So here's the thing, High Court judges ........

A father has won an appeal in the High Court against a fine for taking his children out of school during term time.  Let's forget the chaos caused to education if the 30 parents of children in one class take the children out of school at different times in addition to generous holiday dates.  Let's forget the arrant nonsense of school holidays being  controlled by the old 'harvest time' and remember these are kids and a full year at school is too much for a young mind.  Let's forget the stupidity of assuming that teachers are lazy and want long holidays.  Only the intellectually moribund would not recognise that teachers work far more hours in a week than most of the parents, and are confined to the tourist industries greed in overcharging for school holidays themselves.

For once let's look at the facts.

Children are required by law to attend school 190 days of the year.  Teachers, laughingly, are required to work 195 days of the year which is a nonsense since teachers work through the holidays.

The child had a 90% attendance before being taken out of school, so has attended for 171 days.  Let's be generous and say that the child was only out of school for 5 days to go on the term-time trip.  That means the child's attendance is now 166 days which is 87.368%.  This does not take into account any future genuine absences such as for medical or family bereavement.

In my days as a manager in industry, the schools provided the first employment reference for the school-leaver including attendance record.  Would I employ a school-leaver who only turns up for 87% of the time? No of course not, there are too many available students with a 90-100% attendance record.  Would I employ a school-leaver who has a D in maths because the individual missed the start of new topics all through the school year?  No of course not, there are too many available students with GCSEs at A* to C.

The chaos of politics in education.

The events of today are a real conundrum for me.  I oppose children being taken out of school during the school term, to the extent that I would not strike to prevent a child from accessing education even for one day. However, parents seem to be keeping their children off school today in protest at the upcoming SATs tests and various campaign groups have chipped in with their two penny worth.  My view is that the parents have a point and that SATs are all about political point scoring.  It is alleged by ministers that SATs show progress and improvement.  But in fact, it makes no measurable difference to the individual child.  After all, where is the empirical evidence that an individual child has benefited in any way from being tested at the age of six?

Education Minister Nick Gibb says that tests improve standards.  How? The other Nicky, Morgan, says that raising standards will improve  creativity.  How? The fact is so much pressure is put on schools to produce 'results' and show improvement year after year that teaching creatively is abandoned to teaching to tests.  No wonder children are actually saying that they can't cope.  Even Chris McGivern of the Campaign for Real Education has jumped on the bandwagon by saying that British children are three years behind the Chinese at the age of fifteen.  My question to the Campaign for Real Education is "So what?".

The important question is how British children succeed compared with Chinese students after that time.  We do not produce drones that follow party policy but innovative individuals.  The British have and continue to develop inspiring technological and cultural creativity, as opposed to cloning other people's ideas.

It is the time that teachers be allowed to use their judgement and personal knowledge of the child to determine where that child should be set upon the transition from primary to secondary education, and secondary teachers should be more proactive in moving those children between sets as required.

Perhaps the answer is to get the politicians and think-tanks out of education.

Our children's education should not be a political football!

Every UK government administration feels the need to interfere with our children's future by tinkering with the education system.  Within that period between general elections, the unqualified Secretaries of State are changed on a regular basis.  The interference seems to be dictated by the desire to 'out do' the previous government or to make our kids the clones of Chinese, Scandanavian or US students.  But in my travels children are the same the world over, some will want to learn, some will not.  Of course, in some areas improvements can be made both in the UK and globally but the best teaching comes from teachers who are allowed to use their own initiative and innovation.  My own career proved to me that schools that are not afraid to experiment and innovate produce the best results and then share that best practice with other local schools.

The advent of multi-academy chains have choked off innovation and tied the hands of Headteachers and staff.  The senior (well paid) managers in the academy chains, if educators at all, are classroom deficient in modern techniques and impose outdated and discredited policies and procedures.

I can quite understand Jeremy Gargan, the Headteacher of Aycliffe Village Primary School's decision to resign in protest at forced academisation.  His decision proves what a great teacher he is and will be a loss to the profession.

So what do we do?  My personal opinion is that government and the civil service should be removed from the equation and education within England and Wales (Scotland and N. Ireland do their own thing anyway) and hand the responsibility to an Education Trust comprising real educators and non-education related business leaders.  It is a well known strategic strategy that a paradigm shift is more effective than 'tinkering' strategies, so let's make that huge change now before even more damage is done to our young generation, teacher morale and results.

Headteacher resignation over forced academisation

I refer the Honourable Lady to my previous answer

The intention by Government to force all schools to become Academies would be a good one if the Academies were in small clusters supported by an outstanding school.  But by encouraging even bigger Academy Trusts all that is happening is the transfer of schools from Local Authorities to a privatised authority, with all the risks that entails.  The money that small clusters could use to improve their schools will be used up, out-of-area, by monolithic education corporation's infrastructure, high director salaries and contingency hoarding.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35814215

Here we go again. Time to reduce academy chains to clusters of three schools.

An academy chain has been accused by Ofsted inspectors of not making enough progress, with warnings the quality of education for too many pupils is "not good enough".

The E-Act trust runs 23 academies across England and the Ofsted report says pupils from "poor backgrounds do not do well enough" in its schools.

Last month the academy chain scrapped all its local governing bodies.

Another failing Academy chain?

AET Failure?

This post is not a "told you so", but I have made my views known publically, and in my resignation feedback, that Greensward, Maltings and New Rickstones opportunities have been squandered by an over-inflated, over-managed, monolith that dictates top down policies, instead of the highly successful classroom innovations of Greensward that shared best practice up the chain of command.

Once again I call on the three original academies to retrieve the Greensward Charitable Trust from being the vehicle that gives charity status to the AET and go it alone. This is about the children and not overpaid egos.

Do SOMETHING!

BBC News - AET article

Academies to scrap Governing Bodies

The independence of Academy chains seems to permit them to scrap their locally appointed school governors, and in the words of the academy chain, E-Act, replace them with 'academy ambassadorial advisory bodies'.  What the heck is one of those?

The Academy structure was a brilliant idea that actually worked well in its initial form.  Outstanding successful schools and staff shared best practice and procedures with local schools needing improvement.  But now, the so-called 'not for profit' (but 'yes to high salaries for managers') organisations now run huge chains of schools in widely differing geographical areas.  So the 'shared best practice' is now top down from out of touch monoliths without the initiatives formed at a classroom level.

In fact, what has been achieved are a series of mini-education authorities that are not even 'local', and they syphon off their overheads and vast paycheques from the money that should have gone directly to the school.  By running schools north, south, east and west, the best interests of the community are no longer addressed.  In addition, the ability of Advanced Skills teachers to pop down to a nearby school to assist, train and support their colleagues has now disappeared.  I, for one, enjoyed visits from my local colleagues who were welcome to come into my classroom at anytime to see for themselves, and for me to visit them, which was a mutually beneficial experience.

In summary, I believe that academy chains have run their course, and before they do any more damage they should be broken up, with two or three local academies being clustered into academy support groups.  Each academy to have its own Governing Body comprising parent and staff elected  governors and a sprinkling of 'public appointees' who have expertise in the areas of finance, human resources, and fund-raising.  An overseeing Cluster Governor Board comprising three governors from each school can monitor 'key performance indicators' and make suggestions and add support where needed.

It is time education in this country was finally changed for the better ,and not by Education Secretaries who have been solicitors (present incumbent), journalists (Gove), economics journalist (Kelly), postman (Johnson), a student in Cuba before only politics (Charles Clarke), and a lecturer in industrial relations (Blunkett).  This is not to decry the professions they did follow, but I ask you, to run education for England?  Honestly?

Missed university places?

How many young people missed their university places because of poor marking standards?  The whole UK education system needs to be overhauled urgently.

90,000 re-grades?- Click here

Research Bid Failed

My interest in researching remote methods of delivering teaching and learning took a blow recently when I failed in my bid to get funding for a research project.  The application is reproduced here for the interest of educators:

Employment History (5/7)

Job title 

Retired Teacher

Name and address of employer  

n/a

List, in brief, previous employment or occupations  

Shipwright Artificer - Royal Navy
Submarine Officer - Royal Navy
General Manager -and Business Management
Teacher - Business Studies, Law and ICT

Briefly list appropriate qualifications, if any. In particular, if your project is science or medicine related, please include your relevant qualifications  

BA(Hons) Business Studies
P.G.C.E. (Secondary) (Business and Economics Education)
M.Teach
Fellow Mirandanet
FCollT

Additional Information (6/7)

 Interests outside normal work 

Motor cruising, dinghy sailing, kayaking
Community Volunteer with Victim Support

 Apart from holidays, have you ever been abroad; if so, where and in what connection? 

Africa, Asia, Australia, USA, Mediterranean and European countries - Royal Navy
New York with Business Studies students
Denver, Colorado to write a report on the provision for TaG students

Project Details (7/7)

Project Description 

To evaluate Disrupting Technologies for Remote Teaching and Learning

Please indicate under which category you are applying 

Education - Education Futures

Which country(ies) do you wish to visit? 

- Australia

For how many weeks 

6

State the background to your proposed project. 

Since qualifying as a secondary teacher at the age of 50, I have, and continue to, research various Disrupting Technologies to bring education to students who could not access school for a variety of reasons. I have run a 'virtual classroom' successfully. During early research, I discovered that the Alice Springs School of the Air achieves consistently higher results than mainstream schools by remote education. I wish to show that UK schools could utilise this pedagogy to reach school refusers.

 Describe the aim(s) of your project 

To understand how the School of the Air, and parents, maintain motivation to study in the face of geographic isolation by working with School of the Air, and visiting the remote communities that they serve. To compare the School of the Air results and processes with Queensland schools (Townsville) and, main cities such as Sydney. To promulgate the findings and possibilities with UK academies, LEA and free-schools via presentations, TES articles and using the global Mirandanet Fellowship based in the UK, and proselytise the benefits of remote digital learning for certain students and schools.

 Describe how you will carry out your project 

The Alice Springs School of the Air is one of the world leaders in teaching children by remote and ever changing technologies. One week working with the school in Alice Springs with the teachers and administrators will give a clear insight into the methodologies being used. A further week spent visiting remote communities will show how the school and the parents maintain motivation and focus by their children.

It is also necessary to compare the School of the Air with other Australian states and schools to discover any fundamental differences between them and the School of the Air, and also the UK best practice. Two weeks researching, team teaching and meeting parents and children in schools in the North East town of Townsville, followed by the final two weeks following the same aims and objectives in Sydney will give a clear and usable pedagogical data.

A report would then be written and shared with Government Departments, Academy Trusts, Local Education Authorities and clusters of Free-schools.

Describe the benefits of your project, to others as well as yourself 

There appear to be a number of benefits for education in the United Kingdom that can be derived from a better understanding of providing education via remote access such as 'virtual classrooms', quizzing programmes such as Socrative, Second Life and MOOC courses (massive open online course). The benefits can include educating school refusers, the long-term ill, prisoners, isolated communities in the Highlands and Islands, and excluded and disruptive children.

The dissemination of this fascinating topic can be processed by presentations, magazine articles (e.g. TES), and television interviews. Using academy and free-school trusts, the Mirandanet Fellowship and teacher training establishments, the thinking around Disruptive Technology can be promulgated.

Oh well!

Oh well!

It might have provided me the evidence I needed to show that if Alice Springs School of the Air can do it, so could the UK education system: My application to travel to Australia for 6 weeks to research remote blended learning has hit the buffers:

"Dear David,

I am sorry to have to inform you, on behalf of the Advisory Council of the Churchill Trust, that you have not been shortlisted for interview.

This year’s awards generated considerable interest, and we received 989 applications for the 150 Fellowships we are offering in 2016. The overall quality of the applications has also been exceptionally high, and Council members had a very difficult task assessing and selecting a short list for interview."

Where is the research about violence in respect to school size?

Within my limited resources, I have found research that shows that the larger the school, the greater the instance of violence in schools.  Unfortunately, the research is from other countries such as the US and it does indeed show a correlation.  I cannot find any research in the UK which addresses this issue.  Should we not have that evidence before we start to build super-schools?

Does anyone know of any such investigation into the correlation between pupil numbers and instances of violence in school?  I would be interested to hear about it.

More tinkering with a broken engine instead of changing the engine?

The Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, continues to tinker with a broken engine.  What do I mean?  She is now proposing a National Teacher Service to take high-flying teachers out of their schools to parachute them into 'failing' schools.

In my experience, the loss of fantastic teachers to other schools dilutes the original school's success and demotivates those left behind.  The 'failing' schools' staff are then perceived by parents to be incompetent and useless.  The 'failing' schools are judged on the results of the most over-tested children in the World and rarely has anything to do with poor teaching.  The socio-economic divide and the expectations of children are the real causes of 'poor' results.  To be frank, as in my school days in the 50's and 60's, some children are just not up to getting 5 A*-C GCSEs, and the jobs they took after school were worthwhile but now degraded in value.  To expect 90%+ plus to gain A* to Cs is unrealistic and setting some pupils up to fail.

In addition to removing good teachers from their schools, she intends increasing testing of Primary students.  For goodness sake stop torturing them and let them have a childhood.  We all find our level in the end.

Time for a moratorium on school changes and the setting up of a national task force to develop the paradigm shift in education that we desperately need.

Five more reasons for an urgent paradigm shift in education

The TES this week provides five more reasons why the United Kingdom education system needs urgent reform:

1. 'Lesson observations can ruin teachers’ careers'
2. Teaching is among the 'top three most stressed occupations'
3. ‘I hear of teachers crying on their kitchen floor because of the stress’
4. Half of teachers have considered quitting in the past six months, poll finds
5. How art in schools is being painted into a corner

1. 
   
2. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news

Robbing pupils of individuality - is that not where we are heading also?

A recent article claims that pupils in China are being robbed of their individuality by their 12 hour school day and rote learning.  Are we not producing our own version by punishing pupils and teachers if OfSTED cannot see improvement in every minute of every lesson even if that child cannot cope?  Today's children are far more stressed and anxious than during my school days in the 50's and 60's, and my generation didn't do too badly as we rebuilt Britain after the Second World War.

China 'robbing pupils of individuality'

A leading educationalist says China's education system needs to change or its young and economy will suffer

• 23 October 2015
• From the sectionEducation & Family

Related content

• Fifth of youngsters suffers from anxiety
• Hong Kong minorities 'marginalised' in school

Full article China 'robbing pupils of individuality'

Now here is a thought ........  if a third of school syllabuses were delivered in MOOC-style so that children can work from home 2 days per week, then what is to stop them going on a school term holiday and completing work while everyone else is on holiday during term-breaks?  Time to think outside of the box?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34591050

The Riba Stirling Prize architecture award, announced last night, has been given to the re-vamped Burntwood School in Wandsworth.  From the images,  it seems to be a bright and colourful set of buildings, although the inset window designs are very similar to an accommodation block in which I lived in Rosyth, Scotland during 1967.  It was disappointing, therefore, to see television footage of the new school depicting desks in regimented rows facing a smartboard, which I suspect was just like the previous design of the classroom.  The school looks very nice, but is it fit for the 21st Century?

The main point is that £40m and three years were taken to produce what would appear to be superficial restructuring for over 1,700 students, not all of whom will be well behaved.  As all educators know, nooks and crannies provide areas very hard to supervise during breaks, lunch periods and going home time giving ample opportunity for bullying and other bad behaviour.  1700 students on-site can be, as I know from my own experience, very challenging to control.

The Headteacher would no doubt challenge my assumption that some bad behaviour will occur, but how much better for students and staff would it have been to build a smaller, high specification school, with classrooms proving interesting layouts and opportunities, with some of the girls working at home or elsewhere on MOOC-style provision of their curriculum?

What is your view?

BBC News - Riba Stirling Prize

Is there too much pressure on teachers to use technology in the classroom?

Is there too much pressure on teachers to use technology in the classroom?  Here are my views (purely my own) expressed on Virgin Disruptors.

Click here to read Natalie Clarkson's Virgin Disruptor article:  Too much pressure on teachers to use technology

Super-size Schools - Really?

I just wish someone would listen ............. we do NOT need super-sized secondary schools.  We need smaller schools built to very high technical specifications and a student 3-day week at school and a 2-day virtual classroom environment for the rest of the week.  If parents cannot or will not take responsibility for their kids for those 2-days then re-open all of the closed libraries and employ supervising assistants.  We are educating children for a different world than we inhabit.  More and more UK jobs can be done by working from home, so let's teach them how to do that.
BBC News: Super-sized secondary schools

Are we preparing our students for the wrong world?

The UK's primary production is declining.  Our fishing fleets are devastated, and mining almost extinct. Oil production being exhausted, and farming is being taken over by imports.  Manufacturing in secondary production has all but disappeared, with shipbuilding almost non-existent, and the construction industry has reduced owing to austerity.

That leaves the tertiary production sector as the major contributor to the national economy and sources of employment.  Within the sector, more and more professionals and employees are working from home, reducing travel time, the requirement for large offices, and the daily commuter slog.

The only nod to this changing world in education is to insist on computer coding being introduced again into schools.  So the question is ...... what are they going to code.  UK information technology companies, almost without exception, farm their coding specifications out to India, Kuala Lumpur and China.  The level of basic salary that exists in those countries would not be feasible in the United Kingdom.

So what should we be doing?  I believe we should be preparing our students for the new world.  Instilling the discipline to work at home, or in a library, or youth club.  We should be reducing the physical size of schools but building them to higher specifications and upgrading the technology as it develops, not trying to catch up once it has moved on.

More emphasis on the user than the programmer training.

By having a rotating three day week in school, with the additional two days being logged on to a 'virtual classroom' completing MOOC-style courses, that preparation for the future will begin.  There will, of course, be those children who will not or cannot accept these changes, (no different than with today's model) but there are many school refusers and students with long-term illnesses that would thrive along with the rest of the school population.  Those not succeeding would be required to attend all five days at school.  I cannot think of a better motivator for the disinterested than to work towards being allowed out for 'homework days'.

I know that at the moment I may be in a minority of one, because traditional thinking clouds an open mind.  But before shooting me down in flames please at least think about this first.  Something has to change, and soon.  We must stop teaching in a 19th Century way, but using technology instead of slates and blackboards.