The Sad and Pointless Academisation of Hillcrest School

From the Yorkshire Evening Post March 5 2013

Hillcrest "branded inadequate by an education watchdog will be transformed into an academy to boost standards". The article acknowledges that the school has had 14 headteachers over 20 years. Now what does that prove? That noone wants to stay; that even superheads can't turn it around?

Or is it that terrible "control by the local authority", which takes away some of the school's money in order to pay the superheads and the pychologists?

Or possibly the school is not inadequate; headteachers shouldn't need to grovel and apologise, eg: "We recognise that we are not successful as we should be . . . . the governors are keen that the academy status will bring the stability of a long-serving hedteacher."

So is that the big idea! you won't get a long-serving head unless you give them the extra money that the cruel local authority syphons off for its own greedy self! Squandering its money on psychologists and Special Needs experts, superheads, governor services and so on.

Does anyone, does Mr Gove care about the psychological effect on staff, parents and children of constantly and publicly being told that you are rubbish - when possibly you are just bog-standard, doing your best for the children in you care, some of whose life-styles are already affected by poverty, or unemployment, or racism, or struggling in a second or third language?

How has it come about that one inadequate, self-important Oxford graduate can cause so much misery? Gove must go; Ofsted must go; and Twigg must step up before there is nothing left in this once glorious  comprehensive education system to rescue!

It's not a good time to be a good, qualified, trained, experienced, dedicated, hard-working peripatetic music teacher

The TES covered the story in Canbridge. It's sacking all its 68 periptetic music teachers, and re-employing them as coaches/instructors and paying them, obviously well below the Qualified Teachers Rate, is 1. astonishing, 2. unprofessional, and 3, extremely short-sighted.

Read the story In TES March 1st 2013:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6323273

And it's not just in Cambridge. Music Services all over the UK are struggling. The "cuts" in general affects all council workers, but music services are one massive casualty from the despicable academisation of what what once were state schools. Until the Adonis-Balls-Gove continuum set out on their course to destabilise the UK public education one tenth of every school's money went to the local authority so they could run all the school support services.

The government's arguments runs thus: academies are free from local control. But schools had been happily paying up so experts could work together and provide SEN, governor support, a music service, union support - all that stuff. Now it's been dismembered, unravelled.

Now Music teachers are increasingly being asked to sort out their own taxes, find their own work, have no guaranteed work the following month, let alone the following year. Opportunist private firms have appeared, undercutting the council's music service prices, but not providing the CPD or the big central orchestras.

Sparrows first at National Festival of Music For Youth 2006

Because music services paid trained teachers [with QTS] a proper wage, experienced teachers made their way into them, bringing a wealth of experience with class management and school based skills, meaning that they could provide National Curriculum teaching in those schools which needed it; meaning they could taker the wider opportunities full classes.

Sparrows win UK award and play Royal Albert Hall 2009

But now we have the Gove, who operates from the premise that, if you can do, then you can teach it. [He also seems to think that if you went to Oxford University, you have the right to impose whatever idea pops into your mind to a whole nation.]

Above are two pics of the Leeds Music Service steelband [Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows] comprising children from inner-city Leeds, and playing at the National Festival of Music For Youth; quite impossible without the infrastructure that a city-wide service can offer, and the professionals who teach and run it.

I have had to use pics of my own band here, because they are what's on my computer at present.

Not the Greatness of the Linguists, but the Ungreatness of the Pay

I absolutely loved Maths. Then the wonderful Miss Swindells had retired. The new Maths teacher was presented to us as having double honours from Oxford. [What she didn't have was any noticeable teaching skills.]

I spent most of my Maths lessons in Year Ten [Lower Fifth as it was then], perfecting the art of playing dots with my pal, Jane H. 

I wrote to the papers thus:

In your article 1/4/13 a department for education spokeswoman said, "Independent schools . . . Already hire brilliant people who do not have . . QTS. We have extended this flexibility. " So is "brilliant" a new technical term then, maybe introduced to the DFE by the late and very much not lamented Education Leeds?

The spokeswoman suggests that all academies can hire "great linguists" etc who have not worked in state schools before. No great linguist would be seen dead in a state school for the money that unqualified teachers are paid. It's not the greatness of the linguistics that this is about but the ungreatness of the pay you can give them.

And parents beware. I look back to my days at high school in Leeds, where I was always joint top of the class with my friend, Kathy, of course, in everything, including Maths until little Miss Double Honours from Oxford turned up. After that I went back to being a linguist - at least the Latin and French teachers knew how to teach!

Being a good teacher, in my opinion, is about three things - talent, training and experience. Then it 's about working in a supportive environment so that you can work to your best. And not in the oppressive atmosphere that is Ofsted roaming around the country like a veritable dementor sucking the life and the joy out of schooling and childhood.

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA, (qualified teacher)

Gove in York, a Bridge too Far, Yudda yudda [!]

I staggered home from the Music Expo in London to find that someone had put Michael Gove on Questiontime without telling me.

Michael acts as if he was a regular nice guy, and he must have paid the BBC a tidy sum to lobotomise the audience as, at one point, they even applaud him. Maybe it was just York. And I noticed the audience was on the small side. Maybe they had to filter a load of people out to be on the [his] safe side. Whatever. Let him come to Leeds, and he can answer for his crimes at Prince Henry's and Primrose, and all the rest. [thought it must be said he picked up the baton that Adonis and Balls handed on to him].

The panel was asked if creativity in schools was being stifled, and if the development of critical thinking was being hindered [by Gove's latest random thoughts {aka proposals}]. I would say it is difficult to be creative in this reign of terror. And primary school children are not immune to the terror. Here's a story from when my youngest were in Yr 6.

Royal Park closing, and in perfect condition

 Georgia took her SATs in 1999. Just before she took them, she asked me, rather anxiously, "If I do badly in my exams will get put in the wrong sets at high school?" Well, I was a high school teacher myself: "No, high schools don't take any notice of SATs results." I told her, " They're never accurate enough".

Morgan took his SATs in 2000. Just before he took them he asked me, rather anxiously, "If I do badly in my SATS, will They close the school? 

Well, we had just fought off the first closure proposal. Morgan and Georgia sent Tony Blair Stand up for Royal Park badges. [He commended their enthusiasm but sent them back]. Morgan did well, but They closed the school anyway. Seven years later this striking Victorian beauty stands untenanted at the junction of Royal Park and Queens Road, while the council builds onto the other local primaries to try and cope with the population explosion. 

Last ever Royal Park Steel Pandas

The private company that closed Royal Park, Leopold, Asket Hill, Miles Hill and either closed or merged the 26 other Leeds primary schools was closed down itself in the end, but the damage they did, educationally, socially and psychologically endures still. 

Gove asks schools to instil a body of knowledge and skills in our young people and then he thinks that they will be set up for life. Even if I agreed with the same knowledge and skills, young people are not empty vessels to pour anyone's, let alone a central government's agreed info into. The are already human beings, with minds of their own, and learning styles of their own, and educational and personal needs of their own. These enquiring minds need listening to, and their needs met, not society's needs, not industry's needs.

And Gove had a Govite on the same panel: The Horowitz person thought our children should have a "reservoir of facts". .  dreary things" to set them up. So the answer is yes:

Creativity is being stifled.

This Story Might Make You Angry, and it Might Make you Cry

My daughter found this on Facebook. It speaks for itself. I don't know know who the teacher is, nor the school.

"I'm feeling low and a little bit helpless at the really horrible struggle my mum is currently going through. Hopefully she won't mind me posting about this - but I want to put it out there as it's something I really think people should know about.

My mum is a primary school teacher in a state school in Yorkshire, and has been for 20 years. She is a wonderful teacher: caring, committed, enthusiastic, her pupils love her, she has produced countless concerts, plays and choirs that have won national competitions, and has never received anything but very good / outstanding reports from Ofsted inspectors.

Her school is now, it would appear, in the midst of being systematically forced to become an 'academy school'. Academies have been around for a while - originally the stillborn brainchild of the Blair government, they are now being ruthlessly implemented by the self-important imbecile - sorry, 'moderniser' - Michael Gove; a representative of an even more clueless government obsessed with results tables and change for its own sake. But what is most disturbing about the whole pointless affair is not so much the staggering waste of time and resources, as the shockingly corrupt way it is being implemented.

For the first time in the entire history that my mum has worked at her school (which is 10+ years), the school was judged in an Ofsted report as having 'serious weaknesses' (having only ever been judged as good / outstanding prior to this). The headteacher was let go, and an 'executive head' was drafted in by the local authority, a woman who apparently has a reputation for supposedly 'turning around' failing schools (and by this I mean that she clearly deliberately fails them so that she can be seen to have 'turned them around' six months later).

The teachers were all subject to impromptu lesson inspections, and almost EVERY SINGLE teacher in the school, individuals my mum described as 'some of the best teachers I have ever known' were failed. My mum was failed for the first time in her career (Although on receiving this news she rather wonderfully told the inspectors "I don't give a monkey's"). The school has now been given six weeks to 'improve', before the government will come in to inspect them again. The teachers are doing 16 hour days in an attempt to do an impossible amount of work so that they don't fail this second inspection. My mum hasn't had an evening or a weekend off for weeks. She worked all through her supposed holiday last week. She is getting chest pains. One teacher collapsed from stress.

My mum had been planning to retire at the end of this year - this will be her final year as a teacher - what a way to thank her for 20 years of hard work and dedication to the state school system. She has always been an incredibly strong, cheerful, optimistic person, and whenever I speak to her now she talks of her life being a 'living hell' and 'just making it through the next five months'. I have never in my life heard her talk like this.

And all this in spite of the fact that the teachers at her school have been made perfectly aware that when the government come in to 'inspect' the school, they will be doing so with an agenda. That agenda being to turn the school into an academy - as they have done with several other schools in the area.

Essentially, all the work the teachers are putting in will most likely be for nothing, because the government have every intention to fail the school so that they can be seen to 'turn it around' and make it into an academy. It seems to me to be the most ridiculous scam - a con on a national scale which must be happening in countless more schools and which is abusing the time and resources of already desperately over-stretched, underpaid and under-appreciated teachers.

I feel very frustrated at not being able to make more people aware of what seems to me to be a total outrage. I am going to make this post public - please share, and if anyone I know is interested in the story or has any suggestions about how to increase awareness of this please get in touch. Thanks."

City of Leeds: The Mouse that Roars!

After Alan Bennett came to City of Leeds School to give some readings and some comment, and most importantly sign my book!, he wrote this:

21 September. To the City of Leeds School in

Woodhouse, the head of which is Georgie Sale, a

troubleshooting headmistress formerly at my own

old school and who, though not a fan of Michael

Gove, relishes schools like hers that have to be

turned round. There are fifty or so nationalities

here, including two boys who were child soldiers

in Africa and are thought to have killed people, s

and two boys smuggled out of Afghanistan in a

wooden box built above the axle of a jeep. They

came to Leeds thinking they had relatives here

but found they had moved on and so lived rough in

Hyde Park, preying on students and stealing food

until they were picked up by the police and

brought to the school. None of these I see, but

only a light airy secondary school, the

childrens art on the walls . . .   my usual stuff seems trivial and

frivolous, with the purpose of the evening to

raise funds so that these extra-curricular events

can be maintained. Were the school an academy

funds would be provided, so I must be grateful to

Mr Gove for bringing me out on this Friday night.

actual picture of the inner-city oasis that is COLS

Now actually, it is truly marvellous that this school has survived, and testimony to a great local community who came out to support the school, that it has done - survived, against all the odds. And testimony to its great staff who gave and who give beyond the call of duty to care for and educate the children, as Alan Bennett describes above. 

Of course we all know, that Michael Gove has City of Leeds in his sights. When Ed Balls vacated the office he left the dartboard up with the schools he had been targetting. But Alan [I think maybe we are on first name terms since he signed my Untold Tales] was mistaken in one respect: the school, over all the years that the Inquisition levelled its guns on it, never failed an Ofsted. 

By the time that Ms Sale was invited to be headteacher, the school was simply low on numbers. Turning the school round was not the point; regaining the confidence of local parents was the issue, so that the school's league tables would depend not upon the results upon the ex-child-soldiers but on the local children in general. [Or maybe league table are not really a good indicator of a school's suceess?. Hmmm!]

I came across an article in YEP [Feb 26 2009] about recent City of Leeds School history, and it really is no wonder the school suffered with numbers. "Sep 1994 moved from city centre site to Woodhouse . . . 

Nov 2001 phased closure announced, site to become "young people's academy"
July 2002 planned merger of City of Leeds with Carr Manor High
Oct 2002 Staff launch save our school campaign
Jan 2003 Carr Manor to remain open, but City of Leeds to become a 16-19 learning centre
Aug 2003 plans to merge City of Leeds with St Michael's College revealed
Jan 2004 threat of closure lifted as federation with Primrose High announced
Set 2005 federation formally begins
July 2007 named among 12 possible academies
Nov 2008 among 16 high schools to redeveloped as part of £300m proposed scheme
Jan 2009 academy plans announced"

It didn't stop there. After that Education Leeds tried to close the school. It failed, of coutrse, and shortly after it was Education Leeds who were kicked into touch.

And, do you know, despite all this, the school still did not fail an Ofsted.

The article also included some truly disgusting statements by Chris Edwards [ex-head of late private education company], who also said on Radio Leeds, live, "Who would send their children to that school?", but, do you know what - the school survived.

And, actually, Chris, I sent my two younger children to this school [living as I do, down the road], in 2000 and in 2001 [both leaving with eight A-Cs + a piece], and then spent every year since fighting for its survival, the younger one leaving 2009, shortly before the education company gave away our sixth form [and all the benefits that that brought the school] to Primrose High. As Dizzy would say, Bonkers!

A Bunch of Untrained Amateurs

It's not so long ago [last May in fact] that I opined to a shocked Jonathan Dimbleby, sadly live on air on Any Answers that school governors were a "bunch of untrained amateurs". I am pleased to see that Michael Wilshaw was obviously listening and now has suggested that some governors should indeed be professionals.

Does this mean that events' managers, lawyers and local shopkeepers not being allowed anymore to sell off public land and public buildings for absolutely nothing will come to an end? Does this mean that governors might have some previous in education? Maybe even they could even be obliged to visit the school during the working day before pronouncing judgment on what happens in it and to it.

But Michael, aren't you the person who suggested that if teachers were scared, then heads were doing their jobs properly. Or was it if schools were scared then Ofsted was on point? Whatever it was, Michael, it was about setting sister against sister and brother against brother. And do you know, I never expected the Spanish Inquistion. I thought it was just a joke.

These proposed professional governors - I can't help wondering about how they might be chosen, and what their political bias might be. And Michael, who gets to pay their wages? Call me sceptical but, . . . . . actually just call me sceptical.