Gove to the power of three

"In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad" - Nietzsche

Last week my leadership team colleagues and I enjoyed our Christmas meal in a large London restaurant with a famous history (the food ranged from indifferent to excellent, with our collective assessment averaging out at an Ofsted '2'). Over rather more wine than the Daily Mail commentariat would like us to be able to afford, we reflected on a year of momentous, bewildering and often contradictory change. Together we had reluctantly embarked upon converting to Academy status, only to turn back at the last minute when we were utterly unable to accurately fathom what budget we could expect, or the extent to which the 'hidden costs' of conversion would end up haunting us. Recent reports seem to suggest that we were very wise to do so.

But I'm nervous about 2012. Very nervous.

The unseemly and chaotic cash grab to conversion created a momentum of 'every school for themselves' which the government has been able to present as wild enthusiasm for the 'freedoms' that Academy status purports to offer. It is in actual fact a sign of the fear and uncertainty the Education Act 2011 has created in our state system. Localised planning and allocation of funding/expertise is disappearing and being replaced by a centralised system which nobody understands and which is not equipped to cope with the complexities of fair allocation of resources based upon need.

This anarchic state of affairs should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the Free Schools saga with any degree of scrutiny. Brilliant campaigners like Schoolduggery have had to use Freedom of Information requests to prise information out of these secretive and select institutions. What has been discovered is what many of us expected from the start. These schools, while mostly containing some spread of 'abilities', use indirect means of selection by aspiration with the result that their intakes appear heavily skewed in favour of affluent wards and contain fewer children with special educational needs than their established neighbouring schools.

Planning (such as there is) has been largely centralised and the 'plan' is to inject free market principles, creating a supply and demand system of competition and profit to emerge. All of which is fine if, as a parent, you want to compete with others to find a good school and fine if, as a taxpayer, you like the idea of our children turning a good profit for someone.

The old PISA lie that I highlighted on this blog back in January finally gained some press attention this month, but sadly by now the notion of systemic failure in our school system has become an accepted truth (Stage 1). I now see Gove's project as being likely to evolve over three stages. We are currently in the middle of the second stage, which is all about appearing to devolve control (conversion and Free Schools) while also devaluing and ideologically purifying the profession (pensions, cuts, teacher training, NPQH). It seems that Gove views teacher training and the unions as the fundamental 'problem' with schooling; they are, to his mind, the power base of the progressive thinking which has created a system of mediocrity in which elitism and academic rigour is sneered at and standards are allowed to decline. This is nonsense, but those who try to lend Gove the benefit of the doubt on any of these issues are being very naive in my view.

Stage 1 - Discredit the system. Trim the fat. (the PR stage)
Stage 2 - Devolve, devalue and divide. (the legislate and cut stage)
Stage 3 - Curriculum and assessment control. (the 'gold standard' fear factor)

This week we have learned that the national curriculum review body Gove commissioned have had their suggestions rejected, and that the timetable for implementation has been delayed to 2014 (he reminds me of the head chef sending back a dish from the pass as 'not good enough'). Last week we had the 'scandal' of the exam boards presented as a coordinated opening salvo in his move to take control of assessment (which he has probably by now worked out will be a far more powerful route to curriculum change than the NC review). Here we see the beginning of stage three, which I suggest will end with a single examination board for all subjects, and a national curriculum which, while remaining notionally 'optional', will be tied so closely to assessment and to inpsection systems that only the very brave (foolish) or the very self confident (posh) school would dare to depart from it. Both curricula and modes of assessment would then reflect Michael Gove's ideology, both would be more prescriptive than in the past and both would surely confuse rigidity for rigour and favour the acquisition of facts over the development of twenty first century skills.

So I'll finish by returning to the Nietzche quotation I plastered at the top of this entry. To be clear, I think he is talking complete nonsense from a nineteenth century perspective (is there a theme emerging!?). Of course large countries can plan excellent education systems. However, international comparison is very important in 2011. The PISA 2009 rankings were used as a preface to all this change so please allow me to be as crude in my rebuttal as the government are in their denigration of our fine and complex education system. Look at those countries in the top ten for Reading and Mathematics. Look at them closely and compare their relative sizes, economies, traditions and geo-poloitical influences. Are they much like us at all? We need to accept that we are a much larger 'kitchen' than most of these top ten nations, with very different 'ingredients', very different 'recipes', different tastes to cater for and different customers to serve. Accepting that concept is not to accept mediocrity, nor is it the same as saying that we are happy to come as low down in such a table. It is to challenge the interpretation of an ideology which is inflicting very great damage upon our state education system. The government have launched a confusing attempt to mould schooling in England into something nobody really understands and which most with a professional understanding of teaching and learning are deeply uncomfortable with.

FIGHT!

There are times in a school when a collective fog descends; normality and order seem to evaporate into a miasma of collective arousal. Ancient and feral instincts rear up while the air seems to take on a perceptibly sour, edgy character. Just as the sea becomes colder and darker immediately prior to a shark attack, the corridor or playground seems to swell and surge as somewhere, somehow, a group forms and begins to move as one in response to the excited cry of ‘FIGHT!’.

Teachers understand how young people can turn quickly from reasonable, sensitive and empathetic individuals into a seemingly uncontrollable and sometimes depressingly violent pack. Dealing with outbursts of aggression, fighting or vandalism is one of the most depressing and unpleasant parts of the job. Children you often like and may have formed a good relationship with can commit acts of appalling cruelty or mindlessness, challenging your assumptions and rationality, sometimes making one ache at the thought of the adults they may become if those instincts remain unchecked. In all honesty, at times my fingers itch and I find myself longing to wield authoritarian, draconian, parade ground sanctions.

But inevitably the tears follow. Withdrawn to some office or classroom the shame, pain and the recriminations are bruised up along with lingering senses of injustice, ruffled egos or defamed characters and the child, the scared and confused child, reveals themselves and cries. Or goes howlingly silent. Or runs to the park or to a home. No excuses.

For every ‘pack’ which forms around a fight there are the (sometime numerous) voyeurs, the provocateurs and the grinning hangers on. Often their shame is as strong as the scrappers or smashers themselves: “For goodness sake lad/lass, what on earth is there to find amusing in watching (victim) being kicked on the floor?”. They have no answer and yet know all the answers. It was exciting; it was a surge of activity at the fag-end of a soggy lunchtime. It was something to do in the absence of war or an essay deadline. They are perfectly capable of rationalising their participation as a shameful act and will often do so eloquently. Sometimes they’ll be defensive, but generally such positions are as transparent and flimsy as the window they are staring angrily out of. 'I was an idiot', but then we’ve all been grinning titillated idiots in our time haven’t we? No excuses.

In schools we don’t excuse; we always try to punish fairly and we always seek to rebuild relationships, reputations, smashed windows or kicked in doors. We take an evenly firm hand and we make our disgust and disappointment palpably clear. We learned a long time ago that the answers didn’t lie in the swing of a cane or in summary expulsions. Those would be the itchy finger, primary instincts at work and look at the mess those urges get us into.

I’ll finish my first post in months on a note of optimism. What I’ve described here, like urban rioting, is rare. They are occasional displays of the worst elements of our group behaviours. They need tackling, we need to worry about them, debate their causes and preventions. We shouldn’t excuse aberrations and, yes, we should punish where authority and remorse is required and lacking. But we should be thankful that lots of those rioters will be going back to school next week. As ever, we’ve got a job to do.

Humbug!

Segregation by aspiration will not improve social mobility Mr Gove.

We live in complicated times. The old Blairite, statist, mantras of ‘accountability’, ‘targets’ and ‘strategies’ are seemingly being replaced with more abstract terms like ‘autonomy’, ‘progress measures’ and ‘reading lists’. The process of conversion to academy status is now becoming a common headache for school leaders across the country. The bold and ambitious jumped in straight away and will financially benefit the most, the more cautious and agnostic are dipping their toes, consulting and doing their sums, while the weak, determinedly opposed, scared or ‘categorised’ try to pretend it isn’t happening. Many hope that it will all simply go away, or that the government will fall before they find themselves the only ‘local authority’ school in the area. It is not a leap of zealous enthusiasm so much as an exercise in weary, wary pragmatism.

Meanwhile we have the mysterious case of the missing Admissions Code. Where is it? We had anticipated and expected a draft in advance of the Education Bill’s passage through parliament but it still has yet to see the light of day. In this shifting landscape, the seasoning, garnish and wording of Gove’s ‘Admissions Code 2.0’ could be of huge importance for those schools who would like to be able to select their students a little bit more (or at least send their own kids to 'their' Free School), just as much as it may be for those schools who would like some of their ‘competition’ to be able to covertly select students a little bit less. It is possible that the code is delayed because it has become something of a political football within the coalition. There is suspicion that the government hopes to introduce it quickly and quietly, perhaps over the summer, because it will weaken the powers of local authorities to control fair catchment areas and bandings. Until we see it, speculation will remain.

Like the old ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ sweetie sections in Woolworths, such an autonomous, market driven, system offers the attraction of choice and variety. There always did seem something deliciously egalitarian about the ability to choose your own weight and selection of sweets. For the record I was, and remain, a big fan of Jelly Babies. However, even as a child I recall a strange and sad stirring of sympathy for the left over Everton mints and hard boiled sweets no one ever seemed to want to add to their bag of treats. They didn’t even look like they wanted to be picked. Gove genuinely believes in autonomy and competitive self-determinism for schools as a means of widening social mobility. He appears to favour this as a more effective means of improving the perceptions (for it is that which is important in this culture war, not empirical or research-based realities) of state schooling among the middle classes than a return to, or expansion of, outright selection.

The shocking attrition (exclusion or drop out) rates, particularly among young black males, that were recently revealed to be the price of whatever successes the much lauded, funded and admired US ‘KIPP’ school system can claim, show just what is required to allow autonomy and self determinism to be seen to succeed. ‘Free’ or ‘charter’ schools have not invented a cure for the problems free access open schooling systems in western democracies face. They have been able to divest themselves of students who don’t play ball, or who don’t accept the systems they put in place. Any school would be able to point to improved results given the power to show reluctant or recalcitrant participants the door in large numbers. They can also be seen to do more with less money for precisely the same reason: the children they exclude are expensive and require a lot of additional time and support. Hard boiled sweets.

The consequent legacy of ‘attrition’ is ugly and has to be picked up by whatever schools these rejected students wind up in. There has to remain an authority to school, or at least contain, these children as best they can. You can see why schools currently mulling academy conversion fear a future in which they find themselves fulfilling this tricky societal role. What the Govian philosophy offers is not a solution for schooling; it is about enabling segregation by aspiration. And that is a tough philosophy to try and oppose. Who wants to appear to be the enemy of aspiration? Why shouldn’t the aspirant working and middle classes be given the chance to send their children to excellent schools? Shouldn’t we applaud the progress that some children from deprived backgrounds make in such schools?

Sometimes the temptation in social policy is to become obsessed with the solution without fully understanding the problem. The need for school reform should always be driven by a relentless desire to improve standards and outcomes for the largest number of children. There can be no aim more aspirational than that. Most objective analyses of standards in UK schools over the last twenty years conclude that standards have been consistently rising in most key areas (despite the government’s persistent, deliberate and egregious misuse of PISA data in a tawdry attempt to trash the modest achievements of the Labour years). The enduring question mark over that progress and improvement is the continued belief, regardless of any serious research or inquiry which might prove otherwise, that exams are easier, grades have been inflated and that standards of teaching and student behaviour are far worse than, well...‘back in the day’.

Only a fool would try to claim that British schools are perfect. Inequalities and inadequacies persist. The continued existence of state funded faith schools skew intakes and allow covert selection to take place in many parts of the country, particularly urban centres. A few backward counties still persist with academic selection at eleven years old and, despite big improvements in recent years, too many schools are still found by Ofsted to be providing inadequate provision. Bad teachers still blight too many classrooms and the systems for removing them and for developing/sharing the best practice in teaching and learning are not robust or developed enough. This combined with the eagerness of a relentlessly negative and largely right wing media to ‘expose’ occasional examples of bad practice, poor judgement or gross misconduct and portray them as endemic and commonplace system-failures, means that those of us who see much virtue in our schools, and in the expertise and skills of our teachers, have a tough sell. Those whose ideologies have always been in favour of academic selection and in opposition to comprehensive education, or whose priorities are unashamedly elitist and self serving, have a much easier job. Their solutions, therefore, are often more attractive at first glance.

What is happening in schools at the moment is akin to a disorganised and hungry rush at the pick and mix counter. Budgets are down, redundancies are on the up, the admissions code is missing, the rhetoric from the top is often ugly and in today’s climate nobody wants to find themselves left scooping up the hard boiled sweets.

But they need us the most.

Jamie, Toby and Michelin starred schools...

For a while now I've been reflecting on the similarities between cooking and teaching. Dangerous territory, I know, given Gove's pointed assertion that teaching is more of a 'craft' than a profession. To illustrate, I began a recent staff training session on assessment by asking colleagues to reflect on how a few images of different types of meals I projected could be compared to a lesson. It was surprising, and somewhat interesting, how easy it was to playfully compare convenience food with bought in, worksheet-heavy lessons, and Michelin star quality fine dining with the most intricate, personalised and nuanced 'outstanding' lessons. Our conclusion was that just as most of the time we are very content with a well cooked plate of steak frites (or the vegetarian equivalent - you choose your poison!), surely well planned and engaging lessons with excellent content, 'good' if you must, should be the staple ambition of the day to day classroom experience? The content are your ingredients, the delivery and choice of activities akin to the skill a great chef brings. You can stretch the analogies a surprisingly long way...

Like chefs, teachers are sensitive souls, easily bruised by criticism yet consistently bombarded with it. Perhaps, though, it is fair to say that for teachers the day to day 'steaks' (please accept my apologies) aren't as high as they are for commercially vulnerable gastronomes. Ah-ha, the market-minded 'free schoolers' would holler - therein lies the key to securing improvements to the system. Teachers are more comfortable defending special interests than being challenged to make learning especially interesting. Introduce competition, allow schools to thrive or dwindle based on performance, and the profession and standards will rise as a consequence.

Here the analogy ends.

This is because a meal is a transient, sensory experience, whereas a good education must be a transformational one. A restaurant is a potentially one off destination, whereas a school is a life long definer and shaper. When you reduce schooling to a transaction, a commercial interaction, the value becomes something that is measured in terms which are usually far too simplistic. A child is much, much more important than an empty stomach, and building a curriculum for 1000+ children of diverse abilities and needs is infinitely more complex, nuanced and important than designing a menu du jour.

That through his 'dream school' Jamie Oliver appears to be realising just this with a combination of excitement, awe and anxiety, for me renders the experiment a worthwhile and interesting one. One can pick on some of the lazy aspects of the narration: the easy cliches about young people who have been 'let down' by the system, the inferred 'failure' of the schools these children attended. You can enjoy smirking as, even with some of the most exciting and 'interactive' content or activities one could conceive of, the celebrities struggle to engage the class. But essentially this is a television programme which does teaching a big favour by highlighting just how bloody difficult the job can be. In the end Jamie will probably add some considerable value to the lives of the twenty young people he chose to be gifted this extraordinary opportunity, just as the viewers will have some of their assumptions about teaching and learning challenged. For this he deserve some praise and thanks.

Toby Young and other 'free-schoolers', however, should look on with anxiety rather than feel any sense of vindication or solidarity. Just like free schools, Jamie's school is a vanity project, but it is upfront about being an 'experiment'. Their plans extend beyond a few weeks and at some point the television cameras will go home (although I suspect Toby's school will be seeing quite a few of them for some time yet). They have won the right to appoint unqualified staff, and will be able to deliver whatever curriculum they so choose. However, so far they are pledging to abide by the current admissions code. If this actually transpires (and there is plenty of evidence that covert means of selection will easily dilute the true social diversity of free schools) they will have to face the same challenges and intractable students Jamie struggled with. If their answer to these problems extend no further than exclusion, then they will be failures whatever their eventual examination results end up being.

So I'll end by re-appropriating the cooking analogy in defence of the comprehensive ideal. I don't know of a single three star restaurant which selects their customers or throws them out half way through if they aren't enjoying their dinner. This is what private and selective schools do, and this is why high performing comprehensives (and there are thousands of them) are the true centres of excellence in this country. I wonder if those setting up free schools really have the appetite for it?

Raising standards - it's a PISA cake!

Several years ago, before many in this country had heard of it, I used to bang on to friends about PISA. It came onto my radar after I helped run a German exchange visit in 2004 and found it to be the 'hot topic' of debate amongst German teachers. The 2000 PISA statistics had been a big story in Germany because they had come 23rd out of the 28 OECD countries who had participated that year (England came 8th, but you wouldn't have heard about that because it was good news). In the 2009 figures, Germany have scored a statistically significantly increase in their performance. I'm sure that the German authorities will be pleased to see an improvement which is worthy of note, although they may temper that with some concern that they still rank only 18th internationally - if they are still paying attention.

In his hilariously pompous speech to the Education World Forum this month, Michael Gove made reference to this German experience and again (just as he, David Cameron and Nick Clegg do in their forewords to the 2010 White Paper) cited PISA as evidence that education standards in the UK have 'plummeted' since 2000. 'These are facts from which we cannot hide' he trumpeted.

FACT, Mr Gove? Facts? David Brent of 'The Office', Dickens' pedagogical terrorist Thomas Gradgrind and a litany of promising political careers have all come unstuck through a careless over reliance upon that outwardly 'rigorous' but damnably slippery concept. The statistical fact is that the OECD have been very clear that 'no trend comparisons are possible' when comparing UK PISA data from 2000 with that of 2006 or 2009. Whilst the (statistically comparable) 2006 and 2009 data does show a small decline, the OECD analysis table does not classify that decline as being statistically significant. So the fact appears to be that the premise upon which the White Paper is introduced by the Prime Minister and his Deputy are somewhat questionable to say the least.

Whilst all this is very important to point out given the radical nature of the changes Mr Gove seeks to justify as a solution, there is a very obvious and important trap in highlighting this statistical, and politically motivated dishonesty. The fact is that, however spun, nobody involved in education should be pleased with, or satisfied by, an international study which places us 23rd in the OECD in terms of attainment. Gove is correct in asserting that PISA shows us that standards need to be improved. He is not factually correct in asserting that PISA shows us that standards significantly declined under Labour.

So this presents a challenge to those of us who don't share or recognise Gove's narrative of state school failure and decline. We must place a relentless focus on standards at the heart of any opposition to Conservative curriculum or school reforms. We must accept the essential inclusion of core knowledge within any planned curriculum whilst defending passionately the importance of skills and contemporary relevance (I don't shy away from that word, it does matter) to the content and focus of our courses and qualifications. We must not allow the right to dominate the territory of academic ambition and rigour, portraying the comprehensive ideal as lying in opposition to all that is meritocratic and aspirational. Quite the opposite. We must fight reductive, discredited and old fashioned ideas with broad and brave counter proposals. Labour must enter the next election with a clear and reforming policy agenda designed to strengthen the comprehensive and inclusive ideals of open access schooling, combined with a new approach to qualifications and assessment which will restore the public faith in our examinations system. I am convinced that the public will see more merit in such an approach when contrasted with the dour, mean and tedious agenda on offer from the present government, that which Simon Jenkins this week brilliantly dubbed the 'Govian Paradox' of 'a dictatorship of Liberty, a free market in doing what we are told'.

Want to set schools free but want to tell them which battles and books to teach? Want to equip young people to compete in a changing global economy but primarily want them to understand our 'island story'? Want schools to do more with less whilst opening new schools in areas with surplus places? It's the Govian knot - anything but a PISA cake!

'E-bacc'. The good, the bad and the ugly...

It is perhaps worth reflecting that an obsessive attention to weights and measures accompanies some of the least appealing of vocations and callings. Drug dealers, alcoholics, bankers: all of them are meticulous in their counting and weighing of units and consumption. These days we can increasingly (and reluctantly!) add school leaders to that ignominious list of those for whom the count is, all too often, what counts.

The proliferation of data has created a blizzard of confusing and contradictory 'realities' in education over the last fifteen to twenty years. It is possible for anyone with an internet connection and some determination to find a figure or piece of 'research' to support their particular perception of how good/bad/indifferent standards of schooling are in 2011. I'm guilty of it myself and I make no apologies for engaging in such activities.

Reductive thinkers use data bluntly and slavishly to construct simple narratives of success or failure because more qualitative investigations are time consuming, require deeper expertise and produce more complex conclusions; master the data and you control the narrative. Ofsted understood this when they moved to shorter 'light touch', data driven inspections. Mr Gove realised at some point in November that he is the ultimate master of the data, and that he could use it to construct a narrative supporting his perception of academic decline and failure in state schools. The 'Ebacc' statistic of 15% nationally is alarmingly low at a simple glance and Gove knows that a 'glance' is all that most casual observers will take. The damage is done.

So he's had his headlines, he's signed over his first 'Free Schools', and this week schools across the country are picking up the pieces and considering how best to respond. What I haven't yet seen is an adequate answer to any of the following questions:

1. How was the decision over which subjects to include in the English Baccalaureate taken?
2. What advice did Michael Gove invite or receive on which subjects to include?
3. When was the decision taken to publish the 2010 figures retrospectively and who consulted or advised him on that decision?

If I were Andy Burnham I'd be seeking clarification on this as a matter of urgency.

The Good
I think the decline in take up of Languages in schools over the last ten years is deeply regrettable. I'll happily heap criticism on successive Labour ministers for failing to incentivise or promote Languages.
It is good and right that thousands more young people will follow a Language through to sixteen and beyond as a result of pursuing the Ebacc certificate. One hopes that this will be accompanied by better international links and collaborations in schools.
It is, arguably, the case that some schools have structured their curriculum to place a heavy emphasis upon the accrual of results in subjects which are statistically heavily weighted when calculating the league tables for CVA (Contextual Value Added). This hasn't always worked in favour of stretching academically able students.

The Bad
Where to start? I (genuinely) take Michael Gove to be a sophisticated and cultured man who values, relishes and excels in debate and intellectual pugilism. He is brilliant (there, I've said it!). This makes the base crudity of the English Baccalaureate all the more shocking. It is an ideological 'tinkering' and 'fiddling' with something deeply important and irreversible - the curriculum we provide for our young people. It is contradictory to his desire to free schools from centralised control, and will probably prove the single most significant act of direct, government driven, curriculum manipulation since Blunkett's 'National Strategy' reforms at the end of the last century. At a stroke, thousands of schools have been coerced into limiting the GCSE options for hundreds of thousands of children in favour of Mr Gove's preferred list. It is disingenuous of Mr Gove to claim that schools have a choice in this; the writing is on the wall and on the front page of the Daily Mail. Make no mistake, this measure has forced schools to rapidly redesign their curriculum over the Christmas holidays. Year 8 and Year 9 students are choosing their GCSE subjects as I type, and many schools have been forced to limit these options for fear of having poor 'Ebacc' figures in the league tables. The result of this will be a marked decline in the take up of subjects not deemed worthy of inclusion. Supporters of Gove will sneeringly and lazily welcome a decline in subjects like Media Studies and Travel and Tourism, but the casualties will also include many subjects traditionally thought of as 'difficult' and 'demanding'. The reality for parents of many thirteen and fourteen year old children will be that their offspring will typically have just one or two 'options' as opposed to the three or four they might have expected previously.
Schools are not all equipped or staffed to cope with the rise in take up of the preferred subjects. Many schools will not have the quality or depth of staff expertise, meaning poor or inadequate teaching is likely to increase alongside a decline in the behaviour and engagement of students angry and resentful at being forced to continue to study subjects they either don't enjoy or have little aptitude for. I see no corresponding strategy to train a new generation of Language teachers coming from the Department for Education; only the assault on established teacher training which the White Paper laid the foundations for.

The Ugly
I don't think much of what I wrote in the section above ever even occurred to Gove. I genuinely don't think he had calculated the full effects of this 'policy', and I'd contend that this reveals his fundamental unsuitability for high office combined with a shocking arrogance. I have seen nothing to suggest he took any advice on which subjects to include, or that he had recognised the impact the change would have upon how schools would immediately and very quickly need to shape their curriculum. This would suggest he isn't listening or speaking with many school leaders at all (an approach which Nick Gibb's failure to visit schools worryingly supports). It would also suggest that he is unconcerned about implementation, so long as the ideology is served. This might be radical thinking, but it is lazy and harmful governance.

With reduced budgets soon to be revealed, a fight over teacher pension contributions looming and the full impact of a two year pay freeze set against climbing inflation dawning on school staff, Mr Gove may soon be heading for a 'Spring Awakening' the likes of which our profession hasn't seen in decades. I hope that it won't be messy, and that the Unions show restraint and professionalism. I hope above all that our profession puts young people and families at the centre of our protests in a way that Mr Gove has failed to do in placing his academic prejudices at the heart of his rash and ill thought through policy making.

Some New Year predictions.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone who has taken the time to follow this blog over the course of 2010. 2011 will see many of the positions adopted by the Tory led government put into action in schools. The White Paper will move from a set of objectives to a cold, hard reality set against what will doubtless be a meagre budget settlement. In the spirit of Janus, I shall offer six predictions for the year ahead. They make grim reading, and some may accuse me of alarmist partisanship, but I would modestly argue that many of my predictions through the course of this year have proven accurate, so watch this space...

1. The 'Pupil Premium' will prove meaningless to all but a very few schools. I am prepared to predict that in excess of 75% of schools receiving the PP will recognise no benefit whatsoever as their net budgets will still be less than 2010/11. I am tempted to go even further and suggest that it is possible no schools at all will benefit in real terms from the PP.

2. The average budget for schools in England for 2011/12 will be beween 5%-8% less than they received in 2010/11. The government will try to claim that all the funding from axed programmes such as Specialisms and One to One tuition have been directed back to Headtechers. This will not, in reality, be the case as the money will have become so diluted as to be lost amidst the plethora of general cuts. This will result in redundancies and, very probably, strikes (I'm predicting we will see at least the teaching unions engage in industrial action in June/July of 2011).

3. The right wing press will have a field day when the first 'English Baccalaureate' statistics are published in January. The narrative will be that Labour's academies are actually failures, that schools have ceased to provide a rigorous academic curriculum, and that the figures are the final confirmation (as if evidence has ever got in the way of gut instinct in that silly 'debate') of the extent of 'dumbing down' in our schools. Whilst all this is going on, hundreds of thousands of children will have significantly fewer GCSE options to choose from and subjects such as Art, Music, RE, PE and Drama will see dramatic declines in the numbers of students taking the subject up. Schools are already scrambling to change their options routes and force children to take the 'annointed five' which Gove has decided warrant the 'EB' qualification.

4. Despite what you have read this week, the School Sports Partnerships will not exist in any meaningful way by end of 2011. The 'money' Gove is offering schools to release a PE teacher one day a week will not materialise in a form which will allow many schools to achieve that aim. Who will teach PE on these days? The only people who benefit from the alleged 'U turn' this week are the employees, who will gain a few months stay of execution, and David Cameron, who gets to appear as if he is tempering the excesses of his most ardent 'austerity axe' wielders.

5. There will be a 'crisis' in the exams system this summer which will enable Gove to rush through reforms to examinations and assessment. The 'crisis' will be little more than the usual inconsistencies and cock ups writ larger by the new 'controlled assessment' model of coursework creating standardisation issues and allegations of cheating. This will create the 'perfect storm' for Gove to push through a return to 100% examination for core subjects and the abolition of AS/modular A levels and GCSEs.

6. The West London Free School will open in September. Its intake and admissions policy will not stand up to scrutiny.


So there we are. You can hold me fully accountable for these predictions this time next year. In the interest of constructive opposition (and because it is Christmas), I thought I'd add a six point manifesto/ Christmas list for my 'fantasy' 2011 in Education. Here we go...

1. In February 2011 the new Education Secretary, Andy Burnham, releases his White Paper which paves the way for the abolition of all Faith Schools combined with a central order banning those remaining local authorities from operating academic selection by 2015.

2. The SIPS programme is widely expanded to take over from Ofsted as the main schools' inspectorate by 2013. All schools will be inspected using rigorous self evaluation, supported by an allocated school SIP, and verified by a visiting team of School Improvement Partners every three years. School leadership teams will be required to 'cross moderate' with other schools, looking at standards in teaching, learning, student care/guidance and leadership. The SIPS would either verify the self evaluation process or call for special measures/ give notice to improve. No more damaging 'gradings'. All School Improvement Partners must have been school leaders, and must have been directly employed by a school within the last ten years. School self evaluations are to be open documents and published to parents annually.

3. Free schools are immediately scrapped and the Academies bill ammended to increase the democratic accountability of Academies. Equivalent curriculum freedoms are to be extended to all schools, regardless of Ofsted status. Local authorities are to be the only body with repsonsibility for admissions.

4. League tables abolished in favour of three year average performance indicator tables. There would only be three categories: schools which have performed (contextually) significantly better than average given their intake, schools which are performing broadly in line with expectations, and schools where performance is significantly below what would be expected. It would be expected that any schools in the final category would already be involved in some form of intervention or improvement programme. The measure would be linked to a points based weighting for qualifications.

5. All private schools to lose charitable status with immediate effect. SIPS and inspections to become mandatory for the private sector. Private schools to be compelled to re-pay the government the cost of PGCE training for any NQTs they employ.

6. KS2 tests to become a 'transition' test. Tests would be centally set but teacher asessed. Results would remain unvalidated and unpublished until the results are 'verified' and confirmed by the secondary schools at the end of Year 7 using an equivalent to APP tasks. This would result in better liaison and communication between phases, more accurate assessment of true ability at the age of 11, and the removal of an insecure and unacceptably 'high stakes' assessment model for Primary schools.

As an added Christmas bonus...

No changes to the examinations or curriculum for a minimum of three years to allow the new curriculum and revised A levels and GCSEs to 'settle' and establish.

Well, one can dream. Gove bless us everyone.