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Category Archives: Schools
Ofsted chief calls for troubleshooters in schools failing poor children
Sir Michael Wilshaw to deliver speech calling for improved education for disadvantaged children ‘unseen’ by current system
New superteachers should be parachuted into areas with “mediocre schools”, the chief inspector of schools in England will say in a radical speech on Thursday, as part of a drive to improve education for poor children “unseen” by the current system.
Sir Michael Wilshaw will also spell out a tougher approach from Ofsted to schools that are believed to be failing poor children. Schools previously judged outstanding but which are not doing well by their poorest children will be reinspected by the inspectorate.
The head of Ofsted argues that a cadre of “national service teachers” should be created, employed directly by central government rather than by local authorities or individual schools. They would be sent to teach in parts of the country that struggle to attract accomplished teachers, into schools that are said to be failing their most disadvantaged pupils.
Wilshaw believes that schools in large cities such as London, Manchester and Birmingham have been successfully turned around since Ofsted first raised the issue 20 years ago, and that the children now most at risk of missing out on the benefits of education are “hidden” in otherwise well-off areas, including Kettering, Wokingham, Norwich and Newbury.
“Today, many of the disadvantaged children performing least well in school can be found in leafy suburbs, market towns or seaside resorts. Often they are spread thinly, as an ‘invisible minority’ across areas that are relatively affluent,” Wilshaw will say.
“These poor, unseen children can be found in mediocre schools the length and breadth of our country. They are labelled, buried in lower sets, consigned as often as not to indifferent teaching.
“They coast through education until – at the earliest opportunity – they sever their ties with it.”
Ofsted’s latest report identifies deprived coastal towns and rural, less populous regions of the country, particularly down the east and south-east of England, as having been overlooked by national initiatives. It also found that a significant number of poorer children are being failed by schools in areas of higher income.
Wilshaw is calling for the London Challenge programme – in which successful schools partnered with weaker establishments in the capital – to be extended nationwide. “The most important factor in reversing these trends is to attract and incentivise the best people to the leadership of underperforming schools in these areas,” Sir Michael is to say.
Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers praised the school collaboration model of the London Challenge but was otherwise sceptical of Wilshaw’s superteacher proposal.
“Sir Michael’s idea of individual teachers being catapulted into schools to help with pupils achievement will not have anywhere near the same impact,” she said. “It really is time government and Ofsted stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and just work with what we know achieves results,” she said.
The speech marks 20 years since Ofsted published its first report on the educational barriers for the most disadvantaged children in seven deprived areas in England. “Our report shows that poverty of expectation is a greater problem than material poverty because we know of examples of schools serving areas of great disadvantage that are doing very well by their children,” Wilshaw says.
Sir Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust said: “Sir Michael Wilshaw is absolutely right to focus on the poor attainment of low income pupils, particularly outside London, where results have been patchy. Good teaching across the board, strong leadership and effective use of data are all absolutely vital.”
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All schools should have same freedoms as academies, say Labour
Party plans to tackle inequality by taking policies applied to academies and extending them through state sector
Labour will on Monday attempt to wrest the initiative on education away from the Conservatives with an offer for all schools to have the freedoms enjoyed by academies alongside a new effort to tackle inequality in admissions to the best state schools.
The shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg is to challenge “Michael Gove’s [education secretary] incoherent approach that grants some schools access to freedoms that help raise standards while denying them to others.”
In a speech on Monday, Twigg will propose that a Labour government embraces several policies applied to academies, and extends them throughout the state sector.
They would include the ability to opt out of following the national curriculum; to utilise a greater degree of financial freedom; and to make it easier for schools to vary the length of their working day.
“We know that giving schools more freedom over how they teach and how they run and organise their schools can help to raise standards. So why should we deny those freedoms to thousands of schools? All schools should have them – not just academies and free schools,” Twigg will say in London.
He is also expected to announce new measures to overhaul school admissions and make the system fairer after recent research by the Sutton Trust highlighting inequality in admissions to the best non-selective state schools.
“Labour believes that there is a strong case to look again at the admissions code. There are too many schools – schools of all types – not fulfilling their duties, to the letter and in the spirit of, fair admissions,” a Labour source said.
According to the Sutton Trust, England’s top 500 state-funded comprehensive and academy schools taught fewer than the national average of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, and fewer than other schools in their area. It proposed radical reforms, including the greater use of lotteries and admission by bands of ability.
Twigg would also end Gove’s policy of allowing free schools and academies to employ untrained teachers – and would give the 5,000 such teachers two years to gain relevant qualifications or be sacked.
The proposal, first reported by the Observer yesterday, would face legal obstacles, according to a Whitehall source.
“Labour’s policy ignores that the Department for Education does not employ teachers, therefore cannot fire them, and any attempt to do what Labour’s talking about would be illegal under European Union and European court of human rights law,” a DfE source said.
Labour’s proposals would not extend further flexibility in varying teacher pay and conditions, and would stick to the current settlement, arguing that even most academies are happy to use the existing national pay framework.
Twigg’s proposals would not lead to all schools becoming academies. Academies would retain their status and new academies would not be ruled out, while the national curriculum would be made less prescriptive and focused on educational attainment.
Labour would also tackle the problem of “singleton” academies, the three-fifths of academy-status schools that are not part of a chain.
“The evidence on school improvement, from home and abroad, demonstrates that partnerships, federations between schools, are key to raising teaching standards, leadership skills and sharing best practice,” Twigg will say.
“Michael Gove used to talk the talk on schools working together but he’s failed to deliver.”
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Comprehensive school pupils do better at university, two new studies confirm
Students from state schools outperform private ones admitted with same A-level grades, according to Cardiff and Oxford Brookes research
Two studies showing state school pupils do better at university than those from private schools will strengthen demands for admissions tutors to give priority to applicants from comprehensives. The findings, from two separate universities, reveal that students from state schools gained better degrees than independently educated candidates with the same A-level grades.
The internal studies, which have been obtained by the Observer under the Freedom of Information Act, give ammunition to those who support giving special consideration, such as lower A-level offers, to comprehensive school candidates at elite institutions.
A separate report by Alan Milburn, the government’s social mobility adviser, to be published on Monday, will show that the numbers of working-class entrants to prestigious universities has stalled.
This follows demands this month from Professor Les Ebdon, director of the Office for Fair Access, which promotes equality of opportunity for potential students, for more action from the most selective universities to attract those from deprived backgrounds.
Despite record amounts of funding for improving access, the most advantaged 20% of young people are still eight times more likely to end up at a leading university than the most disadvantaged 20%.
In the research, admissions tutors at Cardiff University, one of the Russell Group’s 24 leading universities, commissioned an analysis of the progression and degree results of students from deprived neighbourhoods. As part of the analysis, which looked at student records since 2005, researchers pinpointed other factors that influenced how Cardiff’s undergraduates performed.
One of the characteristics, along with differences such as age, gender and ethnicity, was the type of school attended. “All other factors being held constant, students from independent schools tend to do less well than students from comprehensive schools,” the study said.
A second study, from Oxford Brookes University, produced similar evidence. Students who had been to state schools and further education colleges were more likely to complete their degrees. They were also more likely to get a good degree, classed as a first or 2:1, than their privately educated counterparts, with the attainment gap growing wider for undergraduates with A-level grades of CCC or below.
The findings from Oxford Brookes, which has a higher proportion of applicants and entrants from private schools than the average, have influenced the university’s decision to set a target to increase the proportion of state school entrants and make lower offers to some candidates from deprived backgrounds.
Internal documents from the university stated: “If you take applicants with the same grades, studying the same course, one from an independent school and the other from a state school, the student from the state school would, on average, outperform their independent school counterpart by as much as seven degree points.
“Here there is a strong case to offer a place with one or two lower A-level grades to students from a particularly disadvantaged background knowing that, on average, their achievement would at least match that of an independent school individual.”
The studies back up earlier research by the University of Bristol and the Sutton Trust education charity. The Bristol research, published in 2010, is widely quoted to justify access measures but leading independent schools have dismissed it as flawed because it looked at only a proportion of Bristol students when the university was being boycotted by several private schools.
The new studies make it harder for the private sector to argue against schemes which give priority to state school pupils. They also suggest that the educational boost provided by attending a fee-paying school is not necessarily maintained in a university setting, where independent study is a vital ingredient.
Shabana Mahmood, the shadow universities and science minister, said: “These reports add weight to the case for contextual data being given greater consideration in admissions. Although many universities already use contextual data, it is not yet mainstream activity.
“As many recent reports have shown, and as Professor Ebdon has recently highlighted, we need to see more progress in universities increasing recruitment of students from poorer backgrounds. The use of contextual data could play a greater role in allowing higher education to fulfil its potential as a true powerhouse of social mobility.”
Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: “The benefits gained by paying to attend a private school eventually wear off. Independent schools have denied the evidence that state school pupils do better, grade for grade, than their independent school counterparts, but it is there.
“Being accepted for a course at university is not a prize for what you have done in the past; it is a recognition of what you are likely to achieve in the future. That is why it is right that admissions tutors consider more than A-level grades.”
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Teachers must get trained or face the sack, says Labour
Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg to issue challenge over free schools as party joins battle with Michael Gove
More than 5,000 untrained teachers who have been allowed to work in academies and free schools under Michael Gove’s education reforms will be sacked if Labour wins the next election, unless they gain a formal qualification within two years.
The proposal is one of several to be announced by the shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, as the opposition joins battle with Gove.
In a speech in which he will say he will work to ensure that every child has a place in a good school, Twigg will also say it is “unacceptable” for a government that professes to be driven by a desire to raise standards to allow teachers with no training to work in state-funded schools.
“It is shocking that this government is allowing unqualified teachers into the classroom,” Twigg said. “High-quality teaching is the most important factor in improving education. We need to drive up the quality of teaching, not undermine it.”
If Labour forms the next government, it will ensure that unqualified teachers get access to training in the first two years and will encourage heads to make time for them to become qualified. But if they have failed to do so by the end of that time, they will lose their jobs.
The move was welcomed by teaching unions, who said Gove’s approach had devalued the profession and let down both pupils and parents.
The latest figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) show there are now 5,300 unqualified equivalent full-time teachers in academies and free schools.
Gove announced in 2010 that the country’s free schools – which now number 80 and are outside the control of local authorities but funded by the state – would be allowed greater leeway over appointments, meaning that teaching qualifications were not necessary.
Last summer, he extended this to academies – now more than half of all secondary schools – claiming that, by removing the requirement for staff to have qualified teacher status, schools would be able to show the same “dynamism” that he believes drives success in private schools.
The DfE under Gove has also announced that former soldiers without degrees will be fast-tracked into teaching in England under a programme called the Troops to Teachers scheme.
A DfE source dismissed Twigg’s arguments and insisted greater flexibility meant the best state schools could hire gifted people. He said: “We are raising the standards required to qualify for taxpayer-funded training. However, we also need flexibility to allow brilliant teachers from private schools or abroad to teach in state schools.
“It would be stupid to stop brilliant teachers who want to be able to switch from private to state schools from doing so. Having qualified teacher status and being qualified to teach are very different things.”
However, the teaching unions countered by saying it was just a cost-cutting exercise that delivered state education on the cheap. Chris Keates, general secretary of the largest teachers’ union, the NASWUT, applauded Twigg’s intention to reverse Gove’s policy. She said: “Quite honestly, it was a gross betrayal of parents and children when this government removed the requirement for teachers to be qualified.
“People would be horrified if they had done this for lawyers, doctors or dentists. Most parents would expect their children to be taught by people who are qualified, and it is a good move by Labour to reaffirm the importance of qualified teacher status. We have been shocked how widespread the use of unqualified teachers is now. We should never have been put in this position.”
Mike Griffiths, headteacher of an academy in Northampton and vice-president of the Association of School and College Leaders union, said he also welcomed Labour’s acknowledgement that teaching was a skilled profession.
Earlier this year the Observer revealed that Pimlico free school in Westminster, which is due to open in September, had employed a 27-year-old who had not completed her training as headteacher. Annaliese Briggs, a former thinktank director who advised the coalition government on its national primary curriculum, is understood to have been receiving training in preparation for the start of the new school year.
She has said that she will ignore the national curriculum and teach lessons “inspired by the tried and tested methods of ED Hirsch Jr”, the controversial American academic behind what he calls “content-rich” learning.
Twigg, who has been accused by some in the Labour party of being slow off the mark to challenge Gove, added: “Labour wants to see more talented people come into teaching. That’s why in government we invested in improved conditions for teachers and funded initiatives like Teach First.
“Michael Gove damages standards by allowing unqualified teachers. Under Labour all teachers in all state-funded schools would have, or have to acquire, qualified teacher status.”
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