Week three and some small girls accost me with a legitimate grievance. They offer documentation in support. ‘Miss, it says in the uniform list in the planner that you can’t wear false eyelashes or nails, but we’ve seen loads of people wearing them.’ They’re right on all counts. I tell them I’ll do better in future. Revision required. Truth to power, bang to rights.

Truth matters. HM Government has been reprimanded in the past by the Office of National Statistics for telling untruths about school funding. Because of this track record of mendacity the recent funding undertakings have been met with moderate enthusiasm by Heads. So, today, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a second annual report on education spending in England, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. I only quote the bits that affect children in our age group, but it is worth a read.

Spending by local authorities on services for children and young people is increasingly focused on mandatory elements and responses to crises. Spending on children looked after by the state is up nearly 20% since 2010 and spending on children’s social care is up 9%. However, spending on preventative services has been cut significantly. Spending on Sure Start is down 62% and spending on services for young people is down 65%.

Extra funding announced in the spending round effectively reverses past cuts to school spending per pupil [but that’s all it does].

• Total per-pupil spending on schools in England has fallen by about 8% in real terms since 2009–10. This is largely driven by a 57% cut in spending per pupil on services provided by local authorities and a cut of more than 20% in sixth-form funding per pupil.
• Funding per pupil in primary and secondary schools fell by 5% in real terms between 2015–16 and 2019–20.
• The government proposes teacher starting salaries of £30,000 for 2022, an increase of about £6,000 or 23% on current levels. Few details are available on how this will be delivered, but such details will be very important in determining likely pressures on school budgets.
• Despite the increase announced for 2020, funding per student aged 16–18 has seen the biggest squeeze of all stages of education in recent years. School sixth forms have faced budget cuts of 23% per student since their peak in 2010–11. The 2019 Spending Round allocated a further £300 million for 2020–21. This represents a 4% real-terms increase in spending per student, but will still leave spending per student in further education over 7% down on 2010.
• Student numbers are growing, so an additional £300 million on top of current plans would be required by 2022–23 just to avoid further cuts in per-student funding. Fully reversing cuts since 2010–11 would cost £1.1 billion on top of current plans by 2022–23.

It may be better than nothing. It may look really encouraging, but school funding isn’t index linked, it doesn’t go up with inflation. This proposed increase, however welcome, is less than the rate at which costs are rising. Will the promise mean additional teachers, resources or extra staff? Will it cut down Tallis sixth form class sizes or reduce our teacher workload? I shouldn’t think so.  

The little ones have got more confident and are picking up speed. Long shiny corridors are irresistible to an 11-year old in new trainers and our day is punctuated by cries of ‘Walk!’ I direct some to Drama every day: ‘Go through all the double doors until you hit the wall then look for your class on the left.’ One looks impatiently at me, as to an eccentric who’s gone too far. ‘I don’t really think we need to hit the wall, Miss.’

Year 11 are facing up to a misspent year 10. Some are being given extra support in Study Hall after school every day, not entirely voluntarily. Some have sought to elude this, outraged by the sheer persistence of adults in league against their frittering away the year. We bring them a motivational speaker of unashamed cheesiness: he’s captivating, and they love it. I sit in on a debate about sex and religion in RE which is loud and beautifully respectful, though distracted by gay penguins. ‘Really?’

I talk to the sixth form about the Supreme Court, and Fuller’s 17th Century dictum be ye never so high, the law is above you. I tell them we live in extraordinary times but they assume that all times are like this and can’t imagine a calmer way to regulate national life, can’t imagine a world in which truth is reliable, systematic, embedded, irrepressible.

We claim of ourselves at Tallis that we mean what we say. The small girls are asking me if it’s true, or if we’re just some more adults who promise one thing but mean something else. They’d really like an answer. I have high hopes for them. 
 
CR
19.1.19

Doubly blessed, Ofsted called on us twice last year. Let me tell you the whole story because some readers, perhaps on Mars, may not have heard this yet.

Regular readers will recall that we had a one-day inspection in January 2018. These were an Ofsted scheme for quick inspections of good schools. They’re also short of cash so it was a reasonable efficiency plan. They didn’t look at the whole school, just stuff they had a hunch about from the data. One option after a short inspection is to say – well, yes, you’re still good, but you need to sort out stuff and we’ll be back after a year. That’s what they told us: look again at maths and English, think about higher ability pupils, and carry on improving feedback to children.  We were working on all of those. We are always working on all of those. 

Perfidiously, the phone rang after 11 months, but we were ready.

In the meantime, there’d been a lot of hoo-hah about Ofsted’s new inspection plans. Realising that just looking at data skewed the way schools behaved, and that curriculum had become dangerously under-thought in many schools, Ofsted declared themselves interested in what was being taught, rather than just outcomes. They were rightly bothered that schools were being entirely turned over to producing the kind of things that inspectors like rather than educating children. They also wanted to tackle some issues in the system, such as off-rolling and three-year key stage fours. Off rolling is the underhand practice of removing underperforming children from the school’s roll so they don’t count in progress scores: three-year key stage fours are said to narrow children’s experiences.
This proved interesting for us once we got the five chaps into the building. We dealt with the off-rolling very quickly. We work very closely with the LA, we take in more strugglers than we send elsewhere and we know exactly where they’ve gone. They were impressed with our commitment but returned to the matter of the curriculum later.

Inspections are half carried out in the Head’s room. There’s a long phone call the afternoon before they come and a longer meeting when they arrive. These check that we know what we’re doing and we have a plan to do it better. After that, they investigate aspects of leadership and management: curriculum, pastoral, inclusion, safeguarding, personal development, attendance, exclusions and so on. They meet groups of staff, governors, parents and students. Simultaneously, they rush about going into lessons to see what’s being taught, or look at a theme. They collect up information and swop observations at the end of the day. Then they invite the Head into their meeting so you get the drift of their thinking.

This end-of-the-day meeting is meant to be open and inclusive, a benefit to Heads. In my experience it’s absolutely terrifying. I’d added a wild card as I was largely unable to hear anything they said. I’d been to the doctor earlier in the week, and was awaiting a return visit. That meant that Mr Tomlin had to accompany me everywhere as interpreter and I was forever asking the chaps to speak up. In these end meetings the Head is meant to be a silent observer, not bellowing what are they saying? like a comedy granny to an amanuensis trying hard not to laugh.  At the end of the second day there’s a final meeting with governors and the LA where the lead inspector reads the verdict and declares the deed done. He or she writes the report that night. After an interminable wait for the report to be quality assured, a confidential draft with a 24-hour turnaround appears. There’s no real right of reply, only for factual inaccuracies. Phew.

We’re pleased with our report. Inspectors have told us to persevere with improving progress. They have reminded us that we need to think hard about the impact of starting GCSE in year 9 and whether all children thereafter follow a broad and balanced curriculum. They encouraged governors in their governing. These are all very fair points.

Inspectors thought the sixth form was outstanding with excellent teaching, great outcomes. They had 30 minutes earmarked to talk to students but were trapped for 90 minutes until students were satisfied they’d got the point.  That’s how we do it here: if in doubt, explain again.

They liked the work we put into inclusion and the personal development of children. They thought that was outstanding too and used the un-Ofsted language of ‘first class’, which is nice. Everything else is good. We’re glad to be good with outstanding features. It is a fair judgement. We went over the whole report as a staff on Wednesday afternoon and looked hard at what we need to do. Governors and school will form this into our next strategic plan, and we’ll put this on the website later in the year.

Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to get this, and thank you to parents who told the inspectors what they thought of us. They’re not used to hearing from so many at secondary level.

Tallis life goes on. Out on the bridge, a rare sighting of Mr Post-16 Study Room at large with an older young person. They pass sedately and are replaced by two year sevens at roadrunner speed trying to hold worksheets to their chests using only forward momentum (which may be the wrong word), shrieking loudly. Below stairs, Sir Detention annoys a detainee by analysing the correct use of ‘innit’ while Ms Reception rushes to First Aid with a little wheelchair. Humanutopia pack up in the hall after a day’s work holding year 9 to account for the way they treat one another. Two visitors are blown away by dance and drama. It’s getting darker, but there’s no snow.

Tallis should be 50 when the inspectors next call. We’d like them to be even more impressed then: Tallis the brave, onwards and upwards! Plenty to be getting on with.

You can read our inspection report here.

There’s an open meeting to talk about the report and related matters on Monday 11 February at 1800 in the Hall.     
 
CR
31.1.19

I’m humming Bugsy as I potter about our scorched landscape. I love this show. It’s a perfect school musical: very little plot, and lots of opportunities for outrageous accents and hamming it up. Much like….anyway, Bugsy next week, get your ticket while you can.

This week was taster days for the New Year 12s and Headstart Day for the new year 7s. Taster day is the only time year 12 spend break and lunch on the yard.  Once they get into the swing of things in September they stay indoors, basking in a very small privilege and an even smaller canteen. Year 7 get an even less realistic experience. They’re met late at the gate, guided to where they need to be, ushered round by current year 7 sheepdogs, given a snack at break and lunch without others looking on. They don’t need to carry or remember anything other than their manners.
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Just as well we keep them a bit apart so they can get the feel of the huge building, protected from fearsome sights. Mr Pape raising money for his tutor group’s trip using the wet sponge method: as a Mackem he’s used to cold.  Or the small youth I encountered last week with his jacket over his head, ruler in teeth, pencil case under one arm, water bottle between his knees, bag on back, and football under the other arm, looking for all the world like Jagger’s Great Western Memorial soldier at Paddington. ‘I’m a bit overloaded’ he remarked as we tried to rationalise his accoutrements.

And in a fit of forward planning we’ve actually been thinking about the Great War, and how to mark the 100th anniversary of its end. We’re inspired by work with the Imperial War Museum and we’d like to broaden our remembrance to fit our community, so if you know people who’ve served in any war and would like to help us, do get in touch.

Our curriculum consultation is spreading too. We had a meeting this week about the issue of the EBacc and whether the Tallis curriculum should change so that all our children take French or Spanish and history or geography to GCSE as well as English, maths and science. The government have an ‘ambition’ for 90% of children to do this by 2025. We are some distance from this figure and even further from liking it. We’re not convinced it’ll help children be anything that they wanted to be. Anyway, there’s a targeted survey out to 300 parents so if you’ve had one please fill it in.

Back to the year 7s. I passed a bunch of them on the stairs outside block one beside themselves with excitement, Sir bringing up the rear. A veteran of many campaigns he’s pleased to get some little ones to lick into shape. Other tutors will themselves be new so have the double bewilderment of guiding new children round a strange land. If you’re newly-qualified there’s a third confusion of quite reasonably not knowing what you’re doing at all, with children, who you’ve just met, in a building you don’t know, where the room numbering is like Esperanto (looks clear but is actually really foreign). Hence the 12-year-old sheepdogs.

However, there’s nothing like a year 6 for finding out information. We had a minor glitch before lunch was ready so the assembly-training needed to stretch a bit. Head of Year sought my public wittering skills but once I’d covered sleep, breakfast, bag-packing, buses, homework and queueing even I ran out of steam so threw it open to the floor. Unsurprisingly, this knocks all other methods of information-sharing into a cocked hat. We’ll build in henceforth.  ‘What do you do if you fall over?’ ‘When is the library open’ ‘What clubs are available?’ ‘How do I start my own’ ‘What if I forget something?’Go to reception. Morning, noon and night. Wait for announcements. Talk to your tutor. Learn to remember. The same answer really: time to stand on your own feet, but we’ll help you to do it. Like our chap with the kit crisis.

So after an afternoon’s whole-staff training on speech, language, communication and memory there’s a gap between school and Prom. Wednesday was the year 13 party, Friday the formal leaving ceremonies for the 16- and 18-year-olds who represent our finished product, our gift to the nation. Thursday a gaggle of staff in various levels of party gear await the antepenultimate viewing of year 11. Mr H has secured bling for the occasion. New year 7’s new Sir is year 11’s Mr Chips. 

This year: more navy or red dresses, a minor outbreak of burgundy suits, three pairs of velvety trainers covered with little spikes, gents’ jackets worn short and tight, one pair gold-tipped loafers, one newly-purple hair (previously blue), one surprisingly impressive beard, Head of Year regretting changing out of her trainers. At the door, the usual security, Ms Gallagher’s speech ‘You look great, we’ll check you over, have a great night’ and me gawping.  No horse and carriage, I’m sad to report, only a Tesla that wouldn’t oblige with a dance. Some of the suits don’t fit and the heels are more trouble than they’re worth, but that can happen at any age.

They could be anything that they wanted to be. Next week is Bugsy Malone, then the final week, then we stop, reset, and start again.
 
CR
6.7.18

Welcome to new readers. I write a blog at least once a fortnight and more often if I feel particularly opinionated about something. Some blogs contain useful information, but there’s a lot of that elsewhere on the website, so these pieces are reflections on the state of education as seen, 39 weeks a yea,r on Kidbrooke Park Road.
This week’s piece is in two parts. Part 1 is before our children come back to us, part 2 after. I’ll tell you how the day went!
 
September 6th 2017 part 1

We’ve talked and tidied and ourselves for two days since the holidays ended and now we’re ready to welcome our young people back. We think we’re ready now, so we’ll fling wide the gates and get the show on the road for another year. Term begins with welcomes to new starters – largely year 7 and year 12 – lots of assemblies, raucous and refined reunions, some tears (from anxious parents) and a lot of hugging. Day 1 is peak hug, which is saying something.

Saying goodbye in the summer term is a really strange experience. We have a lovely last morning, a bit of a celebration and then everyone walks away and disappears back into the undergrowth. People joke about schools being very peaceful without children but actually, they’re not schools at all without children, just big public buildings filled with emptiness and unanswered questions. Two odd ones today. What’s the difference between a noticeboard and a sound baffle? and Have we enough desks?  I’ve never given the former a moment’s thought or thought to worry about the latter. I expect it’ll all be fine. What if I’m wrong?  No-one’ll be able to hear anything and everyone’ll have to squash up for a day or so. Of all the things I lost sleep over in August, they didn’t remotely feature. Cripes.

September is simultaneously the best and worst time to do new things in school. It’s the obvious time because it’s good to make improvements with a fresh start, and the worst because the holidays wipe your memory and you can’t remember the motivation for arcane changes. How did we say we’d avoid that bottleneck? No, really? Cor blimey. A new rota, please, pronto.

I’m not so cavalier about the other questions we think about before the year begins. Why are we teachers? What are we doing it for? What do we really want for our nations’ young people? Do we have any way at all of measuring it? I’ve not written yet about this year’s exam results, apart from the information on the website here. In a nutshell? Sixth form results were jolly good again, with lots of young people getting a great boost into next thing. Year 11 results are a bit impenetrable this year, as Mr Tomlin’s Q and A document explains here: everything’s changed again and will change again again next year. In both sets of results some amazing achievements at all levels, some triumphs against adversity, some just deserts, some inexplicables, some wild inaccuracy, some re-marks. Is it too soon to hope for a new emphasis on our children as children, not examination yields?

If only other education stories in the news had been so equivocal. In what seemed like three ghastly days we had scandals about pay, exams and sixth form admissions. I expect that parents are at a loss as to what Heads think they’re doing?  May I offer a thought?  If, nationally, we can’t agree whether it’s important to hitch up our international PISA scores or worry about children’s mental health, in a system so deregulated that no one can speak for anyone else, we shouldn’t be surprised if people make odd decisions. Confused? Who isn’t? Let me get back to my sound baffles.

We’ve committed ourselves at Tallis this week to keeping our eyes firmly on our children as children, on what they need to fulfil themselves today and this year. We’re thinking about our broad curriculum, our commitment to inclusion and our diverse community. We’re thinking about persistence, discipline, imagination, collaboration and inquisitiveness. We’re concentrating on kindness, fairness, respect, honesty and cheerfulness. We’ll do that all year, every year, and we’ll teach our young people everything we know. At a time of nuclear threat and wickedness the world over, we’ll strengthen their hands through education so they understand the world and can change it for the better. 

CR 5.9.17

October blows towards half term and I take a turn outside to check the elephants and the miasmas and the general views (as Stevie Smith once said). The view from the bridge is diverting, watching the Brownian motion of folks as they rush about carrying news or just chasing each other. Heading back to another meeting I’m surrounded by a group at scuttling height, half a dozen shepherded by a smiley adult. I investigate their purpose. ‘We’re in transition’ they tell me and I have to laugh. ‘What?’ ‘We’re going to Transition, it’s our last Transition Group’. I suggest that they’re in transit to Transition which amuses at least one of them as they rush past. Transition’s what we do for the little ones who might need a hand settling into our big community: looks like it’s worked with this bunch.

I muse about this as we do our second big set-piece of the season, Sixth Form Open Night. We’re a huge sixth form and a big importer, so it’s important to give local and distant sixteen-year-olds a gander at what we offer. Head of Sixth (by his own admission dressed like an accountant for the gig) and I (dressed to match the tablecloths) give it our rhetorical best.  He’s inclined to the expansive but assures me he’s timed himself and so he has, 20 minutes delivered four times faultlessly, graphs, charts, the lot. The stars, however, are the extant sixth formers who charm the crowd. Ellen’s been with us since she was a rusher and chaser, subtle and stylish in black and applying to Oxford, couldn’t do it without Ms McG and the History department. Grace is newer, in a sort of transition too, been here seven weeks and already running the show. She’s got a lab coat over her Tallis Habits tee shirt and dashes off between speeches to check up on science.  

As we manage this year 11 to 12 transition we try make sure that young people don’t make the wrong choices for the wrong reasons. We don’t keep everyone here: our sixth form is largely A levels and solely level 3 courses, so some of our own go elsewhere to get the courses they need. Some want to spread their wings. A few, however, are persuaded by parents to move on when they’d rather stay and this worries us. One or two leave us every year to go to grammar school sixths over the border, which really doesn’t make sense. Our results are excellent and our value-added is outstanding – top 15% of sixth forms anywhere. Stay with us and you get a grade higher than you might expect, including in the grammar schools. Do well in a comprehensive school sixth form and admissions tutors at competitive universities love you. Our people make better undergraduates than those from independent and selective schools because they have their work habits embedded for themselves, in their own habits and minds. However, it’s hard for some parents to see beyond the brand hype of grammar schools and they worry that their beloveds might lose the chance to get ahead of the game. We find new ways of explaining it, so we’ve two enormous banners showing where last year’s year 13s went to university. It’s pretty impressive but a pity that the architecture of the foyer gives you a crick in your neck if you try to read them. 

Chair of Governors wanders around talking to staff between presentations and demos. He wants to hear their thoughts on workload and how the new day feels. We’ve changed the transitional parts of the day; added time to registration and separated the rushers from the moochers in two shorter lunchtimes. Governors worry when staff say it feels exhausting: I worry too. It works for the children but it’s harder on the adults, so we’ll need to keep an eye on it.

Friday is Black History Month Own Clothes Day. The year 10 girls who’ve organised it are clear, committed and very organised and their doughnuts sell out in minutes. A group of boys come to talk about some work they’re doing with Barclays and ask if they can hold a talent show. They all impress me: confident, articulate, brave. But I’ve stuff to worry about: money largely, and the pressures of cyberspace, body image and street life. How we sustain what we do and ease transitions for all our children. How we offer education for the hand and the heart as well as the head. How we change the world for the better.
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Good job its half term, a transitional point to clear the mind. And new drains to come back to!
CR
21.10.16