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!

Financial Sense Classes

Government big-wigs have decided that school children need lessons in financial management, teaching students all about credit cards interest rates and the meaning of APR amongst other things. What do these people think we do in maths lessons? Do we not cover percentages, interest rates of varying types and other stuff that children may come across in modern life?

The launch of this new policy, in which a senior teacher will be placed in charge of teaching "financial sense", presumably on a supplement to their current wage (fair enough, but expensive in a climate where budgets are dwindling), will be attended by the government's celebrity maths guru, Carol Vorderman.

This current government, and actually all recent governments, continually send out the message that teachers can't be trusted to deliver a relevent education. In this particular case it's maths teachers, but not doubt there have been many other examples where teachers of other subjects have essentially been told that they are not doing what's required of them. The government themselves dictate what goes on the curriculum, so if it's not relevent, they only have themselves to blame

This is yet another example of people who no longer do, or have never done the job of teaching coming up with policies for the sake of coming up with policie, presumably to justify their considerable wage to whichever politician has been appointed to meddle in schools as a stepping stone to "greater" things.

Funnily at the school I teach at we already run this sort of thing - the kids hate it. They realise that it may come in useful later in life, but later life isn't now, and anyway parents can always bail them out. In ICT we teach them how to set up spreadsheets so that they can effectively keep accounts in case they end up being self-employed. In maths we teach them about compound interest (essentially APR) and the perils of gambling, in that the odds are stacked against the punter and how you calculate the odds in the first place. Many are capable of calculating using these skills, but so few are capable of taking a mathematical concept and using it outside the classroom, because there's no-one standing at their side explaining exactly what they need to do.

It's all well and good educating children in what these various financial terms mean, but whether the children pay any attention or actually put what they're taught into practise is a totally different thing. Maybe the only way that many will learn is by making the very mistakes Gove and his cronies want us to avoid and having to get themselves out of a financial hole - call me old-fashioned, but that's how everyone else has managed.

All this policy stuff fronted by Vorderman and Gove is just another (desperate) plea for votes, as many of the policies pushed forward by government seem to be. The things they are introducing as being new and forward thinking have been happening in schools for years, only the young people of today have no concept of accountibility or consequence. They are shielded from failure in exams, because they will end up with a qualification or two no matter how little they do, and even if the certficates they now own are the equivalent of toilet paper, they will get into college because the college need the money. It's all well and good saying that children need educating in matters financial, but they won't be interested because they are immune to failure; or so they believe.

Perhaps the credit card companies need to be educated into not continually extending credit limits, even when an extension isn't requested. It's a novel thought, but maybe the teaching profession isn't at fault this time. Maybe teachers are actually doing their job, perish the thought. Maybe someone else is to blame - children or parents?

Can I have a B please Carol?

Data - How Useful It Can Be

Data is the new black - schools and teachers are swimming in the stuff. You can't move for spreadsheets in your planning, and planning lessons for official observations (don't be fooled into thinking teachers do all that paperwork for every lesson they teach - there are only 24 hours in a day) becomes an absolute minefield of wading through lists and numbers so that you "really know" the students in your class. Just chatting to them and getting to know them as a person is no longer required, you need to know what they got in a test that they sat in Year 6, plus other standardised tests that they may have sat.

A colleague of mine went on a course this week (a feat in itself due to massive budget cuts) and upon their return said that everyone was in the same boat.

At our school we currently assess every child once per half term in every subject. We then record their score and level/grade (depending on what key stage they are) in a spreadsheet so that their progress can be checked throughout their school career. Why are we doing this? Ofsted want to see it is the only real reason, but there's also a culture of accountability for teachers.

Is this a good thing? In short, the answer is "No". Ofsted only want it so that they get a feel of what the children in a class are like before they observe it, although data isn't always that reliable. What statistics don't take into account is that children have a flair for making friends who aren't always a good influence, doing things that perhaps they shouldn't and resisting pleas to do any work at all, but try finding an "attitude" column on a spreadsheet, or a  "what they actually do in the evenings instead of their homework" column for that matter. There's not an "are the parents supportive?" column either. All these things are just as important as the assessment data that all schools are collecting endlessly.

When you look at it, what this huge amount of data is used for is to beat a teacher over the head with when those children that stray off the straight and narrow don't reach what the data suggests they should achieve. Especially when, in our school's case, all the target grades generated by the data we've collected are what's known as "aspirational", or in layman's terms, only possible to achieve if the child works ridiculously hard. How many 15 and 16 years olds do that? Admittedly some, but certainly not all. And since a teacher's results (or those of their class) can make or break their pay progression, you will understand that data is not the most popular educational beast.

Schools even pay a senior manager (somebody who actually has some power in school) to "run" data, costing thousands of pounds per year, per school.

And all because of Ofsted - not only do they suck up £200 million of tax-payers' money directly, they also suck up millions indirectly, millions that could be spent on actually educating children.