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A comprehensive education for Prince George | Letter

2024-01-17

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/17/a-comprehensive-education-for-prince-george

An inspiring headmaster suggested that the next royal baby should attend the local comp 50 years before Zoe Williams proposed it for the prince, writes Dr John S Kot When I was at high school in the 1970s, my headmaster, Mr Russell Sharrock, made a speech that was reported in the national press where he suggested that the next royal baby should attend their local comprehensive school, since the South Yorkshire comprehensives had outperformed the private schools in university entrance results (Kate doesn’t want Prince George to go to Eton – and for once I agree with her, 8 January). Mr Sharrock was a physicist with a MSc in mathematics, who had served with the Royal Signals Corps during the second world war, and then enjoyed a long and distinguished career in teaching. He sadly passed away some years ago, and so it is left to his students like me to ask: how is it that the highly successful legacy of such bold reformers has not only been ignored by successive governments but appears to have been completely forgotten? Dr John S Kot Sydney, Australia

Teaching assistants are the backbone of a crumbling education system | Letters

2024-04-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/30/teaching-assistants-are-the-backbone-of-a-crumbling-education-system

Jenny Hartland says special needs support is being handed over to staff with no experience, while Susan Buckley says teaching assistants are being saddled with extra work for no extra pay. Plus letters from Dr Jeff Penfold and Toby Wood I am saddened but unsurprised by your report on the (mis)use of teaching assistants in schools (Teaching assistants routinely cover lessons in England and Wales, survey finds, 26 April). Back in 2005, I was a special needs teacher employed centrally by the local education authority, and worked in mainstream primary schools on a one-to-one basis with children with statements of special educational need. Around this time, funding for this service was being run down and transferred to individual schools. On two occasions, I was told by a headteacher that they would no longer be using our service – with all its resources and expertise – and would I please explain to a teaching assistant what I did. The first time, to my shame, I complied. The second time I refused. Thirty-five years as a primary teacher – half of that time in special needs, with all the in-service training that accompanied the role – was not going to be reduced to a half-hour chat with an untrained assistant who was to take over my job, at a much reduced salary. What an insult to all concerned.Jenny HartlandYork Taking support away from children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) is a very real problem because they are often the children who teaching assistants are employed to support in the first place. To say a class may be taught by an unqualified teaching assistant, however, is a little misleading, as a higher-level teaching assistant has a qualification enabling them to take a class in the absence of a teacher. This level carries a higher salary, though nowhere near that paid to a teacher. Also, a qualified teacher whose specialism is music, for example, may be expected to cover the absence of a science teacher and may rely heavily on the teaching assistant who is regularly present in the science class. It has long been the case that teaching assistants have been looked down on in schools, but are expected to carry out duties above their pay grade. They often carry responsibility for the medical care of Send children, requiring extra training, with no extra remuneration. The number of Send children is rising, so the number of teaching assistants has to increase to care for them. It is unacceptable for these children to have their support reduced or removed in order for a teaching assistant to cover an absent teacher. Teaching assistants are the backbone of a failing education system that would crumble without them. Susan BuckleyEdlington, Lincolnshire The unwanted and unwarranted pressures of Ofsted inspections and the challenges of a changing curriculum on teachers have been well documented. But they are not recent problems. While reading the Thomas Hardy short story A Mere Interlude this week, I came across a historical parallel to the current plight of teachers from the late 19th century. In the story, the young schoolmistress, Baptista Trewthen, is expressing her dislike of her profession, relating to school inspections and a changing curriculum, to her landlady. I quote: “Yet I would even put up with them if it was not for the inspector. For three months before his visit I didn’t sleep soundly. And the Committee of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don’t know what to teach, and what to leave untaught.” It seems that politicians have always interfered and contributed to making teaching a demanding profession. Will they never learn?Dr Jeff PenfoldWantage, Oxfordshire Recently, a highly qualified teacher I know attended an interview in an academy. Despite the fact that she is an expert in her subject, and has spoken at national conferences, she was not given the job and was told that her experience made her too expensive. The post went to an early-career teacher who is inexperienced and cheap, and therefore more likely to go off sick due to stress, potentially leading to low-paid teaching assistants covering lessons. It is common knowledge that management-heavy academies are looking for savings so appoint cheap, and therefore potentially vulnerable, teachers.Toby WoodPeterborough Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Newham pupils to be offered classical education

2024-02-07

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/07/newham-pupils-to-be-offered-classical-education

Newham Collegiate Sixth Form in London will offer two-year course based on grammar, logic and rhetoric Pupils at a leading state sixth-form college in one of London’s most deprived boroughs are to be offered a classical education like the ancient Greeks to help them win scholarships to Ivy League universities and into top jobs. Newham Collegiate Sixth Form (NCS), which opened in East Ham in 2014, already enjoys enormous success. Last year the college celebrated 41 offers from Oxford and Cambridge, while two of its students were offered places at elite US universities. Now it is introducing a two-year liberal arts programme based on the trivium – grammar, logic and rhetoric – the three liberal arts considered in classical Greece to be the pillars of critical thought. The course, which is currently a pilot for 30-40 students, will involve two lessons a week in addition to normal A-level studies and will be expanded to more students in other sixth forms within the trust. One of the first topics up for discussion is “From Plato to Nato”, looking at the development of western civilisation. Pupils will study the Socratic method, pioneered by the Greek philosopher Socrates, which helps develop critical thinking skills. The aim is to provide students, many of whom come from underprivileged backgrounds, with the kind of “rich diet of knowledge” that private school students enjoy. The principal, Anita Lomax, said NCS had a responsibility to support young people to get the best possible academic outcome to enable them to get into top universities. “But we also believe that we need to create well-rounded individuals who’ve got the cultural capital to really compete with their more privileged peers,” she said. The college already offers weekly Oxbridge supervision sessions, “specialist schools” aimed at supporting students to prepare for their chosen professions and coaching on “polish and etiquette” to help them crack different social codes. Mouhssin Ismail, the chief standards officer of the City of London Academies Trust, which includes NCS, said: “A classical education with a rich diet of knowledge that private schoolchildren are taught gives them a grounding in the skills required to succeed. This programme will give them the building blocks of the ancients to be competitive in job interviews for the most sought-after positions.” The author and historian Sir Anthony Seldon, who was master of Wellington College and is now head of Epsom College, welcomed the initiative. “This is an exciting idea. I think the trivium should be underpinning all education,” he said. “I also think it’s very good they are aiming for US universities. It’s been overwhelmingly independent schools that have tended to send young people to US universities.” Edith Hall, a professor of classics at Durham University, was also enthusiastic. She runs an organisation called Advocating Classics Education (ACE), which promotes classical civilisation and ancient history studies in the state sector. “I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I’m absolutely all for it,” she said. “If you go to a private school, you can get Latin and Greek,” which are not available in the state sector. “Through Latin and Greek, you have access to all these orators, all these speech makers, you get to figure out how to write properly. “I’m absolutely convinced that access to the world, society, the religion, the politics, the ideas, the culture, the literature and mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans is something that every single person should have some kind of knowledge of and access to at school.”

Stem the tide of cuts in artistic education | Brief letters

2024-02-28

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/28/stem-the-tide-of-cuts-in-artistic-education

Valuing the humanities | Criticising Israel | Deepfake Tories | Cuckoo clock A very big thank you to Charlotte Higgins for her wonderful article (Art shows the surreal reality of wartime Ukraine in a way the news never could, 25 February). This should be circulated to departments of education everywhere and to all the other people who would eliminate art, literature and music from our schools and universities. The value of these disciplines can never be replaced by Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), despite what we are being led to believe. A world without the humanities would be a very bleak world indeed.Dr Wendy Quinlan-GagnonOttawa, Canada To those correspondents who fear being labelled antisemitic if they criticise the actions of the Israeli government (Letters, 21 February), can I refer them to a relevant part of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism: “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”.Pauline CadeWelwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire James Cleverly need not worry about malign states using AI deepfakes to interfere in a UK election (Report, 25 February). Any malign actor wanting to cause mayhem in the UK would surely act to keep the Tories in power.Richard HollowayNailsea, Somerset Re David Mole’s cuckoo (Letters, 28 February). Did anybody think to check if it was heard on the hour?John WoolleyCranswick, East Yorkshire Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

Age curbs on sex education topics risk making some children vulnerable

2024-05-15

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/16/age-limits-sex-education-risk-making-children-vulnerable

One-size-fits-all guidance will lead to some children accessing information via internet searches When it comes to sex education in schools in England, teachers and experts agree on one thing: using age alone to determine what topics to cover and what to avoid risks leaving some children more vulnerable. Headlines announcing the new guidance, to be published under consultation this week, focused on its bar on teaching sex education in primary schools to children earlier than year 5, when they are aged 9. The revised guidance is also expected to set topics to be discussed in secondary schools, with “explicit” teaching of subjects such as contraception and abortion restricted to year 9. Jo Morgan, a former teacher who now runs workshops in schools, said the proposed relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance needs to guard against “arbitrary age cutoffs” that fail to support young people when they might need it. She said: “You want to ensure the curriculum is very age and stage appropriate but you don’t want to be delivering things too late and leaving students at risk. “Every school will be different, and within a school each class will be different. I was a teacher for many years, teaching sex education, and you can walk into a year 7 class or a year 9 class and have a very different experience with a different class. “What I’d want to see is a statutory sex education that prioritises the subject and gives teachers the time and resources to tailor a curriculum to their students’ needs. Being generic, one-size-fits all, won’t work.” Dr Katie Malbon, ​a consultant ​paediatrician and ​chief ​medical ​adviser for ​the teen wellbeing app luna, said: “Paediatricians in the NHS are seeing girls starting their periods earlier​, as young as eight years old, so restricting education around sex and contraception until after this point only explains half of the biological story, which is only going to lead to more unanswered questions. “On top of this, surveys show that 96% of 8- to 11-year​-olds have a smartphone​, which means they can find ways to access this information in unsafe ways via internet searches and often via secret TikTok accounts – leading to misinformation and potentially distressing content being accessed.” School leaders also fear restricting topics to fixed age groups would create more difficulties than the government thinks it will solve. “We have serious concerns about how potential ‘limits’ would work in practice,” said Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. “Schools already work hard to ensure that the curriculum and teaching is age-appropriate based on the current government guidance and have the vital flexibility to respond to their own community and the needs of pupils in their schools. “We cannot ignore the fact that some children and young people are already accessing information from different sources outside of school. It is hard to see how rigid limits on what can be discussed and when would be in the best interests of young people.” The PSHE Association, the national body for personal, social, health and economic teaching, said the existing curriculum “has had a positive impact” since it was introduced in 2020, and hopes that the revised guidance will not reverse the progress that has been made. Morgan, chief executive of the consultancy Engendering Change, said one worry is that the revision is more politically motivated than about protecting children. “My concern is that this gives the impression that relationships and sex education is somehow sexualising children and harming them, when in fact what it is doing is protecting them and is absolutely necessary. It’s more important now than ever before.”

Curbs on sex education use pupils as ‘political football’, school leaders say

2024-05-15

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/15/sex-education-pupils-schools-england-conservatives-children

Conservatives criticised over plans to ban sex and relationship lessons for children under nine in England School leaders have accused the government of using children as “a political football” over its proposals to restrict sex education lessons by age in England. The revised guidance published on Thursday outlines what topics could be taught to specific age groups, as well as allowing parents access to teaching materials used and further restrict how teachers address gender and sexuality, after pressure from Conservative MPs. Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told the BBC: “Pupils are being placed in the middle of a highly sensitive subject and being used as a political football for the sake of headlines when we should be focusing on their wellbeing.” Di’Iasio added: “We do not think the government has handled the important matter of the teaching of sex education with the care it deserves. It has not consulted with school leaders and we have not seen the guidance that is planned other than through leaked reports to the media.” Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, will propose the new age ratings for relationship, sex and health education (RSHE) in schools to ensure it is “appropriately and sensitively taught,” according to the Department for Education (DfE). The revised guidance will restrict explicit discussions of important topics such as contraception and sexual violence until children are in year 9, the third year of secondary school when most pupils are 13. Keegan said the revised guidance “will support schools with how and when to teach often difficult and sensitive topics, leaving no doubt about what is appropriate to teach pupils at every stage of school. “Parents can be reassured once and for all their children will only learn age-appropriate content.” Sex education will not be taught before year 5, and at that point “from a purely scientific standpoint”. The current guidance allows primary schools to decide whether they need to cover any aspect of sex education, based on the needs of their pupils rather than by age. The guidance will also require schools to show parents all classroom material to be used – a key demand lobbied for by a group of Conservative MPs. The DfE said the consultation followed “multiple reports of disturbing materials being used in RSHE lessons,” with the updated guidance aiming to ensure that content is factual and that children have the capacity to understand what they are being taught. While the DfE’s commentary states that “the contested theory of gender identity will not be taught,” the guidance will still allow secondary school pupils to learn about legally protected characteristics such as sexual orientation and gender reassignment. “In light of the Cass review, it is important that schools take a cautious approach to teaching about this sensitive topic, and do not use any materials that present contested views as fact, including the view that gender is a spectrum,” the DfE said. The guidance will be expanded to include a dedicated section on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including abusive behaviour such as stalking, as well as advice for teachers about how to address misogynistic online influencers. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Additional content on suicide prevention will be included in the secondary health and wellbeing section, intended to equip pupils to recognise when they or their peers need help. Louis Appleby, chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, said: “It’s vital that young people are able to understand thoughts of suicide or self-harm that they may be feeling, and that schools are confident in addressing this most sensitive of subjects. The new guidance aims to break down the shame that can make it hard to ask for help and, crucially, places an emphasis on safe ways of coping.” The DfE said the guidance would help young people understand the benefits of rationing their time spent online and its impact on their wellbeing, and the serious risks of viewing content that promotes self-harm and suicide. The revisions have been under discussion within the government since March 2023, when Rishi Sunak promised to bring forward new guidance. That followed more than 50 Conservative MPs lobbying the prime minister with claims that children were being “indoctrinated with radical and unevidenced ideologies” about sex and gender. Presenting the new guidance, Sunak said: “Parents rightly trust that when they send their children to school, they are kept safe and will not be exposed to disturbing content that is inappropriate for their age. That’s why I was horrified to hear reports of this happening in our classrooms last year.” RSHE is a mandatory subject to be taught in all secondary schools in England, while relationships education has also been compulsory for primary schools since September 2020. The consultation on the updated guidance opens on Thursday and will remain open until 11 July.

U3A education is for any time of life | Brief letters

2024-02-06

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/06/u3a-education-is-for-any-time-of-life

Lifelong learning | Rishi Sunak’s poor bet | Football in instalments | Remembering Ian Lavender Jenny Braithwaite (Letters, 29 January) deftly characterises the peer-to-peer learning model of U3A groups. However, the “third age” is not limited to “retired people” – founders characterised it as a time in life when education is for its own sake, not for qualifications. And U3A groups are not “branches” of the national Third Age Trust, but autonomous units within it.Keith RichardsFormer chair, Third Age Trust Rishi Sunak, as a Hindu, should heed the Mahabharata, which relates the tale of Yudhishthira – a man who lost everything, including his wife, when involved in gambling (Sunak ‘out of touch’ for betting £1,000 on Rwanda plan’s success, says Labour, 5 February). I’d settle for Sunak just losing the election. Phil Sinnott Crosby, Merseyside Walking down the main street in Clovelly, Devon, I kept losing my husband, who was behind me. It turned out he was watching a football match, in instalments, as he passed each living room with a television (Letters, 5 February).Lesley BarnesGreenford, London So sorry that Ian Lavender has died (Obituary, 5 February). I imagine that, at the pearly gates, when he’s asked for his name by Saint Peter, a voice from within will cry: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”Dr Stephen PaceyNorth Muskham, Nottinghamshire Ian Lavender won a celebrity special of The Weakest Link in 2002. As he walked off, he turned to the camera and said, in his Private Pike voice, “Not such a stupid boy after all, Mr Mainwaring.”Steve LuptonPrestwich, Greater Manchester Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

Foreign students may be undermining UK higher education, says Cleverly

2024-03-12

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/12/overseas-students-undermining-uk-higher-education-warns-cleverly

Home secretary calls for visa review over concern that courses are being used as shortcut to gain work permits The home secretary, James Cleverly, has said international students may be “undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system” by using university courses as a cheap way of getting work visas. In a letter to the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Cleverly asked the body to investigate whether the graduate visa entitlement – allowing international students to work for two or three years after graduating – was failing to attract “the brightest and the best” to the UK. But university leaders fear that cutting or restricting the graduate visa route will lead to a drastic fall in international recruitment, and provoke a financial crisis for universities that rely on income from international tuition fees. Cleverly told the MAC that while the government was committed to attracting “talented students from around the world to study in the UK”, it also wanted “to ensure the graduate route is not being abused. In particular, that some of the demand for study visas is not being driven more by a desire for immigration”. Cleverly said: “An international student can spend relatively little on fees for a one-year course and gain access to two years with no job requirement on the graduate route, followed by four years’ access to a discounted salary threshold on the skilled worker route. “This means international graduates are able to access the UK labour market with salaries significantly below the requirement imposed on the majority of migrant skilled workers.” The home secretary instructed the committee, which gives independent advice to the government, to investigate “any evidence of abuse” of the graduate route, “including the route not being fit for purpose”, and to look at which universities were producing graduates who used the route. He also asked the MAC to analyse “whether the graduate route is undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system, including understanding how the graduate route is or is not, effectively controlling for the quality of international students, such that it is genuinely supporting the UK to attract and retain the brightest and the best, contributing to economic growth and benefiting British higher education”. Rachel Hewitt, the chief executive of the MillionPlus group of universities, said the government’s review appeared to be deliberately aimed at undermining the success of British higher education. “It is impossible to imagine the government going out of its way to make Britain less inviting to investment in almost any other sector – and yet every negative headline and policy reform makes Britain less attractive to international students,” Hewitt said. “The graduate route is a key component of the offer that UK universities can make to international applicants, and its value should be recognised and not eroded.” Jamie Arrowsmith, the director of Universities UK International, said universities were “deeply concerned” by the short notice given by Cleverly. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion “Post-study work matters for many international students, allowing those who have invested in our country the opportunity to find work and contribute to the UK economy​,” said Arrowsmith. “Having publicly recommitted to the graduate route on its current terms in May 2023, any further changes would be extremely damaging to our reputation as a welcoming destination for international students, and risks undermining a UK success story that generates more than £20bn a year in export earnings for the economy​.​” Cleverly said “early data” showed that just 23% of international students using the skilled workers route moved into graduate-level jobs, and that last year only a third moved into jobs paying more than £26,000 a year. The committee is expected to report back in May, and its findings could come at a difficult time for the higher education sector. So far this year, enrolments from overseas have fallen by 40% compared with 2023. Vanessa Wilson, chief executive of the University Alliance group, said: “It is important that international students have the opportunity to study at the full range of UK universities so they can select the option that is right for them, and so that all UK students and regions can benefit from their contributions.”

Sex education in English schools set to be banned before children are nine

2024-05-14

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/14/sex-education-in-english-schools-set-to-be-banned-before-children-are-nine

Education secretary Gillian Keegan to announce guidelines for phased discussion of topics depending on pupils’ age Sex education in England’s primary schools is to be limited to those aged nine and over, with “explicit” discussions on topics such as contraception to be delayed until the age of 13, according to new guidance to be proposed by the government. The revised guidance on relationships, sex and health education is expected to be published this week by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and is likely to contain further restrictions on teaching about gender and identity, with teachers told to instead explain “biological” facts, according to reports. Keegan will announce a consultation that proposes schools be barred from teaching sex education of any type before year 5, when children are nine years old. A Whitehall source said: “Most schools are doing a great job [teaching sex and relationship education], however, there have been many concerning reports, and these limits are based on advice from an expert panel.” Schools would be given the flexibility to discuss topics outside the detailed age groups in certain circumstances, such as if a younger child shared an inappropriate image with a class. “It’s never an easy balance to make to ensure children are both prepared but also able to remain children but this guidance achieves that,” the source said. The guidance will also require schools to show parents all classroom material to be used – something long demanded by a group of Conservative MPs. The Daily Telegraph reported that the details were “still being finalised”, with the plans being circulated to cabinet ministers, and suggested there could still be changes before they are published. The Telegraph also reported that the guidance will make clear that “gender ideology” involving discussions regarding changes of gender is a “contested subject”, and that teachers must say that there are two biological sexes. However, one adviser likened it to “any other contested view: schools should ensure they are clear that it is a contested view and fairly present all sides” – in the same way that political discussions are handled. The revised guidelines are said to be far more detailed on what schools can teach in sex education up to the age of 13, when pupils are in year 9. Before that, the content will be limited to “basic facts” of conception and birth. Primary schools will be expected to focus on the importance of families, friendships and ensuring that relationships are “respectful”, including discussion of damaging stereotypes and roles, as well as warning of the dangers of social media and online relationships. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Discussions of sexual acts will be kept until year 9, the third year of secondary school in England, which may also cover subjects such as contraception, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases. Topics such as sexual violence and domestic or relationship violence are not to be raised until year 9. Pupils in year 7 will be able to be taught about the dangers of sending or receiving naked images or pornography, as well as about sexual harassment, stalking and grooming. Rishi Sunak first agreed to bring forward the review of England’s statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in March 2023, after pressure from Conservative MPs who claimed that inappropriate subjects and graphic material were being taught. The claims were rejected by teaching unions, with one describing the review as “politically motivated”.

Parents in England: have you recently switched to home education?

2024-02-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/29/parents-in-england-have-you-recently-switched-to-home-education

We would like to hear from parents who began home schooling their child in the last year. What was the main reason for the change? The number of children being homeschooled in England rose by nearly 14% last autumn, official figures show, with parents increasingly citing mental health as the main reason for home education. Department for Education (DfE) statistics showed that 92,000 children were recorded as being home schooled on one day last term, compared with 80,900 at the same point in autumn 2022. If you have started home schooling your child in the last year, we’d like to hear from you. Why did you make the decision? What was the main reason for the change? How has the experience been? Do you plan to continue with home education next year? Tell us about you and your child’s experience of home schooling – what has gone well and what has been challenging? Has it affected your employment situation – if so, tell us about it. You can see the article that included respondents to this callout here. You can contribute to open Community callouts here or Share a story here.

UK scores expected to fall in Pisa education study

2023-12-04

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/04/uk-scores-expected-to-fall-in-pisa-education-study

UK’s maths scores predicted to drop after a jump last time, with a less severe decline in English UK scores in tests that compare educational attainment among 15-year-olds around the world are likely to fall when they are published this week, after the disruption that Covid caused to learning. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will publish the results of its latest programme for international student assessment (Pisa) on Tuesday, a year later than expected due to the pandemic. One expert predicted that England’s scores in mathematics, which markedly improved in the last round of tests, would fall back this year. Results in English were also likely to suffer, but probably less so, he said. Pisa, which began in 2000 and is ordinarily held every three years, compares standardised test results in reading, maths and science across about 80 countries. Participating governments study the rankings closely for evidence that their education policies are having a positive impact when compared with other countries. This year’s results are expected to be like no other after Covid wrought havoc on education systems around the world. Many countries are bracing themselves for a decline in performance, while school absences also continue to be a concern in the UK and elsewhere. In recent years, the UK has made positive progress in the Pisa rankings, while remaining outside the top 10, lagging behind high performers such as China, Singapore and Estonia, which was Europe’s standout performer in the last survey in 2018. There were improvements in Wales in 2018, but more mixed results for Scotland and Northern Ireland. In 2018 the survey included a wellbeing questionnaire, which found that schoolchildren in Britain were more likely to be miserable and less likely to think their lives had meaning compared with children in many other countries. Britain ranked 69th out of 72 countries for pupils’ life satisfaction. John Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at UCL Institute of Education, said he expected Pisa maths scores in England, which rose by 11 points in 2018 after a long period at the same level, to fall back this time, judging by recent national reference test results, which track performance over time. Scores in English are likely to be less affected, he said, based on other test results suggesting that English learning was less affected by Covid. “England was pretty stable from 2006 to 2015 and then there was a big uptick in maths. In reading there was a kind of shallow trajectory. Science was flat for ages and last time dipped a bit,” he said. “In terms of scores [this year], we’re probably expecting some shift downwards in England, but also in all countries, because of the Covid factor. How big a decline, I’m not entirely sure.”

Peers call for urgent overhaul of secondary education in England

2023-12-12

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/12/peers-call-urgent-overhaul-secondary-education-england

Lords report says there is too much learning by rote and many key Tory changes should be reversed A major parliamentary report has called for an urgent overhaul of secondary education in England that would reverse many of the Conservatives’ key education changes of the past decade. The House of Lords report says the education system for 11- to 16-year-olds is too focused on academic learning and written exams, resulting in too much learning by rote and not enough opportunity for pupils to pursue creative and technical subjects. Published on Tuesday, the report also calls for the English baccalaureate, introduced by the then education secretary Michael Gove as a school performance measure to encourage the uptake of a narrow suite of academic subjects, to be scrapped. The government’s ambition was that 90% of year 10 pupils should enter the English baccalaureate, or Ebacc, by 2025. However, the criticism has been that in pursuing such a limited range of subjects there has been a dramatic decline in other subjects. “Opportunities to experience more practical, applied forms of learning have become increasingly limited, even though many pupils enjoy, and excel in, this way of acquiring knowledge and skills,” the report says. The report also challenges the government’s focus on a “knowledge-rich” approach, complaining it has resulted in a curriculum that is “overburdened” with content, which is then examined by 25 to 30 hours of assessment at the end of year 11. The criticisms by the Lords education for 11- to 16-year-olds cross-party committee echo many of the concerns raised over the years by school leaders, academics and unions in response to the series of changes introduced by the Conservative government. The committee recommends instead that schools and teachers should be allowed to offer a more varied range of learning experiences, to help pupils develop a broader set of skills that will better meet the needs of a future digital and green economy. It says there should be more opportunities to study creative, cultural, vocational and technical subjects. Pupils should also have the option to take functional literacy and numeracy qualifications that are equal in value to GCSE English and maths. The report also calls on the government to consider cutting the amount of external assessment undertaken by pupils during key stage 4 and introducing more non-exam assessments. It is also in favour of more on-screen assessment in GCSE exams. “The evidence we have received is compelling,” said the former Conservative education minister Jo Johnson, who chairs the committee. “Change to the education system for 11- to 16-year-olds is urgently needed, to address an overloaded curriculum, a disproportionate exam burden and declining opportunities to study creative and technical subjects.” Another member of the committee, the former education secretary Kenneth Baker, said dropping the EBacc would give schools greater freedom to decide which subjects they wanted to teach. “There has been a tremendous drop in technical subjects – design and technology entries have dropped by between 70% and 80% in the last 13 years and many cultural subjects, such as drama, performing arts, music, dance, have dropped by 50%, at a time when there is now a huge demand from the creative sector and a boom in entertainment industries,” Lord Baker said. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “Any current or future government must take note of calls like this one, from across the sector, for curriculum and assessment modernisation. The future success and wellbeing of young people, and the nation, depends on it. However, without addressing real-terms school funding cuts and tackling the intense workload of staff, which drives our serious teacher recruitment and retention challenge, the changes needed have little chance of materialising.” Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, added: “Government policies have prioritised a set of academic GCSEs, and increased the time students spend sitting exams as well as the amount of information they must memorise. It is not conducive to good mental health or enjoyment of learning.” A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are constantly seeing the success of our reforms. Just last week, England was ranked 11th in the world for maths up from 27th in 2009, and in May we were named ‘best in the west’ for primary reading out of a comparable 43 countries.”

Why investing in arts education is so vital | Letter

2023-10-15

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/15/labours-arts-ed-plan-needs-sketching-out

Investment in young people’s creativity after years of cuts will pay off for society as a whole, says Matt Bell It is great to see Labour pushing for “real world maths” and addressing the gaps in our education system (Labour announces ‘phonics for maths’ scheme in planned curriculum review, 10 October), but what about art and creativity? Arts education in schools has been cut to shreds. No paint, no materials, no status, no nothing. Last summer, Labour committed to make creative education compulsory to the age of 16. Now we need some detail to back that up. Let’s recognise the potential of all the arts to nurture self-esteem and creative expression in young people, and help them find their voice in the world. High-quality arts education is indispensable. It’s part of the reason why our creative industries are so good, and it shapes our society for the better. On 25 October, the winner of this year’s Young London Print prize will be revealed on the giant screen in Piccadilly Circus, London. This is a competition where young Londoners express their response to the climate crisis through printmaking. Their art shows us a future full of colour and hope. That’s what you get by investing in art. Matt Bell Chair, Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair

Stars back Andrew Lloyd Webber call for music education funding

2023-11-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/nov/30/stars-back-andrew-lloyd-webber-call-for-music-education-funding

Ed Sheeran and Dua Lipa among signatories of letter to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer calling for funds for music in disadvantaged schools Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Dua Lipa are among the music industry leaders who have called for public funding for music in disadvantaged schools. In a letter to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer on Thursday, Lord Lloyd-Webber called for funding to scale up the work of his music education charity, the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), which has provided free musical instruments and weekly music lessons for 20,000 children in disadvantaged schools for the past 10 years. The letter was co-signed by industry figures including Liam Gallagher, Katherine Jenkins, Nicola Benedetti, Julian Lloyd Webber, the Kanneh-Mason family and Jonathan Vaughan, the principal of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. The MiSST provides instruments, lessons as part of the curriculum and a developed programme for children in years 7, 8 and 9 in schools in England, including in London, Barnsley, Bournemouth, Middlesbrough and Cumbria. According to the trust, across all subjects taught in its partner schools – not just music – children are getting half a grade more than predicted, and some are going on to study at the likes of Oxford, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. It says there is also a 10% increase in pupils’ self-confidence and resilience, and many students report that music helps to improve their happiness, and sometimes turn their life around. The cost of the programme is initially £200 a year for each student, which drops to £132 once a school has been running the programme for three years. Lloyd Webber’s letter said: “From improved cognitive development, communication skills and problem solving to greater confidence, self-esteem and social development, music has a profound impact on young people’s lives. “Most pertinently, in a world that feels more divided than at any point in my lifetime, and with conflict raging around the world with incalculable consequences, music has a unique ability to unite. It is a universal language that can transcend borders, cultures and differences and bring people together.” It continued: “For many years, music education in schools has been scaled back – at a time when we have never needed it more. Every child deserves to be empowered through music, no matter their background, race or religion.” The letter urged the government, and all future governments, to help scale up the work of the trust, targeting the most disadvantaged schools in the most disadvantaged areas, starting with the 80 schools on the trust’s waiting list. “Now, more than ever, we must reverse the tide on musical education and recognise the transformational impact it can have for our children, schools, communities and society at large,” it said. Rachel Landon, MiSST chief executive, said: “If governments are serious about creating equal opportunity in education, programmes like MiSST are exactly where they should be focused.”

Unions ask education secretary and Ofsted chief to halt school inspections

2023-12-11

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/11/unions-ask-education-secretary-and-ofsted-chief-to-halt-school-inspections

NAHT and ASCL call on Gillian Keegan and Amanda Spielman to allow time to address concerns raised by coroner Two unions representing school leaders in England have called for a halt to Ofsted inspections to allow time for concerns raised by the inquest into the death of headteacher Ruth Perry to be properly addressed. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said the decision by Ofsted to suspend inspections for just one day on Monday to bring together lead inspectors for a briefing did not go nearly far enough. The two unions have now written a joint letter to the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and the outgoing chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, formally requesting “an immediate pause” to inspections of schools and colleges to give space for proper consideration of the issues raised by the coroner. “This is necessary for schools and colleges to have even a modicum of confidence in the inspectorate,” said the NAHT general secretary, Paul Whitehouse, and the ASCL general secretary, Geoff Barton. The senior coroner for Berkshire, Heidi Connor, concluded last week that Ofsted’s inspection of Perry’s school, Caversham primary in Reading, which was subsequently downgraded from outstanding to inadequate, had contributed to her death by suicide. The two unions said the coroner had raised seven areas of concern at the conclusion of the inquest, including how safeguarding was inspected in schools and its impact on overall effectiveness, a lack of Ofsted training or published policy in key areas, and a lack of additional support for schools and colleges graded inadequate. “It is important that we have clarity from Ofsted about a plan and timetable to address each area before further inspections take place,” the joint union statement said. “This is vital in reassuring schools and colleges that appropriate steps are being taken to protect and support the welfare of education staff.” This week is the final week for inspections this term ahead of the Christmas break. An Ofsted spokesperson said under its existing deferral policy, headteachers would be able to request to defer their inspection to the new year, if they preferred not to go ahead this week. “It’s important that school inspections continue, in the interests of children and parents – but we are determined to work sensitively with headteachers and their staff,” the spokesperson said. “We recognise and understand the strength of feeling in schools, following the inquest into the tragic death of Ruth Perry. We are immediately introducing a number of measures that we described last week and talked through with our lead inspectors today. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion “And we are developing new training for all inspectors, to include external experts, that will take place in early January. These measures address several areas of concern set out by the coroner. When we receive the coroner’s report we will urgently address all remaining issues.” Keegan, speaking during education questions in the Commons on Monday, refused to be drawn on whether Ofsted’s single-word judgments should now be scrapped. She said: “I will be working very closely with the new HMCI (His Majesty’s chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver) when he starts three weeks today to see what more we can do. But we must remember that Ofsted do play an important role to keep children safe and to keep standards high.”

Vulnerable children in England ‘safer at school’ than being educated at home

2024-05-14

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/15/vulnerable-children-in-england-safer-at-school-than-being-educated-at-home

Review of serious safeguarding failures finds young people from abusive environments ‘less visible’ to agencies Children who grow up in neglectful or abusive environments are safer attending school than being educated at home, according to a review of serious safeguarding failures in England in which six children died and 35 were harmed in one year. The report, by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, emphasised that while home education was not a safeguarding risk, it found that vulnerable children were “less visible” to safeguarding agencies than those regularly in school. Annie Hudson, chair of the panel, said: “While most children who are home educated have happy and safe lives, it is crucial that, where and when children are at risk of harm, they are afforded the very best protection. “Our analysis looks at the lives of 41 children who were subjected to horrific, and sometimes fatal, abuse while they were being electively home educated. It seeks to raise awareness and understanding of the risk of harm factors so professionals can better provide children at risk with the help and protection they need. “Our findings show that children who are educated at home and where there is a risk of abuse and neglect, may not be visible to safeguarding agencies and cannot access the potential protective benefits that school may provide.” The panel looked at reviews of serious safeguarding failures in 2020-21, and identified 27 cases involving 41 children in England not attending school who were subjected to sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect. Six of the children died as a result, including three who died by suicide. One child died owing to an undiagnosed eating disorder, one from undiagnosed leukaemia and one from stabbing. The panel’s briefing paper states: “While the number of electively home educated children who are harmed or are at risk of serious harm is comparatively low, the protective factor that school can offer was missing from their lives and this had serious, and sometimes fatal, consequences for their safety and welfare.” Of the 41 children, 21 had never attended school and only 17 were known to children’s services at the time. A total of 29 were seen as being home educated, while six children appeared to be missing from education and the remaining six lacked enough information to classify. There is no legal obligation for parents in England to inform a local authority that their child is being educated at home. The panel said its investigation followed increases in the number of children being home educated after the pandemic-era lockdowns. The Department for Education’s data shows the number of school-age children being home educated increased from under 81,000 in autumn 2022 to 92,000 in autumn 2023. In 2021-22 there were eight safeguarding reviews involving children being home educated, and 15 in 2022-23. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Heather Sandy of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said: “We recognise that parents have the right to educate their children at home. However, local authorities must be given the powers to match their responsibilities to assure themselves that children are safe and receiving a good education. This must also be met with adequate funding to allow us to carry out our statutory duties.” The panel said it backed the creation of a national register of children who are being electively home educated, which has been urged by Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England. A Department for Education said: “Local authorities have a legal duty to safeguard children in their areas, regardless of how they are educated, and we expect them to use their safeguarding powers when warranted. “We support parents who choose to home educate, providing that education is safe and suitable, and are working closely with Flick Drummond MP on a new law that will mean councils must maintain children not-in-school registers.” In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org

House of Lords report on secondary education is well-intentioned but wrong | Letter

2023-12-21

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/21/house-of-lords-report-on-secondary-education-is-well-intentioned-but-wrong

The reason why most pupils in fee-paying schools do well is because they have access to resources, says Michael Young Of course the Lords are right in recognising that “one size doesn’t fit all” for the secondary curriculum. However, such generalisations easily mask as much as they reveal. We have a divided and unequal education system in which, as your editorial (12 December) pointed out, a third of pupils in England do not obtain a pass in maths and English and, one could add, often give up a science and a foreign language. It is also true, as the House of Lords committee states, that the Ebacc is too narrow. Any national curriculum should encourage access beyond the traditional academic subjects. However, the damage caused by educational inequality will not be remedied by replacing the Ebacc with art and other practical subjects. This is to treat the curriculum in isolation from the inadequate resources of state-funded schools as the main cause of low achievement and disaffection. The reason why most pupils in private fee-paying schools do well in a range of academic subjects as well as having good opportunities to develop their artistic, sporting and practical skills is not because such schools value diversity but because they have access to resources – material and human – that make such goals possible for all their pupils. Our educational problems are not primarily the result of failing to recognise the diversity of pupils. They are the result of the poor resources of state-funded schools and the failure of successive governments to learn from the past. The Lords committee mirrors the equally mistaken but no less well-intentioned 1963 report Half Our Future, by Sir John Newsom, and the similar recommendations of the 2011 Demos thinktank report The Forgotten Half.Michael Young Emeritus professor of sociology of curriculum, Institute of Education, University College London Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

The bones of medical education examined | Letters

2023-07-17

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/17/the-bones-of-medical-education-examined

Graeme M Weiner thinks graduates don’t need the detailed knowledge of human anatomy that he was taught in the 1980s; Dr Anna Harvey Bluemel says going ‘back to basics’ is a useful way of thinking through complex problems As an ear, nose and throat surgeon, I frequently have to wrestle with complex areas of human anatomy. However, I cannot agree with Prof Bernard Moxham’s assertion (Letters, 10 July) that all medical graduates need detailed knowledge of human anatomy to the level that I was taught during the 1980s; hours spent learning the details of the layers of the sole of the foot are now fortunately forgotten. Some knowledge is certainly required, but I do not believe that a GP (for instance) requires anything more than a general idea of where in the chest the heart sits, or where the appendix hides in the abdomen. Gold-star students might identify the thyroid sitting bow-tie-like in the route of the neck, but unless intervention is required, further detailed knowledge of nerve and blood supply is largely superfluous. As a trainee I was taught that, unless I was about to dismantle my car, a detailed knowledge of the workings of the internal combustion engine was largely unnecessary. Graeme M Weiner Consultant otolaryngologist, Exeter As a doctor in training in my second year of qualification, and an aspiring medical education researcher, I was interested to read both Chris Ward’s defence of a truncated medical course (Letters, 4 July) and Bernard Moxham’s rebuttal focusing on the teaching of anatomy. I would take this further: medical students deserve adequate time to learn the first principles of anatomy, physiology and indeed the scientific process. As a first‑ and second-year medical student, I found learning these topics that were seemingly unrelated to clinical practice frustrating when I was itching to see patients. But as I become increasingly senior, I rely more and more on the knowledge of these principles when signs and symptoms aren’t adding up, or there is uncertainty about a diagnosis or course of management action. When we talk about training doctors, we must remember that we are not just training for the first year of practice, but for a lifetime career, with increasing responsibility for managing increasingly complex cases. For many, going “back to basics” is a useful way of thinking through complex problems – and so we need to ensure that these basics are adequately taught and understood.Dr Anna Harvey BluemelNewcastle upon Tyne Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Special educational needs in English schools in ‘crisis’, minister admits

2024-03-26

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/26/special-educational-needs-in-english-schools-in-crisis-minister-admits

Gillian Keegan says parents having to ‘fight to get right support’ as unions say provision falls short of what is needed Special educational needs provision in England is in the grip of a “crisis”, the education secretary has said, as school unions questioned whether a funding boost promised for the sector by the government was actually new money and said it fell a long way short of what was needed. Days after figures showed about two in three special schools were at or over capacity in the last academic year, Gillian Keegan also acknowledged parents were having to “fight to get the right support” for children with special educational needs. Keegan used a round of broadcast interviews on Tuesday to promote plans to deliver 60,000 more places to meet the needs of pupils and their families. Asked whether she agreed there was a “huge crisis”, she told BBC Breakfast: “We have definitely acknowledged it. We have special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plans, so you don’t put that in place unless you acknowledge that you definitely need to improve it. “There’s been a massive increase in special educational needs, we know how to diagnose more, we care more, we know more about how to overcome special educational needs, so that’s definitely something that has changed over the last 10 years. But we have been really trying to make sure that we do the right thing.” Keegan was speaking as the Department for Education said new Send (special educational needs and disabilities) and AP (alternative provision) funding were being delivered to meet children’s needs, and that councils would get “a record £850m cash boost”. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the “blizzard of figures looks very much like previously announced spending commitments”. “While investment in education is always welcome, the latest figures are “a very long way short of the level of funding that is needed”. Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “It seems everyone, even the government, now accepts we are in the middle of a full-blown crisis when it comes to Send. “However, this hasn’t just come out of nowhere – we have been warning about this for years and it is immensely frustrating just how little progress the government has made on actually tackling the issue.” Figures published earlier this month showed there were approximately 4,000 more pupils on roll in special schools than the reported capacity. The Guardian reported last month that hundreds of children with special educational needs have been waiting for a year or longer to access support as local authorities across England buckle under the strain. Children in some local authorities had been waiting for more than two years to be issued with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) that details the support they require, freedom of information requests revealed.

‘Less daunting’: inside the new education unit in north London supporting school refusers

2024-01-01

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/01/less-daunting-inside-the-new-education-unit-in-north-london-supporting-school-refusers

The Royal Free hospital children’s school is running programmes at the renovated Konstam Centre in Camden When schools in England fully reopened after the Covid lockdown in 2020, most children were happy to return. But Rex, like many other children, decided he wouldn’t go back. “He didn’t particularly enjoy school, pre-Covid, but just got up and went, because that’s just what you did,” says his mother, Tracey. Rex’s mental health deteriorated; he was struggling with chronic depression and anxiety, and he became what is known as an emotionally based school avoider. “His school fell apart during Covid. It wasn’t like he was particularly keeping to any routine. And then he tried to go back in September 2020, and I think he suddenly realised, ‘this doesn’t work for me at all and I’m not going to do it any more’,” Tracey says. “As a parent, you’re at your wits’ end, because your child is just stuck at home. They’re just on their phone, they’re getting more and more distressed. They’re just getting more isolated. “I would wake up crying and I would go to bed crying. Because apart from mainstream schools, in the UK I didn’t know what the other options are, apart from home schooling and that’s a no for me anyway.” Luckily for Rex and Tracey, the London borough of Camden has another option, run by the Royal Free hospital children’s school. After a false start that saw Rex rejoin his previous school for GCSEs only to retreat into further avoidance, he was offered a place in the hospital school’s “futures group”, designed for older children who can’t cope with the bustle and complexity of a mainstream school. Despite Rex’s initial reluctance – “I think he thought it was just going be sitting around playing a guitar, it would just be a bit of a joke,” says Tracey – he thrived with the group’s support, gaining a string of good GCSE results. He is now taking A-levels at a mainstream sixth form. While the centre does use therapy, including horse riding, art and music therapy, Alex Yates, the headteacher of the Royal Free hospital children’s school, says the children it takes on should not expect an easy ride. “The level of scrutiny and push that they get here is like probably nothing they’ve experienced before,” he says. “It’s certainly nothing that mainstream schools will prepare them for, the fact that somebody will be contacting them every morning from 8.15am to ask how they’re doing, what time they’re going to be in. “These children are not in a good place. When you opt out of things, and you take a depressive view on things, you are stuck. And these children are stuck. And we’ve got to provide them with innovative ways to get them out of that.” The hospital school’s success has led local schools and Camden borough to support the renovation of a bespoke unit at the Konstam Centre, which officially opened in October – the first of its kind designed to help children aged five to 16 who have been estranged from attending school because of their medical or mental health challenges. Originally opened as a children’s health clinic in 1924, funded by the Konstam family to commemorate two sons killed in the first world war, the centre allowed Yates to bring together a variety of programmes to help school avoiders. Dr Cathleen Halligan, an educational psychologist who works with the school, says: “The vast majority of children I’ve met, who aren’t attending school and are struggling with school avoidance, they do not want it to stay like that. They want it to be different. “A place like this is less daunting for children who have struggled with some of the things they’ve experienced, like difficulties with peers or the sensory overload of a big secondary school. “It’s a smaller group here, it’s quiet. You have one classroom as a main base, you don’t go between lots of different classes, you call people by their first names, you don’t wear a uniform. The setting of the school lends itself to overcoming those barriers.” Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Admissions are strictly limited, and not just to the centre’s capacity of 50 children. Students must be referred by a medical professional, social worker or school leader, and funding from the child’s current school has to be agreed. Each case is considered by a panel to decide if they can fit in. “Essentially, what we’re trying to do is to get young people to feel better about themselves, regardless of their age group,” says Yates. “My measure of success for the futures group, the GCSE group, has never been how they do in year 11. Because, quite frankly, you can hothouse and get them grades that are approximate to their ability, or push beyond it sometimes. “The real test is what they are doing the year after that. Because all the effort that we make in terms of reconnecting them with the world, in terms of getting their self-esteem back, in terms of building up their self-confidence, that has to be resilient.” Yates said the development of the Konstam centre was “the result of local authority maintained schools working together”. “The only reason I’ve been able to do this is because at every stage I’ve had support from local headteachers, I’ve had support from Camden’s school inclusion team. They’ve invested, financially invested, as a group,” he added. “The reason we got this building is because we were able to demonstrate that the outcomes were fantastic and it was worth the council investing.” Marcus Boyland, Camden council’s cabinet member for children and families, said: “We’ve got a leadership team that’s really committed to children in the borough, and we’ve taken policy decisions to support them and protect them from cuts that needed to be made elsewhere. It’s something we are really proud of. “We see [RFHCS Konstam] as part of an early intervention and prevention strategy, getting in and supporting these children early on, and I believe it can help stop or prevent other issues that might come up later.” Tracey says that while Rex still struggles, she now feels better equipped: “It’s work in progress but it’s helped massively, me and him both. Whenever I do speak to Alex [Yates], he always says: ‘we’re here if you need us’.”

Gillian Keegan tells schools to let parents see sex education materials

2023-10-23

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/23/gillian-keegan-tells-schools-to-let-parents-see-sex-education-materials

Education secretary’s letter emphasises copyright cannot be used as ‘excuse’ to withhold RSHE teaching resources Gillian Keegan has written to schools in England ordering them to make the materials used in children’s sex education available to be seen by parents, warning headteachers there can be “no ifs, no buts, no more excuses”. It is the second letter the education secretary has sent to schools on the issue, which has been seized upon by some backbench Conservative MPs amid claims that children are being exposed to inappropriate material during relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) at school. The secretary of state first wrote in March after reports that some schools were being prevented from sharing curriculum resources provided by a third party with parents because of warnings over copyright. The latest ultimatum to schools – many of which are closed for half-term – said companies providing RSHE teaching resources cannot and should not use copyright law to prevent schools from sharing materials. Any attempt to do so would be unenforceable and void, she added. Keegan has simultaneously penned an open letter to parents, encouraging and supporting their right to know what their children are being taught in the classroom and to see the materials used to impart those lessons. Keegan said: “This government is acting to guarantee parents’ fundamental right to know what their children are being taught in sex and relationships education. “Today I’m writing to schools and parents to debunk the copyright myth that parents cannot see what their children are being taught. Parents must be empowered to ask and schools should have the confidence to share.” According to the Department for Education (DfE), if a third-party provider tries to stop schools sharing curriculum materials with parents when asked, schools should carry on regardless, because it would “contradict the clear public interest in parents being aware of what their children are being taught”. The DfE is also sending a sample letter that all schools can adapt and send to external providers, making clear such copyright clauses are unenforceable. Sex education was made compulsory in secondary schools in 2020 and updated for the first time in 20 years. A review of the RSHE curriculum was brought forward after Miriam Cates, the Tory MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said children were being exposed to sex education classes that were “age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate”. More than 50 organisations concerned with education and tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) wrote to Keegan, urging her to resist the “politicisation” of sex education. Updated guidance on RSHE is expected to be published by the end of the year for public consultation. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, agreed there should be transparency over materials used in RSE lessons and welcomed the clarification over copyright law. “However, we are concerned that the education secretary’s letter to schools and parents creates an expectation that schools will publish every piece of planning and resource used across the RSHE curriculum,” he said. “This is a huge additional workload requirement at a time when they are already significantly overburdened.” Parentkind, which represents parent-teacher associations, welcomed the secretary of state’s intervention. The chief executive, Jason Elsom, said: “The key to children receiving appropriate and beneficial relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) teaching is full transparency with parents. “Our research clearly demonstrates that when parents are consistently informed about RSHE in advance, they are significantly likelier to have confidence in the curriculum and be supportive of the content. This move should help to reassure parents about the content and provision of RSHE.”

We’re behind Andy Burnham’s technical education revolution | Letters

2023-07-14

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/14/were-behind-andy-burnhams-technical-education-revolution

For too long, academic and class snobbery has hampered innovation in education, writes Paul Haworth, while Albert Calland recalls the advantages of training at Leigh technical college in the 1960s There is nothing revolutionary about the need for technical education (Greater Manchester is revolutionising technical education – whether London likes it or not, 7 July). The 1944 Education Act set up three types of school: grammar for the more academic, secondary moderns for the less academic and technical schools to encourage high standards in science and technology in order to produce well-trained scientists and engineers. Few technical schools were established, due to a lack of funding and a shortage of teachers at the time. However, there was also a lack of political will. Grammar schools were seen as prestigious, technicals as expensive and inferior. The lack of encouragement for such an education since then emphasises the academic snobbery among the establishment in this country, which has had a dampening effect on our economic growth. It is not surprising that a Tory minister of education is against Andy Burnham’s initiative.Paul Haworth Witton-le-Wear, County Durham Andy Burnham’s article on the future of technical education in the Greater Manchester area brought back my own experience in Wigan in the 1960s. If at the time a youngster failed the 11-plus, they were destined for a mediocre education at a secondary modern school; but in the Wigan area, anyone showing some promise was given a chance to attend Leigh technical college full time from the age of 13, where boys were taught predominantly science and technical subjects and girls commercial and secretarial subjects (practices common at the time). If a similar system was open to all youngsters now, by choice, and without prejudice, it would benefit both the individuals concerned and the economy in general. Albert Calland Wigan, Greater Manchester Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

‘Code words and dog whistling’: why the conservative attack on higher education is so efficient

2024-01-20

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/20/conservative-attack-higher-education-claudine-gay-harvard

The Claudine Gay and Harvard University case was just a glimpse into the plan to advance rightwing agendas When Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University president in early January, pundits credited her departure to a successful removal campaign led by conservative activists. The strategy behind Gay’s ousting wasn’t new, and has been used to advance conservative agendas, influence school curriculum and demonize Black people throughout history. What was different this time was the quick efficacy of the takedown, which, according to some political scientists, historians and lawyers, emboldened conservative activists and could have dangerous implications for the future of education. The campaign to drive Gay out was waged by vocal opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, who accused her of being an unqualified diversity hire. “She got her job not through merit, but because she checked a box,” the Republican Ohio senator JD Vance wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after her resignation. His post, according to Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, serves as an invitation for conservatives to use DEI as a dog whistle in the future, to invalidate anything from the progress of historically marginalized communities to medical research. On X, Vance went on to question the validity of credentials from universities with DEI programs, an unsubstantiated claim and a significant escalation in the attacks on higher education. Sustained and coordinated pressure through media coverage helped kick off the campaign against Gay. Critics, mainly conservative activists, used social media and news outlets to claim that she responded inadequately to congressional questioning about antisemitism on campus. Soon thereafter, they levied allegations that she plagiarized some of her work. Weeks prior to Gay’s resignation, the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo publicized the plan to remove her from office: “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” In an interview with Politico after Gay vacated her post, Rufo described his successful strategy as a three-pronged approach of “narrative, financial and political pressure”. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, noted the effectiveness of the plan, and warned of what it could portend considering that these actors have “seen the impact that they can have when they are able to marshal pressure from the media, donors and others”. He pointed to similar strategies employed in the conservative movement to reshape state legislatures, where activists and lobbyists leverage understaffed and under-resourced statehouses by providing them with research and advice for bills in order to sway them. In his book State Capture, Hertel-Fernandez wrote about how the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council drafts and disseminates bills to apply political pressure. “They can have an outsized impact by diagnosing the weak spot in the institution and going after that,” said Hertel-Fernandez. “Just as they did in the case with Harvard.” Relying on allies within government was a key approach in Gay’s case as well, one that has also been used to further conservative agendas in the past. In the Politico interview, Rufo said that he used the Republican congresswoman and Harvard alum Elise Stefanik as “political leverage”, calling her aggressive questioning of Gay during the congressional hearing a “masterful performance”. “They use the actors and allies that they have inside of government to amplify those claims and turn them into a bigger narrative,” Hertel-Fernandez said. Previously, Rufo worked with lawmakers in Florida to craft conservative policies. He collaborated with Governor Ron DeSantis to draft the “Stop Woke Act”, which banned schools and workplaces from teaching critical race theory, an academic and legal framework that examines structural racism in policies and institutions. Rufo also helped dismantle the New College of Florida’s gender studies department and DEI office as a DeSantis-appointed board of trustee for the school. The specific language used to characterize Gay was one of the most important tools in the conservative plan, according to John Tilghman, an associate professor and interim department chair of history and political science at Tuskegee University. Rufo’s allegations that Gay plagiarized throughout her career gave the impression “that she practiced academic dishonesty over a period of time”, Tilghman said. (In December, Gay added several new citations to articles that didn’t have proper attribution, and a Harvard review found no violation of the university’s standards.) Tilghman sees parallels in Rufo’s strategy with those used by the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, who helped George HW Bush win the 1988 presidential election against the then Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Dukakis had supported a prison weekend release program during which Willie Horton, a Black man, raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend. Atwater used rhetoric to sow fear and racial animus among white voters by creating a campaign that focused on Horton and portrayed Dukakis as being lenient on crime. “It was all part of Bush’s campaign of tough on crime, by using racial code words and dog whistling language to do that,” Tilghman said. “Christopher Rufo is mostly using that same playbook, but he’s applied it to higher education and high school education.” In the Harvard case, activists tapped into existing fears in the center-left coalition about diversity and the ascension of people of color to power, said Hertel-Fernandez. Some of them latched on to the “great replacement theory” – a racist ideology that asserts people of color will replace white people. (Notably, the theory was the motivation behind the 2022 murder of 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.) “We’re seeing a more emboldened and expressed approach to eradicating spaces for Bipoc people,” the ACLU’s Watson said. “Racist ideology isn’t new; extreme rightwing conservatives are using the same tools repeatedly, and publicizing their playbook so it can be used to attack anything from evidence-based public health advice to election results, and equal opportunity and access.” Conservative activists have signaled that the Harvard case is only the beginning of their quest to take down institutions with opposing agendas. According to Watson, the courts may serve as the only protection against the further erosion of educational and racial justice advancements in the future.

Cuts could reduce education in England to ‘bare bones’, headteachers say

2023-10-18

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/18/risk-of-education-in-england-being-reduced-to-bare-bones-headteachers-say

Funding error on top of previous shortfalls may force schools to cut enrichment activities and reduce special educational needs support Education in England is in danger of being reduced to a “barebones, boilerplate model”, headteachers have said, after an embarrassing £370m government bungle forced them to plan for further cuts. Some heads are looking at cutting teaching assistants (TAs), who often work with children with special educational needs (SEN). Others are considering delaying infrastructure projects and reducing pupils’ enrichment activities in order to balance their books. “The impact of not just this error, but other funding shortfalls and cuts is that education is in danger of becoming reduced to a barebones boilerplate model or basic schooling,” said one Essex headteacher, James Saunders, whose school will receive £50,000 less than anticipated. The Department for Education (DfE) was forced to apologise this month after an error in forecasting pupil numbers resulted in the schools budget for 2024-25 being inflated by 0.62%. As a result of the downward adjustment, schools will receive £370m less than they were told in July. The schools minister, Nick Gibb, minimised the potential impact of the error on schools when he spoke in the Commons this week, saying the July figures were merely indicative and schools had not yet received funding for 2024-25. Gibb said the total amount of funding schools receive would remain unchanged at a record £59.6bn for 2024-25. But headteachers have said they are having to revisit their budgets and are facing tough decisions as a result of the error. Darren Gelder, executive headteacher of Grace Academy Solihull, a secondary school with 1,000 pupils, said: “It’s beyond the pale really. Someone at that level making this sort of mistake with such huge consequences is just unbelievable. The implications of that for every school in England is beyond words. “Most academies run as pretty efficient businesses, with a reliance on understanding what income is likely to be. So when that changes, plans have to change. We’ve had to go back now and look – how do we continue to deliver a balanced budget with less income?” Gelder and his team are reviewing all their financial plans – for everything from lighting to carpeting, ICT and staff. “It would be foolhardy to think that there aren’t consequences. We are looking at all those budget lines, things that we were hoping to replace. We will be carefully looking at our staffing budget, and it will be the support staff – sadly – more than likely we would need to look at.” Steve Hitchcock, headteacher at Saint Peter’s Church of England primary school in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, said he just laughed when he heard about the DfE error. He said Devon schools as a whole would be £5m down on what was anticipated. In Cambridgeshire, schools would get £4.4m less, a local Labour MP, Daniel Zeichner, told the Commons. Hitchcock said: “This is just par for the course now. We’re always having to deal with less money and things coming out of left field, so I’m trying not to worry about it. But based on what I’ve seen, I think we’re probably going to lose a teaching assistant.” Losing a TA will affect children with SEN the most, as well as children still needing to catch up after Covid. Hitchcock said his budget was already so squeezed he has had to go to the parent-teacher association (PTA) and crowdfund for everything from paper to educational psychologists and dyslexia assessments. He used to work to a three-year budget, but as money dwindled and pressures mounted, he scaled back to a two-year budget, then down to one. “I honestly don’t bother planning beyond each term now. I’ve gone past getting angry, upset, or losing sleep. We’ve got no control over this.” Glyn Potts, headteacher at Saint John Henry Newman RC College in Oldham, expects his budget to be £75,000 adrift as a result of the miscalculation. “We’re in a no-win situation. If we do cut it’s likely to be something around classroom provision for children with special educational needs because we’ve invested in that area.” Manny Botwe, headteacher of Tytherington secondary school in Macclesfield, said his school was £44,000 down. He will have to look at infrastructure projects and appointments the school had hoped to make, including additional pastoral workers to help improve attendance – a government priority – and support children with SEN. “Whenever there are cuts to the budget, these are the youngsters who are most affected, because we make the most adaptations for them.” Saunders, who is headteacher of Honywood school in Coggeshall, Essex, which has already been hit hard by the Raac concrete crisis, said: “My fear is that we could lose all of the things that make schools unique – the opportunities to provide enrichment, social and cultural capital through extending the curriculum.” The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “The schools budget debacle is more evidence that this Conservative government has given up on delivering the high and rising standards our children need to achieve and thrive.” James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “Years of real-terms funding cuts and the continued impact of inflation mean that many schools still face really difficult decisions when budgeting, affecting everything from staffing to learning resources. The error in school funding estimates means there will be even less wriggle room in budgets than school leaders had expected when the final amounts are confirmed in December.”

Revealed: UK government keeping files on education critics’ social media activity

2023-09-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/30/revealed-uk-government-keeping-files-on-education-critics-social-media-activity

An Observer investigation finds DfE tried to cancel conference with ‘unsuitable’ speakers – and experts who criticised state education policy had online posts monitored The Department for Education (DfE) is keeping files monitoring the social media activity of some of the country’s leading educational experts, the Observer can reveal. At least nine experts have uncovered files held on them, some as long as 60 pages. One individual even discovered the department had compiled an Excel spreadsheet in which officials had detailed who she interacted with. Officials at the DfE also tried to cancel a conference because two of the scheduled speakers had previously criticised government policy. Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury, co-authors of a bestselling book on early childhood, were told by the organisers of a government-sponsored event for childminders and nursery workers, which they were due to speak at in March, that the DfE planned to cancel the conference just days before it opened because they were deemed to be “unsuitable” headline speakers. The event was eventually allowed to go ahead after Swailes and Bradbury threatened the department with legal action, although a senior government official was present to “monitor” what they said. Speaking to the Observer, Bradbury, principal lecturer in early childhood studies at Nottingham Trent University, said: “I received a phone call from the organisers saying there were some concerns about us being speakers. The DfE had decided we were unsuitable because we had been critical of government policy.” He said: “To be told that we couldn’t have this debate felt like we were living in a dictatorship, not a democracy. “We were due to talk about nurturing and early child development. It wasn’t some covert stuff about infiltrating Russia.” Swailes, an independent consultant who advises schools and nurseries on early years education, was so shocked that she filed a subject access request, requiring the DfE to disclose any documents it held on her. The results, which she received at the end of the summer, revealed that the department kept a file on her. It included critical tweets she had posted about Ofsted, England’s schools inspectorate, and noted that she had “liked” posts promoting guidance on teaching young children that was written by educationists rather than the government. She said: “They have tried to silence me. What they did could have ruined my livelihood and still has the potential to.” In support of Swailes, many other education experts who are known for challenging the government have now requested similar information about themselves. At least nine individuals have received what they describe as often very lengthy “files” on their views and social media activity. Some, including headteachers and university academics, are still waiting for responses. Dr Pam Jarvis, a former teacher and education psychologist who has now retired from Leeds Trinity University, said that her request had returned more than 40 pages of records in which officials had monitored her tweets, focusing in particular on her criticisms of the department’s controversial new baseline assessments for four-year-olds in their first term at school. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion She said: “Discovering they have been monitoring me makes me fucking furious. And it also makes me more inclined to go on doing it. They should know I will speak up like this until I am dead.” One modern languages expert, Carmel O’Hagan, uncovered an email from DfE officials accusing her of having “an axe to grind” on Twitter, now rebranded as X, and an Excel spreadsheet in which the department detailed who she interacted with. She described the emails among officials about her in her 37-page file as “puerile” and “spiteful”. Dr Ian Cushing, a senior lecturer in critical applied linguistics, whose subject access requests revealed that both the DfE and Ofsted were monitoring him, said: “What is deeply troubling to me is the fact that they spend substantial amounts of time and money in these surveillance procedures at a time when schools are being hit by economic difficulties and cost of living crises.” Sue Cowley, an education expert who runs training for schools, tweeted her response to the records she had been sent under her name this week: “Excuse my language but WTAF [what the actual fuck] are the DfE doing spending taxpayer money conducting surveillance on critics of government policy on here?” When asked why the government had been compiling files on the social media activity of its critics, the DfE said it did not comment on individual cases.

Creative arts courses at English universities face funding cut

2024-04-04

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/04/ministers-to-cut-funding-for-performing-and-creative-arts-courses-in-england

Education secretary Gillian Keegan will also squeeze funding for programmes to widen access to higher education Ministers will cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities next year, which sector leaders say will further damage the country’s cultural industries. The cuts, outlined by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in guidance to the universities regulator, will also reduce funding for Uni-Connect, which runs programmes aimed at widening access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to £20m, a third of its 2020-21 budget. Universities across England are already announcing redundancies and restructuring plans as inflation erodes their income from UK undergraduates, with performing arts and design courses among those most at risk. Keegan told the Office for Students (OfS) to freeze grants intended to meet the extra costs of offering music, drama, fashion and other arts courses for undergraduates, and for it to cut grants for postgraduate teaching in those subjects. Gordon McKenzie, the chief executive of the GuildHE group of universities and colleges, said: “These cuts show once again ministers’ disdain for creative education. The creative industries deliver over £115bn in value to the UK and create jobs at three times the UK average. “But decisions like this show the Department for Education doesn’t get the message and repeatedly makes policy and funding decisions that damage the creative talent pipeline on which those industries depend.” A spokesperson for Universities UK said: “There are real concerns about the ability of many institutions to cope with spiralling costs, along with frozen fees, which have depreciated by more than a third in real terms since their introduction, which all impacts on the student experience.We urgently need investment in teaching funding, and the announcement that OfS grant funding has also been cut in real terms is very disappointing.” The grants are intended to fill the gap between the tuition fees paid by UK students and the additional costs of more expensive or specialist courses involving workshops, studios or lab classes. Keegan’s decision means the top-up funding for creative and performing arts courses will be frozen at £16.7m in 2024-25, the same as this year, resulting in a real-terms cut due to inflation. In 2020-21 the grant was worth £36m, before it was cut nearly in half by Gavin Williamson as education secretary. However, funding for what Keegan called “our world-leading small and specialist providers”, such as the royal colleges of music, would be protected through an additional grant. The OfS was also directed to increase the grant for high-cost courses such as medicine, engineering and nursing by £18m next year – a rise of just 2% at a time when inflation is nearly twice as high. Graeme Atherton, the director of Neon, representing professionals working to widen access to higher education, said Keegan’s £10m cut from Uni-Connect would shatter the organisation’s plans. “This cut will be a devastating blow to efforts to ‘level up’ the lowest-income communities through higher education. We estimate that 40,000 young people will now miss out on higher education advice and support over the next year,” he said. Programmes such as the Higher Horizons partnership that helps learners in Stoke-on-Trent will have to cut half its staff and stop residential visits to universities for students from low-income backgrounds, which Atherton said “have a transformative impact on the aspirations of young people”.

‘Children are being failed’: why more English parents are home educating

2024-03-13

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/13/children-failed-why-more-english-parents-home-educating

Fines, health needs, and a poor learning environment are among the reasons for the rise in children taken out of school Julie, a 47-year-old counsellor and mother of two from Northamptonshire, made the drastic decision to take her daughter out of school last June, before the end of year 3. “My child had been struggling with the school environment from the start,” Julie said. “She’s autistic, has sensory difficulties, finds noise and lights difficult, but is academically clever. She found it so hard to navigate relationships with peers and her anxiety was so intense she was mostly mute at school. “Her attendance started to drop and I was at risk of being fined and potentially having a criminal record because of it, which would have jeopardised my right to work in my field. The GP recommended that she be taken out of school, as she was biting all the inside of her cheeks and rubbing her tongue on her teeth till it bled. I had no choice but to remove her.” Julie’s daughter, now nine, has been home educated since, an experience Julie describes as “distressing” due to her lack of knowledge about teaching and home learning, and a lack of support. A referral to an NHS occupational therapist resulted in her daughter being assessed as not struggling enough to qualify for specialist support, and since she was doing well academically in mainstream education, a special needs school would not be suitable, Julie said. “We’re left with nothing, it’s terrible. I don’t want to homeschool my child,” she said. The family finances have taken a big hit, as Julie has had to cut her hours to supervise her daughter. However, despite all this, Julie concedes there have been positives: “In some ways she’s better now than she’s ever been, and I would say she’s now finding her feet in social-emotional ways. Academically she’s fine for the moment, and perhaps being able to self-regulate and develop confidence is more important for her future.” Hundreds of parents from across the country got in touch with the Guardian via an online callout to share why they had taken their children out of school, with more than two-thirds saying they had switched to home education either this year or last. While a majority said they had deregistered their children as a last resort because schools had been unable to support complex health needs such as autism or anxiety disorders, a significant number also said they did so because they did not feel a school environment enabled their children to thrive socially, emotionally and academically. The number of children in England being home educated increased by more than 10,000 last autumn to 92,000, with mental health increasingly cited by parents as the main reason, according to official figures. Scores of parents of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) told the Guardian their children had been traumatised by their time in school and there had been no other solution but to deregister them, as they had been refusing or unable to attend school regularly. Matthew, a 45-year-old software developer from Suffolk, removed his son from school last year, in year 9, to avoid being fined for a week-long absence. “After the switch to secondary school he started having anxiety attacks that slowly escalated,” Matthew said. “They were mainly related to tests, homework demands, and managing expectations. The chaotic and uncertain environment of frequent supply teachers, constantly shifting timetables and bullying made it very difficult for him to cope.” The school, Matthew said, refused to authorise any absence for mental health reasons, despite his son’s previously good attendance. “They were very antagonistic and unwilling to work with us. I couldn’t afford the fines.” The home education experience, led by himself and his wife, has been “a mixed bag”, says Matthew. “Our son’s panic attacks have mostly disappeared, he’s gained confidence and has been making better progress academically, because we’ve been able to tailor the topics more closely to his interests and ability. But much of this success is down to the fact that we were both working as qualified teachers in the past. I worry about all the people in a similar situation who aren’t teachers, and don’t have understanding employers – mine has allowed me to work flexibly from home.” The downside, Matthew says, is that his son has been feeling even more isolated, despite joining some community clubs. “He is still in contact with friends, but I don’t think it’s a workable long-term solution for him.” Many parents also cited concerns about bullying and poor behaviour of other students as the main trigger for their decision, while many others said they felt the national curriculum no longer prepared their children for the modern world and workplace, or let them explore their interests. “The school my daughter was attending was huge and very overwhelming, with significant bullying and too many naughty children who took up far too much teachers’ time,” said one such parent, Ellie, 43, from Leicestershire, whose daughter is in year 9. “There was too much emphasis on appearance, uniform and unnecessary things. Silly punishments. The school day was long: her bus journey began at 7.15am, she was not back home until 4pm, then she’d have approximately two hours of homework, leaving little or no time to do anything she enjoyed. She had no life beyond worksheets and learning things that are no longer relevant.” Home education, Ellie said, had been “phenomenal” for the past year. “It’s made all of our lives much better, my daughter is happy, relaxed, has time for other things such as gym and swimming and has found her love of reading again.” Another concern raised by many parents was a curriculum reportedly so crammed that it left no opportunity for repeating content and to make up for lost learning during the pandemic, and a perception that pupils were bombarded with information, causing children to struggle with basics such as times tables and making homework increasingly harder to complete. A mother from Salisbury said she took her daughter out of schoolbecause she was academically lagging behind her peers. “Gaps in learning were not being plugged,” she said. “Lessons just moved on and she was left behind. This led to her having very low self-esteem. She felt like a failure. We decided we could better meet her needs.” Catherine, 50, a teacher from Brighton, who also said that she took her daughter, who has ASC [autism spectrum condition], out of school to avoid fines for poor attendance, is one of many parents who switched to online school. “She started just on two subjects but now does a full eight and is choosing options for GCSEs. She’s engaged and enjoying her learning, it’s been wonderful.” One big relief of online learning, Catherine said, was that her daughter had permission to not turn her camera on during lessons. “I think we’re fully committed to home education now, and will re-evaluate when it comes to A-levels. “It is a struggle financially, though. The online school costs £300 a month. I’m a single mum and had to give up working outside the home. I get by on whatever remote work I can find and benefits. I also worry that if my daughter wants to go to university or work in an office environment she will have had no exposure to that kind of thing.” While many parents praised the advantages of online schooling, some were less convinced, among them 46-year-old Liza, from Walsall, who said her daughter had struggled with online lessons after she left school at the end of year 10 due to bullying. “It was all cameras off, all mics off,” she said. “By the time my daughter had typed up a question, the class had moved on,” she said. A switch to about 15 hours of private tutoring a week in five subjects instead of eight improved things, she said, though concerns remain. “I’ve spent over £2,000 on tutors since September, and £1,000 so she can sit exams. She’s better now, however socially it’s been very hard. She’s very isolated, my husband and I both work full-time. The plan is for her to return to school in sixth form.” Many parents said they were hoping their children would eventually return to school, with some worrying whether they would cope in a school environment after spending years at home. One parent, who wanted to stay anonymous, said they had taken their child out of year 6 last September because of unmet needs in school, and desperately hoped they would be able to return as soon as possible. “The experience [of home education] is not great, my child is now struggling to leave the house and is missing out on socialising with peers. She’s too anxious to attend home education meet-ups. We need the correct support so she can attend school. It’s so unfair.” A mother from Lancashire said her daughter, who would now be in year 8, had been out of school for a year because no place at a special needs school could be found. “It’s currently taking years to get a diagnosis for ASD or dyspraxia, and we haven’t been able to do home education due to my own health issues. She’s gone without an education for almost a year now. Our children are being failed by a system that is not fit for purpose – the government needs to wake up.”

How the system is rigged against children with special educational needs | Letter

2024-02-28

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/28/how-the-system-is-rigged-against-children-with-special-educational-needs

Rebecca Lucas on the myriad reasons why families – and schools – are struggling to find support for children The reason there is a huge backlog in applications for an education, health and care plan (EHCP) is threefold (Hundreds of children with special needs wait a year for support in England, 18 February). First, funding in schools for special education needs and disabilities (Send) is now such that without an EHCP a child cannot be guaranteed any support at all. This means that schools have limited capacity to support children and young people whose families lack the resources (time, money and cultural capital) to get hold of an EHCP. I know of schools, for example, that are no longer able to offer any in-class support for students without a plan. So the families of children with moderate difficulties, who previously could have been supported by the school’s normal resources, are forced to seek an EHCP to get any help at all. Second, to qualify for a plan, a young person’s needs must be significant, so families must amass, and defend, a huge amount of evidence to successfully apply. This often leads to an exaggeration of the child’s needs – for example, requesting 10 weekly hours of social skills support where in reality two would suffice – in order to trigger funding. This process of acquiring evidence, then appealing when inevitably questioned by the local authority, is breathtakingly inefficient. And the end result, if a plan is eventually approved, is that the young person has a monopoly on the school’s resources, and the cycle continues. But this is currently the only way that parents can ensure their child gets supported at all. Third, the impact of funding cuts, the cost of living crisis and aftermath of Covid means that families are struggling. We are increasingly encouraged not to point the finger at the government or systems that have failed us, but to pathologise our problems. The challenges faced by children with special needs and their families are very real, but we are also experiencing an epidemic of neurodiversity whose symptoms could also be attributed to external stressors. Families, understandably, seek help any way they can. The system is rigged against children and families, against schools and against local authorities. Nobody wins, and a lot of children are losing out. Unless you can afford private school, of course, in which case you can buy as much support as you need.Rebecca LucasCooksbridge, East Sussex Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

Unions and teachers call Rishi Sunak’s new education plan ‘a misdirected fantasy’

2023-10-08

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/08/unions-and-teachers-call-rishi-sunaks-new-education-plan-a-misdirected-fantasy

Scrapping A-levels and making English and Maths compulsory to 18 said to be unworkable due to recruitment crisis in subject areas Heads, teaching experts and unions have slammed Rishi Sunak’s plans to scrap A-levels and make Maths and English compulsory to 18 as a misdirected “fantasy” that won’t work because so many schools can’t recruit teachers in these subjects. Sunak, who argued in his speech to the Conservative party conference last week that reforming education was “one of the biggest levers we have to change the direction of our country”, plans to replace both A-levels and the government’s new T-levels with a merged baccalaureate-style qualification called the Advanced British Standard. Dr Rachel Roberts, who leads the postgraduate teacher training course in English at Reading University and is the former chair of the National Association for the Teaching of English, told the Observer: “Given the national crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, the idea of making English and Maths compulsory to 18 seems quite preposterous at the moment.” Secondary heads across the country who say they have become used to adverts for Maths, computing and science teachers not attracting a single suitable applicant, have reported that for the first time they are now seriously struggling to find English teachers. Applications to train to teach English were down by a third at Roberts’ university this year, a trend she says was replicated across the country. The Department for Education confirmed this weekend that early career bonuses for teachers in shortage areas in deprived schools and colleges would come into force next academic year. But the tax-free bonuses of up to £6,000 a year for teachers in the first five years of their career will focus only on maths, physics, computing and chemistry. There will be no extra support for English teachers. Dr Roberts said that, as well as it being unfair to those who have stayed in teaching for longer, few experts think these bonuses will work. “The bursary system for initial teacher training hasn’t really done anything to increase numbers in shortage subjects, and certainly not for English.” Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at Exeter University, said: “Grand aims declaring that we will deliver Maths and English to 18 feel like a fantasy when set against the real challenges our education system is grappling with amid growing societal inequalities.” He argued that enabling all teenagers to master basic maths and literacy skills by the age of 16 was a far greater priority than reforming A-levels. “It’s scandalous that a third of pupils in England fail to secure a basic grade 4 in English and maths in their GCSEs,” he said. Will Teece, headteacher at Brookvale Groby Learning Campus, a secondary academy in Leicester, said heads were hoping Sunak’s announcements were “just noise” and wouldn’t ever happen. “The idea of additional teaching hours and extra maths is a fantasy. A-level changes are not needed at all in my view.” Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said Sunak’s announcement showed “just how out of touch this government has become with the teaching profession.” “There are so many immediate crises that schools are now dealing with, from recruitment and retention, to crumbling school buildings and the lack of support for pupils with SEND,” he said.

How Labour could rescue children from this endless series of educational crises | Letters

2024-03-14

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/14/how-labour-could-rescue-children-from-this-endless-series-of-educational-crises

Doreen Worthington says a new Education Reform Act is needed and lists what an incoming government could do The autism crisis (Autistic pupils in England denied right to education as absenteeism surges, says charity, 5 March) is the latest in a long list of crises in English schools that the Guardian has reported on recently, including the children’s mental health crisis, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, the headteacher retention crisis, the absenteeism crisis, the Ofsted intimidation crisis, the crisis of children not being toilet trained or knowing how to brush their teeth, the literacy crisis, the maths crisis and now the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) crisis. Is it not time that someone (a future Labour government perhaps) started to join the dots and realise that a new Education Reform Act is needed to rescue our children from this crisis in education? They could start with a snappy election slogan – “Education, education, education” for example – and a commitment to bringing back Sure Start centres, funding nursery and early years education properly, reversing almost all the Gove-era ideological changes to the curriculum and testing regimes, bringing back the arts, humanities, sport and extracurricular activities that schools can no longer afford or find time for, funding and reforming Send provision, investing properly in child and adolescent mental health services, abolishing Ofsted and replacing it with his majesty’s inspectors, introducing a fair salary system and, finally, abolishing multi-academy trusts and bringing all schools back under properly funded local education authority control. Yes, of course, it would be expensive, but saving future generations from all these crises would be priceless. Doreen WorthingtonLincoln

Letter: Jennifer Nias obituary

2024-04-01

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/01/letter-jennifer-nias-obituary

I was on the PGCE course for junior and middle school teachers that Jennifer Nias taught at Liverpool University in 1974-75. Subsequently she interviewed me for her study of 50 former teacher training students. A post-grad course concerned with teaching younger children was itself unusual; so was Jennifer. Some on the course, which included a week in Yorkshire to observe outstanding practice, thought she worked us hard, and she could be quite austere at times. However, her passion for education was undeniable. Keen to recruit a diverse group, she took a close interest in each of us. She expected high standards and, after observing a disastrous lesson by me, kindly told me: “I’ve seen worse”, rather spoiling it by then adding “but not many.”

Teachers in England stretched by pupils’ mental and family problems, MPs say

2024-05-16

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/17/teachers-in-england-stretched-by-pupils-mental-and-family-problems-mps-say

Education select committee concerned that excessive workload is driving teachers out of profession Teachers’ workloads are being increasingly stretched by their pupils’ mental health and family difficulties, according to MPs who were critical of the government’s efforts to tackle chronic staff shortages in England’s schools. The education select committee said it was “concerned that since the pandemic teachers are spending more time on addressing issues that would typically fall outside the remit of schools, including family conflict resolution and mental health support,” and called for the government to support better provision inside and outside schools. The MPs said those tasks were contributing to the excessive workload cited by teachers as pushing them out of the profession, while it said reports of deteriorating pupil behaviour could also be discouraging prospective teachers. The committee’s report on teacher recruitment and retention follows gloomy official figures showing that the Department for Education (DfE) missed its targets for recruiting teachers in key subjects such as physics, computing and foreign languages, with the committee hearing evidence of vacancies going unfilled and schools having to drop some subjects entirely. Robin Walker, the Conservative MP who chairs the education committee, said: “With a bulge in the population now arriving at secondary school level, it’s essential we have a teaching workforce that feels respected and rewarded, or else the shortfalls in key subjects will deepen. The government must use all the tools in the box to resolve this.” Walker said that excessive workload was more frequently cited than pay as the biggest factor pushing teachers to leave the classroom. “We also heard that ‘overspill’ from wider social problems is heaping extra stress on teachers, be it children’s mental health, behaviour, even cases of teachers helping families resolve disputes. Teachers must be able to rely on adequate local services,” Walker said. Jack Worth, the National Foundation for Educational Research’s school workforce lead, said the MPs were right to highlight the need for urgent action to address the worsening shortages. “We welcome the [report’s] suggestion that government should prioritise resources in the next spending review to support a funded long-term strategy which reduces teacher shortages, including adequate funding for pay increases,” Worth said. The report also criticised the DfE for making cuts to programmes and bursaries aimed at attracting more people into the profession, and called for the DfE to reverse its decision to cut funding to Now Teach, which encourages career-changers over the age of 40 to retrain as teachers. But Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that “piecemeal incentives” such as bursaries were not working. “This comes down to funding – for pay which is sufficient to attract and retain teachers, and to properly resource schools. But the financial position is actually getting worse, not better,” Di’Iasio said. “You cannot turn around an ocean liner without enough fuel, and the current government just does not understand that.” The report comes as Labour has made the recruitment of 6,500 extra teachers one of its six “first steps for change” in government, having said it would fund the new posts by adding VAT to private school fees in England. The DfE also published new figures showing that attendance rates in England have improved this year compared with last, as schools recover from the higher rates of absence seen since the Covid pandemic. During the autumn term, overall absence in state schools was 6.7% of sessions missed, compared with 7.5% the previous year. Absence rates in primary schools were closer to those seen before the pandemic, while those at secondary schools remain elevated at 8%, compared with 5% in autumn 2019.

‘More to be done’ to bring down school absences, says education secretary

2023-08-10

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/10/more-to-be-done-to-bring-down-school-absences-says-education-secretary

Non-attendance in English state schools better than in Covid years but persistent non-attendance still double pre-pandemic rates The education secretary has admitted that there is “more work to be done” to improve pupil attendance rates in England after official figures showed levels of persistent absence remained double those of pre-pandemic years. The figures for the 2022-23 school year published by the Department for Education confirmed that pupils at state schools in England were absent at much higher rates than before Covid, including authorised absences for illness as well as unauthorised absences. While the figures are a substantial improvement over the very high rates of absence seen when Covid was rampant during 2020 and 2021, there are concerns that non-attendance remained stubbornly high this year. “School attendance is just as important on the last day of term as it is on the first,” Gillian Keegan said. “It’s encouraging to see more children in school this year than last, but there is still more work to be done. “Barriers to children attending school are wide and varied. We are supporting parents and teachers year-round to make sure children are in classrooms and ready to learn.” The national figures show that 7.5% of school days were missed in state schools from autumn 2022 to summer 2023, a rise of 60% compared with 2018-19’s overall absence rate of 4.7%. In state primary schools the absence rate doubled to 6% from 3% in 2018-19, while in secondary schools the rate was 9.3%, compared with 5.5% in the year before the pandemic began. More concerning was the proportion of pupils who missed 10% or more days in the classroom, who the DfE classes as persistently absent. The past school year saw 17% of primary school pupils and 28% of mainstream secondary school pupils classed as persistently absent, more than double the figures of 8% and 13.7% recorded in 2018-19. “Being in school is quite simply the most important thing for children’s education, and so valuable for their mental health. We all – government, schools, parents and young people – have a part to play in making sure classrooms are full day in, day out,” Keegan said. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion In June the Guardian revealed that absences had ballooned among year 11 students, whose GCSE results will be published this month. Many secondary schools have hired attendance or student welfare officers to tackle the problem, while some schools are employing “emotionally based school avoidance” counsellors to help students overcome anxiety or other barriers to returning to school.

Education secretary accused of being ‘flippant’ over absent pupils in England

2023-07-14

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/14/education-secretary-accused-of-being-flippant-over-absent-pupils-in-england

School leaders criticise Gillian Keegan for saying headteachers should personally collect pupils The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, was accused of being “flippant” and unhelpful by school leaders, after suggesting that headteachers should personally collect absent pupils to help solve England’s “crisis” in school attendance. Keegan told Sky News that headteachers “have a duty” to ensure that their pupils were regularly attending school, in the face of statistics showing that attendance rates in England have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Asked about cases of headteachers driving to pupils’ home to collect them in the mornings, Keegan said: “We all have to play our part and actually I have a number of headteachers who work with me on policy and they say that sometimes you just have to do that. “Sometimes you have to go or you have to text the parent in the morning, sometimes you have to do whatever is possible.” Whether that was a good use of headteachers’ time, Keegan responded: “It is a good use to have all kids in school. It’s not what we want headteachers doing all of their days. But to be honest, right now, if that works to get somebody in school, it’s worth it. If you feel left behind it makes you feel anxious.” But school leaders rejected Keegan’s comments, with the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) saying the education secretary’s remarks “demonstrate a worrying lack of understanding of how schools operate”. “School leaders quite obviously need to be in school leading their schools – asking them to drive around the local area collecting children is not practical, nor would it be a good use of their time,” said James Bowen, the NAHT’s assistant general secretary. “For many years, schools had local authority teams employed to do exactly this job, but we have seen them largely disappear after a decade of cuts. “While schools clearly have an important role to play in supporting good attendance, we should not lose sight of the basic reality that bringing children to school on time is the role of parents.” Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The education secretary’s suggestion that headteachers should drive around picking up pupils and bringing them into school strikes us as a flippant and unrealistic solution to a serious and complex problem. “There is an issue with pupil attendance post-pandemic and there are complex reasons for this, particularly around rising mental health issues. This needs a concerted effort by policymakers working with the education sector to understand the problem and to provide targeted solutions and support.” Headteachers who spoke to the Guardian said they had resorted to visiting recalcitrant or anxious pupils, and that primary school leaders in particular were often called upon to make home visits to speak with parents or encourage children to come to school. Downing Street moved to distance itself from Keegan’s remarks, with Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson declining to repeat the suggestion, instead saying that “different schools will take different approaches” to pupil absences. “It is right that of course headteachers are proactive in tackling this and indeed the vast majority do an excellent job in ensuring all children are regularly attending school,” the spokesperson added. Persistent absence, where pupils have missed more than 10% or more of school sessions in a year, has increased steeply in England since the Covid pandemic in 2020. But researchers at University College London’s Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities have found that persistent absence has been more concentrated among children affected by food poverty, high levels of psychological distress or special needs.

All parents, working or not, should have access to childcare, say experts in England

2024-05-16

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/16/all-parents-working-or-not-access-childcare-unions-employers

Rescue and reform manifesto from Early Education and Childcare Coalition calls for overhaul of model A manifesto calling for an overhaul of childcare provision in England, including making early education accessible to all children regardless of whether their parents work or not, has been backed by dozens of leading employers and unions. Thirty-five national organisations have joined forces to call for the reform of the current childcare model, including the Federation of Small Businesses, the Early Years Alliance, the Fawcett Society, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and National Children’s Bureau. The suggestion is contrary to the government’s long-held position that childcare support is dependent on parents’ employment status. Sarah Ronan, director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition (EECC), which is launching its Rescue and Reform manifesto on Friday, said: “To say that the point of early years education is not just about increasing the number of mums’ bums on office seats is radical in England, but in other countries it’s already happening and not controversial at all.” The coalition is also calling for a commitment to reduce childcare costs to 5% of household income within 10 years. Early years education currently costs English households 25% of their total income compared with Sweden where it is 2%, Germany, which holds it at 6%, and France and Spain at 13%. Ronan said: “There is unequivocal evidence of the positive impact that early years education has on the attainment gap, lessening challenges in later life and improving academic achievement as well as health and social outcomes. This is why we feel so strongly that it’s time to equalise access for all children.” Under current plans, only children whose parents work a minimum of 16 hours a week are entitled to the new 15 and 30 hours of childcare support being phased in. The Institute for Fiscal Studies previously found that the poorest third of children would get no direct benefit from the current planned expansion. Last month, the National Audit Office (NAO) raised concerns about the potential for the current expansion to widen the educational attainment gap between the poorest children and their peers. The coalition’s goal is backed by the public, with research revealing 71% of voters saying children should have a right to access early education and childcare regardless of whether their parents work or not. The EECC research also found 67% of voters agreed that investing in early education and childcare was good for the whole country, not just parents. That was up from 59% last year. Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Unicef UK, said: “High-quality early education and childcare helps level the playing field for children, ensuring every child has the best start in life, no matter who they are or where they are from. “Yet government policies are still falling short – availability and quality of childcare can be a postcode lottery and often unaffordable and unavailable for many families, particularly those on the lowest incomes.” Plans to expand the existing 30-hour offer means more children are eligible for government-funded places in early education. Experts, however, say that low funding for those places means many providers are unable to offer the new entitlements or recruit the staff required to meet demand. Jemima Olchawski, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said: “Our childcare system is broken and needs fundamental reform. High-quality childcare genuinely transforms the life chances of children, and in doing so gives parents real choice about how they want to raise their family and manage their working lives.” Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion The chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, Neil Leitch, said: “Years of neglect have pushed the early years workforce to breaking point. Despite the huge value of the work they do, many early educators still earn little – if anything – above minimum wage. “On top of this, significant day-to-day pressures are leaving educators overworked and exhausted, and settings with little to no capacity to support further training and career development. Is it any wonder that so many educators are leaving in their droves and providers are finding it close to impossible to recruit?” The EECC manifesto’s other priorities include a call for sustainable and fair funding for all types of providers, and a new early-years workforce strategy. Its research shows the public is aware of the staffing challenges facing the sector with more than half of voters feeling the number of early education and childcare professionals is too low. The NAO’s recent report also highlighted the shortage of staff in the sector, as did recent research by the EECC and the University of Leeds, which found that 57% of nursery staff and 38% of childminders were considering quitting the sector this year. When this turnover is modelled against increased demand, as many as 100,000 more staff could be required to meet the additional demand and counter the high turnover. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are focused on delivering the largest ever expansion in free childcare for working parents, set to save those using the full 30 hours an average of £6,900 per year. “This comes on top of significantly increased amounts that parents on universal credit can claim back for their childcare – over £1,000 per month for a single child – available to working parents with no minimum number of hours they need to work per week. Our existing 15 free hours of free childcare for three- and four-year olds is available regardless of whether their parents are working.”

Tim Brighouse, ‘one of the century’s great educators’, dies aged 83

2023-12-16

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/16/tim-brighouse-one-of-the-centurys-great-educators-dies-aged-83

The ex-London schools commissioner and chief education officer for Birmingham was hailed by colleagues Teachers and education experts this weekend paid tribute to Sir Tim Brighouse, “one of the great educators of this century” and “a delightful human being”, who has died at the age of 83. The former schools commissioner for London and chief education officer for Birmingham and for Oxfordshire, who said he had learned from his own mistakes in teaching and believed in teachers’ ability to change the world, died on Friday after a short illness. Brighouse was appointed chief adviser to the London Challenge school buddying scheme in 2003, at a point when only 16% of students in the capital gained five GCSEs at grades A to C, and is credited by many with a dramatic improvement in pupil performance. Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby primary academy in North Yorkshire, said he had kept Brighouse’s list of “20 things teachers do” on his wall since he first started out in teaching over 20 years ago. The list includes “offering a welcome to every child” in the morning, “remembering a birthday”, “finding the invisible child” and “stealing crisps”. Smith said: “As a young teacher what he said really resonated with me and it still does. He understood that when you get the relationships right the learning follows. That list is the most important one I’ve ever had. He saw that teaching is about being human.” Ed Dorrell, a partner at the policy and research company Public First and a friend of Brighouse’s for 15 years after interviewing him regularly as an education journalist, said: “He was a delightful human being and a fantastic educationist. He loved children and he loved teachers and understood what made them tick.” Dorrell, whose grandfather gave Brighouse one of his firsts jobs, recalled how the veteran reformer tackled the many difficult conversations he had to have with schools. “When he was leading Birmingham, he told me before he went he would always find out something unique that was happening at that school,” said Dorrell. “He’d say: ‘I’ve come to see you today because I want to hear about this great thing you do.’ He made them feel proud. Then the hard conversations were easier.” Over the years, Brighouse was a notable adversary of Ofsted, particularly under Michael Wilshaw, and said in the Guardian last year that “accountability has gone too far and become punitive”. Many educationists regretted this weekend that Brighouse was never given the chance to lead the schools inspectorate himself. Prof Chris Chapman, chair of educational policy and practice at Glasgow University, who chatted to Brighouse via email only last week, said: “It’s a great shame he was never chief inspector. He could be sharp and hard when he needed to be, but he always did it in a very humane way.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Chapman first met Brighouse when he was a newly qualified teacher in Birmingham and Brighouse was the director of education. “How many education directors would know the names of all the new teachers? Well, he did,” he said. “He would visit your classroom and later you’d find a postcard or note in your pigeonhole.” He added: “He knew how to galvanise the workforce. He did it in Birmingham, Oxfordshire, London, and nationally and globally. He was one of the great educators of this century.”

Further education students in England hit by ‘extreme poverty’, report finds

2023-07-03

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/03/further-education-students-in-england-under-extreme-poverty-report-finds

Decade of cumulative funding cuts means colleges lack resources to meet students’ needs, says report Further education students in England are struggling in “extreme poverty”, forced to work excessive hours in insecure jobs to support themselves and their families and falling behind with their studies as a result, according to a report. FE colleges say they are seeing students in “financial desperation”, often dressed in the same clothes for days on end and struggling at home where family tensions and domestic abuse are on the increase during the cost of living crisis. There has been a fall in attendance, with some students dropping out altogether, and an increase in safeguarding concerns involving criminal and sexual exploitation of the most vulnerable students who “are often drawn into lawbreaking because of financial destitution”. There has also been a “massive” increase in students requesting bursary support, the report says. At Hartlepool College, 95% of the 16- to 18-year-old cohort of students applied for a bursary this year, compared with 65% last year. The report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for students said a decade of cumulative funding cuts in FE meant colleges did not have the resources to meet growing need among students, many of whom also have mental health issues. Eight in 10 colleges who were polled have made a referral to A&E in the last year due to student mental health concerns and nine in 10 are aware of students attempting to kill themselves in the last 12 months, with 70% reporting an increase in the frequency of these incidents. Although total spending per student in 16-18 education is expected to rise by 6% between 2021–22 and 2024–25, even with this additional funding, the report says that college spending per pupil in 2024–25 will still be about 10% below 2010–11 levels. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are much more likely to study in an FE college and FE students are more likely than their peers in higher education to have qualified for free school meals. Of those surveyed for the report, 72% said they were facing costs that were putting them in financial difficulty, 23% said energy was the main cost pressure and 21% said transport was the main issue. Paul Blomfield, the APPG chair and Labour MP for Sheffield Central, said: “Further education should provide an opportunity for skills development and social mobility, however, many of the young people and adults who might benefit most from further education and training are now – because of the cost of living crisis – less likely to take up opportunities to study, attend courses and achieve their potential.” Bernie Savage, the National Union of Students (NUS) vice-president for FE, said: “It is shocking that in 2023 we have students and apprentices that are left with no other option but to leave education because they cannot afford to continue their studies and placements. “They are being forced to sacrifice essentials such as food and transport to classes just to try and continue in their studies that little bit longer and it is unacceptable. The colleges that support these students are rapidly running out of money and are forced to cut back on essential services and support that their students depend on.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The report is based on responses from more than 700 students and just under 80 colleges, with additional information from sector bodies such as the Association of Colleges and the NUS, the Sutton Trust educational charity and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have increased the 16-19 bursary fund by more than 12% to over £152m this academic year, helping disadvantaged students who couldn’t otherwise afford to participate in education with costs of books, equipment, and trips where needed. “We have also increased overall funding for the sector with an extra £1.6bn in 2024-25, which is the biggest increase in 16-19 funding in a decade.” In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Don’t blame the 1944 Education Act for grammar schools and secondary moderns | Letter

2023-07-19

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/19/dont-blame-the-1944-education-act-for-grammar-schools-and-secondary-moderns

James Chuter Ede, who piloted the act through the Commons, made no mention of selection or the 11-plus, writes Stephen Hart It is unfortunate that the myth persists that the 1944 Education Act prescribed a tripartite system of schools – grammar, technical and secondary modern (Letters, 14 July). James Chuter Ede, the Labour party minister at Rab Butler’s board of education in the war coalition, told a union conference at the time that, having piloted the act through the Commons, he had gone through it with a small-toothed comb, and could find only one type of school for senior pupils – a “secondary school”. Selection, the 11-plus and the three types of school are not mentioned in the act at all. Ede, with experience as a state school teacher and education administrator (which Butler and most other politicians lacked), insisted that each local education authority should determine the nature of its own secondary provision. Had he become Attlee’s education minister as expected, he might have managed the country towards a much less selective system. As it was, Attlee wanted him as home secretary, and the Ministry of Education (under both parties) encouraged selection into grammar and secondary modern schools. This perpetuated one of the major problems of education here – the most able pupils have for centuries been given an excellent academic training, while the rest have been provided with little more than they need to move into low-skilled employment. As such employment became less available during the last century, the failure to produce young people with technical skills became more and more apparent. But the Education Act 1944 was not to blame; it was the way it was implemented.Stephen HartBiographer of James Chuter Ede Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

UK universities must ‘show leadership’ over Gaza protests, says Gillian Keegan

2024-05-09

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/09/university-chiefs-show-leadership-gaza-protests-gillian-keegan

Education secretary says she wants campuses to be safe places and warns vice-chancellors about escalation University vice-chancellors need to “show leadership” in response to student protests over Israel’s military action in Gaza, the education secretary has said. Gillian Keegan told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that she wanted “our campuses to be a safe place where students feel welcomed, where students can express different views”. Pro-Palestine encampments have been set up by students at more than a dozen universities across the UK against the war in Gaza, including in Cambridge and Oxford. Referring to the encampments, Keegan said: “We have seen how this can escalate very quickly in other countries.” Pro-Palestinian student protesters in the US have clashed with police. Keegan’s comments came as Rishi Sunak was hosting a meeting at Downing Street with vice-chancellors from leading UK universities on tackling antisemitism. Vice-chancellors from Leeds, Bristol, Middlesex and Sussex were among the first to arrive for the meeting, followed by about 12 more university leaders who all remained silent as they entered Downing Street. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has criticised encampment protests for creating a “hostile and toxic atmosphere” on campus for Jewish students. In an article for the Times, the prime minister condemned “extremists at the National Union of Students” who, he said, had tried to remove the UJS over its support for the existence of Israel as a state. The UJS and the Community Security Trust (CST) are among the groups who will attend the summit in Downing Street on Thursday. Sunak wrote that there were “students and academic staff being targeted, threatened and assaulted simply for being Jewish” and that discussions with vice-chancellors would focus on keeping Jewish students safe. Keegan told the BBC: “Some university vice-chancellors have taken firm steps and some of the others I think probably need to share what others have done so they can figure out how to deal with this.” She cited a Community Safety Trust study that suggested there had been a 203% increase in university-related antisemitic incidents in the UK between 2022 and 2023 and said there had been instances of violence on campus. Keegan told LBC that she had heard directly from Jewish students who felt nervous and intimidated at university. “What we need to do is show real leadership and we need to de-escalate the situation,” she said. In his article, Sunak wrote: “I understand the strength of feeling over recent events in Israel and Gaza. No one is saying that students should not be able to express the very human angst that many of us feel about the terrible suffering of war. “We will always protect freedom of speech and the right to protest – and our universities are a natural place for that expression, precisely because they are institutions of learning and exploration where challenging ideas are debated rigorously. “But just as importantly, universities have a profound duty to remain bastions of tolerance, where such debate takes place with respect for others – and where every student feels safe and at home, whatever their faith or background.” Ministers will call on university leaders to take immediate disciplinary action if any student is found to be inciting racial hatred or violence and to contact the police if a criminal act has been committed. Mark Gardner, the chief executive of the CST, said: “The growth of antisemitism on British campuses is appalling and an affront to the fundamental principles and values of university life. “Everyone has the right to protest, but they do not have the right to disrupt other students’ learning, harass and threaten Jewish students, or spread hatred of Israel with calls for ‘resistance’ and other extremist language.”

John Coe obituary

2024-04-03

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/03/john-coe-obituary

My father, John Coe, who has died aged 98, was an inspirational leader in the field of primary education. As he went from the classroom to the head teacher’s office and then on to inspector and senior adviser roles in Yorkshire and Oxfordshire, children and their teachers were at the forefront of his thoughts. Born in Southwell, London, John was the only child of Dorothy (nee Lindsay) and Albert, who worked for Marconi. Evacuated during the second world war to Chichester, he returned after only one term to the new family home in Chelmsford, Essex, where he continued his education at King Edward VI grammar school. He spent the last year of the war training in South Africa as a navigator in the RAF and, although he saw no active service, the experience made him a lifelong pacifist. John qualified as a primary teacher at the College of St Mark and St John in Chelsea, London, in 1949. After only three years at Chelmsford Cathedral school, John was recruited as head teacher at Roxford primary, a small, rural school in a village just outside Chelmsford. In 1956, he became head teacher of Lawford Mead junior school in Chelmsford. There, his vision in introducing non-streamed classes and emphasising the central priority of the child was such that Lady Plowden visited the school while preparing her seminal 1967 report into primary education. John was greatly influenced by the progressive ideals promoted by Christian Schiller at the Institute of Education, and he continued to champion this radical attitude to the way children are taught. He moved to Yorkshire in 1965 when he became an HMI and then, in 1969, became senior adviser for primary education in Oxfordshire for 16 years, working latterly with Sir Tim Brighouse. Both counties were considered to be beacons of excellence in the primary sector during my father’s time in office. John also studied for a master’s degree in education at the University of Bristol, graduating in 1984. A four-year spell as director of primary teacher training at the Institute of Education in London followed, and then a five-year period as senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. In 1980, John had co-founded the National Association for Primary Education, which continues to be influential in educational and political spheres. He launched their quarterly magazine, Primary First, and took great pride in being the editor for many years. As a young man, John was an accomplished painter and sculptor. He continued to draw and to paint watercolours, especially when holidaying in his beloved Ravello in Italy. He was a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, and a supporter of the Labour party. In 1948, John married Pamela Lewis. During a three-year illness, he nursed her at home until her death in 2005.Their elder daughter, my sister Lindsay, who followed my father into primary education, died in 2002. He is survived by me.

‘Horrible’ disparity emerging in cultural education in schools, says V&A head

2023-06-26

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/26/cultural-education-disparity-schools-v-and-a-tristram-hunt

Speaking at launch of UK’s ‘first museum created with and for young people’, Tristram Hunt said it could help fill gap A “horrible disparity” is opening between state and private schools in the provision of creative education, the director of the V&A, one of the country’s leading museums, has said. Speaking at the launch of the Young V&A museum, aimed at children from birth to 14 years, Tristram Hunt said creative education was being downgraded or excluded in many state schools, leading to a 60% fall in the numbers of young people taking art and design subjects at GCSE. “This is a real problem, and there’s a social inequity here because the private sector is not closing its theatres and art studios, its kilns are still producing ceramics. “So we’re seeing a horrible disparity emerging between the state and the private sector in terms of provision for cultural education.” Young V&A, which opens on 1 July after a three-year, £13m redevelopment of the former Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, could help fill the gap in state school provision, Hunt added. More than 2,000 objects from the V&A’s collections, dating from 2,300BCE to today and from all over the world, have been put on display at the Grade II*-listed Victorian building. They are exhibited at child height in three galleries focused on play, imagination and design. About two-thirds of the objects have undergone conservation ahead of the museum’s opening. A 19th-century plaster lion statuette has been cleaned, an owl puppet has had surgery on moth-damaged feathers, and a delicate clown nose made from a ping-pong ball has been reshaped and stabilised. The original skylights, that were painted on both sides, and arched windows have been uncovered and a 19th-century marble mosaic floor has been restored and revealed. More than 22,000 schoolchildren, teachers, community groups and local families contributed ideas to the project. The end result is the “UK’s first national museum created with and for young people”, said Hunt. “By continuing to work in partnership with teachers and schools, locally and across the country, [Young V&A] will become a national resource for supporting the teaching of art and design.” The V&A team asked children what they wanted from a museum, and drew on their ideas for displays and activities. Despite a “lot of interest in getting live animals in”, according to one curator, tigers failed to make the cut. Shreshti and Zoya, both 13-year-old pupils at the Ursuline academy in Ilford, east London, contributed to the design gallery, conceived for older children. It explores how items were designed, made and used – such as a LifeStraw which makes unsafe water drinkable – and offers activities, workshops and collaborations with contemporary designers. The gallery was “a great way to show how DT [design and technology] skills can be taken out into the real world and used to make something inspiring”, said Zoya. Shreshti said she was now considering a career in design. In the play gallery, aimed at the youngest visitors, an iridescent cosmetic tray in the shape of a fish, dating from about 1550-1077BC Egypt, illustrates the letter F in an alphabet of objects. “It would have been easy to create a soft play environment, but we wanted our collections at the gallery’s heart,” said its curator. Lucy Frazer, the UK culture secretary, said: “Young V&A is going to encourage countless young people to dream big and unlock their creativity. We want to maximise the potential of our creative industries with a pipeline of talented young people and this space, dedicated to art, design and performance, will inspire young people to pursue creative careers in the future.” Young V&A opens on Saturday 1 July, admission free

Funding model for UK higher education is ‘broken’, say university VCs

2023-05-31

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/31/funding-model-for-uk-higher-education-is-broken-say-university-vcs

Vice-chancellors urge review of tuition fees in light of caps on overseas students and rising costs Vice-chancellors are warning the current funding model for UK higher education is “broken” and have urged the government to review the system of tuition fees, which have been capped at about £9,000 for more than a decade. They have made clear that limits to overseas students announced last week on top of rising costs caused by inflation posed a serious risk to universities which would require more funding from government. Under government proposals only overseas students on courses designated as research programmes, such as PhD students or research-led master’s courses, would be able to bring dependants with them under measures to curb net migration. Universities have become increasingly dependent on fees from international students to prop up their finances and vice-chancellors are waiting to find out the impact of the announcement on applications from abroad. There are fears that some universities could find themselves squeezed between the plummeting value of domestic tuition fees and declining overseas recruitment. According to Universities UK (UUK), which represents 140 higher education providers, the £9,000 tuition fee for UK students, which was introduced for English universities in 2012 and was topped up to £9,250 five years later, is now worth just over £6,500 to universities. Vice-chancellors know that any move to increase tuition fees would be politically unpalatable, but against a backdrop of high inflation and the cost of living crisis, higher education funding is forecast to drop to its lowest level in real terms since the 1990s, while the proportion of English universities reporting an in-year deficit increased from 5% in 2015–16 to 32% in 2019–20, UUK says. Prof Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, said raising tuition fees might seem the most obvious response but was not a sustainable solution to the problem. “It’s not the way to go for students,” he said. “So the solution has got to be a hybrid public-private model, possibly based on a teaching grant for higher-cost subjects, underpinned by loans which could be set at the cost of teaching lower-cost subjects, plus a maintenance offer for poor students.” He added: “This country has an outstanding university sector and the government – and opposition – need to get to grips with what makes this an outstanding university sector, and be prepared to take the decisions to keep that. “Because if we don’t make decisions in the best interests of the sector, then in four or five years’ time we’re going to be a lot weaker internationally. That’s my big worry.” There are also fears that impending hikes to employer contributions to the teacher pension scheme, used by staff at 80 post-1992 universities, will add to the financial pressures on some more vulnerable institutions. Courses may have to be axed and staffing reduced as finances are squeezed. Prof Charlie Jeffery, the vice-chancellor of the University of York, agreed the system was broken. “There is a growing recognition across all sides of parliament that the current system is now under real pressure. Inflation is driving up costs in a way that frankly we haven’t seen [before]. “That of course impacts hard on the money we get for home undergraduate education, which is basically flat and has been for a decade. Most universities will now be losing money on teaching. “That’s a difficult place to be at the best of times, and it does require us to think of the other income streams that can help us achieve all of our objectives. By far the most significant one of those is international students. “And therefore it adds to the pressure if you see changes in policy which might undermine the UK’s attractiveness to international students.” Asked if it was now time to look at the domestic tuition fee again, Jeffery said: “It is exactly the time to look at that question. I wouldn’t pose it just in that way, because there are different ways in which you can finance higher education. “One answer could be reflecting the importance of universities to the economy in various ways: you actually put in more public funding and don’t put it all on the individual shoulders.” There are already concerns about the impact on students of changes to tuition fee loans, which come into force from September and will see future graduates paying back their university debts earlier and for longer than any generation before them. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Under the new measures, the income threshold for repayment in England will drop from £27,295 to £25,000 and instead of outstanding loans being written off after 30 years extended another decade. Prof Steve West, the vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England, said universities were also falling short with just 75-80% of the cost of research covered by funding. “So you’ve got a perfect storm where you’re losing money on home tuition and you’re losing money on research.” Asked about revisiting tuition fees, he said: “I think it’s difficult running towards an election because at the moment it’s not a doorstep issue and no political party wants to make it one.” West said: “In the absence of any increase in domestic fees, we will continue to see deterioration in the sustainability of institutions, and the less attractive we are to international students, we make it even harder.” He said he did not think a wholesale shift in the funding model was possible, but more a tweaking of the current model. Dr Tim Bradshaw, the chief executive of the Russell Group of research intensive universities, said: “Universities will always work to run as efficiently as possible so they can continue to deliver the best possible student experience. “However, as costs rise and deficits grow, universities’ ability to mitigate the impact on quality and choice for students is limited. That is why we are calling for a more sustainable approach to funding higher education that is fair and affordable for students and the taxpayer and protects the pipeline of skills to support innovation and economic growth.” A Department for Education spokesperson said universities were independent from government. “This means that universities decide their business models and oversee issues such as admissions, staff recruitment and pay. “To support our world-class higher education sector, we’re providing £750m of extra funding over three years to support universities to invest in world-class facilities and offer more high-quality courses, supported by our taxpayer-backed student finance system. “We are hugely proud to have met our international student recruitment ambition two years running by attracting over 600,000 international students. As we made clear in the recent update of the International Education Strategy, the sustainable recruitment of international students remains a priority.”

The Gonski dream: how can governments restore funding – and trust – to public education?

2023-07-19

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/20/gonski-review-school-funding-government-public-private-education

Experts say Australia’s leaders need to change the narrative on public schools, and make a clear case for funding private ones When Greater Shepparton secondary college was first announced, it was described by Victoria’s then education minister as “the most important education project” in the region’s history. The goal was to restore trust in the public system and improve student outcomes by merging the regional city’s four underfunded public high schools into one $140m “super school”, complete with rooftop gardens, a gymnasium and a Stem hub. But 18 months after the school opened, that goal is still a work in progress. “[Parents] need to be confident in what we can offer their students,” says the college’s principal, Barbara O’Brien. “And that will happen as we prove we can provide the same outcomes, results and opportunities, even better in some respects because of [the] breadth of subjects we can offer.” Experts say funding is a crucial part of the puzzle to achieving education equality, but not the silver bullet. They urge governments to also take steps to restore parents’ trust in the public system, and stem the growing concentration of disadvantage. “Our kids can’t wait any longer,” says the Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne. “We can’t continue to pretend that fairness is central to our national identity when our public school system is on the brink of collapse and elite private schools are swimming in cash.” The federal government is working on a review of the education system before setting a new national schools reform agreement next year, and has committed to get every school to 100% of its Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), the fair funding level proposed under the Gonski reforms. The education minister, Jason Clare, says there is a crucial gap that needs to be filled. “By the end of this decade all nongovernment schools will come down to 100% of the Schooling Resource Standard. But apart from in the ACT, no government school will be.” The former New South Wales state education minister Adrian Piccoli says the onus is on the federal government to increase its contribution to public schools from the current 20% because it has greater taxation powers than the states. “That’s why you get this disproportional increase because the commonwealth are increasing their funding, but they fund nongovernment schools more than they fund government schools, so of course the nongovernment funding goes up more than the government schools funding goes up.” He says the federal government should fund public schools at the same proportion it funds private schools. “[It] could be 50/50 or that the commonwealth funds 80% of all students,” he says. The Australian Education Union has also called for the federal government to lift its cap from next year, but to a more conservative 25%. It also urged the government to fully fund schools according to their SRS by 2028. But Allman-Payne says lifting the commonwealth contribution to 25% is not enough: “Another 5% won’t close the gap in the Northern Territory, where public schools are underfunded by more than 20%. Or in Queensland, where they’re being shortchanged by over 10%.” Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The former prime minister Malcom Turnbull says the reason his government set the federal contribution at 20% – which was an increase from 17% – was to hold the states to contributing at least 75%. “Otherwise you get a zero sum game where the commonwealth puts in more and the state just takes money out the back end,” he says. As the example of Shepparton shows, restoring parents’ confidence in public education requires more than just a funding increase. O’Brien says the facilities in the amalgamated school are a big improvement on what was available to students previously. “Students love going into these spaces,” she says. “It’s shown them that it’s possible for them to get the best, regardless of their background, demographics.” Greater Shepparton secondary college was built to hold about 3,000 students. But last year only 2,083 were enrolled, a drop from 2,269 students in 2020, and 562 fewer than the combined figure for the final year when the four pre-existing public schools were open in 2018. More affluent parents have continued to turn to or remain in the independent and Catholic schools in Shepparton. MySchools data shows their students perform above Greater Shepparton secondary college on Naplan. Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Michael Sciffer, president of the Armidale Teachers Association, says restoring trust in public education needs to start with a narrative shift from the top. “In my view the conservative side of politics are part of the problem in creating this negative view of public schools,” he says. “Governments need to talk about the fact that public schools provide equal opportunities for kids to reach their potential in life.” Part of the problem is simply one of perception about standards in public schools. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) studies show the results of both Australia’s government and nongovernment schools fell between 2009 and 2018, but public schools had the smaller drop. It was also the only sector to not have a significant drop in reading and literacy, according to Pisa. Sciffer says attracting more students from affluent backgrounds back to the public system is a win-win. The Pisa data underlines that on average, students from a low socioeconomic background perform better in schools that also have students from a high socioeconomic background. And students from a high socioeconomic background tend to perform just as well at a public school as they do at a private school. Sciffer says governments could consider adjusting Atar ranks according to a school’s socio-education disadvantage. Similar moves in Texas and California have helped draw middle-class families back to neighbourhood public schools, he says. Dr Tracy Woodroffe, a Warumungu Luritja woman and an education expert at Charles Darwin University, says in relation to Indigenous students, governments need to consult more with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, and also calls for a concerted effort to train more Indigenous teachers – currently only 2% of the workforce. “We get the annual Naplan report that shows that Indigenous students [are] performing below their non-Indigenous peers, and that’s even more the case for remote Indigenous students,” she says. “I believe people don’t know enough about the diversity of Indigenous peoples across Australia, and programs that are implemented are often one size fits all.” She says meeting the specific needs of a community would benefit the broader community. “If a school has a good reputation, they’re going to get more students and more enrolments and better educational results. So really, that cross-cultural communication and learning benefits all our kids.” Tom Greenwell, the author of Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools, says ultimately all schools should be free to reduce the concentration of disadvantage in certain schools and boost education outcomes. He argues that in return for full government funding, each school should have an obligation to enrol a student population that reflects the socio-educational advantage of their community, as is the case in the Canadian province of Ontario. “Catholic schools in Ontario are as Catholic as Australian Catholic schools in their ethos, in their curriculum, in their governance,” he says. “But they’re as public as Australian public schools in that they’re free, there’s no fees required, and they enrol on an inclusive basis.” He admits such structural transformation would take time, and says in the immediate term, the national school reform agreement should clearly articulate the purpose of public funding to private schools. “There’s all sorts of rationales that float around – like, we want to increase choice or reduce fees – but … public funding increases and fees keep going up. So actually, we’re not improving choice or saving taxpayer money, so these rationales fall away,” he says. “We need to explicitly say what we are hoping to achieve by doing things this way. Only then can we maximise the potential benefits of this approach and minimise the potential harm.”

Gillian Keegan criticises union for ‘inappropriate’ Israel-Palestine motion

2024-03-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/30/gillian-keegan-education-union-neu-motion-conference-support-israel-palestine-gaza

Education secretary says conference proposals describing Israeli government as racist ‘reflect NEU’s divisive ideology’ Gillian Keegan has strongly criticised the National Education Union over a motion to be debated at its annual conference describing Israel’s government as “racist” and “guilty of apartheid policies”. The education secretary said the motion and amendments were “wholly inappropriate and completely ignore the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on 7 October … These motions reflect the NEU’s divisive ideology, which I don’t believe is representative of our teachers. “Teachers have a duty to remain politically impartial and to ensure all sides of contested views are presented fairly and without bias or prejudice. These proposals will cause significant hurt to members of the Jewish community and the thousands of Jewish children and parents in British schools.” The motion, to be discussed by delegates to the NEU’s gathering in Bournemouth next week, calls on the union to “publish and circulate educational resources that members can use to increase understanding of Palestine and Israel”. It claims that Israel’s government is the main driver of the conflict and calls on the UK to stop “being an enabler of Israel’s apartheid policies”, while an amendment says attempts to clamp down on the right to protest and discuss the issue must be opposed. Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s general secretary, said the union had a long history of standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The war in Gaza has, however, increased sensitivity around the issue, and schools have found themselves on the frontline. An amendment says there has been a rise in the number of Prevent referrals for pupils showing solidarity by wearing Palestine Solidarity Committee badges and stickers. Charities have also reported an increase in reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia involving schools and pupils. Commenting on the motion, the Conservative MP Robert Halfon, who stepped down as an education minister this week, said: “Perhaps the NEU should concentrate on teaching and education.” He claimed it was “no wonder” some Jewish members had left the NEU. “If this motion was passed, the NEU would be an uncomfortable place for some Jewish members, especially after the horrific atrocities of 7 October.” The law in England requires schools to remain politically impartial. Teachers must not promote partisan political views and should ensure the balanced treatment of political issues. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Kebede denied that teachers were taking a political stance. “Teachers discussing this issue will do so in a way that’s supportive and allows young people to form their own opinions around a world that is incredibly complex. I think the majority of the public clearly want a ceasefire. They want to see humanitarian aid flow into Gaza. It’s not a position that is, I think, far from where the majority of people are.” The NEU conference will also debate holding a formal ballot on industrial action after its members in England voted overwhelmingly in support of strikes in a consultative ballot. More than 90% of NEU members voted in favour of strike action for a government-funded, above-inflation pay rise, with a turnout of 50.3%. “The result demonstrates the mass discontent within our profession to which the government should take notice,” said Kebede. “Urgent steps are required to tackle the crisis in education, and our members know this.”

Senior Labour figures call for ‘life-transforming’ Sure Start policy

2024-04-08

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/09/senior-labour-figures-call-for-life-transforming-sure-start-policy

Gordon Brown and three former education ministers say New Labour’s acclaimed early-years programme benefited millions Veterans of the last Labour government have called on Keir Starmer to put a new Sure Start-style programme at the heart of his election manifesto after research showed its transformational impact on poor children. Gordon Brown, the former prime minister who first announced the Sure Start initiative as Labour chancellor in 1998, was among those urging the opposition leader to prioritise the early years last night. He said: “The wilful destruction of Sure Start and the reductions of children’s benefits after 2010 has set back opportunities for millions of children’s futures. That’s why our country desperately needs a new Sure Start.” Three former Labour education secretaries added their voices, among them David Blunkett, who said a reinvention of the policy was “crucial to the wellbeing of so many young people in the years to come”. The pioneering Sure Start programme, which set up “one-stop shops” in disadvantaged areas, bringing early years, health and family support services under a single roof, is widely regarded as one of New Labour’s most popular and successful policies. Now, new research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has shown for the first time how the programme generated significant improvements in the academic attainment of children from low-income backgrounds years later. Analysis published on Tuesday found that children who were eligible for free school meals and had access to a Sure Start centre boosted their GCSE results by three grades – equivalent to the difference between getting two Cs and three Ds and getting five Cs – relative to similarly poor children who were not able to access Sure Start. The effect was most pronounced among children who benefited from Sure Start centres set up early in the programme, before 2003, which had bigger budgets and more successful outreach programmes, the IFS research found. It also found that Sure Start increased the prevalence of support for special educational needs (SEN) among younger children, as problems were picked up and addressed early on, reducing the need for education, health and care plans later. “These results tell us in detail what most parents already know,” said Brown, “that if you provide a supportive environment to children in their early years and invest in their futures, the results will be life-transforming. I was determined after 1997 to create Sure Start to do just that.” Alan Johnson, who served as Labour education secretary from 2006 to 2007, said: “The creation of Sure Start was one element of Labour’s plan to eradicate child poverty by 2020 which we were on course to achieve before losing the 2010 election. “We can’t recreate the past but we know the crucial importance of early intervention and this report emphasises the need to restore it to the forefront of Labour’s thinking whether it be on education or social services.” Estelle Morris, who served in the role between 2001 and 2002, said the IFS results showed the importance of long-term investment and constant evaluation. “So often, policy-makers discard promising initiatives to save money and the whole cycle has to start again. “Why would anyone want to waste time and resources constantly re-inventing the wheel when there is good strong evidence about what works? Sure Start has made a real difference not only to children’s lives but to their families and wider community.” Lord Blunkett, education secretary from 1997 to 2001, added: “Sure Start was always one of those programmes that the public yearned for, but politicians rarely deliver. Namely, a long-term policy without short-term electoral gain, but transformational outcomes many years down the line. “It is why I was so proud to be part of initiating the programme, and remain convinced that its reinvention is crucial to the wellbeing of so many young people in the years to come.” Childcare and early years is expected to be a key battleground in the run-up to a general election. While the Conservatives have prioritised the roll-out of their expanded free childcare offer to help parents return to work, many in the sector are concerned about the decline in toddler development post-Covid. The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said that childcare reform will be her first priority, but although she is deeply proud of Sure Start she does not believe that simply winding back the clock will give children the better future they deserve. At its peak, total spending on Sure Start was about £2.5bn a year in today’s prices but spending has since fallen by more than two-thirds and many centres have been closed or scaled back. The government’s new family hubs programme has £300m funding to cover 2022–25 in just 75 local authorities. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The IFS findings build on earlier research about the impact of Sure Start on future health, which found that almost a third of the upfront cost of the programme was offset by savings to the NHS through reduced hospitalisations. On education, researchers found that access to a Sure Start centre improved children’s academic performance through primary and secondary school but the impact was most pronounced among low-income children and children from minority-ethnic backgrounds. When considering all children – rather than just those from low-income backgrounds – all pupils who lived near and had access to a centre for their first five years performed 0.8 grades better at GCSE than those further away. For children eligible for free school meals, that increased to three grades. Nick Ridpath, research economist at the IFS and co-author of the report, said: “Sure Start generated substantial benefits for disadvantaged children throughout their education, helping to close the disadvantage gap in attainment. “Centres with more resources generated much larger benefits, partly because the extra funding allowed them to reach out to families who were less likely to engage with Sure Start but who stood to benefit a lot. The return on investment in integrated early-years services that are given the resources to reach those most in need can be very large.” Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance, said: “This study makes clear just how vital children’s centres are, not just as a places where families can go for advice and guidance, but also as a source of vital learning opportunities that support children’s long-term development and, as this research shows, improve their life chances. “While the government’s new programme of family hubs is undoubtedly welcome, with the current rollout limited to 75 local authorities, it’s very difficult to see how the plans will compensate for the sheer scale of children’s centre closures that have taken place over recent years.” A Labour spokesperson said: “The last Labour government transformed young lives, and if we’re privileged to form the next government, Keir Starmer’s changed Labour party will transform lives again. “Our mission-focused Labour government will embark on a decade of national renewal, with reducing child poverty and expanding opportunity at its heart. With Labour, children will be the healthiest and happiest generation ever.” A Department for Education spokesperson said expenditure on Sure Start at its peak would represent a quarter of current overall spending on early years thanks to the government’s huge investment in expanding childcare. “We continue to invest in family hubs, which now cover half of all upper-tier local authorities and provide a number of advantages over the Sure Start model, including access to support up to when children turn 19 or 25 if they have special educational needs or disabilities, a wider range of support and an evidence-led focus on the crucial 1,001 days of a child’s life.”

UK university courses on race and colonialism facing axe due to cuts

2024-05-05

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/05/uk-university-courses-on-race-and-colonialism-facing-axe-due-to-cuts

Academics warn loss of higher education arts and humanities courses will harm understanding of racism and imperial history Cuts to arts and humanities subjects within higher education will have damaging implications for our understanding of race and colonialism, academics have warned. Petitions have been launched to save anthropology at Kent University, where the subject has come under threat of closure, while Oxford Brookes confirmed the closure of its music programme earlier this year. Last month, Booker prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo criticised the “amputation” of the Black British literature master’s course at Goldsmiths University in London, asking them to reconsider scrapping the “pioneering” subject. “The MA in Black British literature shouldn’t be seen as dispensable but as an essential course that is intellectually and culturally enriching for academia, the college and society,” she said. Last year, the MRes on the history of Africa and the African diaspora at Chichester University was cut and the course leader, Prof Hakim Adi, lost his job. Adi, the first African-British historian to become a professor of history in the UK, was shortlisted for the Wolfson history prize in 2023. “There’s not very much about race and colonialism on the curriculum to start with, and it sends a signal from those in power that these types of subjects are not desired,” he said. “[Race and colonialism] just won’t be taught in higher education, if this trend continues. Our course [at Chichester] was the only one in Europe that specialises in African history in this way. When I was made redundant, it also impacted the students whose PhDs I was supervising. They were left without an expert on race and colonialism to guide them in this research.” The government has attempted to crack down on what the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has described as “rip-off university courses”, which critics have viewed as an attempt to cut arts and humanities degrees. Recent guidance to the Office for Students issued by Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, places importance on Stem subjects and “higher education studies that enable [students] to progress into employment, thereby benefiting them as well as the wider economy”. The letter, dated 4 April 2024, makes no mention of funding for arts and humanities subjects – something that scholars from the Defend the Arts campaign, a University and College Union-associated group ­calling to save the arts and humanities in higher education, described as an “attack on critical thought”. University of the Arts London lecturer Kevin Biderman, a leading figure in the Defend the Arts movement, criticised the government’s argument that an arts and humanities education is not employable or beneficial to the economy. Data from January 2024 shows creative industries contribute about £126bn to the UK economy – more than oil and gas. He added: “At the RCA [Royal College of Art], they got rid of critical and historical studies. What we’re starting to see now is institutions are keeping skills-based courses, under the argument of employability, but they’re cutting courses that require critical thinking about society. [Universities] also cite economic and money-saving reasons – but these courses are cheaper to run in many ways because they don’t need much equipment.” Adi echoed Biderman: “Getting rid of me also didn’t save [Chichester University] very much money, because I wasn’t getting paid very much.” Dr Cecilia Wee of the RCA emphasised that less teaching about race in higher education leads to less public awareness. She said: “Arts, culture, and humanities courses are really vital in terms of educating groups of people to make sure that understanding of these topics [such as race, colonialism and feminism] are alive.” Wee said the “trickle-down impact” of these course closures will, in time, silence voices and narratives that are already underrepresented. Kent University said its decision to “phase out” anthropology courses followed “an extensive consultation with staff, students and their representatives”. Goldsmiths said: “We’re proud to have widened scholastic learning with the introduction of the MAs in Black British literature and queer history and are committed to both protecting and enhancing arts and humanities subjects in the best way we can.” Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion A spokesperson for Chichester University said “despite extensive marketing” of the history of Africa and the African diaspora course, it had “always recruited a relatively small number of students”. The spokesperson added: “Courses that fail to consistently recruit sufficient students are simply not viable for the university to continue to offer.” A RCA spokesperson said that critical thinking, while no longer a separate unit, was now integral across its courses: “Critical and historical studies was a single module that formed part of the RCA’s overall studio-based Masters programmes. After extensive consultation with staff and students over the design of the new academic model, the delivery of this unit ended in the academic year 2021-22, due to feedback that a more integrated approach to theory and practice was needed. “Our academic programmes now have research and critical thinking as an integral part of the curriculum, which means that critical and radical thinking is embedded in research, learning and teaching at all levels at the RCA. These decisions were taken for academic reasons, and we continue to strongly encourage critical and radical thinking in our students.” A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We recognise the immense value of the higher education sector, including arts and humanities courses.” Adi said that his experience of teaching Black history and race-related studies in the classroom shows that there is a desire for these topics to be taught. He taught a first-year module about Africa and the African diaspora at Chichester University, where his hundreds-strong cohort was mostly white students. “They voted [it] ‘module of the year’,” he said. “They said they’ve never heard this history before, they’d never heard it at school and that it was fascinating. Young people’s eyes are always open to new perspectives and ideas. “We’re in the world of educating people to be enlightened citizens in the 21st century – but unfortunately higher education is run as a business.” This article was amended on 6 May 2024 to include a response from the Royal College of Art regarding its revised approach to teaching critical thinking, which was inadvertently omitted at first publication.

International education providers ‘gaming the system’ undermine Australia’s reputation, inquiry hears

2023-05-17

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/17/international-education-providers-gaming-the-system-undermine-australias-reputation-inquiry-hears

Labor MP Julian Hill says behaviour of some providers is harming students and could ‘destroy the social licence’ of the sector The vocational education and training (VET) sector’s reputation will be destroyed if urgent action isn’t taken to clean up malpractice among international education providers, a parliamentary inquiry has heard. In the past weeks, the committee has heard of providers working with unregulated international education agents to steal students from prestigious public institutions for massive commissions, sell work visas and open “ghost schools” where students don’t attend classes and get handed degrees. Labor MP Julian Hill told the inquiry on Tuesday the behaviour of the “bottom end” of providers was harming students and causing reputational damage but could also “destroy the social licence” of the sector if it wasn’t cleaned up. “I couldn’t put it more clearly … if we don’t act more urgently, the community will start to turn on this sector … we’ve got to deal with this,” he said. “Year after year, nothing seems to happen. Home affairs isn’t even enforcing the current rules, let alone new rules. “All the evidence we get is you don’t regulate quality, you regulate the ecosystem around the provider, police paperwork, you have no line of sight to the quality of the graduates which are being produced from these institutes.” About 180,000 international students are enrolled in the training sector across about 900 providers, regulated by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA). Its CEO, Saxon Rice, told the inquiry the body was “acutely aware” of the risks of poor practices but conceded the current regulatory model didn’t assess the quality of teaching and graduate outcomes, instead focusing on individual provider risk. Since July 2022, ASQA has received 470 complaints and intelligence about training providers. In the same time period, just seven have had their registrations cancelled or suspended. A former teacher who taught English at a private educational institute with campuses across Australia for about six months told Guardian Australia the school was using educational agents to funnel international students into courses with dated textbooks, improper accreditation, substandard teachers and filthy classrooms, at a cost of about $1,000 a month. The education agents were housed in the same building, on the same floor of his workplace. “I could see from the inside how unethical the entire operation is,” he said, in comments separate to the inquiry. “The agents act as the sketchy middle point … they find students – friends, friends of friends, and shuffle them to Australian offices who shuffle them to the courses. “They’re not concerned about the quality of the course, they just take a massive cut. It’s a win-win but not for students because these courses are exorbitant.” The institute is accredited by ASQA and promises pathways to affiliated public universities on its website. It has received multiple formal complaints. He said they were provided with material from 20 years ago and forced to teach in overcrowded classrooms that still had plastic wrap on the seats. He received no training and didn’t have his credentials verified, claiming other teachers had poor English skills and dealt with a revolving door of managers. “Sometimes students had no access to textbooks. We were given two pages to teach a four-hour class,” he said. “The test every week seemed to come from some random website, and they were reused so it was easy to cheat,” he said. Menelaos Koumides, managing director of the Australian Academy of Vocational Education and Trades, told the inquiry the current regulatory system was failing. “We see institutes that we think really should not be here … they’re highly competent in licensing requirements [and they’re] gaming the system,” he said. “What is severely lacking in this industry, which is actually fundamental, is to hold registered trading organisations accountable by having independent assessments … and to make these transparent. “[There are] blow-outs in agent’s commissions … 98% of students are going through agents … these are all consequences of a regulatory system … that was never fit for purpose.” Koumides said students were receiving automatic passes with minimum study requirements. “It’s not fit for purpose when it comes to quality, it never was.”

Children in England’s schools need better sex education, experts tell MPs

2023-05-10

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/10/children-in-english-schools-need-better-sex-education-experts-tell-mps

Too few teachers have training in how to deliver lessons in relationships and sex, committee told Children need more and better sex and relationship education in England’s schools, to help them navigate the issues they are likely to face as they get older, experts have told MPs. The Commons women and equalities committee heard that too few teachers in England have received training in how to deliver lessons in relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) since it became a compulsory topic in 2019. Lucy Emmerson, chief executive of the Sex Education Forum, told MPs that young people reported that important issues such as power imbalances in relationships between boys and girls were often not being tackled in RSHE lessons. “This isn’t something that you can just reel off some facts about. It relies on the confidence of a teacher to open up discussion to a diverse group and to manage some of those complexities,” Emmerson said. “And not to just put a video on and think that’s going to do the job. Because, unfortunately, that’s what young people are complaining about, that sometimes that’s all the lessons are.” Because RSHE was relatively new, “there haven’t been specialist teachers in the numbers that we need, there hasn’t always been space in the timetable or planning time, or the leadership support” in schools, Emmerson said. Jonathan Baggaley, chief executive of the PSHE Association – representing teachers of personal, social health and economics wellbeing topics – said that untrained teachers would struggle to deliver lessons on highly sensitive subjects such as self-harm. “There are ways to do that which could be damaging, in which you might instruct or even inspire practices of self-harm or in the context of eating disorders. Yet there are ways to do this incredibly safely and effectively. “If teachers are not trained in best practices to have these conversations safely, they are not going to be able to choose materials which meet those principles as well,” Baggaley said. Concern over the way primary and secondary schools can teach RSHE has caused the government to speed up its planned review into the guidance around the subject, with a public consultation expected later this year. Much of the controversy has centred around allegations of inappropriate teaching materials involving LBGTQ+ and transgender issues used by external providers. But Baggaley said his association, with members in more than 8,000 schools, was not aware of widespread poor practice. “If we want to tackle problematic materials the way to do it is through teachers having training,” Baggaley said. The MPs also heard from campaigners representing parent groups, who warned of the “sheer volume” of pornography that was affecting young people, with parents powerless to stop it. Tanya Carter, of the Safe Schools Alliance UK, called for a ban on smartphones among children and in schools. “Once you’ve got smartphones in schools, every child in that school is only as protected as the least protected child in that school. “It doesn’t matter what controls you’ve got on your own child’s smartphone, if another child in that school has no controls on their phone your child can be exposed to hardcore porn at lunchtime,” Carter said.

Sex education in schools in England to be reviewed by expert panel

2023-05-31

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/31/sex-education-in-schools-in-england-to-be-reviewed-by-expert-panel

Teaching unions and charities argue first review of statutory guidance since 2020 is politically motivated An expert panel will be set up to review sex education in England’s schools, with updated guidance due in September to ensure that no “disturbing or inappropriate content” will make its way to students. This review will take place over the concerns of teaching unions and more than 50 organisations and charities, who fear the move is politically motivated. Rishi Sunak announced the review in March, after the Conservative MP Miriam Cates claimed that children were being taught “graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and 72 genders”. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said: “The wellbeing and safeguarding of children is our absolute priority, and I share the concerns of parents and teachers about reports that inappropriate lessons are being taught in schools. “The review of the statutory guidance – with the help of this expert panel – will provide clear safeguards against children being taught concepts they are too young to understand or that are inappropriate for their age.” An independent investigation for the Isle of Man government in March found that claims that children had been left “traumatised” by sex education taught by a drag queen in a school on the island were “inaccurate”. The release of the investigation’s findings resulted in death threats to teachers. “It is worth remembering that the current curriculum was subject to extensive consultation before it was introduced,” James Bowen, director of policy for the National Association of Head Teachers, said in March. “We have seen no evidence to suggest there is a widespread problem with pupils being presented with age-inappropriate materials, and if this were the situation, we would expect it to have been picked up on a case-by-case basis.” Members of the independent expert advisory panel, who are expected to give their time on a voluntary basis, will begin work immediately, taking into consideration evidence provided by the schools watchdog Ofsted to ascertain where clear age ratings are needed. The panel is expected to finish its work for consultation by the end of September, with a full review of the guidance expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to the Department for Education. The panel will be made up of Prof Dame Lesley Regan, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Imperial College London and the government’s first ever women’s health ambassador; Sir Hamid Patel, the chief executive of Star Academies; Helena Brothwell, a regional director of school improvement for David Ross academy trust; Alasdair Henderson, a barrister specialising in public law, human rights and equality law; and Isabelle Trowler, the government’s first chief social worker for children and families. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion This will be the first review of the statutory guidance since it came into force in 2020.

‘Where is the accountability?’: Indigenous children bear the brunt of Australia’s unequal education system

2023-07-18

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jul/19/gonski-review-reform-indigenous-children-worse-off-education-system-funding

In the Northern Territory, the failure to implement the Gonski funding reforms has left students with the fewest resources further disadvantaged When schoolteacher April drives past one of the local private schools in Alice Springs, what sticks out are the green, manicured lawns. When she looks out of the window at one of the public secondary schools where she teaches, she sees a brown, weed-choked oval. “It’s like a metaphor for public education in this town,” says April, who has asked that her real name not be published. “It’s parched, it’s neglected.” In the decade since the Gonski review into the funding of Australia’s education system, state government funding to public schools in the Northern Territory – where 39% of the student population is Indigenous – has fallen by 7.75% in real terms. In Western Australia, it has fallen by 5.6%. “It doesn’t reflect the area of need,” says Tracy Woodroffe, a Warumungu Luritja woman and an education expert at Charles Darwin University. “If we’re having standardised assessment, which is what Naplan is, that reports students in more remote areas are performing less [well] than students in urban areas … where is the accountability in catering, then, for students who have the most need?” “Education is a right, so surely students are entitled to the best education that we can provide for them, and not just because they have enough money to pay for it.” April is at pains to stress that the town’s public schools offer benefits that cannot be measured by funding levels or Naplan results. “Our kids have the experience of attending a multicultural school, and mixing and learning with lots of different people,” she says. “For those that do go on to university, they do very well because they’re able to self-manage and function in flexible and diverse environments.” Teachers in the public system go above and beyond to enable students to reach their potential with the available resources, she says. But that effort cannot entirely compensate for the basic inequity of the system. In their book Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools, Tom Greenwell and Chris Bonnor point to Alice Springs as a glaring example of how funding divides schools by class and race, at the expense of Indigenous students in particular. At the public middle school in Alice Springs, 62% of the 347 enrolled students are Indigenous and 53% speak a language other than English at home. Only 5% of students are in the top quarter of socio-education advantage, and 58% are in the bottom quarter. Socio-education advantage categorises the educational advantage a student brings to their studies based on socioeconomic status and parents’ education. At one of the town’s private schools, which performed well above the public middle school on 2022 Naplan scores for students in year 7 and 8, the demographics are quite different. At the private school, 80% of the 547 students are non-Indigenous and 16% speak a language other English at home. Almost a third of students are in the top quarter of socio-education advantage, and 15% are in the bottom. The public school receives $31,834 for every student in government funding, compared with $26,848 at the private school, which also gets $9,382 for every student from parent contributions and fees. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup But Greenwell says a core recommendation of the Gonski report was to provide additional funding for each Indigenous student, and for schools in regional and remote locations to try to prevent students with a low socio-educational advantage being concentrated in the public education system. “Are we doing that? No, we’re not,” he says. Nor has the government put in place policies to make private schools more accessible to people who cannot afford fees, he says – 83% of Indigenous student enrolments are in public schools, compared with 65% of non-Indigenous enrolments, according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (Acara). The division in Alice Springs is a microcosm of the country. In 158 of the 200 most educationally disadvantaged schools in Australia, the student population is more than 50% Indigenous; in more than half of those 200 schools, the figure is above 90%. Australia’s schools are the second most segregated along socioeconomic lines in the OECD, with 51% of students who experience socioeconomic disadvantage attending schools with students from a similar background. According to OECD analysis, students experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage who attend schools with advantaged students on average perform the equivalent of three extra years of schooling in science tests. Over the past 20 years, April says, the schools in Alice Springs have increasingly self-segregated as private schools have expanded their facilities and reputation. “They’re able to attract more middle-class families and then it becomes self-perpetuating – other families will choose what looks like stability and opportunity for their kids,” she says. Another teacher who worked at an Alice Springs public school until last year, speaking on the condition of anonymity, calls it an “apartheid-style” system. “It’s a system for the haves and a system for the have-nots,” he says. “And that’s only going to reinforce inequality.” Sign up to Afternoon Update Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Woodroffe says the funding inequity is exacerbated because Indigenous students are stuck in a system that doesn’t meaningfully engage with them. Teaching and assessment is in standard English, the third or fourth language for many students, and only 2% of teachers are from a First Nations background. “Over time, children within a school get a reputation – it’s ‘oh, they don’t come to school, they’re not good learners, they can’t speak good English’”, she says. Woodroffe says efforts to engage students are often misguided plans instigated by non-Indigenous people. She recalls one instance where children in remote areas were collected from their homes and brought to school to try to improve attendance rates. “It’s the wrong point of view because engagement isn’t just attendance. It’s social, it’s emotional, and it’s intellectual engagement, as well as physically being there,” she says. The president of the Northern Territory’s education union, Michelle Ayres, says the problems of disadvantaged schools are made worse because the Territory government, which was contacted for comment, funds its public schools based on attendance rates, rather than on enrolments. “This completely ignores the fact that it takes more money to engage kids who aren’t attending, not less,” she says. “So in every sense of the word it is an inequitable funding model, because it takes money away from those who need it the most.” Some are taking it upon themselves to fix the “huge gap” in culturally relevant and accessible education for first peoples. Cara Peek remembers entering the classroom in Broome as an eight-year-old. Until then, she had been at a public school in Melbourne – not the fanciest place by any means, but still a world away from remote WA. “I was a year or two ahead of classes,” she says. “I was blown away. As a child, I was cognisant of the quality of education my cousins weren’t getting in comparison to me.” Frustration at the system prompted the Yawuru Bunuba woman to co-found Saltwater Country, an Indigenous-led program that aims to improve outcomes for students across remote parts of WA through workshops led by Indigenous educators. But her efforts are also being stymied by funding shortfalls. Saltwater Country loses a bid for a government grant the day she speaks to Guardian Australia. “I am so sick of hearing people talking about the Indigenous problem in education,” she says. “Put your money where your mouth is. Check cultural bias and think about why you aren’t funding us – we need substantive funding to Indigenous-owned and controlled organisations delivering for Indigenous people.” For Peek, the stakes are high – and personal. “I come from a community with the highest child suicide rate in the world,” she says. “This is literally life or death. We want kids to think about what their dreams are, not what has to be done to put food on the table.” This is part three of a series exploring how successive governments have failed to make Australia’s education funding fairer. Next: what can be done to redress the balance? This article was amended on 19 July 2023 to correct the spelling of the author Tom Greenwell’s name. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

Labour has no easy options over student loans, say education leaders

2023-05-05

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/05/labour-student-loans-university-tuition-fees-education-leaders-keir-starmer

Warning comes after party ditched its promise to abolish university tuition fees in England Keir Starmer has been warned that he has “no easy options” over student loans and higher education financing, after the Labour leader’s decision to scrap an earlier policy of abolishing tuition fees in England. Experts and education leaders who have advised or been consulted by Labour have told the party that universities face greater financial difficulties than before the 2017 or 2019 elections, while the country’s economic difficulties leave it with less fiscal room to help students. Radical changes, such as replacing the current system of student loans and tuition fees with a graduate tax, appear to be off the table but sector leaders are advising that a Labour government could revive teaching and maintenance grants to fill the most immediate budget gaps for students and universities. In the longer term, university leaders say they want an independent review to address the financial problems facing higher and further education, similar to the Dearing review in 1997 and the Browne review in 2010 that preceded fundamental reforms. Minouche Shafik, the president of the London School of Economics, and other vice-chancellors are among those pressing for a bipartisan commission, “rather than make it up on the hoof”, in the words of one. Recent changes by the Conservatives have greatly increased loan repayments by future middle- and lower-earning graduates, by bringing down the starting point for repayments and extending repayment terms from 30 to 40 years. Meanwhile, the government’s freezing of undergraduate tuition fees since 2016 has squeezed the funding for institutions. The result is that the £9,250 tuition fee has shrunk to be worth just £6,500 after adjusting for inflation. Universities in England say they are losing money on teaching British undergraduates, who in turn are having to pay more for less, while part-time students have been largely forced out by the funding system. Diana Beech, the chief executive of London Higher, representing universities in the capital, and a former ministerial adviser, said Starmer’s policy reversal was inevitable given the state of the economy and Labour’s other priorities. “Maintaining the status quo on fees and finance is not going to be an option for a future Labour government, however, and the party is going to have to produce detailed policies soon about how it will make higher education in England more sustainable, both for institutions and future students,” Beech said. But Labour could still achieve “quick wins” by lowering interest rates on student loans, reversing the graduate repayment period back to 30 years and reinstating maintenance grants for those in most need, according to Beech. Andrew McGettigan, an expert on higher education financing who has previously advised Labour, said more fundamental reforms would need to wait but an incoming Labour government still had “a lot of room for creativity” under the current system to improve the student experience, such as more support for mental health or capping rents for student accommodation. “It would probably make sense to review maintenance support – restoration of grants would be popular, restoring bursaries for nursing and paramedic students, even a one-off [rebate] for those who worked during the pandemic and paid tuition fees for the privilege – particularly disgusting in my book,” McGettigan said. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion “All good, popular measures that would show you are approaching the problems with a clear set of priorities.” Other possibilities include restoring teaching block grants to increase resources while continuing to freeze tuition fees, and a temporary loan repayment moratorium, which would have an immediate impact on the cost of living for new graduates. David Kernohan, the deputy editor of the higher education news service Wonkhe, said Labour needed to think beyond the “sticker price” of £9,250 tuition fees and look at how to improve support for students whose parents were not able to support them at university. “If we like what universities can do for us, we need to fund universities sustainably. There’s scope for Labour to explore the balance of contributions made by everyone who benefits from universities,” Kernohan said. “The scope of what universities are expected to do needs to be reexamined. Should universities be running health services, or local transport, or reinvigorating the high street, simply because nobody else can afford to do it? Should universities be focusing on training the immediate workforce, or do employers also have a role to play?”

Sex education review is ‘politically motivated’, say teaching unions

2023-03-08

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/08/sex-education-review-is-politically-motivated-say-teaching-unions

Tory MPs’ claims of extreme graphic lessons at England’s schools written off as ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ Teaching unions have criticised a “politically motivated” review of the way sex education is taught in schools, after Conservative MPs voiced concern that children were being exposed to “graphic” material including “lessons on oral sex”. Rishi Sunak has asked the Department for Education to “ensure schools are not teaching inappropriate or contested content” in the subject of relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), and will bring forward the review that was already “on the cards for some time”. Sunak confirmed the review, which will apply only to state schools in England, after a Tory MP, Miriam Cates, said children were being exposed to sex education classes that were “age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate”. The prime minister and the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, are understood to be concerned about the issues raised and will consider whether schools should place clearer limits on the content taught to children, depending on their age. Posing a question to Sunak during prime minister’s questions, Cates said: “Graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and 72 genders. This is what passes for relationships and sex education in British schools. “Across the country, children are being subjected to lessons that are age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate, often using resources from unregulated organisations that are actively campaigning to undermine parents. “This is not a victory for equality – it is a catastrophe for childhood.” Sunak responded: “Our priority should always be the safety and wellbeing of children, and schools should also make curriculum content and materials available to parents. “As a result of all of this, we are bringing forward a review of RSHE statutory guidance and we will start our consultation as soon as possible.” Before PMQs, Cates coordinated a letter to the prime minister that was signed by MPs including Priti Patel, former levelling up secretary Simon Clarke, Jonathan Gullis and Andrea Jenkyns, urging Sunak to launch an independent inquiry into what young children have been asked in lessons concerning how they “feel” about oral and anal sex. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The joint letter warned that “even primary schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with radial and unevidenced ideologies about sex and gender”. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and a former headteacher, said: “The vast majority of schools are incredibly cautious and sensible about the teaching of RSE and we disagree with the sweeping generalisation and inflammatory rhetoric from Miriam Cates in the Commons.“Schools are doing their best to teach children and young people about things like being safe and respectful relationships in a sensitive and age-appropriate manner, but they are constantly subjected to unhelpful potshots from various individuals and groups.“We welcome the review of relationships and sex education as part of an ongoing process of ensuring that schools and teachers are well supported in delivering this topic, but our understanding is that this review has been on the cards for some time, as one would expect, given that this is a relatively new and very important part of the curriculum.”James Bowen, director of policy for the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “It is hard to be anything other than deeply concerned by this announcement.“The overwhelming majority of schools are doing nothing more than following the government’s own statutory guidance when it comes to relationships and sex education. It is worth remembering that the current curriculum was subject to extensive consultation before it was introduced.“We have seen no evidence to suggest there is a widespread problem with pupils being presented with age-inappropriate materials, and if this were the situation, we would expect it to have been picked up on a case-by-case basis.“There is a real concern that this is a politically motivated review, rather than one based on the reality of what is happening in the vast majority of schools up and down the country.”

Equality depends on education. The class of 2023 have suffered a grave injustice | Lee Elliot Major

2023-08-20

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/20/equality-depends-on-education-englands-class-of-2023-have-suffered-a-grave-injustice-over-a-level-results

Exam grading has plunged an unlucky cohort into a scramble for university, after a schooling ruined by Covid Robbed of their schooling and forced into the fiercest of races for university places, this is surely the Covid generation’s unluckiest student cohort. In years to come the bruised and battle-hardened class of 2023 will always carry with them a sense of intergenerational injustice – whatever success most will go on to make of their lives. What made this summer’s wait for A-level results so nerve-shredding was the worst kept secret in education: the generous grade boundaries that softened the blow for previous victims of the Covid school closures would be cruelly removed for this, the biggest wave of university hopefuls in living memory. England’s 2023 school leavers have every right to feel unfairly treated. Students from just across the Welsh or Scottish borders may have earned the same exam marks but have benefited from higher grades that can make all the difference in the great scramble for coveted degree places. One missed opportunity can change a life. Once more, the adults in charge have failed our younger generation. In the post-pandemic era, the dream that education could somehow act as the great social leveller seems a distant, laughable fantasy. The biggest victims, however, are the young people on the wrong side of an increasingly unequal education arms race. National examination results lay bare the societal and educational inequalities that have shaped young lives over their entire lifetimes. We should never call any young people disadvantaged; they are simply under-resourced. It is not their fault that they lack the sharp-elbowed parents able to navigate a bafflingly complex university admission system and advocate for their children in the frantic rush of clearing. They aren’t to blame for missing out on all the extra tutoring and home support provided during the turmoil of the Covid years. Sadly, for education’s have-nots, the dials are all pointing in the wrong direction. The stark academic gap between private and state schools is now wider than it was before the pandemic. Just under half of A-level entries (47.4%) in the elite fee-charging sector in 2023 were graded A* and A grades, compared with just 22% in the state sector. For all the talk of levelling up, geographical divides have also widened: students in London and the south-east have pulled further away from their peers in the rest of England when it comes to securing highest grades. Yes, more pupils on free school meals have entered higher education in 2023; but this is merely a product of the rising tide of child poverty pulling more students into hardship – hardly something to celebrate. This week’s GCSE results, I’m afraid, will bring further ill tidings. About a third of teenagers will have failed to secure the basics in their English and maths exams after 12 years of schooling – a statistic that has scarred the education system for decades. This summer’s results are set against the arguably the greatest worry of all: hundreds of thousands of younger pupils persistently absent from the classroom. This doesn’t bode well for the future. In any other era, these damning figures might constitute a national crisis. Yet political debate on education remains high on rhetoric and frustratingly low on firm financial commitments. It’s great to hear talk about smashing class ceilings, and boosting maths or speaking skills. But these promises are empty without vows to invest the extra billions now needed to improve our ailing education system. At the height of the pandemic the government’s own education commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, was forced to resign after his £15bn recovery plan to get children back on course was rejected by the government. Funding for the government’s national tutoring programme, meanwhile, has all but dried up. We also need an urgent review of how to create sustainable funding for our universities. In truth, we were already heading for a reckoning long before the pandemic. A perfect storm of growing inequalities, economic downturns, and the harsh winds of globalisation and technological automation has created a growing sense that the current model of capitalism is broken. The problem for politicians is that the promise that anyone can make it through education is essential to defend a world of ever-starker inequalities. Trickle-down economics relies on several assumptions. And a big one is that anyone can get the good education needed to stand a fair chance of succeeding in life. Other countries have recognised this undeniable truth. The best education performers on the international stage have made long-term investments to properly support teachers and a growing army of welfare workers. Levelling the playing field of learning requires a combined effort inside and outside schools – and support from cradle to graduation. There is also growing recognition that there is more to developing human potential than just preparing for narrow academic tests. Improving social justice, moreover, is seen not simply as a matter of catapulting a fortunate few into elite universities, but a much broader challenge of enabling people to lead decent lives whatever they happen to do and wherever they happen to come from. But our political leaders need to recognise that these grand aims always come at a price: they need to put their money where their mouths are and give our younger generations the fairer and brighter future they deserve. Lee Elliot Major is professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter. His latest book, Equity in Education, is published this autumn

Disadvantaged pupils further behind in maths since Covid, English study finds

2024-03-04

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/04/disadvantaged-pupils-further-behind-in-maths-since-covid-english-study-finds

Union criticises education recovery funding as attainment gap in primary school pupils grows to 8.7 months Children from low-income families in England are further behind their peers in maths than they were before the pandemic, research suggests. The attainment gap for disadvantaged primary school pupils in maths has grown from an average of 6.9 months to 8.7 months, the study by the thinktank the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and the software firm Renaissance Learning has found. Outcomes in maths are also down on average for pupils overall, the study of primary and secondary school assessments in years 3 to 9 found. The problem equates to an average of four months of lost learning at secondary schools and two months in primary schools, the study said. The study was conducted by comparing Renaissance’s Star Reading and Star Maths assessments from 2017-18 and 2022-23. It gives further evidence of the profound impact of Covid on vulnerable children whose support had already been cut back by austerity. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: “Schools have moved heaven and earth to support children in catching up with lost learning from the pandemic but as these results show this has not been an easy task, and in terms of maths that is likely to be because missing key elements of numeracy at an early stage makes later progress much more difficult. “This analysis makes it even more frustrating that the government not only failed to provide sufficient investment in education recovery in the first place but is now pulling the plug on the national tutoring programme – which was its flagship recovery programme … Unfortunately, the government has decided that it is a case of job done when this is very clearly not the case at all.” The study also looked at numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals for at least 80% of their time in school, which it classed as “persistently disadvantaged”. The proportion of primary-age pupils in this category grew from 8.9% before the pandemic to 13.3% in 2022-23. Jon Andrews, the head of analysis and director for school performance and systems at the EPI, said: “This latest analysis shines further light on the disproportionate impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on the outcomes of disadvantaged pupils, worsening already stark inequalities. These inequalities should be a significant concern for policymakers and education providers. “The far lower outcomes for pupils who experience persistent disadvantage is a reminder of the importance of tackling child poverty as a root cause of the gap in academic outcomes.” A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know the pandemic had a significant impact on education globally, which is why we have made £5bn available since 2020 for education recovery initiatives, including the national tutoring programme. “We are constantly seeing the success of our reforms. England ranked 11th in the world for maths, up from just 27th in 2009, and in May our primary-age children came fourth in the world for reading – making them the best readers in the western world.”

A Labour government could face teachers’ strikes, union warns

2024-04-06

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/06/a-labour-government-could-face-teachers-strikes-union-warns

National Education Union chief Daniel Kebede says Labour pledges are ‘a long way from the scale of change’ needed A new Labour government could find itself facing a wave of industrial action by teachers in England and Wales if it fails to meet demands over pay and education funding, the leader of the UK’s biggest education union has warned. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), fired a warning shot over Keir Starmer’s bows, declaring that Labour’s current proposals on schools and education were “a long way” off the scale of change needed. Addressing the NEU’s annual conference in Bournemouth on Saturday, he said the reforms required in the sector after 14 years of Conservative austerity could not be done on the cheap, warning: “We didn’t tolerate Tory cuts and we won’t tolerate Labour cuts either.” Making his first speech to conference as general secretary, Kebede was scathing about the Conservatives’ record on education, accusing the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, and her predecessors of doing “an f-ing terrible job”, using her own vernacular. Kebede was, however, keen, speaking in an election year, to send a message to an incoming Labour government that the NEU would not pull its punches in its fight for fair pay and funding in schools, whoever was in power. After a recent indicative ballot, when nearly 150,000 teachers voted in support of industrial action, the conference decided to wait to see the government’s pay offer for teachers for 2024/25 before moving to a formal ballot on strike action. The government has yet to publish the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), or its decision on whether to accept them. Last month, however, the Department for Education (DfE) said teachers’ pay awards should “return to a more sustainable level” which could be covered by existing school budgets. That has been taken to mean 1-2%. In his speech, Kebede issued a warning to “this government, and any government that follows it” that “we are ready, we are prepared and we are able to take any further industrial action that ensures our members and our schools get the fair deal they deserve”. The union chief listed Labour’s current pledges to increase the number of teachers by 6,500, provide free school breakfasts for primary children, replace single-word Ofsted judgments with report cards and review assessment and curriculum. “While all of these are welcome reforms,” Kebede said, “they are a long way from the scale of change that we need to see in education”. He said he was ready to work with a Labour government to “embark on a journey of renewal” and called on Starmer to make education the number one priority, with smaller class sizes, refurbished schools, free school meals for all primary schoolchildren and an end to the two-child benefits cap. “We want an incoming government committed to making teaching a competitive career again, to address the recruitment and retention crisis. And we believe it is wrong that support staff are paid little more than the minimum wage.” The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has sought to downplay a Labour government’s ability to reverse Tory cuts in public services and increase investment, saying that the next government will inherit the worst set of economic circumstances since the second world war. A Labour spokesperson said: “Boosting opportunity for every child through high and rising standards in education will be one of Labour’s five missions for government. “After 14 years of stagnation under the Conservatives, Labour will be put education at the forefront of national life once again, so we can transform the life chances of children across our country.” A spokesperson for the DfE said: “Our plan to raise standards across the education sector is working, which is why, thanks to the dedication of our hard-working teachers, we have a world-class education system where primary children are the ‘best in the west’ at reading and 90% of schools are now rated good or outstanding up from just 68% in 2010. “Overall school funding is rising to over £60bn in 2024/25, its highest ever level in real-terms per pupil – and teachers have already benefited from two historic pay awards totalling over 12% in just two years.”

An educated society brings benefits to all | Letter

2023-06-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/29/an-educated-society-brings-benefits-to-all

Paying for universal education will ensure we have enough doctors, police officers, plumbers and technicians to keep the machinery of society running, writes Tim Bloomfield May I attempt to nail the persistent notion that people who have no children or who pay for private education are “subsidising a state sector” from which they derive no benefit (Letters, 26 June? By contributing towards universal education, they receive the benefit of living in a society with enough doctors, nurses, police officers, civil servants, plumbers and technicians who literally keep the machinery of society running. In economic terms, a social good not only benefits those who directly use it, but all those who live in that society. Social security and youth clubs reduce crime; the support of minorities and people on the fringes of conventional society reduces alienation and strengthens their sense of belonging and loyalty towards that society, which reduces the risk of terrorism. A strong NHS reduces the number of long-term sick, identified as being a significant contribution to economic inactivity and the labour shortage. Cheap and efficient public transport increases economic activity and reduces congestion. I could go on.Tim BloomfieldActon, Suffolk Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

‘You can’t get a first-class education in second-class schools’: Labour’s Bridget Phillipson sets out her vision

2023-09-03

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/03/bridget-phillipson-labour-cant-get-first-class-education-in-second-class-schools

The shadow education secretary shattered the ‘class barrier’ of a tough upbringing to achieve her position. Now she wants others to do the same It is a Friday, a day of train strikes, so Bridget Phillipson cannot easily get back to her Houghton and Sunderland South constituency. Instead, the shadow secretary of state for education is in London being bombarded by media requests for comment on England’s crumbling schools. The state of the country’s public services reminds her of her own upbringing in the north-east, in Washington, a former mining town between Sunderland and Newcastle in Tyne and Wear. Now 39, she was raised by her mother in a small terrace council house with rotting window frames and no upstairs heating. “I was at school under the last Tory government,” she says with passion. “I saw it first-hand, what happens when you have schools that are falling down, buckets collecting water, a total failure to invest in facilities. “It feels like we face a similar challenge across our public realm, the fact that nothing seems to work in Britain any more, that our schools are literally crumbling, while the Tories have been content to sit back for years and years, focusing on petty internal squabbles rather than on our children’s education.” Her views, and desire to change things, were clearly formed early and her resentment of the Tories runs deep. Despite being a shy child without many material advantages, she won through with flying colours, going on to study modern history at Oxford University and co-chair the university’s Labour club. Now if, as expected, she stays in post during an imminent shadow cabinet reshuffle, she is on course to become education secretary within 18 months. Phillipson has already done what Keir Starmer says he wants millions of other young people from working-class backgrounds to be empowered to do under a Labour government: she has shattered “the class ceiling”. That is what now drives her. Like all of her shadow cabinet colleagues, Phillipson knows that if Labour wins the next election, money will be tight, far tighter than it was for New Labour in 1997. “We will face enormous challenges, big fiscal constraints,” she says. Dangerous school buildings are the current story and a huge worry, but they also give her a political opening a mile wide. The crisis is, she says, “a metaphor for 13 years of Tory government”. It is also an issue Phillipson and her team have been monitoring closely for years, calling on ministers week in, week out to publish lists of those schools with classrooms, assembly halls, corridors or dining rooms that are at risk of crashing down on pupils, teachers and support staff. She says it is “incredible” that this information has been held back and believes the inevitable disruption and worry will affect the quality of education as well as raise safety concerns. “You can’t expect children to get a first-class education in second-class schools,” she says. One of the first acts of the Conservative government in 2010, she recalls, was when Michael Gove cancelled Labour’s big school rebuilding programme, as the coalition government introduced austerity across the board. “They then failed to put in place a [replacement] national programme to rebuild schools. So now after 13 years the chickens are coming home to roost.” Phillipson is demanding that ministers come to the House of Commons on Monday when MPs return from their summer break to explain what has been going on and what they will do next. For her part, she is upbeat about how Labour can improve things in office, over time. It is a matter of different values as well as funds, she suggests. “I remember when the Labour government came in in 1997,” she says. It was around the time she joined the party in her mid-teens. “It took time but we got there. As in 1997 it will fall again to a Labour government to deliver for our schools, our NHS, for the economy. We have to get the economy growing. “The priority for any secretary of state for education has to be making sure that children can go to schools that are fit for purpose. But the challenge is more than that. It is to break down the barriers.” Her vision seems to be to transform state schools into places that children want to attend, and are proud to do so, in which teachers want to teach, and in which parents have confidence and place their trust. “Places that are central to the community,” she adds. She is worried about absenteeism among pupils, levels of which are higher in areas of the north of England, where GCSE and A-level results are less good. There is a clear connection. “We need children back in school. We are seeing a real problem with absenteeism.” One big idea that is now firm policy is to bring in breakfast clubs for all pupils in all primary schools in England, as a priority and in a first Labour term. It will cost £365m a year, ensuring that children from poorer backgrounds can start the school day with a good meal. “It is also that they will get a softer start to the day, time with their friends,” says Phillipson. It will be of educational benefit too, helping concentration and the ability to learn. Other policies are coming together. There is no promise of a structural reform revolution, but rather of a change of focus and emphasis, and a belief that if state schools can improve social mobility, then everyone wins. Under an inevitably cash-strapped Labour government, money will be found to pay for more teachers by ending tax breaks for private schools, a policy the Institute for Fiscal Studies says will raise about £1.6bn a year. Problems with retention of teaching staff will be addressed by promising extra payments of £2,400 to those in the very early stages of their careers in England to try to stop them leaving. Teachers, Phillipson suggests, are paid too little. “The facts speak for themselves. Under the Tories teachers have had a 13% real-terms pay cut,” she says. “I understand the way teachers feel about this government.” She believes that the combination of a lack of investment in the last 13 years, Covid and the recent teachers’ strikes have all taken a toll on state education, as well as on the attitudes towards it. Too many parents and young people now think that it does not matter if this generation of pupils misses a few more days because, as she puts it “they have already missed so much”. It is the kind of thinking Phillipson wants to reverse. The danger, she suggests, is that the crisis over school buildings will make it all worse. She sees her task as rebuilding in the broadest sense, to ensure that children from her kind of background get the best possible chance, and if at all possible more than one if at first they don’t succeed. “It about showing that school matters,” she says, “that being at school matters, it is how you will you get to a better life. For a lot of young people, they have not got the grades they need, for a lot of working-class kids they only get one shot. That’s unfair.”

Number of children home schooled in England rises by more than 10,000

2024-02-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/29/number-of-children-home-schooled-in-england-rises-by-more-than-10000

Mental health being increasingly cited as main reason for parents choosing home education, official figures find The number of children in England being home schooled increased by more than 10,000 last autumn, with mental health being increasingly cited by parents as the main reason, according to official figures. The statistics published by the Department for Education (DfE) showed that 92,000 children were recorded as being home schooled on one day last term, compared with 80,900 at the same point in autumn 2022. The government is launching a fresh push to improve school attendances in England, including a 33% increase in the cost of fines for unauthorised absences and a tougher line banning pupils from attending protests during school hours. The percentage of parents recording mental health as the primary reason for home education rose from 9% last year to 13%. “Philosophical” or “lifestyle” reasons accounted for 24%, while 40% were recorded as unknown, other or no reason. One per cent of parents cited religion as their primary reason for home schooling, while 3% cited bullying. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We are concerned that the increase in elective home education is in part a symptom of wider problems – such as unmet special education needs, and school anxiety and other mental health issues. “These are areas that are badly under-resourced, with huge pressures on school funding and an erosion in local support services.” According to the estimates by local authorities, 126,000 children were home schooled at any point during 2022-23, up from 116,000 in 2021-22. For the first time the DfE also released statistics on children missing education (CME), a new classification covering school-age children not enrolled at school and receiving “unsuitable” education. Last autumn, councils recorded 33,000 children missing education, compared with 24,000 in autumn 2022. Across the 2022-23 school year, councils recorded 117,000 CMEs at any point, compared with 95,000 the previous year. The DfE defines CME as children who are “not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school. This includes children who are awaiting a school place and children in receipt of unsuitable education, including those children local authorities are supporting to place into suitable education.” About 20% of cases last autumn were the result of a child moving out of the country or to another local authority, while 23% involved children who were waiting for a school place. About 44% of cases were for other reasons or not recorded. Just 6% of CME cases were attributed to “unsuitable” home education. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, has said Labour would introduce a national register of children not in school, while the Conservative MP Flick Drummond has introduced a bill that would require local authorities to maintain a register of children not enrolled in a school. The DfE published new statutory guidance on school attendance on Thursday, to come into force next summer, which includes a ban on students attending protests. “Leave of absence should not be granted for a pupil to take part in protest activity during school hours,” the guidance states.

Hugh Burkhardt obituary

2024-04-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/30/hugh-burkhardt-obituary

My father, Hugh Burkhardt, who has died aged 88, was an educator and visionary in the field of mathematics education. Through his work as director of the Shell Centre for Mathematical Education at Nottingham University, and books such as The Real World and Mathematics (1981), Hugh helped millions of maths teachers help their students to appreciate mathematics and use it in their daily lives. A theoretical physicist for 16 years, Hugh became interested during the 1960s in the teaching of mathematics. Over four decades he drove the evolution of the field from a set of formal academic techniques applied to contrived problems, to a range of practical methods that could be applied creatively to real-world problem-solving. Born into a scientific family in Manchester, Hugh was the son of Carol (nee Bell), a mathematics teacher before marriage, and George Burkhardt, a chemistry professor. After Manchester grammar school, he studied physics at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1956. He began his academic career as a theoretical physicist at Birmingham University, with a year at UCLA in the US (1968), and two years at Cern in Geneva (1964-72). In 1976 he was appointed professor of mathematical education at Nottingham University, and director of its Shell Centre for Mathematical Education. There, Hugh championed the role of “educational designer” in changing the teaching of mathematics. However, he knew that creating new methods and proving them empirically was only half the battle. The challenge was to drive adoption by the great number of teachers subject to local incentives and constraints. In 1993, in response to the influence of “high stakes” public examinations, he introduced the acronym WYTIWYG, “What You Test Is What You Get”, and this slowly became accepted by policymakers and exam boards. Exams changed to assess higher-level skills, such as solving non-routine problems and interpreting graphs of real-world data. To help teachers reinforce these skills, the centre produced “formative assessment” lessons through the US-based Mathematics Assessment Project. It is estimated there have been more than 7 million teacher downloads of these lessons, such as the dice game to aid learning of probability concepts. As emeritus professor at Nottingham, Hugh remained active into his late 80s, directing and contributing to many research projects. His co-authored book with Daniel Pead and Kaye Stacey, Learning and Teaching for Mathematical Literacy, was published in February. Outside work, he loved French food, wine and classical music. He played the oboe with the Bavicchi wind quintet, performing for more than 40 years. Hugh married Diana Farmer, a computer science lecturer, in 1955; they had three children, Roger, Ian and me. The marriage ended in divorce in the mid-80s. From 1990 he was in a relationship with Jeanne Downton, a bereavement counsellor. She and his children survive him.

Labor MP calls for ‘nuclear’ reforms to stop international education providers teaching poor quality courses

2023-06-19

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/19/labor-mp-calls-for-nuclear-reforms-to-stop-international-education-providers-teaching-poor-quality-courses

Speaking to parliament, Julian Hill warned of Australia’s student visa being used as a ‘low-rent work visa’ Labor MP Julian Hill has called for “nuclear” reforms to weed out poor quality vocational educators who he says are exploiting the system as a “low-rent work visa”. He has proposed suspending international student intakes for low quality courses and preventing internal assessments. Hill, who was previously the executive director of international education in the Victorian government, is co-convener of the ministerial advisory committee interrogating international education. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup The parliamentary committee has heard shocking allegations of vocational education and training (VET) providers “gaming the system” and working with unregulated international education agents to steal students from prestigious public institutions for massive commissions, sell work visas and open “ghost schools” where students don’t attend classes but still receive degrees. Speaking in parliament on Monday, Hill said the international student sector was vital to Australia’s prosperity but radical thinking was needed to clean up the sector. “The vast majority of the sector do wonderful things but a minority of students – mainly in the bottom end of private VET – are only here to work not study,” he said. “Our student visa must not be used as a low-rent work visa.” Hill said Australia’s future success relied upon quality education that had been compromised after “a decade of drift and neglect” and the sector’s social license needed to be restored. He floated four options for reform, termed “nuclear” in private conversations. Among them was revamping the entire accreditation framework for private VET providers, to separate training from assessment as is done in year 12 certificates, forcing providers to re-apply for licenses and suspending enrolments in “low-value” courses, and banning the payment of education agent commissions for onshore students. “Most providers do good things but there are a significant minority that are dodgy, selling work visas,” he said. “In education, ASQA [Australian Skills Quality Authority] inspect the paperwork and use that as a proxy for quality. “Good quality private providers are despairing. They report that dodgy providers just get the students in, pop the exam answers on the board and the students write them down and go back to work.” Hill said dodgy providers couldn’t be weeded out unless students were properly tested and the bar was raised to become an assessment provider. “If we … force the higher risk private VET providers to have their students externally assessed, then it would shock the system,” he said. Sign up to Morning Mail Our Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion “ASQA could rapidly put colleges selling dodgy qualifications out of business.” With concern over the rapid post-pandemic growth in international student numbers, Hill said suspending enrolments to courses with non-vocational outcomes in which vast numbers of VET students were enrolled was “controversial” but “food for thought”. “What benefit is Australia getting from tens of thousands of international students enrolled in certificates and diplomas in marketing, leadership and business?” he said. “There are few if any migration pathways. The courses are cheap. And too many students are working not studying.” The inquiry has heard sweeping allegations of education agents acting as a Ponzi scheme by taking commissions of up to 50% to enrol students in courses and funnelling them to lower quality private providers once arriving onshore. The broadly unregulated sector acts as a middle man to advise and recruit students from overseas. Hill said “rapacious onshore agents” were “destroying the integrity of the sector” by “bribing and stealing students from universities to low-cost VET providers with kickbacks, discounts and incentives”. Hill said attempts at regulation had failed in the past because “it’s expensive and complex” but parliament could ban the payment of commissions for onshore students entirely to wipe out the intermediaries. “Regulating agents has become a question of ‘how and when’ not ‘if’,” he said. “Time to prune the tree to save the tree?”

‘Children without a bed aren’t going to be interested in school’: can England’s north-south education divide be repaired?

2023-08-27

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/27/children-without-a-bed-arent-going-to-be-interested-in-school-can-englands-north-south-education-divide-be-repaired

This year’s GCSE and A-level results exposed devastating inequalities. But Tory promises to help ring hollow At St John Henry Newman Catholic college, a state secondary in Oldham, a minibus goes out twice each morning and collects children who don’t want to come to school. But headteacher Glyn Potts knows that persistent absence – which has mushroomed across the country since Covid – often requires more than a lift to solve. “We had a number of children who stopped coming in on certain days,” he says. “When we explored it we found mums who had taken extra shifts at the factory or nursing home to keep food on the table and the older child was staying at home so someone could collect the youngest from primary school.” Although it is a national issue, higher rates of absence have been flagged as a likely factor in causing children in the north to fall starkly behind those from London and the south-east again in this summer’s GCSE and A-level results. Last week over 28.4% of GCSE exams were graded 7-9 in London, compared with 17.6% in north-east England and 18.6% in the north-west. A-levels results showed a similar picture. While in London 30% of A-level grades were A or A* (up from 26.9% in 2019), in the north-east this figure was 22% and in the north-west it was 24%. The split between north and south focuses on England. Wales, Northern Ireland and some private schools in Scotland all take GCSEs but there has been less focus on results in all devolved regions because they are removing grade inflation more slowly. Potts says not turning up is often a sign of deeper social problems. The school has “quite a number” of young people from low-income families who have been hooked into distributing drugs for county lines gangs, “because they earn good money”. After years of public services cuts the school has to wade in on social care issues, often working with families to solve problems like housing. “Children aren’t going to be interested in school if they haven’t got a bed,” Potts says. The double whammy of Covid and the cost of living crisis has meant that an extra quarter of the schools’ families are really struggling to pay bills and buy food. The school gives out free breakfasts as an incentive to non-attenders to come in. “Parents are having to make decisions about things like whether to give children money for food in the school day or for school transport,” Potts says. Oldham has one of the highest rates of parental fines for pupils missing school in England, which makes Potts deeply uncomfortable. “If I fine these families I’m making their situation worse,” he says. “And what exactly is the plan here? Is it really bearing fruit?” Frank Norris, education adviser to the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP), says to solve the crisis of absence schools in more deprived areas need support to re-engage not just children, but also their families, after the pandemic. “The idea that they are all just lazy good-for-nothings who are walking round shopping centres in their slippers is wrong. It’s not what I’m seeing,” he says. Norris argues that parents struggling to pay for electricity, heating and food often won’t be focused on getting their kids into school, much as they might want to. “In the most acute areas, the stress in families is worse than I’ve ever seen,” he says. For many schools, he fears, the problem has become too big to handle. “If you’ve got a secondary school with 2,000 kids and 250 regularly don’t attend, that is a massive problem to fix,” he says. “If you wanted to connect with the families to understand what is going on, how do you deal with that alongside everything else a school has to do?” Sir Kevan Collins resigned as the government’s schools recovery tsar in 2021 after the government agreed to fund only 10% of the £15bn package he felt was “the minimum viable option”. This week he told the Observer that his greatest fear then was that, without proper investment, existing gaps – between children in the north and the south, and between the least and most privileged – would widen. This summer’s results proved him right, but he says: “I take no comfort in the idea of ‘I told you so’. It feels very sad.” He adds: “Teachers and schools have been heroic in all this, and they were abandoned. The scale of it required a national endeavour. It still does.” Collins says that children who were well supported by families and schools have “recovered pretty well” from the pandemic, but children who didn’t have that support “have been really badly hit in ways I couldn’t have imagined then, such as the stark and scary numbers on persistent absence”. He thinks it is right that schools should seek to understand what is going on behind this absence – but “we should never accept it. To me it signals a breakdown in the social norm that this is just something you do every day”. He worries about a potential lost generation of young people who may have walked away this week with GCSE grades lower than a 4 and a feeling that they have failed – even though if they’d happened to sit their exams last year that 3 would probably have been a 4. “When you meet a child who got a 3, that sense that they’ve somehow failed is profound,” he says. “The vast majority who have to resit English and maths will fail again. You create a cycle where they stop believing in the promise of education.” The fact that there is now a record attainment gap between top GCSE grades awarded to pupils in London and those in much of the north of England is not only terrible news for young people and their parents in those educationally disadvantaged areas. It is also a serious blow to a government that claims to be committed to “levelling up” the country. Many Conservative MPs who won seats from Labour in “red wall” areas at the 2019 general election were promised that educational opportunities – as well as economic ones – would be made more equal. For those Tory MPs, particularly ones with small majorities, the GSCE and A-level results will have been arguably as important in determining their futures as for the students who sat the exams. As far as education standards are concerned, the results will hardly strengthen their case with constituents for voting Conservative again. There is already frustration that key levelling up projects, including for transport and economic regeneration, have been ditched or cut back. The Northern Research Group of Conservative MPs will launch a manifesto at the party’s annual conference in Manchester, hoping to keep levelling up on the road. Last week on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the schools minister, Nick Gibb, appeared to confirm that the education north-south gap had widened, giving Labour a political opening a mile wide to exploit. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary and MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, said the divide reinforced the impression that the Conservatives were “happy to see the managed decline of educational standards across large swathes of England.” Henri Murison, the chief executive of the NPP, said reforms introduced under the Tories had simply not been ambitious enough. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion “Although it was right to extend pupil premium funding for 16 to 18-year-old care leavers in some areas it has gone nowhere near far enough, which is why we need this extended further to all the poorest young people from 16 to 18 years old as an emergency response to this week’s results. “The government has failed many of the poorest who took GCSEs this year with a lacklustre tutoring programme; it is clear they need extra help when they arrive at college or sixth form next month.” The Rev Steve Chalke, whose Oasis Charitable Trust runs 54 academies in deprived areas of England, says: “It is so frustrating that the government didn’t back Collins’s recovery plan. The writing was on the wall then and these GCSE and A-level results put the final nail in the coffin of levelling up. The geographical differences are stark.” Chalke argues that the results show the truth that children from comfortable homes “with good housing and good salaries who can give time and decent wifi and peace” are able to perform “hugely better than children from homes where employment is precarious, accommodation is squashed, money is scarce and parents don’t have the time or energy to sit with children they love just as much”. Jonny Uttley, chief executive of the Education Alliance academy trust, which runs eight schools in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, said: “Sir Kevan laid out exactly what needed to happen to help children catch up, and policymakers chose not to hear it. As a consequence you are now seeing yawning gaps again between the advantaged and the less advantaged.” Meanwhile the government’s announcement this week that it had approved Eton College to open free sixth-form colleges in Dudley, Middlesbrough and Oldham to offer “transformative outcomes” for disadvantaged young people, has gone down like a lead balloon with headteachers, who say it will do nothing to bridge the north-south educational divide. The new colleges will select pupils based on high GCSE results and Darren Hankey, principal of Hartlepool Further Education College near Middlesbrough, said: “Sharp-elbowed middle class parents will focus on getting a free Eton education for their kids there, just as they’ve done in grammar schools.” A recent review found there were too many post-16 providers in the Teesside area and recommended mergers. “Because of its name and reputation, of course this new college will get its numbers,” Hankley says, “but they will be drawn from colleges in the area which are already hand-to-mouth and all rated good or outstanding.” Over more than 13 years the Conservatives have promised to deliver improved education regardless of the postcodes in which young people attending state schools happen to live. Early in his premiership Boris Johnson said he wanted “every parent across England to know that their child’s education is at the very heart of this government’s agenda”, while Rishi Sunak said that improving standards in schools across England was a reason he came into politics. This weekend, for those living in large parts of the north of this country, such comments will ring particularly hollow. National literacy strategyThe literacy strategy was a cornerstone of Tony Blair’s 1997 election pledge to focus on “education, education, education”. It introduced a daily hour of literacy (and later numeracy) in primary schools to tackle concerns that too many children started secondary school unable to read properly. It led to significant rises in national assessment test results. The strategies were also credited with reducing the attainment gaps related to disadvantage and ethnicity. Critics say, that an over-focus on literacy and numeracy narrowed the primary curriculum. 4/5 Infant class size policy Class size legislation was introduced in 1998 to stop overcrowding. It limits classes for five, six and seven-year-olds to 30 pupils. Data shows that the vast majority of children are in classes at or under this level, although in 2012/13 the proportion of larger classes increased after a baby boom. Conservative administrations have introduced various exceptions to the limit. Although research is inconclusive about the benefits of smaller classes, parents and teachers think it matters and many would like to see the maximum set well below 30. Smaller classes are often cited by parents as a key reason for sending their children to private school. 3/5 The English baccalaureate The coalition government’s English Baccalaureate policy (EBacc) began in 2011 in an attempt to force schools to teach traditional subjects and drop “low quality” vocational alternatives. Schools are required to publish the number of GCSE passes in English, maths, science, modern foreign languages and history or geography. In 2011, only a fifth of pupils entered all five subjects at GCSE. This has since risen to between 38% and 40%, well short of the 75% target. The performance measure has been roundly criticised for sidelining arts subjects and forcing all students down the same academic route. Supporters argue that it keeps all subject options open for pupils post-16. 2/5 Pupil premiumIntroduced in 2011, the pupil premium is the main government policy to tackle educational underachievement linked to deprivation. In 2023-24, schools will receive an extra £1,455 for each primary pupil and £1,035 for each secondary pupil eligible for free school meals. While there are examples of the funding making a difference, 2022 results in primary tests, GCSEs and A-levels suggest that the attainment gap between pupil premium children and their peers has widened. Headteachers say the pupil premium cannot make up for the general lack of funding and that in some situations they use the money to plug funding gaps rather than targeting it. 3/5 Academisation The policy began under Labour with specialist schools and city academies, aimed at giving successful heads room to innovate and targeting struggling secondaries. It was adopted by the Conservatives in 2010, with promises of more academies and “free schools”, independent of local authority control. By January 2022, 79% of secondary and 40% of primary pupils attended academies and free schools, many run by multi academy trusts. Supporters say the system has given heads more control and driven up standards - 88% of state-funded schools are now judged good or outstanding, compared to 68% in 2010. Opponents point to a significant number of inadequate academies, a lack of accountability and the big pay of some trust bosses. 3/5Julie Henry The headline on this article was amended on 29 August 2023. An earlier version referred to Britain rather than England.

Sex education overhaul in England based on ‘overblown’ claims, say teachers

2023-03-31

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/31/overhaul-of-sex-education-in-england-based-on-overblown-claims-say-teachers

DfE proposes age ratings for classes after Tory MP claimed children were given ‘graphic lessons on oral sex’ Plans to overhaul official guidance on sex education in schools are blowing a perceived problem out of all proportion, teachers’ representatives have said. The Department for Education (DfE) has set out proposals to introduce age ratings designed to prevent teachers covering some subject matter with younger children, as well as other measures, after the prime minister ordered the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, to bring forward a planned review. Rishi Sunak did so in response to pressure from the Tory MP Miriam Cates, who claimed in the Commons earlier this month that children were being given “graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely and 72 genders”. On Friday, Keegan declared herself “deeply concerned about reports of inappropriate lessons being taught in schools” and the DfE confirmed Cates’s statement in the Commons on 8 March was the grounds for its new proposals on relationships, sex, health and education (RSHE) guidance. But the chief of the teaching union the Association of School and College Leaders said the claims were “overblown, sweeping and supported by evidence which is flimsy at best”. Geoff Barton, the union’s general secretary, said it was “very disappointing” to see Keegan offering “implicit criticism of schools when she says the review will restore the confidence of parents”. He said the “vast majority” of schools already teach RSHE “cautiously, sensitively and in an age-appropriate manner”. The DfE said it would lead the review, but that it would be informed by an independent panel providing “external expertise”. The guidance is expected to be released in the coming months, possibly before the beginning of the next academic year, and will then be subject to public consultation. That process is expected to conclude by the end of the year, with the guidance coming into statutory force as soon as possible after that, the department said. Announcing more details on the RSHE review, the government said it was determined to make sure such teaching “leaves children equipped to make informed decisions about their health, wellbeing and relationships, in a sensitive way that reflects their stage of development”. But Barton accused the government of providing little training and funding, while expecting teachers who specialise in other areas to cover the subject. Earlier this month, the New Social Covenant Unit, a thinktank founded by Cates, produced a report: What is Being Taught in Relationships and Sex Education in Our Schools? A Call for a Government Review. It contained no evidence the material she referred to in the Commons was prevalent in British classrooms. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion In a report in the Daily Telegraph published shortly before she addressed MPs, Cates cited several secondhand accounts she said had been sent to her by anonymous parents. Neither she nor the DfE has responded to requests to provide clear evidence of specific examples of the material they claimed was posing a major problem. Last week, it emerged that teachers at a school on the Isle of Man received death threats after false reports that children had been left “traumatised” by graphic sex education taught by a drag queen. An investigation by the island’s government concluded the claims were inaccurate. The guest speaker – a drag artist who was not appearing in drag – was not teaching a sex education lesson at all, but had been asked to talk to the children about “gender-neutral language and the concept of gender in the LGBTQ+ environment”. It added that the speaker’s reference to the possibility there could be as many as 72 gender identities came in response to a question from a child.

NEU teachers’ union asks members to consider strike in England later this year

2024-03-02

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/02/neu-teachers-union-asks-members-to-consider-strike-in-england-later-this-year

Leader says education secretary’s approach to pay review is ‘nothing short of insulting’ as indicative ballot opens England’s largest teaching union is asking its members to consider strike action later this year, with the union’s general secretary accusing the government of planning an “insulting” pay rise. The National Education Union (NEU) is opening an indicative ballot on Saturday on backing industrial action for an above-inflation pay increase in 2024-25, fully funded by the government. If carried, the union would then hold a formal strike ballot. The vote comes after the Department for Education published its submission to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), the independent experts who advise on teachers’ pay. Rather than specifying a percentage pay increase, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has instead asked the STRB to make its recommendation “more sustainable” for school budgets. The DfE’s submission also claimed that shortages would be combated by an upturn in unemployment making teachers less likely to leave the profession. Daniel Kebede, the head of the NEU, said: “Gillian Keegan’s approach to this year’s pay review is nothing short of insulting … There is every indication the government will be unwilling to offer more than 1-2% in the next pay round, so we are putting our members on alert that action may be necessary to ensure a proper pay and funding offer for teachers. “Rather than allow the government to undo the gains of last year, the NEU will seek to push forward in its campaign for a long-term correction on pay. “We believe that the case for additional funding for pay and staffing provision is clear and obvious. Fair pay is not just a request but a necessity. Schools deserve proper funding for staffing provision – and also so that schools have the necessary funding to cover a pay rise.” The DfE argued that the cumulative 12% pay rises, on average, received by teachers over the past two years meant there was less need for a substantial pay rise next year alongside forecasts of lower inflation. But the NEU and other unions pointed to the results of the DfE’s own survey of 10,000 teachers in England, carried out last year but published on Thursday. It showed teachers and school leaders working longer hours than in 2022, with 36% saying they were considering quitting teaching, compared with 25% in 2022. The DfE also surveyed those who left teaching, with 63% saying pay was the main reason, while many included stress and high workload as important factors. Of those that remained only 20% were satisfied with their pay level, compared with 26% in the previous survey. Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the government’s stance on pay was “deeply concerning”. “For over a decade, teachers and leaders have grappled with real-terms pay cuts in the face of a cost of living crisis, and sky-high inflation. The consequences of this are now being felt through a full-blown recruitment and retention crisis,” Whiteman said.

Colin Lacey obituary

2024-01-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/29/colin-lacey-obituary

My friend Colin Lacey, who has died aged 87, was professor of education at the University of Sussex from 1978 until his retirement in 1998. His academic output reflected his wide-ranging interests, including education, research methodology, the press and the environment. The common thread was his belief in the power of education to challenge inequality and ignorance, and address social problems. He published six influential books: Hightown Grammar (1970), The Socialization of Teachers (1977), Issues in Evaluation and Accountability (1981), Education, Ecology and Development (1987), Deception, Demonstration and Debate (1990) and The Press as a Public Educator (1997). Additionally, he produced more than 200 papers in academic journals. Towards the end of his career, he worked with the Overseas Development Agency, leading a major initiative in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, and Seychelles to establish and evaluate school systems. Colin was born in Dagenham, Essex. His father, Richard Lacey, organised transport logistics at London Docks, and his mother, Phoebe (nee Moore), worked variously as a seamstress, dinner lady, care assistant and housewife. He was educated at Chingford grammar school, Birmingham University, where he studied geophysics, and Manchester University, where he gained a PhD in education.His first academic post was a fellowship in the US at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He returned in 1969 to the then newly built University of Sussex in Brighton, where he became professor of education in 1978, a post he held for the next 20 years. He was also a director at the Schools Council, the public body that co-ordinated secondary school exams, until its abolition by the then Conservative administration in 1984.Colin was a regular peer reviewer – for academic journals, but also in public commentaries. His fair but uncompromising analyses sometimes provoked his opponents. A critique he wrote for the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) of the so-called Black Papers on the British education system (published in the 1960s and 70s by the Critical Quarterly magazine) attracted a threat of legal action – swiftly withdrawn when the THES stood by his work.A lifelong socialist and a Labour party member, though he was often highly critical of its leaders, Colin never lost the belief in the value of collectivism and social justice. In retirement he wrote stories for his grandchildren, restored old motorcycles and enjoyed gardening.He is survived by his wife, Jeanne (nee Marfleet), whom he met at secondary school and married in 1960, their children, Katherine, Sarah, Richard and Stephen, and his sister, Louise.

Gillian Keegan urged to not let culture wars weaken sex education

2023-03-24

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/24/sex-education-england-schools-review-gillian-keegan

Organisations write to education secretary before review, saying England’s schools have vital role in tackling misogyny and abuse Dozens of organisations and charities have written to the education secretary, amid fears that sex education in England may become a casualty of the culture wars. More than 50 organisations concerned with education and tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) have written to Gillian Keegan to urge her to resist the “politicisation” of sex education, following a row in which Conservative backbench MPs claimed that children were being taught “graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and 72 genders”. Rishi Sunak responded by asking the Department for Education to “ensure schools are not teaching inappropriate or contested content” in the subject of relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), and said he would bring forward a review into the subject. The letter comes after an independent investigation for the Isle of Man government this week found that claims that children had been left “traumatised” by inappropriate and graphic sex education taught by a drag queen in a school on the island were “inaccurate” and had led to teachers facing death threats. The prime minister confirmed a review into sex education, which will apply only to state schools in England, after a Tory MP, Miriam Cates, said children were being exposed to sex education classes that were “age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate”. But teaching unions said the claims were “inflammatory rhetoric” and the review was “politically motivated”. Led by the End Violence Against Women coalition and signed by organisations including Rape Crisis, SafeLives and the Sex Education Forum, the letter argues that schools are critical to tackling abuse, but currently were being left to deal with the fallout left by misogynistic influencers and tech companies. It states: “In light of recent headlines – which have the potential to incite opposition to much-needed RSHE delivery in schools, we are seeking assurances that the upcoming review will not be unnecessarily politicised, and will be focused on what children and young people need to live happy and healthy lives, and the urgent need to do more to tackle VAWG and the rising influence of online misogyny in schools.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The letter states that young people are being exposed to misogynistic influencers online and “increasingly looking to porn to fill the gaps in sex education”, adding: “We urge you to commit to providing teachers with much-needed support and resources to hold space for young people to openly discuss these themes. We cannot afford the cost to these young people, and for wider society, of shutting these conversations down.” It also argues that the VAWG sector had “a long history of delivering evidence-based and trauma-informed interventions with children and young people” and should be a critical partner delivering lessons. The organisations accused the government of spending only £3.2m of the promised £6m funding package for RSHE, despite research from the DfE estimating that it would cost £59m to deliver the RSE curriculum. It also pointed to recent research from SafeLives that found teachers felt “time, resources and school prioritisation presented major barriers to effective delivery”. A government spokesperson said: “All children deserve to grow up in a safe environment, which is why we will be publishing further guidance on how schools can create a culture of respectful relationships, and teach effectively about sexual harassment, sexual violence and stamping out violence against women and girls. “We are also protecting children though our online safety bill, by ensuring technology firms will be required to enforce their age limits to stop children from being exposed to harmful material online.”

Children’s special educational needs are not being met | Letter

2023-06-27

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/27/childrens-special-educational-needs-are-not-being-met

Angela Lee-Foster on the struggle by her and other parents to get the support their children need There are a number of reasons why just over half a million children and young people in England have an education, health and care plan (EHCP), more than twice as many as eight years ago (180 pupils a day in England given special needs support plan, 21 June). First, there are more than 9 million school-aged children in England; having around 5% with an EHCP does not seem disproportionate. It suggests perhaps that, in previous years, children’s special educational needs and disabilities (Send) have gone unaddressed. The figures also suggest that schools are not able to adequately meet the needs of children, that children’s special educational needs have changed (possibly as a result of Covid and resultant mental health issues such as anxiety), and that we are becoming better at diagnosing educational needs that have previously gone unaddressed. My daughter is one of those children struggling to get their needs addressed and awaiting an EHC needs assessment. Twenty years ago I led a charity’s policy and campaigns department working on this issue. Now, from a personal perspective, I can see that little has changed and that parents still have to battle for their child’s educational rights. My daughter is now educated at an independent school online, where 25% of the pupils have Send. This also suggests that the mainstream system is inadequately addressing children’s educational needs. Angela Lee-Foster Hacheston, Suffolk

Watchdog to investigate ‘franchise student’ provision at Leeds Trinity

2024-02-23

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/23/watchdog-to-investigate-franchise-student-provision-at-leeds-trinity

Office for Students reviewing courses by subcontractors amid concerns of potential loan abuse and poor education standards England’s higher education regulator is to launch its first investigation into “franchise students” enrolled on university courses run by subcontractors, amid concerns about poor quality and potential abuse of student loans. The Office for Students (OfS) said it is investigating how 6,500 students are taught under franchise by subcontractors of Leeds Trinity University, saying it will look at whether the courses are of high quality and whether Leeds Trinity has “effective management and governance in place” for overseeing its partners. The move comes as MPs on the parliament’s public accounts committee question leaders from the OfS, the Department for Education and Student Loans Company in its own inquiry into university franchising. The OfS said: “The opening of the investigation means that the OfS has identified potential concerns that require further scrutiny. The decision to open an investigation does not mean that any form of non-compliance or wrongdoing has taken place.” A spokesperson for the university said: “Leeds Trinity University will work with the OfS to ensure transparency and assurance in relation to the institution’s franchise partnership arrangements. “Widening participation is at the heart of Leeds Trinity’s ethos and has been for many years. Franchise partnerships are one of a number of ways in which the university enables social mobility and raising aspirations in groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education.” Under franchise arrangements, subcontractors such as private colleges teach students on courses overseen by a university that awards degrees. Franchise students can apply for government-backed tuition and maintenance loans, with the university paid up to £3,000 per student out of their £9,250 tuition fee. The National Audit Office has warned that loan fraud among franchise students accounted for more than half of the student loan fraud uncovered in 2023, despite franchise students making up only about 6% of England’s student loan recipients. Franchise student numbers have rocketed, with full-time enrolment rising from 34,000 in 2018-19 to 90,000 in 2021-22. The courses often have low entry requirements, and have been successful as a route into higher education for mature students or those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Prof Nick Braisby, vice-chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University, said: “There’s a nervousness within the OfS and the DfE, that they don’t have sufficient grasp of questions such as is public money being spent for the purpose for which it’s intended. “It was a few weeks ago that the OfS announced that it was going to look at franchise provision. But yet again it’s investigating an institution that has a very good reputation for extending higher education to people who have been traditionally denied it. “I think the OfS isn’t considering carefully enough that poor quality could be in any part of the sector, in theory, but it seems to have a relentless focus at the moment on one particular part of the sector, and that’s unfortunate.” David Kernohan, deputy editor of the Wonkhe higher education site, said franchising has become an attractive option for cash-strapped universities, being cheaper to run owing to lower overheads and less well-paid staff. “Bringing university-level study to parts of UK society that have not previously been able to access it is a noble aim, but there has been concern that some universities may be cutting corners on governance and oversight and that some of these students might not be getting the positive experience they deserve,” Kernohan said.

Former education ministers attack plan to reduce vocational qualifications

2023-01-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/29/education-plan-reduce-vocational-qualifications-t-levels

Coalition fears DfE may break pledges that only small percentage of qualifications will be replaced by T-levels A coalition of former education ministers has attacked the government’s “disastrous” plan to scrap dozens of popular vocational qualifications in England and push students into taking its favoured new T-levels. David Blunkett, the former Labour education secretary, said he feared that widespread scrapping of qualifications such as BTecs from 2025 could backfire and lead to more 17 and 18-year-olds opting to take A-levels rather than the vital vocational qualifications the country needs. “At this moment in time, every high quality route to employment and filling the vast vacancies which exist should be encouraged rather than abolished, and clear commitments given in parliament should be honoured,” Lord Blunkett said. A joint letter from the group to the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, accuses the Department for Education (DfE) of breaking earlier pledges that only a small percentage of the applied qualifications would have their funding cut off and replaced by T-levels. The signatories alongside Blunkett and Ken Baker, who served as education secretary under Margaret Thatcher, include David Willetts and Jo Johnson, the former Conservative education ministers, and Sue Garden, the Liberal Democrat peer and deputy speaker of the House of Lords. A copy of the letter, seen by the Guardian, states: “These qualifications are popular with students, respected by employers and valued by universities. Removing them will have a disastrous impact on social mobility, economic growth and our public services. “For example, it is difficult to think of a worse time to scrap the extended diploma in health and social care. Given their importance to the healthcare workforce, it would be very damaging to the NHS to remove funding for these qualifications.” BTecs are the most well-known applied general qualifications, with about 200,000 students each year taking BTec qualifications at level three, the equivalent to A-levels. The qualifications are nationally accepted for entry to apprenticeships and technical training, and for entry to university. The government wants more students in England to take its T-level qualification, introduced in 2020 but so far only available in seven vocational areas, including education and childcare, construction and health and science. More subjects will be added later this year but colleges remain reluctant to teach them, because of lack of demand and extra expense as well as the substantial work placements they require. Critics also say T-levels are too narrowly focused, with each T-level the equivalent of three A-level or BTec subjects, meaning students can take only a single course after they finish GCSEs. The government had promised that the funding of BTecs and similar qualifications would be protected while T-levels were being rolled out. In April last year, both Nadhim Zahawi, the then education secretary, and Diana Barran, the education minister in the Lords, said during debates in parliament that only “a small proportion of applied general qualifications would be removed”. But in January, a DfE guide included a list of subjects where ministers had made a “conscious choice” to axe funding, which researchers found would mean cutting 75 out of 134 relevant qualifications. The letter urges Keegan to exempt all 134 qualifications from the cull, saying that they remain “a vital pathway to higher education and employment” for many young people. Blunkett said: “A failure to listen to what business is saying and ensure there is real choice – which of course would include T-levels – is damaging to the economy, and a complete contradiction to the thrust of Jeremy Hunt’s speech last Friday.” The Labour peer warned that reducing student choice to A-levels or T-levels could backfire. “I fear that government has still not understood that the route to T-levels is now being toughened to the point where applying for A-levels is actually easier,” he said. Bill Watkin, the chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association – which is leading a campaign to protect student choice by retaining BTecs – said scrapping so many valued qualifications in the space of two years was “utterly unacceptable”. “Unless the government reverses this decision, and starts to incorporate some evidence and transparency into its policymaking, tens of thousands of students will be left without a pathway to higher education or employment, and many employers will be left without the skilled workforce they need,” he said. A DfE spokesperson said: “Our reforms will simplify the system for young people, with popular BTecs continuing to be available alongside A-levels and T levels. The BTecs that will no longer be available are only those with low take-up, poor outcomes, or which overlap with T-levels. We have also introduced a transition year to support students who may have taken BTecs, into T-level qualifications. “We are committed to creating a world-class education system that provides a ladder up for all and gives young people the skills and knowledge to prepare them for higher education and the world of work.” This article was amended on 30 January 2023 to make clear the plan to reduce vocational qualifications is in England, not the UK as an earlier version suggested.

Education secretary’s empty boast on school funding | Letters

2022-12-01

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/01/education-secretarys-empty-boast-on-school-funding

Gill Vincent, Shaun Soper and Mike Lee on Gillian Keegan saying that the Tories are doing their best for teachers and schools My husband and I, both retired teachers, couldn’t believe it when we read Gillian Keegan’s boast that after 12 long years of underfunding and depredation, she was proud to get school funding back to where Labour left it (Teachers, we are doing our best for schools. We don’t need the threat of strikes, 25 November). I was a primary school teacher during the last Labour government, and I remember the new money to spend on books, computers and staffing. I also remember shedding tears when a visiting speaker showed us a big book and told us how the new national literacy strategy would foster a love of reading and writing instead of the emphasis on grammar we had had previously. Keegan describes education as a “magic bullet” to transform lives; in Tory hands, it’s a bullet in the heart for our education system.Gill VincentSheffield Gillian Keegan explains how much she owes her career to the hard work and dedication of Mr Ashcroft, a teacher she had when she was doing her O-levels. He “changed the course of my life,” she says. It is clear that without his intervention she would not be in the position she is in now – a position that gives her power over how the likes of him are rewarded for what they do day in, day out. If she had the chance to speak to Mr Ashcroft today to thank him, how would she explain the fact that her party has cut the real-terms pay of teachers consistently since 2010?Shaun SoperMidhurst, West Sussex As I read the article in which the secretary of state for education heaped fulsome praise on teachers, I immediately thought of the nurses’ slogan: “Claps don’t pay bills.”Mike LeeRamsbottom, Greater Manchester Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.

Punishing Ofsted regime is driving us out of education, say school leaders

2023-03-24

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/24/punishing-ofsted-regime-driving-out-education-school-leaders

Senior teachers in England blame culture of fear and high stress for damaging their health and careers School leaders in England say they are being driven out of the profession by Ofsted’s punishing inspection regime, blaming a culture of fear and high stress for damaging their health and careers. Senior teachers who spoke to the Guardian reported harrowing cases of “overwhelming panic” affecting their physical and mental wellbeing, including headteachers who felt humiliated or were reduced to tears by inspectors, and cases of school leaders hospitalised during Ofsted visits. The outpouring follows revelations around the death of Ruth Perry, a Berkshire headteacher Perry’s family say she took her own life in January after a critical Ofsted inspection rated her school’s leadership as inadequate. A headteacher in Kent summed up the feelings of many of the school leaders while awaiting inspections: “I cry most days because of the pressure of impending Ofsted. I work at least 80 hours a week. I am broken by it.” An experienced headteacher in the West Midlands said she had stepped down last year after a bruising inspection left her feeling incompetent. “My most recent inspection was horrendous. I was put through the mill and made to cry by the inspector as she kept asking the same questions over and over and didn’t listen to the answers,” she said. “I have no intention whatsoever of putting myself through an Ofsted inspection again.” Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Our schools, colleges and students need a pipeline of great leaders but it is clear that Ofsted inspections are causing leaders to quit the profession and deter others from stepping up to leadership. “If Ofsted is to achieve its stated aim of being a force for improvement it must work with leaders and not drive them out of leadership.” State schools in England are inspected by Ofsted on a rolling basis every few years unless there are immediate concerns. But recent changes requiring schools previously rated as outstanding to be reinspected, and a backlog caused by the suspension of inspections during the pandemic years, has made the inspection timetable more erratic. According to her family, Perry killed herself in January while waiting for the publication of an inspection report that downgraded her school from outstanding, the highest rating, to inadequate, the lowest possible rating. The report rated the school, Caversham primary in Reading, as good in every category apart from leadership and management, which it judged inadequate because of gaps in safeguarding procedures. Julia Waters, Perry’s sister, said on behalf of her family: “We are in no doubt that Ruth’s death was a direct result of the pressure put on her by the process and outcome of an Ofsted inspection at her school.” Berkshire coroner’s court will hold an inquest into Perry’s death later this year. Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of schools in England, said the news of Perry’s death was “met with great sadness at Ofsted”. She defended the need for inspections but said there was a “legitimate” debate to be had about removing grades from inspections. Earlier this year Labour said that if elected it would end the use of summary grades, replacing them with a report card aimed at informing parents, and establish separate annual safeguarding inspections. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion While some of the teachers and school leaders who spoke to the Guardian said they had positive experiences from Ofsted inspections, many more were negative, describing them as “gut-wrenching” events that reduced good teachers to “frightened shells”. One teacher at a school in Bristol downgraded by Ofsted from outstanding to inadequate – similar to Perry’s school – described it as “like going through a factory of fear”. He added: “Hardworking, committed and highly resilient staff were savagely treated in interviews, and one has been diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] such was the traumatic nature of her experience. “The fallout is horrific. Our headteacher has left due to the pressures, senior leaders describe coming to work ‘feeling sick’ at the prospect of an Ofsted monitoring visit, parents are increasingly angry at the negative judgment which is at odds with their experience of the school. “And saddest of all, teachers are now not running as many enriching activities for students as their time is taken up with preparing the paperwork needed to convince inspectors that the school has improved when they next visit.” Classroom teachers were also deeply affected by the stress, with some saying it made them want to leave teaching. A primary school teacher who has worked at the same school in Cornwall for 20 years said an impending Ofsted inspection was causing lost sleep and long working days that spread into the weekend. “I have been under stress for so long, and it is so unsustainable that this week I sold my beautiful house and am downsizing significantly so I can afford to leave teaching in the next year or so. The detrimental impact of this on my family is huge,” she said. “I will miss the children when I leave teaching and feel gutted – but I cannot sustain this level of stress.” A primary school teacher in Lancashire said: “I was seven months pregnant during my last Ofsted inspection. I stayed up late to prepare as is the usual. The following day I was admitted to hospital following a TIA [transient ischaemic attack, or mini-stroke] that had been brought on by stress. I nearly lost my baby. “The current system is deeply flawed. Of course, there is a need for accountability but it is so high stakes and punitive that it genuinely drives fear into the heart of every teacher.” One teacher who contacted the Guardian while undergoing an Ofsted inspection this week said: “The whole thing is a farce. Prior to teaching, I worked as a private consultant in the construction industry and faced deadlines, pressure from clients and huge coordination issues between different parties, yet I have never experienced anything close to as awful as this.” Another, a deputy headteacher, described a recent inspection after two years of preparation: “It all came crashing down due to one small piece of guidance which was not observed. We received an inadequate judgment as a result. “Since then leadership and management have all suffered from serious mental health issues, the sense of failure is unbearable.” The Department for Education said Ofsted had a crucial role in upholding standards and ensuring children were safe while in school. Ofsted inspections “provide independent, up-to-date evaluations on the quality of education, safeguarding and leadership, which parents greatly rely on to give them confidence in choosing the right school for their child,” a spokesperson said.

England’s special educational needs crisis ‘out of control’ amid record complaints

2023-09-03

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/03/special-educational-needs-provision-crisis-england-record-complaints

Analysis shows that number of cases upheld has soared by 60%, with some children left without a school placement for over a year Concern is growing over provision for children with special educational needs after new figures revealed that a record number of complaints have been upheld by England’s local government ombudsman this year. Analysis of the decisions showed that some children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) had been without a school placement for more than a year. The rise comes as the Send system struggles with rising need and years of underfunding. Councils across England have racked up huge deficits on their Send budgets amid lengthy delays in issuing Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). These documents set out what educational provision children with the highest needs should receive – requirements which are then often not met. The number of complaints upheld by England’s local government ombudsman over special needs education has surged by more than 60% since last year. Between the start of 2023 and mid-July the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGO) partly or fully upheld 380 complaints, compared with 234 upheld complaints in the same period in 2022 and 167 until mid-July in 2021. The increase comes despite capacity issues meaning the ombudsman being more selective in the complaints it looks at. A spokesperson for campaign group SEND Action said: “The huge upsurge in the number of complaints being upheld by the LGO is clear evidence that the Send crisis is out of control. LGO penalties for failing to meet legal duties are tiny compared with meeting the cost of provision and this is unfortunately resulting in abuse of the current system by some local authorities. “The resulting accountability vacuum is causing serious injustice for disabled children and young people and their families. “There has been a conspicuous lack of action by the government (including through new proposals under the Send and alternative provision plan) to improve accountability and ensure that local authority decision making is aligned with legal responsibilities.” Many complaints concern delays caused by a shortage of educational psychologists (EPs), whose assessments are used by councils when drawing up EHCPs. Research published this summer by the Department for Education (DfE) found that 88% of councils were struggling to recruit EPs, while a third were struggling to retain them. The Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) is currently balloting members on industrial action over pay. AEP general secretary Cath Lowther said: “Despite the vital services and support provided by EPs, local authorities are not investing in the profession and are now facing widespread recruitment and retention problems. “The resulting explosion in EP workloads means that children and young people are waiting far too long to be seen by an EP – or worse, don’t get to see an EP at all.” The LGO has recently increased the financial remedies it requires councils to pay, and is increasingly asking them to improve their services to as to ensure other parents are not affected by the same issues. Paul Najsarek, the local government and social care ombudsman, said: “Complaints about Send, and in particular those about Education, Health and Care Plans continue to be one of the largest areas of our work, and one of the areas in which we uphold the highest proportion of complaints. Education and children’s services complaints remain some of our most high-profile cases and over the past year we have published more reports about these areas than any other.” A DfE spokesperson said: “Every child deserves to have access to education that enables them to enjoy their childhood, achieve good outcomes, and be well prepared for adulthood and employment – and we want to address the issues that can prevent that from happening. “Our recent improvement plan sets out how we will reform the support system for children with Send, creating consistent high standards across the country, and making sure parents do not have to battle for support. “We are also putting significant investment into the high-needs budget, which is increasing by a further £440m for 2024/25, bringing total funding to £10.5bn – an increase of over 60% since 2019/20.”

More UK universities cutting ties with fossil fuel industry

2023-12-13

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/13/more-uk-universities-cut-ties-with-fossil-fuel-industry

Student pressure pushes higher education institutions to commit to divesting from fossil fuels More UK universities are cutting ties with the fossil fuel industry in response to student campaigns, according to the annual survey of sustainability in higher education. The student network People and Planet has published its sustainability university league showing that 72% of the universities it surveyed have committed to divesting from fossil fuels – up from 65% last year. Jack Ruane, the university league manager at People & Planet, said there had been progress but much more needed to be done. “We are seeing much higher engagement from a broad range of universities, including the Russell Group, because universities recognise that students are increasingly demanding their institutions are run sustainably and ethically.” The Fossil Free campaign, active since 2013, has been led by students, who say it should not be acceptable for education and research institutions to invest in companies responsible for global heating. Students have used a range of campaign methods, from petitions gathering thousands of signatories, lobbying university management, political education and non-violent direct action, including occupying university buildings. This year’s league table assessed 151 institutions based on 13 categories including environmental policy and strategy, ethical investment and banking, carbon management and reduction and workers’ rights. For the first time, universities were also asked if they had a sustainable travel policy that included reducing emissions from aviation for staff travel. The institutions were then ranked and awarded a “first-class degree, 2:1, 2:2, third, or fail”. Seven universities made commitments to end recruitment “pipelines” to the fossil fuel industry, which campaigners say reflects a growing movement of young people who are refusing to work with big oil. The University of Reading topped the league table, up from fourth position in 2022-23. Ruane said its success was due to improvements in its carbon emissions, workers’ rights and ethical investment – including a commitment to screen out investments in companies complicit in the violation of international law. Manchester Metropolitan University was ranked second and the University of Bedfordshire third. Post-1992 universities ranked highly, gaining 66% of first class awards and three of the top five slots. Russell Group universities had only one in the top 10 in this year’s rankings – King’s College London. However, 58% of these institutions received a 2:1 award or higher, up from previous years. The Royal Veterinary College finished bottom of the table, with 3.4% overall – with other smaller and specialist universities also scoring less than 10% overall. The most dramatic improvement came from the University of Gloucestershire, which jumped 80 places, moving from a third last year to a first this time round. The Robert Gordon University leaped 58 places, moving from a third to 2:1 having made improvements in sustainability policies, and having recently committed to divesting from fossil fuels. The University of Birmingham shot up 51 places, gaining a 2:2 having previously scored a fail, meaning all Russell Group universities are scoring passing grades. On workers’ rights, 68 universities (45%) are accredited living wage employers, up from 33% last year. Seventy-four universities (49%) have more than a quarter of their staff on fixed-term contracts, showing the precarity of employment in the sector.

How Birkbeck broke down barriers to education | Letters

2022-11-16

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/16/how-birkbeck-broke-down-barriers-to-education

Alan Davidge describes how the college gave him the ticket to a career in further education, while Stephen Baron remembers teaching in its extra-mural department Re Birkbeck providing second chances for so many (Letters, 14 November), in 1965, it was becoming increasingly hard for those of us approaching our 18th birthday to gain a university place. We were the baby boom generation. I had 10 O-levels and was taking four A-levels at a good state grammar school. Rejections from the Universities Central Council on Admissions (UCCA) were coming thick and fast. In January that year, Birkbeck announced that it would offer full-time places in geography, psychology, chemistry and mathematics. I was interviewed by professors in the geography department and when I explained my current UCCA status, they delighted in referring to me as “Davidge, the five-times rejected”, and one turned to his senior lecturer and said, “We won’t reject him, will we?” Four years later, I had my degree and a PGCE. I spent nearly 40 years working in further education colleges and Birkbeck was my role model for second-chance learners. From 1980, I was developing access courses to break down the barriers for adults to get to university. With colleagues, I worked locally and nationally to provide opportunities for mature students. It was evangelical and at times miraculous. All through this period, Birkbeck was my mentor. I well remember how, as a young undergraduate, after sitting through a few hours’ lectures, a pint and a game of darts at lunchtime, we encountered this tsunami of highly motivated adults who had worked all day, arriving to study from 6pm-9pm, sometimes four evening per week. They completely put us to shame. When the results came out, they got the firsts. I retired as assistant principal of a large college in 2008, feeling that I had helped to enhance opportunities for adults in higher education. If it wasn’t for my experience at Birkbeck, I would never have understood the needs of adult students or what they could be capable of if, if given a chance. If they ever thanked me for helping to change their lives, my reply would have been to thank Birkbeck.Alan DavidgeNoues de Sienne, France The proposed redundancies at Birkbeck come as no surprise to me. For 17 years, from the early 1980s, I worked in its extra-mural department teaching music, and we had the finest resources including a book box for each class and multiple copies of musical scores so that each student could follow the music being performed. Alas, this all changed in the mid-1990s, when the then Conservative government insisted on formal assessment of learning outcomes as a condition of government support. This meant I was having to enforce a new regime whereby each student had to prove their “effectiveness” by producing four pieces of written work during the year. The average age of the students was 75 and it is no wonder that student numbers plummeted. Stephen Baron London

England homeschooling surge could become permanent, data suggests

2024-01-25

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/25/england-homeschooling-surge-could-become-permanent-data-suggests

Department for Education estimates 97,000 children were home educated in 2023 summer term, 11,000 more than previous term More than one in 100 children in England were homeschooled last summer term, with many parents citing lifestyle or “philosophical reasons” for abandoning traditional classrooms. New estimates by the Department for Education (DfE) show that 97,000 children were home educated in 2023’s summer term, an increase of 11,000 compared with the 86,000 home educated at the start of 2023. The figures suggest the surge in numbers of children being homeschooled during the Covid pandemic is at risk of becoming permanent, with only 4% of parents saying health concerns over Covid were the main factor behind their decision. Nearly one in four families surveyed by the DfE said “lifestyle choice” and “philosophical or preferential reasons” were their primary motivation to educate their children at home. The DfE also published new attendance figures showing the number of children persistently absent from school remained stubbornly higher than pre-pandemic levels, especially among older children at secondary school and those with special needs. The DfE’s statistics show that 20% of secondary school pupils in England were persistently absent from September to mid-January, an improvement on the 24% of students who were persistently absent the previous year but far above the 11% recorded in 2018-19. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said ministers needed to “look at the bigger picture” to get more children back to school. “Schools alone do not have the time, resources or expertise to address what are sometimes deep-rooted social issues, yet vital services like children’s social care and mental health support have suffered cuts or failed to keep up with demand over the last decade,” Whiteman said. “We need to see more boots on the ground, with visits to families to get to the bottom of issues with children’s attendance – but crucial local authority roles like education welfare officers have been decimated.” The DfE said in autumn the overall absence rate was 6.8%, down from 7.5% in autumn 2022. But absences among those with EHCPs (education, health and care plans) were much higher, with 35% classed as persistently absent. Catherine McKinnell, the shadow schools minister, told a conference of school leaders in the north-east of England that the numbers of children missing half their lessons had tripled in parts of the region such as Newcastle and Gateshead. “Something has been going seriously wrong that so many parents don’t see the merit in their children being in the classroom. But the numbers speak for themselves,” said McKinnell. Before the pandemic hit in early 2020, local authorities in England estimated that about 55,000 children of compulsory school age were educated at home. But the numbers jumped by 36% in autumn 2020, to 75,000. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, is planning legislation that would create a compulsory register of children who are not enrolled in school, while the government has said it would support a private member’s bill with the same aim. The moves are opposed by supporters of elective home education, who fear it could lead to further restrictions. While ministers have urged schools to do more to improve attendance, school funding levels continue to suffer, despite increased support. The DfE’s figures showed that, adjusted for inflation, funding for state schools in England this year and next would be the highest for more than a decade. It calculated that average funding was £7,450 per pupil this year, compared with the equivalent of £7,170 in 2010-11. But school leaders said the government’s measure did not include the increases in staff salaries that would come out school budgets. Julia Harnden, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It’s clear that many schools remain in a very difficult financial position. The chancellor must use the spring budget to invest in education, as the prime minister promised at the Conservative conference, ensuring schools can afford staff pay awards and the other rising costs they are faced with.” The National Foundation for Educational Research said many schools had “deteriorating” finances, with 13% of local authority schools carrying budget deficits in 2022-23.

He got a college degree in prison. Now he’s off to a prestigious law school

2024-04-11

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/11/northwestern-prison-education-program-law-school

In a historic achievement, Benard McKinley, 39, was accepted to Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago Since leaving prison in December 2023, Benard McKinley, 39, has been busy preparing for huge next steps. Between working and visits from friends and family, McKinley is getting ready for his first year of study at the prestigious Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, a historic achievement. “Just months ago, I was still behind prison bars, and not knowing exactly how the future of going to law school would turn out. So to be home and know I’m going to law school … is an amazing feeling,” McKinley told the Guardian. McKinley is the first person from Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program (NPEP) to be accepted into any law school, including Northwestern’s, which has about a 15% acceptance rate. The NPEP scheme grants bachelor’s degrees, among just a handful of programs in the US that offer a collage-level education to incarcerated people. McKinley, who served 22 and a half years in prison, finished his bachelor’s degree last year and applied for a place at the prestigious law school, all while incarcerated at the Stateville correctional center in northern Illinois. McKinley and his classmates were the inaugural class of NPEP, one of four cohorts with 20 incarcerated students in the program overall. Northwestern has stated that graduates in McKinley’s class are the first incarcerated students to receive a bachelor’s degree from a top 10 US university, as measured by rankings from US News & World report. McKinley said he had always wanted to go to college. But the 39-year old’s mainstream education stopped abruptly when he received a criminal sentence while still a teenager. “I was already passionate about trying to go to college, I just didn’t know how or when that would happen,” he said. McKinley was sentenced when he was 19 to nearly 100 years in prison after being convicted of a gang-related murder. While incarcerated, he began studying the law with the aim of appealing his case as well as helping others serving time alongside him with their legal problems. He first obtained his GED and paralegal diploma behind bars and was eager to continue his education. McKinley applied and was accepted into the highly competitive NPEP program, a rare opportunity to get a bachelor’s degree while incarcerated. In 2023, out of 400 people who applied, only 40 were accepted. Northwestern University’s degree requirements were rigorous and McKinley studied intensely, taking classes on political science, thermodynamics and more, pushing through the Covid-19 pandemic in the process, like millions of other college students. The NPEP experience proved transformative, he said. “It allowed me to reflect on who I thought I was, who I wanted to be, and where I wanted to go,” he said, adding that classes taught him how social ills, such as systemic racism, manifest in society. He started applying for law school last year – taking the LSAT examination, writing application essays and collecting letters of recommendation, all while incarcerated. McKinley wrote his application essay on his personal journey, detailing how he went from being incarcerated at the age of 19 to obtaining a degree from the prestigious university. Those handwritten essays were then typed out by NPEP tutors, many of whom wrote letters on McKinley’s behalf to the law school admissions committee. He found the best time to study was late at night or “five, six in the morning”, but it was difficult in the prison environment. “At the end of the day, prison still has a negative social dynamic and to be able to block all that out and focus can be challenging,” McKinley said. McKinley was released from prison early into transitional housing, while his law school application was still pending. In a rare case, his original sentence was successfully reduced to 25 years by the Illinois appellate court, which said that the judge who originally tried McKinley’s case did not take his young age into consideration or the efforts he had made to rehabilitate. At Northwestern, graduating students walk under a famous arch that forms the university’s entry gate as part of a commencement tradition. Early in 2024, McKinley was able to as well, and it was one of the first things he did after being released, to mark his degree. “That was an amazing feeling,” McKinley said. “To know that, no matter how my journey led up to getting to that point. I was still welcome to participate in that type of tradition.” Soon after, McKinley heard he’d been accepted into law school. Sheila Bedi, clinical law professor and director of the community justice clinic at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, said: “He’s just an exceptional student on so many levels. He’s rigorous, disciplined, eager to learn, passionate about self-growth.” She added that other Northwestern law students were “thrilled” for McKinley to join the community. She is eager for more programs like NPEP. “There are so many other Benards who could come home and could be contributing positively to their communities, but who are not provided that opportunity,” Bedi said. McKinley hopes to become a civil rights lawyer and open his own legal aid clinic to help other marginalized communities. Now the first person in his family to attend college, let alone law school, he is relishing the achievement while also feeling responsibility. “It feels amazing. I’m definitely a positive role model for the future generation and my family. So you know, I have a job to do,” he said. This article was amended on 22 April 2024. An earlier version said that Northwestern’s acceptance rate was 4%; this has been corrected to about 15%.

Gillian Keegan ‘deeply concerned’ over pupils missing school for Gaza protests

2023-11-17

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/nov/17/gillian-keegan-deeply-concerned-over-pupils-missing-school-for-gaza-protests

Education secretary wants children’s absence from lessons treated ‘with utmost seriousness’ The education secretary has expressed “deep concern” that some children are missing lessons to join protests backing a ceasefire in Gaza, with hundreds estimated to have joined school strikes on Friday. Gillian Keegan said schools should treat the wave of absences “with the utmost seriousness”, despite strike organisers circulating messages suggesting parents would not be fined if children missed school for short or one-off instances. The school strikes have been called by the Stop the War Coalition, which tweeted pictures saying hundreds of children had joined protests outside town halls in Glasgow, and in the London boroughs of Redbridge and Newham. Using the hashtag SchoolStrikeForPalestine, students also staged walkouts in Manchester, Luton, Bristol, and the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Harrow. However, Keegan said the movement was not acceptable. “I’m deeply concerned that some children are attending political protests during the school day. “Even more so if they’re taking part in, or being exposed to, antisemitic chants. This should be treated with the utmost seriousness – missing school for activism is unacceptable.” More school strikes are expected next week, and the weekly national marches in London have this weekend been changed to local action by protesters supporting Palestine and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Schoolchildren handed in a petition calling for a ceasefire to representatives at Bristol’s city hall, collected by Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green party. Speaking in Bristol on Friday, Denyer told protesters: “Thank you for taking a stand for Palestine and for calling for a ceasefire. The abhorrent situation in Palestine and Israel must end. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion “I know we are all horrified by the Hamas attacks and we all want the immediate release of the hostages. Those atrocities do not in any way justify the level of bombardment of civilians, including many Gazan children, that has shocked the world.” The war in Gaza was triggered after Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in a massacre in Israel and took about 240 people hostage. Israel’s subsequent bombardment and incursion into Gaza has killed an estimated 11,470, about 4,700 of them children, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian health authority. The Stop the War Coalition, an organisation set up to oppose the Iraq war, has issued instructions on organising a school strike, with templates for WhatsApp groups and letters. It has also told local organisers: “We’ve been assured by those working in schools that whilst this would count as an unauthorised absence, a child can have up to four days in a row unauthorised and would need 10 in a short amount of time to be fined. Please do check your own school policy.”

Rapid help needed for Covid babies who fell behind, says former Ofsted chief

2024-01-05

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/05/rapid-help-needed-for-covid-babies-who-fell-behind-says-former-ofsted-chief

Labour highlights data showing children born in England during crisis were slower in developing communication and other skills Babies born in England during the Covid crisis have been slower at developing key language, cognitive and social skills, and the veteran education policymaker Sir David Bell is warning that rapid intervention is needed to stop those children being left further behind. More than 80,000 children born in 2020 or 2021 did not reach one or more of the key measures of progress for their age group last year, according to official data highlighted by Labour’s education team, including 60,000 very young children who did not develop communication abilities usually seen in children their age. Writing in the Guardian, Bell – who is chairing Labour’s review of early childhood education – said nursery closures and “eye-watering” childcare costs meant many two-year-olds were unable to receive high-quality early years education to make up for the “crucial experiences” they missed during the Covid crisis. “It’s no wonder that headteachers have spoken of children arriving at school who are still wearing nappies, whose communication abilities are limited, or who are still unable to use a knife and fork,” said Bell, a former primary school teacher who later served as the permanent secretary at the Department for Education and the chief inspector of Ofsted. “Despite the best efforts of teachers, gaps in learning and development widen as children grow older, becoming embedded and therefore more difficult to overcome. “Prevention is better than cure, which is why we need to intervene early to prevent educational gaps from developing before they can grow. This will require a clear plan from the government. Yet its support has so far been lacking.” Bell said creating a “new, modern childcare system” to eradicate those gaps would not be easy. “Britain has a broken economy, an exhausted workforce and rising child poverty. Local government and public services have been hollowed out. But we cannot afford to fail,” he said. The official data showed that national rates of child development last year were lower among two-year-olds than in 2018-19, before the pandemic, with London reporting the worst rate of development among children surveyed. There were also sharp disparities between England’s local authorities. Nearly 95% of children aged between two and two and a half in Wokingham, Berkshire achieved or bettered all five development targets including problem solving and social skills, compared with 44% of the same age group in Brent, north London. With the general election approaching, Labour is pushing early years education and post-Covid recovery as one of its key policy offers with a wide appeal to parents and grandparents as well as employers. Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, said: “That so many of our youngest children are missing the crucial building blocks that lay the foundation for their future life chances is nothing short of a modern-day scandal. “Labour’s plan for reform of early years will be informed by a review led by the respected former Ofsted chief inspector Sir David Bell but we will also work with early years settings to develop ‘maths champions’ and offer innovative early speech and language interventions to help children still affected by the impacts of the pandemic.” The government has also been active with increased funding for the early years sector in England. In last year’s autumn statement, it announced an additional £400m funding for the sector to cover staff pay increases and up to £1,200 for new childminders joining the profession, in an effort to tackle longstanding staff shortages. And earlier this week applications opened for the government’s expansion of funded childcare provision in England, with working parents able to claim 15 hours a week during term time from April. By September 2025 the government aims to offer 30 hours of childcare a week, for 38 weeks a year, to all eligible children from nine months old. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said the latest expansion would make sure that “parents no longer have to choose between a career and a family”, getting more people into work and growing the economy. But Bell said while the expansion to children as young as nine months old sounded appealing on paper, in reality the government’s promises would be undeliverable. “Many nursery providers are already saying they will not offer these new entitlements, meaning families will continue to struggle to get the childcare they need. The government rushed out an announcement in an attempt to score political points. It is the equivalent of saying, ‘We’ll treat 100 more patients – we just have to build the hospital first.’” “There is no plan to recruit the staff needed to care for more children. There are no proposals for how these new nursery places will be delivered, nor how to solve the problem of childcare deserts that exist across the country,” Bell said.

Nigel Lemon obituary

2024-02-23

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/23/nigel-lemon-obituary

My father, Nigel Lemon, who has died aged 83, was a lay preacher in the United Reformed Church and a senior lecturer in theology at Chester College of Higher Education, which is now part of the University of Chester. Nigel preached in all the places that he lived, and once he had settled down permanently in Chester he served villages around West Cheshire and into Wales as a local pastor. In 1978 he was ordained, serving as the minister of Lavister and Trevalyn chapels near Wrexham. At Chester College Nigel was known for his liberal and ecumenical outlook, which led him to introduce Islamic Studies to the curriculum. He also set up an MEd course that focused on religious education. Nigel was born in Bromley, Kent, to Winifred (nee Cole), who worked at the Co-Operative Wholesale Society’s head office in London, and Harry Lemon, who worked for William Brandt’s Sons & Co, a merchant bank. After attending Beckenham and Penge grammar school for boys he undertook teacher training at the College of St Mark and St John in Chelsea, during which time he met Anne Barton. They were married in 1964 after he started teaching religious education at Colne Valley high school in Huddersfield. It was a time of revolution in school RE teaching, with a new commitment to raising awareness of the wider religious world beyond Christianity, and he thrived in that environment. After moving on to teach RE in Derbyshire at the John Port school in Etwall and the Herbert Strutt grammar school in Belper, in 1969 he went to Chester College of Higher Education to teach modern church history. In 1981-82 the college granted him a sabbatical year to study at Lancaster University for an MA in religious education, in which he achieved a distinction, and it was on his return that he introduced his MEd course, also beginning to teach part of a module on the history department’s MA in Victorian studies. Nigel had a gently subversive streak that manifested itself in a number of ways at the college, including his advocacy for colleagues who were under pressure from a sometimes-hostile management and his support for industrial action when required. A hint of his political activism from decades before came to light recently when one of his granddaughters underwent screening as part of the process of becoming a special constable – and Nigel had to declare that he had been arrested on an Aldermaston CND march in the early 1960s. He took early retirement from Chester College at the age of 59, but continued preaching, including in chapels in the villages of Malpas, Barton and Farndon in Cheshire and then in the Preston and Fylde area after he and Anne moved to Lancashire in 2002. Outside teaching and preaching, Nigel’s interests were equally divided between church history and transport, as evidenced by the fact that the 14 societies he belonged to at the time of his death were evenly split between both subjects. He had a keen interest in nonconformist and Quaker hymns (he had a rich singing voice), and was fascinated by the narrow gauge railways of Switzerland. He is survived by Anne, their three children, Katherine, Rachel and me, and three grandchildren, Rebecca, Grace and Ben. A fourth grandchild, Fiona, predeceased him.

Education secretary talks of battle to get support for nephew with Down’s syndrome

2023-03-01

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/01/gillian-keegan-nephew-downs-syndrome-send-education

Exclusive: Gillian Keegan opens up about 16-year-old relative as government prepares to publish Send improvement plan for England The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, has described her family’s battle to get the right support for her nephew, who has Down’s syndrome, as the government prepares to publish its improvement plan for special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in England. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Keegan said the experiences of her 16-year-old nephew Joseph and his family had shown her first-hand how parents of children with Send have to fight every step of the way for the support they need. The government’s long-awaited Send improvement plan is expected to be unveiled on Thursday, almost a year after the review was first published as part of a green paper consultation. It has since attracted thousands of responses, including from families struggling to negotiate the system. “Every family in the country with anyone with special educational needs will have felt at times like they’re battling the system,” Keegan said. “I’ve seen that myself for my own family as well. I have a nephew with Down’s syndrome and from the very moment that you have a baby with special educational needs, you know that you need support.” The Send system in England is generally recognised to be in crisis, due to rising demand, chronic underfunding and gaps in provision. The number of complaints from parents has risen by three-quarters in the past four years, according to figures from the local government ombudsman, and councils have built up huge deficits in their Send budgets. Many children are out of school and regularly struggle to get the support they need. The government has pledged to end the Send postcode lottery, and provide high-quality, early support across the country. Ministers say investment in Send and alternative provision will increase by more than 50% compared with 2019 to over £10bn by 2023-24. Keegan said her nephew had mixed experiences of the system – there was an incident when he was at nursery when he broke his arm and no one noticed – but he has also experienced some of the best the Send system has to offer and has secured places in good schools. She also described the constant worry for parents. “You’re concerned about health. What are the options for nursery places? What are the options for schooling? What do you do for secondary? What do you do when you’re older, when you get into college and those kinds of things? What are the opportunities to make sure that your loved one, your young person, gets the absolute maximum support to do as much as they can in their life?” Speaking during a visit to a special school for children and young people with autism and/or severe learning difficulties in Islington, north London, Keegan said she thought her nephew’s early experiences in nursery might have been improved by some of the proposals in the government’s Send plan. “He did not have such a great time at nursery because he broke his arm and they didn’t notice. I think he has quite a high pain threshold because he wasn’t actually screaming in pain. That wasn’t such a great experience. Then he went to a wonderful mainstream primary school. “But as he got a bit older, it was clear that potentially mainstream secondary school might not be the best place for him. So then my brother and sister-in-law had to battle the system, and it’s very worrying, because what are the alternatives if you don’t get the place? “But he did get the place. So he has a place at a school that actually goes up to the age of 25, so it also includes a college, so he’s in a good spot. But what you notice all the time, you’re fighting for it, fighting for support.” Then there are all the other parental worries, she said. “You worry about him having lots of friends and being able to see friends, being able to get life skills. What job options is he going to have? He wants to be a waiter, or something to do with a cafe, but how do you get those options and how do you make sure he’s supported?” The Send improvement plan is expected to include provision for supported apprenticeships for young people with Send and “adjustment passports” to support them as they move into the world of work. It is also expected to address parental concerns about proposals – outlined earlier in the green paper – to standardise the system across the country. The headline of this article was amended on 1 March 2023 to remove an incorrect reference to Gillian Keegan as the “UK” education secretary.

Welsh education minister hits out at ‘misinformation’ over LGBTQ+ curriculum

2022-12-23

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/23/welsh-education-minister-jeremy-miles-misinformation-lgbtq-curriculum

Campaigners are putting teachers under pressure, says Jeremy Miles after verdict in high court challenge The Welsh education minister has accused campaigners of putting teachers under pressure by deliberately spreading “misinformation” about the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues. Jeremy Miles also told of how he struggled to find his place in the world as a gay young person, in an era when “someone like me” did not exist as far as the school curriculum was concerned. Miles said the new Welsh relationships and sexuality education (RSE) curriculum would give young people “the knowledge they need to safely navigate the modern world”. He said he hoped it would mean that in the future, young people’s introduction to the word “gay” would not be as a playground insult. Some campaigners against the move claim it “forces LGBTQ+ teaching” on all children from the age of three and characterised the curriculum, which is being rolled out, as “woke” and “dangerous”. Speaking after campaigners lost a high court challenge against the curriculum, Miles said for the youngest pupils, RSE was about learning how to build positive friendships, family life and being kind to each other. He said he was “appalled” that false claims made by some campaigners had put added pressure on schools and staff. “Some schools and teachers have felt pressure from some parents. We can’t have that. We can’t have campaigners spreading misinformation and taking advantage of parents’ anxieties,” Miles said. “It’s really important the discussion about RSE is based on what it’s really about, rather than what some campaigners are claiming. The court has found that what the campaigners are saying is completely unfounded. I’m hoping that gives reassurance to parents with anxieties. “Very young children will be taught about the importance of kindness and friendship, not the sorts of things the campaigners have been talking about. The campaigners have been using images which are nothing to do with resources that are being used in Wales. The law requires that all teaching and resources are age-appropriate. That’s been reaffirmed by the court.” Of his experiences of school, Miles said: “Growing up gay in the 1980s, like many, I struggled to find my place in the world. In fact, according to the curriculum back then, someone like me didn’t exist – let’s not forget section 28 was law until 2003. “We need a curriculum that recognises people and families come in different shapes and sizes, and that hate in all its forms is unacceptable. I want to make sure the first time someone hears the word ‘gay’, it is not as an insult on the playground. “When I was young, I went through school without having my own identity, my own feelings reflected back at me in any way. We don’t want young people in Wales to have that experience today.” Miles, 51, said “sex education” was limited to one specific lesson when he was at school in the Swansea valley. “It was often delivered with embarrassment and met with giggling. We learned the names of body parts, that sex resulted in pregnancy and very little about safety. Most of us were left to work the rest out for ourselves,” he said. “The previous national curriculum was put in place in 1988. Before the invention of the internet, before we fully grasped the importance of mental health, and before many of the advancements on equalities and respect we might take for granted.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Miles said Wales had taken a “unique approach” by legislating so that all pupils access these lessons and, rather than them being delivered on a standalone basis, they are integrated into the curriculum. “RSE now has the same approach as any other subject; it’s as essential to a pupil’s education as maths or science,” he said. The group that led the high court action against the curriculum, Public Child Protection Wales, has said it will appeal against the ruling, continuing to argue that it exposes children to “serious dangers”. The group has also claimed the Labour-led government is wrong not to allow parents to take their children out of RSE classes that they consider “entirely inappropriate” and believe conflict with “religious and philosophical beliefs”. The Welsh Conservatives have backed the rights of parents to withdraw their children from RSE lessons when they feel the content is not age-appropriate.

Further education colleges in England face losing financial independence

2022-11-29

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/29/further-education-colleges-england-face-losing-financial-independence

Government likely to treat FE sector as ‘big schools’, removing autonomy over borrowing and investment Further education colleges are likely to be treated as “big schools” by the government and lose critical financial independence, after a ruling reclassified colleges in England as part of central government. Sector leaders said the change had major implications for the way FE colleges are run, removing their autonomy over borrowing and investment decisions and hampering their ability to grow, while allowing few of the benefits in funding, taxes or pension guarantees enjoyed by state schools. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) ruling that new government legislation – allowing the Department for Education (DfE) to intervene directly in the operation of colleges – means they are state controlled and their finances should be included in the government’s accounts. The ONS decision means the £1.1bn in borrowing held on college balance sheets will be counted as public sector debt, although the ONS said the impact “has not yet been assessed”. David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said his members would now be regulated similarly to academies in England, despite significant differences in size and role. “There’s a sense that the [DfE] has said, ‘Well colleges are just big schools really, so we’ll apply the school rules’. But the school rules won’t work,” Hughes said. An average FE college in England has an annual budget of £30m, 10 times the size of that of many state secondary schools. They also educate and train a wider section of the population, including apprentices and adult learners, often across multiple campuses. The DfE said the reclassification “will not alter the strategic aims of colleges. Colleges will continue to play a leadership role in England’s skills system.” It added: “Colleges will retain many of the flexibilities they currently have, for example the ability to keep and spend any surpluses. The day-to-day operations will continue with minimal changes, so colleges can maintain a smooth delivery.” But the government said it was “very unlikely” colleges would continue to access private finance, and would need government “value for money” approval for capital projects such as student accommodation or new facilities. Gerry McDonald, the principal and chief executive of New City College, one of England’s largest FE institutions with an annual turnover of more than £100m, said he welcomed the DfE’s move to smooth grants throughout the year but feared the new finance rules would make it harder to support future investment. “Our concern is that if we need a quick response, adding more layers of approval and a slow bureaucratic timetable gives us less freedom and will not help us serve the skills agenda that our students need,” McDonald said. Hughes said the barriers to investment “feels like a backward step” when the government wanted colleges to improve the UK’s skills base. “The biggest issues facing colleges are eye-watering energy costs and impossible challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled staff, especially in construction, engineering or health, and this does nothing to address those,” he said. The ONS decision means sixth-form colleges will be included in central government. Bill Watkin, the chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said the government had “missed a golden opportunity” to reform post-16 education. “There is very little in today’s response that will benefit students but a great deal that will tie up college staff in bureaucracy and red tape,” Watkin said. Both sixth-form and FE colleges want to be able to reclaim VAT, as schools can, which costs the FE sector an estimated £200m a year.

School complaints about bullying Ofsted inspectors soar to ‘ridiculous’ levels in England

2023-12-09

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/09/complaints-about-bullying-ofsted-inspectors-soar-in-schools-in-england

Education consultants say headteachers approaching in record numbers, after inspection ruled a factor in Ruth Perry’s suicide The number of schools in England filing complaints to Ofsted about bullying inspectors has risen to “ridiculous” levels, education leaders warned this weekend. Delivering her verdict on Thursday, coroner Heidi Connor concluded that a “rude and intimidating” Ofsted inspection was a contributory factor in the suicide of Reading headteacher Ruth Perry in January this year. In 2022-23, a total of 747 schools made formal complaints about Ofsted inspections, up from 454 the previous year, Ofsted’s annual report says. But education consultants told the Observer this number may rise further, because they are receiving an unprecedented number of approaches from distressed heads unhappy with the behaviour of an inspector. They say these complaints are falling on deaf ears, with Ofsted failing to investigate poor conduct fully. The Observer has seen standard response letters to a number of schools, which say that Ofsted will accept no additional evidence or witness statements or enter into any discussion with the school about an inspector’s conduct. They add that concerns will be passed on to the inspector’s regional manager and the outcome cannot be discussed with the school. Julie Price Grimshaw, a former inspector who now advises schools, said: “I had three heads contact me on just one day this week with serious inspector conduct issues. One was in tears. It’s getting ridiculous.” Price Grimshaw says she has had more calls than ever about “brutal” inspections this academic year, possibly because heads are feeling “more inclined to reach out for support” after hearing about Perry’s experience. But she added: “Ofsted do not seem to be in the least bit interested in inspector conduct.” She claimed many local authorities and academy trusts have a “blacklist” of particular inspectors who have upset local schools in the past, but can’t actually stop those individuals turning up. The Observer revealed last weekend that inspectors were accusing Ofsted of misleading Perry’s inquest by claiming that “reducing stress” was a “core value” when training inspectors. The coroner said in her summing up that they had been unable to provide any evidence of this beyond a two-minute reference on a slide alongside other points. She also described Ofsted’s claims that inspections could be paused if a head was showing signs of severe stress as “mythical”. Responding to the coroner’s verdict Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said: “We have started to develop training for all inspectors on recognising and responding to visible signs of anxiety.” She added that “as a first step” inspections would be delayed by a day to bring all lead school inspectors together. Training will, she said, focus on anxiety and how to pause an inspection. She said: “From next week, we will provide all schools with a number to call if they have concerns about their inspection. This will put them directly in touch with someone senior from Ofsted.” The head of a further education college serving a very deprived community in England said she is complaining to Ofsted about the “highly unprofessional conduct” of one of their team of inspectors. “The inspector aggressively questioned several staff to the point where one was so upset they had to walk out. They are still scarred by it,” she said. “I know I can’t ever put some of those teachers through an inspection again.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The head reported this inspector’s behaviour several times to the inspection leader, but the inspector in question “denied everything”. “We’re compiling a complaint because it doesn’t feel right to just take it,” she said. “This inspector shouldn’t be inspecting again.” One recent Ofsted letter, shared with the Observer, noted that a school had complained about different instances in which the lead inspector was “rude” and “hostile” and refused to listen. The letter said: “I can confirm your concerns have been passed on [to the inspector’s line manager]. It would not be appropriate to comment further on the outcome of this process.” Paul Garvey, a former inspector who now helps schools prepare for Ofsted, said: “If you’ve got the wrong personality in charge of an inspection who is bullying people, even if there is a complaint, they will just keep on doing it.” Garvey says he is “often” contacted by schools who want help writing a complaint about a bad inspection. “The basis of it is almost always inspector conduct,” he said. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

Universities are a vital public asset. We must save them | Letters

2024-04-04

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/04/universities-are-a-vital-public-asset-we-must-save-them

Prof Des Freedman, Michael Bassey, John Sommer and Sally Bates respond to an article about the dire state of Britain’s higher education institutions Gaby Hinsliff (Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding, 29 March) says “the story [of decline] starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017”. However, this was the outcome, not the cause, of a crisis that began with the decision by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 to treble tuition fees and to build a “market” in UK higher education. Since then, policymakers and university managers have pursued a disastrous ideological project to turn higher education into a commodity rather than to treat it as a public good. Students have been burdened with unsustainable amounts of debt, staff wages have not kept up with inflation and the sector has been plagued by an audit culture that undermines high-quality teaching and research. The market has clearly failed, with staff and students set to bear the costs of course closures and job cuts. The question now is whether we can mount an effective resistance to defend a vital public asset, or whether we are prepared to see our universities – along with jobs and futures – wither on the vine.Prof Des FreedmanGoldsmiths, University of London Gaby Hinsliff believes universities are in freefall and says “nobody seems to have a clear answer” as to what and who universities are for. Here is one answer, from a 91-year-old emeritus professor. Universities have three equal purposes. First, to accumulate, store and disseminate useful knowledge; second, to engage in research to increase useful knowledge; and third, to help students acquire useful knowledge beyond what they have learned elsewhere. “Useful knowledge” embraces social, technological, historical, ecological and many other bundles of integrated understandings that are judged worthwhile by someone claiming the authority to designate such knowledge as useful. That authority is given by their peers, mostly in universities. Which adds a fourth purpose to them: to ensure that seeking useful knowledge is based on rational, logical and reliable processes, embracing the widest range of human concerns and disseminating that knowledge effectively.Michael BasseyCoddington, Nottinghamshire Gaby Hinsliff says that we need to think more about the function of universities, but there is little agreement about their role. Is that a bad thing? A university was where a Covid vaccine was developed. Can those researchers meet the teaching needs of a 20-year-old? I recently saw a brilliant programme about the bluestones around Stonehenge, with several professors explaining their discoveries. Where does that fit in with the purpose of a university? The health needs of a community are often overseen by a university hospital, with research and training overlapping. If a Venn diagram of important activities in the country is drawn, the most overlaps would be a good description of what a university does. Lose them in the name of streamlining and organisation, and the country would poorer.John SommerBristol We need to decide what we as a society require from universities. A restructuring that offers apprenticeships, provides essential public workers and ensures a rich cultural heritage is a worthwhile investment. Sally BatesCotgrave, Nottinghamshire Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

The Goldsmiths crisis: how cuts and culture wars sent universities into a death spiral

2024-04-11

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/11/the-goldsmiths-crisis-how-cuts-and-culture-wars-sent-universities-into-a-death-spiral

Arts education is essential – yet on both sides of the Atlantic, the humanities and critical thinking are under attack. With massive redundancies announced at this London institution, is it the canary in the coalmine? It is a couple of days before Easter, and the students who have been holding a sit-in in the Professor Stuart Hall building in Goldsmiths, University of London are packing up. The large basement smells of duvets and camping mats and solidarity and liveliness, and deodorant sprayed on in a hurry under a T-shirt, and it smells like a place where people have slept, which 20 of them have done since 20 February, with crowds swelling to 100 for spontaneous lectures. This isn’t a story about idiot idealists making futile gestures: Mark Peacock, a 28-year-old postgraduate student in the politics department, rattles through a number of concessions the senior management team at the university has made as a result of the action. Yet Danna MacRae, 24, studying for an MA in ecology, culture and society, says the occupation has been greater than the sum of its demands: “It’s about opening up the literal physical space but also the social space to expand political possibilities. So much becomes possible when you’re living together 24/7.” I read their banner as they’re furling it up: among other things, it calls for the university to protect students’ right to protest, expand scholarships for Palestinian students and divest from any company providing equipment to Israel. These are by no means extraordinary calls, particularly among students – many universities have coordinated protests and motions on Palestine. Besides, calling for an end to the bombardment and starvation of Gaza becomes a more mainstream position the longer it goes on. But I’m really surprised, because there’s a whole separate, hot dispute going on at Goldsmiths, and I’d assumed the students were protesting as part of that. The media are really bad at examining two issues at once, particularly if they’re on different scales and not obviously connected – more than one academic from the media and communications department explained this to me. Midway through the occupation, the warden of Goldsmiths, Frances Corner, had announced the so-called Transformation Programme, which would require 132 members of staff – or the full-time equivalent, so it was expected to affect more than that number of people – to be made compulsorily redundant. It would mean losing 17% of the staff, with some departments – English and sociology, arguably their most famous, along with art and politics – taking hits of 50%. It is no exaggeration to say that staff are devastated, gobsmacked. They had a hunch that something was about to happen but say that for days ahead of the announcement, Goldsmiths’ council, its governance body, wouldn’t meet them, putting them off until the day after it had approved the redundancies, the day academics got the letters. “They agreed, but we said: ‘We cannot meet you now because half of us are having a panic attack,’” says history of art lecturer Yaiza Hernández Velázquez. Many are at pains to admit that they know “the glory days of the 80s are no longer with us” (in the words of an academic from the English department, who asked to remain anonymous because they are at risk of redundancy). Many understand very well the financial pressures Goldsmiths is under, although they point out that they’ve already made many concessions to save money. “Voluntary redundancy schemes, vacancy rates and cutting down associate lecturer budgets and research budgets: with that, Goldsmiths had already recouped £10.1m. We didn’t really oppose any of that, because it was acknowledged there was a need,” Hernández Velázquez says. But to make cuts like this, which are planned for this September, will surely change the face of the university, diminishing the educational offer that many students – certainly many undergraduates – signed up for, and curtailing much of the activity for which Goldsmiths is famous. Apart from the fact Blur met there, Goldsmiths is known for a few things. It’s quite an anarchic, radical place. English students go there for the decolonisation, and students of sociology and art go there for the ecology course. Des Freedman, professor of media and communications (not at risk from the redundancy plans), summarises it more broadly as: “It specialises in the creative and the critical, so you would expect more musicians, more artists, more film-makers, more designers than in less specialist institutions, all of those with a critical perspective.” It has punched above its weight – being a small university of about 8,600 students, with a turnover of £135m versus a university average of £250m – both in terms of reputation and international pull. Since about a third of its students are international, more as postgraduates than undergrads, and since, as is well known, the fees foreign students pay go so very far towards keeping any tertiary education institution afloat, to strip out the unique elements that bring them here seems, in the first place, bizarre. Corner is adamant: “Our financial position is really serious. We absolutely know what we’ve got to do. [These redundancies] sound like a lot, but part of the problem is that over the last five years we’ve lost a thousand students. In terms of the amount of money our staff bring in, only the London School of Tropical Medicine is lower than us. The number of students per member of staff is very low, and it’s not sustainable.” Without question, some of this situation is unique to Goldsmiths and the decisions of Corner and her senior management team. The administrative staff were streamlined in the so-called recovery plan into one central hub in 2021-22, again to save money, and there has been chaos ever since. The details are quite funny, like watching W1A, but only if you are doing so from a gigantic distance. One of the reasons for the decline in international student recruitment was that “the letters went out too late”, says Hernández Velázquez. “The prospective students couldn’t get their visas. They can’t deny that, but what has been very frustrating is that they have never explained how many letters didn’t get sent. We were never told what the shortfall was. We were just told that people don’t want to come here any more.” That is thought to have cost hundreds of international applications, though Corner rejects that, blaming “problems within departments”, along with spurious applications and a tightening of Home Office regulations, particularly recently around dependency visas for postgrads. That anti-immigrant sabre-rattling by the government has fallen harder on some universities than others. Chinese postgrads, for example, tend not to bring dependants, while Nigerians on average bring two and a half. Yet in many ways, what’s happening at Goldsmiths is a vivid thumbnail sketch of the crises, both accidental and deliberately manufactured, hitting the entire sector, bar a very few stunningly well-funded universities from the high-profile Russell Group. Specific to the so-called “classroom” subjects of the humanities – English, history, sociology – the financial model is falling apart. Would it amaze you to hear that the Tories and Lib Dems of 2010 did not think this through? When tuition fees were first hiked to nine grand a year by the coalition government, Andrew McGettigan, author of the Great University Gamble and expert in university funding and finance, says: “Suddenly classroom subjects were getting a lot more than the cost of delivering teaching, so you could fund research time in your department out of the money you were getting from your students.” You could also cross-subsidise more expensive subjects. This led to what he calls “a great sucking sound” as larger, more prestigious institutions pulled in humanities students because they were very lucrative. This became even more pronounced when George Osborne abolished the cap on student numbers in the 2013 autumn budget. This led to a slow death spiral for smaller universities; their prestige came from being research universities, rather than just teaching universities, but they were having to drop their grade requirements to keep their numbers up. Prestige takes quite a long time to drain away, though (longer to rebuild, of course), so the situation bobbed along for a bit with a lot of research staff in the humanities who were basically paid for by undergraduates they didn’t teach. But there was a much bigger problem coming: as tuition fees have stagnated, going up only by £250 in 14 years, even classroom subjects are now costing more than they bring in. So the only possible cross-subsidy is from foreign students, whose fees are unregulated and have no ceiling – some undergraduate courses at Oxford are £48,000 a year for overseas students. Oxbridge has more money than it knows what to do with, while smaller institutions just get by. But now enter – let’s call it, for brevity – the performative xenophobia of the new Conservative. Foreign students, considered until so recently an export success story (not just their fees but every meal deal they bought counted as a plus on the UK’s balance of payments), are now a number that Tory ministers vie with one another to reduce. So when Corner blames the government (in tactful, passive terms: “That’s why arts and humanities have been undermined”), that is fair. When academics and students say they suspect her of trying to turn Goldsmiths into a “management and business teaching university”, as Peacock describes it, supplying technical and vocational education to students who pay through the nose and definitely don’t occupy lecture theatres, she would deny that in general terms: “I would say that that thing that makes Goldsmiths really special is the combination of humanities and social sciences.” But her core argument is that the sector is underfunded and the funding model is bust anyway, and she’s not wrong. More sinister is the sense that Freedman describes: “It’s hard not to think that a culture war is being evoked against you simply for trying to think independently and critically.” Science minister Michelle Donelan’s recent shameful attack on two academics, reporting them to UKRI (the national research-funding body) for extremism and blighting their lives over an accusation that was wholly without foundation, springs to mind – but then so does almost everything Donelan and education secretary Gillian Keegan say about the sector in general, and humanities in particular. All those references to “woke ideology”, “intolerant woke bullies” and “cancel culture” are increasingly accompanied by defunding of the humanities, using increased accessibility to education as a fig leaf, as Keegan announced last week. “Your subjects are mocked and called low value,” Freedman says. “Arts, humanities and social sciences haven’t played the instrumentalist game, so they’re seen as easy targets by tabloids, by GB News. We would laugh it off, but this is a huge asset to the British economy.” More importantly, he continues, “it’s not just a tragedy – it’s almost like a crime to shrink those spaces that provide a home for the inquisitive, the experimental. If the space disappears, it’s very hard to recreate it.” McGettigan perceives expedience here: universities are very independent, institutionally, and that’s a problem when the market starts to fail (and it is failing: a truly tragic sidebar is that it’s not working out for students either, and some universities are hitting 30% dropout rates after the first year. Maintenance grants haven’t kept pace with inflation, and students just can’t afford to stay). “Culture wars do distract from market failure,” he says, “and leave the impression that the market failure was a result of misplaced priorities.” All that would definitely be bad – cynical, self-sabotaging, philistine. But there’s another possibility that is worse: that culture wars aren’t being fought to destroy the humanities – rather that humanities are being destroyed because they’re incredibly inconvenient to authoritarianism, representing as they do “a pedagogical practice that calls students beyond themselves, embraces the ethical imperative for them to care for others, embrace historical memory, work to dismantle structures of domination, and to become subjects rather than objects of history, politics, and power”. That’s from Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Fascist Politics by the American academic Henry Giroux, and I mention it not to freak anyone out, merely to note how striking the similarities are between rhetorical and financial attacks on the arts and humanities in the US and in the UK. You can read about the crisis in the creative writing degree at the University of Florida and swap out only one or two words (“semester”, plus the name of the president) and you could be reading about Goldsmiths. In fact, the students protesting about Gaza at Goldsmiths are also passionately opposed to the mass redundancies, and many of the staff were involved, non-residentially, with the occupation – teach-ins, coming to guest lectures, supportive vibes. But there’s a deeper connective logic, common to student protest throughout history. MacRae, when the occupation began, was working on a soundscape about the Tiananmen Square massacre, where her father had witnessed the occupation of the square and subsequent shootings of students and civilians. “Did they get what they wanted?” she says. “Of course not. But for a few months, the whole city was in a state of anarchy in a beautiful way, and people still remember that feeling.” When you embark on an education that cannot obviously be commodified, that doesn’t translate into earnings, it is a way of saying (and believing) that your mind’s value to society is innate. Politics is your business because you are its business. You are the keeper of ideas, historical memory, compassion, context, hope, that the market cannot understand and authoritarianism cannot stomach. Back in February, one (anonymous) academic was in a meeting at which some of the senior management team wanted to get the students arrested. “Can you imagine?” they said. “Calling the police on your own students? At Goldsmiths?” That was outvoted, but the ludicrousness hangs in the air. Can you imagine? Trying to hollow out the arts and humanities? In the UK, where it’s one of the few things we’re good at? (No offence, scientists: you’re good too.) You don’t have to imagine it – you can see it. But I don’t think it’s a done deal.

Pauline Tambling obituary

2024-02-12

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/12/pauline-tambling-obituary

My friend and colleague Pauline Tambling, who has died of cancer aged 68, played a huge role in the arts education world for four decades. She was one of very few people to work successfully across arts education, employment, and policy development at a national level, for organisations including the Royal Opera House, then Arts Council of England, and the National Skills Academy. Having started out as a teacher, in 1983 Pauline became the first education officer for the Royal Opera (the ROH having recruited an education officer for the Royal Ballet the previous year), as a result of the recommendation in the 1982 Gulbenkian Foundation Arts in Schools report that cultural organisations create education posts. The “Write an Opera” scheme she created in 1985 is still going, as is the European network of opera education departments that she co-founded. Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, Pauline was the daughter of Annie (nee Butcher), a factory worker, cleaner and cook, and Bill Dorling, a labourer and hospital porter. After Ely high school for girls, she gained her teaching certificate at Stockwell College, Bromley, south London, in 1973. Her first job was as a religious studies teacher at a comprehensive school in Brent, in north-west London. She then taught at a primary school in rural Essex, before joining the Royal Opera. In 1997 Pauline was made director of education and training at the Arts Council of England, rising to an executive director position. There she was the prime mover behind several major national initiatives including Creative Partnerships (2002-2011), which aimed to engage young people in schools with creative practitioners, and the charity Youth Music. She became chief operating officer of Creative & Cultural Skills (CCSkills) in 2007, soon becoming joint chief executive and managing director of the National Skills Academy, a national network of further education colleges working with the creative industries. In 2013 Pauline became chief executive of CCSkills, where she was involved in creating High House Production Park, a regeneration project in Thurrock, Essex. Here she was responsible for the building of the Backstage Centre, a training and rehearsal space co-located with ROH workshops. Pauline had lived with cancer since 2017. After retiring from CCSkills the following year she continued to remain active in the education and arts sector, in many trustee and chair roles. Her career came full circle when she revisited the 1982 Arts in Schools report. Her 2023 report, The Arts in Schools: Foundations for the Future, which she and I wrote together, calls for arts subjects to be central to a rethink of England’s state education system. Pauline was an unassuming powerhouse – a dynamo of ideas and great fun. A fabulous collaborator and strategist, she was always generous with her time and superb at navigating complexity to make positive things happen which would go on to have a lasting impact. She was appointed CBE in 2014. In 1976 Pauline married Jeremy Tambling, an English lecturer and latterly professor of literature. He survives her, as do their children, Kirsten and Felix, and three grandchildren, Frances, Emil and Sidonie.

DfE’s funding error will have a lasting impact on teaching assistants and pupils | Brief letters

2023-10-20

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/20/dfes-funding-error-will-have-a-lasting-impact-on-teaching-assistants-and-pupils

‘Bare bones’ education | Reading emails | Edmund Burke’s wisdom | How to pronounce one This funding error will directly lead to a reduction in the number of teaching assistants, which will impact mostly on children with special educational needs (Cuts could reduce education in England to ‘bare bones’, headteachers say, 18 October). These teaching assistants will lose their jobs and may have to go on benefits, if not already on them, and have to visit food banks. This simple “funding error” has a very long tail.Helen BeioleyStroud, Gloucestershire Anita Chaudhuri is perhaps half right in her declaration that life is too short to read an email properly (How many years of my life will be spent writing – and ignoring – emails?, 18 October). If a message matters, it is worth remembering that phones are still capable of transmitting voices, providing better context, focus and nuance while reducing the chances of misunderstanding.Geoff ReidBradford “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” The words of Edmund Burke could hardly be more tragically demonstrated than by recent events in the Middle East.Elaine LukeFairlight, East Sussex Forgive me for showing my ignorance, but Pat Robson (Letters, 18 October) has me baffled. How else would you pronounce “one” other than to rhyme with “gone”? Maybe it’s a southern thing?Kath ChecklandHathersage, Derbyshire Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

First UK-wide hybrid school offering home and class learning to open in 2024

2023-12-26

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/26/first-uk-wide-hybrid-school-offering-home-and-class-learning-to-open-in-2024

Aimed at school refusers and those not suited to mainstream, Duke’s Education model will provide virtual and classroom learning The first UK-wide hybrid school, teaching children up to sixth-form age both from home and in person, will open in September 2024. Duke’s Education schools will expect students to come in for at least one day a week for practical subjects, and to take part in sporting and social activities. For the rest of the week, it will offer four live lessons and two independent study sessions a day. Designed for school refusers, those with anxiety or those whose parents feel there are no suitable local schools, and students who want to fit their education around sporting or other extracurricular commitments, the school has ambitions to open its doors to children across Europe. “Unlike other online schools, we are not a temporary phase, we are a proper school,” said Ambreen Baig, who is modelling the Duke’s schools on the more limited model she set up at London’s Portland Place independent school in September 2020. Duke’s Education runs more than 25 schools and colleges in the UK and Europe. Now Baig aims to offer the hybrid model across them all. “Our research shows that families are prepared to travel quite large distances to get to one of our schools if they’re just doing it once or twice a week,” she said. Duke’s schools are private but Baig aims to work with local education authorities (LEAs) to introduce scholarships and bursaries. In the meantime, she said, the hybrid model is about a third of the full-time cost of independent schooling. “At most, we’ll charge £4,000 a term but I want to work with LEAs (local education authorities) to see their school refuser list and whether they are willing to fund this for those children to join us,” she said. Baig said her model could be used more widely to tackle the growing issue of absenteeism in education: government statistics have found that 24.2% of pupils were persistently absent over the autumn term of 2022 to 2023, meaning they missed at least 10% of lessons. Pre-pandemic levels of absence were only around half of this. Over the same period, the number of children who missed 50% or more possible education sessions – 110,000 or 1.7% of students – was almost double pre-pandemic levels Sonny Brendon, now 15, found it impossible to settle into his secondary school three years ago. Without the hybrid model of Baig’s previous school in Portland Place, which only goes up to year 11, his mother, Sasha, said that Sonny would be “lost to education by now”. Sonny said he felt his new secondary school was too big. “There was a distinct feeling that most of us did not matter to the school,” he said. Now on track to get all 8s and 9s in his GCSEs, Sonny said that “hybrid learning is really appealing for students who don’t have the mental capability to go in five days a week, every week, but also don’t want to learn exclusively online for fear of missing out socially”. “It gives you the best of both worlds because it gives you the time to socialise with friends but, simultaneously, gives you the ability to stay at home for other parts of the week. It should definitely be available for every child,” he said. A few other schools, including Harrow private school and online schools Kings InterHigh and Academy 21, have tried remote learning but none has adopted the fully hybrid model going up to sixth form. Baig’s previous school, Portland Place hybrid school, recently received a glowing report from the Good Schools Guide (GSG) and GCSE results better than the day school, with 31% gaining grades between 9 and 7. Explaining why the school’s hybrid students perform better academically than the other students, the GSG said: “The school attributes this to them making a positive choice to opt for the mix of online and in-person learning – they really want to do well but realise traditional schooling is not right for them. By nature, online students also tend to be focused, independent learners and, as a result, they progress quickly.” Baig said that if hybrid learning was available across the UK, it would transform education. “There are so many children for whom mainstream education just doesn’t work,” she said. “I’ve had children who hadn’t been to school in years: children who are wounded and damaged, bullied and bereaved. Their parents didn’t know what to do – mainstream education didn’t know what to do – but we watched them blossom.” Baig said that she does not think Covid is the only reason why there is an increasing interest in hybrid learning. “It’s also due to the changing nature of parenting – we’re much more aware of mental health wellbeing and don’t think it’s OK to just force kids into a school environment if they struggle with it,” she said.

Lack of home schooling oversight ‘obvious danger’ to children, experts say

2023-12-25

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/25/home-schooling-education-oversight-danger-children

More US families are choosing to home school, meaning removing access to mandated reporters and lack of education monitoring As more people in the US choose to home school their children, experts have warned that the lack of oversight over the process leaves children at risk of isolation, receiving a poor education, or suffering abuse and neglect. The number of Americans choosing to home school has more than doubled in some states since the Covid-19 pandemic. While that represents a small minority of American children as a whole, the rise in children being home schooled has troubled both academics who track the effects of home schooling, and advocates who endured destructive home-schooling environments themselves. Much of the reason for that concern is the lack of safeguards to protect children being home schooled – a uniquely American problem not seen elsewhere. For years, rightwing home school lobbying organizations in the US have successfully fought attempts to introduce regulations over the process. That means the welfare of children is not monitored and there is barely any direction over the quality of education they receive. “The majority of home-schooling parents have their child’s best intentions in mind,” said Angela Grimberg, the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an organization run by people who were home schooled that advocates for better policies to protect and educate home-schooled children. Grimberg notes that of those children who were home schooled, some had their education “neglected” because “of a lack of home schooling policy”. “[They] fell through the cracks,” she said, adding that “on the more severe end of the spectrum” there were children who were “physically abused and neglected”. Home schooling has traditionally been associated with evangelical Christians, but there are now “a variety of reasons” why people choose to home school, Grimberg said. That can include parents believing they can provide a better environment for children with disabilities, or some people choosing to home school children who have experienced bullying. There are also some home schoolers who are dissatisfied with the perceived direction of the public school system, including how schools address issues of racial history and sexuality. That concept matches the rightwing war on education, which has seen books banned in schools across the country and the introduction of draconian laws, typically targeting issues of race and LGBTQ+ identity, over what teachers can say in the classroom. Grimberg, who is from Florida, said her mother did not want to send her to public school “because she thought home schooling was safer”. “There are organizations out there that just continually perpetuate the narrative that in public schools you have sex offenders that are teachers, you have bullying, you have all of this crime. And my mom really believed that, and so she just decided, you know, let me just keep them at home,” Grimberg said. Grimberg’s mother worked at home at the time. When she took on a more demanding job, the schooling fell by the wayside. “My brother’s and my education was neglected and we didn’t receive an education in elementary or middle school and I had to fight my way out of home schooling,” Grimberg said. When she was 14 years old, Grimberg enrolled herself in Florida Virtual School, which provides e-learning. As she got older, Grimberg found that her home schooling experience was the root of many challenges she faced. “There were just so many obstacles,” she explained, “when trying to pick up on social cues, make friends, also, in understanding some of the dangers. I was very naive, because I was so protected at home that I didn’t know what dangers outside were and how to overcome them, so I faced a lot of those head-on.” Grimberg added that she needed “triple the time” to study “to make up for the lost time in my education, to just be able to perform how other students who are performing that were in my grade level”. “It was a tremendous amount of work and I got very, very lucky,” she said. “My experience is not typical.” The National Center for Education Statistics reported that 1.5 million children between five and 17 were being home schooled in 2019, the last year figures are available. That amounted to 2.8% of American children. The Washington Post estimated that there are currently between 1.9 million and 2.7 million children being home schooled. The Post also reported that the number of home schooled children had doubled in New York state and Washington DC, and almost doubled in South Dakota, Rhode Island and Tennessee. The number of children being home schooled has declined slightly in the last year, according to the Post’s analysis, but remains above the 2019 figure. Given that the majority of states do not monitor the quality of education home-schooled children are receiving, and 11 states do not even require parents to notify the state that they plan to educate their children at home, the potential for problems is high. The level of oversight and regulation to make sure children are safe and receiving an adequate education is “close to none”, said Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor of law emeritus at Harvard law school whose work has specialized in child welfare. “And that’s pretty true in all 50 states. Even in the ones with regulation on the books, it’s not that significant. Some states require that the parents commit to teaching the essence of the public school curriculum, but I would contend that they don’t do much of anything to make sure that that actually happens,” she said. “Some states say that kids have to be tested, but many of those states allow the testing to take place at home, where the parents can do the testing, and just turn in the results, [states can] give parents the option of just turning in a portfolio review – and it’s not clear that if the parents don’t turn it in anything actually happens.” Beyond that, state-run Child Protective Services departments rely on “mandated reporters” – typically school professionals or medical practitioners – to report suspected child abuse or neglect. If a child is home schooled, they are far less likely to come into contact with a mandated reporter. “Going to school is one of the first and best protections for kids because they are seen – at least during school terms – five days a week by a variety of school personnel, all of whom have this duty to report. Most of the reports that come into our child protective system are from school personnel,” Bartholet said. “So when you give parents the right to keep their kids at home free from anybody looking at them, including mandated reporters, you’re taking away one of the main protections for children.” Given the lack of oversight of home schooling, there is little data on its impact and the number of children being educated in unsafe environments. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education said it was aware of “thousands” of children whose educations were neglected, while the organization’s Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database has documented 600 cases of child abuse and neglect among home-schooled children. Grimberg says this is “an extreme underestimate” of the total. The potential for harm inherent in the US system is not replicated in other countries. Home schooling is effectively banned altogether in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain, while Bartholet said most countries that do allow it enforce strict monitoring, which can include home visits by teachers, and require home schoolers to follow the standard school curriculum. (Bartholet said the UK is rare in having relatively little oversight.) “I think a lot of the people [in the US] promoting the current unregulated regime in home schooling are saying: ‘Parents should have this absolute right to bring up their kids free of government intervention,’” Bartholet said. “And the rest of the world doesn’t think that way. I think the rest of the world is much more ready to see children as having rights. They don’t see adults as having as sacrosanct a right to be left alone by the government. They see adults as more part of the community and having responsibilities for children, not just rights vis-a-vis children.” The lack of regulation can be attributed to an aggressive home schooling lobby, which has worked for decades to prevent stricter rules around the welfare of children taught at home. The types of people opting to home-school may have grown more diverse, but right-wing conservative organizations dominate the lobbying around it. Chief among them is the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded by the rightwing legal activist Michael Farris in 1983. Under Farris – who later became the CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group that works to roll back the rights of LGBTQ+ people – the Home School Legal Defense Association has worked with legislators to draft legislation that defends home schooling. The group has also sued states that have attempted to enforce existing laws around home schooling. Bartholet said there has been little political appetite to introduce better regulation over home schooling. Given the close ties the rightwing home school lobby has with the Republican party - Farris was involved in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election – bringing the US up to the standard of other countries could take some time. Bartholet said at the very least “there should be some minimal protections”. “For example, we shouldn’t allow parents to home school without first checking to see if they have a history of serious abuse and neglect,” she said. “And if they have that kind of history, I don’t think they should be permitted to home school. “I mean, it seems to me fundamental, if you care about kids’ rights, to say that if some parent has seriously abused one of their children, they shouldn’t be permitted to keep this child at home free from any observation by any other human being. It just seems like an obvious danger for children.”

School leaders in England feel lockdown ‘broke spell’ of bond with parents

2023-11-23

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/nov/23/school-leaders-england-feel-lockdown-broke-spell-bond-with-parents

Education experts agree with Ofsted chief that many parents now disregard rules previously taken for granted Lockdown “broke the spell” that bound parents and schools together, according to school leaders and experts who have endorsed the Ofsted chief’s view that many parents now disregard rules on behaviour and attendance they once took for granted. Delivering her last annual report as chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman said: “The social contract between parents and schools has been fractured by lockdowns and closures.” And she warned: “That social contract took years to build and consolidate and it will take time to restore.” Tom Bennett, the Department for Education’s adviser on behaviour policy, said the pandemic-era lockdowns “broke the spell” of children and parents building their lives and habits around going to school. “The unquestionable belief that school must be attended was exploded. It’s predictable and expected to see that for some families, those have been hard habits to rebuild. And inevitably it’s the families who already struggle, who have struggled the hardest to build them,” Bennett said. But some headteachers painted an even darker picture of hostile parents who have become unresponsive to a school’s requests, with some using private social media forums to harangue individual teachers and school leaders over behaviour decisions or attendance policies. One school leader said he was shocked to see ringleaders orchestrate campaigns against attempts to tighten up behaviour policies and supporting pupils refusing to obey instructions or using social media during lessons. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and a former secondary school head, said Spielman’s comments agreed with what he had heard from many school leaders. “Parents are increasingly willing to challenge school rules themselves. This applies to a minority of parents and pupils but it is a significant problem, absorbing time and energy and putting school leaders and staff under enormous additional pressure and stress. “We appeal to parents to understand that school rules are there for the good of the whole school community and to support their schools,” Barton said. One school in Kent has experienced such a deterioration that teachers in the National Education Union went on strike this week at the Oasis academy on the Isle of Sheppey. Nick Childs, an NEU senior regional director, said: “Behaviour at the school is currently completely unacceptable. Lessons are regularly disturbed and staff safety and wellbeing put at risk. A zero-tolerance approach must be introduced including a fixed exclusion tariff for assaults and threats of violence against staff and pupils.” Bennett said teacher strikes over behaviour meant “something is seriously wrong and we should listen carefully”. Improving behaviour was not helped by local authorities putting pressure on schools to avoid using sanctions such as exclusion, he said. Spielman said the persistently high absence rates since Covid were also being driven by changes in middle-class attitudes, saying she was struck by reports that “there is no longer any stigma around term-time holidays”. “That’s an issue across the board, that’s not narrowly about disadvantaged children. That’s about people who can afford to pay for foreign holidays, choosing the weeks that they’re going to go away,” Spielman said. “The idea that the odd day here, the odd week there, doesn’t really matter, that they can drop in and out, actually that has real and lasting consequences for children.” Spielman also warned against the use of part-time attendance, designed to reintegrate pupils suffering from illness or anxiety, “as a long-term accommodation that may make things more manageable for the school and the family but ultimately means [children] don’t get the education they should be getting”. Labour sources say the party plans to make behaviour and attendance a significant area of focus in coming months, with the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, arguing that persistent absence “represents one of the gravest threats to children’s life chances”. “Labour will make it a priority to rebuild the shattered relationship between families, schools and government to drive the high and rising standards in education that our children deserve,” Phillipson said.

Education secretary says she is willing to talk to teachers about money

2023-01-17

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/17/education-secretary-willing-talk-teachers-money-gillian-keegan

Gillian Keegan ‘extremely disappointed’ in decision to strike and stops short of promising pay review The education secretary said she was willing to talk to teachers about money but stopped short of promising to review pay, after teachers in England and Wales announced seven days of strike action over February and March. Gillian Keegan, who will meet teaching unions on Tuesday, said she was “extremely disappointed” in the decision to strike but said the government was prepared to talk to teachers about the challenges faced by the profession. After Rishi Sunak’s minimum service levels bill that would restrict strikes passed its first stage in the Commons overnight, Keegan suggested that legislation would not be used to keep all schools open during stoppages. She said the focus on minimum service levels was initially designed for “health and transport” but suggested it could be used in future disputes “to keep schools open for vulnerable children, in particular. That is something we very much learned during the pandemic,” she told LBC. “So yes, we are part of the bill, but at the moment, the focus initially will be on health and rail and then when we get to that stage, obviously, we’ll consider what is reasonable.” Action by members of the National Education Union will begin with a mass strike on 1 February, to coincide with the Trades Union Congress’s national “protect the right to strike” day of action, followed by six days of regional strikes. The NEU, which is the biggest education union, has asked for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise, after the government announced last summer that most teachers would receive a pay rise of about 5%, while starting salaries would go up by 8.9%. Keegan said she was willing to talk about money but backed pay being set by the national independent body. “We did talk about money,” she told Sky News. “We didn’t negotiate the pay, that’s not what we’re there to do. We didn’t negotiate pay but what we did do was talk about some of the challenges, workload challenges, as well, we talked about.” Asked on LBC whether pay for teachers was enough, Keegan said: “We do still attract a lot of teachers. Where we struggle a little bit more is with maths and science and computer science. So what we’ve done there is we’ve put additional payments in place for those and we’ve also offered bursaries of £27,000 and scholarships as well so that you get a lot of money towards your fees. “So we specifically focused that on maths, science and computer science because they’re the ones that you struggle more to recruit. But it is still an attractive profession. We didn’t meet our recruitment targets just after we came out of the pandemic, but before the pandemic, we were pretty much mostly in our recruitment targets.” Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 1 February England and Wales14 February Wales28 February Northern, north-west, Yorkshire and Humber regions of England1 March East Midlands, West Midlands and eastern regions2 March London, south-east and south-west regions15 and 16 March All eligible members in England and Wales

Beatings, humiliation and loss of self-worth: how Edinburgh Academy victims were scarred

2024-03-27

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/27/edinburgh-academy-john-brownlee-abuse

Former schoolboys at the private school give raw testimonies about abuse meted out by John Brownlee The enormity of the abuse suffered at the hands of the Edinburgh Academy teacher John Brownlee became clear when the first witness was asked a simple question about the moment his mother left him alone at the boarding house of the elite private school. John Graham, now a trim 56-year-old with a goatee beard, was asked: how did he feel? Until then fluent and factual in the witness box, Graham froze. His face crumpled. In that moment, Graham again became the eight-year-old boy who had felt “not good” that day, but with the awful adult hindsight of the abuse he would endure there. “I didn’t know these people. I didn’t know this place. It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.” Graham’s graphic account at Edinburgh sheriff court earlier this month, of being a child repeatedly assaulted, beaten and abused at Brownlee’s hands set the scene for nine harrowing days of witness accounts which exposed, in their words, a vicious sadist who relished inflicting pain. According to a lengthy indictment, Brownlee, now an 89-year-old with advanced dementia, terrorised young boys over a 20-year period: both at Dundas House, where he lived with his own family alongside boarding pupils, and at the Academy’s junior school, where he rose to the position of deputy head. Declared unfit to stand trial on health grounds, the 36 charges against him were heard in a rare quasi-trial process known as an “examination of facts” overseen, without a jury, by Sheriff Ian Anderson. Witnesses including Nicky Campbell, the BBC journalist and broadcaster, recounted the weapons Brownlee employed over those two decades. Those included the clacken (a spoon-like bat Brownlee repeatedly used “with a golf swing” to strike the boys’ backsides), a cricket bat, a broken snooker cue, metal and wooden rulers sometimes brought sharp edge-down on a child’s knuckles, his own brogues, fists and open hand. “He had a hair-trigger temper on him,” Graham said. He witnessed another boy being “annihilated” once in the junior school dining hall. “Smashed him down on the floor, just laid into him; he was kicking him, just battering him.” Frazer MacDonald, 54, a former Christian missionary who arrived at Dundas House aged eight, recalled Brownlee had a method for choking boys by inserting his knuckled fist inside the back of a boy’s collar, and twisting as he flexed his fist. “You felt like you were being strangled; it happened to many boys.” Others testified to that technique; Campbell told the court Brownlee, who at turns could be charismatic and at others arbitrarily violent, once rained blows on his head like “a knuckle dance down on my skull”. Giles Moffat, 51, described being locked in a garden shed with two other boys over a weekend for a minor infraction, and being fed on bread and milk by Brownlee’s wife. He also described one shocking incident where a six-year-old had a garden hose pushed into his anus by Brownlee as a punishment for bedwetting. Moffat, who co-founded a support group for survivors of Edinburgh Academy abuse, was clear that for those who witnessed the abuse of their fellow pupils it could be as traumatic as being abused themselves. “He enjoyed the psychological torture, there was no doubt about that,” said another witness, who has asked not to be named. During one assault, Brownlee slammed the folding door of a blackboard on his head “spraying spittle” as he did so. “He enjoyed the fear, knowing that the violence could happen at any time.” “The pain of the beating passes,” said Graham Macleod, a day pupil who had Brownlee as a teacher at junior school, “but the humiliation of being beaten in front of your peers, the class, that lasts,. So humiliation is very much part of the experience.” Others described routine humiliations: cold baths for boys who failed to brush their teeth; children’s underpants paraded in front of their peers; a metal comb dragged painfully across their scalps in the morning. Witnessed described a culture where violence, fear, silence and shame were so normalised that bullying was “institutionalised”, as the children turned against one another to act out their distress. The loss of self-worth was a recurring theme. A number of the witnesses have survived alcoholism and opiate addiction; some struggled to build careers; others know classmates who killed themselves in adulthood. Neil McDonald, a former army major, said self-loathing drove him to reckless, suicidal conduct in war zones. “I hate myself,” he told the court bluntly. “I see myself as a loathsome piece of shit. I can’t stand being me. Because I was taught that that was what we were.” The witnesses were repeatedly pressed by Andrew Seggie, the Brownlee family’s lawyer, to explain whether they had told their parents about their experiences. Many said they did not; some feared retribution in the school; others said they thought Brownlee’s behaviour was normal, or that they, somehow, deserved it. Campbell, who also alleges other abuses including a serious sexual assault by other Academy teachers, never told his parents. “You thought, this is happening. It must be OK,” Campbell told the court. “I must have put myself in this situation, for this to happen.” But the court also heard Brownlee routinely censored the weekly letters boys were expected to send home: “If he didn’t like what was in, you would be made to rewrite it.” These men, now stout with their hair grey or receding in middle age, say privately that telling their story in court – even without Brownlee in the dock to hear them – was an opportunity to break the hold this man had on them. Some wanted the chance to speak for longer, but others described the mental strain of returning to their vulnerable younger selves in public. The question of why no other staff member intervened became another recurring theme of the hearings. Brownlee’s wife, Margaret, and his sons Neil and Graeme also lived in Dundas House. Did they ever intervene? They did not, said the witnesses, and instead appeared for the defence to vigorously dismiss the allegations of more than 30 former pupils as “ridiculous”, “lies” or “distortions”. Margaret, an immaculately presented 83-year-old, insisted Dundas House was “run along family lines”. Her elder son, Graeme, at 56, of an age with many of the victims, described it as “a happy house” where he grew up “cheek by jowl” with the other pupils and witnessed no evidence of beatings or other excessive punishments. “The truth is you are here to protect your father’s legacy and you will never and can never accept these things happened,” the fiscal put to him at the conclusion of his evidence. “That is correct,” he replied. The evidence exposed a wider culture of complicity. Other teachers were keenly aware of the abuse but it appears none took action, and some were directly complicit in Brownlee’s violence. Indeed, Brownlee is one of numerous former teachers facing prosecution for violent and sexual assaults on their pupils. Many of these charges stem from the work of the long-running Scottish child abuse inquiry, which has commended the work of the journalist Alex Renton, whose BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Dark Corners about abuse in Britain’s elite private schools prompted Campbell to reveal his own abuse. It resulted in a flood of other former pupils coming forward and encouraging the inquiry to take detailed evidence on the school. But one boy did summon up the courage to report Brownlee, to the headteacher’s wife one evening. Then about nine or 10 years old, Graham Macleod recalled “a very tearful conversation” with her about the abuse and trauma he had suffered. “She seemed to be obviously distressed by it. I didn’t hold back. My impression after that was things did improve, at least for me.” That conversation took place in 1967. Brownlee remained on Academy staff for another 20 years. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

US public schools took a stance on Israel-Hamas. The backlash was swift

2023-12-07

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/07/us-public-schools-israel-hamas-backlash

The politicization of education has resulted in schools becoming culture-war battlegrounds, often leading to more division than solidarity On 7 October, the day Hamas attacked Israel and the country began bombarding Gaza, the superintendent of the Los Angeles unified school district posted on social media: “We stand with Israel.” Weeks later, the teachers’ union in Oakland, California, issued a statement. “The Israeli government created an apartheid state,” it read. “We unequivocally condemn the 75 year long illegal military occupation of Palestine.” Both statements were met with almost immediate backlash from the community – parents, teachers and even politicians – who either disagreed with the content of the announcements or were befuddled by why a local school district would take a position on a complex global conflict. It’s not just California: in Massachusetts, two school district superintendents were lambasted for insufficiently calling out Hamas in the statements they issued shortly after the conflict began and a Minneapolis teachers union sparked controversy when it issued a statement calling for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza and for a boycott of Israel. Across the US, public schools have been taking stances on the war, often leading to more division than solidarity. Districts have repeatedly found themselves in hot water over their approaches. While some of the statements lacked context or were issued prematurely, leading to retractions, the backlash is part of a nationwide politicization of the education sector, experts say, especially in kindergarten to 12th grade (K-12) public school districts where school boards in recent years have become culture-war battlegrounds. “Over the past few years, schools have increasingly become sites of conflict,” said John Rogers, professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles who researches issues related to democracy, education, and inequality. “That has made schools more contentious spaces and education politics more partisan.” In some ways, what’s happening in K-12 schools reflects broader societal divisions over the Israel-Hamas war, whether it’s on college campuses, in workplaces, or in government. But experts say there are other dynamics at play in public schools that have set the stage for the uproar seen today. In recent years, schools have come under attack by rightwing extremist organizations like Moms for Liberty that launch “conflict campaigns” to bring partisan debates into schools in order to sow distrust in public institutions, Rogers says. Usually they target lessons on racism or LGBTQ+ issues and encourage book bans. These groups exert most of their efforts in purple and blue districts – including in regions around Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area – experts say. These groups aren’t fueling the school-based tensions around Israel and Gaza. But Rogers says their fringe methods have normalized the airing of political grievances in education. Another factor lies in pandemic-era school closures, when classrooms were swiftly fettered to prevent the spread of Covid, said Jon Valant, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and director of its Brown Center for Education Policy. Unhappy with the pace of reopening and the institution of mask mandates, parents and community members showed up in school board meetings in unprecedented numbers to voice their grievances. “What came out of it was a lot of parents getting frustrated and mobilized,” Valant said, adding that those same organizing methods spread to other issues. From the racial reckoning following the 2020 murder of George Floyd to the implementation of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, schools have become “a magnet for any political controversy” in ways we haven’t seen before, he said: “There is heightened attention and sensitivity in schools to all kinds of political issues right now.” Taken together, these factors have made it so that schools are struggling to generate productive discussions about complex issues. And they have put teachers and administrators on the defensive, leading some administrators to see official statements as ways of getting ahead of pressure from parents or community members. As educators have been targeted for supposedly teaching “critical race theory” or advancing a “woke” agenda for supporting transgender students, amid school board fights, many teachers today are concerned about how bringing contentious topics into their curriculum may impact their own careers. “Teachers are generally not engaging because they’re also fearful of being reported,” said Andrene Castro, assistant professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. In Alameda county, for instance, one Palestinian American teacher expressed concerns that having her students read texts written by Palestinian authors could lead to repercussions. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion But while decrying an incident for which there is a consensus of opinions, such as a mass shooting, can be straightforward, drawing a line in the sand regarding a contentious global conflict can rile people up, especially in districts with diverse student populations, explained Rogers. “Statements don’t work as well in climates where there are cross-cutting values or interests in the community,” he said. Such is the case in Oakland, where school district officials have come to a head with teachers who have called for a teach-in focused on Palestinian history. What’s more, in cases where schools or local governments bungled statements and had to issue retractions, their efforts to get out ahead of an issue spurred new problems. “There’s a need for a good deal of complex and nuanced understanding in order to contextualize the issue that sometimes educators will not have access to,” Rogers continued. For Ailen Arreaza, executive director of national education advocacy organization Parents Together, there is at least one binding thread when it comes to parents’ interests: student safety. Arreaza says that in the weeks following 7 October, she heard from a number of parents who were concerned about the targeting of Jewish and Muslim students. (Days after the war began, a Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death in an alleged hate crime.) For these parents, Arreaza said, having access to practical resources about tolerance and bullying – not assertive political statements – was top of mind. “They just want their kids to be safe,” she said. The chief concern for education experts is that the turmoil happening outside of the classroom directs resources away from the facilitation of critical conversations around Israel and Palestine within them. “When you pretend like these things are not happening, students become disengaged,” said Castro, thinking back to 2012, when Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was killed by a member of the neighborhood community watch in Florida. At the time, Castro was teaching high school in a diverse district. She said that the unspoken rule among her colleagues was not to bring the event into the classroom. “There was a similar silence around it,” said Castro, explaining that while teachers avoided discussions about the killing, their Black and brown students wrestled with intense feelings and struggled to connect with the curriculum. That’s why now is a critical time for educators to help students and communities work collectively towards an understanding. “[Students] want to be able to make those connections. That’s where teachers are important,” said Castro.

Teddy Thomas obituary

2023-09-10

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/10/teddy-thomas-obituary

My father, Teddy Thomas, who has died aged 89, was a prominent figure in adult education both nationally and internationally, publishing and editing numerous books and articles (as JE Thomas) and serving as the Robert Peers professor of adult education at the University of Nottingham from 1989 until his retirement in 1996. He was also head of the department of adult education and dean of the faculty of education, and in 1990 was appointed senior pro-vice-chancellor of the university. In 1982 he co-founded the International Journal of Lifelong Education, which he co-edited for its first 15 years. Teddy wrote 16 books on such diverse topics as the last invasion of Britain, the definitive history of English prisons, a biography of the Victorian writer and clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould and a social history of modern Japan. His final book, The Grandest Larceny, an account of the creation of the state of Israel, will be published posthumously this month. He was named James Edward, but known as Teddy from childhood. Despite a humble start in a council house in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, six-year-old Teddy overcame the loss of his father, James – killed when his fishing trawler hit a German mine – to pursue a path of academic excellence. The 1944 Education Act allowed him, encouraged by his mother, Margaret (nee Absalom), a housewife, to attend Haverfordwest grammar school, which led him to study English at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he was tutored by JRR Tolkien. Ultimately, he earned five degrees, including two doctorates, from universities including London, York and Nottingham, as well as his BA and MA from Oxford. Teddy embarked on a varied career after his studies, working for the Colonial Office in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) from 1957 to 1959, and later served in the Prison Service, at Feltham borstal and then as assistant governor of Wakefield prison from 1962 to 1967, where he developed a simple but powerful mantra: “No one is beyond hope. Anyone, given a chance, can change.” But his true calling was in education, and in his mid-30s he found his life’s purpose, joining Hull University as a lecturer in 1967, then moving to Nottingham in 1979. He joined the University of Nottingham in 1979 as reader in the department of adult education. His own story of personal transformation through education was the driving force behind his deep conviction that anyone can transcend their circumstances, with the right opportunities and support. Teddy had many talents – he was, for instance, an accomplished musician, playing the trumpet for the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, among other bands, choirs and orchestras. He met Olwen Yolland, a biologist, in Haverfordwest in 1953, and they married in 1957. He is survived by Olwen and their two children – my brother, Simon, and me – and four grandchildren, Joe, Emily, Henry and Tilly.

Letters: Sir Tim Brighouse obituary

2024-01-22

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/22/letters-sir-tim-brighouse-obituary

When I was headteacher of Blurton high school, Stoke-on-Trent, Tim Brighouse kindly agreed to award prizes at our annual ceremony; I had known him since my days as a young teacher at Bicester school, Oxfordshire, in the 1980s. The evening took twice as long as normal because Tim insisted on talking to each prizewinner. One Year Seven boy came on to the stage at around 7.30pm for the history award and reappeared after nine for a sports prize. “Not just good at history then,” he said as he presented the boy’s award; a remarkable and well-loved man, and a huge loss to the world of education.Robert Powell The breadth of respect for Tim Brighouse was brought home to me in 1993, when he had come under attack from the politician John Patten. On a train from Oxford, I was approached by someone I didn’t know, but recognised as a prominent figure in the county’s science and business world. He thought I was “something to do with the county council” (I was), in which case did I know Tim Brighouse personally? (I did). He then said he feared pursuing libel actions could be very expensive, so was there an appeal to help Tim out? I confirmed that a support fund had apparently been set up. After delving into his wallet, he produced some high-denomination notes, thrust them into my hand and told me to give them to Tim, with his best wishes.John Harwood

Higher education regulator to make freedom of speech priority next year

2022-12-15

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/15/higher-education-regulator-to-make-freedom-of-speech-priority-next-year

OfS expected to gain new powers to regulate freedom of speech issues in England The Office for Students will make freedom of speech and “off-limits” subjects on university campuses one of its top priorities for next year, despite the regulator receiving only around 60 complaints over the last four years. Susan Lapworth, the OfS’s chief regulator, said students’ experience of higher education in England was “not just measured through statistics,” and could be affected by the attitudes towards issues such as freedom of speech at the institutions they attend. “We note the frequent press reports of incidents that cause concern in this area, alongside the 60 or so notifications we have received on free speech issues since 2018,” Lapworth said. “This is not simply about high-profile cases where speakers have been barred or turned away on the basis of their public statements – although a small number of such cases is too many. “We are concerned about the perception that attitudes and cultural assumptions in the academic environment mean that discussions aren’t mooted, topics are tacitly seen as off limits or people who disagree legitimately on issues may feel silenced.” The 60 complaints or notifications from students or their representatives since 2018 are in contrast to the 232 notifications for all categories received by the OfS in 2021 alone. The higher education regulator for England is to begin surveying students on their impressions regarding free speech from next year, as well as polling academic staff for the first time. The OfS is expected to gain new powers to regulate freedom of speech issues involving universities and student unions, as a result of legislation going through parliament. But the bill has been significantly altered in the Lords, with peers removing a clause that would have created a new statutory right to sue universities by those who felt their freedom of speech had been infringed. But Lapworth – introducing the OfS’s 2021-22 annual report – said universities needed to balance free speech with “careful consideration of potentially competing legal rights and obligations,” such as the protections against unlawful discrimination and harassment in the Equality Act. Hollie Chandler, head of policy for the Russell Group of universities, said that while the OfS was right to highlight the issue, university leaders were already “playing an active role” in upholding freedom of speech on campuses across the UK. “Given the importance of free speech, it is right that we keep protections under review. But regulatory action needs to be taken on the basis of accurate data rather than partial analysis or inflammatory stories,” Chandler said. “Contrary to some media reports, the overwhelming majority of events featuring controversial speakers go ahead successfully. As the OfS takes on additional free speech responsibilities, its independence and ability to make impartial judgments will be critical to ensure students, staff and the sector more broadly have confidence in its approach.” Lapworth said the OfS is also consulting over how universities deal with harassment and sexual misconduct on campus, and will be conducting further research, including a pilot survey of students. “We have minimal information about instances of sexual misconduct, and their prevalence in different universities or colleges,” Lapworth said. The regulator said that online or digital learning had “an increasing and innovative role” in higher education, but warned: “Where digital delivery is poor or used as a cheap substitute for traditional teaching, it undermines the credibility of the good, and can reduce the sense of community that comes from getting together in person.”

Bernard Godding obituary

2024-02-19

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/19/bernard-godding-obituary

My friend and colleague Bernard Godding, who has died aged 82, was one of the more imaginative adult educationists of his generation. As head of adult education for central Norfolk for nearly 20 years, he was known for his commitment to visiting classes across the wider Norwich area and his encouragement of new tutors. Bernard was not a rule-follower and he was determined to give communities what they needed. He had an ability to work round systems “for the students”, as he put it. This irritated some senior managers who were forever finding ways to rein him in, but fortunately he was strongly supported by centre heads and tutors. This led to some groundbreaking advances. Provision at regional forensic units, in long-stay hospitals, and on social housing estates, brought people into learning who had not had the opportunities before. It was his idea to create a national project to improve the quality of education for adults with learning difficulties, which he persuaded the then National Institute of Adult Education to put in place in 1988, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Born in south London, Bernard was the son of Joan (nee Darker), a teacher, and Alfred Godding, an engineering draughtsman. He went to Sutton county grammar school, Surrey, then to Bretton Hall College of Education, Yorkshire, to gain his teaching certificate, despite leaving school with few qualifications. On graduation in 1965, he married Naomi Vatcher, a fellow student, and taught for four years at Queniborough primary school, Leicestershire, before moving in 1969 to a primary school in Wigston, where he was also given the chance to manage the adult education offer until 1972. This was a creative time, establishing new courses for adults. A two-year stint in administration in further education at Leicestershire county hall followed. In 1974 he took up a split post at Burleigh Community College, teaching young people and managing adult education. While there he worked closely with the local Asian community, gaining both trust and friendships. Having been told he would not progress without a degree, Bernard combined working full-time with studying for a BA in science at the Open University (1976). He followed this with a diploma in adult education from Nottingham University (1978). The following year Bernard was appointed as area head for adult education in central Norfolk. As the county coordinator for adult basic education, I worked with Bernard for 10 years, and we remained in regular contact throughout our lives. Bernard retired in 1997, but his passionate support for adult education continued with the Educational Centres Association (ECA). As chief executive and chair of ECA nationally for 20 years he ran many conferences and projects in every region in England, virtually single-handed. He was appointed MBE in 2010. Naomi, their daughter, Rachel, and grandchildren, Ellie and Peter, survive him.

How Tim Brighouse improved teaching | Letters

2023-12-26

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/26/how-tim-brighouse-made-teaching-better

Martin Kirk and Marilyn Rowley recall their dealings with the inspirational champion of education, who died earlier this month Your obituary of Tim Brighouse (20 December) mentions his writing of letters to classroom teachers and ancillary staff. What it didn’t mention was how difficult those letters sometimes were to decipher. I have several such handwritten letters from his time in Oxfordshire, and the very first one, on my appointment as headteacher, ended with, I think: “Your local head colleagues will also help – they may even tell you how to read this.” I remember the partnership meetings of secondary schools plus feeder primaries, when he brought wine and loads of encouragement. He remembered everyone – I felt that if we’d met walking down some street in foreign parts he would know who we were. A rare model of a chief education officer. And then there were the unannounced visits, when children were his prime focus. When he left Oxfordshire he was sorely missed, and the world of education has now lost a true champion.Martin KirkBotesdale, Suffolk I once wrote to Tim Brighouse in despair about the effect some educational “reform” would have on my nursery class. He replied by return post and advised me to collect all the relevant paperwork, set fire to it in the garden and dance around it. “It won’t make any difference, but it might make you feel better,” he wrote. His letter certainly did.Marilyn RowleyManchester Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

Is there a GCSE in pointless research? Give the Department for Education a grade 9 | Brief Letters

2023-02-12

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/feb/12/is-there-a-gcse-in-pointless-research-give-the-department-for-education-a-grade-9

School absence and exam results | Raven reasoning | Standing up for older people | Next-level mansplaining | Death penalty “Previous research published by the Department for Education (DfE) shows that pupils with high rates of absence get worse results overall than pupils who attend more often,” you report (Third of 15-year-olds persistently absent from school in England since September, 10 February). Why did the DfE waste its money, when any teacher could have told it?John CrawshawWakefield With the country in the state it is, has anyone checked whether the ravens are still in the Tower of London? There’s been one in my garden in Wiltshire for the last two days – I have never seen one before – which may be trying to tell me something (or may just be partial to leftover cat food).Mary FinchDitteridge, Wiltshire We have just returned from a trip to London. Several times while travelling on the busy underground, people got up to offer us a seat. I still don’t know why, but perhaps Adrian Chiles does (Age has caught up with me – and it feels appalling, 8 February). Jeanette HamiltonBuxton, Derbyshire Jim McLean takes mansplaining to another level by ignoring the substance of Rebecca Solnit’s article while using it as an excuse to talk about himself (Letters, 9 February).John RobertsLondon Surely the issue is not those who don’t commit crimes after they’re executed, but those who didn’t commit crimes before they were (Rishi Sunak rebukes Tory vice-chair for backing death penalty, 9 February).John SaxbeeHaverfordwest, Pembrokeshire

‘It felt like a dictatorship’: UK teaching experts hit out at government bid to cancel them

2023-09-30

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/30/it-felt-like-a-dictatorship-uk-teaching-experts-hit-out-at-government-bid-to-cancel-them

Specialists critical of official policy claim secret files are being kept on them by the Department for Education It was a Tuesday night in March, two days before Ruth Swailes, an expert on early years education, was due to travel to Manchester to speak at a conference. Nothing about the event – launching a government-funded hub to improve the education of children under five – had struck her as controversial. But that evening she opened a message from her co- presenter, Dr Aaron Bradbury, saying the government was blocking them both from attending. Moreover, the multi-academy trust organising the event said because these two “unsuitable” experts were to be given a platform, the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to pull the plug on the whole conference. “It was shocking,” Swailes says now. “I emailed the DfE straight away but they just said they’d get back to me. It all felt very cloak and dagger.” The organisers were horrified – and adamant that Swailes and Bradbury, co-authors of one of the top-selling books on early childhood, must be allowed to speak. After some negotiation, the DfE agreed that the event could happen, but only if Swailes and Bradbury appeared virtually via Zoom. Swailes assumes this was so that officials could “cut us off if they didn’t like what we were saying”. The trust refused Zoom, insisting they couldn’t make 120 childminders and nursery workers give up their weekend to trek across the country then make them watch a screen. After Swailes and Bradbury informed the DfE that the lawyers they had consulted took a very dim view of attempts to silence them, the two experts were allowed to speak in person. But Swailes notes that a senior government official turned up to “monitor” them. Bradbury, who was actually advising the DfE on workforce development at the time, found the incident “traumatic”. “To be told that we couldn’t have this debate felt like we were living in a dictatorship, not a democracy,” he says. Swailes was unsettled too. She filed a subject access request (SAR), which compelled the DfE to release any emails or documents mentioning her name. What came back was “scary”, she said, and opened a whole can of worms across the sector as other education experts known for voicing their opinions launched their own investigations. “I discovered they had been keeping tabs on me,” Swailes says. The file she unearthed flagged tweets in which she was critical of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. It noted occasions when she “liked” tweets promoting Birth to 5 Matters, guidance written by a coalition of early years experts rather than the government. One email calls her a “long-time critic” of the government’s early years policy – something she says isn’t true. Whichever officials were following Swailes on Twitter (now X) – their names were redacted, so she has no idea – will also have seen posts about her husband Pete’s battle with terminal cancer, and the tribe of strangers and friends who shared pictures of their “snazzy socks” to cheer him up. “When we met officials to talk about their attempt to cancel us, I pointed out that I am a freelancer and a single parent, recently widowed,” she explains. “I said: ‘I have two daughters, and my reputation is our livelihood, so none of this is OK.’” Nine other education experts have now uncovered similar – often very lengthy – DfE files recording their tweets and any critical views. Many more are awaiting results. Carmel O’Hagan, a consultant and expert in modern foreign languages, says reading the 37 pages of correspondence about her, which included an Excel spreadsheet detailing who she interacted with, was “distressing and hurtful”. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion One redacted DfE email commenting on her Twitter posts says she had “an axe to grind” because she worked for Cilt, the national centre for languages which the government closed and then decided to recreate. It said she had “a will to be destructive”. O’Hagan describes this as “deeply unprofessional and puerile”. Rachel Lofthouse, professor of teacher education at Leeds Beckett University, has extracted a DfE record on her stretching back five years and covering more than 60 pages. “They are pulling up old tweets I’ve written in new emails to each other,” she says. Prof Lofthouse says she filed the SAR because people she knew had been warned by the department that she was “persona non grata”. “It has left me feeling jaded,” she says. “Instead of secretly monitoring me, why don’t they discuss these policy issues with me? It feels unethical.” Swailes insists that none of those who have been monitored will be silenced. “They tried to ruin me, but they have only made me more vocal. Every so often I tag them and say: ‘You can add this to my file’.”

Sunak’s plan to ditch A-levels is out of touch with reality, says union

2023-10-04

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/04/sunaks-plan-to-ditch-a-levels-is-out-of-touch-with-reality-says-union

Head of National Education Union says new qualification would need 5,300 additional teachers in England Rishi Sunak wants to scrap A-levels and replace them with a single qualification that includes compulsory English and maths, bringing upheaval to sixth-form education in England that would last a decade. The new baccalaureate-style Advanced British Standard, which Sunak announced in his speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, would also kill off the T-level vocational qualification the government launched just three years ago. Sunak told delegates: “We will introduce the new rigorous, knowledge-rich, Advanced British Standard which will bring together A-levels and T-levels into a new single qualification for our school leavers.” The proposals would increase the number of classroom hours by 15% for most sixth-formers, adding about an hour a day, while requiring students to study “some form of English and maths” until the age of 18. Rather than three A-levels or a single T-level course, students would be able to study five subjects, including “major” and “minor” subjects from both technical and academic options. But details of how the new qualification would work remain sparse. The Department for Education (DfE) said a consultation document would be issued this autumn, followed by a white paper next year. The DfE’s briefing document, released after Sunak’s speech, said the qualification “will take a decade to deliver”, meaning that children who started primary school reception classes last month would be the first to be affected by the reform in 2033-34, assuming it is adopted. Some experts welcomed the opportunity for students to study a wider range of subjects, but others were sceptical, questioning how widely different courses could be merged into a single qualification. Sunak said the additional 195 hours of teaching would allow subjects to be studied in the same depth as current A-levels. Union leaders said the longer hours and extra classes in maths and English would overstretch the teaching workforce. Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union, said Sunak’s plans were “out of touch with reality”, given that schools were already short of 4,300 maths and 2,600 English teachers. “Post-16 curriculum reform is worthy of debate, but simply increasing the number of hours taught would require an additional 5,300 teachers. This year the government missed their recruitment target for secondary teachers by 48%,” he said. Sunak’s proposals included increased tax-free retention bonuses of up to £30,000 over the first five years for school and further education college teachers in key subjects. But without more staff, Sunak’s plans “are likely to prove a pipedream”, according to Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. The proposal to terminate T-levels, the flagship qualification designed and launched by the current government, is a big U-turn after years of investment by ministers and colleges in creating a new vocational course to compete with A-levels. But T-levels failed to capture the public’s imagination despite extensive promotion, with new courses plagued by delays while colleges complained of difficulties in attracting qualified staff and finding employers willing to offer students the lengthy placements required. The proposals came as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reported that the budgets of England’s state schools were being eroded by rising costs. “School funding per pupil is in fact increasing by only just about enough to keep pace with overall school costs. Policy debate should reflect the acute pressures on school budgets,” said Luke Sibieta, an IFS research fellow.