Media Analysis – Education (10-03-14)
Bad news for Suffolk County Council as Ofsted deems it to be damaging the life chances of pupils
by failing to challenge and support schools.
In the South East, however, Ofsted have said that overall pupils do well. ‘The proportions of pupils
who reach the expected benchmark for assessments, tests and exams at the ages of seven, 11 and 16
exceed the national figures. However, the attainment gap between pupils who are eligible for free
school meals and their wealthier peers is the most acute in England. Some South East schools have
bucked the trend, and in areas like Windsor and Maidenhead the achievement of poorer pupils has
improved considerably. But in 2012 five areas – Wokingham, Mole Valley, Wealden, Brighton
Pavilion and New Forest West – did not have a single secondary school where the gap between the
attainment of 16 year olds entitled to free school meals and their more affluent peers was above the
national average.’
Warwick Mansell, writing for the Guardian, analyses academies which have been much in the
news recently. He picks up on the National Governors Association stating their concern about
ministers discouraging schools from using federation arrangements to pool resources rather
than the academy route. Last month DfE rejected the NGA’s request for schools to receive £25,000
towards the cost of federating in groups while still under local authority control. He gives multiple
examples of schools questioning the academy route, one example being: ‘Sheriden Edwards,
executive head of the Denton and Harlaxton federation, formed in September 2011, comprising two
small Church of England primaries near Grantham, Lincolnshire, has a similar view. Edwards had
taken Denton primary school from having failed an Ofsted in 2007 to being outstanding in 2010.
The inspectorate had recently rated nearby Harlaxton primary as "satisfactory". Harlaxton is now
rated good with outstanding leadership, with Denton judged outstanding overall again last year.
Edwards says she and her governors prefer federation with the support of the local authority to
academy status because – perhaps in contrast to the position espoused by the DfE – the former
allows the schools to retain more autonomy. Governors feared that under an academy organisation
independence might be lost.’
There was, unusually, some positive news regarding academies which featured in the BBC.
‘Andreas Schleicher, in charge of the international Pisa tests, faced questions from MPs about how
he thought England's academy system was working. Mr Schleicher said the global evidence
suggested local flexibility for schools was linked to higher results. He described free-standing
academies as a "promising trend". Describing the features of the most successful education systems
around the world, he praised "local discretion" for head teachers and school leaders combined with
a shared expectation of high standards….Another problem facing schools in England, he said was
that as well as poorer results from disadvantaged pupils, many schools serving privileged areas
failed to reach their potential.’
Gaby Koppel, also for the Guardian, reports on the campaign, Maintained Sector History of Art
Project, being run through the schools section of the Association of Art Historians. Currently there
appears to have been only a few initiatives actually started. ‘It sounds like just the sort of thing
Michael Gove should approve of. In February, the education secretary said he wanted state schools
to aspire to become more like private schools, but so far there's been little sign of him endorsing art
history in the same way that he has classics. Yet, Osborne says, this subject could be a gateway to a
variety of well-paid careers.’
Moving onto another subject – Philosophy – the DfE comes in for strong criticism from Frank
Furedi at the Guardian. ‘Tragically, the draft philosophy syllabus offers an intellectually inferior
version of the old. Some of the most intellectually stimulating questions of the existing curriculum
disappear, such as that on free will, as does political philosophy. A new compulsory philosophy of
religion topic – which counts for 50% of the AS course – suggests a reorientation towards the
teaching of RE. What's most disturbing is that the text disappears, to be replaced by an online
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Media Analysis – Education (10-03-14)
anthology of extracts. Why? According to the draft syllabus, to provide "greater clarity on the
content so that teachers are clear about what they need to teach". The impulse to remove a teacher's
capacity to make judgment calls threatens to turn what has been an exciting intellectual adventure
into an exercise in box-ticking. In line with this pedagogical orientation, the assessments have been
revised to cater for a more intellectually light curriculum.’
TES features an article from a religious studies teacher in Sheffield on new methods of debating.
‘I tried a different tack, with funding support from charity the Shine Trust. The idea was to use the
debating techniques of Tibetan Buddhism. In this form of Buddhism, monks debate with each other
not just through talking but through physical actions, too. The actions represent the aspect of the
debate they are presenting. For example, an individual will stamp their feet and clap their hands to
indicate the forcefulness of their point.’
A Freedom of Information Request by TES has revealed that Asian trainee teachers are almost
twice as likely to be on a university course as opposed to the School Direct training scheme. There
are concerns that fragmentation of teacher training could result in less diversity. ‘The FOI figures
showed there were 270 Asian, 140 black and 140 mixed-race students among the 6,580 School
Direct trainees. In contrast, there were 1,740 Asian, 540 black and 660 mixed-race students were
among the near 26,000 trainees at universities. The current teaching force is 93.3 per cent white,
according to DfE statistics. Teachers from an Indian background make up the next largest
proportion accounting for 1.6 per cent of teachers.’
A separate investigation by the BBC also relating to teachers found that poorly performing
teachers in Wales can take too long to sack. Apparently it can take up to a year to sack some. ‘Of
the schools that responded to the survey, 16 said it had taken a year to sack poorly performing
teachers and 13 said it had taken two years or even longer…BBC Wales sent Freedom of Information
requests to 22 local education authorities asking how many teachers had been dismissed in the last
five years. Only four teachers had been removed, with a further 38 resigning before or during the
process that can lead to dismissal.’
In further bad news for Wales the BBC reports on headteachers raising concerns over unexpectedly
low results for GCSE English language exams.
The Observer at the weekend revealed the rather unpleasant news that Tiffin school is among the 23
secondaries and primaries where pupils have come forward claiming they were sexually abused by
teachers. ‘In one case, the state school – not Tiffin – has made a settlement on behalf of the victim
which is covered by a confidentiality agreement. In another primary school, there is an ongoing
police investigation. In a recent case, at Hillside First School in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the
headteacher was dismissed when it emerged that staff had witnessed a total of 30 inappropriate
incidents involving one teacher, none of which were passed on to the local authority.’ In the case of
state schools they are expected to compensate the victim using their liability insurance.
The Telegraph also had some concerning news regarding Birmingham schools. Andrew Gilligan
describes a leaked document discussing a Trojan Horse operation. ‘They had already, they claimed,
caused “a great amount of organised disruption” in the city and “as a result now have our own
academies and are on the way to getting rid of more headteachers and taking over their schools.
Whilst sometimes the practices we use may not seem the correct way to do things you must
remember that this is 'jihad’ and as such using all measures possible to win the war is acceptable.”
The leaked documents describe how the alleged plotters stir up “hardline” parents to attack
headteachers with allegations that they are “corrupting their children with sex education, teaching
about homosexuals, making their children pray Christian prayers and [carrying out] mixed
swimming and sport”.’
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Media Analysis – Education (10-03-14)
They also comment on Michael Gove saying football clubs should open their own state schools in
response to the news That Tottenham Hotspur is set to become the latest to help run a school.
‘Teachers’ leaders have criticised the development, insisting that control of schools is being placed in
the hands of organisations with no track record of education.’
Anita Singh, also in the Telegraph, focuses on Tony Robinson’s criticism of Michael Gove’s
insistence that children learn about the First World War from a patriotic standpoint. ‘I think it’s very
worrying to say that. Not that you don’t want to imbue into kids a love of your country, because our
country is wonderful in a whole variety of ways, but the idea that there is some ideological
standpoint that you should start from when you’re looking at a moment in history – that’s not
history, that’s the kind of teaching which is deployed by some of the regimes that we tend to think of
as the worst regimes in the world’.
Finally, the BBC reports that Education Minister David Laws has insisted that the
government’s plans to give free meals to all infant school pupils in England will happen on time.
This follows a statement from Chairman of the Education Committee, Graham Stuart MP, that
schools would struggle and more planning was needed. The article noted that several headteachers
have complained that the timescale for implementation is unrealistic. This story also featured BBC’s
The One Show on Monday 3rd March.
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