Character building FEAT on a concrete slab in Colindale

The concrete slab viewed through perspex window

Purple marks the proposed school site

Brent's new Cabinet will tomorrow  consider a proposed new free school to be built at the back of the new Morrisons Supermarket on the Oriental City regeneration site in the Edgware Road.

Both the design of the school and the chosen free school provider are likely to be controversial.  The Cabinet papers state:

The site comprises a concrete slab at first floor level with parking beneath.

It is proposed that the Council have a 999 lease interest in the land which it will then lease to the free school provider for 125 years at a peppercorn rent on the basis of the 'template' lease which the Secretary of State is empowered to grant.

The site is physically 'constrained' so it is proposed that the school will be on two levels (on top of the slab) with a roof top playspace for the 420 pupils as there is no space for a playground.  Add to this that fact that the school is very close to the traffic pollution of the Edgware Road and it is not exactly ideal.

The free school provider is Floreat Education Academies Trust (FEAT) of which more later. To enable them to take pupils from September 2016 the Council wish to grant FEAT a 3 year lease on the former Kingsbury Pupil Referral Unit in Church Lane, Kingsbury. This was refurbished to provide additional temporary infant class places but the Cabinet paper states 'but has not been used for classes to date as demand has not required it.' I also understand existing primary schools were relectant to take on the additional unit as a 'satellite'.

The fact that 'demand has not required it' but somehow there will be a demand when it opens as a free school  is a little strange.  It is very close to Fryent Primary School but a long way from the Oriental City site so it is difficult to see how there will be continuity between the two sites in terms of actual pupils. Pupils who live in Church Lane will have to take two buses or a bus (302) and a walk to get to the Morrisons site.

The Church Lane site

Never mind. Floreat seem to have assumed that the Brent Cabinet will deliver the goods. They have already set up a website for the Church Lane school LINK

So why do I sound a note of caution about FEAT?

It was founded by James O'Shaughnessy, (now Lord) former Director of Policy for  David Cameron. He was a visting fellow at the Govite Policy Exchange, consultant to Pearson, and an Honorary Senior Research fellow at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue.  LINK

He has described current education 'reforms' as a 'huge battle in an already very long war.'

Thanks to Powerbase for the following information.

Ian Moore, Director of Education, was seconded from PwC to the prime minister's education delivery team in 2006 and a senior adviser to the Conservative Party's 'Implementation Team' 2008-10,

And then there is Annaliese Briggs, who at 27 survived for just 6 months at Pimlico Primary School (one of Education Minister John Nash's chain) having no teaching qualification. Nevertheless she is in charge of FEAT's curriculum delivery!

See Powerbase for more but you get the picture.

So what is all this 'character building' stuff?

Imported from the US (there is a statement from the US Secretary of State for Defense on the  Jubilee Centre's website LINK) it is rapidly becoming a government supported industry penetrating into our schools. This is their rather dull film about the programme:



 

An article by Matthew Bennett on the Local Schools Network website LINK explains some of the background:

‘No excuses’ charter schools are a product of the test-based accountability systems that have dominated American public education since George W. Bush’s first term.  In the same way, English academy chains like ARK Schools and the Harris Federation developed within the culture of ‘hyper-accountability’ – to use Warwick Mansell’s term – created by the Education Act of 1988.  The ARK Schools chain is, in fact, closely modelled on the KIPP ‘network’ of charter schools.  Both target the inner cities.  Both argue that severe economic and social deprivation is ‘no excuse’ for educational underperformance.  Both aim to demonstrate – by dramatically boosting test and exam scores – that privatisation can be the miracle cure for decades of failure by state or public schools.  Both have a surprising number of financiers on their boards (of the eight trustees on the ARK Schools board, five are hedge fund managers;  none has any background in education). 

The new character education cannot really be understood without looking at the methods of behaviour management used in ‘no excuses’ schools and their English imitators.  These schools love mnemonics – displayed in every classroom, chanted by students – and their mnemonics are quite revealing.  SLANT:  Sit up, Listen, Ask questions, Nod, Track the speaker.  SMARTS:  Stand and sit straight, Make good choices, Always 100% on task, Respect, Track the speaker, Shine.  HALL:  Hallway heads and eyes forward, Arms with finger on lips, Legs straight, Lips sealed.  The rules cover the smallest details of students’ behaviour, and the slightest infraction of the rules – for example, failing to maintain eye contact with the teacher at all times – meets with immediate punishment (this is what one defender of the model calls ‘sweating the small stuff’).  Sanctions include detentions, a period wearing a special ‘miscreant’s shirt’, or a deduction from the student’s account of ‘KIPP dollars’.  (In a training video aimed at teachers in charter schools, a student is told at one point:  ‘Laughing is ten dollars’.)  Some charter schools push the principle to insane extremes.  A list of complaints made by parents against a ‘no excuses’ charter in Texas, Nashville Prep, includes the following:  ‘One student received a demerit for saying, “bless you” when a classmate sneezed.  He also received detention (1) for saying “excuse me” while stepping over another child’s backpack and (2) for picking up a pencil for a classmate’.

James O'Shaughnessy is an advisor to the US Character Lab, co-founded by Dave Levin who also co-founded the KIPP network of charter schools.

It looks as if Katharine Birbalsingh will soon have a rival in the Brent 'scariest teacher' league.

Meanwhile I hear that Gladstone School's Maria Evans and Jim Gatten LINK are to move to Oxford in July.  Gladstone has announced that it is now not in a position to open to year 7 pupils in September as no site has been found.

Paul Phillips, in post since January 2014 as Principal Designate continues in his role.  Accounts have not been filed since 2014 and there have been recent changes in directorships.

Gladstone has yet to educate a single child but has spent £175,000 on 'educational operations'.

Click on image to enlarge

Insight into the business of Gladstone Free School: Are they doing it right?

Guest blog by Anonymous
 

It all started innocently enough. Jim Gatten and Maria Evans, a mum and dad from Barnet, decided to set up a new parent-led secondary school which they hoped the community would embrace. They applied to become a free school, a school independent of the local authority and accountable only to and funded directly by the Department for Education (DfE). They advertised for other parents and members of the community to join them in gathering enough signatures to show the DfE that it would be full for the first 2 years after opening, a box ticking exercise the DfE puts hopeful free school founders through. Off they went with their clipboards to various primary school gates gathering signatures. They got the required minimum of 250 signatures necessary for their free school application but there was never a groundswell of local support. Many parents who signed simply thought that a new school sounds like a good idea, after all, these are parents setting up a school and just need a simple no-obligation signature. No explanation was given as to the implications a free school has on the local communities and it was 2013, before the flurry of headlines of failing and undersubscribed free schools had hit the press.

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.