Former Ofsted chief Michael Wilshaw takes over at Jewish Free School following departure of the headteacher & safeguarding concerns

 Sir Michael Wilshaw

Sir Michael Wilshaw, former Chief Inspector at Ofsted (2012-2016), has stepped in as temporary interim executive principal of the Jewish Free School (JFS) in Kenton following the sudden departure of headteacher Mrs Rachel Fink.

Dame Joan McVittie

Sir Michael will be advised by Dame Joan McVittie a former London headteacher, senior Ofsted inspector and an expert in safeguarding.

JFS is tha largest Jewish secondary school in Europe and, although in Brent ,takes pupils from a much wider area.

The Jewish Chronicle reported LINK:

Parents have voiced concern about the situation at the school, highlighting disciplinary and safeguarding issues. Speculation is rife about the findings of a supposedly negative Ofsted inspection last month, which have yet to be published.

The school had been named on the Everyone's Invited website where pupils reported peer-on-peer sexual misconduct. The Daily Telegraph  LINK reported on the tesimonies:

“I was in the lunch queue and he put his hand up my skirt and groped me [and] no one said anything,” one account allegedly about JFS read. Another said it was “normal for boys of any age to grope girls”.

At the time Mrs Fink write to parents about the 'disturbing' testimonies:

There are those who might suggest that it is impossible to verify the truth of these allegations, or that the naming of different schools and universities is inconsistent.

Others will argue that when you read the testimonies it is clear that most of them reference incidents that take place out of school, at parties and on the weekend; that they are nothing to do with school.

My view, both as an educator and as a woman, is that we have a responsibility to have an open and honest discussion and once again partner with students and parents to really understand what is taking place in our community, a microcosm of society, and how do we collectively create change.

Andrew Moss, Chair of Governors said:

We appreciate that changes of this nature cause concern. We have full confidence in the team along with the entire staff body to deliver the education priorties and maintain the Jewish ethos of the school. 

Although JFS is not a local authority school, Brent Council has an overall responsibility for the wellbeing and safeguarding of all children in the borough.

There was much disappointment in 2014 when Ofsted downgraded JFS from 'Good' to 'Requires Improvement' based on the behaviour and safety of pupils and the school's leadership and management. Action taken at the school enabled it to reurn to the 'Good' category in all areas in 2016.

The report on the latest Ofsted inspection has not yet been published.

 

 

 

London boroughs need to be more vocal about their role in school improvement

From London Councils

London boroughs renewed their commitment to driving school improvement at London Councils’ Education Summit, held at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on Monday.

London is currently the best performing region at GCSE level and around 80 per cent of schools in the capital are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, but at the same time 40 per cent of young Londoners are failing to achieve  5 A* to C grades including English and Maths. 

At the Education Summit, councillors and council officers from across London discussed various strategies to boost pupil performance across the capital, particularly for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

Cllr Peter John OBE, London Councils Executive member for children, skills and employment, said:

London’s schools have much to celebrate when it comes to standards and performance, but it is vital that they do not rest on their laurels. By analysing what drives success in schools across the capital and focusing on narrowing gaps in attainment for pupils on free school meals, who are classed as being the most disadvantaged, boroughs can pave the way for further school improvements.

London boroughs remain committed to playing our part within the education system to ensure children in London receive a top-quality education, and that is why we are so concerned about the likely impact of the national funding formula for schools, on top of rising costs and growing pupil populations.

Keynote speaker Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Ofsted, focused on why it is imperative for local authorities and schools to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and voiced scepticism about the effectiveness of re-introducing grammar schools. He shared insights gained as a head teacher at Mossbourne Academy in Hackney and during his tenure at Ofsted on the education system at large and the factors that create better schools. 

Another keynote speaker at the event was Alan Wood CBE, currently Chair of a government advisory group on the role of local authorities in relation to children. He called on London boroughs to be vocal about their role in school improvement and to do more to help schools push the most able students and those from working class backgrounds, boost attainment among pupils with special education needs and those interested in vocational 14-19 education routes, and improve standards in early years education. 

COPLAND IS GETTING GOVE’S ‘REVERSE -TROJAN -HORSE’ TREATMENT

Guest blog by Will Shaw

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the bizarre events surrounding the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse’ schools should have finally made clear that Ofsted exists to give the government the inspection reports it requires to support whatever its  schools strategy happens to be at any particular time. If the inspectors don’t come up with the right report they can be sent back into schools until they do. This is not usually necessary as the inspectors know what is expected of them and they dutifully supply it. Their lack of integrity or principled independence of thought can be measured by their deafening silence in objecting to this role over the years  and the extreme rarity of any individual resignations.

Ofsted inspections are a key weapon in the government’s overriding aim of ultimately turning  all (state) schools into centrally-run academies and  taking them out of local democratic accountability.  Once Ofsted supplies the government with the ‘appropriate’ inspection report on a school, the next stage is special measures, the imposition from outside of a non-accountable IEB  and forced academisation. This is the stage Copland has been at since last September. 

Obviously, this stage in the process has to appear  to be both necessary and beneficial and it’s Ofsted again which is used to show how much schools like Copland  improve as a result of the government’s wise policies. At Copland, if the inspectors are to be believed, the beneficial results of government policy were almost instantaneous. Their report after last November’s visit spoke of  the school having ‘turned a corner’ and ‘students making better progress’. It continued ‘ teaching …..attendance and punctuality are improving’, ‘students are keen to learn’, ‘ there has been a sea-change in the pace of improvement’, ‘the interim headteacher and associate headteacher and very strong governance of the IEB are driving this change well’ and so on; and all this after only 6 weeks! The nature of the narrative had been set. 

March 2014’s Copland report took the hagiography to the next level:  ‘… the  headteacher of St Paul’s Way is an astute Chair of the Interim Executive Board….. IEB members are asking the right questions about the school’s performance.. balanced in the rigour of challenge and in the quality of their support. Senior leaders are ‘stepping up to the plate’ more …. having greater impact on the work of the school ……... responding well to the high level of challenge being laid down by school leaders and the IEB... ……more accurate understanding of students’ needs  ……..higher expectations for students……  behaviour is much improved and the school is a more respectful place…… zero tolerance to poor behaviour … ….. an attitude of respect between and among students and staff……more confident and articulate learners. …….a richer quality of teaching…..teaching is better… lessons are more structured’. Clearly carried away with the spirit of the thing, the reporting inspector at one point came over all Mills and Boon and, revealing  a bureaucrat’s tin ear for the speech patterns of 21^st century London youth,   wrote this:

 ‘One student, capturing the views of many, said, ‘We can see hope now.’ This new-found optimism is palpable’.  

 (I like to imagine the inspector considering whether to  attribute the final 6 words to this ‘student’ as well, but wisely deciding that this might be pushing it a bit). 

It’s difficult not to laugh (if only at the writers’ belief that they could get away with this tosh) but many teachers and pupils have worked very hard at Copland this year and it’s a pity that any truth which these Ofsted reports might contain is tarnished by the relentless gung-ho bollocks  of the rest of it. But then, establishing  the truth is not at all what these inspections are about. How could they be when 2 inspectors come in for a day and a half and watch 10 or 15 minutes of a few lessons?  No, as in Birmingham their function is to provide bogus supporting evidence for actions already decided on. In the case of Copland, we are being provided with the  narrative of the ‘saving’ of a school by Gove, forced academisation, ‘tough’ but necessary action, (60 staff and half the curriculum axed), and finally the salvation that is The Ark Rescue.  

It’s a satisfying narrative  so far and it will be interesting to see how far the Ofsted inspectors think they can push it when the report on their imminent final visit comes out in a few weeks time.  As the purpose of the report is pre-determined and as the inspectors know what is expected of them (and  also know that their continuing employment depends on their coming up with the goods), the report  might as well have been written last September. If it was, I hope they don’t change anything if they , by chance, should come across this blog. And if they’re looking for further fictional inspiration, what better place than in the sort of book that, if he’d ever read it, Michael Gove would surely have banned, if only for the fact that it isn’t even really a decent, proper, stout English novel but rather some thin, poncey, foreign-sounding thing called a ‘novella’: Animal Farm.

“It has become usual in Wembley to give Mr Gove, Michael Pavey, the IEB, the Interim Headteacher and the Associate Headteacher  the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune at the school. You will often hear one pupil remark to another, “Under the guidance of our Senior Leadership Team  I have progressed  five levels in six months” or two teachers, enjoying a drink at the staffroom water-cooler, will exclaim, “thanks to the leadership of Headteacher  Marshall and  Associate Headteacher John, how excellent this water tastes!”...” (With apologies to  George Orwell).

The next Copland Ofsted visit is ‘imminent’  and the inspector’s report will be published in a few week’s time. But please remember, and thanks to Martin, you read it here first.

Potential 'Non-compliance' on 'schoolifying' of the early years

On the day that Michael Wilshaw called for more formal learning for two year olds it was good to see this letter in the Daily Telegraph. Signatories include Dr Richard House who is a member of the Green Party.

GRADGRIND FOR TINY TOTS

SIR – “The erosion of childhood” is becoming a theme of concern to citizens across the political spectrum.

The latest salvo in this “paradigm war” for the heart of childhood has been discharged by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. In a letter to all early-years inspectors, he instructs them to judge nurseries mainly in terms of preparation for school. They must “teach children the early stages of mathematics and reading”.

This utilitarian shift from experience to content betrays an abject (and even wilful) misunderstanding of the nature of early childhood experience. The determination to dragoon England’s young children into unconscionably early quasi-formal learning is catastrophic for their well-being, and is setting up many for failure at a very young age.

England’s early years education and care is safe in the hands neither of Sir Michael Wilshaw nor of the current incumbents at the Department for Education. We urge Sir Michael and the DfE to stop digging in their current “schoolifying” hole, and step back from this misguided drive to over-formalise England’s early-years sphere.

The alternative might be that these policy-makers end up precipitating the first wave of professional “principled non-compliance” with government policy that our education system has known in living memory. Any government that underestimates the strength of feeling on this issue, and the resolve to resist it, does so at its peril.

Letter and full list of signatories HERE 

Let Gove and Wilshaw spit blood - we'll organise for an alternative

Following on from the successful West London Education Question Time last week, I attended the Anti Academies Alliance AGM, and left optimistic that at last the agenda supported by both Michael Gove and Michael Wilshaw (their squabble is more about power and ego than policy) is being challenged on a broad front.

The AAA recognised the connection between the neoliberal privatisation and austerity agendas by agreeing to affiliate to the People's Assembly. They agreed to participate in developing the education policies and actions of the PA and to support their local and national activities that accord with those of the AAA and the National Campaign for Education.

The importance of democracy and accountability highlighted by the struggles around  academisation was the subject of a motion on Parental Ballots which was agreed by the AGM.

The notion read:

The AAA notes

• that many of the schools converting to academy status - voluntarily or forced - are doing so without proper consultation of parents
• the recent decision of Barking and Dagenham Local Authority to organise ballots of parents in schools facing academy conversion

The AAA believes

• that parents should have the final say on the status of their children's schools

AAA calls

• on all governing bodies in any school consulting on academy status - whether by choice or by direction - to hold a ballot of parents
• on all Local Authorities to organise parental ballots for all schools converting to academy status

I hope that Brent Council will take note of Barking and Dagenham's policy and adopt it. But B&D have gone further winning an historic injunction, alongside governors,  in the High Court preventing the imposition of an Interim Executive Board and an Academy Order on Warren School.(1) After Warren went into special measures a year ago a partnership was established with Rober5t Clack School and Warrens's results have risen by 16%.

The Director of Children's Services at B&D had said:

I believe the Secretary of State's proposal will disrupt the progress made, and could negatively impact on children's education.

The ruling by Mr Justice Collins is itself very interesting as he not only questions the decision itself, saying. 'It appears to me this decision should never have been made' but also questions the legislation which allows such decisions to take place in the face of local demoracy and th best interests of the children concerned.

The Judge said:

This is an extraordinary piece of legislation (Academies Act 2010). The Secretary of State has wide powers to make am IEB (Interim Executive Board) and AO (Academy Order) and thereafter consult. On the face of it that is crazy. How can he be impartial by consulting thereafter?

He went on:

(It) seems from reports the present Secretary of State thinks academies are the cat's whiskers - we know of course some of them are not.

Cllr John White, cabinet minister for  children's services, and Michael Pavey's equivalent in Barking said:

This (injunction) is a victory for both common sense and the education of our children. Our position remains that the improvements at the school, and the arrangements we have in place, are having a very positive impact on outcomes for children, and as such, imposing an academy will be disruptive to children's education.

This follows on from the Snaresbrook Primary school's victory against forced academisation where an effective parental campaign was backed by the senior management team of the school, the governing body and the local authority.

Even in Hammersmith and Fulham flagship Tory borough, the decision to close top performing  Sulivan Primary School to make way for a free school, has stubled with the Scrutiny Committee's decision to call in the decision.

There seems to be the potential for a cross-party and non-party campaign to at least slow down Gove's juggernaut.  This is only a small step though because the three main parties are still wedded to neoliberal ideas of education emphasising marketisation and the producing of children who are 'fit for work' or even in the case of some academies and free schools, 'fit for military service'.

We must both win small victories to slow down Gove's reforms but also build and win support for alternative ideas about what education is for, how it is organised, and how decisions are made.

Having been elected to the National Steering Committee of the Anti Academies Alliance on Saturday I hope to make a contribution to this strategy.

(1) Acknowledgements to paper circulated at AAA AGM

Class size facts challenge Wilshaw ahead of spending cuts

This piece from the excellent Ripped Off Briton website LINK should be of interest to parents, teachers, governors and pupils ahead of next year's expected education budget cuts:

Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools, said at a seminar organised by the Reform think tank: "You can't have small classes - small groups - and a highly-paid staff." Wilshaw's assertion being that by having bigger class sizes, and therefore fewer teachers, it will be possible to offer higher pay to tempt in better teachers. In this he was parroting Reform's own agenda: 

 

"Ministers should support schools that reduce numbers of teaching assistants and allow class sizes to rise. Ministers should also make the case that having a high quality teacher is more important than smaller class size."  

So, is it actually true that our schools have small classes? We produce data below from the OECD's "Education at a glance, 2012" report, which looks at and compares the education systems in the OECD countries.

For both primary and secondary schools up to GCSE, class sizes in England are among the largest in the OECD.

The reality is we already have among the largest class sizes in the OECD. The government's agenda is simply to cut spending in the government education system.

After all, those who can pay for private education can enjoy classes of 15 to 20, as you would find in ordinary schools in Austria, Hungary, and the USA.

The story behind Harris's academy aspirations

George Monbiot has given national prominence to the forced academy issue LINK which has attracted many comments on the Guardian website.

This comment sums up the issues very well:
 
Our local secondary schools were taken over by Harris, essentially forcibly. It's no coincidence that Harris is a donor to the Tory Party, and the Tory party are now repaying him. There's no clear information on how much money is now being channelled through Harris for these schools, but if you take an average secondary school budget of £3m-£4m depending upon numbers, you can start to see what big business this is. Harris is fast approaching £100m of taxpayers' cash.

Of course, much of this goes to the schools. But Harris also has set up two profit-making companies which he can instruct his schools to use for provision such as buildings and maintenance. I'm sure that there are also "preferred suppliers" for other services. In addition, Harris provide some services centrally - of course they would claim not to make a profit, but in 2011, the average cost of each member of the Harris Federation staff was over £80,000. His chief executive, and pet Gove advisor, Daniel Moynihan, paid himself a quarter of a million pounds. This came from school budgets. That's the salary of 3 headteachers, or nearly 10 new teachers.

This is just one academy chain. Dig into the others and you will find some equally odious developments.
We need to recognise what this is. Under the guise of Gove and Wilshaw's blatant lies about "falling standards", "dumbing down" and "failing schools", and aided and abetted by a mendacious Tory press happy to repeat obvious nonsense about academy status granting "freedom from LEA control" in areas in which the LEA never had any control, we are witnessing the outright privatisation of our education system.

Our schools are being handed on a plate to rapacious businessmen under the guise of school improvement, yet the real agenda is to marketise the system, remove schools from any local accountability, and allow businesses to reap huge profits from siphoning off money which we paid in taxes for our children's education. Gove and the Tories know this would never obtain public approval, so the lie is pushed again and again that this is a benign process to raise standards, but the events at Roke, at Downhills, at Kelsey Park and Cator Park, to name but a few, give the lie to this. This is a sell-off.

Labour have cowered on this issue because it was them who started this nonsense about academy status being the universal panacea, to cover up what they were really doing, which was rebranding difficult "sink" schools to try and change the intake. That policy worked up to a point as long as the intake changed. But it was always a nonsense to suggest that there was any connection between academy status and results - plenty of academic studies have now demonstrated this link is simply bogus. They are now facing the result of their own propaganda, and to stop this sell-off, they will need to face up to their own lies and mistakes, and admit that this is never what academies were about. Can you hear Twigg saying that ? No, I didn't think so.

Michael Rosen has also commented on the forced academies issue in his latest 'Dear Mr Gove' letter LINK