NUT: We must say 'never again' to SATS car crash

Kevin Courney, Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers made this statement on Facebook earlier this morning:

On comparing SATs results and Morgan's failure.

This year 47% of children will be told they haven't reached the "expected" standard in at least one of their SAT papers.

Last year this figure was only 15%.

It is really important that we reassure parents and children. These children haven't failed. Nicky Morgan has failed.

She and Nick Gibb have consistently ignored advice - even pleas - from educationalists and teachers.
It was clear to many teachers that these tests were going to be a car crash.

The material was too hard, the curriculum wasn't in place, the tests were badly designed.
NUT called for this year's tests to be cancelled - but Morgan wouldn't listen.

We must reassure children and parents now. It's not their failure - it's Nicky Morgan's failure.
But we must also say "never again".

Next year's year 6 mustn't be put through this experience

Communications failure at Brent Civic Centre

The first Council meeting at Brent's £100,000,000 Civic Centre was the occasion for opening remarks  praising this 'magnificent' new building by Labour councillors.

Then things went downhill.

Councillors' microphones were either not working or only intermittent, making proceedings inaudible to the public and some councillors sounding like short-circuiting Daleks. The speakers' screen that shows the Mayor, who chairs the meeting, who is due to speak was not working. The mobile phone signal in the conference room was very poor and the broadband not sufficient to download the documents under discussion. The display board merely displayed the Brent logo rather than documents, speaker's names or motions under discussion.

The public are now roped off on the same floor level as the councillors with some councillors seated right in front of them, this obscures the view.

More complaints are coming in to me regarding the phone service including residents' calls not being answered, being abruptly cut off, barely audible answerphone messages and the robot switchboard voice recognition  'mishearing' names and departments and making ludicrous suggestions as to what the customer may require.

It is beginning too look more than mere teething problems.

Professor: academies are failing black students

An interesting article from Voice on Line LINK which gives pause for thought as the academisation of Brent secondary school nears completion:

A LEADING academic has said that black pupils achieve worse GCSE results in academies than in local authority schools with a similar intake.

Professor David Gillborn, director of the centre for research in race and education based at the University of Birmingham, pointed to the Government’s data which revealed that while other ethnicities performed better, attainment among black pupils leaves much to be desired.

According to the Department for Education’s Equalities Impact Assessment: Academies Bill published in 2010, 37.1 per cent of black children enrolled at academies achieved five top GCSEs including maths and English.

But in local authority-run schools with similar characteristics, that figure was 41 per cent among children of African and Caribbean heritage.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “These are not the most up-to-date figures. In fact, results in sponsored academies are improving at a faster rate than in other state-funded schools. Analysis published by the department last year shows that, in 2011, the proportion of black pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and mathematics was 2.5 percentage points higher in sponsored academies than in similar council-run schools.”

For other ethnic groups including white and Asian, this pattern was in reverse with both groups performing slightly better.

Academies tend to have a higher proportion of black pupils than other ethnic groups. Gillborn, a guest speaker at the annual London Schools and the Black Child conference, said: “The Government claims that academies are going raise standards for everyone but, actually, its own data suggests academies are bad news for black students.

“When compared with similar local authority schools they do worse...this has not stopped the policy being rolled out across the country. [The Government] has taken no steps whatsoever to identify where this problem might be arising from, let alone taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen in every single new academy.”

RBS IT failure may affect Brent council tax transactions

Following from Brent Council:

Brent uses the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as its clearing bankers.

On Wednesday, 20 June, a software upgrade at the bank failed, resulting in services being unavailable. This was a nationwide problem affecting individuals and businesses that bank with RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank.

The problems affecting reporting systems meant that whatever transactions were undertaken, neither customers nor bank staff could accurately identify transactions or balances.

As a result we have been unable to verify some customers' payments including Council Tax. This could result in us writing to some customers to recover 'debts' which have actually been paid.

We will do everything possible to minimise the impact on customers and at the moment we are not aware of any transactions that have either failed or been duplicated. We will keep customers informed as more information becomes available.