Building Slums for the Future

Building Slums for the Future

Five years ago I attended a Westminster briefing. This was in Westminster, London. Here politicians and slum-builders congratulated themselves on stage on the BSF programme and the like. At this time I was already a paid up member of the Anti-Academies Alliance.

First hand I had observed three main ways in which schooling had been diminished. In my opinion they were academisation, PFI new-builds and Ofsted. I could not sit back.

I took my seat on the front row after the break. Got chatting to the woman next to me. She was some sort of academy broker and quite proud of it. I didn't tell her what I thought because it would not have helped my cause. I was there to learn, but inevitably as one self-satisfied architect followed one self-satisfied builder I felt the truth clamouring to be let out. Then when the woman on the next row described how their old school was in ruins but the only new building offered was not good enough and then burst into tears, I also had had enough.

I was given the microphone, and told the assembled group that there were schools in Leeds in mourning for their old buildings. And a bit more besides. I thought I was a lone voice, but later met up with other contributors.

It is four years later. The buildings are still rubbish, badly designed, although mostly they have stopped leaking. however the effect on education is there for all to see who will look.

In 2008 the Architects' magazine was already in tears itself. They described BSF as an opportunity lost. No politicians commented. (This originally written in 2015).

Dressing For School

Well I started teaching at Foxwood School the same year that I acquired a new lodger, a hairdresser, now called Harvey. H introduced me to the delights of colouring my hair, and so it was that I turned up at school with part of it now turned pink, or maybe red or purple, sometimes it was all green.

I also had five piercings in one ear, and four in the other [prizes for why], as indeed I still do. Head of Year Malcolm X [later to become Head of Bruntcliffe] also complained that it was hard to discipline the girls for their multiple piercings when I was there with paperclips hanging from mine. I opined that it was a pointless activity on his part, especially the school still was proud to have no school uniform. And I was proud of it for that.

Well, this was a hard school to teach in; Seacroft and Gipton were were poor deprived estates. Towards the end, Foxwood was a Special School in all but name, where we included mainstream kids. However we more than rose to the challenge, and under the visionary leadership of Bob Spooner, we were awash with initiatives to support our charges.

One happening has stuck in my mind for ever. Once, our when our home-liaison teacher, Margaret Neat was in the family's house, she was found it was meal time. The parent cleared the windowsill and put two or three dollops ofbeans on it, and the children ate from there. We found this shocking and so sad.

Times Tables - Why not use a calculator?

What Nicky Idiot fails to understand is that we are all different, physically and intellectually. For some, times tables will be a breeze, and for some, un unclimbable mountain. And one there is no point trying to conquer.

She says here 1. that teachers will be tested on their students’ results, and 2. that testing will enable teachers to target those in need. We see that some of our kids find times tables hard [which we may well have already spotted!], so we must now continue to batter them down with more of the said tables, while we abandon the more able children who might appreciate a bit of stretching here. intellectually. For some, times tables will be a breeze, and for some, un unclimbable mountain. And one there is no point trying to conquer.

She says here 1. that teachers will be tested on their students’ results, and 2. that testing will enable teachers to target those in need. We see that some of our kids find times tables hard [which we may well have already spotted!], so we must now continue to batter them down with more of the said tables, while we abandon the more able children who might appreciate a bit of stretching here.

If gifted children aren’t supported at the right age, they lose their gift. So 1. why target the kids with more times tables for whom times tables is not their strong point? Why not find out what their strong point is? 2. why not give some more academic attention to the needs of the more academically able? 3. why waste professional teachers’ time and wonderful expertise with this latest “initiative” and all the other meaningless instructions.

We should be looking for all our students’ strengths, not concentrate on their academic weaknesses.

When it all comes out in the wash, it will you, Nicky and the gang, who will be rated not just Requires Improvement, but Unfit for Office.

And actually in adulthood most people needing to multiply numbers use a calculator.

(Originally written ages ago. Still applicable).

Motion 8: The importance of the Arts and Music in the school education system. NEU Conference 2023

 As a previous classroom teacher, and then Head of Music and Head Expressive Arts at Foxwood
School, Leeds [1980-96] and then peripatetic steel pan teacher and also Steel Pan Development Officer and Head of Steel Pans [1996-2023] for the Leeds Music Service, I have lived through and observed the decline of the status of arts in the English Education System. Along with this came several devastating government "initiatives": 

1.The Private Finance Initiative [PFI] and 2. Building Schools for the Future [BSF] in which school buildings were given away to demolition and construction companies to destroy and rebuild smaller, with now no music rooms in primary schools and high schools without enough space to house all their bigger instruments. 

All now belonged to private business owners and shareholders, and schools who used to pay nothing now had to pay rent for 30 years to said owners. Also all non-teaching staff were employed and answerable to the company who owned the building. If your computer needed mending you had to ring IT Services and get permission for your school technician to fix it. 

The Association of Architects described BSF as "an opportunity lost" [article to be inserted].

2. Literacy hours; Maths became Numeracy. STEM, EBACC, Ofsted, SATs; The Arts didn't and still don't feature in assessments. Culture is the preserve of the private schools. 

Last year [2022] I piggy-backed a motion at NEU Conference. [See previous blog]. As I came down from the podium people said - get your motion for next year. And I did. with the support of the MU Education Officers and Leeds NEU Officers, and Ralph Eriksen from Birmingham NEU [and others from Exec]. The motion got most votes in its section, and we were first up of the whole conference. 

Here is the main motion, then my speech printed, and mine and Ralph's speeches from youtube:

The Importance of the Arts and Music in Education

Proposer: Victoria Jaquiss, Leeds

Conference believes that

1.       All our children need, and all schools should provide a broad and balanced curriculum which fully includes a mixture of science, humanities, arts and sports.

2.       This should be truly inclusive; the arts,including music should not be geared solely towards children deemed to be talented, or whose parents can afford music tuition.

Conference notes that since the introduction of private finance initiative building schools in the future

1.       Schools no longer have enough space to house all acoustic, especially world instruments

2.       Primary Schools no longer have purpose-built music rooms, but they use “flexible spaces” i.e. the hall, which they are sports, dinners, parents evenings, assemblies and the rest.

3.       All the arts are marginalised, often taught in rotations and dropped by most students for KS4 

Conference further notes that 

1.       Of all the arts, music suffers most from being the most expensive in terms of money and space

2.       Primary teacher training varies widely, and can include less than a week on training to teach music. In fact in primary training students are taught to teach every subject except music. With many younger teachers not confident musically it is now up to Music Services is to provide specialist music provision. Music services can provide excellent national curriculum music lessons, but their staff may be at the school for as little as one hour a week, and don’t always get the chance to know their students well enough to support them properly in this most important of disciplines. 

3.       There is an arts crisis in our schools. More and more children suffer from mental health issues or are deeply dissatisfied with their school’s ability to cater to their own personal and spiritual needs.

4.       There runs a risk of the music industry, both classical and pop, becoming the preserve of the wealthy especially those who can afford and choose to send their children to private schools (which, in general, understand the importance of the arts to fully develop the rounded child). For mainstream schools access to music remains a lottery in the hands of the  headteacher. 

 

Conference instructions the Executive to 

1.       to campaign for music and the arts to take their proper and equal place in the school curriculum.

2.       To work with sister Union, the MU to develop this campaign to promote the arts to government, to all educators and to parents.

Speech for Harrogate NEU 2023: The Importance of the Arts and Music

Victoria Jaquiss

My speech https://youtu.be/cEixGCclS_M

"The man on the radio said there were talented children already missing out in our primary schools.

 

I replied, though he couldn’t hear me, that there were untalented children in our schools also missing out.

 

Yes, The Arts are in crisis in our education system

 

But as the adjudicator said last month at our regional festival “Well, Lady Muriel School [not her real name] must be doing something right!”

 

Yes it was. They were spending shedloads of money on music! Private school! Durr!

 

I have list of some of the things that are wrong.

 

1.     The Arts in general don’t survive compulsorily past KS3. And it not that students aren’t choosing them; they are being deliberately steered away from them.

 

At one school, in a city near here, they call them the Purple Group. They turned up last week to Yr 9 Parents’ Evening with faces like death because they were top of the year academically. They knew that meant they had to give up the subjects they had been loving for three years. Which had made them feel complete.

 

2.     STORAGE

Primary schools  rarely have dedicated music rooms, and never have adequate storage. High schools, especially PFI new builds have inadequate music suites. I call them suites. Two rooms and a cupboard, and  a mini recording studio with a glass wall!

 

3.     OfSTED, SATs, EBACC.

They should be abolished anyway as they do nothing but harm. Amongst their many crimes, they don’t measure the arts, therefore they lower their importance in public’s eyes

 

 

4.     STATUS

If, according to this same radio presenter, 54% parents always want to know    about the arts in their children’s prospective school, that means that nearly half of all parents don’t ask, and there was no olden age when they did, not in my 40 years teaching music. Music: the lesson is seen too often by them as a leisure activity.

 

This leads onto the kids thinking the arts are pointless, and then Yr9 can be a tricky year. They see that no one measures them, no one cares what they do, their motivation collapses, their behaviour deteriorates.

 

5.     HIT and MISS

The pockets of excellence that do exist are enabled by supportive headteachers and determined staff. And nearly always validated by how they improve academic results. [And just throwing this in: two of the academies that I have been working in recently do have thriving music departments, and one has the best art department in the world! IMO. Have they been talking to the private schools?].

 

6.     WHY DO WE STUDY ANYTHING

Children don’t learn football, or study maths so that some of them can become professional footballers or mathematicians. And children don’t study music so that some “talented” individuals can become musicians.

 

We watch a play or a dance, listen to music, or look at art, with a deeper enjoyment when we have an understanding of how it is created.

 

7.     WHY SINGLE OUT MUSIC

All arts suffer in the same way but Music is most at risk as it is most expensive in terms of space, sound, equipment and specialist teachers. Because while 25 students can be in the same room painting, for example, quite different pictures, the same can’t be said for 25 music students. I am simplifying wildly here.

 

 

All our students need and deserve the arts. Just for themselves. Just for culture. Just for life. [Not for industry.]

 

So much damage done. So much to rebuild. We must start now.

 

Let’s have ARTS for ALL           and ARTS for ARTS’ sake!

Ralph's speech:

https://youtu.be/kuFVmdcYDDY

Fighting for Music and the Arts to take their rightful place in Education

Hoping to push Music and the Arts up the agenda at NEU Conference I had this mini speech ready as a support to an amendment about a broad and balanced curriculum. As nobody was speaking against the amendment I wasn't called on the day and so thinking I wouldn’t get to speak, I blogged and then deleted  said speech. 

The prepared speech is below, as is a video of the speech I ended up making when finally called to speak in "unfinished business". Traumatised by arriving at the podium to discover/remember the speech was deleted, what followed was more of a stand up routine. It served its purpose, but never again! The youtube video of the routine is below too.

"I am speaking in support of an amendment appointment 8.1. The motion itself talks about the stress caused by narrowing of curriculum, and instructs executive to campaign for a child’s right to access a broad and balanced curriculum.

I believe it should go further and talk about how music and the arts should take their proper place in the curriculum as equal in status to STEM subjects. 

Music and the arts give students a place to destress, and a place to find ways of expressing their inner feelings.  And where they can make a spiritual sense of the world around them. Arts are good for mental health. School should be the place where student can discover which is the artform that suits them best, and which they carry through to adulthood.

And for the school students music and the arts do all this without their having to be tested on them.

And can I emphasise that all children should have a right to a broad and balanced curriculum that includes music and arts. We should recognise and remember that music is no more for the future musicians of this world the maths for the future mathematicians. 

Music is for appreciate audiences, and the more you know by playing or by having played yourself, the more you get out of it.

Music is for dancers to dance to, workers to work by, gym bunnies to bounce to. 

I mention music in particular as it has its own practical problems for the school - such as the need for big rooms, expensive equipment and lots of storage space. But for too many primary schools a music room is a thing of the past.

Besides saying we should have a broad and balanced curriculum, let us say how we would broaden and it ,that would be through the life enhancing Arts, looking to the personal rather than professional. And who knows. Maybe through school the next Spice Girls or Nigel Kennedy might also discover their talent. Or even the next karaoke queen.

https://youtu.be/IXIEqAzZP04

Reason to be a [child centred] teacher

Reasons to be a teacher, and a child-centred one at that.

I was reading some people’s accounts about school days being the worst days of their lives. Most of them were mine too.

I knew I wanted to be a teacher from the age of 5 or 6. The teacher asked us to draw what we wanted to do when we grew up. I wanted to be a teacher but 1. I thought the teacher would laugh at me if I told her and 2. all the other girls wanted to be nurses, so I drew a nurse. But I remember knowing I wanted to be a teacher. 

Because of my father’s rather itinerant work habits, I went to 5 different primary schools and 2 different high schools (in 4 different counties, 3 villages and 2 towns) and thus I was always the outsider, and publicly humiliated and bullied by staff and pupils at all of the primary schools, and had a hard time at the high schools. 

Aged 4 or 5 in Luton, I had to stand by the classroom sink possibly in a waste basket (but I might be mixing Luton up with the Frampton). This was for finding a marble by the sink and putting it on my desk, then denying it publicly. I had only been in the school a few months, didn’t know this counted as theft, but the teacher’s thunderous voice let me know it was not a good thing.

In Frampton-on-Severn I was slapped across the face (aged 5 or 6) by Elizabeth, because I got to the toilet first, and refused to get off let her wee before me. As if that wasn't bad enough, when we all got back into school, I tried to go and wash my hands, but was then publicly singled out to wash my hands on my own (mother and teacher had different ideas about hygiene!). But the humiliation was too awful and I never washed my hands again at school.

In Whitminster, the next village school, I was so upset one day by leaving my satchel at school, that my mum and I cycled back over the canal, she with my baby brother on her bike. There was no one in the open school when we arrived, and then we saw the satchel hanging up in the headteacher’s office. Next day the headteacher threatened me (aged 7 ) with the cane. He said he would “tan my hide” if I went into his room again. Again I had no idea what I had done wrong. Luckily we only stayed in Whitminster for a few months before the next upheaval.

We moved to Tanners Green in Wythall, Worcestershire, and I went to Silver Street School in Drake’s Cross. I think it was because I was tall for my age they accidentally put me in the wrong class! However after being there a few months I came 17th in some exams I don’t recall taking, and was made to stand in hall/on the stage with all the kids who had come first, second and third in their classes. I recall being mystified, and wondering what the effect on my relationship with the class would be. But I needed have worried. They had spotted how old I was by the beginning of the next school year and then I had a new set of friends to make, but I was back with Mrs Kidger. 

I think it was when I was with the older kids that The Great Trauma began. There was to be a a concert. We had to sing and some people would have starring roles. I used to go to the “ballet” class in Frampton-on-Severn and was well used to being on a stage, but mostly as an elf. When I was six I went to the panto in Stroud with the Brownies and sang all of O Little Town of Bethelemen, even though they said thankyou after the first verse. I had tasted stardom and was ready for more. I loved it - the singing, the stage, the applause. I wanted to be a musician, and asked for piano lessons (the mother had her Pohlman in the house, a wedding present from her father).

Back to Silver Street School. We were rehearsing For the concert. I was ready for the starring role and hoping be king or queen. When Mrs Kidger tapped me on the shoulder and then tapped Dermot Mackie on the shoulder, and one other boy, I thought great, I don’t need to sing with the rest of the class, I am going to have a main part.

After the concert rehearsal finished Mrs K gathered us three together and told us we were singing out of tune, and so we were not be in the show. Went home in floods, mother came to school next day, confessed cheerfully to whoever that she couldn’t sing in tune either, and asked if couldn’t I mime. I mimed, trying to keep the floods back - as I mimed from then on for the next 21 years. Still do quite often. Mimed in assemblies, at weddings, in folk clubs, singing lessons. (I was having piano lessons in Kings Norton at the time, and had been dreaming of being a rock and roll star, but actually the piano teacher terrified me. I never said a word. I just laid the florin down at the top end of the piano, and played every dot in front of me, did whatever she told me.

In September I sat at the front next to Susan, and in front of Roger and Yvonne. I was to discover that we were 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the class, and seating us like this also mystified me. Was she preparing us for high school? Still I Loved living in the countryside and Yvonne’s parents had a farm, and goat you could tie your scooter to. 

The following year I finally moved up a school year and met Mr Parker. I blossomed. He gave me all sorts of extra things to do and he would talk to me differently, and when my dad got a job in Leeds and he only came back at the weekends, Mr Parker let me learn a verse a week from The Funeral of St John Moore after Corunna in order to recite it to my dad when he got home and Mr Parker got me to recite it to the class beforehand. (Don’t ask why I chose that poem. I just found it in a book, liked the feel of the words and probably the rhythms of the words). 

Mrs Kidger and her class hadn’t finished with me. There were three girls who took it upon themselves to barge me and my friends in the playground, and then one day they filled all our pockets full of rubbish; in revenge I wrote pig pag and pog and three little scraps of paper and put one in each of the girls pocket. They told Mrs Kidger and she called for me and told me off. I was terrified, and in vain told her they started it. . I couldn’t see the fairness of this, again quite mystified.

But she even trumped herself with some proper teacher cruelty in that last week. I was in Mr Parker’s class full time now but the girls did knitting with her once a week and I was making a turquoise and coral striped hot water bottle cover for my dad. However it wasn’t finished, and in order to take it to Leeds, I had to bring some money in. I don’t know why I didn’t bring any money in. Mrs K summonsed me, and publicly handed the knitting over to the bully girls. I left for Leeds. Mr Parker asked if he could keep my composition book, promising to send it on [which he did]. And he and also the headteacher, Mr Matthews, then corresponded with me for two or three years - they were both 60 and retired the year after I left. Mr Parker wrote he thought we had another George Elliott in our midst. It was only years later rereading his letter that I knew what kid of a man this George was, but I already knew it was a compliment. that he had faith in me, and cared. 

At Harehills County Primary I brought the house down upon myself with the southern accent. It took my brother 3 weeks to shorten all his vowels. For some reason, I suppose bloodymindedness I kept my southern drawl for decades.

I was white, everyone so far in my schools was white, but I had curiously enough been brought up anti-racist by by dad. He was Welsh, crossed Uffa’s Dyke (as they say), and shelved his Welsh accent in his mid teens. One story he told us was that he had been with a group of colleagues, shortlisting candidates for interview, and the boss man said oh we can’t have him - he’s a Taff. Later my dad told us how when he was giving a lift to a hitch hiker once, and the hiker started making racist comments about black people ( don’t think we got the details, but on the lines of Enoch Powell I imagine). My dad stopped his car at the next roundabout, gave him a lecture and chucked him out. 

I remember knowing, but without knowing properly that Miss Fielding was a racist. She was horrible to me, but at least I didn’t get the ruler. And I knew, without knowing why I knew she was picking on Martin Goldman cos he was Jewish. I was traumatised watching her give him the ruler (not seen corporal punishment before). 

Two things from my year and a half at Harehills. Alison Phelps-Jones was top of the class and teacher’s favourite. Being clever was not Alison’s fault, nor was her being favourite. By now I was comfortable with having that position and was setting about proving my worth. We had a spelling test. Miss Fielding said ‘tongue’; I thought she said ‘ton’. 19 out of 20! What! I raised my hand, then her approached her on her plinth. ‘Very well then, spell it now!’ Very flustered at her irritation I of course misspelt it. There, she said, you wouldn’t have got it anyway. Distraught at the injustice I resumed my place, still second to Alison PJ. Later that term, I was now sitting at the back of the class and howling “I want my mummy” to the great amusement of my classmates.

But worse was to come. I had by now got a friend. She was Dorothy Padgett; she lived in Bayswater Grove and we used to bunk off after being marched along to St Aidans Church Hall, Roundhay Road for our school dinners. Dorothy had lost her mother, and her 16 year old sister had stepped up. School grassed us up and my parents forbade me to see Dorothy. I thought it was cos she lived in a back-to-back and was poor, but I don’t know why I thought that. At first we lived in a flat on Wetherby Road, but we had a social ladder to climb, which sadly included private education.

The Greater Humiliation was that entrance exam to Leeds Girls High. I remember taking my 11+, sitting in the school's big Victorian hall rubbing my squeaky new shoes together, half casually wondering what we there. It was really really boring. But my parents thought I could don better than Roundhay School (near to where we lived, and crucially where my classmates and neighbours would all be going).

I got through. I don’t know how Miss Fielding found out. I didn’t think she was interested in me. She made me stand at the front of the class and then she made them all applaud me. 

After I was the poor kid at Leeds Girls High School and then the posh kid at Allerton Grange Sixth Form.

When I did my PGSE and the started teaching at Foxwood in Leeds (1980) I wanted no one to go through what I had done, and set about being the most child-centred teacher there could be. Did courses, examined my own teaching styles, listened to the students, and regularly took aprt in residentials, often also dragging my primary age daughter up and down Pen-y-Ghent. And also met up with Charlotte Emery and together we took the world on. And many other amazing teachers. And hundreds of amazing students, some of whom I am still friends with.

So Foxwood School gave me the best days of my life, but it was as a teacher.

A counsellor in every school would be a start!

This is a guest blog from Dizzy Bee: So this is what I say to all the feckers bleeting on about the mental wellbeing of kids and how schools, government and unions have let them down:

The mental health of our children and the concerns for many of our children living lives in abject poverty and in abusive or neglectful households, is not the responsibility of schools and teachers. Teachers, support staff etc are a welcome respite to all this, but ultimately it’s not their job to deal with these particular issues. 

Of course, all the above are extremely important and need urgent attention. And if the government cared that much they would fund schools properly, there would be counsellors on site, there would be space and places in schools staffed by trained professionals, there would be places and spaces to feed and clothe them, there would be an emergency sanctuary and safe place for women fleeing violence, there would be dedicated professionals running workshops for young dads, old dads, mothers returning to work etc etc etc. 

Cuts, cuts cuts, cuts, mean that there is a limited support network for families that live in poverty, a poverty created by an unjust capitalist system that has marginalised so many people they don't even care why or how they are there. or if (and of course there are many) they do there is nowhere to go, no one to turn to... Universal credit? Laughable. 

What schools have become is a space for some children who live in these awful situations, and I don't know one teacher who does not care. But they (we) are teachers, educators and support staff. we are not social workers, psychologists or family support workers. They exist but they are few and far between. well in a school setting anyway, as a permanent fixture. even a school nurse has gone (the nit nurse we called mine!). A handful of family support workers stretch over many schools.

So please STOP claiming you care about the welfare of our children’s mental health until you properly invest in it. And stop piling expectation after expectation on to teachers and non-teaching staff to cover the role of all the above. They do it anyway and that should be just a bonus to the children, the hard-working dedication of teachers and support staff, not actually in the job description and not necessarily taught at teacher school [PGCE]!