are issues to resolve in the curriculum and in examinations. The arts, so long a success story of education in England, are being squeezed out along with sport if trends in advertised vacancies mean anything. Other subjects will disappear if teachers cannot be recruited. What is the future for CGSE now all will be in education or work related training until eighteen? Was Labour prescient in suggesting GCSEs might become unnecessary in the future?

There is much to do with early years as well, especially around those families that don’t see the value of education. That they are holding back the life chances of many of their children is accepted by many of us, but needs to be better communicated. This should be something politicians of all parties can agree upon. Then there are groups such as Travellers that all too often fall below the radar of politicians, but deserve better from society. The same is true for other groups whether young carers, those with SEN not severe enough to be really appreciated and those on the wrong side of the digital divide. Hopefully, the next five years will still be a time when government recognises their need for improved education.

But, my main message remains that, if we cannot recruit enough teachers, then we cannot create a world-class education system.

All or nothing

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According to the press this morning David Cameron is set to announce the creation of a squad of high-quality teachers, to be employed centrally that will be sent out to assist poorly performing schools. The National Teaching Service (NTS) will be made up of up to 1,500 ‘super teachers funded by central government, and will be deployed to so-called failing schools.

If true, this development poses a number of issues for trainee teachers, schools, and indeed parents. Historically, apart for the ill-fated and short-lived Fast Track Scheme introduced by Labour over a decade ago to recruit and place the best new teachers, recruitment has been a discussion between an individual teacher and a school or in a few cases a group of schools. Even in the latter case, except in the primary sector, posts advertised have usually been associated with working in a particular school. In the primary sector, pooling arrangements for the first stage of recruitment were popular when local authorities managed schools even though they sometimes might have discriminated against ‘returners’ in favour of newly qualified teachers.

Any announcement of an NTS has implications for current trainees if it is to start in 2015. More likely it will not commence before September 2016. However, savvy trainees on PGCE or School Direct courses, especially in shortage subjects, may decide to avoid working in schools likely to be targeted by NTS flying squads on the basis that they might need to be replaced by the in-coming teachers. Teachers already working in these schools now have an extra incentive to find another job just in case the alternative is redundancy or dismissal on other grounds when the NTS arrive.

Announcing the NTS in October is probably the most stupid move in the teacher labour market made by a government since the 1996 announcement of changes to the pension scheme drove an unprecedented number of head teachers to quit by the following summer. Even though 1,500 NTS staff, and it is not clear whether they will encompass all grades of teacher or just say, middle leaders, need to be recruited it is not clear how many schools will be targetted. That issue alone will be interesting as presumably there will need to be incentives to secure the NTS staff away from their present posts.

Now, as someone who working for seven years in a school likely these days to be a top target for an NTS squad to replace existing staff, I fully accept that there are under-performing schools. I also accept that some staff drafted in may make a difference. The famous arrival of Mike Tomlinson at The Ridings School in Yorkshire in the late 1990s had an immediate impact but longer-term change proved more elusive.

At the heart of this announcement is the issue raised before in this blog of whether schooling has now been nationalised in England. The very term NTS suggests the answer, but in a typically British manner it may be being handled in a cack-handed manner. However, it probably explains Labour’s announcement of the idea of a teacher’s oath yesterday. As usual, I am left wondering what is the position of my own Party, the Lib Dems on the idea of who is responsible for teachers and their employment

Why all schools must be good

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For some parents this Easter will be a time for celebration as the results of ‘destiny day’ – the day when children starting formal schooling were told which school they will be attending in September – is celebrated. For other parents, whose children have been assigned their second or third choice of school; or in some cases none of those they asked for, the mood will be no doubt be more downbeat. I can sympathise. As I have mentioned before, in 1952 my brother and I failed to secure places at the first choice school identified by our parents, a small one form entry Church of England primary school, and instead went to a four form entry infant school that was admittedly nearer to where we lived.

So, parents of children born in years when the population is growing in an area are always going to struggle to secure a place at the school of their choice, especially as it doesn’t make good sense to have too many places standing empty when they are not needed, even though a reservoir of places to cope with peaks in demand is sensible.

What may worry parents more these days is if the expansion of places to meet growing demand isn’t always in the best performing schools. Now I am aware that Ofsted judgements are moveable feasts; and school can and do improve, as well as in some cases perform less well over time. Also, some new schools haven’t even been inspected by Ofsted. However, the DfE has recently published a Basic Need Scorecard with interesting data about the distribution and cost of new places in each local authority.

Some 25 local authorities were coded red in the DfE dashboard as the percentage of new places in school deemed ‘good’ or better by Ofsted up to 2103 was seen as concerning. Many of the authorities in the code red group were small unitary of other urban authorities. Interestingly, only three were London boroughs where the most noise about this issue seems to be generated in the press. Only one authority, Westminster, was an inner London borough. By contrast, there were eight shire counties in the group, ranging from Shropshire to Essex, and from North Yorkshire to Wiltshire. I suspect that if we were able to find the individual schools in these counties where places been increased, even though Ofsted was less then complimentary about aspects of the school, we would find them concentrated in the market towns and larger settlements within the counties rather than in the more rural areas. Answering that question might make an interesting research study for someone to conduct.

When the report on the admissions process is compiled by the Adjudicator, it will be interesting to see whether any other authorities than Oxfordshire, where I am a county councillor, raise concerns about academies not being willing to cooperate over placing pupils even where they have spare capacity. It would be a real irony if choice, meant choice by school as to how many pupils to take, but also an outcome resulting in more cost to rural authorities in additional school transport expenditure because some schools weren’t willing to help accommodate the growing number of pupils.

Who is in charge of our schools?

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A slightly amended version of this article appeared in the Oxford Times on 31st January 2013

Who is responsible for schools in Oxfordshire? This innocuous question reaches to the heart of the current debate about publicly funded schooling in England. Historically, there were three levels of responsibility: individual schools; local authorities, in our case Oxfordshire County Council; and the government at Westminster. Interestingly, this year, sees the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Education Reform Act. That legislation, by introducing local management of schools, started the process of delivering autonomy to individual schools while at the same time reserving power over the curriculum to the government at Westminster. During the following 25 years local authorities have steadily lost control of their local education service. New types of schools have been developed, ranging from Kenneth Baker’s City Technology Colleges through the grant maintained schools of the 1990s to the more recent sponsored academies of the Labour government, and finally the new converter academies, free schools and university technology colleges all managed from Westminster.

Of course, a range of different bodies running schools is not a new concept. The major churches have been a part of the education landscape since compulsory elementary education was introduced in 1870, and more recently these schools have been joined by those from other faiths. What needs to be resolved now is the chain of responsibility and accountability for publicly funded schools, and whether, as I believe they should, elected local authorities still have a central place in the organisation of schooling?

Since the funding for schools is now largely determined at Westminster, with little room for local political discretion, as is when and where new schools may open, councils have been left with responsibilities, but often no funds or powers to implement them.

The rhetoric from Whitehall has been that chains of academies are the way forward. Local authorities are nowadays pale shadows of such chains, without many of the powers conferred on these private sector chains by the Labour government that invented them. One solution is that councils become just a watch dog, with questions about school performance solved by Whitehall mandarins. This might work for the secondary sector, but with more than 18,000 primary schools across England the chain of command between each school and Whitehall is just too long. Last summer the RSA suggested unelected School Commissioners, along the lines of the Police & Crime Commissioners. That is a possible solution, but it takes away democratic control from a key publicly funded institution, and would create a system for schooling more akin to the NHS.

While the debate about who is responsible for our schools remains unresolved, the present system, especially for the primary sector, risks heading towards a complete collapse. Already, professional development services for schools, effective planning of school places, admission arrangements, and provision of services to children with special educational needs are either under threat or have been severely curtailed.

There is a ray of hope locally in the way that both the County and Oxford City responded when I revealed in November 2011 that KS1 results in the City were the worst for any district council in England. But, it shouldn’t have been up to me to start that debate.

I support local democratic responsibility for schools, directly so for the publically funded primary sector, regardless of who actually operates the schools, and as a watchdog for both the secondary and further education sectors where performance can be the key to the success of local communities. However, what really matters is that the government takes swift action to deal with the present lack of a viable control structure for our school system.

Professor John Howson is the director of dataforeducation.info and holds a visiting professorship at Oxford Brookes University and a visiting senior research fellowship at Oxford University’s Department of Education and has lived in Oxford for more than 30 years. He is a lifelong Liberal Democrat, and Vice President of the Liberal Democrat Education Association. These are his personal views

The curriculum for the primary (elementary) school

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The primary school curriculum

Earlier this week I was asked what I thought should be the essence of the curriculum for the primary school? In one way, defining the early stages of the primary curriculum is an easy process. Moving from gross to ever finer motor skills, developing competence in reading, writing, speaking and listening; learning the basics of numeracy; acquiring the ability to socialise and work with others; an understanding of the need for physical effort related to health; a sense of time, space and identity within a democratic society; an understanding that there is more than one language, and how others communicate using different languages; the basics or art, music and other cultural activities;  science and its approach to the problems of the world; faith and reasoning; the developing technological environment and how it works. And above all, perhaps as sense of wonder, awe and a desire to achieve.

I am sure there is even more. The task for governments is, how much to define and how much to leave to professionals, but to still monitor the outcomes through the political process. As a society we are impoverished in the modern world if children are not literate, numerate, technologically aware and able to appreciate the consequences of living together in society that is complex and based upon many different ideas, ideologies and faiths.

Politicians, on behalf of the learners they fund through schooling and their parents, have a right to expect educators to teach children, using whatever methods are appropriate, providing they meet ethical and moral standards, and achieve expected outcomes, without undue interference. Educators have a right to expect politicians to provide adequate resources for them to achieve these goals.

Universities, government, and the private sector must all play a part in helping develop new approaches to the curriculum, and its delivery, and also in appropriate assessment and recording mechanisms that are not overburdening but do allow the effective measurement of progress to be recorded and effectively disseminated to both the learner and their parents.

Of course, the school is no longer the only source of learning, and never was, but the school must be capable of ensuring that the curriculum for the gifted and talented can stretch beyond the school gates to ensure interests and abilities are not restricted by the need to teach large groups of children. Schools must also ensure that those who have special needs are recognised and treated accordingly and in a manner that doesn’t hinder their learning.

Robert Fulghum probably summed the curriculum up best in 1986 when he wrote ‘All I really need to know I learnt in kindergarten‘. Some things we can learn at any time of life; others we need to know from an early age.