Gove Under Pressure

Well if he's not, he should be. The current list of gripes and headaches facing the Secretary of State for Education is a long one:

1. That pesky GCSE English fiasco has been joined by a GCSE Science fiasco (and will eventually be joined by other subjects I suspect). A legal challenge has been mounted by schools and students and is gathering pace. Ofqual is predictably saying that they are not budging and the pressure on Gove to step in is growing. He's keeping a stiff upper lip and currently sitting on his hands, despressingly predictably.
2. Various experts are stating that Gove's changes to the exam system are being bundled through too quickly, including his own colleagues on the Education Select Committee and Glenys Stacey, the Head of Ofqual, who frankly should be getting her own house in order before commenting on other people's. If your allies are telling you that you may need to slow down, maybe you should listen, but no, not our Mikey.
3. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Gove's pal and Head of Ofsted, has been shooting his mouth off again, saying that teachers shouldn't get pay rises if they don't put the hours in. I don't think anyone would argue with the sentiment, but the tone and phraseology of the man leave a lot to be desired. This seems to be a common theme in Wilshaw's life, where he only appears to open his mouth to change feet.
4. The two biggest teaching unions have started their "action short of strike action" this week, with rumours in our local area that a couple of academy heads have threatened staff with punishment if they choose to adopt the policy. Not a great advert for staff, or indeed a great morale booster for already low-esteemed teachers. Academy freedoms may work well for the headteachers of those schools, but stories of staff being essentially bullied and threatened in them, and the fact that these academies have an extremely high staff turnover, would suggest that the benefits for ordinary teachers are limited at best.
5. An academy has been accused of doctoring students' exams to increase grades, and even worse, it's an academy that was highlighted by the Conservatives due to their improved results - no wonder, the teachers were apparently doing the exams for them! The anti-academy issue won't go away and these sorts of headlines are not helping. The money has dried up and the benefits are rapidly disappearing. Claims that academies are performing better in exams are baseless, not helped with this news of possible cheating.

Knowing our Michael, he will be blissfully unaware of any issues in education or with the teaching profession as he revs up his policy steamroller. What Gove has done to education in two and a bit years has been remarkable, but mainly in a bad way. Teachers were pretty demoralised before he stepped into the role, but now, having overseen an exodus of 10,000 teachers in the last 12 months, teaching is at an all time low in my experience of over ten years in the game - recruiting new staff is not always the answer due to them needing time to find their feet in the classroom. I was talking to a former colleague of mine who is leaving his school, along with another teacher, purely because they can't stand it any more. Neither member of staff has a job to go to - surely this has to set off alarm bells, doesn't it? Couple that with a Head of Ofsted who seems hellbent on winding the profession up and making their lives a misery, the recipe is not a tasty one!

I think it would be fair to say that education in this country needed some change, but the underhand way in which Gove has gone about his business, alongside Ofsted and Ofqual leaves a nasty taste in the mouth if you are a teacher. It's all well and good to have ideas of the way to move something, in this case education, forward, but wouldn't it be sense to seek advice and support from "experts", or at the very least, those who will have to face the consequences of the changes proposed. Seemingly not.

Gove may have achieved his goal by the time he leaves Education in that he will go down in history, but will it be for the right reasons? I doubt it.

I Don't Get It...

Without wanting to sound like one of the children in my class when you put any work, no matter how difficult, in front of them, "I don't get it". I just don't get the obsession of successive governments to promote the policy of academies for schools. I genuinely have no idea what is in it for them other than perhaps eventually education will be part-funded privately, allowing government to spend the billions they save on other stuff, like a duck house for their moat or an "arthouse" film in the local Travelodge.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but the policy has recently become more aggressive recently, with schools seemingly jumping before being forced to walk the plank to academy status. And what reason do leadership in schools give for going for academy status?

1. It's inevitable. It's only inevitable if schools fold to government pressure, and unfortunately teachers are generally keen to moan about something but less keen to actually do something to fight it. Due to diminished job security in academies and fewer benefits for regular teachers, maybe this will spur the teaching profession into action.
2. Increased funding. What little extra there is will go into paying for services lost, although some maybe left over to pay for "better" teachers (in whose opinion?) or for new technology for usage in school (that will be out-of-date within 12 months). Conspiracy theorists (and many of the children in school) will tell you that headteachers will all grant themselves a pay-rise - it's possible but almost certainly won't happen unless deserved. A recent news story of this essentially happening probably won't help, with a Lincolnshire headteacher paying his own children to "work" as consultants for a school, where their job was to travel to Bali to look at a hotel for example.
3. Increased independence over the delivery of the curriculum. This is a total red herring as everyone, whether at a private school, LEA funded school or academy has to take the same exams, meaning that there actually is zero freedom over what subjects to teach. There has always been a choice over how the information is delivered in the classroom.
4. Raising standards. Another complete red herring, as the same kids will be wandering through the doors (academies can't get rid of kids very easily, just like LEA schools). When BTECs were worth 4 GCSEs academies made it appear that standards were lifted, but this year a truer picture will appear and many academies will be back at the bottom of the league tables (I will wash my mouth out with soap) where they were previously.

When I say that it costs up to about £50,000 to actually convert to academy status, the sums really don't add up. What's the point? Really. All the policy seems to be doing is unionising a generally placid workforce, and with the recent news that the numbers of teachers has fallen by 10,000 in the last year, this really is a worrying time for the nation, not just teachers.

There is also the factor that the headteacher and governors hold ultimate power in the school, so there is a major question of trust. These people claim to be accountable to the DfE, but they will only do something if schools go disasterously wrong. The door is open to overt and unopposed bullying in the worse cases, with the bullied unable to do much about it, and the bully (usually the headteacher) able to do what they want, when they want. So it boils down to trust in the governors and headteacher to do the right thing for the school. I'm sure that many are trustworthy, but not all.

Not only are attitudes towards education worsening, but government policy is ensuring that terms and conditions are also worsening. Can't wait to teach classes of 60 kids all telling me that they don't need to learn what I'm teaching them to sit in front of the TV watching Jeremy Kyle. Extreme, but not unrealistic.

Bullies Win In The End

So sure enough the primary school in London, Downhill Primary in Haringey, that Michael Gove wanted to force into academy status but fought back has been re-inspected and put into "special measures" meaning that they have to accept Gove's judgements.

This seems to be a modern tactic in education from government level all the way down to individual school level. Gove clearly had his nose put out of joint when Downhill decided to fight back - he's not used to the minions actually having an opinion after all. It is something he may have to get used to though as I am convinced that more an more of this kind of rebellion will happen as the Secretary of State attempts to force through new, ill-advised policy.

What did for Downhill initially was an Ofsted report claiming that the school was giving its children inadequate provision for education. The re-inspection was, and I quote Gove here, to "provide an indepedent assessment of the school's position". It is a well known fact in education that Ofsted inspectors will support each other through thick and thin (mainly thin), and with the previous judgement being so public, "independent" was the last thing that this inspection could claim to be.

Current pupils were reportedly distraught as their headteacher resigned having received the new judgement, and despite parental support for the school, their pleas has fallen on deaf ears. Like so much in education nowadays, Gove and his cronies clearly have targets to meet regarding the conversion of local authority schools to academies. I still don't really understand the motivation for this policy as the government ultimately still pays the money but has little say in how it runs anymore. If you held the purse strings, surely you'd want some kind of say in how the money's spent? Obviously not.

Gove's bully boy tactics have won the day, and his "best pal" Wilshaw seems to enjoy using the same tactic. In his short tenure as Chief Inspector of Schools he has managed to alienate and worry almost the entire profession. He consistently talks only to Ofsted "outstanding" headteachers at conferences, although that judgement is all relative. Surely if he wants to make a difference to schools he should talk to all the other "non-outstanding" people and try to to indoctrinate them. Maybe because he knows he will get lynched by others (the "outstanding" heads are all his mates, I should add), such is the vitriol from the teaching proffesion aimed his way. His budget is supposed to be cut this year but he's been quoted as saying that his mate Gove should sort that out. Makes you want to vomit, doesn't it?

Sir Michael (of Mouse?) has been on the television a lot recently trying to justify his appointment, enormous pay packet and the existence of Ofsted that many experts are currently claiming is too big for its boots, lacking any real accuracy or consistency in its judgements. Wilshaw is a wholly unimpressive man when interviewed; he can barely speak and looks uncomfortable. That's not to say that professionally he hasn't worked wonders in some schools; his bullying tactics of forcing his staff to work above and beyond what is healthy or sociable clearly works on a small scale (in one school at a time),as he can easily replace the few staff who refuse to sell their soul to devil, I mean Sir Michael. Nationwide there just aren't the numbers of staff in reserve to do that, and the fact that the staff in tenure of the jobs currently, beat the "reserve staff" at interview would suggest that those in reserve aren't always better. He will no doubt try though and at the same time alienate an entire profession.

No-one in education can argue with both Gove and Wilshaw's apparent philosophy of improvement of education and raising of standards, but the way they are going about it leaves a lot to be desired. Their bullying policy is a common one in schools though as teachers who dare to question their leadership (whether constructively or not) or simply fall out of favour for whatever reason, find their progression up the pay scale blocked and life made very uncomfortable indeed (mainly through aggressive and demoralising lesson observations/judgements - a headteacher's trump card over their staff) purely down to the judgement of one or two at the top.

If you are thinking of becoming a teacher, you'd better think long and hard about it, as it really isn't all it's cracked up to be. Although, on the plus side, there will be plenty of vacancies soon as current classroom practitioners race for the door, whether through retirement or career change. This coalition government has obviously set its stall out to completely ruin education in this country, and they are doing a remarkle job of it.

Academies Aren't Doing As Well As They Claim - Duh!

A report has just been released by "School Improvement Expert", Dr Terry Wrigley claiming that most academies have appeared to raise their results/achievement by essentially cooking the books and relying on vocational qualifications.

A link to the news story is here: Click here!

This a yet another non-story if you are a teacher and therefore have some clue about the education system in the UK. Academies up to this point have been failing schools forced into a change of status to raise standards. The problem being that the same students wander through the million pound doors, and even with the best teachers in the country, these academies are going to struggle to raise standards at the rate that they claim to have done. The children that have come on "leaps and bounds" have just been placed onto courses that require 100% coursework and therefore can essentially be completed by the staff themselves. The only issue that they have is getting these children a C grade at English and Maths, and credit where credit is due, they do a very good job at that.

Now, if you don't know, many vocational courses have been worth 4 GCSE C grades up until recently, when the government decided to "downgrade" these qualifications. You can almost sense the wave of panic going through much of secondary education, but especially academy headteachers who are paid silly money, sitting in masive offices whilst playing Angry Birds on their complimentary ipad2s. As soon as their "true" results appear in August, they will all be making a beeline for the Job Centre in a blind panic.

There are a few positives though:

• Since these qualifications have been "downgraded", employers will be able to make better judgements about who to employ as the playing field has now been levelled. Undeserving children will not feel that they have achieved by putting in zero effort and stillwalking out of school with 10 "GCSE" grades.
• The "fat cat" headteachers deserve pretty much everything they get. The good ones will stay because the results will have genuinely improved; the frauds will be unemployed, as they should be.
• The current government, who have been lauding academy status, will end up with not just egg on their face, but a whole battery farm that will hopefully lead to the sacking of the idiotic Michael Gove. Around 70% of academies will see a massive fall in their results to somewhere near where they should be. One can dream, but I won't be purchasing a "Sorry You're Leaving" card for Michael.

The whole thing only goes to prove that the current regime is purely out for headlines, not for the good of anyone other than themselves.

Ten Years To Notice The Difference

Michael Gove has suggested that it will take 10 years for his educational policies to bear fruit and send the UK back up the worldwide education league table, from about 25th position currently, to who knows where. The trouble is Michael, that you may have very few teachers left by then.

His proposals, as far as I can make out, are something along these lines:

1. Cut spending and make schools more efficient. I'm not sure that he really has a choice on this as everywhere is having to suffer cuts in funding to prevent financial meltdown countrywide, if not worldwide.
2. Encourage as many schools as possible to become academies, the reason apparently being to give schools more control over their budgets, but in reality it just threatens staff due to changes in contracts, and the top brass in schools award themselves disproportionate wages. Millions of pounds, that could be spent far more effectively elsewhere in schools, is spent building new premises when the old ones were perfectly workable. At the end of the day, the same kids will be walking through the door, a new building just gives them a fresh canvas.
3. Allow headteachers to sack any consistently under-performing teachers (a good thing) and any teachers they don't particularly like (not a good thing). Another policy that threatens all staff, even the good ones, who by the sounds of Gove's speeches, don't really exist, since he seems to be constantly undermining teachers and their professional judgements, informed by years of experience. Gove likes listening to people who don't actually enter the classroom very often, and headteachers will just manipulate observations and targets to oust teachers they are not keen on.
4. Make it almost impossible to permenantly exclude children by forcing the school that excludes a child to continue paying for that child's education. In a time of dwindling budgets, and the fact that the school only gets paid for the number of students in the school, this policy will mean a worsening situation in schools, where the few consequences that could face a misbehaving child are even further removed. Lawlessness is around the corner.
5. To ensure that exams are tougher and the higher grades are tougher to come by. I have no problem with this per se, as standards have dropped in recent times due to the inflation of top grades, or in layman's terms, giving top grades to those who don't really deserve them. My only issue is that teachers will get it in the neck because their classes will not be reaching the targets set by the school/government, as presumably they will not reflect the increasing difficulty of the children achieving the top grades.
6. To change the curriculum in many areas, which again I have little problem with in theory, the only problem being that those writing the new curriculum haven't ever or recently done the job. Teachers seem to be totally excluded from any discussions regarding their profession with this regime, although it was the same with the previous government.
7. Give the school more powers over the children, and not allowing parents to retain all the cards in the pack as they currently do. I have seen or heard no evidence of this policy in schools or on the news, but I did hear that this was a policy from the horse's mouth, as it were. Not Gove himself, but one of his underlings. Some of the comments made could only have been made by someone who has no experience of the workings of a school, such as telling parents to send their children to another school for simply not allowing their child to attend a detention. This is simply not workable, as anyone working in a school would know. That school wouldn't survive a a couple of years due to falling numbers and therefore falling budget. They are convinced though, because Sir Michael Wilshaw did it in Hackney, and he's God in their eyes - I jest you not.
8. Talking of Sir Micahel Wilshaw, Ofsted inspections will be far more rigorous and schools will be given no notice. I haven't a problem with the no notice thing, but the more stringent Ofsted insoection is a worry. These people (I mean the inspectors rather than the politicians, although I can understand if you were confused) are clueless and arrive in school with pre-formed judgements, the school having little or no chance of changing the inspectors' minds. The more stringent the inspections become, the more excuse the inspectors have to just slate a school for no reason, meaning that the staff in that school's lives become hell until the next inspection.

I'm sure that there are more policies up Mickey's sleeve, but these are the ones that stick in the mind. As I say, by the time Gove's policies bear fruit, I would be surprised if there are many teachers left due to ever-plunging morale in the profession.

Gove wouldn't know that though, as teachers' opinions are never actually sought.

Longer Day Anyone?

They're all at it now, even Labour's Shadow Education Secretary has started to make stupid comments, to go with his coalition counterpart. He reckons that the school day should be extended for the following reasons:

1. It will help stop kids from joining gangs - presumably gangs don't happen in schools.
2. It will offer kids a "haven from chaotic homes".
3. It will prepare kids for the hours they will have to work when they leave school/education.
4. It will raise standards, or should I say, grades as the kids will do nothing but school work.

All these are viable and decent points I suppose, although not all are applicable to some schools in the gang or "chaotic home" senses. In fact most, if not all teachers would welcome the opportunity for their students to practise what they've been taught in class more. I also agree that school currently does not prepare young people for the workplace, but will this really work? Is hoemwork still going to be a requirement? Kids have got to have time to actually be kids at some point.

How's it going to work?

This hasn't been explained of course, it smacks of a potential vote winning statement to me, the trouble being that Schools Minister Nick Gibb seems to agree, which means that it's a very real possibility. To be fair if Gibb said it was a bad idea he may as well say to the general public "please don't vote for us in the next election".

Are teachers going to be paid for the extra hours they do. Currently a teacher can have no more than 1265 hours over the year of "contact time", and that is spread over the 195 days spent in school. "Contact time" is the educational term for "kids in your class". This would have to be rethought unless new staff would be brought in the supervise the extra time required by the politicians. In which case these people would need payment, but we keep being told that there's no more money left in the pot. So something has to give.

There's also the fact that teachers use the time they have before and after school to plan those "outstanding" lessons that the government and Ofsted desire. If that time is taken away standards will actually drop, because teachers will either not have the time to plan the lessons or will have to work every evening in order to plan them. This will lead to burnout, stress-related illness and absence and this isn't good for anyone, teachers or students. Anyone fancy working from 7.30am to about 9pm every weekday? Nor do I.

This is yet another example of political idiocy, but I can't say that I'm surprised. Every day seems to bring a new example.

Read the article here!

Academies - The Way Forward?

News has broken this week of an academy being accused of mismanagement. More precisely it's a group of academies, the second biggest in the country.

Academies, we are told in the teaching profession, are the way forward, and there are rumours that all schools will eventually be forced to become academies, with courses being held for schools' leadership to attend on how to become an academy. The theory behind schools becoming academies is this:

• Schools who become academies can plough their budgets into whatever they deem fit. Financial incentives can be made to prospective staff to encourage them to take the job, and presumably make them work harder. Academies don't have to adhere to the pay structure set out by maintained schools. Academies get money from the government but can use it in whatever way they think is most beneficial for their school. This seems a decent idea on the face of it. You would assume that a school's management would know best how to spend their money rather than be dictated to by a suit in Whitehall.
• Academies take over under-performing schools across the country and by offering better wages to staff, attract the "best" teachers who will turn those under-performing schools into beacons of education, a blue-print to be admired and drooled over by all. This also seems a decent idea in principal, as those students getting a raw deal in "failing" schools will get a better deal.
• Ultimately all schools will be encouraged to become academies because of the huge benefits of doing so. And who could blame them?

What actually happens is the following:

• All the money is spent on leadership and not very much is spent on the people who actually have to go and teach those "under-performing" children. This is what has happened at the MediaCity Oasis Academy in Salford, where 13 teaching staff are being made redundant in order to pay for the leadership team, many of whom I presume don't teach very much, if it's anything like any other school in the country. Many academy leadership teams are made up of old mates who pay themselves increasing amounts to do less and less. The only thing being that if the results don't meet expectations, those members of the leadership are out on their ear. We have a local academy whose headteacher was escorted off the premises and many senior staff are just being given a box to pack up their things. Make a deal with the devil people...
• The clientele, or "stock" as Ofsted like to call them, remain the same. It doesn't matter how many millions of pounds of public money are spent on new buildings, state-of-the-art facilities/resources and "the best teachers" in the land if those who are receiving that education are disaffected and have little or no interest in gaining qualifications because their parents hated school and have imposed their attitude towards education upon their offspring. You can polish a cowpat until it's so shiny you could do your hair in it, but ultimately it's still a cowpat.
• The number of "top quality" staff available to fill the posts falls well short of the number of posts to fill. There are lots of good teachers in the land but not all are up to it to be honest. You can't just magic up a replacement for a poor teacher over-night, and many don't want the extra stress that an increased wage can bring.
• If all schools become academies, the financial benefits of becoming one will be nullified as there's only so much money to go around.
• What isn't reported by the government is the fact that the main reason academies have appeared to make huge strides in raising achievement with their cohort is because loads of them are put on BTEC (or equivalent) courses which require little or no exams, but are mainly coursework which can essentially be dictated by the teachers and are worth 4 GCSE grades. This is changing so that a BTEC is going to be worth just 1 GCSE - I can't wait to see how the academies do then!
• The increased money paid to teaching staff needs to be earned (rightly so - you shouldn't expect to get more money for no extra work), so therefore those "top quality" staff end up burning out very quickly and either have lots of time off with stress (cover teachers will need paying) or will just leave the profession, because of stress (they will then need replacing with teachers who aren't as "high quality"). In some subjects, it's difficult to get mediocre teachers to fill posts.

Most educational policies that recent governments have pushed through are just designed to win votes and gain good press. Very few, if any actually encourage students to reach their potential in education, and just as importantly, although often forgotten, none of the policies make teaching a more manageable or desirable job. In fact, teaching is becoming an untenable job, as increased interference and demotivation become serious issues in the profession.

Article here!

Gambling Lessons

The latest bright idea from the Department of Education: lessons in gambling and the odds/probability of winning, or not as the case may be.

Genius - well done! That stuff is never covered in maths lessons after all, not that anyone has bothered to ask maths teachers around the country. During my teacher training I was first shown a worksheet or two on the topic, and have used or at the very least, discussed it when covering probability in class. In fact I purposely cover gambling and how the odds are stacked in favour of the bookies, casinos or bingo halls. The old phrase "you never see a poor bookmaker" springs to mind.

However the government clearly see this as a vote winner, and no doubt millions will be spent implementing this new "idea", with resources having to be written by expensive consultants, training having to be provided by expensive consultants, and then the printing/distribution of resources to all schools. All this will need paying for when maths departments up and down the country are perfectly capable of delivering what the resources they already have to hand.

The whole drive behind this new policy is that more and more people are apparently accruing mountains of debt with the numerous online gambling sites, from bingo to spread betting to poker, available to anyone who is prepared to hand over their bank details. Advertisements are all over the television for these sites, and one can't fail to think that there surely can't be a market for so many, but presumably there is as new sites seem to be advertised on almost a weekly basis.

In my opinion it's not the lack of understanding that more often than not you will end up losing money - I actually believe that the government underestimate the intelligence of much of the population (how much intelligence do you need to work out that you are unlikely to win?). The problem is two-fold:

1. The "Somebody's got to win, so why can't it be me?" attitude. This is fair enough, and is part of the reason that people have gambled away their earnings for hundreds and thousand of years.
2. "I want something for nothing". This is education's fault, or should I say, education policy-makers' fault. Students have left school with certificates oozing from every orifice for the last 15 or so years, many having not actually lifted so much as a finger to gain these "qualifications". In other words, school has taught them that they will be just fine whether they work or not, so when they can't get meaningful employment, they turn to gambling as a potential quick fix. Obviously not every young person leaves school with this attitude, but the fact that a record number of 18 to 24 year olds is currently unemployed would suggest that many are.

Gambling is a relatively healthy hobby, in moderation and kept within a gambler's means. The problem is that the more desperate one gets, the bigger the risks and the more they tend to lose. That is not a lack of understanding of gambling and the odds associated with it, that's looking for a quick fix. So why are we just about to waste millions of pounds implementing an expensive new policy that has been happening in classrooms up and down the land for years?

I'm not sure I'll ever understand those people up in Whitehall.

League Tables Are Rigged!

Would you Adam and Eve it? The government have just realised that school league tables are rigged by schools "banking" C grades for students and making the less academic students take BTEC courses because they are worth up to 4 C grades each.

Now if you work in a school the fact that students take BTECs to boost a school's C grades will not be news to you, nor will the fact that loads of students take an early GCSE in some subjects to get a C grade and then the main focus of that school is to concentrate on those who get a D grade and push them up to C. But to those in Whitehall it is news, presumably because they are so far removed from day-to-day school life that it's taken them this long to catch up.

So what's the problem? And what are the government going to do about it?

According to the various articles I've read, the league tables aren't a proper representation of how schools are performing. Had the government bothered to ask teachers (this does seem to be a common theme) they would have found this out a while ago. League tables are all about gaining 5 A* to C grades at GCSE, and now must include English and Maths, whereas before it didn't matter what subjects they were. League tables have been sold to the public as the definitive guide to how well students from certain schools do, so the public don't really know any better (unless they know a teacher of course).

The proposal is to make 1 BTEC (that takes a lot of work, and is mainly coursework assessed) equivalent to 1 GCSE (which doesn't take as much work, although is more academic). 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs was too much, but 1 to 1 is too little. And funnily enough all those state schools that were failing (in Ofsted's eyes), were rebranded academies and are now doing really well according to their 5 A* to C count, will suffer hugely. The only thing that makes academies appear to be improving so hugely is the fact that 1 BTEC = 4 GCSEs. The government can't really win this one to be honest - damned if they do, damned if they don't.

As far as making students sit early entries to "bank" a C and therefore focus attention on those who didn't make it first time around, do you really blame schools? The pressure to gain as many many C+ grades is huge and can make or break a school, so any potential advantage to be had by entering students early must be taken, with both hands.

As far as essentially ignoring those who achieve a C grade is concerned, well that's clearly not right, but schools are in a results business. If you don't get the results, you lose customers because parents can now choose which school to send their child too to a certain extent - another well-thought-out government policy. A school that isn't full has to endure budget cuts, which then leads to staff redundancies and ultimately to the school being unable to offer a holistic curriculum because it can't be staffed.

The prime minister has also stated that some schools coast and don't move their students on enough. He says that the league tables should reflect the "value added" to the students' knowledge. Well hooray! Finally they may be getting the message, but little will change in actual fact. As I've said in recent posts, some parts of the country have a hugely selective (grammar school) system meaning that they cream off the most academic in that area and therefore will end end at the top of those wonderful league tables.

Ultimately, whatever happens the league table system is flawed. Just get rid of them so the public aren't fooled by the propaganda.

The only way to assess whether a school is any good is to go into the school and see if the children are enjoying learning. If they are, they will probably reach their potential.

You don't need a league table to tell you that.

Seating Plans

Seating plans - the answer to all discipline issues within the classroom.

Or so many senior management say. But do they really work?

The answer in my view is... occasionally. They are not the be all and end all to classroom management - it all depends on the students within that class. We have gone down the lines of "all classes must have a seating plan" in our school, and I am not all that keen. I'm more a believer of "give them enough rope and they will hang themselves". It's what's known in the trade as a "professional judgement call" and depends on the confidence of each individual teacher to control that class.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally anti the idea, but by imposing a mandatory policy could be seen as showing a total lack of confidence in the ability of staff by a senior management team. It certainly makes life easier at the start of a new year, or when you take over a class to have a seating plan, but this can be got around purely by handing books out and calling out names. There is no guarantee that the seating plan is workable - maybe your class all get on which means that in whatever place you put them the students will chat. Very few, if any teachers have the room or lack of numbers to sit each student on their own. And when you get to secondary school, sitting a class boy then girl can be worse than sitting each gender together.

The whole issue is a minefield and often, in my experience got around by allowing the students to sit where they like and moving them if they don't do enough work.

I went into a the class next to mine today where a new (but experienced) teacher was really struggling with a bottom set. They had been put in a seating plan, a requested, and because the teacher was learning the names, this was unlikely to change in the near future. I was already looking after one student who likes playing to the crowd, and went in to find one student crawling around under a desk and another shouting "See You Next Tuesday - do you know what I mean?" repeatedly. The teacher was trying valiantly, if in vain, to get around and help the class, but ultimately few were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing. I apologised to my colleague and then ranted at the students for 5 minutes, explaining that they were no longer at primary school and should behave their age, and that in a few years time they would be entering a competitive job market and guess who writes them a reference? The nice, but grinning boy sat near me (I think he thought I couldn't see him) was grinning, so I pointed out that although we can't write anything bad on a reference, the telling thing is the lack of words. I then left the classroom with the students in silence. It's easy to do when they aren't your class, I hasten to add.

Now I'm not saying that this happens in every classroom where there's a seating plan, but they aren't the answer to all classroom problems.

Give teachers some credit, and let them decide.

The Riots Around The Country - Any Surprise?

The riots in London and the other cities around England are shocking for want of a better word, and what's more shocking is the large number of younger people joining in. I'm talking about school aged children here, aged between 12 and 16. But should we be surprised?

I watched a BBC news report where some young girls, involved in the riots were interviewed. Here's the link:

Click here!

If you couldn't be bothered to listen, here's the basic scenario:

It's 9.30am after the violence in Croydon and these 15 year old girls are swigging a bottle of looted rose wine explaining that the rioting was fun. They claim that it's all because of the government but struggle to recall who is in government and what the issue actually is. They do however let slip that the action is to show the police that they can do whatever they want. This audio interview is played over footage of the House of Reeves furniture business in Croydon being destroyed by fire, started by the rioters.

Now if you're a teacher you may recognise a phrase common in schools today: they can do whatever they want. It's unfortunately quite an accurate statement nowadays, but was relatively rare when I first started teaching over a decade ago. Those in authority have little or no power nowadays, whether they be in general public through the police, or in schools through teaching staff. There are very few, if any consequences for a child's actions in our society as failure has been essentially prohibited by the various governments of recent times. Continual poor behaviour in schools is rarely effectively punished with expulsion as the paperwork in order to achieve this is long and riddled with loopholes. Exams can be failed but students still manage to get into the college or university of their choice because policy dictates that bums on seats means extra funds and that all students must gain some sort of qualification. We have bred a generation who feel that they are owed something by society, whether they have earned it or not.

A large proportion of the rioters have no idea what consequences their actions will have because they've never had to face consequences in school or out. Police policy appears to be to try and convince young people who are doing something they shouldn't that they are in the wrong and should stop, therefore avoiding a mountain of paperwork that would go hand-in-hand with an arrest and caution. Children aren't stupid, they will continue to do something if they know that they can get away with it, and that includes smashing up a high street and stealing desirable goods.

A large part of this situation has been brought about by policy makers in Whitehall, regardless of the colour of their rosette, who have implemented laws that may seem a good idea on paper, but teach young people that failure and consequences no longer exist. In practise these policies don't really work, as any teacher will tell you.

If any good is to come out of this then let's hope that law and policy changes to give those in authority the powers to actually be an authority, not necessarily to be feared but to be respected. And what better place to start than in schools where if you persistently mess up you are out and children can't refuse to accept punishment as happens regularly at the moment.