Michael Gove's odd schools obsession

If US charter schools have inspired Tory reforms, academic excellence can't be the reason

The new school year was supposed to bring a great wave of new academies. In the event, it will be a trickle. In June Michael Gove claimed that 1,100 schools had applied for academy status. Then it turned out the true number was 153. Take away those not yet approved, and it looks like fewer than 50 academies will open this year. Gove's obsession with school freedom is not being driven by demand from headteachers.

So what is driving Gove's reforms? It is ideology all the way. Look first at his changing justifications: back in 2009, he claimed that his inspiration was Sweden, where a system of free schools was giving parents new choices and driving up results for the poorest. Then the evidence came out. Even in that most equal of countries, free schools had benefited only the children of wealthy parents, widening opportunity gaps.

Since then Gove has quietly shifted his attentions to the US charter school movement. Run by independent providers, charter schools are free to set their own curriculums, and operate outside local controls. Speaking to MPs in June, Gove praised them for doing a "fantastic job, free from bureaucratic control, of transforming the life chances of young people". The reforms he planned were "exactly analogous".

Watching from the US, that still seems a strange star to be chasing. Yes, the best charter schools are thriving: freed from constraints, they're fighting in the ditches – with 10-hour days and Saturday school – to buck trends for disadvantaged kids. But with over 5,000 of the schools now serving 1.5 million children, it's not enough to talk about a handful of successes.

The hard truth is that, the more you look at the US charter school movement, the more the glow fades. Stanford University found that fewer than one in five charter schools were outperforming comparable state schools; about half were performing at a similar level; and 37% were doing "significantly worse".

So yes, Gove can point to successes, but for every one there are two hidden failures. Indeed, of the 5,250 charter schools that have opened here since 1992, one in eight has closed. Last year, nine out of 10 schools in the Texans Can group were rated "academically unacceptable" by the state. On one campus, slated for closure, not a single freshman had gone on to graduate. Yet the Can chief executive still drew a salary of $236,000 (£150,000).

Elsewhere, charter providers have been charged with serious financial mismanagement. Several have been caught excluding huge numbers of students to boost results. Serious concerns are growing over the large, for-profit industry that has sprung up around this lucrative sector. One school offered students $100 to recruit friends, chasing the public money that would come with them.

The point is not that additional freedoms are bad but that, on the basis of evidence, they're a curious obsession. As the US experience shows, schools are not all helium-filled balloons, tethered by government and straining to soar. But nor are they all lead weights, destined to sink without support. Instead, cast adrift, some thrive and some fail; they simply float apart.

Gove may talk of charter schools as a system forging ahead of the pack, but in reality they're a roll of the dice from one that's falling behind. On international tests in reading, science and maths, US students made no gains from 1964 to 2003. On almost all measures the US school system now trails the UK's. Many in a school system paralysed by toxic union relations, perpetual funding crises and fragmented governance have given up on improving from within. Charter school leaders have become vigilantes, going it alone.

That's not an ambitious reform agenda for the UK, any more than it is one based on evidence. In June Gove told school leaders: "Government action has held our education system back" – and that basic disbelief in government – tired old Tory ideology – is driving this destructive experiment.

James Plunkett
The Guardian Comment Tue 31 Aug 2010
http://bit.ly/9yYqAE

Schools reform held up by trade union militans

Michael Gove's plan to kick-start an education revolution has been delayed by militant trade unions and inefficient Whitehall officials, it will emerge this week

Only about 30 of the 2,000 schools who expressed an interest in converting to academies have done so before the new school year, Mr Gove will announce on Wednesday. A further 150 schools are waiting for their formal applications to be approved.

Friends of the Schools Secretary are reported to have blamed the situation on "aggressive" unions and "useless" officials.
One source told The Sunday Times: "It is all going pear-shaped because the unions are being so aggressive.

"Michael is furious about how slowly it is going. His officials have been completely useless. If this thing is going to take off, he's going to have to start booting them about."

Many of the problems have been blamed on a Labour amendment to Mr Gove's Academies Act which stipulated that schools must launch a formal consultation before becoming an academy.

The National Union of Teachers then wrote to all schools warning them of their legal duties. The union has used Freedom of Information laws to establish the thoroughness of schools' consultations and is expected to take legal action against those not conducting a watertight analysis.
One head teacher was warned in a union email: "We regard these proposals as a fundamental attack on state education and…will do everything we can to stop any school becoming an academy."

The plan to overhaul the education system is a key Conservative policy which was rushed through Parliament within weeks of the Coalition being formed. Ministers had hoped that dozens of new academies would be open for children this year and that standards would quickly increase.

A spokesman for Mr Gove said that the process of schools converting was ongoing and that other academies would be established throughout the autumn and beyond.

He said that Mr Gove was frustrated by the behaviour of some trade unions but denied he was unhappy with his officials.

Telegraph, Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor Published: 30 Aug 2010
http://bit.ly/cCoGE5

Allow private firms to run schools, says Ofsted chief

Private companies should be allowed to take over the running of state schools, the outgoing chairman of Ofsted has said.

Zenna Atkins praised the Government's free schools policy, which allows parents and charities to run state schools, but urged ministers to go further by extending that right to profitmaking firms.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Miss Atkins, who has left her job to run the British arm of GEMS Education, an independent schools chain, said that state schools could also improve exam results and save money by learning new techniques from the private sector.

It came as figures from the Department for Education showed that academies, many of which have corporate sponsors, improved their performance at three times the national average in last week's GCSE results.

Academies, which the Coalition plan to expand greatly in number, reported a seven per cent increase in the number of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, compared with the national average of 2.5 per cent.

Miss Atkins said: "At the moment the constraining factor is the fact that academies, free schools and schools that are state funded need to be run by charitable trusts or by the state itself and I think there is an opportunity to expand and look at the role that the private sector can play

"Currently the private sector, if you're running a school, has to set up a charitable vehicle to do that and that seems to be an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.

"A lot of countries are trying to open up the market so that increasing numbers of schools operators can get involved in the delivery of schools.

"At the moment in the UK that is being opened up with quite a progressive policy by Michael Gove (the Education Secretary) and his team but I think that doesn't necessarily need to stop with the charitable sector."

Miss Atkins said the Coalition's free schools, which will be free from local authority control, would benefit from the help of private companies.

"It's a daunting thing for a group of parents and they will need support and assistance in doing that," she said.

"The Government can offer a lot of practical guidance and support going through the process. They don't offer the practical guidance and support in how you actually run the school.

"I think parents are looking for a greater degree of support in that."

She added: "Schools tend not to be run in a businesslike fashion. And that is everything from the management information to basic systems, processes, back office."

Using better systems could help more children pass exams with improved grades, she said, and finances in the education sector could also benefit from corporate expertise.

She insisted that new school premises could be constructed from existing funds despite Mr Gove's decision to scrap 715 projects in the building programme which was known as Building Schools for the Future.

"I think it's perfectly possible within existing funding formulas to run schools more efficiently. Therefore, you can afford to service capital and you can afford the school that you aspired to get while Building Schools for the Future existed," she said.

Miss Atkins also insisted she was unaware of the phenomenon of parents who opportunistically begin attending church in order to win places for their children at oversubscribed church-run schools.

The practice has even led the Church of England to introduce a system to evaluate how often parents worship, to help prioritise admissions.

Asked if she had a view on the trend, Miss Atkins said: "As far as I'm aware Ofsted haven't got any subject matter that shows that has happened.

"You are probably better qualified about it than I am."

Her remarks come despite evidence from different denominations about parents joining congregations in a bid to secure school places.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the then Archbishop of Westminster and leader of the 4.5 million Catholics in England and Wales, told this newspaper in 2008 that he did not condemn parents who misrepresented their religion.

"I wouldn't want to judge parents who pretend to have a faith to get their children into school," he said.

"They'd do anything for the good of their children."

In 2007, the numbers of families doing so led the Church of England to set out three tiers which describe a prospective parent's relationship with the sponsoring church.

Families who worshipped twice a month would be regarded as "at the heart of the church" and therefore their children may be more likely to be awarded priority places.

Less frequent worship would lead to an applicant being regarded as "attached to the church" or "known to the church", the guidance said.

Earlier this year Miss Atkins courted controversy by recommending that "every school should have a useless teacher".

By David Barrett
Published: 7:30AM BST 29 Aug 2010
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Allow private firms to run schools, says Ofsted chief

Private companies should be allowed to take over the running of state schools, the outgoing chairman of Ofsted has said.

Zenna Atkins praised the Government's free schools policy, which allows parents and charities to run state schools, but urged ministers to go further by extending that right to profitmaking firms.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Miss Atkins, who has left her job to run the British arm of GEMS Education, an independent schools chain, said that state schools could also improve exam results and save money by learning new techniques from the private sector.

It came as figures from the Department for Education showed that academies, many of which have corporate sponsors, improved their performance at three times the national average in last week's GCSE results.

Academies, which the Coalition plan to expand greatly in number, reported a seven per cent increase in the number of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, compared with the national average of 2.5 per cent.

Miss Atkins said: "At the moment the constraining factor is the fact that academies, free schools and schools that are state funded need to be run by charitable trusts or by the state itself and I think there is an opportunity to expand and look at the role that the private sector can play

"Currently the private sector, if you're running a school, has to set up a charitable vehicle to do that and that seems to be an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.

"A lot of countries are trying to open up the market so that increasing numbers of schools operators can get involved in the delivery of schools.

"At the moment in the UK that is being opened up with quite a progressive policy by Michael Gove (the Education Secretary) and his team but I think that doesn't necessarily need to stop with the charitable sector."

Miss Atkins said the Coalition's free schools, which will be free from local authority control, would benefit from the help of private companies.

"It's a daunting thing for a group of parents and they will need support and assistance in doing that," she said.

"The Government can offer a lot of practical guidance and support going through the process. They don't offer the practical guidance and support in how you actually run the school.

"I think parents are looking for a greater degree of support in that."

She added: "Schools tend not to be run in a businesslike fashion. And that is everything from the management information to basic systems, processes, back office."

Using better systems could help more children pass exams with improved grades, she said, and finances in the education sector could also benefit from corporate expertise.

She insisted that new school premises could be constructed from existing funds despite Mr Gove's decision to scrap 715 projects in the building programme which was known as Building Schools for the Future.

"I think it's perfectly possible within existing funding formulas to run schools more efficiently. Therefore, you can afford to service capital and you can afford the school that you aspired to get while Building Schools for the Future existed," she said.

Miss Atkins also insisted she was unaware of the phenomenon of parents who opportunistically begin attending church in order to win places for their children at oversubscribed church-run schools.

The practice has even led the Church of England to introduce a system to evaluate how often parents worship, to help prioritise admissions.

Asked if she had a view on the trend, Miss Atkins said: "As far as I'm aware Ofsted haven't got any subject matter that shows that has happened.

"You are probably better qualified about it than I am."

Her remarks come despite evidence from different denominations about parents joining congregations in a bid to secure school places.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the then Archbishop of Westminster and leader of the 4.5 million Catholics in England and Wales, told this newspaper in 2008 that he did not condemn parents who misrepresented their religion.

"I wouldn't want to judge parents who pretend to have a faith to get their children into school," he said.

"They'd do anything for the good of their children."

In 2007, the numbers of families doing so led the Church of England to set out three tiers which describe a prospective parent's relationship with the sponsoring church.

Families who worshipped twice a month would be regarded as "at the heart of the church" and therefore their children may be more likely to be awarded priority places.

Less frequent worship would lead to an applicant being regarded as "attached to the church" or "known to the church", the guidance said.

Earlier this year Miss Atkins courted controversy by recommending that "every school should have a useless teacher".

By David Barrett
Published: 7:30AM BST 29 Aug 2010
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

After-school clubs too expensive, poll suggests

Nearly two-thirds of UK parents cannot afford after-school activities for their children, a poll suggests.

This rises to nearly three-quarters of those parents below the poverty line, the online poll of 854 parents for Save the Children indicated.

It suggested that even basic activities, such as catch-up clubs for those falling behind, can be costly.

Nearly half of the parents polled said they were having to pay more than £10 per child a week.

However, most of the parents thought their children would miss out if they did not take part in such activities.

'More confidence'

The charity said earlier research it had carried out showed many poorer parents would not be able to afford £20 a week.

The previous government encouraged schools to offer a wide range of after-school and breakfast clubs, and research suggests taking part in extra-curricular activities boosts results.

But just over a fifth of parents said they are paying more than £20 a week or £1,000 a year for activities.

Head of UK policy for the charity, Sally Copley, said: "Children who do after-school activities have more confidence, see the world in different ways, have a stronger sense of identity - and this ultimately translates into doing better in exams and getting a better job.

"We're particularly concerned poorer children are missing out as a result."

Children of parents with professional jobs were nearly twice as likely to have music lessons than children in a household with a gross income lower than £15,000 a year, the charity says.

Sport was the most popular activity, with 48% of parents of four- to 18-year-olds saying that their child did some form of sporting activity.

'Optional extra'

One in five took drama or dance and 16% attended music classes. Brownies or Scouts were also popular choices, with 18% of children attending.

But 29% said their children did not do any activities outside of normal hours. And this rose to 39% among those from families on less than £15,000 a year.

Half of the parents questioned said none of the activities their children did were provided by schools.

And with cuts looming, the charity warned the situation could get worse.

While school funding is ring-fenced, many after-school activities are funded by local authority area-based grants which are already being targeted for cuts.

Donald Hirsch, of Loughborough University's centre for research in social policy, who looked at how out-of-school activities can help the poorest children, said they should not be just an "optional extra".

"The evidence is that children with such experiences also approach school learning in a more positive way," he added.

BBC News 29 August 2010
http://bbc.in/bVRyE9

Is the government about to cut the sustainable schools unit?

There are increasingly strong rumours emerging from the Department of Education that Michael Gove is planning to close the Sustainable Schools unit.

In the current economic climate, Ministers are obviously seeking to cut anything that is perceived as peripheral and I can imagine that, at a cursory glance, Michael Gove could easily see the unit falling into that category.

I wonder if he would have made the same decision if it had been called Building Skills for the Green Economy.

Through our work with businesses, we know that there are increasing concerns about how they will meet the skills gap within a low carbon economy.

Through working with schools it is clear that there is a huge desire to run practical sustainable initiatives and that these can create fantastic learning opportunities for students including those who have become disaffected with more traditional learning techniques.

We also know that young people will have to learn to cope with a more resource-constrained world and will need the skills to do this.

Given these requirements, it would be very shortsighted and potentially damaging to the economy to close the unit.

Instead, the Minister might want to start thinking about how it could be refocused to give young people the skills they will need to flourish in the future.

Follow the money

Last week the mining company BHP Billiton launched a £28bn hostile bid for Canada's Potash Corporation.

It is a clear example of a new corporate struggle for resources.

Potash produces many of the components needed to make fertilisers and with possible food shortages, a growing world population and an increasing number of extreme weather events, BHP has realised the long-term value of controlling this resource.

Changes in eating habits are also increasing the demand for fertiliser. More people are eating meat. Every pound of beef requires seven pounds of grain to produce it and this is having a knock-on impact on the need for fertiliser.

This takeover bid mirrors a wider trend as companies and governments seek the resources that will be needed to meet rising consumption

For instance, China has signed a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 2.8m hectares of palm oil for biofuels. The land grab in Africa has been likened to the European carve-up of the continent at the end of the 19thcentury.

What is clear is that resources are going to become more expensive and this highlights the need for us to create a truly robust sustainable consumption and production strategy for the UK.

Helplessness

Like many, I have been overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness watching the continuing suffering of the flood victims in Pakistan.

It is possible that the intense monsoon season has been caused by an unprecedented split within the jet stream. This could also have caused the high levels of rainfall in China where there have been devastating landslips and be the reason that the wildfire smoke remained stagnant over Moscow for such a long period.

Scientists have also expressed alarm at the speed of glacial melt in Greenland, which in an absolutely worst-case scenario could create a 7 metre rise in sea level in our lifetime.

It will obviously take scientists time to understand what is happening and why.

In the intervening period how should organisations such as Global Action Plan react? If we overstate the possible links with climate change we will be accused of scaremongering and distorting the science.

If we highlight the possible links with all the necessary caveats we lose our sense of urgency.

If we say nothing we know in our hearts that it will be too late to avoid even worse weather events such as the current floods in the future.

This is the fundamental conundrum at the centre of all our work and I am unsure how best to respond.

Cycling in Brittany

I have just returned from a weeks' holiday cycling across Brittany organised by the brilliantly ramshackle Breton Bikes company.

It is a great way to see France as it gives you a totally different perspective of speed, distance, the countryside and the people.

Cycling through small villages made me realise how badly the recession is hitting this rural economy. There were huge numbers of properties for sale and countless villages where the sole Bar-Tabac had shut.

Despite this, there was a strong sense of pride, distinctiveness and resilience among the people, which is strongly reminiscent of Cornwall.

Trewin Restorick makes the business case for saving the sustainable schools unit

BusinessGreen, 24 Aug 2010
http://bit.ly/9a81vH

Schools must ‘gird loins’ to get rid of bad teachers

Heads and senior school managers must "gird their loins" and rid their classrooms of incompetent teachers, the new chairman of the House of Commons select committee on education says today.In his first interview since taking office, Graham Stuart acknowledged that heads would need more training to carry out the task of sacking bad teachers. He was speaking as a BBC Panorama investigation to be broadcast tonight reveals that only 18 teachers have been struck off because of incompetence in the past four decades.This is against a background of senior government education advisers and the former chief schools inspector Chris Woodhead claiming that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 incompetent teachers in state schools.
The General Teaching Council for England, which is being axed by the new Education Secretary Michael Gove, admitted that the sacking of only 18 teachers in 40 years lacked credibility. However, its chief executive, Keith Bartley, has put the blame on local authorities for failing to refer cases of incompetence to the regulatory body.
Mr Stuart told The Independent: "Heads and heads of department need to be given more training so they can tackle these problems. "If you're struggling to turn a school round, quite a lot of staff can be pushed out. Typically, though, sometimes now, they don't leave the profession but they just go and get a job in another school – the school thinks the further away the better and so gives them a reference."They need to gird their loins and get the person out so they don't damage anyone's education."He added: "I'm pleased at the abolition of the GTC because all the evidence seemed to point to the fact it was not doing its job effectively."If we're going to give schools more freedom, that level of freedom has to be balanced with accountability – and it needs to be at school level that this problem is tackled."
Tonight's programme will highlight the case of one teacher who was struck off, Denise McKillop, who said she was originally offered a deal of accepting a good reference and leaving her school. "If that is being offered to me who else is it being offered to?" she asked.
Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that in his time as a head teacher there had been several instances of new staff turning up and it becoming quickly apparent that there had been "some errors of judgment" in their references.
The Department for Education said Mr Gove was still considering what would take over the General Teaching Council's functions – whether its regulatory role would be taken over by civil servants or whether a new regulatory body should be created.
Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the parents' pressure group Parents' Outloud, said there needed to be national guidelines for tackling incompetence. "You need to know that if you move to, say, Leicester they are just as efficient at tackling the problem as Bedfordshire," she said. "Parents do worry a lot about incompetent teachers, but I can't think of any action where parents have complained about incompetent teachers – where their complaints have been upheld."
Mr Stuart, the MP for Beverley and Holderness, gained a reputation in the last Parliament as one of the most tenacious questioners of witnesses who came before the select committee. He has an interesting CV for his new job, having flunked his degree course at Cambridge University. "I'd started a publishing business during my time at Cambridge," he said, "which took up my time."I'd always originally planned to become a barrister but decided to stay an entrepreneur."Mr Stuart sends his two daughters to a private school

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Monday, 5 July 2010
http://bit.ly/9ry1GB.

Guess what? The state sector is closing the gap.

By Henry Stewart, Chair of Governors Stoke Newington Schoo

You may not have realised it from the media coverage but this year's exam results showed the state sector gaining on private schools at both GCSE and A level.

In comprehensives the proportion of GCSE grades being an A or A* rose by 0.9 % and those achieving C or better rose by2.2%. In private schools the pass rates in both categories fell. Private school students of course still get more A grades. But back in 2002 they were 3.9 times as likely to get an A grade at GCSE as a student at a comprehensive. Now they are just 2.9 times as likely.

At A level the proportion of A and A* grades achieved in the state sector rose from71% to 71.3%. Not a huge change but a reflection of continued improvement.

The media chose to focus on the fact that private school students were three times as likely to get the new A* grade as those in comprehensives. Why it is surprising that a sector that takes the most privileged students, from the most affluent backgrounds, gets strong results, is unclear. It is a sad reality in the UK, but a reality nevertheless, that educational achievement is closely tied to social and economic background. That they achieve more top grades is no more a big news story than would be the revelation that people who are wealthy live in bigger houses.

There was a lot of misleading reporting. The Observer had to apologise for and correct its front page lead claiming that private schools would get three times as many A* grades as the state sector. In fact the state sector got 70% of the A* grades. The article was based entirely on information from the Independent Schools Council, hardly an unbiased source.

In the Independent, Mary Dejevsky claimed that the new A* grade exposed a gap between the state and private sector that the old A grade had concealed. It is an interesting idea but when I contacted Mary it became clear she had no evidence for it. In fact the state sector achieved 71% of last year's A grades and 70% of this year's A* grades – virtually the same. Mary went on to argue that, if they used the new A* grades, Oxford and Cambridge could find themselves "admitting proportionately fewer state school pupils than before". This is nonsense. Oxford takes 55% of its students from the state sector and Cambridge takes 59%. With 70% of A* grades being taken by state students, the question to ask is why the Oxbridge intake does not reflect this proportion.

In fact there is no need for hand-wringing over the performance of state schools. The sector has shown steady improvement. The challenge remains how to ensure all students, from whatever background, achieve their potential. On this the private sector has nothing to offer, as it has such limited experience. Even in the days of assisted places, private schools were only interested in taking poorer students who were already achieving well. There are comprehensives that do get tremendous results from students from all backgrounds and those are the ones we must learn from and whose good practice we must spread

From the truth about schools
http://bit.ly/bwYxhy
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Educational Visit From Across the Pond

Charter schools are created to make a difference in education outside of the confines of traditional public school systems. Innovative philosophies and practices are embraced, and their success varies from school to school.

So it makes sense that leaders of these schools would benefit from learning from one another.

A group of school heads from academies - Great Britain's equivalent to American charter schools - recently traveled here to spend seven days with USC Rossier School of Education experts and tour key charter high schools in the Los Angeles area.

The delegation was the second in as many years to visit USC Rossier leaders to exchange knowledge and leadership strategies.

Guilbert Hentschke of USC Rossier and Brent Davies of the University of Hull initiated the professional development opportunity for academy heads after the two had collaborated for 15 years comparing trends in U.S. and U.K. schools.

"The academy movement arose as a form of social justice initiative and an effort to try something new because there was a lack of political will or ability to do anything," Davies said.

Charter schools and academies are publicly funded, privately operated schools and, despite being an ocean apart, share many of the same challenges and opportunities.

Both, for instance, have a lot more autonomy than traditional public schools, and both tend to mostly serve inner-city students.

"By coming to the U.S., we're given the opportunity for individual reflection, which is a luxury we don't give to the teaching community often," said Linda Marshall, vice principal of Bradford Academy in Bradford. "The visit was perfect timing in my professional career - a chance to reflect, share and absorb the practices and experiences from colleagues in the U.S. and U.K."

By Andrea Bennett on February 23, 2009
Full article. http://uscnews.usc.edu/global/educational_visit_from_across_the_pond.html?view=full

Today's GCSE results prove that academies work

Today's GCSE results demonstrate the tremendous success of City Academies, a hugely heartening trend given that this formula - which was so slowly rolled out under the Labour legislation which introduced them - can now be rapidly implemented under the new Academies Act. It's always been a con to look at the absolute results of Academies, as under Labour the only schools given such status were schools that were doing poorly. What matters is improvement. Let's take the three Academies groups and look at the ratio of  pupils winning five good GCSEs (i.e. A-C including English and Maths). In the The Harris Federation, which now runs nine schools, there was a 10 point increase. In the ARK academies, a 13 point increase. In the ULT Academies, an 8 point increase. Some other striking examples out today include:-

-Burlington Danes (an ARK Academy) say they have seen a 20 percentage point increase in the number of children gaining 5 A*-C grades from last year from 50 to 70 per cent.
- Ormiston Bushfield Academy has increase of 21 percentage points from 21 to 42 per cent.
- Paddington ULT Academy are reporting a 28 point increase from 34 per cent to 62 per cent.

The Conservatives are rightly pointing to these figures and saying: Academies prove that independent schools do better. We have a major story in the next week's Spectator, a cover piece about the enemies of school reform and the tactics they uses. Bureaucrats and their union allies love to strangle at birth successful school experiments. Andrew Adonis, who fathered the Academy legislation, should be proud today - as should all his Labour colleagues who pushed through this groundbreaking legislation to make this number of Academies possible. Hundreds of kids from poor backgrounds have much better results and achieved a much better education as a result of the brave reforms of the last government pushed through my a small number of determined politicians (and, yes, Tony Blair amongst them). Let's hope this moves to thousands of people under this the Gove reforms. The genie of school choice is out of the bottle and thriving. Academies work. Let's see more of them.

Fraser Nelson, Spectator 24/08/10
http://bit.ly/95f78Y

We need an educated workforce – and an educated citizenry

In an ever-smarter world, all but the most myopic parents sense that getting their children an education is urgent

Another day, another batch of headlines about A-level results, the shortage of university places or – in today's Guardian – the knock-on effect on 16-year-olds of their older siblings staying at school or sixth-form college because they haven't found a course.

This never used to be page one news. So what's changed?

There are two obvious responses, both essentially tied to economics rather than the inherent value of education as such or the ever-popular subplot about the merits of media studies unearthed in an alarmist report today from the right-leaning Civitas thinktank.

One is that, in an ever-smarter world in which unskilled manual jobs such as digging fields or sweeping pavement shrink by the day, all but the most myopic, burger-munching parents vaguely sense that getting their kids an education is even more urgent than bequeathing them a weight problem.

We'll come back to that, since the marginal financial benefits of a bad but debt incurring degree become ever more marginal as the market is flooded with more graduates when jobs are in short supply as the recessionary cuts bite deeper with official assistance.

The second focus – not emphasised sufficiently in the acres of media anguish over dumbed down/up A-level results – is the very obvious point that higher education is a major export industry for post-industrial Britain, as it is even more so for the rapidly de-industrialising United States.

It's worth many millions to the UK economy, plus intangibles such as networking and those creative people who come to research and stay.

Why? We all speak English and, despite everything, we have some very good universities which feature in most global top 50 tables – not just the usual suspects on the Cam and Cherwell rivers, but Imperial and UCL, Edinburgh, Warwick and others.

As a French friend explained at the weekend, anyone who has the necessary matriculation requirements at home can attend a French university – does the same principle apply in Italy? – with the result that they are crowded and not always good.

The French offset this with highly elitist post-graduate "grandes ecoles" in the Paris suburbs, including one attended by William Hague, though it did not cure the foreign secretary of an inappropriate dress sense.

It produces what is explicitly called "the republican elite", which runs everything from TV to Renault. "Only thick kids go to private school," my friend explained. There's no need.

What happens when your (UK) universities attract a lot of foreigners – foreigners who are especially valued because they pay full fees – is that locals get squeezed.

It happens in the property market, too. My neighbourhood of west London has been utterly transformed in the past 20 years by refugees from Kensington who can no longer afford to live there.

Across the capital in Dagenham it's worse for poor people, whose refugees are even poorer.

So the 187,488 A-level students – I love these precise figures – still searching for a university place know they may have lost out to candidates from the EU and beyond.

I once attended a ceremony at UCL (my old college) where a Hong Kong Chinese family had just put a fourth generation through the law faculty.

The issue in Britain is complicated by class and gender. The private schools (7% of the secondary total) still hoover up a disproportionate share of the educational goods – as, increasingly, do conscientious and focused young women – because they are better resourced and (important) motivated to push their pupils hard (and discard the weaker ones? I hear it happens).

This weekend, the ex-health secretary and Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham suggested robust steps to rectify that kind of built-in advantage.

In future, work experience networks – which so advantage people with contacts – should be opened up by public advertising (by law) and restricted to three months. Rather than being free, slave labour "workies", as some of my colleagues call them, should get the minimum wage.

Virtuous thoughts, which arose from Burnham's own unhappy experience as a workie on the Middleton Guardian in his native Lancashire, though I can't help but notice that meritocracy in the French sense worked for him: within three years of leaving Cambridge university, he was working for Tessa Jowell MP. Within a decade, he was a senior minister. Well done, Andy !

Would it work? People with privileges rarely like to give them up without a struggle, be they barristers or firefighters with a string of part-time jobs, and today's Mail is enraged by the parallel kindly suggestion from universities minister, David "two brains" Willetts (also from a modest background) that universities take students with poor results but good potential.

How "unfair" to the middle class, the Mail suggested. But isn't it reasonable to conclude that a youngster with two Bs and a C from BogStandard Comprehensive is probably smarter than one with similar results from UpMarket Ladies College?

They already do that. I know a well-qualified and entitled young man who had to work much harder than he expected to get into med school. The jolt did him no harm.

Tricky, isn't it? I remain unconvinced that the traditional model for higher/further education – the three-year, academically orientated university degree – is the right one for continually expanding the sector in ways that benefit all students.

Not everyone is academically minded. That does not make them stupid, as plenty of ill-educated millionaires routinely demonstrate. Labour's efforts to boost the vocational path (plenty of plumbers earn more than mediocre barristers) seem to be running into the sand. But the coalition should persevere.

Recession or not, we need an educated workforce and, even more important, an educated citizenry.

Guardian 24/08/10

Headteacher Charlie Taylor's unconventional approach pays off

Mary O'Hara meets a straight-talking head who has used massage, tea and toast to change his pupils' lives

The first time I met Charlie Taylor, the straight-talking headmaster of the Willows school, a north London primary for children with severe behavioural problems, was in the autumn of 1988 at university. Despite striking differences in our backgrounds (Taylor was every inch the self-assured public school boy who slotted right in at Cambridge, while I hailed from an inner-city comprehensive in Belfast) we became good friends. He planned to go into teaching, but I assumed he would do what others from his background eventually do (he was a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton) and gravitate towards politics, the City or some other money-laced profession.

Fast forward two decades (we lost touch about 15 years ago) and he's a lauded headteacher, a consultant who has taught in and advised some of London's toughest schools, and latterly the author of two books to help parents navigate unruly behaviour, the latest of which, Divas and Door Slammers, focuses on how to deal with teenagers.

"I got into teaching – reluctantly – and then found I was interested in children who were naughty," he explains, putting his career history in context. "I got my first job in an inner-city secondary school [dealing] with all the rogues. It was a shit hole." One job led to another and, thanks mainly to a burgeoning interest in behavioural issues, Taylor began consulting for local education authorities and doing private freelance coaching with parents and children when bad behaviour was proving intractable. By 2005, he "got bored" and was ready for something new. Taylor was already working on his first book when he came across a vacancy for a head's position at the Willows. "I had no credentials, but I thought, 'fuck it, I'll just go for it'. I hadn't been a deputy head or anything like that, but I had a reasonably good reputation in the borough so I went and was interviewed. I've been there for the last five years."

He may not have been entirely qualified to run a school, but within 18 months the Willows had achieved its first outstanding rating from Ofsted, in part due to his unconventional approach. Describing the scale of the problem on arrival (the school had 36 children aged 11 and under who had been excluded by mainstream schools) he says: "Those first few months, it was like a war zone. I bought a £29.99 machine-washable suit, I got spat on so much". Most days staff had to physically restrain children who were aggressive. "Staff were getting injured and the children were getting injured. It was a complete zoo." Desperate times called for radical measures, so Taylor set about introducing a new regime. "For example, we brought in peer massage so that all the kids massage each other every day. The whole school has tea and toast every day. They stop at 10 o'clock in a very twee way and sit round a table with a china teapot."

He describes his approach as "very basic" and he focused on tackling rudimentary but fundamental gaps in the children's development, such as teaching them to welcome affection. The aim, he says, "is to put something in the tank", a reference to the fact that the majority of children arrive at the school with a host of developmental difficulties against a backdrop of "multi-generation" poverty and chaotic home lives. "[Then] they'll have something," he explains. "A little pocket of confidence and caring and love they'll be able to draw on. We have to do the cuddling bit, the family bit and also the playing bit. Some of them have got no idea how to play."

After making some "rookie" errors, mainly as he learned how to manage, the changes he implemented began to bear fruit. Taylor's experience both at the Willows and elsewhere has left him with an uncompromising view of the root of the problems he encounters. "It's poverty. I mean poverty in every sense of the word: poverty of expectations, poverty of emotions. It's the four horses of the apocalypse in terms of social deprivation."

In what turns out to be a sweeping (and disarmingly candid) interview, Taylor seamlessly segues from his own career and on to the gamut of what he regards as England's interwoven educational and social problems. He touches on everything from the failure of New Labour to address entrenched problems such as the minuscule number of youngsters on free school meals (one barometer for evaluating educational meritocracy) who get A* grades in exams, to the benefits system (he calls it "entrapping"), to why most parents could do with a bit of help adjusting to their children's adolescence.

Taylorbelieves mainstream schools aggravate problems for the most vulnerable youngsters, accusing New Labour of being "incredibly paranoid", afraid to take real risks and introduce reforms that could have improved the performance of kids at the lower end of the social scale. He also rails against politicians in general for an "obsession" with testing and league tables. The introduction of more tests and greater scrutiny weren't of themselves bad things, he suggests. "When I first started teaching, it was so sloppy and slack. Children just weren't being taught anything. It had to change." Rather, he contends that league tables and tests have done nothing to make the system fairer. As for those children least likely to perform well? They are all too often neglected by schools, he says. "I was in one school and the deputy head said, pointing at the lower achievers: 'that's the bunch. Forget that lot down there'. It's a very common [attitude]."

Finding the X factor
While the young children at his school tend to be the most difficult cases, "they've always got an X factor", Taylor says. In an echo of the Conservatives' Centre for Social Justice analyses, he regards their plight as an intrinsic consequence of social breakdown and a malfunctioning welfare system that discourages people from finding work. "It is easy for me to say. Of course it is. But I'm not insensitive. I see the damage. The [number of] long-term jobless hasn't even wavered on the dial." Blair putting "a lot of money in to Sure Start and stuff like that" helped some, but, he adds: "there was a glass bottom that they couldn't get through and there was a benefit-dependent underclass that it didn't trickle down to."

So what would he do to change things? Taylor asserts that "the ideology bit" gets in the way of debate on education, but says he likes the idea of implementing a quota system requiring schools to allocate a proportion of places to children on free school meals as a way of mitigating against middle-class parents colonising the best state schools.

Like the prime minister, David Cameron, Taylor has a confounding capacity for melding ideas from the left and right of the political spectrum – he advocates "pouring resources" into pregnant teenagers to improve their life chances rather than vilifying them, while adding that state schools could learn a lot from public schools. "That's another incredibly political thing [to say]. Public schools are unbelievably successful. Why wouldn't you want to emulate them?"

So what's his verdict on the new government so far and proposed changes, including allowing more schools to opt out of local authority control and become academies? Taylor says he "doesn't know enough about" what academies will mean in practice for a school like the Willows, but has begun to make enquiries. When asked about Cameron's view, widely seen as a gaffe, that the prospect of finding a good state secondary in inner-city London was terrifying, Taylor, who knows the prime minister personally, volunteers: "I would say the same thing. A lot of parents would say that. You don't have to be middle class".

Taylor knows that speaking his mind on what's wrong with state education will bring accusations of hubris. So would he be tempted to cash in some of his public-school privileges and move into something more lucrative or into politics? I am what I am now. I've made my bed. Who knows where I'll end up?"

Mary O'Hara
The Guardian Interviews Mon 23 Aug
http://bit.ly/8ZIvjO
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Coalition education: first 100 days

Of all the new secretaries of state, few could be described as needing a summer break as much as Michael Gove.

A major plank of new legislation, numerous quangos axed and serious case reviews published, not to mention a botched announcement on school buildings leading to a demonstration and a string of apologies.

And his reforms to England's education system have been introduced at break-neck speed.

First to go was the name. Within hours of moving into the Great Smith Street headquarters, the Department for Children, Schools and Families reverted back to the Department for Education.

Legislative changes were not far behind. The day after the Queen's Speech laid bare the new government's intentions, the Academies Bill was launched.

In the face of accusations that it was being rushed through Parliament, the Bill received Royal assent just in time for the summer recess.

But former Conservative education secretary Lord Baker said Mr Gove was right to hit the ground running.

"If he had not achieved this, then the changes he wants to make in education would have been halting and slow and hesitant and would have made not much of an impact even by 2014," he added.

All schools are now free to apply for academy status. Although early departmental pronouncements hinted that more than 1,000 wished to do so, fewer than 200 have applied so far.

Perhaps more important than the initial numbers, is the ideological shift the Bill represents.

The Academies Bill facilitates a move from a state-run to a free market approach to schooling under Mr Gove's so-called "free schools".

Rather than relying on the authorities to determine the best school for your child, parents, teachers, charities and "new providers" are being encouraged to go it alone and set up their own schools using state funds.

So far the department says more than 60 such schools are in the pipeline.

There are more than 20,000 schools in England, and so the number who have applied under the new legislation is comparatively small.

I think this particular government has, just as Labour did in 1997, tried to do too much too quickly "

Estelle Morris, an education secretary under Tony Blair, argues the "jury's out" on the significance of Mr Gove's Academies Bill.

'Miserable pipsqueak'

"If it goes as he wants, and many schools go on to be academies or free schools, I think these are big changes...because it leaves the centre of a local school system with too little power and too few resources to do anything.

But, she says, if few schools go for the plans, then it is little more than a "big waste of time".

In common with every other government department, education is having to make savings.

Axing the school building programme may have seemed necessary, but it has provided Mr Gove with his biggest political headache to date.

Cancelling more than 700 school rebuilds was never going to be easy, but the inclusion of several mistakes in the initial list of named projects whipped up the tension and attacks on the new secretary of state.

He was labelled a "miserable pipsqueak of a man" by one angry MP and on a hot, July day hundreds of teachers, parents and pupils marched on Westminster.

Squeezed budgets

While Building Schools for the Future may have become the most high profile cut there have been plenty of others.

Contactpoint - the database which was to have stored the details of every child in England; playground grants to local authorities; Labour's planned expansion of free school meals; the ending of the Child Trust Fund and Health in Pregnancy Grant and quango's including Becta, which promoted technology in schools, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency.

With council education chiefs being told to save over £300m, and more cuts expected after the Comprehensive Spending Review in October, the bad news is likely to be far from over.

That has led many within the education sector to question the introduction of new legislation when budgets are being squeezed.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says: "I think this particular government has, just as Labour did in 1997, tried to do too much too quickly and what I want to see is a greater emphasis on supporting schools to continue to raise standards at a time when inevitably resources are going to be much scarcer".

Despite the dropping of "families" from the department's name, it does remain a key area of responsibility.


Child protection gained prominence following the death of Baby Peter, with the then Children's Secretary Ed Balls becoming personally involved in the removal of the head of Haringey children's services.

The coalition has already made good on their pledge to publish, in full, serious case reviews which outline the failures of support services.

However, concern has been expressed that this government is focussing too heavily on school reform and that other important areas of responsibility such as child protection risk being overlooked.

Although the summer recess is providing some respite from proposed school reforms, a White Paper is due to be published in the autumn.

Pupil premium

This is likely to set the change train in motion once again.

A review of the curriculum is planned, as well as reform of qualifications from tests for 11-year-olds to the A-level.

Details on the pupil premium, whereby funds are to be targeted to the poorest pupils are expected, and there will be more plans developed on children with special education needs.

But as with all government departments, the ambition to implement reform will have to be tempered by how much money is available.

And that will not be known until after the Comprehensive Spending Review in October.

BBC online 18 August 2010
http://bbc.in/bgZaXg

Teachers unite for academies fight

Teachers and campaigners will unite in a countrywide offensive against academy schools when the new term begins in September.

They are seeking to stop schools bowing to pressure to become academies as part of government plans they branded "a disgusting attempt to privatise schools lock, stock and barrel."

Head teachers and governors of "outstanding" schools have been put under considerable pressure to sign up to become an academy, according to the Anti-Academies Alliance (AAA), which is fronting the campaign.

But only 153 schools have applied to become an academy, a measly 10 per cent of the 1,907 schools that expressed interest, it said.

AAA national secretary Alasdair Smith said yesterday: "Urgent campaigning can stop all these schools becoming academies.

"Given there are about 24,000 schools in England and Wales, it does not amount to the 'schools revolution' the Tories heralded before the election."

Campaigners are gobsmacked that, despite massive opposition, the government's Academies Bill was passed last month.

They argue the new Act has nothing to do with improving education standards but is a blatant political drive to "break the monopoly of state education" and create "educational inequality and social segregation."

The AAA is working with parents to launch a series of campaigns around the country at the beginning of the new school term.

A lack of proper consultation of schools going for academy status will be at the centre of the campaigns.

The AAA believes the Academies Act was deliberately amended to require limited consultation.

Teaching union GMB has also backed the campaign. Senior organiser Warren Kenny warned against cuts to jobs, pay or pensions as a result of a school moving to academy status.

"It is absolutely clear that support staff, parents and governors seem to have been left out of the discussions," he said.

National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower said academies and free schools "will privilege the few at the expense of the many."

Free schools are funded by the taxpayer but run by private organisations without democratic oversight.

Fellow union NASUWT leader Chris Keates said: "The expansion of the academy schools programme and creation of free schools has more to do with breaking the monopoly of state education by severing the links with local authorities than with raising standards of education. 

"Academies and free schools are a recipe for educational inequality and social segregation."

The academies issue is expected to create further damaging divisions within the Con-Dem coalition, with the Liberal Democrats preparing to call for a boycott of academies and free schools at their conference next month.

The AAA is producing a new edition of its newspaper, compiling leaflets and will announce details of more than 20 campaign meetings across the country.

From morning star Sunday 22 August 2010
http://bit.ly/aHsTW8

Academies may prove to be less independent than they think

The 2010 Academies Act might end up giving central government too much power over teachers and schools, argues Tom Clark

Listen to Michael Gove enthuse about academies, and you imagine the educational system as an archipelago of fiercely independent islands, each with a distinctive culture. Rather like Oxbridge colleges, free schools are envisaged as each being blessed with a distinctive ethos. The chief objection raised to this vision amounts to the claim that no school is an island – the fortunes of one are so tied to the other, that some institutions will end up prospering at the expense of others.

That argument is important, and it has been well rehearsed, not least in the pages of Education Guardian. But after a generation of curriculums and tests being handed down from on high, it is not hard to see why the idea of independence holds terrific appeal.

Far less thought, though, has gone into assessing whether the claimed independence is meaningful, or even what "independence" actually means. The legislation hardly helps: Labour's laws defined independent state schools purely negatively, as institutions not funded by local authorities.

Sir Peter Newsam, the respected educationalist, notes that this is rather like "defining a camel as not being a horse", and suggests it is more instructive to consider how far academies are beholden to powers outside their own walls.

Consider how academies fare in respect of the two worries that most reliably render institutions dependent – worries about where the money will come from, and worries about the right to stay open for business. Unlike universities, private schools or even church schools, academies have virtually no independent resources. The revenue comes from a deal with the secretary of state, and in the final resort even the premises can be returned to him or her, to redeploy or sell off as the secretary sees fit.

Under Labour, the law provided at least a measure of security by specifying that there would be formal contracts that would run for at least seven years, but the new Academies Act – which was rushed through in July – opens the possibility of new schools being established from scratch, using the secretary of state's sweeping powers "to give financial assistance for purposes related to education". These were originally intended to allow Whitehall to subsidise particular initiatives, such as scholarships or literacy schemes, but in theory they could now be used to set up and maintain entire institutions on the basis of insecure grants.

The traditional local authority school was, if anything, rather too free of the fear that anyone would shut it down. Rab Butler's 1944 Education Act was in part a response to the totalitarian habit of bullying schools into line. While local authorities could propose shutting a school, they could not actually do so unless the secretary of state agreed. The secretary, meanwhile, could not close any school's gates without receiving such a proposal. With the local tier swept away, however, academies lack these checks and balances. The educational islands have no defence if they incur the wrath of the imperial power in London.

Now, whatever else Gove may be, I do not think he is a power-mad centraliser. He defines himself against the French Third Republic, where the minister could sit in his office and dictate that children all over the nation were reading the same book at the same time. But, like all politicians, he has his own views – think of the great stress he lays on children learning British kings and queens.

The great dependence of academies on the educational centre might make them more receptive to such whims. The real dangers, however, could emerge when we get a new education secretary who has a more prescriptive agenda – be it religious, secular, liberal or traditional. We might then discover that – in the name of increasing school independence – the 2010 Academies Act has given the centre all the power it needs to tell teachers how to teach.
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Does the new A* at A-level make the grade?

Did the new A* grade do what it was intended to do? Opinion is divided.

For the tens of thousands of students celebrating climbing to this new height, much praise is due. With only one-in-12 A-level papers (8%) getting the grade, they are set apart.

The grade was brought in to challenge the brightest students, give them a chance to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge - and to help universities choose the best students. Critics had complained A-levels were not hard enough. But has the A* done its job? Opinions are divided - even on what the job was.

Martin Stephen, the high master of St Paul's School in west London, is very critical of the A*, even though many of his pupils boast a string of them.

"I think it is an outrage and a disgrace," he said."The idea of an A* is fine. Universities need an exam to identify the top 15% of the cohort - unfortunately the A* is not the way to do it."

Dr Stephen dismisses the grade as a "statistical, mathematical device" and says the "fatal flaw" is that no new material was involved.

Pupils have to score at least 90% on their harder A2 papers - taken in the second year of study - and get an A overall to be awarded an A*. All candidates get the same questions.

"It will destroy creativity, imagination and independent thought because people will be terrified of dropping a mark," he added.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, disagrees.

" He said there was "no question" the exams were harder this year - and that teachers and pupils rose to the challenge.

It will destroy creativity, imagination and independent thought because people will be terrified of dropping a mark"

"The questions were harder, the way in which the questions were framed. Over the last 10 years, people who have done A-levels, the A2 questions would take them through A, B, C, D, E," he said.

"It would sort of take you through the answer, whereas now the question just comes at you, and you've got to do the analysis. It's required a different way of teaching." Martin Stephen High Master St Paul's School

Gillian Low, president of the Girls' School Association, said: "There was stretch there and some demanding questions. "We did welcome the A*. It is important to give that stretch and challenge to the brightest."

Magic bullet

Isabel Nisbet, chief executive of the exams regulator Ofqual, says the A* "did what it said on the tin - and did it fairly and accurately". "The purpose of the A* was to demonstrate exceptional achievement at the most difficult part of the A-level. I think it has achieved that," she said. "If you ask me whether it was the magic bullet to answer all questions about university selection - it was never intended to do that."

Andrew Hall, chief executive of the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, one of three main exam boards in England, said: "I think there is a myth to slay here - the A-level is not meant to get harder. "There is a myth to slay here - the A-level is not meant to get harder"

"What was introduced was some more complex questions that enabled the really, really strong students to show how much stronger they could perform within the A grade."

The new format for the A-level, Ofqual explains, was intended to stretch the brightest while not disadvantaging the "C" candidate. Andrew Hall AQA exams

But will universities find it easier to choose the best students because of the A*? The jury might be out on that for some time. Only a dozen or so universities built the A* into their admissions systems for this year.

Those which chose not to include the new grade say it is because they rely heavily on teachers' predictions of pupils' grades when making offers - and they were not sure how reliable the A* would be in the early days.

Indeed, many students with strings of A*s are among those disappointed not to get a university place of their choice this year.

But universities are paying close attention to the grade. Oxford University - unlike Cambridge - did not make offers based on the A* and says it will not do so for the next round of applications.

But the director of undergraduate admissions, Mike Nicholson, says the university will look closely at the results of those it has admitted for this year - and those it did not - to see what lessons it can learn.

"The next stage will be to look at how the distribution of A* grades correlates with Oxford's own selection procedures," he said.

"We will also over a number of years be looking at how candidates with A* grades perform in their university exams."

Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, said she expected to see an increase in the number of courses requiring at least one A*.

"The A* grade - alongside very helpful recent reforms such as access to AS-level unit grades and the extended project - is a welcome addition to the tool kit that admissions tutors can choose to use to help them select students with the greatest potential," she said.

Some fear the introduction of the A* will make it harder for pupils from disadvantaged homes to get to university.

Just 14% of A-level exam entries this year were from independent schools - but private schools took 30% of all the A*s awarded.

Entries from comprehensive schools made up 43% of the total but just 30% of the A*s.

At some independent schools, as many as 40 and 50% of A-levels were passed at A*.

Conveyor belt

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The introduction of A* at A-level has introduced a way for the Russell Group of universities of filtering candidates for selection without the rounded interview processes which have enabled many candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to those universities."

And TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Whatever its intentions, the introduction of the A* grade will do even more to favour the conveyor belt from private education to top universities."

Dr Piatt said more students from low-income groups were now going to Russell Group universities but members remained concerned about the under-representation of students from comprehensives among the highest-achieving A-level candidates.

"Ensuring students from low-income backgrounds fulfil their potential at school is by far and away the most effective way of increasing their chances of going to a leading university," she said. " The A* grade represents genuine top-level attainment"

Schools minister Nick Gibb spoke up for the grade: "The A* grade represents genuine top-level attainment. The most competitive universities have long wanted to differentiate between top-performing students. The previous government introduced the A* to help them do this. It is now down to universities to decide how they use it." Nick Gibb Schools Minister The coalition government has already committed itself to making the exams system "more rigorous".

Education Secretary Michael Gove has said he wants A-levels to "revive the art of deep thought". He has asked Ofqual to make sure the exams withstand international comparison, and wants universities and employers to be more involved in their design and content.

The government will set out its plans in a White Paper in the autumn

BBC 21 August 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11037928
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Multi million schools plan will go ahead

BSF for two local schools will go ahead

St.Helens is celebrating today's news that it has confirmation that two projects under the Building Schools for the Future programme will now go ahead together with the associated ICT investment.

Earlier this year the Government scrapped the majority of BSF projects but left some hanging in the balance.

A £27-million scheme to rebuild and remodel Rainford High Technology College catering for 1650 young people will now go ahead. A £20-million scheme to remodel De La Salle School with partial new build catering for 1220 young people will also proceed

A scheme proposed for part new build and part refurbishment of Sutton Academy catering for 1200 pupils plus post-16 provision is still awaiting a government decision.

Councillor Barrie Grunewald, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Culture,Communications and Town Centre welcomed the news adding: "While being devastated that the coalition government scrapped BSF at least two of our schemes will now go ahead and residents can be assured that we will be pressing the government to come forward with plans to finance our other Schools in the Borough. This announcement will be a tremendous boost for the educational facilities concerned and good news for the construction industry."

Councillor Eric Smith, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Learning Services says: "This is a major investment into the two schools and into their communities, which will support the ongoing regeneration and modernisation of St Helens. This is however not just about buildings and facilities - critical to the success will be the transformation of teaching and learning in the high schools, and the aim is to lift the achievement of our young people in these schools to another level in future years."

From St Helens Council website
http://bit.ly/bVhykA

A-level results: academy to move to international baccalaureate

As pupils at Havelock get their results, all eyes are on the academy in Grismby as it prepares to introduce qualification

Havelock academy in Grimsby received its first ever set of A-level results today, having set up its sixth form in 2008. But they are also among the last for a school which views the qualification as a limited – and limiting – measure of pupils' talents.

"Two more years, and then we will be using the international baccalaureate," said the headteacher, Nick O'Sullivan, as pupils compared results beside a quacking pet duck which shares Havelock's grounds with a wildflower garden.

"I believe that will bring us a richness and flexibility which we can apply across the school at all levels."

Two Havelock pupils illustrate the various pitfalls of the current exam system, despite good results.

Lauren Ward, 18, has won the school its first A* grade, in photography. However, her place at the University of Lincoln still depends on the results of retakes of GCSEs in English and maths, due next week.

"She's brilliant at photography, no one can have the slightest doubt about that," said Janet Shawcross, the school's A-level co-ordinator.

Ward has already set up wedding and commercial business "to earn a bit of money and to get my name out there for when I've finished my studies."

But the two GCSE basics came a lot harder, and the regimentation of grades for university could still, just possibly, mean that she loses out.

Jessica Paterson has got three Bs in English, psychology and social care, enough for her to pick and choose from five university offers. Instead, she is one of a growing number of well-qualified leavers opting to go into full-time work instead.

"I'm just fed up of studying," she said. "I've been offered a job as a support worker and events organiser for Mencap, which is just want I want to do. It'll be great experience, and I can maybe think about going to university later."

O'Sullivan, who was head-hunted from the independent sector to lead the new academy, believes that the international baccalaureate (IB) will nurture and encourage such independent souls. Lauren in particular, he says, has shown "a route to success which I don't think anyone would have foreseen a couple of years ago".

The IB system will feature innovations such as Dutch and Swedish – languages familiar on lorries heading up and down the M180 to the port – and courses designed to help students such as Paterson into work at 18, if they prefer to postpone or sidestep university.

Havelock has been chosen to trial the aspects of the IB, and O'Sullivan hopes that the new exam may also ease the careful targeting of A-level students towards "achievable" universities, which can sometimes fall on the wrong side of caution.

Havelock's system of houses, all named after famous Grimsby trawlers, encourages intensive mentoring of pupils which leads teachers to a good notion of where they will succeed, and where applications to further education might be risky.

As a result, two-thirds of the first tranche of 19 A-level students have got their first choice of place. All the others have got into their "insurance" options, bar two who are still waiting for confirmation or clearing.

"The teachers advised us very carefully, and I'm glad they did," said Joe Wilkinson, 18, who knew by the end of his exams that things had not gone as well as he'd hoped. So he backed up his first choice of Nottingham Trent with Manchester Met and, in the event he failed to make the grades for either, a third choice, Grimsby Institute, where he will now study psychology.

Eyes now turn to Havelock's lower sixth, including two Oxbridge applicants and budding mathematician Aakash Limbu, son of a former Gurkha who relocated to the UK three years ago. He took maths and physics this summer, a year early, and got an A and a B, which he hopes to supplement with more A-levels in order to gain a place at York next year.

The attention comes not just from Grimsby either. Havelock was favourite of the last government, much-encouraged by the former education minister Lord Adonis. And the school's sponsor, David Ross, the scion of Grimsby's leading fishery family who made his own fortune with Carphone Warehouse, is one of the Tories' main cheerleaders for academies.

Lord Plant, the philosopher and another influential adviser to government, who was himself a Havelock alumnus, also keeps in touch and is following the IB trial with interest.

Martin Wainwright
The Guardian News Thu 19 Aug 2010
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/19/international-baccalaureate-havelock-academy-grimsby

High hopes for improved A level results at new academy

THE headteacher of what was formerly one of the worst performing schools in the borough is expecting a turnaround in A level results this year.

Oasis Academy Hadley, Bell Lane, became an academy last year after being placed on a Government hitlist of failing schools.

Computer system failure means the school has not calculated its overall results yet, but headteacher Lynne Dawes said she hopes the results are in line with the national average – which would be an improvement on past years when A level results have consistently been below national levels.

She credited improved teaching - the school has replaced a quarter of its staff, and appointing two new deputy headteachers, as key. The school timetable has also been redrawn, with the school day beginning at 8.30am with lessons, and registration and tutorial groups taking place later in the day.

Ms Dawes, who has been principal of Albany School since 2004 and was then reselected as principal of the newly renamed Oasis Academy Hadley last year, said: "Moving into academy status has given us a real opportunity to improve. We've made stronger links with parents with the mixed year learning groups, which are like tutor groups and give pupils a chance to chart their progress and get pastoral care.

Now 85 per cent of year 9 pupils have a GCSE in media, ICT, business studies or performing arts. We introduced this because we felt pupils were ready to begin a specialism in one of their subjects and get used to having success early. We're expecting our GCSE results next week to be well above floor targets."

Herpreet Singh, 18, achieved two A*s and a B and will go to City university to study law.

She said: "When I first opened my letter I couldn't see anything, none of these letters in front of me made any sense to me. I got what I needed but I'm annoyed about the B in politics. This last year has been quite disruptive. I think we suffered a bit because we were the guinea pig year but I think it will be much better next year. I do think the school has changed for the better."

Demitra Ellina, 18, said: "I did well, I got more than I needed, an A* and two Bs so I'm pleased. I'm going to Southampton to do biomedical science, I wanted to go to university outside London to see what it was like as I've always been in Enfield."

Anfaal Goolamally, who was predicted four As, said she was waiting until she got home to open her results because she was nervous. She said: "I thought I might go into clearing as I haven't applied anywhere but I'm going to take a gap year next year to do some work and get some experience, perhaps in a hospital."

From http://www.enfieldindependent.co.uk/news/8341960.High_hopes_for_improved_A_level_results_at_new_academy/

Premier League hopes to set up free schools

England's football Premier League is considering how it might set up its own education system under the government's free schools policy.

The Premier League is keen to harness the talent of budding English football stars of the future, as do dance or performing arts schools.

It says boys in its existing academies only get five hours of training a week.

Free schools can be set up by parents or other groups. They are state-funded but free from government control.

The Premier League already runs football academies at all its clubs. These academies take scouted young footballers, aged nine to 16, offering them specialist training and coaching.

But the league is frustrated that the average contact time these youngsters have with coaches is just five hours a week, compared with 15 to 20 hours for their counterparts in other European countries.

Now it is exploring how the new government's free school policy could allow it to better develop young talent.

Director of Youth for the Premier League Ged Roddy said clubs were currently working extremely hard to develop young players, but the aim should be to increase training to 15-20 hours per week.

"Part of the difficulty has been a lack of flexibility in our education system," he said.

"But if new measures proposed by the government allow us to create more flexibility - be that through forging closer links with schools or looking at the possibility of setting up specialist sports schools that cater for the needs of a young athlete - then that is something we should explore."

'Premier-league education'

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: "We want every child to have a premier-league education and would be very happy to talk to the Premier League about setting up schools in communities across the country, where there is a local need.

"We would be delighted if they joined the hundreds of passionate and talented groups that care about raising standards for all children and are interested in setting up new schools."

Under the Academies Bill, free schools are set up as academies and are funded directly from central government, rather than via local authorities.

The policy, put forward by Education Secretary Michael Gove, attracted a lot of attention in the run-up to the general election.

The scheme is similar to the Charter School system in the United States and the system in Sweden, where non-profit and profit-making groups can set up schools - funded by the government - but free from its control.

By Katherine Sellgren BBC News education reporter
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10864748

Premier League hopes to set up free schools

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First primary school prepares for academy status

Michael Gove's Academies Act was rushed through parliament last week and now Goddard Park is working through the summer to become one of the first new primary academies

Goddard Park primary doesn't sit in a leafy suburb of Swindon; its catchment comprises a swathe of modest housing estates where many families manage on low incomes or on benefits. It is a medium-sized primary of 420 pupils in the 11th poorest ward in the south-west; a significant proportion – 38% – of children currently enrolled are eligible for free school meals.

Those facts don't scream "outstanding school", observes its headteacher, Mike Welsh, who is also president of the National Association of Headteachers.

But Goddard Park was top-rated at its recent Ofsted inspection, and it is capitalising on that in a bid to become one of the first – perhaps the first – primary school to become an academy in September under Michael Gove's Academies Act, which was rushed through parliament last week.

Welsh has only just received final confirmation that his application has been approved: the pressure is now on to get every last bit of administrative nitty-gritty sorted over the summer holiday so the school can fully opt out of local authority control and be launched as an academy on 1 September.

Full info
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/aug/03/michael-gove-primary-school-academies

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