Category: Ascl

Not Penguins but Pilgrims

11/3/2023

Rain and wind, snow, even. I greeted a colleague at the door in a coat he’d brought from his years in Ukraine, which gave me something to think about, but that’s not what the title’s about. Read on.

It’s conference season so I’ve already been to Eastbourne for the Greenwich Heads and tomorrow it’s the Association of School and College Leaders in Birmingham. At Eastbourne we focused on the link between reading and educational disadvantage and what we can do about it. Also staff wellbeing – for reasons I’ve ranted about before - in the hope of keeping our staff, our hair and our sanity.

The ASCL conference has been rocked by the Secretary of State giving backword and pulling out of the programme. This is newsworthy. It will be my 26th time at the great gathering and I can’t remember the last time the SoS didn’t come.

Our illustrious leader, former Headteacher and reading expert Geoff Barton expressed himself more in sorrow than anger:

We are disappointed that Gillian Keegan has decided not to come to our conference. We very much hoped she would use this opportunity to thank school and college leaders for everything they are doing in what is proving to be yet another extremely challenging year. It would also have been a good opportunity for her to set out her vision for education, to talk about how we can work together to shape a better future for all young people, and say something about how the government intends to address the teacher recruitment and retention crisis which is at the heart of the current industrial dispute and which our members have to deal with every day. But nevertheless we will continue to engage with the Secretary of State positively and constructively and look forward to a time when she will feel more able to talk directly to our members.

Ouch. Given the Gavin Williamson tweetgate (‘heads really really hate work’) you’d have thought she might come to soothe. Or perhaps that’s why not? She should calm herself: it’s not as if we’re unruly. Mr Barton manages the thousand or so delegates like a big assembly and gives us a look if there’s even any rustling. Heckling would be unthinkable.

Back at freezing Tallis, much afoot. We’re talking with good folks who fancy governing. They express an interest to the Chair for which they’re rewarded with a visit and, special gift, a conducted tour with year 9. These youth fling themselves into the task, devising long routes and answering questions freestyle and at length. Today’s visitor got the full service, including being taken to places with which the guides were unfamiliar. ‘What happens in these rooms?’ ‘We don’t know’. I’m hoping this was, perhaps, the sixth form silent study area rather than the boiler house.

And on Wednesday, year 13 parents’ evening, the final countdown. We made some innovative changes to the distribution of teachers which confused everyone, especially the most experienced. Someone still complimented me on our efficiency, which was perhaps an aggregated kindness. I’m thinking now about something to mark this passage, the end of some 2-year but many 7-year relationships. The commitment of your beloved child to a neighbourhood school that you support and value – with eyes open to our limitations and alarums - is a social action that builds up the common good. We can’t afford to have medals struck, but we might run to a card.
Which brings me to Community Day today, where the whole school thinks about a theme.

Using and strengthening local and community links is one of the aspects of our School Plan so today we’re all thinking about A Sense of Place, about being formed by, and our relationship with a particular area. This we merge with aspects of the history of Greenwich and our immediate locality to give us all a better understanding. So many young people without cash or confidence to spare rarely stray from their immediate locality. It’s the same in London as on the estates of the north and the bus-deprived rural villages. We try our best to help them live on a larger map, but seeking richness and understanding on your doorstep is also valuable and validating.

This is one of the quotations we’re using:

You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.

― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Perhaps this is especially poignant for year 13s, within six months of adult life? They may lack the head-space for this kind of thinking, this side of the exams.

There is significant power for change when a community discovers what it cares about. We try constantly to give the best service we can to this place. We know what we stand for and our young citizens tell us what they care about. We listen and we try together.

Which is why I can’t fathom Gillian Keegan’s decision. I don’t know why she won’t go to ACAS. I don’t know why she wants to look as though she doesn’t care. Do we not travel together through this currently rather barren land?

Which brings me back to the title. It’s from a reported conversation with a young person searching for ‘pilgrim’ as the correct term but stuck on, y’know, those small animals, what are they called, penguins? And which are we? Journeying together or frozen out? Stolidly waiting and guarding our young until the storm passes? We need our community around us for that. Thank you.

CR
9.3.23

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On battlements

19/3/2021

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The book of Deuteronomy advises with varying degrees of utility. I take as my text today chapter 22, verse 8 - from the Authorized Version for maximum portentousness:

When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.

Had Balfour Beatty employed an Old Testament scholar, we would have been spared last week’s added excitement.

I’m experiencing the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders, online. This is usually a jamboree in Birmingham involving two of my favourite things: train travel and a hotel bath. Sorry, did you expect me to say ‘networking with other professionals’ or ‘listening to the Secretary of State?’. This year the sessions are spaced out so I can be mildly annoyed for ten days rather than furious for two. A diversion has been the same question asked of each speaker: ‘What are you doing for your own wellbeing?’ The President keeps chickens, the Secretary of State has a dog (I hope he’s got someone else to train it, his bizarre instructions would scramble the most patient hound); Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector isn’t coping very well at all but walks a lot and talks to her children whether they want it or not. I’ve observed before that she’s a fidgeter. The Interim Chair of the Ofqual Board is following the government’s instructions about exercise, diet and sleep. Yes, yes, we’re all trying to do that. Me? Jazz, Scotch and detective stories. He may be right.

We’ve been getting a bit shirty aboard the Ark Tallis. What with the return and the testing and the mixed messages about assessment, teachers are tetchy. The best of us are inveterate planners and we like nothing better than having everything under control and the year’s work planned out carefully in advance. This stop-start online-real life malarkey is the very antithesis of what makes for a settled school experience. We are quietly and privately beside ourselves, though generally with a smile you understand. We are also asking each other ‘what are you doing, for your own wellbeing’. The answer? Just about coping, until the roof fell off.

I exaggerate for effect. It didn’t actually fall off. There was a high wind, a funny noise and on closer inspection, large bits of metal deviously working themselves loose three stories up. When suitably equipped folks went to look, they discovered the problem foretold in Deuteronomy so the repair would have to be effected by the equivalent of standing on a step ladder. This couldn’t be done until the wind dropped, und so weiter.

I hate closing – and we’d only just got open – and the testing meant that some children were having other days still at home – but really, this didn’t take any deciding. You can’t risk lumps of metal falling on children no matter how deeply you’re into conditional verbs and screen printing. We declared Monsoon Rules to the irritation of the young who could see that it wasn’t raining and set about getting them home. Everyone was magnificently understanding, thank you.

Unlike Dominic Cummings, who obviously hopes that chucking blame about like a gibbon will distract us from his single-handed undermining of the first lockdown. I like to follow his rantings because I used to work with his mother, and I know the roads well along which he ranged with unchecked eyesight. Deuteronomy is also pretty fussy about people telling the truth in court, and he was brought up in a religious family, so I hope he’s taking note.
Cummings has this week described Whitehall and the Cabinet Office as disaster zones and the Department of Health as a smoking ruin. These are odd metaphors, best used after a catastrophe and not while people are doing their best. He tells us that the outfit he set up, the Advanced Research and Intervention Agency (ARIA, opera lovers everywhere) will both be much more effective and apparently have a ‘higher tolerance for failure than is normal’.
I’ve got a higher tolerance for failure than is normal. We just won’t get some things done and my obsession with keeping everything within tight timescales is having to work a bit loose, like the roof. I’d have liked to hear that Ofsted will have a higher tolerance for failure than is normal when the nation’s schools start being inspected again, but that wasn’t divulged this week.

Most of all, we hope that young people’s efforts will not be condemned as failure when we start getting assessment going. Wouldn’t it be great if as well as rethinking the smoking ruin that is the broad and balanced curriculum, and the disaster zone of ‘fail’ to which we condemn a third of grades at GCSE we could also rebuild trust in teacher judgement?

However, the youth are fully on top of this. I followed two year 13 boys along the corridor yesterday and one was explaining a major breakthrough to his chum. ‘You know, the best thing about having timetable for the assessments is that you can, like, revise and stuff?’

Enough talk of tolerating failure when it’s your idea but insisting on it for the nations bewildered young. Mr Williamson, you had nothing of any note to say this week, but let me suggest something.

When thou buildest education anew after these sore trials, then thou shouldst make a battlement for thy children, that they may succeed and not bring shame upon thine house, by being made to fall from thence.

Or in the modern idiom, rethink assessment, please.

CR
17.3.21

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Kipling again

3/1/2021

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For a man who seems likely to resort to Kipling at any point, the PM’s been a bit remiss, in this our hour of need. People quote If at the drop of a hat, except when it might actually help, it seems.

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

I’m happy with the first verse which brings me succour. The chances of my ever looking too good or talking too wise are vanishingly small at the best of times and hopeless now when the guidance I get changes each sixty-second minute. I’ll steer clear of the third and fourth verses abut gambling and being a man, but the second part of the second verse is helpful, situated as we are in the middle of an almighty fight between the DfE and the teacher associations and unions.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

A word on nomenclature here. Unions are precisely that. They are affiliated to the TUC and exist to get the best working conditions for their members commensurate with the job actually being done. I’ve been a member of both the big teachers’ unions: the NASUWT because I qualified in Birmingham and worked in the north-east, both NASUWT-dominated areas. I was a member of the NUT (now NEU) when I worked in London in the 90s, because that was stronger there/here. I was appointed a Deputy Head by John Dunford, and dragooned into membership of SHA, the Secondary Heads Association, of which he became General Secretary and which later became ASCL. I held office in ASCL and have come to know office-holders in the other unions: all good people, all committed to children and schools.

One problem in education is that the same organisations end up trying to speak for schools, teachers and children. This is confusing and it’s why the Charted College of Teaching is so important. The CCT should be able to work tirelessly to improve teaching without having to foreground protecting jobs and improving working conditions. Unions can think about those while the DfE then runs the schools in the way that the nation thinks best for children and all our futures.

It’s a pity that it doesn’t quite work like this. The CCT is young but strong. It will play the part of the medical Royal Colleges for us in the future. The unions are trying to protect their members’ physical health in a global pandemic – and trying to get someone to speak for children. The department are trying to keep schools open no matter what.
While a three-legged stool is extremely stable (even according to the Foreign Office, you’d think they had other things to worry about), a two-legged stool is a ladder to nowhere and the one-legged version is just Gavin Williamson hopping off as fast as he can. Despite the significant collective brain power available in the teacher associations and the Chartered College, the department prefers – or is forced – to make predictable doctrinaire pronouncements that don’t move at the speed of the virus. Of course it is better for children to be at school but that’s only true while it can be done safely, which has to include the safety of the adults who look after them.

I was a member of ASCL executive for four years and I take my hat off to Geoff Barton and his colleagues trying to steer a typically moderate course through this hurricane. ASCL and the Chartered College are right about the questions that need answering: what did we learn about infection rates once schools were fully re-opened in September? What is the risk to children and teachers of different ages, in school, now? Why not vaccinate all school staff immediately after NHS staff and keep schools open that way? To which we have to add: what is to be done about the department’s new focus on poverty, disadvantage and children’s mental health in the immediate, medium and long-term? And why, oh why will no-one make a sensible decision about exams in 2021?

I know that children and teachers don’t come very high in the government’s priorities but it has to be possible to do better than this. Shouting at schools through a megaphone then running off and hiding behind a curtain for a few days, releasing the press attack-dogs when the unions patiently explain why it can’t be done that way then bellowing another, contradictory, muffled message a couple of days later that has to be reacted to all over again is not good for any of us.

Mr Williamson, work with schools. Work with teachers. Work with those of us who have devoted ourselves to this corner of the nation’s vineyard for years and let’s try to sort it out peacefully together. If you can’t, then hand over the job to someone who really can keep their head.

Hoping the New Year gets happier.

CR
3.1.21

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Vain and vapid

21/6/2019

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One of Jane Austen’s nastier creations is the ghastly Sir Walter Elliott in Persuasion. Vain, vapid, disregarding, flimsy and partial, he wafts about in a cloud of debt preferring his horrible daughter to his good one. At one point early in the book he’s told by his agent that he must retrench and move to Bath because a gentlemen may live cheaply there. Off he goes and devotes his time to his rich relations. Long story.

Retrenchment aptly describes schools and their budgets since 2010. Beginning with austerity (formerly known as public sector cuts) funding has plummeted. Governments since 2010 have tried doggedly to avoid solving the problem.

First, they said there wasn‘t a problem and school leaders should stop going on about it and do their jobs properly.
Second, they said that there well may be a problem, but that because the money was hiding in clumps and not fairly distributed. The National Fair Funding Formula would sort this out so everyone would be happy. Then the NFFF lost it’s Fair and set about redistributing only the money that was already in the system.

Third, they said that there was, actually, literally loads more money in the system so, like, what is the problem, really? The UK Statistics Agency took a dim view of this. In the interest of balance, they were critical of a union counter-narrative called School Cuts which gave crude and scary headline figures slightly detached from the context. They then issued four rebukes to the DfE along the lines of ‘I am sure you share my concerns that instances such as these do not help to promote trust and confidence in official data, and indeed risk undermining them’. Do the sums properly, would you?

Fourth, Lord Agnew put some embarrassed civil servants on the road to go over our budgets with a bottle of champagne promised to any head where they couldn’t find savings. Churchill Pol Roger at £150 or Co-op Les Pionniers at £19.99? I don’t think anybody knows.

As a top-notch strategy for a major public service, guaranteed to bring about the world-class system which politicians apparently desire this is flaky. Schools have had to devote a disproportionate amount of time – and therefore cost – to dealing with the terrible effects of the 8% drop in funding and trying to gather counter-arguments. ASCL cost it at an extra £5.7 billion to deliver basic expectations: £40.2 billion compared to the allocation of £34.5 billion. The Worth Less? campaign has mobilised the reasonable, the parents and the Tory shires.

It is perhaps hopeful therefore, that the next PM will allegedly make school funding a Thing? None of them have looked closely at what heads are saying but all of them are frightened that the ballot box will be impeded by the begging bowls of headteachers. None of them will say: ‘we didn’t care so much about schools, we don’t really care now but I’ll say anything if you PLEASE elect me. And by the way? We’ve spent the money on Brexit, on nothing.’
Notwithstanding, Gove has said he will spend an extra one billion on schools. Javid promises “billions more for education”. Johnson will spend at least £5,000 on every secondary pupil (which wouldn’t help us in London). Even the hapless May is reportedly setting a £27 billion education “spending trap” for whoever follows her. What should they spend it on?

As part of the OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), teachers in England (and elsewhere) were asked precisely this: 'thinking about education as a whole, if the budget were to be increased by 5%, how would you rate the importance of the following spending priorities?’

The answers are clear.

Recruit more support staff to reduce teachers’ administrative loads
Recruit more teachers to reduce class sizes

Teachers in England want these more than they want a pay rise. Politicians, it seems, will say anything to get a clap. I’m not hopeful but always ready to unlock the coffers and await the coinage.

I’m surrounded by adolescents all of whose brains are being rewired as they go about. It means that they take risks, push boundaries and – some of them – like the PM contenders, will say anything to get out of trouble. I was showing a Dignitary around this week when we chanced upon an altercation in which intemperate language was used by a youth. I was the net winner in this tussle, one phone the richer as I whisked off to a calmer spot. The youth had to be confined to (our in-house) barracks and as part of the punishment, apologise honestly to me. This he did. It might not stick, but it was properly done.

Adults can do it too. A parent was agitated and spoke with asperity. Time elapsed and an apology appeared: time to think, heat of the moment, sorry. Can we pick up where we were before I lost it?

A group of 18-year-olds, in sight of the final A levels, gather to chat on the yard. Eight years of their education has been sacrificed to shallow, doctrinaire, fearful and punitive spending cuts. Above them a small child pelts along the empty bridge at full throttle, full of energy and on a mission. Perhaps he’ll be luckier.

Sir Walter was a foolish spendthrift and the capable Anne was rescued from his stupidity by the Austen’s best hero, Captain Wentworth. He’s described as having ‘spirit and brilliance but no fine friends to recommend him’ much like the state schools of the nation. We don’t need a hero to rescue us, but we need honesty, openness, truth, trust, justice, wisdom, service and an apology. How dare they use the children as a bargaining token in their vain and vapid competition?

CR
19.6.19

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‘Hush, hush, nobody cares’

5/4/2019

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I arrived late for a workshop session at a conference – not one I was leading, you understand – and was handed a piece of Winnie-the-Pooh to read out. I love this stuff and the Bear has been my companion these 57 years.

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.”

The quotation introduces the interim report of ASCL’s new Commission called The Forgotten Third. It is apposite.
Each year in England over half a million 16-year-olds take their GCSEs. A third of these students do not achieve at least a standard pass (grade 4) in English and mathematics.

The commission is asking some pointed questions, common to all subjects:

Why is it that a third of 16-year-olds, after twelve years of compulsory schooling, cannot reach what the Department for Education (DfE) describes as ‘standard pass’ level?
Why is there not proper recognition of the progress these young people have made as they move on to further education and employment?
At age 11, as they leave primary school, a similar third of children fail to reach expected national standards in reading, writing and mathematics. What is happening in homes and schools that means too many children and young people are judged not to be competent at a basic level?
Does the answer lie with: a. the students; b. their parents; c. teachers; d. the content of the GCSEs e. the design of the examination system; f. the national accountability measures?
As one 17-year-old student, with a grade 3 in English Language, asked the Commission: “Do a third of us always have to fail so that two-thirds pass?”

A thinking nation should be asking all of these questions. Might I suggest some answers?

A very small number of children will underachieve because they haven’t worked hard enough. Adolescence is distracting. I’m leaving them on one side.

Some children may appear to be underachieving, but actually they’re doing pretty well, because their KS2 grade may not reflect their true ability in year 6. This is for two reasons. First, published performance tables do terrible things to education: watch Monday 25 March 2019’s Panorama for more on this. Second, national progression data works well in big datasets but is hopeless at individual progress level.

The very concept of a GCSE ‘pass’ at grade 4 standard or grade 5 higher is troubling. We have a single examination to assess every child at all levels of aptitude for testing. So why do some grades have more intrinsic worth than others? Again, two reasons. There are levels of skill that are obviously important for adult life. If you’re secure at that level, you may find adult life easier. Employers expect a level of competence, fair enough. Not all jobs, however, require this level and not all children progress at the same speed.

The real reason for the ‘pass’ nomenclature is a combination of elitism and international comparison. Singapore or Ontario or Finland or Shanghai have a certain proportion of children able to do certain things by the age of 16, so the UK will only be globally competitive if we do too. That’s a superficially attractive argument, but it wobbles in the slightest breeze, like Winnie-the-Pooh’s spelling. Other jurisdictions aren’t committed to inclusive schooling where every child is included in the common school system and its measured outcomes. Other jurisdictions are not beset by a zombie obsession with selection at 11 which serves no educational purpose and depresses the achievement of children in selective areas. Other jurisdictions are not beset by class obsession with private education which undermines national pride in our common schools.

And finally, the very slightly improved accountability measure of P8 itself remains shamefully dismissive of children’s endeavour. ‘Comparable outcomes’ require some children to fail so that others may succeed. It has to produces a failed bottom third if it has willed that the top two-thirds pass.

We value what we measure. In England we appear to value ranking and blame, and their brothers elitism and failure. It’s no way to model human value. We could make a very small step in the right direction by refusing to use the word ‘pass’ altogether. We could make a bigger step by finally, permanently rejecting any threshold measure in school performance. We could change the world by valuing perseverance and effort over accidents of birth and social standing.

I’m happy that people should have to pass a driving test. I’m happy that children should learn how to work hard and stick at it. I’m furious that only the two-thirds who are good at tests are allowed to value their effort and experience after 12 years of compulsory schooling. This can’t be what we intended. As Winnie says:

“When you are a Bear of Very Little brain, and you Think Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

This is one of them.

My title is the incomparable Beachcomber’s parody of one of A A Milne’s more sugary poems, but it captures the DfE’s view of 170 000 of our young people, every year. Look again, Secretary of State.

CR
5.4.19

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News, with knobs on

13/3/2016

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"Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on" A. A. Milne

I like to keep abreast of the eduzeitgeist so I put myself about a bit to see what's what. Herewith an update on some obsessions, courtesy of the Annual Conference of the Association of School and College Leaders held in the marble halls of the Birmingham International Metropole. Regular readers recall that I don't dance, but I do chat and occasionally take a drink in order to gather news.

The Secretary of State was booked for 45 mins but didn’t speak for long. She answered questions pleasantly enough, but had nothing of substance to say. Perhaps she will soon. She wouldn't be drawn on the Ebacc, and hasn’t got a plan to find any more teachers for us except to perhaps make it cheaper to advertise for the ones who aren’t there.

The good ship Royal College of Teachers seems to have run aground. Their speaker also didn’t have much to say, so no news there either. Disappointing: I’d high hopes for it. Bennett the Behaviour Tsar recommended a fundamental text, Michael Marland's Craft of the Classroom (1975) so he's edging into my good books. Doubtless he’ll be relieved.

We talked about curriculum and assessment change. When Balls steamrollered the impenetrable Diploma programme over us 10 years ago, it was fuelled by cash. Now that we're changing every grade every year for five years there's not a penny piece of publicity to help parents understand what's happening to their children. Why? Maybe the department don't understand it, or back it, or think democracy involves effort.

Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, on the other hand, was demob happy. He was semi-affable, alarming in itself. He warned schools against taking part in trash television or wasting money on charlatan consultants and mocksteds (huzzah!). He wouldn't be drawn on the Ebacc either, not even his own previous criticisms (boo!).

HMCI’s had quite the week. Wednesday was retro rant day: Heads are appeasers but should be Lone Warriors ‘fighting for righteousness’. Schools should be run by Teach Firsters full of vigour, not these lily-livered child-centred loons. We need ‘bruisers and battleaxes’. (I refer you to AA Milne’s matchless Bad Sir Brian Botany) Thursday he was berating academy chains whose CEOs earn public money beyond the dreams of avarice.

He knows how to get into print. Unfortunately, the truth is out there. There aren't enough people to fill posts at any level, including headship. The pipeline of vigorous young leaders provides cannon fodder for academy chains to swap Heads every two or three years so nothing gets built up, only brought down. Teach Firsters quit in droves when the rhetoric of the meteoric rise crashes into the long game of quotidian relationships and real school leadership. While quality people might be attracted to a considered, responsible, vital and challenging public sector role, what kind of people aspire to be bruisers and battleaxes, exactly? And do we want them looking after the nation’s young? Why don't parents rise up as one against this stuff? Then he started in on the private schools, so huzzah! again. Really, this is bad for my blood pressure. He is a bit right and very wrong, self-obsessed but fiercely independent. And yet, and yet – a Department yes-man to take over, or an elderly imported American? It could actually be worse.

Not that schools will notice. We really won't know what day it is until 2018, when it might be safe to emerge from the stock cupboards into which we've locked ourselves and the children until the grading settles down.

Year 10 aren't bothered by this kind of stuff. They're being trained to sort themselves for exams. We gather them in teaching groups, then they have to transform themselves into maths groups, then tutor groups. We did it in the dining room, using that comedy implement, the megaphone. Who's to say that its ear-splitting squawking was the Head of Year amusing herself at their expense?

We've got a theatre group and the Anne Frank exhibition. We had World Book Day, a brilliant transgender speaker and Severus Snape shouting ‘Hold My Wand’ to Tinkerbell as he broke up a skirmish. We had heats of the pi competition rewarded with pies. We're wrestling with the budget and the strangely short half term that the Archbishop's distraction-offer of sorting the date of Easter could really help. We're trying to balance every department's needs and probably failing. We're still a bit cold and the new bins haven't arrived yet. Year 12 are on Science boot camp and we’ve the MultiMedia Show to look forward to soon!

So that’s me. I went out into the world but came back gratefully. We're working towards summer, and the light, and changing the world for the better.

CR

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Better in Madrid

29/3/2015

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Warren de la Rue, Total solar eclipse of 1860 in Spain

We didn’t see the eclipse, but Tallis youth described it on Sky News and the radio. Science large and small went and stood on the MUGA and were careful with their eyes, but as the whole of SE3 was shrouded in dense cloud, all we got was a sense of teatime in the morning. A year 11 said ‘It looks better in Madrid’, but that would be so for any March day in an English yard.

The spring conference season brings light and fog to educators. First there was the Greenwich Heads’ Annual get together, then the ASCL conference last weekend (the Association of School and College Leaders, since you ask). This latter outfit’s gig is the stadium rock of our world: 1200 delegates, big name speakers, all the politicians. 9 till 6 then dinner and dancing. Your correspondent hasn’t actually done the dancing since 1998, but I believe that the younger generation still manage it: dancing deputies, a sight to be seen.

ASCL made a proposal this year alongside our usual calm campaigning on funding. In order to protect our children’s interests, what about an Independent Commission on the Curriculum made up of teachers, governors, employers, parents and politicians to review the core curriculum once every five years. That way, we put up a shield between children’s learning and the need for Secretaries of State to make their mark (not literally, though the help would be welcome) on children’s exercise books.

Mrs Morgan is underwhelmed: ‘what our children learn in school should be determined by our democratically elected representatives’.

I used to agree with this because I’m all for democracy, but I’m done with it now. Politicians have an eye on the electorate, the press and their legacies (3 eyes in total). They know precious little about children and less of pedagogy or epistemology. Few of the current cabinet went to state schools and the current enthusiasm for the excellent Greycoat Hospital does not make them curriculum thinkers. Even the CBI despairs, begging for schools to be allowed to offer the rounded and grounded curriculum that their members crave. I strive to be apolitical but here’s what Roberts thinks: stack the commission if you will, fill every position from Chair to tea-boy with political placemen but give us a break. One mega idea (diplomas, EBacc, grit, phonics, Mockingbird) every five years will still get you into the history books but it might mean that a child has only two major upheavals in his school life, three if she’s unlucky. Leave us alone, to think, to plan, to teach. Struth. Commission the thing, would you?

A smaller national conference happened in terrific Tallis last week. We shared a love of expansive education, helping young people think and make links with the world. Two delegates nearly didn’t make it at all because their train went the wrong way out of London Bridge and, in the manner of a Secretary of State, without planning, warning, apology or support, deposited them in Hither Green. Isn’t it the whole point of trains that they don’t get lost? However, our people are teachers and despite all provocation got back on track and arrived on time.

As did the hundreds of young people from other schools we interviewed for our sixth form, the parents who came to find out about revision and the friends who joined the PTA’s Wine and Chocolate evening. We did it wearing lurid socks for Down Syndrome, eating cakes for Ecuador, setting off to Zaragoza or Santander or the history trip or Snowdon or the Maths Feast. We did it winning the year 8 London Sportshall Athletics finals or at the Fashion Show Abstract Couture. We did it because you can trust us to teach our hearts out, if you just let us.

I told them all this in a recent speaking tour of Germany. I describe it thus because saying ‘some nice German English teachers were kind to me in Leipzig and Duisburg’ doesn’t sound quite so grand. I talked to teachers brought together by Klett publishers who use Tallis and Greenwich as a way to learn English. They were interested in our pastoral work and outraged by interference in the guise of accountability. The teachers wanted to know about the triumphs of multiculturalism and goggled at photos of our building and laughed with our Good Morning video. 100 German 12 year olds shared their excitement with us this week: we love this link.

The Germans know a thing or two about politics and the curriculum. Perhaps that Commission isn’t such a bad idea.

CR

23.3.15

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MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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