More than 79,000 children missed out on a place at their first-choice secondary school for this September, apparently.

However, Nick Gibb Minister for Schools seems to think that this means, ” there simply aren’t enough good schools.”

No it doesn’t, Nick.

The figures simply show how many kids missed out on their choices, not that there aren’t enough good schools.

It may be the case, for example, that an area only has good schools. Or that an area only has bad schools. Yet we wouldn’t know that from application trends, only that specific schools have been chosen over others. Parents may be making the best of a good lot, or the best of a bad lot.

We can’t find out how good a school is from the number of applications. We need to look at other measures. The Government loves league tables, so they’d recommend that measure. Others, like us, would expect schools to be chosen on location, word-of-mouth, former pupils, newness of building and facilities, transport links and so on.

But number of applications isn’t one of them.

The finding comes from a survey of 2,275 children aged 11-17 and 1,761 adults aged 18-24 carried out by the charity in 2009. The study follows an earlier NSPCC survey of the childhood experiences of 18-24 year olds in 1998-99.

Despite the high amount of abuse found, the NSPCC study reveals falling amounts of some types of abuse over the last 30 years – showing that progress can be made in the fight against child cruelty. The charity believes that this can be attributed to heightened awareness and action that has contributed to changing public attitudes and behaviours towards children.

Overall, the findings raise concern that the vast majority of abused and neglected children are not getting the vital help they need – either from statutory services or informal support networks in the community. There are currently around 46,000 children of all ages on a local authority child protection plan or register.

Such lack of support can cause serious harm to children’s development and long-term health. The study indicates that severely abused and neglected children are almost nine times more likely to try and kill themselves and almost five times more likely to self-harm than children who have not been severely abused or neglected.

The NSPCC sees schools, along with other professionals and the wider community, as vital in helping to identify hidden cases of child abuse in the UK.

Andrew Flanagan, chief executive of the NSPCC, said:

“There are likely to be severely maltreated children in every secondary school across the country. Some will face abuse and neglect while still at school. Others will have suffered abuse and neglect in early childhood.

“Teachers have a critical role to play in helping these children, as outside the home, school is the main place of safety for a child. They must be supported to identify possible signs of abuse and neglect, like feeling suicidal. They can then work with social workers, health and other professionals to prevent the long-term harm it causes.”

The NSPCC is urging all schools to use its information and resources for schools, teachers and education professionals

If you are worried about a child you can call the NSPCC’s a free, confidential, 24-hour Helpline on 0808 800 5000

About the NSPCC
The NSPCC is the UK’s leading children’s charity specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children. The NSPCC runs projects and services across the United Kingdom and Channel Islands, including ChildLine, the UK’s free, confidential 24-hour helpline for children and young people.

ChildLine 0800 1111

NSPCC Helpline 0808 800 5000.

Twitter – www.twitter.com/nspcc

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/nspcc

Web – www.nspcc.org.uk

YouTube – www.youtube.com/nspcc

Video:

Everyday Choices – Video promotion for the NSPCC Helpline

A Difficult call – How the NSPCC Helpline works

CASE STUDIES

Andy, 22, research participant

“I spent my childhood feeling like a faulty product which my parents couldn’t take back to the shop and they were angry all the time because they couldn’t return me.

“They punished me with violence and told me off for crying. They told me I was worthless and no good. They would always try to demean me.

“When I was four years old my mum threw me down the stairs and broke my arm. Another time, when I was about nine years old, she hit me around the head with a stiletto heel.

“I wasn’t allowed to be with other kids outside of primary school, so most of them stopped being friends with me and then started bullying me. I became more and more withdrawn. The bullying continued pretty much constantly until I was in sixth form.

“I left home just before my 16th birthday. I was vulnerable really. I went through a phase of drinking and smoking and dabbling in drugs. After that, I took two overdoses in quick succession.

“I had only talked to a few close friends about my childhood before I took part in the NSPCC research.

“When the doors are closed, kids only know what goes on in their own family.”

Pete, 20, research participant

“Over the years, my mum kicked and beat me, she throttled me, threw me down the stairs, pushed me into a scolding hot bath. She once held my head under water and another time she shoved a full bar of soap in my mouth. There are too many incidents to recount.”

“I’m still living with the feelings and fears from those days now, in my twenties.”

“When I was very young, I didn’t know any different. The hostility and violence was just part of life with my mum. Her answer to most things was to lash out or scream at us. That’s how I was brought up.

“For a long time, I accepted what was going on at home as normal. But no child should have to live in fear or on edge in their own home – that’s the place they should feel safest.”

This only underlines what everyone already knows: no Government act is independent from the political context in which it is carried out. Despite having no political figures leading it, the review panel has been told by Government what its findings should be; it will now proceed to confirm those findings. Michael Gove is a journalist turned political ingenue, while those leading the review are all involved in education and include some pretty big names – who have, ironically, reached their pre-eminent position by advocating and implementing progressive and non-traditional teaching, in an attempt to interest all children in school, not just those who would enjoy learning whatever style of teaching is used. However, the academics and practitioners on the review panel will have no opportunity to voice what they actually think about the way the curriculum should be reformed: they can never come to any conclusions other than those they have already been ordered to come to.

There is, of course, not much that’s new here; only, perhaps, the phenomenon of this political skewing of apparently “objective” reviews being reported openly and as a matter of course in the press. Governments have always used academically credible and politically impartial review panels as a mask for fulfilling their own agenda. The Rose Review, a so-called “Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum”, was Labour through and through. Led by Sir Jim Rose, who had long been a favourite of the Labour education policy people, it advocated in 2009 a massive overhaul of the the primary curriculum. It was clearly an enormous undertaking, consulting widely and emerging with some genuinely radical and well-thought-through ideas.

Of course, as soon as the Coalition took power around a year later, any steps towards implementing the Review’s findings were dropped immediately, and the Review was never heard from again, hidden in the archive of the Department for Education website. This is the kind of wastage that Government should deal with, over and above the ubiquitous “efficiency savings”: despite being an “Independent Review”, the Tories could not – even if they had wanted to – have used any of its ideas, for fear of assimilating what was effectively Labour policy.

On a personal level too, I find the ideas behind Gove’s new review somewhat chilling. He has explicitly said he wants more “facts” in the national curriculum, as if “facts” were somehow of value in and of themselves. Teaching over the past twenty years has shifted away from this idea of education as equivalent to the accumulation of facts, towards a view that it is concepts, skills and analytical processes that a child really learns at school. It is easy to see why: is it important to know the fact that George shoots Lenny at the end of Of Mice and Men? No, of course not. But it is important to understand the thousands of reasons why he feels he has to do it, his feelings afterwards, and how Steinbeck’s skilful writing allows the reader to understand the significance of this ending to this book.

It is Gove’s understanding of education as simply this process of empirical building up that offends me, and it provides a consistent conceptual thread throughout his policy. He has also denounced the idea that GCSE English Literature requires the study of only one novel – as if making pupils study ten novels in the same timespan would somehow make them better-educated than studying one in great depth; nevermind that fact that this is a minimum; and that as well as novels each pupil will also study a good body of poetry, and several short stories, plays and non-fiction texts.

I find myself agreeing again with Chris Keates when she colourfully says that teachers “want another curriculum review like a hole in the head”. This review is clearly nothing to do with what is good for teachers, and especially nothing to do with what is good for pupils: it is an overtly political act, and nothing more.
Paidtoreason is currently a teacher, and has experienced politics from various angles: as a Lib Dem MP’s researcher, a temp in the lower echelons of several Government departments, and a deeply unenthusiastic lobbyist for a morally dubious organisation headed by a former Tory MP. He has been unimpressed with most of what he’s seen, and writes about it at the paidtoreason blog.

That TF teachers are working in schools that need them is made much of in TF’s literature. In the Summary Information Return 2009 Of Aims, Activities and Achievements for Teach First TF declares its “mission is to address educational disadvantage” with “the main beneficiaries of the programme…the pupils taught by Teach First teachers in some of England’s most challenging…schools.” While on their website they make repeated reference – we counted at least three pages of search results – to the challenging nature of their schools.

In the media, too, it is believed that TF “trains graduates to teach in struggling inner-city schools”, and “recruits graduates to teach in inner-city schools”,

To find these most needy 240 schools (see below), TF takes into account:

1. where schools have more than 50% of their pupils living in the lowest 30% of the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI – percentage of children that live in families that are income deprived i.e., in receipt of Income Support, Income based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Working Families’ Tax Credit or Disabled Person’s Tax Credit below a given threshold). In other words, the IDACI measures the proportion of children under the age of 16 in an area living in low income households.

2. and where 5+ A*-C GCSEs results fall below the lowest 30% of the national distribution

This doesn’t seem bad. Common sense would tell us that there has to be some kind of link between poverty and educational achievement. However the link between them has been proven to be complex – why do rich kids do badly/poor kids well at school if all you need is affluence? – and such a connection is arguably of real significance only at the extreme end of the poverty scale.

It could also be argued – and is – that, ultimately, TF and other education reforms of recent times are simply window-dressing on a problem with deeper causes rooted in the underlying structure of society. Poverty then isn’t the only cause of underachievement neither is it necessarily the primary cause of educational disadvantage.

It appears then that TF is perhaps right to bang on about how they recruit the best graduates and place them in deserving schools, but it is asking a lot of new TF teachers to do something about the vicious structures that cause and keep on causing this educational disadvantage in the first place.

It is, of course, still the case that TF teachers are working at schools where GCSE results may be below average. There they can at least try to do something about other non-poverty factors leading to underachievement and so fulfil the TF mission anyway.

But, again, taking an average like this leaves a lot to be desired. As we know, averages are just shorthand for more complicated and nuanced information. For example, a good secondary modern with open selection would expect to have an average lower than a selective school. Yet it is true that they could have future Russell Group undergrads among their pupils.

With such a mix of students it is clear how TFers could be deployed. They could be given the star pupils in school top-set while the difficult kids are given to more experienced staff. This also very nicely solves another problem for schools, that of older staff on higher and more costly salaries. Having to work with the unruly is not good for morale or stress levels, and the knock-on effect is that the more experienced staff member not too far off early retirement will leave as soon as possible. This deprives pupils of a quality member of staff but very neatly reduces the wage bill.

Another problem with using GCSE results to gauge school need for TFers, is that it isn’t applicable at primary level. For even with child prodigies, primary pupils don’t normally sit them.

None of this seems to fit with the charity’s mission to address educational disadvantage. Poverty isn’t directly correlated to educational underachievement. The measures used to assess for need are questionable e.g. primary kids don’t take GCSEs. And recruiting newbies and losing experienced members of staff is hardly to a pupil’s educational advantage.

But what is really eye-opening about TF’s approach to challenging schools is the complete and utter mismatch between TF schools and schools that are truly educationally disdavantaged i.e. those on special measures.

By end of 2009, 251 English schools were deemed be subject to special measures. That is,:

1. failing to give pupils an acceptable standard of education, and
2. the people responsible for leading, managing or governing not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvement.

To us special measures seems a pretty clear and straightforward measure of educational disadvantage. A school is either failing or not. If it is, the pupils are disadvantaged and TF – as a charity on a mission to address this – should be involved. The problem with the TF measure of educational disadvantage – the IDACI – is that it is about poverty, as much as anything else. And as we have noted poverty isn’t a proxy for educational disadvantage but one of many potential contributory causes.

According to OFSTED, the 56 secondary schools subject to special measures at the end of 2009 were:

Abbeydale Grange School - Sheffield
Alderman Smith School and Sports College - Warwickshire
Andrew Marvell Business and Enterprise College - Kingston upon Hull
Burleigh Community College - Leicestershire
Cecil Jones College - Southend-On-Sea
David Lister School - Kingston upon Hull
Denefield School - West Berkshire
Dyson Perrins CofE Sports College - Worcestershire
Elliott School - Wandsworth
Endeavour High School - Kingston upon Hull
Epsom and Ewell High School - Surrey
Evesham, Simon de Montfort Middle School - Worcestershire
Fullhurst Community College - Leicester
Furtherwick Park School - Essex
Handsworth Grange Community Sports College - Sheffield
Hatfield Visual Arts College - Doncaster
Humberston Maths and Computing College - North East Lincolnshire
Kirkley Community High School - Suffolk
Lawnswood School - Leeds
Magnus CofE School - Nottinghamshire
Medway Community College - Medway
Newfield Secondary School - Sheffield
Parklands High School - Liverpool
Parrs Wood High School - Manchester
Pensnett High School - Dudley
Queen Elizabeth’s Mercian School - Staffordshire
Queensbury School - Bradford
Richard Rose Central Academy - Cumbria
Saint George’s Church of England School - Kent
Sandon High School - Stoke-On-Trent
Scalby School - North Yorkshire
Seaham School of Technology - Durham
Sheffield Park Academy - Sheffield
Shuttleworth College - Lancashire
St John Fisher Catholic High School - Peterborough
St Neots Community College - Cambridgeshire
St Peter’s High School - Essex
Stretford Grammar School - Trafford
The Coleshill School – A Maths and Computing College - Warwickshire
The Hundred of Hoo Comprehensive School - Medway
The John Loughborough School - Haringey
The Lindsey School and Community Arts College - North East Lincolnshire
The Mountfitchet Mathematics and Computing College - Essex
The Park High School - Norfolk
The Royal Docks Community School - Newham
The Rushden Community College Specialising in Mathematics and Computing - Northamptonshire
The Verdin High School - Cheshire West and Chester
Thornaby Community School - Stockton-on-Tees
Unity College - Northamptonshire
Weston Favell School - Northamptonshire
Wheatley Park School - Oxfordshire
Wilmington Enterprise College - Kent
Winterton Comprehensive School with Specialist Status in Engineering - North Lincolnshire
Woodside Middle School - Bedford

What is striking is that on Ofsted’s list of 56 secondary schools subject to special measures, only 1 – Shuttleworth College in Lancashire – is on TF’s list of schools.

And this quite amazing disparity between TF ‘challenging’ schools and special measures schools is even more evident with primary schools.

The following 171 primary schools are on OFSTED’s 2009 list of schools subject to special measures:

Ackton Pastures Primary School - Wakefield
All Saints Church of England Primary School, Stand - Bury
Allenton Community Primary School - Derby
Appleton Primary School - Kingston upon Hull
Arthur Dye Primary School - Gloucestershire
Ashwood Park Primary School - Dudley
Aslacton Primary School - Norfolk
Bankwood Community Primary School - Sheffield
Barn Croft Primary School - Waltham Forest
Barnehurst Junior (Foundation) School - Bexley
Beech Hill Community Primary School - Wigan
Bell Lane Combined School - Buckinghamshire
Bell Wood Community Primary School - Kent
Bellinge Primary School - Northamptonshire
Bemerton St John Church of England Aided Primary School - Wiltshire
Bentfield Primary School - Essex
Bewbush Community Primary - West Sussex
Bewsey Lodge Primary School - Warrington
Blueberry Park - Liverpool
Boston Staniland Primary & Nursery School - Lincolnshire
Bridgewater Primary School - Salford
Broadlands Primary School - Herefordshire
Brooklands Primary School - Greenwich
Broom Valley Community School - Rotherham
Browney Primary School - Durham
Brownhills West Primary School - Walsall
Caen Community Primary School - Devon
Calcot Junior School - West Berkshire
Callands Primary School - Warrington
Canberra Primary School - Hammersmith and Fulham
Causeway Green Primary School - Sandwell
Chineham Park Primary School - Hampshire
Christ Church Pellon CofE VC Primary School - Calderdale
Cleves Primary School - Newham
Compton C.E. Primary School - West Berkshire
Conway Primary School - Birmingham
Cottage Grove Primary School - Portsmouth
Courthouse Green Primary School - Coventry
Crab Lane Primary School - Manchester
Cragside CofE Controlled Primary School - Northumberland
Crawford Primary School - Southwark
Crockerne Church of England Primary School - North Somerset
Culvers House Primary School - Sutton
Dearne Goldthorpe Primary School - Barnsley
Deepcar St John’s Church of England Junior School - Sheffield
Denaby Main Primary School - Doncaster
Dilhorne Endowed CofE (VA) Primary School - Staffordshire
Dorothy Barley Junior School and Special Needs Base (MLD) - Barking and Dagenham
Ducklington Primary School - Oxfordshire
Dukesgate Primary School - Salford
East Park Junior School - Wolverhampton
Elmhurst School - Buckinghamshire
Elmrise Primary School - Bournemouth
Ethel Wainwright Primary School - Nottinghamshire
Farfield Primary and Nursery School - Bradford
Farnworth Church of England Controlled Primary School - Halton
Filton Avenue Junior School - Bristol
Fosse Primary School - Leicester
Foundry Primary School - Birmingham
George Eliot Infants’ School - Westminster
Germander Park School - Milton Keynes
Glenfrome Primary School - Bristol
Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School - Croydon
Goose Green Primary School - Southwark
Gordon Junior School - Medway
Great Harwood St John’s Church of England Primary School - Lancashire
Hall Road Primary School - Kingston upon Hull
Hallgate Primary School Cottingham - East Riding of Yorkshire
Harden Primary School - Walsall
Haslington Primary School - Cheshire East
Haveley Hey Community School - Manchester
Henry Fawcett Primary School - Lambeth
Heronswood Primary School - Worcestershire
Heyworth Primary School - West Sussex
Hibaldstow Primary School - North Lincolnshire
Highfields Primary School - Doncaster
Highley Community Primary School - Shropshire
Hollin Primary School - Rochdale
Holmfield Primary School - Leicestershire
Huthwaite All Saint’s CofE (Aided) Infant School - Nottinghamshire
Hylton Red House Primary School - Sunderland
Jervoise Junior and Infant School - Birmingham
John Rankin Junior School - West Berkshire
Killamarsh Junior School - Derbyshire
Kiwi Primary School - Wiltshire
Knights Templar Church of England/Methodist Commununity School - Somerset
Langley Primary School - Sandwell
Larkholme Primary School - Lancashire
Lickhill Primary School - Worcestershire
Little Dewchurch CofE Primary School - Herefordshire
Lyon Park Junior School - Brent
Manchester Road Primary School - Tameside
Manor Primary School - Wirral
Marish Primary School - Slough
Marlborough Road Primary School - Salford
Meath Green Junior School - Surrey
Milton Court Primary School - Kent
Monteagle Primary School - Barking and Dagenham
Moorhead Primary School - Derby
Moorlands Junior School - Bath and North East Somerset
Morton Trentside Primary School - Lincolnshire
Mount Pleasant Primary School - Darlington
Newgate Lane Primary School - Nottinghamshire
Newport School - Waltham Forest
Nyewood CofE Junior School - West Sussex
Oakfield Junior School - Surrey
Offa’s Mead Primary School - Gloucestershire
Okehampton Primary School - Devon
Old Hall Drive Primary School - Manchester
Orchards Church of England Primary School - Cambridgeshire
Our Lady Roman Catholic Primary School - Camden
Pells Church of England Primary School - East Sussex
Pinehurst Primary School - Liverpool
Pontefract the Rookeries Carleton Junior and Infant School - Wakefield
Portfield Community Primary School - West Sussex
Primrose Hill Community School - Birmingham
Priory Green Primary School - Wolverhampton
Quarry Hill Junior School - Thurrock
Queensmead Community Primary School - Leicester
Ravensdale Junior School - Derby
Ridge Hill Primary School and Nursery - Tameside
Robin Hood Junior School - Sutton
Romsey Abbey Church of England Primary School - Hampshire
Roscoe Primary School - Liverpool
Salisbury, Manor Fields Primary School - Wiltshire
Shaw Hill Primary School - Birmingham
Shepton Mallet Infants’ School - Somerset
Sherdley Primary School - St. Helens
Shinfield St Mary’s CofE Junior School - Wokingham
Sinclair Primary and Nursery School - Southampton
Siskin Junior School - Hampshire
Skinner Street Primary School - Medway
Slater Primary School - Leicester
Smallwood Primary School and Language Unit - Wandsworth
Southmead School - Devon
Spinney Junior School - Essex
St Christopher’s Church of England School, Cowley - Oxfordshire
St Clement’s Church of England Primary School - Birmingham
St Francis Catholic Primary School - Bradford
St John CofE Primary School, Kearsley - Bolton
St John’s CofE Primary School - Worcestershire
St Margaret Mary’s RC Primary School Manchester - Manchester
St Margaret’s CofE Junior Infant and Nursery School - Oldham
St Mark’s CofE (A) Primary School - Stoke-On-Trent
St Mary and St John Junior and Infant School - Birmingham
St Mary Cray Primary School - Bromley
St Mary’s Church of England Primary School, Burton - Northamptonshire
St Mary’s CofE (VA) Primary School - Worcestershire
St Matthew’s CofE School - Cumbria
St Matthias Church of England Primary School - Worcestershire
St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School - Nottinghamshire
St Patrick’s RC Primary School - Manchester
St Paul’s and All Hallows CofE Junior School - Haringey
St Teresa’s Catholic Primary School - Merton
St Wulstan’s Catholic Primary School - Staffordshire
Stafford Junior School - East Sussex
Sutton Road Primary School - Nottinghamshire
Talavera Junior School - Hampshire
The Henry Prince CofE (C) First School - Staffordshire
The King George VI School, Great Bircham - Norfolk
Tupton Primary School - Derbyshire
Upton Heath CofE Primary School - Cheshire West and Chester
Vauxhall Primary School - Lambeth
Warren Wood Community Primary School and Language Unit - Medway
Warwick Primary School - Northamptonshire
Waterman Primary School - Essex
Welbeck Primary School - Newcastle Upon Tyne
Well Lane Primary School - Wirral
Weston Primary School - Halton
Whitefield Infant School - Luton
William Bellamy Junior School - Barking and Dagenham
Winklebury Junior School - Hampshire
Wirksworth Junior School - Derbyshire
Wykeham Primary School - Havering
Wylye Valley Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School - Wiltshire
Yardley Wood Community Primary School - Birmingham
Yarnfield Primary School - Birmingham

Of these special measures primary schools, only 1 – Yardleys in Birmingham – appears on TF’s list (and we’re not even sure if that is one and the same school!). In other words, that’s only one school from roughly 170 primary schools in England that have been deemed to be critical.

It would seem then that TF isn’t addressing educational disadvantage as well as it might. In fact, you would have a strong case for arguing that TF isn’t doing it at all.

It would also seem that TF’s mission is slightly different to what is painted. For example, TF’s mission could be said to be as much about giving future blue-chip company recruits a few life skills for a couple of years and reducing blue chip tax bills at the same time while – and this is the best part – having future employees’ training paid for by the UK taxpayer.

Meanwhile, due to TF, schools can reduce their wage bill. They can offload experienced but expensive staff and recruit cheaper but undertrained TF newbies – instead of employing fully-trained and qualified NQTs as they ought to. It also enables school managers and the government to get around current wage agreements.

All the time, lastly, the very real yet very complex reasons of structural origin for educational disadvantage remain untouched. And why should we expect anything else when those very same blue-chip companies who fund TF would stand to lose profits and influence if the underlying causes of inequality were tackled head on.

It appears then that TF has some questions to answer as the suspicion grows that this ‘charity’ is nothing but a rather clever recruitment and training agency for leading multinationals, with convenient spin-offs for managers looking to lower costs, and not really at all about raising levels of achievement of disadvantaged pupils in challenging situations.

——————————————————————————————————-

* Here is an alphabetised list of TF’s 240 or so schools (17/1/2010):

Abraham Moss High School Manchester
Addington High School Croydon
Alexandra High School and Sixth Form Centre Sandwell
All Saints Catholic High School Knowsley
Alsop High School Technology & Applied Learning Specialist College Liverpool
Alumwell Business and Enterprise College Walsall
Archbishop Grimshaw Catholic High School Solihull
Archbishop Lanfranc School Croydon
Astley Sports College and Community High School Tameside
Aston Manor School Birmingham
Avon Valley School, Rugby Warwickshire
Aylesford School – Sports College Maidstone
Babington Community Technology College Leicester
Balby Carr Community Sports College Doncaster
Barnhill Community High School Hillingdon
Barr Beacon Language College Walsall
Barrs Hill School Walsall
Bartley Green School Birmingham
Basildon Academies Basildon
Baverstock Foundation School & Specialist Sports College Birmingham
Bethnal Green Technology College Tower Hamlets
Bexley Business Academy Bexley
Bishop Douglass RC High School Barnet
Blue Coat CofE Comprehensive School Walsall
Blue Gate Fields Primary School Tower Hamlets
Bolton St Catherine’s Academy Bolton
Bow School Tower Hamlets
Bradford Academy Bradford
Broadway School Birmingham
Brookfield High Knowsley
Brownhills Community Technology College Walsall
Bruntcliffe School
Burlington Danes Academy Hammersmith and Fulham
Burnage Media Arts College Manchester
Bushey Academy Harrow
Business Academy at Bexley (Primary) Bexley
Buttershaw Business & Enterprise College Bradford
Capital City Academy Brent
Carlton Bolling College Bradford
Carr Manor High School Leeds
Castle Vale School & Specialist performing Arts College Birmingham
Cathedral CofE High School Wakefield
Cator Park School for Girls Bromley
Central Foundation Girls School Tower Hamlets
Charles Edward Brooke School Lambeth
Chaucer Business & Enterprise College Sheffield
Chorlton High School Manchester
City of Leeds School Leeds
City of London Academy, Islington Islington
City of London Academy, Southwark Southwark
Clapton Girls’ Technology College Hackney
Cockburn College of Arts Leeds
Coinsborough College Lewisham
Copley High School Tameside
Counthill School Oldham
Crayford Temple Grove Primary Bexley
Crown Woods School Greenwich
Culloden Primary School Tower Hamlets
Da Vinci Community College Derby
David Young Academy Leeds
Debden Park High School Essex
Dixons Allerton Academy
Djanogly City Academy Nottingham
Dormers Wells High School Ealing
Downs View Primary School Croydon
Droylsden Acadeny Tameside
Eastbury Comprehensive School Barking and Dagenham
Eastwood Comprehensive School Nottinghamshire
Egerton Park Arts College Tameside
Elmgreen School Lambeth
Eltham Green Specialist Sports College Greenwich
Ernesford Grange Community School Coventry
Essa Academy Bolton
Failsworth School Oldham
Fazakerley High School Liverpool
Feltham Community College Hounslow
Firth Park Community Arts College Sheffield
Four Dwellings High School Birmingham
Fulham Cross School Hammersmith and Fulham
Fullhurst Community College Leicester
Garston Academy Liverpool
George Tomlinson School Bolton
Gladys Aylward School Enfield
Globe Academy Southwark
Golden Hillock School Birmingham
Grace Academy Darlaston Walsall
Grace Academy Solihull Solihull
Grange Technology College Bradford
Greenford High School Ealing
Greig City Academy Haringey
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College Lewisham
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Knights Academy Lewisham
Haggerston School Hackney
Harborne Academy Birmingham
Harris Academy, Bermondsey Southwark
Harris Academy, Peckham Southwark
Harris Academy, Purley Croydon
Harris Academy, South Norwood Croydon
Harris Girls Academy, East Dulwich Southwark
Heartlands Academy Birmingham
Highbury Grove School Islington
Hillside High School Sefton
Hinde House School Sheffield
Hodge Hill Sports and Enterprise College Birmingham
Holly Lodge Girls College Liverpool
Hurlingham and Chelsea School Hammersmith and Fulham
Immanuel College Bradford
International School and Community College East Birmingham Birmingham
Islington Arts and Media School Islington
Kemnal Technology College Bromley
King Harold School Essex
Kings CofE High School Wolverhampton
Kings Heath Boys Mathematics & Computing College Birmingham
Kings Norton High School Birmingham
Kingsbury School and Sports College Birmingham
Kingsford Community School Newham
Kingsmead School Enfield
Kirkby College Nottinghamshire
Kirkby Sports College Center for Learning Knowsley
Laisterdyke Business & Enterprise College
Lambeth Academy Lambeth
Lammas School Waltham Forest
Lea Valley High School Enfield
Lee Chapel Primary School Basildon
Leeds West Academy Leeds
Little Ilford School Newham
Little Lever School Specialist Language College Bolton
Longford Community School Hounslow
Loxford School of Science and Technology Redbridge
Manchester Academy Manchester
Manchester Creative & Media Academy for Boys Manchester
Manchester Creative & Media Academy for Girls Manchester
Manchester Health Academy Manchester
Mandeville Primary School Tower Hamlets
Manning Comprehensive School Leicester
Manorfield Primary Tower Hamlets
Mellow Lane College Hillingdon
Menzies High School Science College Sandwell
Mill Hill School Derbyshire
Mossbourne Community Academy Hackney
Mulberry School for Girls Tower Hamlets
New Charter Academy Tameside
New College Leicester Leicester
Nicholas Chamberlaine School, Bedworth Warwickshire
Nightingale Academy Enfield
Noel Baker Community College Derby
Northbrook CE Secondary School Lewisham
Northumberland Park Community School Haringey
Oasis Academy MediaCityUK Salford
Oasis Academy, Coulsdon Croydon
Oasis Academy, Enfield Enfield
Oasis Academy, Hadley Enfield
Oasis Academy, Shirley Park (Ashburton) Primary Croydon
Old Ford Primary School Tower Hamlets
Oriel Primary School Hounslow
Ormiston Sandwell Community Academy
Paddington Academy Westminster
Park View Academy Haringey
Park View Business & Enterprise School Birmingham
Parklands Girls’ High School
Parkwood Academy Sheffield
Parliament Hill School Camden
Peckham Park Primary Southwark
Perry Beaches Birmingham
Petchey Academy Hackney
Pimlico Academy Westminster
Pinkwell Primary Hillingdon
Plumstead Manor School Greenwich
Portland School Nottinghamshire
Primrose High School Leeds
Quarrydale School Nottinghamshire
Quentin Kynaston School Westminster
Robert Clack School Barking and Dagenham
Rosedale College Hillingdon
Royston Primary School Bromley
RSA Academy Sandwell
Samworth Church Academy Nottinghamshire
Sandwell Academy Sandwell
Sandwell Park Hall School Solihull
Sheffield Srpings Academy Sheffield
Shirelands Collegiate Academy Sandwell
Shirley Park Academy Croydon
Shorefields School Liverpool
Shuttleworth College Lancashire
Sidney Stringer School Coventry
Sion-Manning School Kensington and Chelsea
Sir John Plessington Catholic College Wirral
Sir John Thursby Community College Lancashire
Smith’s Wood Sports School Solihull
St Anne’s Academy Rochdale
St Matthews RC High School Manchester
St Wilfrid’s Catholic High School Sefton
St. Alban’s Academy Birmingham
St. Augustine’s CE High School Westminster
St. Catherine’s Catholic High School Halifax
St. George’s RC School Westminster
St. Marylebone School Westminster
St. Michael’s & All Angels Academy Southwark
St. Paul’s Academy Greenwich
St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s School Southwark
St. Stephen’s CofE Primary School Lambeth
Stockley Academy Hillingdon
Stretford Academy Trafford
Stuart Bathurst Catholic High School & College of Performing Arts Sandwell
Swan Valley Community School Dartford
Swanley Technology College Ashford
Sydenham School Lewisham
The Business Academy Bexley
The City of Leicester College Leicester
The Dearne – A Specialist Humanities College Barnsley
The Harefield Academy Hillingdon
The Lancaster School Leicester
The London Academy Ealing
The Nottingham Bluecoat School and Technology College Nottingham
The Nottingham Emmanuel School Nottingham
The Queen Elizabeth’s (1591) Endowed School Nottinghamshire
The Quest Academy Croydon
The Samworth Enterprise Academy Leicester
Tidemill Primary School Lewisham
Unity College Lancashire
Uxbridge High School Hillingdon
Valley Comprehensive School Nottinghamshire
Villiers High School Ealing
Walsall Academy Walsall
Walthamstow Academy Waltham Forest
Walworth Academy Southwark
Waverley School Birmingham
Welling School Bexley
Wembley High Technology College Brent
West Drayton Primary School Hillingdon
West London Academy Ealing
West London Academy Primary Ealing
Westfield Community Technology College Watford
Westminster Academy Westminster
Wombwell High School Barnsley
Woodberry Downs Federation Hackney
Woodside High School Haringey
Wright Robinson Sports College Manchester
Yardleys School Birmingham
Yewlands Technology College Sheffield

Listen to the broadcast here:

Gove getting a pasting on live BBC radio

Charlie from Lewes, the radio listener, for Education Secretary?! He’ll do a much better job than journo Gove if this is anything to go by.

We should say that we’re not supporting Charles’ opinion that headteachers rather than teachers must be allowed a say in a child’s educational choices. Teachers are far better-suited to the task, especially as headteachers are increasingly seen as business bosses.

However, we fully support treating the choices of all human beings with respect and giving them the chance to make their own choices rather than making decisions for them.

For as Charles from Lewes made clear, educational choices made on the behalf of others will no doubt reflect the self-interest of the patrician and business classes.

Our children are all equal. They’re not factory fodder for the rich and powerful.

How can a school be ‘in the red’? They are publicly-funded. They’re not businesses. Deficits are for companies.

Schools should have enough money. The 6th largest economy in the world has enough money. There’s not a bottomless pit, obviously. But there’s enough to go around. The talk of austerity is a scare tactic.

It is telling that the mainstream media so uncritically employ the language of management consultants, and their co-conspirators in the Tories, to talk about education.

Both these groups do not believe in education as a public good – tuition fees hike, anyone? – and would like nothing better than to privatise the whole thing.

The consultants can be expected to do very nicely in fees from the ‘restructuring’, ‘liberalisation’, ‘marketisation’, ‘streamlining’ or whatever euphemism is en vogue.

The Tories on the other hand can cleverly redirect the taxes paid for education somewhere else, say, lowering income taxes and buying the next election.

For all the balance that the Beeb offers, using neo-liberal business language to talk about state education must be music to Gove and chums’ ears.

For an organisation so determined to kowtow to politicians and hold on to power and funds, today’s Successful Science report is quite remarkable.

In its report based on the findings from 94 primary schools, 94 secondary schools, two special schools and 31 colleges visited between 2007 and 2010, OfSTED announced not only that “the quality of science education has improved over the past three years” but also that “the removal of the requirement for statutory tests in science at the end of Key Stages 2 and 3 has helped schools to avoid an undue concentration on revision in Years 6 and 9 and freed teachers to be innovative in planning their teaching and in enriching the science curriculum.”

Just in case you didn’t believe us the first time, the report says and we repeat the end of Key Stage 2 and 3 testing in science has meant teachers rather than teach to the test have been free to do what they were trained to do (i.e. teach) and science lessons and learning has significantly improved.

So, standardised testing isn’t the best way of raising standards, says Gilbert. We’re sure Gove didn’t like that. How can politicians keep harping on about SATS and other forms of standardised tests when the Government’s own inspection police say we’re better of without them?

Quite incredible. And long overdue.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbI-fDzUJXI[/youtube]

Apart from being very funny, ‘Romans go Home’ very nicely illustrates what Latin meant to the grammar-educated Monty Python boys: complicated and brutal. Indeed, Latin lessons since the 1960s have largely faded away in UK schools but there now seems to be somewhat of a resurgence.

One person who is a keen Latin enthusiast appears to be Toby Young.

The writer and journo is hoping to include it in the curriculum for his new free schoool in West London where it will be included in Key Stage 3 (age 11 – 14).

Why would Toby be championing a dead language like Latin? We couldn’t find the answer to this at the school website but a quick google search revealed many pages willing to do so.

One such page was at about.com and written by someone called N.S.Gill (“a Latinist and freelance writer with a longtime focus on the classical world”).

Entitled ‘Why Study Latin?’, Gill lists several reasons why Latin should be on every school’s menu. As seemingly emblematic of all people who extol the virtues of Latin, we thought we’d go through them one-by-one and see how they hold up.

1. Latin Grammar is the Best Grounding for Education

Oh dear. Big statement. No proof. Just sounds good. Apparently, Dorothy Sayers of the National Review says it’s a good thing because it “cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least 50 percent.” Who is she? Also, like ads for hair products just throwing out a number like that is pretty meaningless. And where is the research on that one? If anyone has any references please let us know.

2. Latin Helps With English Grammar

…yes, but so does any language. You can either draw out the similarities between other Indo-European languages and Engish or focus on the differences between them. Saying that, you could also choose to do this with Sino-Tibetan languages or any other set of non-IndoEuropean languages. In short, it doesn’t matter what language is used as long as the similarities and differences are drawn out.

It is also not true that “while neither the language nor grammar of English derives from Latin, many of our grammatical rules do.” Latin has given English lexical not grammatical content, with roughly a third of words having Latin roots. It would make more sense to study not Latin grammar but German grammar from which the overwhelming majority of English grammar is derived.

3. Latin Makes You More Careful in English

Does it? Where’s the research on that? “In Latin you have more to worry about than whether a plural pronoun refers to a singular noun (as in the politically correct – grammatically incorrect: each student has their own workbook). In Latin there are 7 cases with which not only pronouns, but adjectives — not to mention verbs — must agree. Learning such rules makes the student careful in English.” But surely learning Chinese would prove as much of a challenge and engender the learning characteristics desired.

“But more important is the fact that traditional study of Latin starts out with a grammatical framework…. As American students begin Latin, they become acquainted with the “Latin grammar” system, which they can indirectly transfer to their work in English. What it gives them is a standardized set of terms in which to describe words in relations to other words in sentences, and it is this grammatical awareness which makes their English writing good.” Again, why not a living language like Chinese or German instead?

4. Latin Helps You Maximize SAT scores

Really? It may ‘sell’ Latin programs but is it true. Where’s the study refs? Only 30% of words have Latin roots. That may be a large chunk but there are still 70% to get one’s head round. Math scores also increase? Yeah, right.

5. Latin Increases Accuracy

A Professor Emeritus William Harris is cited as saying that this is so but does it really foster ‘close and careful reading’ more than any other language? Refs please.

6. The Study of Latin Enhances Vocabulary

“Latin is a great source language for English vocabulary”, we are told. But so is English. Why not just study English to improve your vocabulary where 100% of the words are important and not 30% as in Latin?

As the late Emeritus Professor William Harris explains, there may be ‘certain benefits’ but as he also admits this applies to Greek too: “Greek along with Latin is the basis for virtually all English scientific terms” so why favour Latin over Greek? That doesn’t make sense.

7. The Study of Latin Introduces Logic

…yet isn’t Greek the language of philosophy? So, again, why not study Greek instead.

8. People Do Think Differently & Latin can help your children realize not everyone thinks the way they do

Yep, perhaps but why Latin. You could easily learn any of the other thousands of the world’s languages to gain this insight.

9. Prestige

And here we have it. Latin is about kudos and keeping up with the Jones’. It’s a status symbol and a mark of social difference. It is of course no coincidence that fee-paying schools are more likely to teach classical languages than non-fee-paying.

10. Help with phonics