Brent Council: GCSE results in Brent outperform London and national averages

Brent secondary schools are all either academies, some stand alone or others part of a chain, or voluntary aided but most still work closely with Brent Council or Brent Schools Partnership. Brent Council published the following press release yesterday:

Secondary schools in Brent have outperformed London and the national average for England at GCSE according to newly published figures.

Data from the Department for Education shows that the proportion of Brent students achieving 9-4 (A*-C) in English and maths is 69.7 per cent which is above the national average (64.4 per cent) and for the first time above the London average (67.9 per cent).

In addition to this, Brent's ‘Progress 8' score, which focuses on how much progress pupils have made between their primary school and GCSE results, shows Brent students making more than half of a grade more progress in each of their eight subjects than students nationally. 

This strong performance has put Brent well above the London and national averages. For the second year running, Brent has the second highest progress score out of 151 local authorities in England. 

Cllr Amer Agha, Cabinet Member for Schools, Employment and Skills said: 

Last year schools in Brent achieved great GCSE results and it is good to see that these have been reflected in the latest performance tables.  

Our pupils and teachers work extremely hard throughout the school year and these results are testament to all their commitment and dedication.  

I'm so pleased that Brent came second in London and England for the Progress 8 scores for the second year in a row. Brent schools are committed to giving the borough's children and young people the best possible start in life and with 96% of our schools rated "good" or "outstanding" by Ofsted I believe we are all doing that. 

In other measures, a higher percentage of students were entered for the five English Baccalaureate subjects (English, mathematics, science, foreign language and history or geography) in Brent than in London as a whole and nationally. Brent's Attainment 8 score is 49.9 which is above both the London average (49.4) and the national average (46.5).

Will Ark get into the Secondary Modern business?

Guest blog by Ray Singh-Standids

In 2014 Copland School was taken out of local authority control and forced to become an academy.  The reason given was that Copland, (a school whose staff and students had suffered a unique period of  mismanagement and corruption which resulted in the sacking of the governing body and criminal charges against the headteacher and his management team), was judged to be a ‘failing school’.  The consequence of this judgement was forced academisation, a move which parents, staff and students voted against but which Cllrs Pavey and Butt publicly supported. 

In 2014, Copland’s last year, 46% of students obtained  5 GCSE subjects including English and Maths at grades A*-C . This followed improvements of 3 percentage points for each of the previous 2 years despite this  being a period in which senior management was helping the police with their enquiries and Ofsted inspectors and other nuisances constantly cluttered up the classrooms hampering  the continuity and flow of the educational experience of staff and students.

Copland was forced to become  Ark Elvin Academy  in September 2014. By the end of Ark Elvin’s  first year the headline 5 GCSE figure had dropped from 46% to 36%. For  2016 the figure is apparently  an even more dismal 31%. Those figures again:

2012  Copland School            5 A*-C  inc English and Maths       40%

2013  Copland School            5 A*-C  inc English and Maths       43%

2014  Copland School            5 A*-C  inc English and Maths       46%

2015  Ark Elvin Academy       5 A*-C   inc English and Maths       36%

2016  Ark Elvin Academy       5 A*-C   inc English and Maths       31%

If Copland was judged to be ‘failing’ at a 5 GCSE rate of 46%, what does that make Ark Academies’ effort of 31% only 2 years later? Ark would no doubt blame the 31% results on Copland’s teaching in earlier years. But that doesn’t stand up as Copland’s 46%  was achieved in those exact same  circumstances (arguably worse circumstances, in fact,  as Copland’s 46% students hadn’t had the benefit of Ark Academies’ claimed excellence at ‘driving up standards’).

So, what’s to be done, Cllrs Pavey and Butt must surely be asking themselves.   When comprehensives ‘fail’ they’re  forced  to become academies, (with your enthusiastic support, Cllrs Butt and Pavey). But Ark Elvin already is an academy. So when an academy ‘fails’  you’ve got a problem.  Do you turn it back into a local authority comprehensive? Not allowed, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, Cllrs,  the Tories  have come up with another wheeze to help you  out. Theresa May has said she’s going to bring back grammar schools (for the very small percentage who pass the 11 plus exam). But for every one grammar school she brings back, (though she hasn’t said this), she’ll have to bring back three  secondary modern schools  for the very large percentage who fail the 11 plus.  And that’s where Ark Elvin comes in. Those sharp hedge fund billionaires who run Ark Academies Inc  know a business opportunity when they see one  and are probably already making plans for this one.  Expect the Ark Secondary Moderns ‘charity’ to be announced within weeks with Ark Elvin as the flagship model (after due consultation, of course) . Problem solved. Tories to the rescue again, just like last time! And don’t worry,  Cllrs Butt and Pavey.  You liked forced academisation so you’re going to love forced secondary modernisation!   Magna Aude! (Or Big German Car  as we’ll probably have to change the motto to for the sake of  those secondary modern duffers).

Another free school makes its pitch in Brent

Another free school has emerged in Brent. The One Degree Academy  wants to set up an all through school in the borough. Like most free schools its website is short on detail including staffing and site. It is derived from the One Degree charity that offers 1:1 mentoring to underachieving GCSE students and claims to have helped 200 in the past 6 years based on 'personalised support and inspirational role models'.

Clearly it is a big step to running a school for ages 5-19 and it is not clear from the website LINK how many of the staff will be qualified teachers,  They are having an Open Day on Saturday from 12-3pm at Harlesden Methodist Church.

Gladstone secondary free school has still not got a permanent site although they are having discussions with the Education Funding Agency and the DfE on a Foundation site.

It has emerged that the 'innovative' writing method promised by Gladstone, 'Do it WRITE'  LINK is the product of a company LINK owned by Jim Gatten, Gladstone's Project Director, a governor of the school and partner of vice chair of governors Marie Evans. They are both directors of the Gladstone school company. So far, according to the records, the company has yet to make a profit.

Parents urged to fight Copland's forced academisation

This letter is being distributed to parents of Copland students about the strike:

Dear Parents

Some people locally and nationally want to force Copland Community School to become an academy. They lie to you that this is in the interest of your children.

WHAT LIES ARE THEY TELLING YOU?

1 Results will improve. But academies do not do better in GCSEs than other schools. They actually do worse. 

2 Academies are in the interests of the children. But academies fiddle their exam results by permanently excluding more vulnerable young people, especially children from ethnic minorities, than other schools.

3 Extra funding. The days of bribes to convert to academy status are over. Under forced academisation there is no new money despite fact that the budget problems contributed to our failure by Ofsted. 

 

4 Parents should have a choice. But parents have less say in the running of academies than of other schools. Why for example was there absolutely no consultation with parents about the decision to impose an IEB on Copland?

WHAT TRUTHS ARE THEY HIDING FROM YOU?

There are many fantastic things about Copland. Many of our students get good GCSE and A Level results and progress to universities including Oxford and Cambridge. Copland should be upheld as a model of good community cohesion. At Copland we have low levels of pupil exclusion, unlike many academies. We take in more students who do not speak English than local academies. Academies would rather not have these students as they will affect their GCSE results but they fit in very well at Copland. We do loads of extra-curricular activities which really benefit the students. For example many of our students are signed up with football clubs. Raheem Sterling who now plays for Liverpool is the most famous one in recent years. Incidentally if we did become an academy it is likely that much of the land that the PE Department uses will be sold to make a profit for the academy sponsor.

WHAT DO WE NEED?

We need your support. Sign our petition and ask others in your community to sign it as well. Write to your councillor and MP. Get involved by contacting Tony Deady (parent governor) on 07952361792.

Will you support a Reclaim Our Schools campaign?

Downhills Primary school protests against forced academy

I wrote this article for Green Left's EcoSocialist broadsheet that was distributed on October 20th.  I would be interested to hear from anybody who would support a local Reclaim Our Schools campaign:

Michael Gove may have been making a shambles of education policies over the last couple of months but his position has, if anything, strengthened within the cabinet. The rebellious right-wing of the Tory Party hail him as one of the government’s few successes and his policies are becoming more extreme in response.

Looking beyond the GCSE marking fiasco and the failure of several free schools to open on time, it is clear that a contradictory combination of privatisation and greater central government control of schools is succeeding in dividing and fragmenting the education system.

Labour has failed to oppose these moves, tainted as it is by the fact that it started the process. Stephen Twigg has been ambivalent about free schools and academies and Lord Adonis’s recent intervention suggesting that private schools should sponsor academies ‘taking complete responsibility for the governance and leadership’ will undermine democratic accountability further.

We need a massive popular campaign, such as that for the NHS, to build opposition to Gove’s policies, perhaps under the heading of Reclaim Our Schools (‘Keep Our Schools Public’ may confuse people!)  The possibility of such a campaign was clear in the case of Downshill Primary School in Haringey when pupils, parents, teachers and governors took to the streets to demonstrate against Gove’s decision to force the school to become an academy.

In campaigning to Reclaim Our Schools we could:

• Resist academy conversions
• Oppose free schools
• Call for a good, local, democratically accountable, school for every child
• Campaign against the Coalition Government’s ruling that any new school must be either a free school or an academy
• Campaign for all free schools and academies to be reintegrated back into the local authority community of schools
• Press for democratic accountability through elected governing bodies and local authorities
• Demand fair admissions arrangements and fair funding
• Demand that all schools should accept children with special needs and be resourced as necessary
• Oppose Gove’s examination reforms that look likely to return us to a two-tier system and mean that many students would leave school without any qualification
• Call for the end of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check which the NUT Survey showed 9 out of 10 teachers thought was ‘A lode ov owld rubbish’
• Press for quality teacher assessment of pupils rather than SATs
• Encourage ‘bottom up’ curriculum and learning innovations lead by classroom teachers rather than  ‘top down’ imposed curriculum and learning strategies
• Reform inspection so that it becomes a positive professional partnership rather than a politicised pressure on schools to conform to the government’s agenda
• Argue for the needs and interests of children to be put back at the centre of the education system rather than the needs of industry or the UK’s position in international comparison tables
• Make ‘Reclaim Childhood’ a central demand for children who are presently the most tested, pressurised and (in the case of the annual ‘dumbing down of exams’ campaign), rubbished generation.

Learning for a full life rather than just work, no taxation without representation, and the right to enjoy childhood – who could argue with that?

There's a great article by Michael Rosen on the upcoming Year 6 tests HERE

London teachers call protest over GCSE debacle and new exam proposals

London teacher associations have orgabised the following demonstration and meeting on the latest of Gove's wheezes:

Wednesday 24th October at 6:00pm in Central Hall, Westminster

Tell Gove: Justice for GCSE students: No to the EBC

Meeting and protest called by London NUT associations

Speakers include:
Chris Dunne (Headteacher, Langdon Park School, Tower Hamlets)
Jane Basset (Head of English)
Professor Sally Tomlinson (Goldsmiths University)
Kevin Courtney (National Union of Teachers Deputy General Secretary)

Come to protest  at the DfE before the meeting. Bring banners
From 5pm n Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings,
Great Smith St, Westminster (only 2 mins from the meeting venue)

GCSE affair "morally repugnant" senior examiner

The legal action undertaken by Brent Council, other local authorities and many schools,  seeking a judicial review of the GCSE marking fiasco has received unexpected backing from a senior figure in AQA, the examination board.. This report from the BBC:

A senior exam board figure has resigned over the shifting of English GCSE grade boundaries which left thousands of pupils with lower grades than expected. Stephen McKenzie quit the exam board AQA on Wednesday after 16 years as a GCSE English moderator. In his resignation letter Mr McKenzie said the grade boundary shift was "the worst decision ever made by AQA". He said the AQA board’s handling of GCSE boundary changes was "morally repugnant"  He told BBC News: "I could not go on working for them - to be frank AQA English has fallen apart." 

 Mr McKenzie's resignation came as the exam boards and the exam regulator Ofqual were given more time to consider a legal challenge from teaching unions, schools and local authorities asking them to regrade English GCSE papers.  The alliance has written formally to Ofqual and the exam boards AQA and Edexcel challenging the refusal to regrade GCSE English papers in England. They are threatening to seek a judicial review after thousands of pupils scored lower-than-expected results when grade boundaries were raised midway through the year. 

In his resignation letter Mr McKenzie called the handling of the affair "morally repugnant" and "disingenuous". He said that claims that teachers had marked controlled assessments too generously were based on "paltry evidence" and called the moderation of the qualification "poor, stressed and chaotic". He added that AQA had reneged on guidance to schools about the standard needed to achieve a C grade and said that this had hit the most vulnerable part of the student population hardest.

 "We have in this whole sorry business the classic social disaster scenario; mismanagement succeeded by chaos, hurt innocents succeeded by collusion between official bodies to suppress the reality of the disaster.  The various AQA English specifications have as their spine texts - To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Crucible, An Inspector Calls - where ordinary but principled people stand up for social justice at whatever cost. If I see anyone at AQA English do this any time soon, I will reconsider my decision not to work for them. Otherwise I mourn the passing of a once fine institution."

In his letter Mr McKenzie quotes emails from a senior English assessor at AQA who states that the changes to grade boundaries between January and June did "massive damage" and "instantly hit the most vulnerable" pupils. In particular the assessor's emails focus on the raising of the grade C boundary on the lower tier English 

Mr McKenzie, vice principal of Morley Academy in Leeds, says this paper is marketed at the students who would have had to work the hardest to achieve a C or better and who needed the grade to enter apprenticeships, employment or further education. 

Earlier this month letters between another exam board, Edexcel and the regulator Ofqual, were leaked to the Times Educational Supplement. These showed that Ofqual ordered the board to make grade boundary changes against its will just two weeks before the results were published. 

The TES says the Mr McKenzie's resignation letter and the emails reveal "that assessors from AQA, the board with the biggest market share in GCSE English, were just as concerned as their Edexcel counterparts about the grading changes". AQA said it was unable to comment because of pending legal action over GCSE English.

Who would you back,  the principled Stephen McKenzie or Michael Gove?

Brent Council joins in GCSE judicial review call

Brent Council has  confirmed it will be joining other local authorities in an attempt to seek a judicial review into the altering of grade boundaries for GCSE examinations between January and June this year.

The council took the decision after conducting a thorough survey of predicted and actual GCSE pass grades among all of its secondary schools which found that as many as 100 students who sat exams in June were adversely affected by the grade boundaries being reset.

Brent's Lead Member for Children and Families, Cllr. Mary Arnold said:

"We believe that the AQA and Edexcel exam boards altered their grades between January and June of this year which resulted in a marked difference in students' predicted and actual grades. On behalf of the hundred or so students affected in Brent and the many thousands of other young people across England we are whole heartedly behind the legal challenge to Ofqual for a thorough investigation into this matter."

A formal joint letter of complaint, to which Brent is signatory, was issued to Ofqual on 20 September calling for a judicial review into the increase in grade boundaries.