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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Frolics and Detours

3/5/2022

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I am indebted in this blog to Paul Muldoon’s volume of poetry of the same title, and, in particular, his 1916: the Eoghan Rua Variations. In it, he discusses the contrary nature of the longevity of English power in Ireland. Caesar and Alexander fell, so why not the English? Well worth a read.
Faber London 2019 ISBN 978-0-571-35499-8.
​
Now the world’s been brought low.  The wind’s heavy with soot.
Alexander and Caesar. All their retinue.
We’ve seen Tara buried in grass, Troy trampled underfoot.
The English? Their days are numbered too’
​

Some people are a pundit’s gift. Social Mobility Chair Katherine Birbalsingh is a worthy successor to  Lord Agnew and Gavin Williamson in these Pulitzer-worthy pieces. You’ll recall that I heard her say (to a thousand school leaders) that she didn’t know what the Social Mobility Commission was doing? This week she’s said that she has no idea how DfE White Paper GCSE targets can be met, and that fewer girls choose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy……they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.” This she backs up fully with detailed evidence: “The research generally … just says that’s a natural thing….I don’t think there’s anything external.” Surely her days are numbered?
 
As the Grauniad said, this prompted anger from leading scientists.
 
‘Dame Athene Donald, a professor of experimental physics and master of Churchill College, Cambridge, said the comments were “terrifying” and “quite damaging” and questioned to which research Birbalsingh was referring in suggesting that girls had an intrinsic lack of appetite for maths and physics.
 
Dr Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who campaigns for equality in science, said: “I honestly can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. It’s patronising, it’s infuriating, and it’s closing doors to exciting careers in physics and engineering for generations of young women. Whilst girls and boys currently choose A-level subjects differently, there is absolutely no evidence to show intrinsic differences in their abilities or preference.”
 
Rachel Youngman, the deputy chief executive of the Institute of Physics, said: “The IOP is very concerned at the continued use of outdated stereotypes as we firmly believe physics is for everyone regardless of their background or gender.”
 
Surely the inevitable will eventually take its course? Surely she’ll eventually be moving along?
 
Sadly, as with the PM, no one is surprised. KB was the Deputy Head who sank her own school at the Conservative Party Conference in 2011. Four years later she set up a Free School and now calls herself the strictest headmistress in the country, as if that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers. Invited to reflect on the scalability of her model, she says – all schools should be like mine, look at the quality of the artwork. (This echoes her 2011 claim that children in state schools didn’t read whole books, in comparison to fee-paying children who might read four or six a year). What? I saw the artwork, which was nice, but lots of us have remarkable teachers eliciting fabulous stuff. Many of our students would think four to six books a year pretty thin stuff. Her pronouncements are often met with well-raised eyebrows. Surely one day she’ll have to give up?
 
I wonder. We have a DfE which appears to be better led in the ‘I want this: Ofsted will inspect it and I’ll name and shame those who aren’t managing it’ style. Around, above and below sit all kinds of Tsars and Tsarinas, favourite MATs and pseudo-research. KB is, to the current government, a very attractive figurehead for the not-very Tory endeavour of social mobility, her media-savvy performances a wonderful distraction from the job in hand. Just like the PM.
 
And yet why say that about girls? KB’s school-based pronouncements about the need for total control and discipline are all about clearing a space for potentially disadvantaged students to not-fail. Because they aren’t given any choice, they are freed to achieve. It is an argument, certainly. So why doesn’t it work for girls doing physics? Shouldn’t the same lie in store for girls with no family history or university or science thinking about storming that citadel? As Mandela said, freedom is indivisible. You can’t raise the economically disadvantaged while oppressing those disadvantaged by gender. Why would you?
 
Part of me wonders, flying in the face of the political zeitgeist, if this latest set of gaffes might dislodge her from favour. Perhaps the cup might pass to someone else’s more reliable lips? Perhaps she’ll get what’s coming to her? Then I look hard at the evidence before me and the sorry context in which we’re in and give myself a shake.  Personal integrity is less important than a snappy soundbite: blame and distancing are more worthwhile than trying to solve an intractable problem; sounding iconoclastic is all that matters. Brexit happened thus, and we sink under its weight.
 
Clever people don’t make accidental gaffes. The PM has never said anything he didn’t mean to say, whether he meant it or not. Oxford-graduate KB may or may not care about girls in physics, but she cares hugely about herself, her profile and her future. Raising the numbers of girls in A level physics and Further Maths has been a long and painful journey for all thinking schools. I wonder if she knows this, has tried her best and not-quite succeeded?  She’s had all the plaudits for so long that perhaps she can’t risk-assess admitting failure. 
​
The world’s topsy-turvy, though. This dust’s the dust that fanned
Caesar and Alexander as each gained ground.
Tara’s under pasture. At Troy, it's clear how things stand.
For the English, their time will come around.

​Where next? From Social Mobility Tsar to oblivion, the Lords or a safe seat? I don’t think she need worry. I think she can say what she likes. I’ll keep you informed.
 
CR
29.4.22
 
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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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Pushmi-pullyu

8/11/2019

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Travelling from Liverpool Street to Ware (Where? How we laughed) was diverting due to tangled announcements.  The outward and inbound messages were delivered tidily together giving the impression of simultaneous forwards and backwards motion. This was moderately amusing for those of us who could identify where it began and familiar with the route. It was potentially catastrophic for the inexperienced and just plain disturbing for those joining part way through the journey. Several people stepped onto the train, then off, then on again in response to what they heard, like an annoying video meme.
 
That the whole zeitgeist of the time feels like a mad seesaw or Dr Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu is too obvious a point to make, making us all miss-step and doubt our capacity to plan or make any progress anywhere. People cope by not listening to the news, not talking about the news, ranting endlessly about the news, making up news or succumbing to despair. In this we have a lot to learn from the common or garden adolescent. Such a youth may be clueless, confused, misinformed, brilliant, tentative, furious, doom-laden, perspicacious, happy or sad within a day, or an hour, or a conversation. They’re like this because they’re detaching and rebooting synapses and suchlike all the time. It’s exhausting and maddening for the child and witnessing adult, but at least we know what it is. Politicians, largely over 25, have no such excuse.
 
I sit to write this in the green canteen, the home of the XFN Study Hall. Not a cheesy radio station, XFN stands for expectations, effort and engagement and is our latest way of tricking and training the reluctant of year 11 into working. Starting in September, we identified 50-odd who needed attention and kept them behind to work for an hour every day. We measured them and released those who’d responded to treatment after 6 weeks, adding others who’d lost the plot or showed no capacity to find it. That was where the fun started. Some of the originals were glad to be out of it, but some wanted to stay. Some didn’t want to stay but their parents wanted them to, some weren’t invited to join but volunteered to join the crew – lured by the custard creams? – and some have parents who want them to join no matter how well they work under their own steam. Some approach with the brisk step of enthusiasm, some have to be lassoed, some adopt a mournful drooping air to demonstrate that the effort required will not be easy to generate. Some come with a current love interest and hardly mind at all.
 
And they all do it in the developing knowledge that they are competing for every mark, for every grade with students everywhere, and that no matter how hard they work they might not get the 4 or 6 or 9. I tried to explain this to an interested non specialist representative of the intelligentsia last night. The logic eluded him. So you’re telling me that 90% might not necessarily be a grade 9? It might be 91% one year and 85% the next year? How does this help? How do you know what to tell them? ’. Good questions, sir. Come and watch us at work.
 
So the excitement and torture of adolescence is compounded by the swings and roundabouts of comparative outcomes: the excesses and exaggerations of press and the politics butt up against the despair and uncertainty of the way we live now. Last weekend another interlocutor, in the west, told me how posh Greenwich is, and Camberwell. And, in fact, Peckham. And everywhere else in south London, well-known fact, poverty’s over, children of austerity not in need. What are we all going on about? Good lord. Where to start? With the facts that the deprivation in London looks less because that in the north has got so much worse? As one might say to an opinionated but lazy A-level student: interesting view point. Come back when you’ve balanced the facts and we’ll talk then.
 
Scepticism and clarity are required skills of the day job. We have to hear the pronouncements of the young through the ears of age. You say you want to go to the toilet, but I think you’re just trying to avoid work. You may indeed have left your homework at home, but chances are that your bedroom is a stranger both to book and biro. You say you were prevented from getting to school on time by a tiger on the pavement, but it hasn’t been on the news so we’ll assume you weren’t. You promise to start revising for the mocks, but every indicator in the universe suggests that you won’t get started before you’re 25. It’s not that we don’t believe you, just that we’ve heard it all before and we know better than you do what you might possibly mean, and why. We trust and disbelieve at the same time, supporting and punishing, interpreting.
 
I hope that the election allows us to think. I hope it is conducted plainly and honestly. I hope that it is focused on the good of all and the best for a happy, safe and united society. Heads have been sent about three versions of the public sector advice about not being partisan in our professional capacity during this time of increased trial, so I hope our trustworthiness is repaid in kind. I hope we can go forward, safely towards some sort of peace together.
 
Two year 13s dressed in black were so obsessed with an argument about graphs that one walked into a wall and the other into me. I said, loving the graph-work, but have a care for the fixtures and the elderly. I know you didn’t mean it but there’s more to life than winning an argument. Is that bipartisan enough?
 
CR
8.11.19   
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Ask for Angela

4/11/2016

1 Comment

 
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Pardon me for mentioning it but I was in the loo of the Wig and Mitre in Lincoln on All Saints Day when I saw the Ask for Angela poster and thought that’s a damn good idea. If you've missed this – and I’m not often up with the zeitgeist – this is a dating safety genius from Lincolnshire County Council. The little posters say something like if your date’s not going well and you're worried about your safety, if you think there’s something a bit weird, go to bar and ask for Angela. The staff will know what you mean and will quietly get you out and whisked off to a safe place of your choosing. Angela the guardian angel, obviously.

Angela replicates for adults the safety nets we know are vital for children. From Childline to the NSPCC, from the trusted Form Tutor to the kindly dinner lady, we expect a worried child to be comforted and protected. We do it all the time. I was on the gate this week and a small person presented himself. It was Tuesday, moved house on Monday and he couldn't remember how to get home. That's a pretty panicky place to be for an 11 year old so we rushed to Reception where Miss even extracted a smile from the sobbing lost soul as she made the necessary calls. Everyone needs an angel when they're in trouble, someone who'll reach out into the hostile world and map you to safety.

We've entertained another Civil Servant from the DfE this week as part of our mission to change the world for the better. He did three days, glued first to a friendly child and then a range of impossible jobs so he could see what we do to protect our communities from political whim. He admitted on arrival (it was a good job l warmed to him) to expecting a big city comprehensive to be a bit chaotic but was bowled over by our calm and happy vibe. He saw English, maths, art, geography, break and lunch duty, staff room life,timetable, data, inclusion, deaf support, the dreaded IER and even did some speed networking for the Year 10 careers gig. He liked the warmth and safety that he felt, and the care he saw in action. He also saw the budget. And what the future looks like.

But we talked about teacher retention and what to do to restock the classroom for the longer term, and stop teachers bailing out. I went off on one as per about intelligent accountability, assessment expectations and unscrupulous school leaders wringing the life out of young teachers but we also talked about the effect of the myriad routes into teaching and the ethical underpinnings of the profession. Except I called it a service, because I think that helps. Decentralised recruitment and training needs really tight principles and explicit expectations if we're to preserve something that was once taken for granted. Kindness, optimism, scholarship (let alone tea and queuing) don’t survive accidentally. Old git, moi?

Which seamlessly segues into part one of a limited series entitled Reasons We Might Miss Michael Willshaw. Himself talked eloquently this week about schools being the glue of a cohesive society which any selection interference will wreck. Go to it, Sir! All power to your irritating elbow! Unfortunately he also blamed local colleagues for not preventing a nasty fight out of hours recently. A tad unjust: these things are the devil to manage and he just wasn't there. Still, one out of two ain’t bad.

We had Year 11 maths and English night on this week and Year 10 careers speed networking with 40 volunteers. Wednesday night was the wonderful Shakespeare Schools Festival at the Greenwich Theatre, complete with an authentically Shakespearean audience, where our young people were slick and witty, Puck on a skateboard, top marks for Bottom. The Dream lives on.

Life should be better than it is for a lot of people. Women ought not to fear for their safety when they're on a date. Everyone should look out for one another and any of us should feel able to ask for help. Our Tallis community isn't perfect, but it’s characterised by genuine warmth not based on a spurious grit ‘n' resilience tick list. Our children have the right to expect kindness and a helping hand when they leave us, and throughout their lives. I'd be proud to think one of them thought up Ask for Angela. #NO MORE.

CR
4.11.16
1 Comment

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Thomas Tallis School, Kidbrooke Park Road, London SE3 9PX
T: +44 (0)208 856 0115   F: +44 (0)208 331 3004   E: headteacher@thomastallis.org.uk
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