Thursday 14 July 2016

Schools and the New Parent Power: This Time, the Fight is Personal By Susanna Rustin

Parents protesting against testing and compulsory academisation.

We had a public meeting of 130 people, a rally, a picnic and a stand-up comedy night, but the most important element of our campaign was getting three parent governors elected. There were three vacancies because the school hadn’t held any elections for ages,” says Natasha Steel.
Steel, who runs her own PR company, is one of a group of East Sussex parents who fought and won a battle to prevent their local school, Hove Park, from being turned into an academy. Now they have widened their sights, including setting up a group, Hands Off Our Schools Brighton & Hove, in response to government plans to force all schools to become academies.
There have been campaigns against academies since the policy of freeing schools from local authority control was launched by New Labour, and the Anti-Academies Alliance has been around for 10 years. But the government’s latest push, signalled by its schools white paper in March – combined with evidence of poor performance at some multi-academy trusts and publicity surrounding high salaries and financial irregularities – has led to a renewed surge of activism.
“I went on the Iraq war march and I’ve done the odd thing here and there but this is the most direct involvement I’ve had in any campaign in my life,” says Steel. “It’s your children, it’s your school, it’s really personal.”
“People are starting to realise they aren’t the only ones with spine-chilling stories of how children are being treated,” says Madeleine Holt, one of the organisers of another group, Rescue Our Schools, whose focus is social media. Holt, a former journalist who also runs the social enterprise Meet the Parents, believes campaigns against academisation and the removal of the requirement for parent governors, protests against behaviour policies and Sats, and parents challenging the bar on termtime holidays, are all part of the same phenomenon.
“It’s a broader movement. It’s an emotional thing: parents feel they’ve been shoved aside over the years,” she says. “It’s like a Venn diagram – we have slightly different views on some issues but there is a substantial core of shared ideas.”
“We’re not just anti-academies activists any more,” agrees Alasdair Smith, a teacher and parent in east London who was active in the Anti-Academies Alliance before setting up Parents Defending Education. “It’s about cuts, special educational needs and the curriculum.”
“You’re seeing an amalgamation of all sorts of issues,” says Steel. “Sats and the growth of testing, mental health issues, the narrowing of the curriculum.”
Steel has what she calls a “gut feeling” against academisation. Smith says he feels “vindicated” that early fears about a policy launched under Tony Blair have proved justified: “What we’re saying to every parent is: try to stop your school becoming an academy because they are unaccountable businesses.”
Other parents with less obviously political views have found themselves in conflict with a specific school or trust. Fiona Forrest contacted Rescue Our Schools because she felt a new regime of punishments, including Saturday detentions, at her daughter’s south-east London school had made it “like a workhouse”.
Nichole Roberts was among a group of parents to receive a solicitor’s letter demanding they rename a Facebook group on which they had criticised rules about dress and behaviour at Morley Academy in Leeds.
If all these parents have something in common, it is that they object to what they regard as the new and unaccountable power of schools, and the corresponding decline in their own influence. Diane Reay, professor of education at Cambridge University and a researcher in the area of family-school relationships, says the Conservative flagship policy of free schools was built on a “fallacy of parental involvement” – in the latest batch of 22 free schools approved by education secretary Nicky Morgan, just one is run by parents. She argues that “growing disquiet about schooling” may be due to growing awareness of anxiety and unhappiness (shown in statistics as well as anecdotes) in children.

David James, professor at Cardiff University and editor of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, thinks parents were slow to realise the implications of a policy that took schools out of local control. “It changes the whole dynamic,” he says. “It happened slowly but inexorably, and people partly didn’t realise because New Labour were as responsible as anyone else.”
But more recent moves to reshape governing bodies along corporate lines and reduce the number of parent governors, or remove them altogether, seem to have woken fears among parents that their voices may in future be ignored. “There is an assumption that if you’re an accountant or a lawyer you have a better sense of what is needed,” says Steel. “In my opinion the lollipop lady and playground assistant know more about the children in a school than anybody else, but they are to be excluded because they can’t manage data.”
Asked whether the weight given to parents’ opinions by Ofsted has changed, a spokesperson for the regulator highlighted Parent View, the online questionnaire launched in 2011, while a statement from the Department for Education said: “we want parents to be more involved in their child’s education, not less”, and that the “expectation that academies listen to the views and needs of parents” will be strengthened.
But despite evidence from the outgoing chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, and others that many multi-academy trusts are underperforming, and the reasonable inference that their governance model is not better than the local authority one, the government seems determined to press ahead with reforms that value skills over stakeholders.
“Academy trust boards will always be free to appoint parents as they see fit,” a spokesperson said. “We are clear, though, that governors should be appointed for their expertise.”
Whether this promise will survive the turmoil created by the EU referendum remains to be seen. But the direction of travel, towards a skills-based model of governance and away from local authorities, seems unlikely to be reversed. Campaigner and journalist Fiona Millar, who co-founded the Local Schools Network in 2010 to promote an alternative vision to academies and free schools, says: “Unless there is a change of government I think parents are going to be cut out.”
If the awkward fact for the government is the poor performance of many trusts, with mounting evidence of academy weakness wielded by activists as a weapon, the awkward fact for supporters of the previous model is that evidence about parental involvement in schools is mixed. Research shows that “parental involvement can increase inequality”, explains Reay, who ran a research project on this subject with James and Gill Crozier, because despite the good intentions of parents who believe they are committed to supporting local education for all, “there is a sense that as a good parent you need to promote your own children’s interests ... What we found is that parents often ended up campaigning for their children to be promoted to higher sets.”
James says if this shocks us, it is because we are in denial about the effect of schooling: “Education does many wonderful things but it does generate inequality as well, and acknowledging that is a really good starting point. Most policy discourse doesn’t. Education is seen as an entirely positive force instead of a process that is really quite dangerous if one isn’t quite sharp-eyed about the inequality that is being created.”
Millar says that with two-thirds of secondary schools now academies and half of those in multi-academy trusts, there is in any case no way back. Instead, she would like to see greater openness, emphasis on local partnerships, and governing bodies that combine skills and stakeholders.
For parents, it is not just a question of a school’s results or effectiveness. For some, the bonds between a school and its local area have an intrinsic and social value not easily measurable. “It’s time for parents not to be party political but parent political,” says Holt. “It’s about schools being rooted in communities and localism.”
She and others welcome the government’s partial retreat on academisation. Whether their belief  in local schools in which parents have a stake as more than consumers can gain any wider purchase in the face of the government’s standards-driven programme is doubtful. But they are trying.

Got a 2:2? Don't Panic, Get Some Work Experience By Holly Callender

‘Am I destined for the graduate scrapheap with my drinker’s degree?’


I found out my 2:2 classification sitting in the common room of a Barcelona hostel last month. After furiously calculating and recalculating my module percentages, the shock turned to tears. I called my parents for reassurance then ate six chocolate digestives.
I’d taken my final year at university seriously. I moved back home with my parents, curbed social excursions and worked hard.
Soon I was subjected to an endless social media stream of 2:1 announcements decorated with celebratory emoticons.
Am I destined for the graduate scrapheap with my drinker’s degree? Short answer: not with work experience.
Sure, the economic crash permitted companies to be picky. A 2012 survey found 75% of top employers required a 2:1 classification from applicants. However, as the financial crisis evened out, so did employers’ expectations.
“Employers can’t afford to be as choosy as they were in the recession. This means that they are not as concerned with grades as they have been, simply because there is much more competition for talent,” says Charlie Ball, head of higher education at the jobs website Prospects.
During 2015, the Big Four accounting firms phased out their 2:1 screening procedure. “This is a direction which some predict is due to grow,” says Nigel Royle, a careers advisor at the University of the West of Scotland.
Work experience is proving to be as desirable as a higher classification. “A significant number of graduate jobs are going to graduates who have had work experience in the same company,” Royle points out. “Plus, smaller companies are more likely to value work experience over a 2:1 classification.”
Ball agrees. “An employer may consider you more favourably if you have some form of work experience and they know you to be a good worker; someone who will make a valuable contribution to their company.”
According to a High Fliers report on the Graduate Market in 2016, recruiters were expecting to fill a third of full-time graduate positions with those who had already completed work experience. Better news still, 90% of top graduate employers in the UK are offering paid work experience to students and recent graduates.
For the creative industries, where recruitment programmes are thin on the ground, work experience is still vital. Paul Fisher graduated from the University of the West of Scotland with a 2:2 in sports journalism. Three years later, he is employed as a senior reporter.
“The more you write and build up a portfolio, the more notice you get,” he says. “A degree is a degree, but experience is key to success. There were some people in my year at university who left without an honours because they had managed to get full-time work.”
Even part-time work taken up during studies can be beneficial. Cara Samson, worked as a sales assistant while studying for a joint degree in psychology and sociology. “My 2:2 hasn’t held me back at all, I’m a personal banker now,” she says. “I was employed by the bank after finishing my degree in 2012 and have since been promoted. My customer service experience the main reason I got the job, not my degree.”
So rather than a couple of numbers guiding my future career prospects, it’ll be work experience and determination. As the optimistic Fisher says: “If you can get your foot in the door somewhere, this gives you opportunities and the only way is up.”

Wednesday 13 July 2016

Teacher’s Letter Praises Boy with Autism for Qualities not Tested in Sats By James Meikle


Gail Twist and son Ben
The mother of a boy with autism has publicly shared a letter from a teacher praising her son for qualities that the teacher said school tests could not measure.
The inspirational letter from Ruth Clarkson to 11-year-old Ben Twist, who failed the Sats he took this year, listed all the talents and abilities that Clarkson told Ben “make you the special person you are”.
Ben’s mother, Gail, from St Helens, Merseyside, tweeted that she was in tears as she read the words: “These tests only measure a little bit of you.”
Clarkson, an assistant headteacher at Lansbury Bridge school and sports college, congratulated Ben on his “attitude and success” in completing the Sats.
“A very important piece of information I want you to understand is that these tests only measure a little bit of you and your abilities. They are important and you have done so well but Ben Twist is made up of many other skills and talents that we at Lansbury Bridge see and measure in other ways,” she wrote.
The examples listed included his artistic talents, ability to work in a team, growing independence and kindness.
Clarkson continued: “We are so pleased that all of these different talents and abilities make you the special person you are and these are all of the things we measure to reassure us that you are always making progress and continuing to develop as a lovely bright young man. Well done Ben, we are very proud of you.”
The post by his mother has been retweeted more than 2,000 times. She told the Liverpool Echo: “Ben worked so hard and sitting the tests was a massive achievement. We knew the results were coming but to get a letter like that – I got part-way through it and I burst into tears.”
Ben, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of five, switched last year from a mainstream school to Lansbury Bridge, whose pupils include children with autistic spectrum disorders, physical disabilities, medical difficulties and speech, language and communication difficulties.
Gail Twist said: “Ben was in a mainstream school all the way through and he had one-to-one support. It was a really good school but the gap between him and his peers just grew and grew. As they were maturing, he wasn’t maturing at the same rate.
“Lansbury Bridge school is a lovely environment where people really do have each individual’s best interests at heart. Ben is sensitive and he does worry about things, and I wish more schools did things like this.
“He is all of the things they wrote about him – he is an amazing person. I think their words will stay with him if we keep reminding him what they said about him. When I told him he said: ‘Wow, do they really think all those things about me?’ It’s just a beautiful thing to do.”

Secondary School Job of the Day!

Are you a Geography Teacher looking for a September 2016 start in Sevenoaks, Kent?

TimePlan Education, working in partnership with their client school, is looking for a geography teacher who has taught successfully across key stage 3, 4 and 5. The position is a full-time contract starting September 2016. The successful candidate must be committed to achieving high standards and able to inspire students across the ability range at KS3, KS4 and KS5.

This is an excellent secondary school, located in an affluent area of West Kent. It is set in picturesque countryside. This school is forward-thinking and fosters a creative learning environment which challenges and supports the students and links well with the local community. They pride themselves on their high standards and expectations of student conduct and academic performance.

To be considered for this geography teaching vacancy based in Sevenoaks, Kent you will need to:
  • show you are an imaginative and forward thinking classroom practitioner
  • have the willingness to form part of a successful and enthusiastic team.
  • support the school ethos
  • possess excellent teaching skills and an ability to lead classes with pace and sufficient challenge.
It is essential that you understand the school's academic standing and have a sincere commitment to sharing long-term aims.

In return we offer:
  • professional classroom support from our team of headteacher consultants throughout the length of your contract.
  • a dedicated key contact at the TimePlan South East office.
  • TimePlan South East teacher socials where you can meet teachers who are teaching at schools in your placement area.
  • opportunities to aid your professional development.
  • pay to scale.
If you are interested in applying for this geography teaching position in Sevenoaks, Kent, please apply online today or call on 01732 373340.
TimePlan are the number one teaching agency for jobs in the south east.

Primary teaching Job of the Day !

Are you a Primary Teacher, looking for a September 2016 start in Chatham, Kent?

TimePlan Education, working in partnership with their client school, is looking for a primary teacher who has taught successfully across key stage 1 and 2. The position is a full-time contract starting September 2016. The successful candidate must be committed to achieving high standards and able to inspire students across the ability range at KS1 and KS2.

This pleasant 2 form entry school has beautifully tree-lined grounds and is always over subscribed with 420 pupils currently.
The school is very close to local amenities making it a very appealing place to work. It also boasts magnificent play areas that are covered for under 5 year olds as well as having separate grounds for infants and juniors.
The school encourages respect both inside and outside of the classroom, success and responsibility.

To be considered for this primary teaching vacancy based in Chatham , Kent you will need to;
  • show you are an imaginative and forward thinking classroom practitioner.
  • have the willingness to form part of a successful and enthusiastic team.
  • support the school ethos at all times during your working days.
  • possess excellent teaching skills and an ability to lead classes with pace and sufficient challenge.
It is essential that you understand the school's academic standing and have a sincere commitment to sharing long-term aims.
In return we offer:
  • professional classroom support from our team of headteacher consultants throughout the length of your contract.
  • a dedicated key contact at the TimePlan South East office.
  • TimePlan South East teacher socials where you can meet teachers who are teaching at schools in your placement area.
  • opportunities to aid your professional development.
  • pay to scale.
If you are interested in applying for this primary teaching position in Chatham, Kent, Please apply online today or call on 01732 373340.
TimePlan are the number one teaching agency for jobs in the south east.

Thursday 7 July 2016

Secondary School Job of the Day

Are you a Modern Foreign Languages Teacher, looking for a September 2016 start until October 2016 maternity cover?
Full-timeFrench/Spanish teaching job in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. TimePlan Education, working in partnership with their client school, is looking for an experienced MFL teacher who has taught successfully across key stage 3, 4 and key stage 5. The successful candidate must be committed to achieving high standards and able to inspire students across the ability range at KS3, KS4 and KS5.
This incredible academy is an all ability independent school set in 29 acres of land and has brand new facilities that include, but are not limited to, 7 science labs, a drama studio, outdoor learning spaces, and a multi-use games area.
The school is Ofsted 'outstanding' for student behaviour, academic progress, and leadership and management.
It takes pride in its success and sets high standards with clear expectations and good discipline approaches.
To be considered for this languages teaching vacancy based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent you will need to;
  • show you are an imaginative and forward thinking classroom practitioner.
  • have the willingness to form part of a successful and enthusiastic team.
  • support the school ethos at all times during your working days.
  • possess excellent teaching skills and an ability to lead classes with pace and sufficient challenge.
It is essential that you understand the school's academic standing and have a sincere commitment to sharing long-term aims.
In return we offer:
  • professional classroom support from our team of headteacher consultants throughout the length of your contract.
  • a dedicated key contact at the TimePlan South East office.
  • TimePlan South East teacher socials where you can meet teachers who are teaching at schools in your placement area.
  • opportunities to aid your professional development.
  • pay to scale.
If you are interested in applying for this modern foreign languages teaching position in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Please apply online today or call on 01732 373340. TimePlan are the number one teaching agency for jobs in the south east.

Primary School Jobs of the Day

Are you a Primary teacher, looking for a September 2016 start in Crawley, Sussex?

TimePlan Education, working in partnership with their client school, is looking for a primary teacher who can teach successfully across KS2. The position is a full time contract starting September 2016. A successful candidate must be committed to achieving high standards and able to inspire students across the ability range at KS2.

This Christian Church has God at the heart of all it does. The school works closely together to provide a caring, stimulant and nurturing environment.
Encouraging a love of learning, this school welcomes diversity and difference.

At the very core of its values, all the staff and pupils work to make a difference in the world by caring for one another and showing support.

The curriculum is creative, broad and relevant. It seeks to engage, challenge and inspire all learners and encourages a reflective learning community.

To be considered for this primary teaching vacancy based in Crawley, Sussex you will need to;
  • Show you are an imaginative and forward thinking classroom practitioner.
  • Have the willingness to form part of a successful and enthusiastic team.
  • Support the school ethos at all times during your working days.
  • Possess excellent teaching skills and an ability to lead classes with pace and sufficient challenge.
It is essential that you understand the schools academic standing and have a sincere commitment to sharing long-term aims.
In return we offer:
  • Professional classroom support from our team of Headteacher consultants throughout the length of your contract.
  • A dedicated Key Contact at the TimePlan South East office.
  • TimePlan South East teacher socials where you can meet teachers who are teaching at schools in your placement area.
  • Opportunities to aid your professional development.
  • Pay to scale.
If you are interested in applying for this primary teaching position in Crawley, Sussex please apply online today or call on 01732 373340, TimePlan the number one teaching agency for jobs in the south east.