Category: Fairness

Rewiring

24/5/2024

The rain having momentarily stopped, there are skipping ropes on the concourse to encourage year 7 and 8. Not just to leap about but to cooperate with one another. Staff gamely tried them before lunch earlier in the week with frankly disappointing results. Unsurprisingly, children are better at it: bouncier, freer, closer to remembering skipping in primary school. It’s a glimpse of play-based childhood, and I’m thinking about that as my transit listening is Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.

I’m only halfway through, but the thrusts of the book ring bells with anyone who spends time around young people. He argues that smartphone use (I have my own two on my desk as I write) has rewired children’s brains since 2010 and that we have moved – globally, but especially in rich countries where children get smartphones young – from play-based to phone-based childhood. He believes that the parallel steep rise in anxiety and depression among young people, especially girls, is caused by all-pervasive social media to which girls devote 8-10 hours every day. For boys, the risks seem different: isolation caused by excessive gaming where a community of live friends has been replaced by online friends, and of course the ghastly risk of endless pornography and dangerous role models. All of which, for boys and girls, is exacerbated by the sleep deprivation caused by smartphones.

What to do? Haidt’s proposals begin with enforcing the laws we already have about children and social media, therefore not allowing profit-makers to rewire children’s brains. As I say, I’m only halfway through and this is a paraphrase. There are other views. What will we do at Tallis? We’ll think, and then act.

One of the most troubling aspects of social media, to which Haidt may well turn in the rest of the book, is its bizarre effect on freedom of speech. You’d imagine, wouldn’t you, that unlimited access to all the knowledge and all the opinions in the world would spread openness and informed judgement – and yet we find ourselves at the other end, beset by tribalism and blinkered thinking. So many children believe they have to plump for one side so schools have to work against this. Teachers have to plonk themselves on the threshold of freedom of expression to prevent the door from closing.

Why? Because good learning requires information of all kinds, open discourse, free expression and the willingness to discuss any problem that presents itself. Education is not designed for comfort but for thinking, to fortify courage and empower the learner to deal with complexity, to became an informed and active citizen. Free speech can be hard to hear so it’s tempting to call for some speakers to be silenced, or banned – cancelled, as we say.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for demagogues and rabble-rousers. Citizens have the right to be safe and treated fairly. But there must be a forum for reasoned debate even with people whose ideas are – to the liberal mind – intolerable. People with harmful opinions have to be refuted, word by word, put right and even pursued by the law. Its what civilisation requires. It’s certainly what universities are for. It’s also what schools should do.

Tallis expects young people to learn to be open-minded: inquisitive, collaborative, fair and respectful. At the same time, they are young people who should want to change the world for the better and might be justifiably frustrated at the time that older generations take to sort stuff out. They are inclined to be revolutionary. That fervour needs to be focused on what will make the world better and more inclusive, not on what will make it worse and more bigoted.

We love an election at Tallis and will throw ourselves into the national frenzy. Education groups are already making their pitches: the social mobility charity The Sutton Trust emailed earlier today. Their General Election wants are:

High quality early years education for all
A national strategy to close the attainment gap
A more progressive higher education funding system

My general election wants are:

Education funding at a level that demonstrates children matter and which allows schools to give teachers time to think, collaborate, plan and develop
Funding for health, social care, police and justice so that schools don’t have to try to do everything and that every citizen is protected
A return to civility and truth in national discourse

I’ve just been with the Sixth Form Thinking Aloud group. These good folk tussle with hearty questions and like to be made to think. I presented them with Archbishop Welby’s conundrum about Christianity and sexuality in global Anglicanism. Can he save the communion? What should he do? It’s a super-wicked problem if ever there was: every action taken to solve it seems to make it worse.

In the end, scripture, tradition, politics and national laws notwithstanding, the young people were optimistic that the positive inclusive messages they read and they post on social media would work this out. Old people will die, and their exclusive conservative views with them. Religions will survive or perish but young people will uphold inclusivity.

It’s a different argument to Haidt’s. What did the old person in the room think? I fear, but I hope.

CR
23.5.24

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Realistic Utopia

20/7/2023

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Life on the block four stairs: two girls walked past and I heard ‘I said alopecia, but I meant arthritis’. Both are difficult enough, though naturally-balding knees would undercut the depilation industry, but I need more on the matter. Shortly afterwards a man told me that he loved stairs. Me, I love escalators but we don’t have any here. You?

I love John Rawls, the great American jurist and philosopher who died in 2002. Oh do keep up. Destined for the episcopal priesthood he lost his faith in the war and devoted his life to setting out the framework of a fair society. His books are – ahem – a little dense – but a sprightly young chap at the LSE called Daniel Chandler has set his thinking out afresh. Allow me. despite it being the end of the year we can’t let our brains go to mush. At least not before Thursday afternoon.

Rawls’ original position is that society should be fair, that we should design social goods such as law, education, employment and health care as if from behind a veil of ignorance where we didn’t know how we ourselves might benefit. Further, there should be intergenerational justice and sustainability. All of this is his basic liberties principle where a fair chance for everyone should be designed into every system.

However, equality is hard to get, so we have to work on it really hard. Equal opps just give the already advantaged an easier swim to the top so we need fair opportunities with some rightly getting more help than others. This is Rawls’ difference principle which governs the distribution of income, wealth, responsibility, power and the social basis of self-respect. Inequalities in the distribution of these goods should be allowed only if they benefit the least well-off in society. That’s very different from a dried-up stream of trickle-down economics. What rising tide?
Finally, the just savings principle spends public money on environmental stewardship in place to protect the material and natural environment.

For Rawls, education teaches subjects, of course, but it’s not just about future economic value. Schools should generate and uphold the political virtues of reasonableness and mutual respect. They should teach rights and freedoms, politics, the diversity of beliefs, social skills and expectations, analytical skills to tell right from wrong, communication to help all the above, basic liberal values and attitudes, good character, the encouragement of respectful debate, critical thinking, respect and tolerance, shared identity and a liberal patriotism that everyone can believe in. A pretty good manifesto for a diverse comprehensive school, eh?

Young Chandler updates this with some priorities of his own, based on the original position. More focus on early years, the abolition of fee-paying and grammar schools, more targeted funding (like pupil premium), admissions decided by lottery and investment in teacher quality.

He’d go further. He’d enshrine freedom in a written constitution, strengthen the judiciary, nurture an inclusive British patriotic identity, introduce proportional representation, remove money from politics, use direct citizen participation methods, impose climate protection laws, make much more effort on respecting protected characteristics, treat the lowest paid with respect, develop opportunities for fulfilling work that builds communities, and mandating good modern workplace democracy. A ‘realistic utopia’ that ‘avoids despondency’. Yes!

And yet, in a moment that calls for creativity and boldness, all too often we find timidity, or worse, scepticism and cynicism – a sense that democratic politics is hopelessly corrupt, that capitalism is beyond reform. The result has been a surge of support for illiberal and authoritarian populists, creating a palpable sense of uncertainty about the future of liberal democracy itself.

Too right, matey.

Is it easier to be upbeat or downbeat at the end of the year? It hasn’t been an easy one, perhaps the hardest I’ve known, for one reason or another. I’ve often (2014 and 2017, to be precise) signed off the year with this lovely bit of Charles Causley’s ‘School at Four O’clock’

At 4 o’clock the building enters harbour
All day it seems that we have been at sea
Now having lurched through the last of the water
We lie stone-safe beside the jumping quay.

I wrote to a coastal colleague yesterday and asked if all was proceeding swimmingly towards the end of term. He said he’d be OK if he could surf the tidal surge of the last week. I know what he means. Popular thought has everyone looking forwards to the holidays, but actually? Lots of children face real uncertainty once the inevitabilities of school are closed to them. Tired staff may be tetchy as the week telescopes. Exam results are the next engagement, and that relaxes nobody.

Inquisitiveness is a Tallis Habit so I asked the man why he liked stairs and he told me it was because he’d once been paralysed for a month in hospital. Now he just loves getting about on his legs, a private utopia. He said it kindly, but it put me in my place. So before next year begins and election posturing ossifies let’s allow our minds to range on what we really want from our leaders and think about holding them to account for a better vision, built on fairness and respect, where none is enriched at another’s expense.

I wish you calm waters, warm sunlight, a gentle breeze and everything it takes to a better world. Thank you for sticking with us, and see you in September.

CR
18.7.23

(PS You’ll blessedly note no mention of the pay award. 6.5% is good, the funding poor and the spin insupportable. Of course there is more money than ever in the system: there are more children and prices are higher. The level of investment still lags behind 2010. Whether it will solve the recruitment and retention problem remains to be seen.)

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Ladies on the Bridge

20/10/2022

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Picture the concourse with its bridge running round it? There’s a jutting-out bit outside block two from which one might sing, survey troops or start a revolution. This never-before contested spot has been adopted at break and lunchtimes by a small group of year 7 girls who can barely see over the railing. They keep a close eye on everything and appear to have found a way to track my (random even to me) movements. Today I was fruitlessly searching for The Colleague With The Answer and these ladies apparated before me in two out of three blocks. I have high hopes for them. If you’ve read Anna Burns’ Milkman - and if not, why not? - they are the Wee Sisters. Intelligent, determined, resourceful, good-humoured and not to be underestimated.

Speaking of what you may not have read, among other journals my household takes the Church Times. My co-inmate, who may be reasonably expected to value this organ of the Church of England, curses it roundly and reliably every time it assaults the letterbox, demanding of the heavens why he is expected to read such drivel. Me, I like the cartoons, the minor gossip and reading just how badly church people can behave to one another when they forget themselves. One article this week looked at values having replaced religion in binding people together. That’s fine when the values are such as equality, justice, accountability, kindness and honesty – but what if the values are self-referential, are about ‘living your best life’ or similar?

Watching the sorry spectacle of current parliamentary politics, it occurs to me that the former PM must have really wanted to be PM. Perhaps she thought she deserved it. Perhaps they all did, all the ministers and who’ve come and gone recently. Perhaps they wanted their hour on the stage, their soundbite moment. Perhaps refusing to talk to the OBR about policies already shared over champagne by the super-rich, or dreaming of planes to Rwanda, or bullying other adults in the lobby queue, or spouting crude tropes about the wokerati or taxis, North London and the BBC were so exciting, so life-enhancing that subsequent ignominy will be worth it? The tale of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Most of us in the public sector would prefer a better résumé.

Two men present themselves to my mind’s eye. One is the former PM, at whose feet much of the blame for the collapse of behaviour in public office must lie. The second is the Secretary of State for Education, Kit Malthouse. He chose to characterise school and college leaders as ‘hanging on to mediocrity’ and needing ‘constant attention and constant pressure’ to ‘drive it forward’. At least we know where he stands, but upon what evidence does he erect this calumny? I expect he believes that everyone outside the privileged bubble is necessarily mediocre and that all we need is a good shake so that we can be thrustingly excellent like…… Like who, exactly? Like the private schools whose results mysteriously dropped by 40% now that exams are back? Like Tory MPs?

If I wasn’t too mediocre to write a piece on values and virtues, I’d start with the hollowing-out of public life when assertion is the key performance indicator. That what enables the party of law and order to starve the police and the courts of money, the party of levelling-up to give tax relief to the super-rich. Twenty years ago we smarted under deliverance as a political mechanism, where measurement seemed to be more important than content, but that looks like responsible government now. At least politicians were trying to do something rather than just be someone.

And so we need to be really careful about how we teach children to be in schools. Innocent aspirational slogans like ‘Be the best you can be’ or irritating reminders to ‘Follow your dreams’ really won’t do. I’ve ranted at length about schools adopting canonical verse from If to Invictus and what that might mean for humanity, captain of my soul and all that. Self-actualisation is laudable as long as it is not at others’ expense. Our skills must be put to the public service and the common good. Kindness, fairness, honesty, respect and optimism are more important than trampling your neighbour because you‘re worth it.

We had 1525 people through the doors last night for post-16 open night. Everyone one of those young people had hopes and dreams. We’ll try to help as many we can get the qualifications that should open doors, if the vested interests of the elite don’t hold them shut, and if they can afford to eat while studying. Over the years, I’ve met young people who were entirely self-centred at the end of year 13, but they were my failures and they are few. Most of them are fired with the passion to change the world for the better. Now my fear is that exhortations to do good and serve humanity look hopelessly old-fashioned. I tell children that they could be Prime Minister – but please, not like these people.

Ladies on the bridge, over to you.

CR
20.10.22

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One Hand for the Ship

8/10/2022

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Travel writer Redmond O’Hanlon reported from a North Sea trawler to which he was poorly suited, being too tall and argumentative, and sick all the time. He described ‘six degrees of freedom’ at sea as pitch, roll, sway, heave, surge and yaw. I found that helpful when I was a young Head in stormy waters but I think we’re all feeling it nationally at the moment. Yaw now?

Heavy weather requires something to cling to so I’m returning to my moutons in the woolly shape of some principles I wrote 11 years ago. These have developed a edu-zeitgeist half-life as well as being inflicted on every group of people I’ve ever met. They are a sort-of answer to the perennial question of ‘what are schools for?’ and I wrote them at the time of the coalition government and to help make sense of Gove’s curriculum reforms. Here they are:

Knowledge is worthwhile in itself. Tell children this unapologetically: it’s what childhood and adolescence is for
Schools teach shared and powerful knowledge on behalf of society.We teach what they need to make sense of and improve the world.
Shared and powerful knowledge is verified through learned communities.We are model learners, in touch with research and subject associations
Children need powerful knowledge to understand and interpret the world.Without it they remain dependent upon those who have it or misuse it
Powerful knowledge is cognitively superior to that needed for daily life. It transcends and liberates children from their daily experience
Shared and powerful knowledge enables children to grow into useful citizens. As adults they can understand, cooperate and shape the world together
Shared knowledge is a foundation for a just and sustainable democracy. Citizens educated together share an understanding of the common good
It is fair and just that all children should have access to this knowledge. Powerful knowledge opens doors: it must be available to all children
Accepted adult authority is required for shared knowledge transmission.The teacher’s authority to transmit or broker knowledge is given and valued by society
Pedagogy links adult authority, powerful knowledge and its transmission. Quality professionals enable children to make a relationship with ideas to change the world.

At the time I was collaborating with Prof Michael Young of the Institute on a book that was published in 2014 and is still being read, called Knowledge and the Future School. He’s concerned that schools leap from one two-dimensional solution to another without sufficient mental scrutiny, without thought and without reflection.

In 2011 it was important to conceptualise and reassert the primacy of knowledge in learning – but now we’re in danger again. Post-Covid, people are lurching towards off-the-peg curricula, like the Oak National Academy that sprang up to assist in desperate times but is now set to take over the thinking of a generation of teachers, a Japanese Knotweed of curriculum development. And perhaps schools can’t find space to see that or worry about it in the context of the unfunded pay award, the energy crisis, the fact that families can’t afford to eat and the missing of teacher recruitment targets in eight of the last nine years. By a mile. (Not that we’ll be able to measure anything in a future without maths or geography teachers.)

So what principles might we cling to in this particularly prolonged storm, with buckets of hail being thrown from each side and the siren call of off-the-peg answers sounding through the surge? Here’s my thinking so far:

Knowledge is powerful: it can change the world, person by person.
Children need knowledge to interpret the world and broaden their possibilities.
Knowledge and understanding bring freedom and requires us to choose how to live
Knowledge is real but provisional: it endures and changes.
Knowledge gives people the power to think and act in new and better ways
Knowledge is social, produced in history: good communities are built on shared knowledge
Inequitable distribution of shared and powerful knowledge undermines democracy
Schools give unique access to knowledge, skilfully tailored to the growing human
Learners volunteer to acquire knowledge when enabled by skilled teachers
Good education is not inevitable. It must not be withheld, misused or devalued.

Comments welcome, of course.

I was watching a staircase last week and found a youth walking up it backwards, with one hand for the ship, the better to lecture his comrades. This caused significant embouteillage upstream so I issued a cease and desist. He apologised nicely, but I couldn’t tell if it was incipient demagoguery or a concern for safety that inspired him.

When I visited the Capitol in 1999 the guides walked backward in front of us to prevent anyone slipping off to install Communism. It does feel as though we’re being led backwards at the moment, without reason or rationale.
Pitch, roll, sway, heave, surge and yaw are only good to look back on if you didn’t go under. Here’s hoping, for us all.

CR
31.9.22

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We Deserve Better. We Can Do Better.

27/3/2022

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This blog has been written largely by others. The first two stories are courtesy of that organ of truth, Schools Week, all power to their shorthand notebooks. The third was heard by my own ears at a very large conference in Birmingham on Saturday March 12 2022.

The fourth is in the form of a response written by a year 10 Tallis student. I don’t need to repeat the brutality of that story.

News Story 1: ‘Elite Sixth Forms’
Eton and a group of successful academies called the Star Academy trust intend to bid in the next wave of free schools to open ‘elite’ sixth forms in Dudley, Middlesbrough and Oldham in 2025. They will provide “knowledge-rich teaching from subject-specialists; access to talks, academic essay prizes and debate clubs; Oxbridge-style tutorial sessions and the chance to learn Latin”. They will also be subsidised to the happy tune of £4000 PER STUDENT on top of the funding we all get.

I’d like to set a few essay questions on this topic, if I may? 20 marks a pop.

If Eton need £4k more per child to do a good job, what are the rest of us supposed to do with just the taxpayer’s shilling?
What is the alternative to ‘knowledge-rich teaching from subject-specialists’ and, for the love of Mike, what do they think the rest of us are doing?
What are extant local sixth form providers meant to do when their results plummet because the elite have lured a particular group into their gold-plated lairs?
What would happen if all 6F providers in the poorest areas got an extra £4k pp?
Why perpetuate the language of elites and Eton-gets-you-into-Oxford? What is preventing Gasworks Comp form getting children into Cambridge who are suited to that kind of education? (The answer may be in the question.)

News Story 2: Lord Agnew’s champagne.
‘Agnew famously said in 2018 he would bet any headteacher “a bottle of champagne and a letter of commendation” his advisers could find savings in their schools – and likened himself to “a pig hunting truffles” in his pursuit of efficiencies. [but] …… cost-cutters failed to identify savings at more than one in ten schools they visited, new figures show….When asked if Agnew had in fact sent those schools a bottle of champagne, the DfE reiterated, “opportunities were identified in these cases but they were not costed or reported.”’

Discuss Agnew’s working hypothesis that all HTs mismanage budgets.
Locate the missing champagne.
Will Roberts have to stop writing about this now?

News Story 3: The Chair of the Social Mobility Commission doesn’t know what the Social Mobility Commission plans to do.

Why not?
Who does?

But the fourth news story cannot be treated lightly.

Today at Tallis we held an act of solidarity for Child Q. This is the speech that a 15-year-old girl wrote and read to our community, at break.

In North-East London, a 15 year old black girl went into her school to take a mock exam. Her parents put their trust in the school to keep her safe but instead... they accused her of being in possession of drugs. They searched her. Called the police and allowed her to be strip searched without her parent’s knowledge or consent.

This happened because black children are often not seen as innocent. And not even seen as children.

No one should EVER have to experience such harmful actions caused by racial bias.

The safety of children and education are basic rights. Fairness shouldn’t have to be fought for. No matter the race, gender, class, abilities, or beliefs of anyone. Dignity is for all. It isn’t fair that we aren’t the first generation to fight for our human rights. But we can strive to ensure that we will be the last.

So what are we doing to change this? If we are being persecuted in our youth and we do nothing about it, then are we any better than the persecutors? What happened to integrity?

Martin Luther King's dream is still only a dream but we can make that OUR reality. We stand for equity, for it is a necessity no matter identity. I want to live in a world where everyone feels safe around the police and not fear an abuse of their power. Where adults advocate for children. Where anyone can excel. For that to stop happening we have to remove these stereotypes from the media, from our curriculum, from what we say, the way we treat certain groups or certain people and even the jokes we make. Small things can make such a big difference once we apply them to everyday life.

We can all make a change now. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a major change. We can be an ally. We can demonstrate solidarity with Child Q. Napoleon Hill once said...“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way”.
Stand in solidarity with Child Q and respond to our call of ‘we deserve better: we can do better’.

And so we did.

I’ve seen a couple of children wearing splendid origami crowns this week. I’d like to give every child one, to demonstrate that we respect them, protect them, take them seriously and try to build a better world for them.

The composite news story of the week has been of division, arrogance, indolence, brutality and a blinkered refusal to see the big picture we are all painting for young people. We are a very long way from changing the world for the better. I don’t have any more words for this.

CR 25.3.22

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Baggy at the Seams

15/1/2022

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I was wandering in science, and dropped into a cover lesson, all going well. I berthed near a pair of girls, one with green hair. They were doing something that required sheep drawing but were dissatisfied with their efforts. In this, I could help. Sheep figure frequently in RE what with the parables and so an occupational by-product means I can draw them pretty sharply, in the manner of clouds with legs. I demonstrated as much on the walkabout rota sheet. The ladies were not only delighted but could also remember the sheep-and-goats routine, so that’s a job done. Who needs performance management?

January requires new thinking even though it's halfway through the school year. I’m thinking about three unmanageable topics at once, just to keep me fresh.

First, as per, ethics. I talked to some young staff yesterday and we chewed over the values and virtues of the Framework for Ethical Leadership. The biggest ethical problems they identified – unsurprisingly – were the way we measure the value of a young person based on their academic scores, and the kinds of curricula we push them through. Wouldn’t it be better, several mused, for young people who struggle on our fearsomely overloaded GCSE courses, to be allowed to take very practical courses about looking after themselves and saving money?

Well, yes, perhaps all children need that, but the argument is multi-faceted. Why shouldn’t a child who cannot score at GCSE History be exposed to some of the stories and lessons from history? They need to be able to tell the difference between truth and revisionist lies as much as anyone else. The problem is in the qualification, which has to be the same for everyone and apparently, inexplicably, shamefully, has to have a third of below-pass grades (‘fails’ in normal person’s language). The problem isn’t with history, but the way we measure children using a qualification designed to prove some old lie about teacher slacking.

They’re not worried – and why should they be, learning to be a teacher is hard enough – about admissions. Mike Ion wrote about it in Schools Week last week and I couldn’t have put it better. He railed at the use of parental interviews, school fund requests, birth and marriage questions and the use of tests, all for y7 entry, and how the sharp-elbowed negotiate it all. The fact remains, he says, that secondary school admissions are ‘the secret scandal of our system, fostering delusions about consumer choice and reinforcing outdated perceptions of quality in education.

The outcome of covert selection practice is to produce an educational apartheid that creates vast areas of underachievement which then suck in vast amounts of public money to compensate for structural inequality.

My second issue is linked, about Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). I’ve just seen a great article in the TES about SEND ‘magnet schools’. This is also to do with performance and admissions of course, but also with the limited understanding some educators have of their role in building up a good, national, comprehensive system.
It goes like this:

Bagpuss Comp has good provision for SEND, so increasing numbers of parents of SEND children choose Bagpuss over Rupert High. The Ruperts then say to any inquiries - we don’t have much provision for SEND, have you thought of Bagpuss? Neatly circular. Further, the money that Bagpuss gets isn’t equal to the provision specified in the Education, Health and Care Plan, and the likelihood of their meeting performance measurements is constrained. All the Bagpuss children get a worse deal, resources-wise and the clipboard brigade descend, with the usual range of results.

Some schools are really committed to inclusion. Some avoid it. How is that allowed?

You’ll recall my tedious attempts to communicate with G Williamson, late of Sanctuary Buildings, SW1. Nothing daunted, I may try afresh with Mr Zahawi who seems pretty efficient. He’s about to publish a consultation on SEND of which we Bagpie have rightly high hopes. I will report further on this.

I regret I don’t think even the SoS can help the third issue, to which all the above are stuck like glue. That’s of the retracted, restricted thinking of educators who take measurable achievement at 16 for their lodestone, inexorably drawn to it such that they don’t recognise the responsibility to map their own path so that their school makes sense as part of our national provision for all of our young. Does it increase results? No? Don’t do it, appears to be the mantra.

A colleague told me she was going to treat herself to a trolley now that the financial year is nearly up: a small pleasure. She needs a bit of help to get herself and her baggage from A to B. So do we all, but the hallmark of a good society is how fairly it distributes its goods, in both senses. I’ve told everyone who gets an email from me that I’m reading Sandel, and I often quote Rawls. There’s no better way to start a new year that with two philosophers. They say:

Those who have been favoured by nature, however and whoever, should gain for their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. Societies should be arranged so that such contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate.

Or, as Anthony Crosland, another Secretary of State, said in the seventies:

The system will increasingly be built around the comprehensive school…..all schools will more and more be socially mixed; all will provide routes to the universities and to every type of occupation from the highest to the lowest….then very slowly Britain will cease to be the most class-ridden country in the world.

Everything needs tightening up. Over to you, Mr Zahawi.

CR
14.1.22

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The Curfew Tolls the Knell of Parting Day

22/10/2021

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Part 700 of an Occasional Series on the Misuse of Great Poetry

Actually, my objection is not to the PM’s use of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. He didn’t misquote it, engrave part of a misconstrued sentence on his walls or force children to recite it while eschewing non-reciters. I’ll tell you my problem later. You’ll need something to look forward to.

We are tacking against a head-wind towards the jetty that is the blessed October half term hol. Since September we’ve seen reunion, controversy, death and outrage as well as joyfulness, dancing, chuckling and solidarity. So in order to nail the zeitgeist I headed to the Midlands for an information conference, invariably time well spent when the decisions of the day are offered in handy pre-digested form to twitching school leaders. I reckoned I could do the important bits and get back in time for Governors at six, updated with the savviest news, while saving the taxpayer’s outlay with my Senior Railcard.

My train got as far as Wembley, where it stopped for an hour. We reached the glorious second city 70 minutes late where I decided that what with finding a taxi, getting to the hotel, leaving early and getting back I’d probably manage about 15 minutes of conference and an hour of lunch break. Therefore, I crossed the platform (metaphorically, it’s not that easy at New Street) and got on the next train back. I read the slides by myself and got loads more done besides. Cripes, this is a dull story.

But not if you were on the train! Simon our train manager was a message masterclass. He communicated frequently and clearly. He described the exact problem, involving a person on the tracks (‘the DC rail used by the Overground’). He did it with respect and humanity and by collectivising our experience, though this may be a word and concept I’ve just made up. He explained how many people there were on the train (have a guess) and appreciating how worried we were about the person on the line, how patient we were glad to be while the emergency services did their work, how relieved we all were that the person was still alive and going to hospital, how calm we were being about our missed appointments, how easy it would be to get a refund and how pleased the driver was with a hot cup of coffee. From my seat in a quiet coach all that turned out to be true and I heard not one fulmination. (190)

He was like a teacher skilled in positive discipline. He identified what was needed, thanked the people for doing it, created the conditions in which it could actually be attempted (in that order) and got happy compliance almost by sleight of hand. It was magnificent, expert work. It made us better people.

Rather like our decision to send almost all of year 11 on Duke of Edinburgh’s Award practices and expeditions this week. It seemed important, after we missed it in the summer. Of course, the weather was capricious with a buffeting monsoon on night testing cluelessly inexperienced campers. One of them, with floods of tears, laughter and outrage, described it all to as many teachers as she could buttonhole in the darkening gloom of the concourse on Open Night where, despite trench foot and incipient malnutrition she’d still come to be a guide and model student. And the probably large proportion of the 1559 guests loved it. So friendly! So articulate!

This particular Tallis-ite is never far from a madding crowd’s ignoble strife, and would never dream of blushing unseen. She’s nothing like a mute inglorious Milton nor is she ever likely to keep a noiseless tenor in a cool sequester’d vale. Chill penury has not repress’d her noble rage nor, more importantly, froze the genial current of her soul. But she, a youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown, like all her contemporaries, is expected to put up with this rot when the elected politicians wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind.
Too harsh? My abiding feeling at the end of this half term is of fury. Fury that policymakers who have served not one day in the classroom can claim that they’ll liberate the disadvantaged without any attempt to fund schools properly so we can care properly for the children of austerity who need us to see, know and love them.

It’s not enough to claim you’re levelling up just so you can say the other lot like levelling down. It's not enough to quote old poetry to evoke a misty-eyed nostalgia of a silent, humble poor. Most country churchyards closed decades ago but every year there are young people who can change the world for the better trapped to plod their way in neglected spots. Let not ambition mock their useful toils, but give them opportunities in a fair society to command the applause of listening senates.

You don’t have time for poetry, Mr Johnson. I’ve got next week off, but you? Do some work.

CR
21.10.21

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Fare Thee Well

19/7/2020

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A three-part blog this week.

First: this one is some of what I said in the final assembly – do watch it if you haven’t already. It contains singing and everything!

This is what I said to the children:

We said goodbye in winter, and now it is summer and we say goodbye again. The word goodbye is a contraction of ‘God be with you’, a blessing or wish from one person to another as they part. It’s a hope of protection in uncertain times. Farewell means the same – I hope you do well, that nothing terrible happens to you until we meet again. All the other languages you speak will have similar words, usually based on an ancient ‘go with God’ or ‘until we meet again'. Although where I come from people say ‘ta ta’ or ‘ta ra then’, which doesn’t really mean anything, to be honest.

Since March, the words ‘stay safe’ have appeared instead of goodbye, all over the place. That’s very specific in some ways, it means ‘I hope you don’t catch the virus’ or even ‘I hope you don’t die’. It sounds new, but it’s really just a way of saying ‘God be with you’ or ‘until we meet again’ in a modern way.

When we said goodbye we didn’t really know what was about to happen. We didn’t know if we’d all be safe, or if we’d all meet again. Some of you, sadly, have lost people you loved to the virus, and that’s tragic. No one at Tallis has died. With the exception of year 11 and year 13 all of us who left in March will be back in September. That makes us very lucky.

We don’t know if the virus will come back and we don’t know what it will do if it does. We all have to be careful, so when you come back in September you’ll find a whole new range of routines and things which are designed to keep you safe, designed to fight it off. Be prepared for change!

And speaking of change. We know that the virus hasn’t been fair in the same way that lots of our experiences as humans aren’t fair. Most of the 60,000 people who’ve died have been old or ill. People were also much more likely to catch it if they are poor or live in overcrowded housing. Too many black and minority ethnic people in England are disadvantaged in these ways, so they were more likely to get sick than white people. And that’s not fair. The Black Lives Matter protests point out the other ways in which the way we live is unjust, and we all need to do something about that.

Fairness is big for us at Tallis. You expect your school to be fair and with your help we try to make it so. We are one big family from all sorts of backgrounds, but we’ve been lucky and we’ll all be together again.

As a way of celebrating our good fortune we should commit ourselves to fairness, to understanding injustice and to rooting it out. Be ready in September to change the world for the better.

Enjoy the sun. Stay safe. Fight injustice and come back to us fit and well in
September.

This is part of what I said about Mr Tomlin leaving us:

When I was clawing my way up the greasy pole, what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a Deputy Head. I worked with 11 before I got there and they ranged from those who never left their offices or the staff smoking room to those who did absolutely everything, but who you didn’t dare ask a question because they looked as though they were about to burst. I became a young Deputy in a stable of three on a split site school: I learned the most when I went to manage the lower school site alone. In 19 years as a Head I’ve had 10 Deputies.

For me, the biggest wrench returning to London in 2013 was leaving a brilliant senior team behind which had taken me 6 years to gather. The Tallis I joined was emerging from choppy waters: I inherited 4 Deputy Heads and made some adjustments during the course of the year. Ashley Tomlin was Head of Sixth at the time, but I changed that to Pastoral Deputy at Easter 2014 – minutes before Ofsted appeared – then again to Curriculum when Douglas Grieg first took on Plumstead Manor in October 2014. I changed it back to Pastoral in September 2018: he has had a full training programme for headship here.

With typical thoroughness Ashley came to visit me in Durham before I started here. Ostensibly to see what we did with our sixth form but probably actually to see if the school was what I claimed it to be. He’d decided by then to give me a year and move on if I didn’t suit. It is with a certain amount of pride therefore that I say goodbye to him after 7. [The full contents of that speech contain anecdote, rambling, some violent references and occasional coarse language and are therefore unsuitable for the website!]

However, on behalf of us all, I’d like to say thank you for all of Ashley’s incredible hard work and determination, his tenacity and commitment – not only exemplified in his hands-on strategic work in school but also in his appearance at the Dover night after night: a feat of courage and determination to help our young people to live safer lives.

As you’ve gathered, I like to be busy in the wider school system in one way or another. This would be impossible without someone very reliable to hold the fort, someone whose judgement I trust completely. Without Ashley, the Ethical Leadership Commission would never have happened: the whole system owes him a debt for this. He’ll tell you that he’s moving largely because of the journey form Gravesend, but that’s not true. Ashley has been more than ready for his own school for years now but stayed here through loyalty to the children. Borden School don’t know how lucky they are in their new Head. We thank him for everything he’s done for Tallis.

And finally.

On my desk this year I’ve had two small bits of paper. One is a newspaper cut-out of an artwork by Douglas Coupland. He has others more apposite in this year, but I like this.

It keeps me calm when the national leadership and advice we get doesn’t quite hit the spot.

The second is an extract from a David Harsent poem – I can’t remember which one.
            ‘
If nothing’s changed
An hour from now, we’ve won:
Survivors of the wind, the streaming glass,
the life outside.

The hour has come to us survivors of the virus, the empty school, the life online. We hope for a different year in September, but if we don’t get one, it won’t surprise us: we know what to do.

Have a happy summer, whatever it brings and thank you for your support.

Carolyn Roberts
17.7.20

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Listening and travelling

19/12/2019

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A creature of habit, I have a view about how long terms should be. 15 weeks is fine for Autumn, but it should be 8 followed by 7, not what we’ve just had. I’ll complain to someone about it. Anyway, we’ve got there. T.S. Eliot’s Magi knew a bit about endurance, as they reflect in old age on the journey to follow the star.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

And how deep the winter has been so far. All that shouting, all that messy politics, all that dislike and distrust as darkness deepens in just the worst time of year.

A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

The end of the autumn term does feel like we’ve been travelling all night, coming to school in the dark and leaving in the dark. And folly is easy to find this December. Folly in the mad consumption of Christmas, folly in austerity’s punishment of children, folly in the state of the climate, folly in leadership of all kinds.

However, we take our pleasures where we may. We’ve been having a great time in assemblies this week rockin’ around the (dancing) Christmas tree, Heads of Year in Santa hats, Pastoral Welfare Team in tinsel, Parris on drums and Tomlin on the old joanna. Hearing’s only part of the experience, and it takes time before it turns into listening. We heard an enthusiastic rendering of an old hit: we listened to a slightly raucous gift of love from people whose working life is devoted to the children’s welfare.

The penny doesn’t always drop quickly. I was directing traffic indoors at the crossroads of block 5 and 6 when two girls waltzed past, one saying ‘but I hate my name, I’d rather be called Val or Tina’. No disrespect to any so-called readers but I thought these were old-fashioned sort of names. It was a day before I realised she’d said ‘Valentina’.

Governors visited a couple of weeks ago to give us the once-over. They talked to some BTEC students in the sixth form about their work, their endeavours and their plans. Students said ‘we love it, but there is a stigma attached to BTECs that is completely unfair’. We can’t do anything about the ridiculous way qualifications are turned into a snobbish calibration of worth but we can do something about hearing their anger, listening to their complaint and advocating for them.

We should understand this at Tallis. Our lives are enhanced by our deaf students and their skilled signers, teachers and advocates. It adds a dimension to our experience that some communities never know. Likewise our students for whom language itself poses a problem and for whom the world is full of discordances and jarringly inexplicable noise. People who can’t hear can still listen: people who hate noise can teach us to long for calm.

Not that adolescence lends itself to quietude. I joined a science class who chunter on so much they can’t hear themselves think, the concept of an unexpressed thought alien to them. They were all wittering about work but there’s only so much ‘I need a pen, have you got one, does the stapler work, why not, where’s the pencil sharpener, what did you get for number 4, why is number 10 wrong I thought it was right, what’s wrong with my formula, what’s the pass mark, I’ve stapled the wrong bits together, Miss! what does this say, what did you ask us to do?’ one can take. After a bit I called a halt and blessed silence engulfed us so we had the chance to organise a thought, to listen to our learning.

The advantage of the election being over, and it being nearly Christmas is that we all might get a similar break from each other in national life. Having been a Radio 4 addict since I first encountered it at 19 I’ve found news so difficult in the Trump-Brexit era that I’ve avoided it. I know a whole lot more about Radio 3 than I used to, which really does require listening. However, this ostrichy approach must end with the old year. I must return to the fray in 2020.

The three kings in the poem reach their destination and don’t quite know where they’ve arrived they’ve got to

Finding the place it was, you may say, satisfactory.

But that’s not how it ends. Children are a gift and a life, exuberant, reflective or both at once is never satisfactory but wonderful, terrifying, joyful or desperate. We can’t be indifferent to children, and we can’t ignore them. We have to hear them, listen to them, travel with them and resist folly as we serve them with integrity, courage and kindness. Here’s to Christmas, and a better New Year.

CR
19.12.9

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Fairness on the Earth's crust

15/10/2017

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Due to my advanced age and objection to any kind of cold weather I’m offered a lunch duty slot in the year 11 study hall. We say hall, but it’s actually 0311, a geography room of average size. 20 young comrades join me for 45 minutes of absolute, blessed silence. ‘It’s like a rest cure’ I remark to Sir as he barrels in at the front of a tidy line of 30 year 9s. We pause to retrieve a football appearing in entirely the wrong place. The ball’s owner is aggrieved: they took it off me, not my fault, not fair. He eventually agrees that all concerned should participate in brisk questioning after school and the resultant culprit issued with the appropriate sanction for the activation of a football indoors.

Fairness is one of our Tallis Character traits and particularly valued among the young, understandably as powerlessness attracts injustice in our flawed world and who has less power than a child? Football manager above didn’t want the indignity – or the football-affecting inconvenience? – of a conversation to establish how he got into trouble. Or perhaps he was wary of those whom he’d dropped in it. Perhaps dear readers are gnashing their teeth now. What a performance about a football Haven’t they got something else to do? What about Sir’s lesson?

Don’t fret. While this 30-second legal wrangle was going on outside the door I was inside the door purring over the geographers, many of whom I’d known as puppies. I admired their height and wisdom and what a pleasant combination the gods of the option blocks had thrown together. I reminded a huge specimen that he’d been foolish in assembly and he had the grace to look sheepish. Books were given out, everyone settled. I didn’t even have time to ask what Zoe was reading before Sir, with a parting shot of ‘This is me being reasonable’ returned to the earth’s crust.

We’d had a furious complaint from a parent the previous night about our method of dispensing justice. Why must the innocent be questioned? Outrageous infringement of human rights. Well, we take rights seriously and the innocent must be questioned so that justice is dispensed fairly. Innocence and justice must be protected and supported so that the community is safe and happy. We actually staff this. We spend money on it so there’s always someone to hear a story, take a statement, and, where possible and reasonable, broker restoration. When a youth comes blundering back into class late with the excuse ‘I had to have an RJ’ that’s what she means. Restorative Justice: a bit of a trade name, but useful none the less.

On Tuesday Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector offered reflections on the difference between education and examinations. She talked about the need to offer children real learning and the value of all the grades at GCSE. I’ve been arguing this point for years so I can’t disagree. What she says, however, feels different at the sharper end: fine words are bowdlerised into tick-lists for inspectors. Ofsted have tried to deal with that too. But HMCI can’t address the high-stakes accountability in which a confused system is mired and someone needs to be honest about that. But we can’t until we have a clear view of what education is and isn’t for, and what a civilised and developed democracy actually wants for its young and sets about doing it as fairly as possible. There needs to be a restorative process between the regulator, the department and the profession, which will take time and good will. At least she’s not calling us enemies of promise.

(I’ll return to the Ebacc argument in the piece when I can summon the strength. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.)

I’m a fan of the American philosopher and jurist John Rawls, insofar as I understand him and in particular, his fundamental principle of justice as fairness. Justice must not only be done, but must have a fair effect. Rawls underpins this with his concept of the veil of ignorance (I’ve have written about this before, sorry dear readers). Imagine that you were setting up a system in which you have no idea about the characteristics of the people it serves, or your own characteristics. Will it work as well for rich and poor, for all genders, ethnicities, aptitudes? If it won’t, then its not fair. Try again. Try again DfE.

There’s a marvellous scene in that film of high art, Nuns on the Run. A hapless policeman lurches into a convent looking for the villains who are having jolly adventures disguised as nuns. After being unable to tell the Superior who or what he’s looking for, or why, she says ‘We’re all very busy here. When you know what you’re looking for, come back, and we’ll tell you if we’ve found it’.

It’s like that in education at the moment and all we can do in schools is to get on with the day job and account for ourselves as best we can. I’m trying very hard to persuade educators to think about the purpose of schools and our social role in loco parentis before we think about examinations and assessments. In the meantime, we’ll work hard like year 11 and try to be fair, like Sir and the indoor football.

CR
12.10.17

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Everything in between

4/5/2014

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Michael Kidner, Circle after Image 1959-60

Have you seen our field of jeans? Do potter along if you haven’t. The jeans on poles at the front of our building are part of a brilliant experimental programme called Catalytic Clothing. It’s the brainchild of artist designer Helen Storey and chemist Tony Ryan – people from different worlds in a highly successful art and science collaboration. They’re working with the R&D departments of big laundry brands, exploring how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify air. Saving the planet while you wander about. Yet another practical use for teenagers.

So we’ve got the Field of Jeans as part of our Catalytic Learning programme. We love the idea of an artist and a scientist working together for public benefit, and we’ve had cross-curricular days, staff and students, to expand our thinking. Look at it on the website: such fun! Our last day was just before Easter, but the tragedy of contemporary education is that young people have become so focused on exams that many of them were troubled about having an off-timetable day to explore new ideas. ‘Is it on the exam?’ they demand. ‘If not, why do it?’ So we work hard to demonstrate that it’s the things in between the exam questions that matter too.

It was at this point in composition that I looked at the clock on Tuesday. It was 12:05, and I bethought myself that (a) OFSTED were due sometime after Easter, (b) they always ring immediately after 12:00 and (c) is that the phone? Time has behaved oddly since then and the last 54 hours seems like (a) weeks or (b) seconds. Thank you, but I can’t tell you how it went. Rules are rules.

Anyway, I have had cause to consider the measuring of what we do. Is it reasonable to measure the progress of children and schools? Yes. Is it reasonable to investigate whether that achievement, behaviour, teaching and leadership are up to scratch? Yes. Does this damage schools? Probably not: the new schedule, as we winsomely call it, is much more sensible than it has ever been before. Does it give a full picture? Maybe not. As Dougal once said to Father Ted about bishops ‘Ah Ted, they just come in, fumigate the place and then they’re gone.’

Children are both oblivious to and troubled by OFSTED. Generally speaking, adult concerns are tedious and while they are nosey about what’s going on, they get back to the dramas of their own existence sharpish. Suits and clipboards are not crowd-pullers. They’re more likely to be outraged by the sheer impertinence of inspection – who are these people? What do you mean, they’re seeing if the school’s alright? Of course it is. Young people see themselves as arbiters of quality: who are these amateurs?

One inspector had had a conversation with a couple of young people over a bin. The responses were thoughtful and interesting, one pictures chin-stroking. I think that’s a good way to find out about a school, but the child was unimpressed ‘He talked to me over a bin. Seriously?’ Another small member was perturbed by the whole experience. Tuesday break he asked me if they’d arrived, and at lunchtime how long they were staying. When we reconvened Wednesday break he shook his head in disbelief that they were still among us. ‘How long can this go on?’ he despaired. He’d have hated it when they stayed for a week.

But after it was over school life picked up again as if the previous 54 hours hadn’t happened. Last week’s dance showcase had fully 29 acts and the time flew, like the dancers. Despite the suits we had a street hockey launch day with remarkably few bruises. 30 Norwegians came to maths. New teachers have been interviewed and appointed for this expanding school: 4 this week, despite OFSTED. Outdoor ping pong proves popular. Photography and art exams happen.

Last night, immediately post inspection, our A level creative writing students performed work from their residential week, to a packed studio audience. Their poetry and prose was witty, poised, serious and a balm to the soul. The anthology is called Everything In between, an apt title for the week. We’ve been scrutinised and picked over, our practice laid bare under 4 inspection headings but it’s everything in between that makes us what we are and who we are: Tallis happy, Tallis proud.

CR 2.5.14

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Banding Together

16/3/2014

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Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square, 1964

I love the list we get in March of our next year sevens. I see the names and picture keen bright eleven-year-olds grinning as they find their way around the big school. I love it that our admissions are handled calmly, fairly and by the Local Authority.

I once worked in a school where admissions resembled the Schleswig-Holstein question. You needed a map, a compass and a Bismarck’s understanding of county bus routes to get a toe-hold in the discussion. There were years when revised admissions criteria might as well have been in Babylonian Cuneiform. Two years running we had public meetings with that Great Panjandrum, The Schools Adjudicator: beat that for complexity.

It was just an oversubscribed LA school in a city where a vengeful providence had put all the schools in one corner. We didn’t go in for aptitude tests, priest’s references, pricy uniforms or parental interviews. We had no choice about and no view on which 11-year olds joined us in September. Admissions were County Hall’s problem. If the LA had sent us 240 penguins to educate, we’d have got with the fish and the ice skating.

As it was, we tried to work out which friends our new children and their parents could agree on liking, which classes to group them in and how to get that perfect mix of background, test scores and gender in every single form group. We hoped for a balanced intake, but had no means of promoting it.

In London admissions are different. Children take a test in year 5 and are allocated one of 4 ability bands: this combines with parental preference to give schools a balanced basketful of children. This wise process is reinforced by the Sutton Trust’s latest characteristically sensible publication. Last month’s report on Banding and Ballots recommends banding to achieve a comprehensive intake, especially in urban areas. It meets the Trust’s laudable aim of improving social mobility through education.

Why is this important? Why is it right to divide children up and then spread them out? Is this not social engineering of the worst sort? Why not make every child go to its local school and let the devil take the hindmost? Why not leave year 7 to the market and the pointy elbows of the argumentative classes?

A good comprehensive school like Tallis is a work of art and a force of nature. It contains within its warm and cheerful walls the raw materials of the good society. Children of all kinds thrown together make friends across the divides and learn something about how to bear one another’s foibles and burdens and how to respect one another. They reject snobbery and develop an immense pride in diversity, community, fairness and justice.

A Head I worked with had a leaving speech for his upper sixth which I’ve plagiarised shamelessly ever since. He would warn those heading off to university to be understanding towards people who had not enjoyed their advantages. He spoke pityingly of young people from dull schools where everyone was alike, who then might find it hard to get along in real life. He said that being an alumnus of a comprehensive school was the best possible preparation for life, and that such young people had a responsibility to keep to the values that formed them, to make the world a better place.

We have to be organised about what we believe is right for our society and our young people. Parents are individually and collectively wonderful, but they need a structure to relax against, where what is right for their children is also right for other peoples. A proper, balanced comprehensive school gives us a glimpse of a just society in which no-one is disadvantaged by money.

It’s not easy to balance all schools and is almost impossible in rural and post-industrial places. Children in some areas would have to spend hours on buses to be part of banded intakes, and that wouldn’t be right either. School buses are at the mercy of the Lord of the Flies at the best of times. Heads in London have little idea of the time it can take to resolve a bus disagreement including soup and chewing gum. But a good is a good, and just because something’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it. If we thought that, who would understand A level Economics, surds or the offside rule? We need banded and balanced intakes in all our schools for the common good. Time to try harder.

CR 12.3.14

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Rewiring

Realistic Utopia

Ladies on the Bridge

One Hand for the Ship

We Deserve Better. We Can Do Better.

Baggy at the Seams

The Curfew Tolls the Knell of Parting Day

Fare Thee Well

Listening and travelling

Fairness on the Earth's crust

Everything in between

Banding Together

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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