A Principled view

The opening video to this post shows 2 of our Sixth Formers, Jack Jesseman (Y13) and Niamh Bates (Y12) singing at the Senior Commemoration service at the end of last term 4 weeks ago. Readers might be familiar with the original 1957 West Side story version, or perhaps the Pet Shop Boys remix from 20 years ago.  If not, then at least they’ll know the Romeo and Juliet original by William Shakespeare, in which we learn of the tragic love and deaths of 2 lovers separated by the enmity between their families, the Montagues and Capulets in Verona. West Side story transposes the tale to the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid-1950s, with two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds, the Sharks, from Puerto Rico, and the Jets, a white gang.

(Spoiler alert) Unlike in the original, where both our young lovers die, in West side story, Maria cannot bring herself to commit further violence, and her choice to grieve and claim peace on of the most moving final scenes in theatre ever. As she cradles her dying love, Tony in her arms, she reprises Somewhere:

As I write, another well known family are sharing their grief for their loss of their own mother, tragically killed 20 years ago in a car crash.  Of course I refer to Harry and William Windsor, the sons of Princess Diana and becoming I suspect in their own way almost as well known and loved as their mother.  What Prince Harry has done this last week, and supported so ably by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is to call-out about their own grieving for their mother, and talk openly about the stress and uncomfortable lack of well being still around their loss.  Simon Wessely writes really well about this in Wednesday’s Guardian newspaper “Princes William and Harry break mental health taboos for a new generation” and it’s a good read.

Parents and Friends of the Claires Court community regularly ask about our own break from service, “How have the holidays gone” etc.  Whilst I always reply “fabulous”, because it is such a privilege to be able to take such regular rest breaks,  in truth I always want to add the little ‘rider’ (second spoiler alert) that we teachers don’t just take a break. This Easter, the entire faculty (200+) spent Friday morning after the end of term looking at the ways we could further promote kindness and compassion in our school. Rachael Williams and Louise Hankinson, experts in the field of counselling services and psychotherapy engaged us in their thinking on the vexed issue of mental well-being.  Whilst it is clear that we are seeing an exponential growth in support requirements, both in school and in the wider society at larger, in many ways such exposure is evidence of a healthier society than perhaps one driven by the ‘stiff upper lip rule’.  The slide below shows you the challenge set to us here:

Many of the discussions we have had in school are about updating what we do. The first pro-social behaviour initiative we ran across 10 years here covered the 1990s, at a time when it was agreed across the UK that the use of violence to discipline children had no place in schools.  Corporal punishment ceased at Claires Court back before 1986, and was outlawed in 1998 in all UK schools, but the belief persisted that physical punishment was part of the educative and disciplinary process, and was often viewed as ‘character building’.  To this day, there remains at the parenting level that a smack for very young children helps modify children’s behaviour, and for the under 2s there is modest evidence that it works. However, since there is also plenty of evidence that there are many other ways of inculcating acceptable behaviour patterns in the young that don’t involve the use of physical violence, no-one actually seriously advocates its use at all any more.

The therapeutic approach we have adopted to assist in our community when individuals feel challenged is known as Acceptance and Therapy Commitment, ACT, and we use this in combination with our Values programme and Learning approach, the Claires Court Essentials. As Academic Principal, I ensure our staff continuing professional development programme has 12 days reserved a year, and we need to use every hour of that time to keep up to speed with curriculum development in the face of national challenges and required changes to examinations. But suffice it to say this; we are spending increasing amounts of time, the most costly of all resources to the issue of providing ‘a place for all of us’ , together with ‘time to learn, time to care’.

So as a bright new day opens on our Summer Term 2017, expect there to be a lot of talk about kindness around amongst my colleagues and in my blogs. There is no longer public debate needed about whether it is a good thing to speak out and be honest about one’s feelings.  What Harry and William have demonstrated however is that, whatever the hurts they faced, (and boy have they faced more in their short lives than ever the rest of us have), they have got on and recognised they have part to play in making the world a better place for themselves and for us all.  They have not looked for special treatment, and though they can’t help being privileged by their birth, they have demonstrated a selflessness which we can all admire.  Above all, they have avoided blaming others for their situation, mindful of the need to distance themselves from unhelpful thoughts, reactions and sensations.

These by the way are the key purposes of our Commemoration Service, held every year, held to ensure we become and remain mindful of the need to serve our Commonwealth, be that local, national or across the Commonwealth, whilst recognising the passing of those in our community who have done just that, but lost their lives and passed away over the past 12 months.

The headline is from the Greek historian Plutarch’s account of the battle of Asculum in Apulia (the heel of the boot in Italy) that gave us the phrase “pyrrhic victory”, the kind of victory won at such cost to life, limb and friendship, that you almost wish you’d lost.

I can’t help that the current government of the day is looking at a very good deal of its national policies and wondering a little as Laurel might ask of Hardy “Well , here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”  I could be referring to military matters, such as the new Aircraft carriers that don’t have sailors, or destroyers whose engines don’t work, or the Army more generally that simply can’t recruit to NHS matters, the Prison or Police Service or indeed to Social Care almost anywhere – we do seem have almost insoluble problems.

As you might guess, I am choosing to write about the government’s decisions over the last 2 decades to provide for schools the financial independence so they can get on and manage their affairs. When I entered the profession in the mid 1970s, local authorities were just beginning to give schools the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of local financial management of their budget and these became enshrined across the country from 1988. You can read more of the historical perspectives around these choices here in a National College of Teaching and Leadership module, and it makes an easy read.

Put simply, over the last 30 years the industry has become fragmented in a myriad of small business units (over 30,000), and some have learned how to manage their affairs really well. Plenty have struggled to make the most of being a business as well as an education provider, and those schools in the main tend to be in more challenging areas where greater resources are needed and where the supply of willing graduate labour to work is hard to find.

It’s no secret that London has done really well, recovering from an incredibly low point it hit in the late 1990s.  Back in 2003, the then Secretary of State, Estelle Morris launched the London Challenge, led by its first Schools Commissioner, Sir Tim Brighouse, himself fresh from his successes in England’s second city, Birmingham.   I quote from an excellent article from the 2013 Guardian Newspaper:

” The London Challenge had a simple moral imperative: to have every young person in London receive a good, or better, education. Along with additional funding, a minister with specific responsibility for London schools was appointed. These two factors, supported by a single policy objective and a first-class team of officials in the Department for Education, gave the project a head start. The credibility of, and respect for, Tim Brighouse were crucial in getting local authorities, schools and teachers to believe in the project’s goal, and to secure their support. Their involvement in shaping the project ensured it was seen not as yet another top-down initiative but as one that included the ideas of key players.
The key components of the London Challenge were a close focus on raising the quality of school leadership and on the quality of teaching and learning. This focus was achieved through a leadership training programme for existing and aspirant leaders, and professional development and support for teachers seeking to improve their teaching. Another important part of the London Challenge was the detailed use of data, not only about the school overall but about the performance of individual subject departments and of students from ethnic groups.  The data was used to create “families” of schools with common characteristics. This enabled the London Challenge advisers to make clear to schools that their performance could not be defended on the grounds of being different in some way from every other school: there was no hiding place.”

On a personal perspective, I learned a lot from Tim Brighouse’s work, probably most specifically about bis ‘Butterfly effect‘ whereby High Impact/Low Effort interventions

could be made in schools.  Here’s Sir Tim on his small creatures: “My favourite sport – collecting ‘butterflies’ of good school practice – derives from chaos theory which is best illustrated by an example:  that if sufficient butterflies whirr their wings in the Amazonian rain forests, then it can set off a chain of climate change that eventually can cause a tornado in the United States.”

We bought multiple copies of his small book (2006) on School Improvement, Essential Pieces: The jigsaw of a successful school  and and shared them around our leadership group. 11 years later, we have much to thank Sir Tim for at Claires Court, as you’ll recognise from this small ‘piece’ from his puzzle, in which he identified the need to be communicative, collaborative and creative!

From the evidence from the London Challenge, the concept developed of Multi-Academy Trusts, which could build families of schools sharing the same kinds of pupils and characteristics, supporting each other , with direct challenge spin-offs to Manchester and the Black Country.  In truth, one of the major reasons why the London Challenge was so successful is the extra heavy funding London schools received in order to meet the genuine ‘challenges’ Sir Tim and his team discovered. Long past the Challenge’s closure in 2011, London has continued to enjoy that much heavier spending, and it is now the single most successful city in the land.

And now comes the crunch: schools across the country, be they in local authority hands or academy ownership have adopted many of these really successful ideas pioneered in London’s schools, though have not received much of the additional funding needed to ensure the programmes are full embedded and developed.  In parts of the country, such as those very near me in Wokingham and West Berkshire, funding has barely moved, so headteachers have had to be particularly creative to meet the growth in activity needed to truly make their schools successful.

From 2010 austerity struck, though it was said that education was to be protected. In some ways it was, but the growing numbers of pupils entering primary schools are now moving into secondary, so schools have been required to do more with the same money. In 2016, schools saw an increase in their employer contributions to both NI and pensions, and in 2017, tax rises in rates and apprenticeship charges add to the costs. So the net revenue available to schools is shrinking, at a time when an ageing work force is retiring more rapidly, recent entrants are staying for a shorter time (less than  5 years, and new recruitment has been well under target for years.

And finally, schools are now facing a readjustment of the monies they receive for each pupil. It is said that more than 50% of schools are going to gain a little or stay static, but in that large minority of schools, revenue is going to shrink, and for London schools, really by quite a lot. We now have the perfect scenario, as seen in BCE279: the schools are set facing the government, much as King Pyrrhus of Epirus did against Consul Publius Decius Mus and his  Roman army back in 279 BC at the battle of Asculum in Apulia.  Whoever wins this titanic struggle of provision against costs, there will be no victory worth celebrating. For schools to cut back their staffing so they have a working budget for the next 3 years, they will have to cut all the programmes and increased staffing levels needed to ensure the provision identified by the London Challenge remains secure. This is why 1 local headteacher, Mary Sandell of The Forest School resigned so publicly last month, and why others are going quietly into retirement or relocation for similar reasons.  The growth in new schools and expansion in existing schools is also badly affected by the sheer lack of teachers available in the locality. As with Pyrrhus, the state sector finds its friends are being cut down to the left and the right, is shorn of new troops to provide replacement and of resources to re-equip.  And from central command it hears some very odd and conflicting messages; one that what the country needs are new grammar schools, the other that schools can employ unqualified teachers to fill the roles needed in schools.

People unqualified for the role are no more fit to teach than they are to work in hospitals or prisons, to detect crime or manage dementia, to bear arms in the military or to sail aircraft carriers. Government can call the shots as much as it likes, but they need to be carefully crafted and well thought out.  If not, it may indeed win the perceived battle its sees to conquer our financial crisis, but it will emerge when it declares its victory over austerity without the well-educated workforce we need to populate our industries, public or private on which we place our trust to provide for our defence, our health, our care and safety, or the future education of our children.

Early March saw our IGCSE results in English and Maths released from the January series of examinations, for many Year 11 pupils this being their introduction into the suite of exam finals they are to take in May and June. Results were as you would expect a mixed bag, because that’s indicative of our broad ability intake, but with A* and As abounding it’s a reminder to all that for many terminal exams without coursework are a ‘good thing’.

The IGCSE examinations themselves have been around for 30 years, introduced at the same time as the England & Wales based GCSEs, and replaced the old O levels and CSE examinations. The new home-based GCSEs had large elements of coursework, indeed English was permitted to move to 100% coursework in the early years.  Verification and validation of coursework marking were managed by examiner visits and representative sampling of exam scripts, which were sent direct to the exam boards.  IGCSEs were developed to be sat all over the world, but it was clearly impractical to send examiners from England to local centres abroad, and so the IGCSE started and have remained as courses supported by terminal examinations only. Inevitably, the exponents of the new style of course with more coursework and less examination considered the new GCSEs better, as the graduating students were made more aware of what they knew, understood and could do through the 2-year educational process.  Graduates of the terminal exam process never had the opportunity to ‘improve’ their work over the 2 period of study, so had to be good enough in one hit, so to speak.

The immediate effect of the new GCSE courses was that children’s school achievement dramatically improved, with so many top level grades being achieved by the students, released from the stifling effect of the old terminal examination test of knowledge (the old O level). With impressive efficiency, teachers learned what the systems were to maximise best effect coursework, and results continued to improve through the 1990s and ‘noughties’. Sadly, whilst results improved, the actual literacy, numeracy and skill-base in 16 year old pupils did not improve, as seen by Sixth Forms, Universities and Employers alike, so the suspicion of ‘gaming’ even ‘cheating’ the system grew in the onlookers’ minds. 10 years or more ago, to counteract this ‘problem’, coursework was swapped out for ‘controlled assessments’, min-public exams during the 2 year GCSE programme, which would solve the perceived woes of coursework. Job done, verification and validation swapped out for external marking, and public confidence in the GCSE exam process restored.

Except not quite, for the public exam bodies started noting that individual exam centres had continued to make further, sometimes rather too dramatic improvements for their students. Anecdotal evidence emerged about children being placed in classrooms and asked to copy down answers from the board, and whistle blowers in schools started to write about the blatant cheating taking place.  Here’s an article from the Secret teacher published in the Guardian in June 2015 “Controlled assessments are not properly scrutinised by line managers and exam boards, a problem that gets worse every year. More and more teachers allow students to use extensive written notes when only limited prompts are allowed. In April I found students in the library “redrafting” controlled assessments for the sixth or seventh time when they should not be attempted more than once.” 

The elements of the above have led to huge volumes of conflict within the profession, creating a real sense of Cognitive Dissonance for all. In many schools it seems, with the endless raft of assessment going on, the most effective way to ensure the best outcomes for the children was to enable them to cheat – “Out the window with Integrity” said one type of teacher – “I get my *performance bonus*, the children get their grades, what’s to worry?”

The Government felt it had to act, and called for the cancelling of all controlled assessments, and the new terminal examination GCSEs are rolling out in schools, with English, English Literature and Maths arriving this Summer in new terminal form, together with new number values (1-9) to replace the former letter grades (G-A*). By the Summer of 2019, all the old GCSEs will have been consigned to the scrap bin, and the opportunities for teachers to ‘cheat ‘ removed.  Hoorah say one and all.

Many Independent schools, Claires Court included, found that they needed to move away from GCSEs with controlled assessments for other reasons, not least because the 110+ tests an average independent school child taking 10 GCSE were rapidly becoming almost all the child had time to do in the 2 year period.  To be honest, as the course actually only covered some 60 weeks over the duration of the course, this made teaching all about the test and little else; failed ‘controlled assessments could be retaken, which only compounded the felony.  A child receiving a ‘b’  as opposed to a ‘a*’ (lower case grades being the way these mini tests were reported) immediately encouraged taking the assessment an extra time, which meant even more sessions were lost to the test.

Fortunately, the GCSE world of controlled assessments has been short lived, and the new GCSEs feel very much like the IGCSEs that have continued to be sat throughout the intervening period. Teachers and pupils are having to learn/relearn how to teach and study for terminal examinations, with far fewer indicators available to determine progress along the way.  It’s changing teacher  and pupil work load too, because work covered previously has to be resurfaced and considered anew, in the light of the broader thematic considerations that can now be introduced into the testing process.  Teachers probably have to be thinking all around the landscape, encouraging their students to do so too, because of course, we have absolutely no idea what questions will be set, or what the marking scheme will look like!!!

But the joy of all this uncertainty is that we will teach more effectively, the courses will be more creative and engaging; the children will genuinely feel (and we know this now because they are in Year 10) that school is more than just a series of interminable tests – actually we had broken away in about half-the subjects anyway, so even Year 11 feel they have had some time to be ‘free spirits’ with their learning.  Whilst the changes do not guarantee ‘Excellent achievement for all’, they make the outcomes even more likely.

And finally, as an Independent school, because we are not constrained by DfE rules about who does what, we have IGCSEs and GCSEs in whatever mix we wish. Whatever type of GCSEs you take, we still have the issues of a mix of letters and numbers for a couple of years, so it doesn’t honestly matter whether you get a Letter grade or a Number value. Universities and Employers of course are going to see the mix of alphabet soup for years to come, and the confusion will last as long as it did when the old O levels and CSEs moved from numbers to letters back 40 years ago.

*Readers of A Principled View might be surprised to learn that the Principals of Claires Court do not offer performance based pay.  We prefer to ensure our staff are well rewarded for their work and to ensure that if pay is to rise, it does for all. 

It’s that time of year in which the Christian season of Lent is due to commence, (Wednesday 1 March), and families consider what ‘treat’ they are going to give up as a sign of their engagement with a 40 day period of abstinence.  It might be chocolate, or other such sweet treats, and for those that have not yet endured a ‘dry’ January, perhaps a few weeks without alcohol provides substitute.

Here in school we have largely ‘given up’ giving things up, and have for many years chosen to do something extra to make other people’s lives a little better. This has morphed into our 3 for 3 week, where the 3 schools seek to identify through their school councils up to 3 local charities they wish to support that enrich the lives of other children. And this work is certainly inspiring for many in our community, causing a vast array of activities spanning from the selling of cakes through to the massed spectacle of the B7 Fancy Dress walk.

So here’s my ‘little bit extra’ challenge for families and friends – I challenge you to ‘Park your Technology’ from bedtime to morning whilst at home. The idea is born of the many and varied tales we have now that adults and children in families are rather too wedded to their technology, their phone/handheld, being unable to be apart for more than a few seconds when at leisure. Now be that as it may, the reality would appear to be more sinister than just possession; indeed it is the very interaction with the device that is causing the development of addiction and symptoms of withdrawal in regular habitual users of such mobile technology.

The deal is this – for no money at all, dear reader, you can claim your sticky ‘tag’ from me. This tag is of the indestructible, showerproof kind, usually used for wristbands. In this band’s case, it is designed to be stuck around the handle of a small basket as in the picture at the top, and used by families for family designed rules. You might choose to have it by the front door, so that all technology is deposited on entry (harsh), or perhaps at the bottom of the staircase so no technology is permitted upstairs (night-time perhaps) or by the side of the room where the family eats, so no technology is taken to the ‘table’ when eating and family time is taking place.

Here’s where you can request a ‘Reminder wristband’. http://schl.cc/2J

It’s for individual families to decide what to do – and to vary it as you think fit during the week and at weekend – the basic deal though is to ‘Park the Technology’ for some part of every day and see if that makes a positive difference to household conversation and family life.  I have 200 such wristbands, and I’ll send them to anyone, anywhere in the UK. Start date is 1 March 2017, and end date is when you choose, though hopefully not before Maundy Thursday 13 April.

The writer (that’s me by the way) is going for the ‘bedtime’ basket, and I started a week early just to check I can cope, and… so far, so good. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to engaging 200 people in my challenge!

As a result of his GCSE performance (8A*, 2 A, 1 B) in his GCSE examinations, his contribution to school life, his performance on the sports and athletic fields and his contribution to the wider community as a sports coach, Todd Lindley was awarded the Whitbread Memorial prize 2016.  It is always lovely to win an Award, and as you can see from our announcement last term, both Todd and the school were pretty pleased.

Actually receiving the Award takes a huge bound forward in terms of prestige, as Todd, his mother Julia, sister Gabriella and grandparents Alan  and Monica Sibley found out on Tuesday. The family party, accompanied by Headmaster John Rayer and myself were invited to the House of Lords by the President of ISA, the Lord Lexden to receive the award. As it happens, I have known Alastair Cooke for many years, from his previous professional life as the general Secretary of the Independent Schools Council. As soon as he read our submission in nomination of Todd for the award, he recognised the fact that Todd’s sister had received the same award 3 years previously (item 10 on this ISA bulletin), and with extraordinary generosity invited Gabby to the House to enjoy the occasion.

It gets better, because we were invited to witness Question time in the House for 60 minutes or so, when the Speaker of the House of Lords, Lord Fowler made his noble statement on the failure of John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons to consult with him on the question of Donald Trump being invited to speak to the House. We witnessed real politicking in the making, something which was a main news headline later that day. It gets better still, when shortly after Lord Speaker’s intervention, we witnessed former Claires Court schoolboy, Lord James O’Shaughnessy, now a junior minister in the Department for Health, defend the government’s strategy to ensure we have sufficient nurses in our hospitals for the future. Boy, by even the Lords’ gentle ways, James was given a grilling by home and opposition members. Filled with admiration for the work of the house, we descended from Strangers gallery into the main circulation square of the lords, only to be greeted by Lord O’Shaughnessy, like long lost friends!  Whatever else happened then could only metaphorically put the ‘icing on the cake’, which  actually happened, because Lord Lexden then invited us to tea with him in the Lords Dining Room!  And of course there was the little matter of the presentation itself, which took place in one of the excellent meeting rooms, somewhere in the gods above the chamber.

Other highlights included mixing with many of the most famous Lords of the Land for an afternoon, such as the Lords Neil Kinnock and Michael Howard, sharing the Gents with Lord David Putnam and taking tea with one of the kindest, nicest men you could ever meet, The Lord Lexden OBE. Sadly there are few photographic highlights of our afternoon spent as Lords of the Land, because such technology is left at the door. However, Messrs Lindley, Rayer and Wilding were snapped all at once in our gracious host’s company, a photographic memory that I will treasure for a long time to come.  #CCpride

This Wednesday at Senior Girls, a select audience of parents and friends enjoyed an extraordinary showcase of the girls’ singing abilities of both formal and contemporary music. Each performance lasted about 4 minutes, so we are talking full on ‘single’ duration. I’d have bought them all. Director of Music Hester Goodsell and singing teacher, Freyja Barter, supported so well by Vron Foster and accompanist Jean Glenorchy set up an amazing album of delights, all laid out in cabaret style, as my very bad photo shows here.

I spoke at the end of the concert about the absolute importance we place in Claires Court on performance Art, and its sheer longevity as an ambition. Shortly after Freyja left the Sixth Form, her singing group’s short album was selected for free mass distribution by the Daily Mail, the first girl’s ‘hit’ we have had in my memory. Since then the Sixth Form have established a major footprint in original theatre work, concluding this last summer with their own ‘musical’ play around Noel Coward’s Black Dog.  A few year’s ago, we were able to persuade Michael Morpurgo to stage his novel ‘The Kites are flying’ as a stage play at the Edinburgh fringe, and the memory of that work still brings tears to my eyes, set as a love story on the wall that divides Jerusalem.

Writing back in 2010, Michael Morpurgo has this to say about the critical need for a robust Arts education in schools:  “I would like to propose that we let the imagination take its place at the heart of learning, and that we create a climate in which it can flourish. We need discovery; making; doing; exploring; creating; critical thinking; seeing; hearing; experiencing. Children have to be introduced to the arts in every form.”  It’s almost the strapline for the Claires Court Learning Essentials, the approach we have developed since then for everything we do at school. Now on Tuesday this week,  we see the publication of the updated report on the Value of a Cultural education in schools by the Cultural Learning Alliance.  The Report is such an easy read, and its key research findings could not be clearer:

1. Participation in structured arts activities can increase cognitive abilities by 17%.

2. Learning through arts and culture can improve attainment in Maths and English.

3. Learning through arts and culture develops skills and behaviour that lead children to do better in school.

4. Students from low-income families who take part in arts activities at school are three times more likely to get a degree.

5. Employability of students who study arts subjects is higher and they are more likely to stay in employment.

6. Students from low-income families who engage in the arts at school are twice as likely to volunteer.

7. Students from low-income families who engage in the arts at school are 20% more likely to vote as young adults.

8. Young offenders who take part in arts activities are 18% less likely to re-offend.

9. Children who take part in arts activities in the home during their early years are ahead in reading and Maths at age nine.

10. People who take part in the arts are 38% more likely to report good health.

Read the Key Research Findings in full at: www.culturallearningalliance.org.uk/evidence

I’ll conclude with a quote from the recently deposed First Lady of the White House, Michelle Obama:

“Arts education is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. It’s really the air many of these kids breathe. It’s how we get kids excited about getting up and going to school in the morning. It’s how we get them to take ownership of their future.”  

And I say Amen to that!

It’s Inauguration day, Brexit plan week and NHS month…

and whilst there may of course be plenty to shout about, not much of the mood music is positive. It’s dry January, nights are long, mornings still dark, weather still wintry and some big banks have announced they are relocating thousands of jobs from London to Europe. With the best will in the world, it is easy to understand why the news media can’t find too much good news to shout about.

Thursday 19 January was DfE’s publication of the GCSE and A level performance tables. Dear Reader, please believe me when I say that schools in the independent sector have almost no idea about the outcomes of such publications in any given year, other than that we are able to look up our data with 24 hours to go to see ‘what’s what’.  Now the statistics are published, not only can any one go and look up the data, but they can make use of the government’s comparison tool to compare the performance of any schools they might wish.  FYI, you can find that tool here: https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

24 hours later, and I have been able to study the outcomes of thee ‘new’ form book the government have created. For the Claires Court Sixth Form outcomes in terms of progress measures, we show up really well – here’s the snap-shot:

This performance comfortably places our performance better than any other school with the Royal Borough, significantly better than any of our immediate competitors in both the state grammar, comprehensive of independent sectors.  This places us as school number 100 out of a total of 4,380 schools, otherwise inside the top 3%  (2.28%) of all Sixth Form schools and colleges. In many ways, our challenge is not just to achieve the best with the highest of fliers, but with those of more modest abilities who strive to pursue their Sixth Form studies through to more modest outcomes. The stats to be published in March on students completing their main course of study should be just as exceptional; we are always keen to keep every soul on board, come what may.

GCSE performance tables you’ll see are as opaque as the Sixth Form are clear, because our sector now is almost completely excluded – all the IGCSE using schools (our sector) are misrecorded, and since government has captured no information on the entry cohort we have entering Year 7, they show no progress measures either. In due course, I’ll write more about this, but in the meantime, let’s just enjoy the good news about our Sixth Form.  But you knew that already of course, because you read our Court Report.

https://www.flipsnack.com/ClairesCourt/court-report-2016.html 

I am sure I was not the only one who watched the Sunday night programme entitled this week. 3 sixth formers from their idyllic welsh valley in Pembrokeshire swapped for three days into two of the best schools in Seoul. Make no bones about it; on the face of what we witnessed, the city pupils in Gangnam had the better deal when it came to school results, but at what cost? School days for most seem to last for up to 18 hours, with only 6 hours for the children to ‘sleep’, no more. before remounting the treadmill for another day in their 44 weeks of school year. You can read a little more here, and the programme is beautifully presented and developed by Sunday Times education editor Sian Griffiths, who had this to say at the start:  “Sixty years ago, nearly 80% of the population here was illiterate, today South Korea is an economic giant. And they did all that through education.”

Make no bones about it, the academic standards between the 2 nations are light years apart, or so it seems, though the pressures on teenagers there are extreme. Suicide is the common cause of early adult death, and one student interviewed had lost 2 friends to suicide at age 16. Standards are higher elsewhere in the UK, and indeed at the individual school level we have state and independent schools here which outperform all of the nation states by published PISA outcomes. But put simply, the UK lags behind academic achievement of South Korea, end of. South Korea is reaching out to understand the better bits of what we do, improvements for example being to force the closure of schools by 10pm, rather then remaining as they do open til midnight.  Yes, rub your eyes – ‘midnight’!

Sian Griffiths’ worries are that if the South Koreans grab the best bits from our offer to children, such as our hands-on practical lessons in science or development of creative skills, they’ll not loose the academic advantage in hard maths and languages, and suddenly we’ll be exposed on all fronts as being second-rate and what little international successes we having will disappear completely.  She makes a very valid point here, when she asks “and what lessons are we learning from the South Koreans?”

What surprised me about the programme, which showed only the 3 welshmen abroad as yet, not the return ‘fixture’, was that my expectations of a nannying Korean set of parents driving compliant, servile children after school to tutors and then back home for homework was so far off the mark! Of course films may lose the truth in the editing, but what with one of the parents having to work 16 hour shifts as a taxi driver to cover the high costs of at least 2 after school sessions, actually the story is much more complex. Here goes…

South Korea is about 30% smaller than England, and so is its population, so comparing the
2 countries is quite a neat thing to do. Their industrial revolution has largely happened since the Korean war, at a time when 80% if their population was illiterate. Now 99+% of their population stays into Sixth form, compared to about 60% of ours, though in truth the latter statistic is not comparable since recently we have insisted that all children stay in some form of education until the age of 18. The difference between the 2 Sixth Form educations is stark, as being diverse and spread from elite academics through to full vocational, where in Korean city schools, the push is fundamentally at the high level academic (including the study of English) level. The 2 city schools visited (boys and taught in separate schools) open their doors for study shortly after 7, with lessons running from 8 to 4pm. School is a full community provision, including ‘fine’ dining (well, hearty school meals for all) and after school, we see the students off to their tutors for a 2 hour catch-up session. They then travel home, eat dinner with the family, before setting off using public transport for some more specialist study (we saw English), before the students returned … to their school which was still open to complete their homework. Lights out at school circa midnight so the students travelling home and going immediately to bed, before prepping for school the next day from 6pm.  Honestly, it’s bonkers for children to do this; the scenes in the classroom all day showed children falling a sleep in their books, and the patent exhaustion and stress of it all was visible to all – on the children, on the parents with their long hours and multiple jobs just to keep up the payments on all the extra tuition needed, and on the relationships between all.

Here’s what I learned that was positive from the programme.

1. It seemed obvious that the students were consenting to their education, because for the vast majority of the day, they were able to live as independent consenting humans, forging friendships and learning what to like and not like without the pervasive stare of a helicopter parent.
2. The peer group pressure to do well was obvious, and they were suitably harsh to each other to keep people in line, gee-ing each other up too as and when necessary.
3. No ‘blame culture’ was evident the teachers were all teaching and working really hard, and no-one seemed to lose the plot if a child fell asleep. That ‘nap’ was clearly necessary and the learner came back on board as they regained consciousness, without the teacher making undue fuss.
4. It’s clearly the student’s job from quite an early age to determine what they need and how much extra support they need, hence the tutors, second tutors and returns to school for homework, rather than study at home*.
5. And because they seem permanently in the company of friends, they don’t seem to be going up in solitude, nor force-fed a narrower diet of what what the idiot’s lantern has for them.
6. And because they are not suffocated with their family, family values are very strong, and at examination time, whilst the students are in the exam hall, the mothers are in the temple, praying for good fortune for their children’s results.

*We are talking city landscape here, with 80% of the population living in high rise flats, with excellent connecting public transport and shops open 24/7. Space is at such a premium, that the homes don’t seem large enough to permit a place for homework or private study.

In case you think I am coming out in favour of the South Korean approach, I’m totally not. I love growing up in our post-industrial world, with a balance available between the academic, the aesthetic, the sporting and creative circles that intertwine in such complex ways. I have never wanted my children to be feral, to grow up without being able to share with each other the closeness of a family life. But watching these brilliantly engaged adolescents, carving their own academic careers in a focussed peer group without intense adult intervention clearly is a reminder to us to move off centre stage a little bit more than we might, because the children are very capable of doing a whole lot more then we might expect. And of course, there are quite a few strategies we have already adopted here at Claires Court to enable the children to become independent and self-reliant, if not feral. We are 8 ’til late (late busses roll at 5.35pm except on fridays and snow days), with full services available at school, universal wi-fi and clubs, activities, study and focus groups for students to join and engage with at their own discretion and interest, and a growing number student-inspired and led.

Think about catching up the programme on iplayer; it’s a harsh society that permits so many of its young children to commit suicide, and the South Korean government is really doing their utmost to learn from why suicide rates are so much lower here in the UK. Yet, as our rates rise, maybe, our society can learn from the South Koreans as well. 100% of their 16 year olds identified our GCSE Maths paper as being suitable for the primary school years – eek!

I posted the title to this blog just before Christmas 2016, and then left content until my return to ‘thinking’ after Boxing Day. The raw emotion sown in the title arises is me simply because so much has been traduced by a variety of governments over the past decade in the quest for progress for no good reason; and in educational terms that means for so many in schools and colleges, new amounts of work have been created through the imposition of structural change, and not just once or twice, in recent years. Let me give you a couple of examples.

On the curriculum side, much has been substantially changed, and not just in terms of content but levels of difficulty. Making the curriculum more demanding, and raising the degree of challenge to the youngsters concerned is simply not a ‘bright’ thing to do. Consider the Early years. As we learn more about the vital importance on movement and interaction with their environment in the early years, a greater emphasis must be placed on ensuring children physically ready for school, because (guess what?) as our society has become even more sedentary, a higher percentage of children are now arriving at school without the physical development in place to permit them to benefit from ‘class’. Sitting still, tying shoe laces, managing their own toileting are no longer expectations teachers can have for the new intake at aged 4. As a close friend and expert in children’s development, Professor Pat Preedy has this to say: “Children today are moving less, they’re developing less well, and they’re learning less; we need to do something drastic to make sure children now and in the future get the movement they need to develop properly physically, intellectually and emotionally.”

Moving up the age levels, we see the challenge in Mathematics and Literacy being made more demanding at every age level from primary through secondary. The requirement for change comes because England is seen to be doing less well in the international PISA tables than over European and Asian nations. But changing the structure for the entire country is completely counter-intuitive, because many of our schools are already matching or outperforming these other nations, as data released by OECD themselves makes clear. But change has happened across all the key stages, and we won’t be able to judge the efficacy of this change for many years to come – one good or bad set of results for the country can’t be used to prove anything, as research needs to be longitudinal and spread over 5 years at least.  And it’s not just the toughening up of the core disciplines that’s the issue, but the narrowing of the curriculum with the loss of so many important supporting disciplines. With subjects such as Art, Design technology, Drama, Music and RS consigned to the perimeter in so many state schools, children won’t find out they have an academic interest in such disciplines in the same planned manner as before.  None of these changes have to make an impact upon the independent sector in which I work; it’s noticeable though that there is an increasing sense of separation from our sector to mainstream, encouraged by government themselves, suggesting that we should be doing far more to influence and support education within the mainstream. David Hanson, CEO of IAPS pointed out recently that poor parents were put off by negative stereotypes of private schools; “The media characterisation of private schools is so extreme and embedded through constant repetition that for ordinary people what they represent is not only unattainable, but also incomprehensible and alien.”

And therein lies the rub. State and Independent school curricula and provision are moving in very different directions indeed, driven by the turmoil of structural change in the state sector. The best state schools will attract and retain the highest quality staff, and be able to offer great breadth and diversity of choice, subject and extra-curricular activity. But those schools that are not able to cope with these demands of structural change, exacerbated by continuing and dramatic budget cuts each year, are having their governing bodies excised and school leaders dismissed at an ever increasing frequency. The net effect is high staff turnover, low aspiration in achieving anything outside of the explicit demands of the ‘test’ and a general lack of confidence that the school more generally can meet all of its pupils’ needs. Suggesting now, as the Government’s Green Paper (November 2016) does, that the way forward involves further dramatic structural change, leading to the expansion of grammar schools at the expense of the other existing schools losing their most able pupils in the process will clearly exacerbate the decline in confidence and breadth of success in such schools. It’s worth noting that in a previous structural change, government insisted Universities were better placed to run schools than local governing bodies. The experiment is only a few years old, but all the evidence indicates the experiment is not going well. Moreover, as Professor Louise Richardson Vice Chancellor of Oxford University has made clear; asking universities to set up free schools is “insulting” to teachers and heads. Speaking to the Today programme on 22 September 2016, Professor Louise Richardson said forcing her institution to establish schools would be a “distraction from our core mission”, and said universities already helped the schools community in many ways, but running them was “not what we do”.

I’ve grabbed the picture to illustrate the paragraph above from www.disabilitynewsservice.com, because the government’s proposals on ‘schools that work for everyone’ completely ignores the provision for those with disabilities – that’s circa 20% of the school population.  As their journalist John Pring writes; But there is not a single mention of disabled pupils in the consultation paper, and the Department for Education (DfE) has failed to carry out an equality impact assessment of its proposals. Inclusive education campaigners say that expanding grammar schools – secondary schools which select pupils via an entrance test – will discriminate against disabled children and lead to more segregated education in special schools.  And they say the plans are a clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with new UN guidance making it clear that all segregated education should end and be replaced by “inclusive classroom teaching in accessible learning environments with appropriate supports”.  Now forgive me, dear reader; is it really permissible for one of the government’s great departments (DfE) to ignore the 2010 Equalities act, which legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society in quite such a flagrant manner?

The Government closed its Green Paper consultation on 12 December, and you can read my submission here – http://schl.cc/2G. For me the biggest structural change impacting upon the school is the hollowing out of local authority services to an alarming degree. Those employees within RBWM with whom I have contact continue to offer professional services, but only where a statutory obligation to provide exists.  Alan Bennett, author, playwright and diarist has this to say on the 11 September 2015 (we received his latest book for Christmas): David Cameron has been in Leeds preaching to businessmen the virtues of what he calls ‘the smart state’. This seems to be a state that gets away with doing as little as possible for its citizens and shuffling as many responsibilities as it can onto anyone who thinks they can make a profit out of them.  I am glad there wasn’t a smart state when I was being brought up in Leeds, a state that was unsmart enough to see me and others like me educated free of charge and send on at the city’s expense to univeristy, provided with splendid libraries, cheap transport and a terrif art gallery, not of course to mention the city’s hospitals.  Smart to Mr Cameron seems to mean doing as little as one can get away with and calling it enterprise. Smart as in smart alec, smart of the smart answer, which I’m sure Mr Cameron has to hand. Dead smart.”

And there is the worry about structural change imposed upon communities, be they local or national, without sufficient due consideration given to the enormity of the changes needed to implement them, and the vast timescales that then ensue. The effect of the Education changes recently wrought with the changes to GCSEs and A levels won’t be seen for at least a decade; these whole scale changes were made in spite of the education community’s carefully considered opposition to them, so what’s worse is that those charged with their implementation are ‘pressed men’ not willing advocates. Do those of us in the independent sector see these changes as a good thing for the nation? You’ll know my view, and as the 2500 independent schools are precisely that, we can’t speak with ‘one’ voice. But you can judge us by our actions:

• we are not reducing the breadth of our offer,
• we are keeping up our very broad focus on the co-curricular,
• teachers have the autonomy to teach, and encouraged to develop the mastery to match,
• class sizes remain of human scale,
• we’ll continue to provide for children from a very broad range of abilities,
• we are using the very best of all approaches to  teaching and learning, blending traditional with modern, old technology with new, and above all,
• we are keeping change for changes sake to the absolute minimum.