A Principled view

Henri Matisse’s Cut-Outs were among the big attractions at Tate Modern in 2014 – BBC News

There has been a recent ‘epidemic’ of concern being expressed across our country that the nation as a whole is falling out of love with Art.  Visitor numbers are falling at the National Gallery and the Tate, and  and more importantly, where we have seen some modest growth nationally, the increase has been as a result of the success of tourism from abroad rather than attracting the interest from our domestic economy. Read more about that here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31533110.

Last month, the Warwick Commission published their findings from a year of detailed research into all aspects of the creative arts sector – the report is entitled Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth.

The Warwick University research examines from film, theatre and dance to video games, pop music and fashion. It estimates the sector represents 5% of the British economy valued at £76.9bn. As with the previous report from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, we are reminded that the creative Arts are integral part of the UK economy, and of course in the Eastern Thames Valley and towards London, probably upwards of 30% of all permanent high quality jobs are in this sector. Politicians of a variety of hues have of course added the research outcomes to their growing list of manifesto commitments – here’s Labour suggesting that using Ofsted Inspections will improve the provision in our schools!

Here’s Vikki Heywood, the chair of the commission as reported in the Guardian “Two of the most eye-opening aspects of the inquiry are to do with cultural education and the lack of diversity in arts audiences. The cultural and creative economies are one ecosystem and policymakers need to realise that if you fiddle around with the education system at one end then something at the other end goes wonky”.

The Guardian article continues “Some of the most striking statistics are around education. Between 2003 and 2013 there was a 50% drop in the GCSE numbers for design and technology, 23% for drama and 25% for other craft-related subjects. In 2012-13, only 8.4% of students combined arts and science at AS level. The number of arts teachers in schools has fallen by 11% since 2010 and in schools where a subject has been withdrawn, drama and performance has dropped by 23%, art by 17% and design technology by 14%.”

To be honest, all those who lead Education in schools have witnessed a dramatic change in Arts Education over the past 30 years. Primary schools often now speak of not having sufficient time or skill to teach painting and drawing skills – which is rather at odds with the stated objectives of the newest National Curriculum for Art and Design from DfE which says that:

“Key stage 2 Pupils should be taught to develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design. Pupils should be taught:  to create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas  to improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay]  about great artists, architects and designers in history.”

Of course what happens in state schools is audited by…Ofsted, and measurable curriculum outcomes exist for Literacy and Maths, but not for the other foundation and supporting subjects. Therein lies the major problems for Art and Design, as it does for other key subjects, such as the Humanities, Sciences, Languages and other physical and creative subjects. A decade ago, Roger Cole, celebrated researcher, advisor and author for both government and national teaching community found that in their efforts to raise standards of Literacy and Numeracy in the Gloucester Action zone, primary schools had reduced their curriculum to little more than these core subjects. Despite the very clear focus, achievement against government benchmarks remained resolutely fixed at below 50% achieving level 4 in either discipline.

After Roger’s engagement with 4 schools in question, the writing of new cross-curricular and creative schemes of work, not only had standards risen in the core, but across the breadth of school provision. You can read the TES 2008 article on this here – and a sample comment from an impressed Ofsted “This approach enables all pupils to achieve well in all subjects, involving pupils more holistically in learning”. Roger Cole has visited Claires Court, worked with our teaching and support staff, and no doubt will enjoy making a return to assess quite how our Essentials curriculum has taken the embedding of creativity and innovation into a higher level, supported as it is with universally available software that works on all devices.

Successive governments have panicked endlessly about our nation’s performance in Maths and English, citing the steady fall down the PISA league table that compares country performance across the globe. In recent years, computer ‘coding’ and  the ‘STEM’ agenda have both assisted in wiping good old Art and Design off the central mission schools should have. Whatever the merits of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths for the nation’s economy (and there are of course many), if  Art and Design skills are ignored, we’ll be able to pass Part 1 of the challenge (do we know stuff?) but we will fail abysmally Part 2 (what we can do with this stuff in the context of what people need?). Look at any of the leading scientific and engineering brands in the world, and great creativity and design sit at the heart of their success. Most notable are companies such as Apple, BMW, Disney, Google, HP, Intel… all renowned for great innovation, design and engineering – inseparable in terms of identifying why they work so well.

At the time of writing, I have just returned from a day at the Discovery channel with our Google gang, boys (Y8-11) who meet to programme and mentor others in the dark arts of cloud computing. We have been working with Discovery Education to understand more about their new Secondary service for schools, to train our own pupils to mentor teachers as well as their peers, and to prepare specifically for BBC School Report 2015, one of the great creative media events of the year. We have been engaged with SR since 2009, and you can review our archive here. As the map shows, we are the only secondary school in Maidenhead to be involved this year, and that is illustrative of the national concern we have – schools will always focus on the Part 1 problem, but find it much more difficult to exercise that extra ‘holistic’ muscle to ensure their students can blend diverse input to tell a coherent and compelling story. And of course that is what a great Art education gives – and what great Art pieces show in their exhibition.

So dear Reader, for me it is quite simple.  If as Matisse suggests, “Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent & independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play” then the obvious way forward is to design and implement (with an iron will it must be said) a curriculum that commands of its students to be curious, flexible, persistent & independent, to provide opportunities for children to sense what a spirit of adventure means, and conjoin that with diverse opportunities to explore play. As is demonstrably the case within our walls, we have these elements in place in full measure, and it therefore will not surprise you that we seem to have developed an almost endless production line of deeply talented young artists, actors, designers and performers. And what is better still is that their talents on display are not uniform – there might be great organisation, but the sheer breadth of innovation and individuality helps highlight that the principle of ‘look after the performance and the results look after themselves’ is working really well within Claires Court, true testament to both Henri and Roger!

Thursday 26 February (this week) saw ISA’s annual Junior schools’ conference visit the Institute of Marketing’s fine premises at Moor Hall, nearby in Cookham. The whole day was given over to looking at what assessing children’s achievement looks like in schools after the abandonment by DfE of National Curriculum levels.

Claires Court left NC leveling in 2006/7, when it had become very evident to us that their presence was badly damaging teaching and learning within English at both Key stage 2 and Key stage 3. Most obviously affected was creative writing in years 3 to 6, though at secondary level, the work in years 7, 8 and 9 leading towards successful KS3 examination seemed to be contradictory to the skills needed for GCSE writing in Year 10. Whilst we have no regrets about leaving the National Curriculum and writing our own, we have had to stretch ourselves somewhat to match our assessment mechanisms to the Claires Court essentials that form the weft and weave of our schemes of work across the years from Year 1 to the end of Year 9.

My colleagues, Leanne Barlow (Head of Junior Girls) and Lindsay King (Head of lower Juniors and curriculum leader) presented how we moved from NC levels to the current state of play for junior boys and girls within Claires Court to the ISA Junior Heads, and as an observer at the occasion, it was really rewarding to witness the very genuine approval our national colleagues gave to the presentation and of course the thinking and pedagogy Leanne and Lindsay showed.  I am extremely fortunate to have colleagues of such quality, not just willing and able to design anew but able to stand up to a national audience and provide persuasive commentary on our work.

You can see Barlow and King’s presentation here – http://goo.gl/KSWBVn, our examplar St Custard’s report* making use of our assessment approach here, and the unique Lesson and Work Scrutiny form we use here.

The day included some excellent other presentations, from Andy Mellor on Assessment mastery, from yours truly on the broader perspectives schools are required to keep in mind when designing assessment, quality assurance and monitoring arrangements, and from 2 of the country’s leading experts in the use of digital technologies, Mark Burrowes from 2Simple/Purple Mash, and C-learning’s Paul Farrell, for teaching and tracking. Claires Court already uses the tools both experts recommend, again useful to align these pioneering methods now being recommended for schools across the country with our own 2 or more years experience of using them!

Carey Dickinson, Membership Officer, ISA

ISA’s Membership officer, Carey Dickinson, joined the conference for the day, stayed overnight and then visited all three Claires Court geographical sites on Friday morning. Carey has more letters after her name than most, graduating from Somerville College for her first degree in History, before gaining her PGCE in primary education at Homerton College, Cambridge and then rather later in life acquiring her Masters in Education, before pursuing her interest in Drama  as she moved in to the prep. school world  to lead the Performing Arts department at Dame Bradburys School, in Saffron Walden.  As one of the leading sector professionals in the country, Carey showed really genuine appreciation of Miss Barlow and Mrs King’s remarkable work. The praise was well deserved, as it is this day when the papers and broadcasters carry the news that a national teacher-led commission is being set up to help primary schools in England find new ways of assessing their pupils’ progress.  This further highlights the dilemma the country is facing in measuring children’s progress when the curriculum is being changed at the same time as the tools used to assess its effectiveness have been removed – honestly, very many schools are seriously worried about the limbo in which they find themselves.  Inevitably, this also highlights just how well we have done as a school to be fearless, innovative and demanding of ourselves to establish  a new curriculum approach with assessment, reporting and quality assurance mechanisms in place in good time – as the ISI inspectors found in March 2014 – by their judgement ‘excellent’ indeed.

*The report tables don’t quite print for exemplar work such as this from our MIS database – works fine for genuine reports!

I have had a good half-term, dear Reader. During the business of academic life, it’s almost impossible to reserve the time to go to see the latest films. And there have been some stunningly good films out there passing me by, not least Selma, The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game. You’ve guessed it, James has been to the movies! In their own ways, the films were remarkable triumphs for Cinema, highlighting in each the role of a central male character to the cascade of events happening around them, over which they have only a modicum of control. In Selma, we see 3 weeks in the life of Martin Luther King, as portrayed by British actor David Oyelewo,  in his campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. In The Theory of Everything, we witness the  the story of Stephen (for which Eddie Redmayne has just won the Oscar for best Actor) and his wife Jane’s life, from first meeting in Cambridge in 1964, with Stephen’s subsequent academic successes and his increasing disability. In the Imitation Game, we see three different periods of Alan Turing’s life, as portrayed by Alex Lawther (when at Sherborne) and Benedict Cumberbatch (in adult life), from introvert but brilliant schoolboy to dismissive, difficult, brilliant and plain odd scientist placed at Bletchley Park to crack the German’s Enigma code, interwoven throughout by Turing’s interrogation about a break-in after the war and his homoselual realtionships with others.

It’s fair to say that women play central roles in all three films, so it was not just a festival of celebrating manhood. But what stuck me about all three films were their very obvious relevance to 2015, not least Hollywood’s decision to leave Selma out completely from any of the Oscar nominations. Now is clearly not a good time across the pond to seek to celebrate Good black men – as the opening speech last night by Neil Patrick Harris made clear at the Oscar’s ceremony “Tonight we celebrate Hollywood’s best and whitest, sorry… brightest”. Celebrating Stephen Hawking’s life was indeed a triumph not just by Redmayne, but by the film itself, leaving us clearly in awe of both Hawking and his wife Jane, played by Felicity Jones, an almost never-ending testament of love and challenge as these two grow up together, producing three children and (almost) a unifying Theory for everything. Having seen previous films on Hawking, including Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead role for a BBC production, I feel I sort of know the story but somehow Redmayne’s portrayal of the Professor, including some very good humour brought it all very much up to date.

Whilst all three of these films highlight the lives of some of the most famous men of the last 60 years, they also remind us of the incredible struggle and conflict they had to face in pursuing hunches and realising dreams. None of the three had an ideal life, and perhaps of Stephen Hawking still with us, a life that none of us could begin to comprehend the difficulties therein. Certainly all three knew how to be very difficult men to live with, and for Turing certainly a very clear understanding that he found it very difficult to communicate effectively with others, whether in agreement or not.

I leave the best line though to the film about Turing’s life, spoken by a number of characters through the film, from boyhood friend Christopher and fellow code breaker, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightly) and by Turing himself – “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine” . If ever there was a mantra that we need to embed in the psyche of schools it is this one.

As evidence of that – https://jameswilding.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/normalising-the-extraordinary/ and of course, so many more past pupils of both genders who have gone on to make their way into adult life, professional and personal, and become remarkable people in their own right.

There is no way Albert Einstein could have known where his research into Newtonian mechanics would take him into Space-Time, particle theory, the motion of molecules and that of the Universe. Reflecting on his life after the second world war, he had this to say “If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” Einstein spent most of his life working out how the chaos of the Universe was ordered, and pleasingly for us all his great work stood the test of time.

For the last 5 years, education in England has slowly been beset by educational change on change, to the extent now that everything we are currently working on for school-age children could be in a state of flux. At state primary school level, the National Curriculum has been renewed, but without a nationally agreed framework for its assessment and measurement of progress. Years 2 and 6 are currently required to follow the old English Maths and Science curricula, which is compulsory, though the levels used there-in are discredited. DfE have all sorts of transitional documents out there describing the next year’s curriculum to 2016.  At secondary school, the new national curriculum framework published in December 2014 describes the curriculum to be followed from September 2014. Need I write on? When change is so breathless that the framework around which careful construction is required is published after the start date, you know something has gone aglay. Government masks its ineptitude by stating that these curricula are statutory and must be followed by all state schools.

The GCSEs programmes for English, English Literature and Maths change this coming September 2015, as do most all A level subjects, though Drama, Geography, Languages wait a year and Maths gets to wait until 2017. Ways of grading are changing, GCSE from A*-G to 9-0, and A levels from modular AS+A2 to terminal A level at the end of 2 years. Not only are we to have a complete alpha-numeric soup of qualifications over a period of 3 years, but since the DfE have made it quite clear that the new qualifications are going to be more rigorous (harder), in the basket of qualifications we will also have apples, oranges, pears and such like.

DfE have of course tried to leaven the pain, by suggesting that during these transition years, the percentage of pupils gaining a new Level 4 or higher in English will be the same as those that would have gained a grade C or higher under the old system.  So not only are the exams to get harder, but in order to ensure fairness, candidates will not need to achieve as well as we might expect they would have to, given the more demanding nature of the challenge. Which of course means that once the old exams are through, we won’t be able to compare the next year’s cohort performance with the previous year, because the pass standard will be toughened.

The earliest that education research teams are going to be able to deploy statistical measures anew to compare one cohort to another is from 2018 0nwards. In research terms for independent research teams at for CEM centre, NFER, Institutes of Education and so forth, we are currently moving close to a Black Hole. Yes they can see and collect data from exam candidates at Key stage 2, 4 and 5 but each subject has been ‘pulled’ in one way or another to the extent that meaningful comparisons will not be available.

Within our national schools at the same time, the government has further destabilised provision by changing how schools are run, the money they receive, their mechanisms of government, the freedoms with which they can appoint staff (qualified or not), and whether these curriculum regulations apply to them. The product lines are Local authority schools v academy schools (stand-alone or trust groups), be they selective, comprehensive and secondary modern, free schools and university technical colleges. The  majority of these schools now report directly to the DfE. It is no surprise that the National Audit office (that watchdog of govt financial probity) has just declared (21 January 2015) DfE account “neither fair nor true”. In an extremely rare move, our public spending watchdog, has issued an “adverse opinion” on the department’s financial statements, indicating that it does not trust the accuracy of the DfE’s figures and is unable to assess whether it is providing value for money. The NAO said auditors had identified a level of “error and uncertainty” in the DfE financial statements that was “both material and pervasive”. The comptroller and auditor general Amyas Morse, who is head of the NAO, said the DfE’s failure to provide statements that gave a “true and fair view” of the financial activity of its organisations meant it was not meeting the requirements of parliament.

So there we have it. Within the state education sector, its controlling government department for Education and the treasury (let alone independent research teams)  have no chance of knowing whether its experiments with curricula and examinations are going to work until 2019 at the very earliest, and the watchdog that can actually can check something, the spending of our taxes, has every right to be deeply troubled. English state education has been put under the most extraordinary reforms, at break neck speed and at at time when the school population is exploding in most areas of the country. What a Big Bang lies in store?

Private schools within the Independent Schools Council family sit on the side and can only watch and protect their own from the incredibly damaging fall-out from such legislative, statutory and regulatory change.  We would not wish this on our worst enemies, and most of the state schools we work with are actually friends in partnership with provision. As a group of 1300+ schools, ISC has prepared on our behalf a manifesto for the parties moving forward toward general election. Entitled

“ISC 2015 Manifesto – It is time to reset the relationship with independent schools in the UK”

it is a statement of the goals, beliefs and aims of ISC schools. Now independent schools stand ready to reset the relationship; they want to be seen for what they really are and what they can offer for the benefit of all children in this country. The eight constituent associations of ISC have each agreed the manifesto and are fully behind its aims.

Claires Court sits with its mission very close to the ideals of this manifesto, which starts “We believe in: Breaking down barriers: the mission of all schools, whether state or independent, is to educate children to achieve their full potential; any barriers, real or perceived, between the two sectors are counterproductive; Social mobility: independent schools are and will be key contributors to social mobility; unlocking the potential of all children and young people benefits our society as a whole. The whole manifesto downloads from the link above or http://goo.gl/4wBQfw.

Anyone who has read my blog, or has listened to me speak or met me in person, can’t miss both my passion for education and for the pupils for whom I am responsible and my deep belief in the value of evidence-based education. In a school which has been in the same family ownership for 55 years, having had a leadership role for 34 of those years, I suspect I feel best placed to be able to reflect on the best value brought about by long term systemic development. One of the things Einstein struggled with is that the Universe (be that macro or micro) is beset by innumerable variables. Even though he gave us the greatest insight we could possibly have into gravity, we still don’t what it is really, can’t tough or explain it, though it affects everything we do on this planet.

In like manner with children, we know what they are like and love them beyond measure, and know we need to treat everyone as an individual. Whilst we can package them up and average them out, that’s not the same as ensuring that ‘Every child matters’. What we must not do is use ‘hindsight’ to manage education, which is of course what both Michael Gove and Nicky Morgan have done this parliament, recalling what worked for them in schools and imposing it on a country. I have no problem with being told that ‘all children by age 11 must know their 12 times table’, (Nicky Morgan, 1 Feb 2015 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31079515) but it’s the reductionist nature of such claptrap that causes me to have lost complete respect for the current ministers.

I’ll leave you with a final poster meme of our Albert, that perhaps suggests where I might place the current members of parliament in the evolutionary tree:

In a belated effort to protect the Petrified Forest in Arizona, the Navajo Indian curators decided to put large signs up around the desert edge reminding visitors that “At the current rate of fossil theft by visitors, the Forest will completely disappear within 25 years”.  Soon after the signs went up, heard at the edge was the following conversation, from one visitor to her boyfriend:

Soak up the silence … Monument Valley belongs to the Navajo Nation. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Lescourret/Corbis = The Guardian

“Well, we’d better take our souvenirs now then.”

Thursday morning, 29 January 2015, and the air waves are full of critics and apologists alike for the latest raft of Secondary school statistics, published today.  Here’s the BBC take on that.

What is quite clear is that there is no real connectivity for the country with these tables for GCSE performance and tables of previous years. Some years back, the Department for Education (oversees English schools), OfSTED (inspects English state schools) and Ofqual (regulates qualifications, examinations and assessments in England) encouraged state schools to take up the lead of many independent schools to swap UK coursework GCSEs/BTECs for terminal international GCSEs.  So state schools did. The  DfE forced UK exam boards to swap coursework for mini-exams during the 2 year course, and these controlled assessments prove to be a ghastly innovation, as pupils entered a 2 year period in which they might face over 100 assessment exams for their GCSEs, Given there are about 300 working days for GCSE, in effect this meant students were taking an exam abut every 4 days.

Faced with no UK alternative, more schools moved some or all of their subjects to the iGCSE route, where assessment is solely by one or two long exams at the end of the 2 year period. Guess what – teachers and pupils liked this, because it meant the 2 years permitted subject knowledge and skill development to occur before a sensible period of 6 weeks revision, prior to critical and judgemental assessment could take place in the May/June of Year 11 (in the UK students 17th year of age). Guess what – standards rose in such schools, because the cut and mow was far more appropriate for adolescent development.

At the same time, the Secretary of State for Education (the politician who leads the DfE) of the day, Michael Gove decided that the English GCSEs needed to lose their course-works (wef Summer 2014) and controlled assessments completely (wef Summer 2017 – Art, Drama and Technology are 3 exceptions), and become terminal examinations like their iGCSE cousins –  the bulk of change to commence later this year, 2015 for Maths and English and the others follow suit next year.

Brilliant, what’s not to like? The removal for example, in English the Speaking and Listening coursework components of English GCSE  results in the grade achieved for English simply reflecting the candidate skills in reading and writing. Now that’s not quite so perfect for pupils and schools reared within a climate where all 4 English skills were valued and promoted.  Inevitably, English GCSE pass rates fell in Summer 2014, with a knock on effect for schools overall record of passing 5 GCSEs including English and Maths. In addition, DfE removed iGCSE English as being an appropriate qualification – so those schools with 100% of candidates taking iGCSE English have dropped like a stone to 0% gaining 5 or more GCSEs.

Some schools chose to pursue both iGCSEs (which are examined in January as well as June) and UK GCSEs, recognising that the new English GCSE was likely to adversely affect some in their cohort. It is alleged that the government also required the exam boards to manipulate statistically pass rates at C and above to ensure that fewer gained a C, in part to demonstrate that the exams were getting more demanding. In my school’s case for example, after 2 major appeals (2011 & 2012) in successive years over the statistical manipulation of pass rates, we have chosen to add both iGCSEs for Maths and English as additional cover for our pupils, to smooth their passage through very turbulent times.

At the time of writing, the DfE have just published the 2014 league tables, and I can see neither the English nor Maths iGCSEs reported that our pupils gained last summer at the end of their GCSE course, so they don’t appear in our GCSE success statistics.

As with hundreds of other schools, state and independent, across the country, we are incensed that the government publication of our GCSE results 2014 bears no relationship or accuracy to the actual results our children received this Summer. Some 40% of all examinations taken in independent schools use the iGCSE, and the DfE’s decision to exclude English and Maths iGCSE as valid indicators of performance means that for some schools, such as Eton ad St Mary’s Ascot, the DfE report 0% gaining 5 or more A*to C GCSEs. In our case, because we use a mix of the 2 qualifications, our actual results for gaining 5 or more GCSEs including English and Maths are 76.5, not 59% as stated.  The 2013-14 Achievements Court Circular is currently with the printers and will travel home with our pupils next Friday.  The Achievements brochure carries a detailed breakdown of all of our examination results this year, as well as the previous 4 years of data from 2010 for comparison purposes.

As we still have a mix of subjects using traditional GCSEs, at least we are not reported at ground 0%. But the local and national press will nevertheless report large moves in the swings and roundabouts of school performance, with potential reputational damage for all involved. As for the independent sector, approximately 40% of all GCSE exams sat are as iGCSEs – you can see the ISC information sheet on that here: Year-11-Results-2014.  The accurate figure for the percentage of candidates gaining 5 or more GCSes graded A* to C is 86%, and you can see those figures, accurate for all ISC schools in 2014 as reported to  DfE here, on the ISC site.

I am sure we will be reported as providing for our children well, with the 5 or more statistic showing we are well ahead of the basement level (40%).  But that’s simply not the point.  It really is very senseless for the DfE to capture the vast amounts of data on schools, and then each year, change the rules about what actually should be published, and then sound off about how well their statistics are reflecting a country’s efforts to realign for the 21st century against the tiger competitive economies of the far east that are said to educate their children so much more effectively than the UK.  Actually what Britain hears from those economies in Europe and the Far East is that their very rigour in technical examinations is destroying the creativity in their students that modern economies require.  They are sending delegations to England to see the best of what we offer and enquire how our schools (such as Claires Court) are able to juggle both academic needs with intellectual and creative skill development. Just 12 months ago we had some 150 teachers from Sweden here to explore how teaching and learning worked in a digitally empowered institution.

It is difficult to believe DfE could make things worse, but they have. As a result of the Gove reforms, DfE/Ofqual have insisted that practical examinations in Science are removed from the A level programme, because they believe the terminal only exam will give us greater rigour/make the exams harder, such exams to start next year. This week, in a speech to the Carlton club, Gove’s successor, Nicky Morgan has called for Ofqual to put these practical exams back into the A levels, because of the significant pressure from Universities and employers alike demanding that the outcome from A levels must be more than just an exam result – a successful A level student should also have strong laboratory-based practical skills. Not surprisingly, the exam boards are digging their heels in now, because after 2 years of argument with Ofqual, they have last month received approval for their new A level course, whereby the practical skills are embedded in the end of course exams, which are to examine much harder technical and mathematical skills than hitherto.  When the people in charge of education run the system like a push me-pull you train, is it any wonder that those ‘spectators’ to the politics decide to take their school into a different qualification framework that has remained stable for decades.

I am told the Navajo quickly took their signs down, when they saw an dramatic increase in theft from their ‘Petrified Forest’.  You don’t improve peoples’ behaviour by making them fearful of the future. People learn to do better things because that which is important is valued, time after time, season after season, generation after generation. Claires Court exists as both an Academic Institution, in which knowledge, skills and the ability to pass exams are nurtured and as an Educational Community in which all  are supported, pupils, teachers, parents and their families to a greater end goal than ‘pilfering’ – oh, and we don’t want a petrified Educational forest in the first place!

At the start of the Autumn Term 2014, the Guardian Newspaper ran an article on Michael Rosen, Poet, former children’s laureate, broadcaster and scourge of the Coalition government, to coincide with the publication of his latest book, Good Ideas: How to be Your Child’s (and Your Own) Best Teacher.  The article is worth the read, here, covering in a few hundred words both Rosen’s own life story and the reasoning behind why he felt it was time to write anew on parenting.  I suspect he is so much luckier than most parents, given the 40 years of practice he has had been a Dad, and as a result much more relaxed now perhaps than he was with his first born. Indeed as the article alludes, his second son Eddie died, aged 18, of meningococcal septicaemia in 1999, and we are left in no doubt that father Rosen faced grief full on at that time.  It left him very much believing that with your children, “What do you do every minute, every hour… that’s what matters.”

Michael Rosen’s book is deeper than this, not just about living life for the moment, but being there with your children, catching them when their curiosity is piqued and running with them to explore ideas and celebrate the learning that follows. I share the same philosophy, and in terms of behaviour agree with author Margaret Goldthorpe in similar vein, when she reminds us that we should ‘catch children being good and praise them for that’. Margaret writes for schools rather than parents, helping teachers understand how to build better relationships both within school and with parents, so it’s not quite so easy to highlight one book that says it all. However, her ‘Stay Cool in School’ helps those working with 7-11 year olds how to put across some difficult messages, such as ‘handling the desire to show off’ or learning ‘to admit we were wrong’. What I like about this book is that the core messages come through understanding the issues that Jesus Christ highlighted through his ‘Sermon on the Mount’.

‘Stay Cool in School’ does not require the children to have Christian beliefs. But at a time when we are challenged to be espouse British values, it is no bad thing to have a look at the underlying christian beliefs that underpin our society.  Having a better understanding of the way Jesus of Nazareth said we should live is no bad thing around Christmas time, very much a time when children are curious about belief and faith.  Whether it be for adults or children, it’s no bad thing to consider the moral and ethical implications of Jesus’ advice for our lives in 2015, and help guide us in choosing the kind of politics we want our country run by, following May’s general election.

It’s Christmas Eve as I write this blog, stimulated by a wonderful article written by Anne Atkins, on why she is looking forward to a school christmas dinner up in Durham, where her daughter Rosie sings as a chorister at Durham Cathedral. No adult here by the way, Rosie is of school age and following in a very strong family tradition of singing for her supper, schooling and all. You can read that article here, in which we learn how Anne’s grandfather and father, herself, and now both husband and children are bound together by a tradition of caroling through the generations. What Anne highlights as part of her article is that Rosie could not have followed in her family’s tradition of singing at King’s College Cambridge, because that is a male only choir, true of many other great choral foundations. As a result, Rosie Atkins has had to travel 200 miles North to ‘earn her living’ at the Chorister School, in Durham Cathedral’s back yard.

Anne Atkins spoke at our Speech Day at the start of this last term, and gave us 3 bits of advice for the future – 1.  Dare to dream your dreams! 2. Let your dreams develop! 3. Never, never, never, never give  up! She clearly runs her family fortunes by these, or otherwise neither Roise or Mum would be looking forward to Christmas dinner on Christmas Day at school. I know just how ridiculously hard it is to train a voice to be good enough for cathedral choir; it’s not something that happens to a child, any more than does great acting, sportsmanship or academic achievement. What works for many is that that path to success has been trod before by members of the family, be they parents, grandparents or even more distant relatives up the family tree.

There can be no better time for most of our families than Christmas, a time when generations do indeed come together, if not in person, then enabled by the extraordinary developments of technology over the past 20 years or so, via web, app, twitter and webcam. What Rosen, Goldthorpe and Atkins show us in common is that wisdom comes through experiences, bitter or sweet, and not necessarily in equal measure. What their own experiences teach us about parenting is that there are no easy answers, but a pretty decent set of route maps visible to those that want to use one.

And finally…if there is one other Blog post of mine I’d want you to read before the close of the year it is this one: “You have only failed if you have given up. Until then, it is called Learning”. You see, Christmas comes with all sorts of family games and competitions, when some of the family members can’t understand why they keep hitting the snake (rather than the ladders) or run out of digital lives  or can’t quite get their Q to hit the Triple letter score. And I know, from that same generational experience that Anne Atkins refers to, that it is only a matter of time and practice before the ladders, lives and scrabble of life become available for those who strive.  Perhaps 2015?