A Feelgood Christmas Cracker

Picture a school facing extremely challenging circumstances. It’s situated in the most deprived local government ward in England and Wales. It can be rough, tough, hard. It’s also an all-singing, all-dancing school. Kids and staff ensure that no opportunity to perform or celebrate is missed. There’s an end-of-term show. Some kids sing to backing tracks. A few play rudimentary guitar. Some just sing and this is accepted, possibly because a young teacher has done it very effectively. Near the end, Gemma appears on stage. The fact that she’s there at all raises some titters. Gemma is the sort of overweight, red-cheeked, essentially shy yet sometimes loud-mouthed, slightly immature girl who, though she has friends, attracts more than her fair share of teasing and outright ridicule. She starts to sing. Actually, she’s not got a bad voice. But it’s obvious that she’s nervous. There’s a tremor and she’s not singing quite loud enough. The titters have faded. Now there’s a slight tension spreading across the packed hall. She scarcely reaches a high note. She falters, picks it up, falters, then stops. There are some amused snorts, some indeterminate murmuring, then almost a silence . Everyone is wondering what will happen. Gemma stands, shaking. Tears appear on her cheeks, which seem to redden further. Time stands still.

Then, quietly, at first, ‘Come on, Gemma.’……‘Gem!’……‘You can do it.’ Gradually, it builds. A chorus of empathy, support, encouragement. Gemma, whose eyes have been pointing down to the floor, looks up briefly. She looks down again. She is trying. She is trying so hard. The encouragement continues. Everyone is willing her to pull through. She starts. The audience quietens. They’re listening. She continues. There’s some applause, but people are careful not to overwhelm her. Gradually she finds her voice. As she does so, the audience becomes more enthusiastic. She builds towards the climax. The audience builds with her. They are willing her on. She gets there. A massive response greets her - shouts, applause, ‘Gemma! Gemma!’. She stands there, tears flowing freely now, not knowing what to do with herself. The popular drama teacher comes on and throws her ample inclusive arms around her. Gemma is swallowed up in the shared pride and appreciation. She will never forget that day.

That’s the kind of success that will never figure in ‘performance tables’ and OFSTED reports but, by God, it matters. That’s achievement.

Oftsed - everyone's getting in on the act

Since my last post, a stream of criticism has been reported. There are essentially two strands. First, giving Ofsted so many different things to inspect, from early years 'settings' (a peculiar nomenclature they've invented as they aren't all schools) to social services, has created a monster organisation that has been unable to keep up with itself. Of course, it was always a monster but now it's a super monster. Inevitably, vast numbers of new inspectors have had to be recruited in record time and the chances of them behaving consistently would be minimal, even if the organisation knew what it was trying to do in the first place. So we have an even greater reliance on ticking boxes, and the focus is inevitably on the deceptively simple trees rather than the too-complex-to-begin-to-understand wood. In transforming Ofsted from an almost serviceable way of keeping schools under control into a megacorporation that cannot tell its arse from its elbow, a government obsessed with central control and micro-management has excelled itself.

The second criticism relates to the latest framework for inspecting schools. For those unfamiliar with these frameworks, it's apparently necessary every three years for everything to be thrown up in the air and reassembled. It usually takes most of the next three year cycle for schools and inspectors to make the latest framework more or less workable (i.e. they learn to work around its absurdities). Of course each new framework makes it virtually impossible to decide whether a school has improved since its last inspection, yet the inspection team are still expected to say whether it has. This produces great confusion for parents and others for whom the report is supposed to be written as the text will identify significant improvements but the grades will be the same or worse. It's as if they've moved the goalposts, doubled the number of teams to be relegated, changed the shape of the ball, and introduced new and obscure laws - possibly from cricket (where no-one knows or understands all the rules).

Even more significantly, it is now impossible for any of the considerable number of schools with below-average intake to be judged a good school. It might well be the case, often is, that the school is doing very well by the students who arrive on its doorstep, yet its results will still be below average compared with results nationally. Previously there was an attempt to 'level the playing field' by calculating CVA (contextual value added) scores for each school. These gave an indication of how well the school was doing by comparing the results of its students with the results achieved by similar students in similar schools. You could argue about the way that these CVA scores were calculated - many people did - but at least there was a way for some of the underdogs to demonstrate that they were actually doing very well. Similarly, complacent 'high-performing' schools that had been able to coast along because the raw results of their above average intake were, of course, above average sometimes had a rude awakening when the CVA score suggested that they could be doing better.

What has happened now is that not only has the attempt to level the playing field been abandoned but (think Subbuteo 'Table Soccer') Big Brother has lifted the pitch up at one end and pushed a boulder under the table so that the teams that are already advantaged are kicking downhill (and the teams don't change ends at half-time). If you don't believe me, take a look at the Ofsted website and see how many schools in deprived areas have achieved 'good' or 'outstanding' grades since this nonsense started in September 2009.

Finally, and just to confuse the public further, since the whole world now has to operate as if there's an army of paedophiles outside every school gate (even though we all know that the vast majority of abuse is carried out by family members or friends of the family), a school can successfully jump through the hoops and still end up labelled as 'inadequate' if their child safeguarding procedures are not exactly as stipulated.

Who'd be a headteacher these days?

(By the way if you are applying for headships only look at those that are likely to be inspected towards the end of the three year cycle.)

Ofsted apologises

You don't see that very often, do you? They've had to apologise in the High Court in the case of Sharon Shoesmith, sacked as Director of Children's Services in Haringey who is claiming that she was unjustly dismissed. It looks as if she has a pretty good case. It seems highly likely that, as alleged, she was sacked as a result of the Ofsted report into Haringey Children's Services being progressively distorted through it's various drafts (pressure being applied by Ed Balls and the DCSF) until it could justify an 'inadequate' judgement (the worst). Ofsted initially said that an earlier draft (which will presumably show what anyone who knows anything about Ofsted or Balls suspects - that the allegation is true) could not be found. Now they've found it! Perhaps Balls will resign if it is shown that he forced Oftsed (supposedly independent) to alter its judgements so that he could demonstrate what a hard man he is? Don't hold your breath.

Of course, Ofsted has a lot of 'previous' in this kind of dirty trick. The most notorious example is the case of Islington Green, a perfectly good comprehensive school dumped into special measures not because Her Majesty's Inspectors found it to be unsatisfactory but because the then Chief Inspector, Woodhead by name and nature, knew that this judgement would gain him kudos with the incoming New Labour rabble. One of the worst mistakes Blair made in the field of education - and didn't he make some dreadful ones - was to commit himself to keeping this ill-qualified clown as Chief Inspector. (Woodhead's predecessor, by the way, distinguished himself by doing the job part-time on a salary most teachers could only dream of and then declaring that teachers should work harder).

For all the sickening details of the Islington Green fiasco follow these links:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2095239
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/feb/04/politics.freedomofinformation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/feb/10/schools.uk

In case you're wondering what happened when all this came to light, the answer is sweet FA. No-one was held accountable. No-one was forced to apologise to students, parents and staff who suffered as a result of it for years afterwards.

To return to Sharon Shoesmith, it's hard to know exactly how good or bad she was as a leader though it's interesting that she had very strong backing from Haringey headteachers. The irony is that the amalgamation of Education and Children's Social Services Departments into Children's Services departments was a Downing Street wheeze, rushed in with, as ever, no evidence that it would improve things - and it may well have made things worse. If anyone is to blame for Baby Peter's death (apart from his murderers) it may not be anyone who works for Haringey.

Schools DO make a difference - and mostly they make about the same difference

I thought so once, and now I know it. Not so long ago I had the opportunity to compare the Key Stage 2 results (in English and maths) of the Year 11 cohort of every school in a Local Authority area with the GCSE results (percentage of students achieving 5 or more GCSE grades A* - C including English and maths) of every school. I know it sounds complicated; essentially I was comparing the difference each secondary school made over five years. An outstanding school might be one whose Year 7 cohort was low in the league table of KS2 results (let's say its students results were below average at KS2) and high in the league table for GCSE scores. An inadequate school might be one that achieved the opposite.

Sadly for educational vandals and tabloid journalists everywhere, there weren't any outstanding or inadequate schools. The best or worst that any school recorded was a movement of a place or two up or down. Over 85% of the schools were in exactly the same position in both league tables.

Parents shouldn't worry (and most wouldn't if they weren't obsessively invited to) about which school their child ends up in (unless they have their own genuine reasons for preferring one school to another); their child will almost certainly do as well academically in one school as in another.

They take the proverbial

One thing they like to do is to change the meaning of words, hence 'satisfactory is not good enough'.

I was in a holiday cottage and glanced at a church newsletter that was lying around. It appeared that the local rural parish had had a 'visitation' from the Archdeacon. After inspecting the documentation and speaking to key figures, he declared everything to be 'absolutely satisfactory'.

That's all Ofsted needs to say about the vast majority of schools. But we don't actually need Ofsted in that case. Think of the saving, not just in terms of money, but time, effort....and lives.