John Bald Ofsted and New Labour

Ignorant Essex, shameful Church of England school. Updated 23.9/09

Update. The child's parents in the story below were not informed of the facts and would not have been but for Carol Hill telling her the truth. The school, amazingly even for Essex, is now "reviewing its procedures", a tacit admission that they are inadequate. And still they sack the person who told the truth. This is truly outrageous, and shows how people with power can use it to do as they wish, without reference to morality, fairness, truth, or, in this case Christianity. Ignorance rules. And as Ms Hill will now probably fail a CRB check, for the offence of protecting a child, we have the full circle. Drive out the truth, and anyone who tells it. OK? Telegraph has more details here.

I had the dubious pleasure of working for Essex from 1980 to 1993. There were some very good people in the authority, but a lot more neo-Marxists, including several senior primary inspectors - not all, but most of the most powerful ones - who had a personal vendetta against "the middle class" - by whom they meant the better-educated parents. Anyone who disagreed with them was "visited" and promotion was almost entirely in their control - one headteacher who defied them when appointing a deputy head told his new colleague frankly that it was the last promotion he'd ever get (he was wrong, though!) I thought it was an excellent example of an ignorant, leftist authority until it became eclipsed by New Labour doing the same thing on a national scale.

The latest piece of idiocy and bullying is this from Great Tey primary school, in which a mid-day assistant has been sacked for telling the truth about bullying to a parent. She will probably be able to get the bullies who sacked her for unfair dismissal. A pity no-one can dismiss them. The problem is in the officials. In my time, they bamboozled councillors - "elected members" - keeping them in the dark and getting on with their agenda. I don't know the current crop, but on this evidence they are just as bad. The only consolation is that their nonsense and bullying is public, and will add weight to our growing dissatisfaction with political correctness. Oh, and I should have added - Great Tey is a Church of England school.

Naughty Independent and Naughty Manchester Metropolitan University.

The Indy, here, has a study from Manchester Metropolitan University which contrives to blame schools for taking account of home circumstances in assessing children's behaviour. I saw a case in point this week. A child of six was telling everyone in sight, including the deputy head, to F off. The school had arranged for her mother to visit on the previous Friday, and mother said she wasn't bovvered. Child completely out of control, and liable to run off when asked to work. Now, Manchester Metropolitan University, why is the school wrong to consider the parent a big part of the problem? And why can't the parent ensure her child behaves?

The full report is here. It is interesting, but would be better if it were written in plain English. The language is also at times loaded - eg a child's reputation is described as being "fabricated", with its overtones of falsification, and mainstream education is said to require "attentive and docile bodies". I've yet to meet a teacher who wanted his or her pupils to be "docile", but at least it shows the authors' assumptions, and what they think of their colleagues who work with young children. Teachers want children to be active and co-operative (in case the authors didn't know, or care to ask). 

This is at the heart of all of our problems with education. No-one can teach a child who tells them to F off. No one, not even a leftie academic, wants children to do this, and no one wants them to misbehave. So, what do we do about it? Outside grammar schools and private schools, which have a credible threat of exclusion, very few schools know the answer - the only secondary school I know of personally that does is Mossbourne. We need to know exactly how they do it. Because one thing the heads and deputies I discussed this with last week agreed on, is that the behaviour you tolerate is the behaviour you get - it becomes the norm.

The researchers did find one point that most good nursery and reception classes would avoid - an adult is quoted talking about "silly children". Most teachers would talk about children making the wrong choices, or about silly behaviour, rather than attaching a negative adjective to the children themselves. But this should not be taken as general practice without more evidence - in my experience, skilled talking to children is much more frequent.

Oenone Crossley-Holland. Tough Times in a London Academy

Oenone Crossley-Holland has written a book about her experience as a teach first teacher in a tough London comprehensive school. The Times has an article here, that is well worth reading. Her problems with discipline were paramount, as they are in every failing school, and the rank-pulling hierarchies have a lot to answer for in this. The key to successful schools such as Mossbourne and St Bonaventures is intolerance of misbehaviour, combined with good teaching. The problem with the old Left is that they see zero tolerance of such things as swearing at staff as disenfranchisement of the pupils. When I was at Stepney Green, a young Black colleague was summoned to the headmaster because she'd had her class write some comic pieces on life at "Dolittle Comp". One of the school's less co-operative pupils, she said, had refused to do his work that afternoon, and called her "a f****** b*****d". "Never mind about that," he said, "What kind of image of the school do you think you're projecting with this?"  He may have had a point - I don't remember the detail of the spoof - but so did she. This little bully was quite prepared to have a female member of his staff sworn at by a teenage thug and do nothing about it, provided his own nose was kept clean. There are too many like this about, and too few that are prepared to stand up against the rubbish. I blame the ignorant and opinionated governors who appoint them. Maybe, in the end, getting rid of them would be cheaper than building a lot of new schools.

More detailed discussion of Ms Crossley-Holland's book, and of the Ofsted report on her school, is here.

Mr Peter Harvey and the Times Educational Supplement

The TES has an excellent article on the current state of indiscipline in many comprehensive schools. Here is an extract:

It was the steady drip-drip of poor behaviour that pushed Francis Gilbert over the edge. He had endured pupils throwing things at him, barricading his classroom and fighting with each other, but the day he grabbed a Year 7 boy by the arm and threw him out of the room, it was over a relatively trivial incident.

“He refused to do any work and persistently disrupted my lesson,” Mr Gilbert says. “What he had done was quite minor, but I was at the end of my tether, constantly dealing with his misbehaviour.”

Although the boy complained about being manhandled, he was persuaded by the deputy head not to take it further.

But Mr Gilbert recounts daily battles to try to get his pupils to learn. One class was studying Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and after Mr Gilbert explained how Eddie was attracted to Catherine, his niece, the class started to chant “Eddie wants to fuck Catherine”, followed by throwing things, shouting and pushing the furniture against the door.

Mr Gilbert, who has chronicled his experiences of teaching in east London in the best-selling book I’m a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here, says when he raised the issue with senior managers he received neither support nor sympathy.

“They said it was my problem I couldn’t control the class and that I should improve my lessons, but no one came in to help - they told me to get on with it,” says Mr Gilbert, who now combines supply teaching with writing.

This piece takes us away from the individual incident to the constant attrition that can drive a human being beyond the limits of control, and the permissive attitude on the part of the authorities, ranging from central government to headteachers and senior staff in schools, that has allowed this to develop. All of the authorities are highly skilled in passing the buck and blaming other people - not a new trend. Local authorities will not hesitate to ditch a headteacher if it suits them, and almost all secondary headteachers are most interested in maintaining the reputation of the school and avoiding bad publicity. The cumulative effect of virtually all secondary headteachers in the country taking the same attitude is to misinform the public over the state of education. The ignorant and self-serving comments of headteachers when whistleblowers have told the truth about their schools on television are entirely typical of an attitude that now runs right through the secondary school system. They are also no respectors of persons - I've known senior officials and HMI receive the same ignorant treatment in respect of their own children. Primary headteachers do not generally have such a high horse to sit on.

 It is most interesting, in view of the general idea that they are less affected by these problems, that the incident took place in a Catholic school. The truth is that no school is exempt, and no teacher, particularly a teacher who insists that pupils work. The inhumanity of the taunt, "Go and have another stroke" is stunning, even for one who has been round the educational block, but perhaps this is because a friend of mine has recently had a stroke, and I've seen what it can do. The TES piece, here, is worth reading.

Havens of Calm?

Dr John Dunsford, replying to the Conservative finding that schools had called in police 7000 times last year to deal with violent incidents http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/dec/22/schools-violence-tories  describes schools as "havens of calm".  Some are. Many are not. Questionnaires distributed to pupils during inspections before New Labour's changes to the system regularly showed well over half of them seriously concerned about behaviour. The solution was to abolish the questionnaire, at the same time, of course, as saying that pupils' views were going to be given increased prominence.

George Orwell called the process "double think", and it has become a key factor in policy from New Labour and particularly the DCSF and Ofsted. The cover up of the true state of discipline in some schools is enforced by GTC action against whistleblowers. Dr Dunsford has, though, given us a real insight into the blindness of some leaders with his "havens of calm" comment. But then, I once heard the good doctor say at a conference in the Reform Club (around 1998) that people wishing to find out about schools should not read Ofsted reports, but go to the local pub instead and consult the drinkers.

Behaviour is the key factor in British education, and much more than in any school system in Europe. This is because our society is broken and theirs, with all their problems, are not.