Category: Lordagnew

We Deserve Better. We Can Do Better.

27/3/2022

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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Skimpole at the Despatch Box

27/1/2022

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Oh! Lord Agnew! My dear!

Regular readers may recall this Agnew’s previous appearances in this column in his former guise as Academies Minister. The eminence grise behind the Inspiration Trust, from where we also got our Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, he once made an offer we could almost all refuse. Putting accountants on the road, he promised a bottle of champagne to any school where his people couldn’t find savings, though whether Chateau Co-op or Pol Roger remained mysterious. ‘Use curriculum driven budgeting’ he cried, as if there was any other sensible way of desperately trying to make four bob educate two thousand people for thirty-eight weeks.

I can forgive him all for this, however, for his magnificent appearance in the Lords last week, resigning furiously over the amount of money wasted by government through ‘schoolboy errors, arrogance, indolence and ignorance’. As minister in charge of counter-fraud he had no alternative but to resign, what with the mountains of fraud hemming him in on every side.

Such behaviour has a touch of retro-novelty in these troubled times. A man is given a job to do, finds he can’t and so resigns. Gosh. From Richard Cromwell to John Major this was once taken as read as principled behaviour, but standards have slipped this last decade and now it seems perfectly reasonable for the power-mad to cling to power no matter what. I write, of course, before the publication of that report, so by the time you read this I may be embarrassingly out of date.

We’re quite big on schoolboy errors here, as we have a lot of actual schoolboys. Picture the scene. A class of twelve-year olds is released form bondage at 12:20 to go to lunch. Queues form in a big community so it’s in their interest to stave off starvation by pegging it down the corridor the faster to bucket across the yard. A man of some experience plonks himself sturdily in their way and after cartoon screeching-to-halts the matter is put up for discussion. He sympathises, but makes them walk. I know what you’re doing because I used to do it. It’s obvious, but still a bit dangerous, you have to walk in the same way that I had to walk. Sorry, lunchers. Committing traditional mistakes anew is a schoolboy error. Getting caught is a schoolboy error.

But there’s a reason for the nomenclature. Schoolboys have infuriating, reckless and bizarre in their job description. While their synapses are forming they’re meant to make errors because they don’t know any better. From footballs to eating to hoods indoors and missing homework, schoolboys through the ages have tended to the random and boisterous, to the flying-by-the-seat-of-the pants, to justifying actions in risible ways, citing necessity, dogs, love or hunger. They don’t always take instruction and they can make you seize your own head in despair.

Much is forgivable in the young but mind-boggling in the old. I wouldn’t expect much sympathy if all of my countless and tedious parent emails since March 2020 had begun with ‘I don’t know what’s right or wrong’ or ‘no-one’s told me what to do’. We’ve lived through a time when everyone was telling us what to do and we, the people, largely embraced it with stoicism and good sense. Birthdays were unmarked, family celebrations postponed, spontaneity disappeared. We thought everyone was doing it – but it seems not.

There’s nothing wrong with childlike-ness. Being relatively innocent and inquisitive, seeking to enjoy life in the moment and to its fullest has a lot to be said for it. We rate optimism and inquisitiveness on planet Tallis. Childishness is another matter. Seeking to excuse oneself, refusing to learn from mistakes, wiggling around the facts and expecting others to love your whim and caprice so much that you can do what you like is not adult, moral behaviour. Bleak House may be Dickens’ finest novel but the creepiest, flesh-crawling-est character is the venial Harold Skimpole, masking greed and irresponsibility in tedious foibles while fleecing his friends and abandoning his dependents.

It's not for me to say what must be done on the national stage (though you might guess what I think), but I refer you to previous messages. Schools are where society looks after its young until they’re old enough to take on the mantle of adult citizenship. All adults are role models to the young, and the higher they’re exalted, the more important the modelling. We have standards for public life, of selflessness, integrity, openness, honesty, objectivity, accountability and leadership. They’re not hard, but they need attention. It’s not always fun to be good, but it is always right.

Agnew’s an unlikely hero. He couldn’t abide being made a fool of and nor, I think, can the rest of us. For me, the example being set to the young is irretrievable. It undermines the democracy and the rule of law that we’re meant to teach as a Fundamental British Values for Pete’s sake. All our lives have been made materially harder by sloppy national leadership.

I’m enjoying Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House. I like a bit of good chairing and he’s a delight. Last week he was trying to calm everyone down, little knowing that he’d still have to be doing it a week later. ‘You may not like this day’ he advised, ‘but this is the day we’ve got’. May it pass briskly, for all of our children’s sakes.

CR
27.1.22

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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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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

We Deserve Better. We Can Do Better.

Skimpole at the Despatch Box

Vain and vapid

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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