Tory Governments appalling mismanagement of education More academies? No Thanks!!!

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It started with the Dark Force of Gove and continues at a rapid pace. They have created a system where results are the only thing of worth. It is narrow, knowledge based, divisive and a disaster. This is what they are creating:

  1. A fifties based emphasis or knowledge and nothing else
  2. A narrow curriculum created by the baccalaureate
  3. The abandonment and decimation of creative subjects (Art, drama, music)
  4. The use of Ofsted as a political tool to hammer teachers
  5. The introduction of free schools with no need for qualified teachers (On the cheap)
  6. The introduction of Academies with Faith groups and Big Business muscling in (Creationists, Fundamentalists and right wing lunatics)
  7. Forcing teachers to follow a strait-jacket of a three-part lesson model enforced by Ofsted – forcing out all forms of eccentricity, different classroom practice and flair – all to be poured into the same boring mould.
  8. Putting child centred education on the scrapheap
  9. ICT and skills are no longer valued – only knowledge is deemed important
  10. Teachers work conditions, pensions and pay has been decimated.
  11. A divisive system of winners and losers where a good proportion of our children are consigned to the scrapheap (streaming, exam failure and pass/fail strategies)
  12. Gone is the caring, support, the effort scores and valuing of all. The ones who cannot perform are hammered and then abandoned.

A nightmare of uniform sausage factories – machines of misery who pressurise and bore our children to death.

The result is that good teachers, overworked, undervalued and underpaid, are leaving in droves.

Education is increasingly in the hands of outside groups (Creationists, Islamic organisations, Big Business) who are willing to put money in in order to get their hands on our children.

All is judged on the narrow criteria of exam results. Nothing else matters.

But hey – that’s alright! Those of worth will send their kids to Eton and Harrow. Who cares about the rest? They are only job fodder.

As a successful Headteacher of an outstanding Secondary School – read how it should be done. A book that has been described as the most important book on education since Summerhill:

Shortage of teachers – It couldn’t be due to the draconian government policy, could it?

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As a Headteacher I caught the beginning of this government’s disastrous policies regarding education. Mr Gove sent us careering back to the 1950s with an outdated knowledge-based approach. The curriculum was narrowed, syllabi limited and children put through a narrow range of tests like pegs in a slot. What comes out the other end are sausages out of a machine. Forget skills and qualities. Forget values. Forget the whole child. All that matters are crude exam results.

Teachers were reduced to cogs in a machine. They were trained to teach in one way only. All flair, individuality and enjoyment went out the window. The three part lesson was raised on the altar and worshipped with the clipboard.

Then the pressure was put on. Pay was cut, conditions of service worsened and pensions slashed.

The workload was made monstrous. The marking regime created hours of extra tedious work. The average teacher is swamped with work. They are trying to cope with sixty hour weeks where their whole life is consumed by work.

I have relatives in teaching. They either are reducing their hours, giving up responsibilities or looking for a way out (abroad, part-time, private schools, or early retirement).

They are worn out, fraught, demotivated and see no satisfaction in the career.

It is an unmitigated disaster.

a. When we look back at the teachers who inspired us they were the ones with flair, eccentricity and who were interesting. The ones with time for us. That is being battered out of teachers in the modern military style, one size fits all.

b. No two children learn in the same way. The uniformity of the teaching mechanism will fail them. What we need is variety. More of the same is boring.

c. What society needs are skills and qualities. The modern world has knowledge at its finder-tips. Knowledge has been downgraded (it is still important but nowhere near as important). We need to train students to cooperate, work as a team, use IT, develop technology and scientific skills, value creativity, be tolerant, be trustworthy, caring and tolerant, be good at solving problems and be great at lateral thinking. Our strength as a nation lies in our inventiveness and skills.

d. The international education (PISA) tables used to bludgeon us are so narrow as to be ridiculous. Why cram kids, like Japan and Korea, to memorise pointless facts. That is not education.

This rigid 1950s model is a disaster.

Teachers have been castigated by the Tory media. I despise the lies – no child left my school unable to read, write or lacking in basic maths skills, no matter how disadvantaged they were.

It is no wonder that teachers feel unloved and morale is through the floor. What is there to attract anyone in?

Anecdote – The 11+ Interview

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The interview

My Primary School was situated in a big house. Half was divided up into three classrooms and a communal room, which was equipped with a piano for music and singing. The back yard was tarmacked and used as a playground and for PE. We weren’t allowed to run in that yard in case we fell over and grazed our knees. That was pure murder for me. I was a ‘lively’ boy whose normal mode was ‘full speed’. The rest of the house was off bounds. It was the Headmistresses’ home. Miss Gates was old, wiry and shrivelled as if she had been dried out in a mean wind. She was so ancient that we wondered how she could possibly still be alive yet alone maintaining such vigour. For vigour she had in plenty. She patrolled the corridors with fearsome strides and brought the edge of her ruler down on your knuckles with venom. Yet that mummified tyrant unbelievably actually had a mother who she cared for in that other part of the house.

None of us had been there. What was behind those doors remained unglimpsed. In our minds it was the den of the dragon.

Yet it was to these rooms that we were directed for our interviews. Billy went in first and I sat outside on my own staring at the door and wondering what was the other side.

Finally I was ushered in by the Headmistress in a stern, matter-of-fact manner. Inside the room there were three interviewers and a solitary chair in the centre of the room. They sat apart with clipboards, watching me. I was motioned to sit down on the chair. I was tiny and dressed up in my best uniform. I sat on the chair with feet dangling and nervously looked from one to the other. They asked me questions and I stammered my answers. I have no recollection of what was asked. All I remember is having to turn from one to the other. They were sitting so far apart, in corners of the room, that I could not see the others while I answered any one of them. I could feel their eyes on me though. I could see them scribbling notes.

Then it was over.

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Anecdote – Education – A tale of parents and me

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Education – A tale of parents and me

I am the first person in my family, from either side, to have gained a University Degree.

It seems to me that keeping a population ignorant makes them easier to control.

I come from working class stock. One of my grandfathers was a meat porter in Smithfield market. The other was a meter reader for the water board.

My father was very clever. He passed his exams to go to the Grammar School. His parents refused to allow him. They could not afford his uniform. He left school at fourteen to go to work and bring his pay packet home. He joined up in the army to fight in Italy in the Second World War. As an adult he took courses and became an ace typist that enabled him to gain a career in Fleet Street on the newspapers. He achieved a middle management post in charge of a telephone reporters’ office.

My mother’s education effectively ended at the age of eleven when she became ill and was sent off to the seaside for a long convalescence. On returning she was deemed to have missed too much and placed in the ‘Remove’ class. This was effectively a class for those with extreme learning difficulties. As soon as the teacher found my mother could read and write she set her to work helping the other students. In those days the class sizes were fifty five plus. My mum became a teacher’s aide. She took a group of students and taught them. She never escaped from that Remove class. She was too useful. Her own education was brought to a halt.

Like my father my mother later took courses and achieved a high level of expertise in typing and short-hand that enabled her to have a career up until she had babies.

My parents believed in education. They knew it was a passport to a better way of life. To be educated gave you the qualifications, skills and outlook to gain a superior way of life. You had a choice of more fulfilling careers, greater earning power and social mobility. More importantly it opens your mind to more options and greater horizons. It gives you confidence and your life more colour.

I believe education is the long term answer to ignorance such as religious fundamentalism. An educated mind questions. An ignorant mind accepts.

My life has been transformed by the education my family afforded me. I gained the qualifications to go into teaching and become a Headteacher – a career that put me in contact with lively idealistic young minds and proved extremely fulfilling. It opened my mind to question the world, appreciate its beauty, to write, read, travel and meet extraordinary people.

I am grateful for my upbringing. They gave me love, freedom and education. The never tried to indoctrinate me with their politics or religion.

I am who I am because of it.

I often wonder how far my gifted parents would have gone if they had education behind them? They were victims of poverty and the class system that prevented them achieving what they were capable of.

Poetry – Education means fun! I think it’s being stifled!

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Education means fun!

Education is about expanding the mind, opening the floodgates and letting the wonder in. It is the greatest and most fulfilling experience a million miles away from the punitive classroom with its regurgitation of facts.

Education is fun.

Education is discovery, exploration and play.

It is sharing, fulfilling, helping and understanding.

Everybody wants some.

Nobody wants that sterile memorizing of turgid facts for the sake of tests. They want to learn facts because they enjoy finding out things.

Education is enjoyable. It is creative. It is about wonder and awe.

There is nothing better than that wide-eyed expression on a student’s face when they’ve seen something that lights them up. That’s education.

So throw away all the stats and the clipboards and make a big bonfire on the field. Rip up the Ofsted guidelines and replace them with flair and individuality.

No more turgid facts – more fun!


 

Education means fun!

 

Truth and fun,

Questioning,

Creativity

And exploration’s thunder,

All mixed up

Together

In a gooey ball

Of wonder.

 

Throw out the checklists and

The tick box culture,

And the observation nightmare

Hovering like a vulture.

 

Learning is great

Everybody wants some

But nose to the grindstone

Becomes rather loathsome.

 

Discovery and excitement

A wide-eyed sigh

That’s the core

Of learning

Along with

Wow! And Why?

 

It’s fun!

It’s fun!

It’s fun!

Education should be fun!

 

Opher 11.11.2015 (Thanks Plato)

Education – Is Ofsted driving good, creative teaching and flair out of the classroom?

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It appears to me that the Ofsted driven tick-box culture, over-observed lessons, and the one-size-fits-all pressure from political interference is driving creativity and flair out of the classroom. Our teachers are being transformed into clones. They operate like robots. Nobody is willing to take risks in their teaching and would not be backed if they do. They play safe.

Education is restricted to a narrow frame of subjects which is abandoning creative subjects and focussing on Maths, English and to a limited extent Science. Art, Music, Drama and other creative subjects are being squeezed out of the curriculum.

Streaming, Academies and Selection are causing social divisions. We are back to first and second class students.

Religious schools and Academies are being run by groups with very narrow perspectives. Do we really want people with narrow religious or political views getting their hands on our children?

Good teachers are leaving in droves. Morale is exceedingly low. I really do not believe education is safe in Tory hands. All they care about is the private elite!

The teaching of politics in schools.

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Schools run scared of teaching politics because they might be accused of being partisan. That is ridiculous. It never stops them when it comes to religion.

We have generations of adults who have limited understanding of what political parties stand for, how they were founded, who they represent, the history of the social struggles that took place and the value of democracy.

I believe this is wrong.

The teaching of politics is fundamental to the education of all adults. If you do not understand what philosophy lies behind a political view you are not in a position to understand the glib propaganda put out by the political parties to get you to vote for them.

In a democracy it is essential that people are well informed, educated and knowledgeable. Otherwise they become cynically manipulated.

For this reason I would have a clear and unbiased syllabus that clarifies the philosophy of the parties, their formation, history and raison d’etre. I would ensure every child leaves school knowing what the parties represent and able to see which fits with their own philosophy.

They should be fully aware of all the major events that have led to our one person/one vote democracy and the major events in our struggle for social equality, rights, freedoms and justice.

I have a good grasp on all that.

My overriding philosophy has always been freedom, justice and equality. I believe in fairness.

That is why I vote Labour. It is also why I will vote for Jeremy Corbyn and not for the psuedoTories who have taken over the Labour Party. I do not want watered down toryism.

Religious Schools should be banned!!

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I have always been extremely concerned at indoctrination of children. To seed young, impressionable minds with faith ideas at an early age, prior to them being able to reason, I consider to be an abuse.

I can see why the religious are keen on the idea. They know that if they can instil those ideas into a child’s head at an early stage they will have hooked them for life. They will have been psychologically impregnated with religion. They will never be able to remove it. It becomes hard-wired.

Most people see nothing wrong with this. They think of religion as benign, even beneficial; it instils moral values.

I believe it is much more sinister than that.

It is only with the rise of fundamentalism that people are waking up to the harm. We are seeing young children being drilled in religious doctrine, learning tracts by rote, and being taught not to question the whole doctrine. Some of these children are now going on to become fundamentalists and extremists. And we are surprised!

I am a multiculturalist. I believe we should respect other cultures and customs. But that does not mean that those cultures should displace British culture. I see them as an enriching and peripheral experience. I believe that people should become integrated into British culture if they chose to live here.

I am concerned when I find enclaves developing in Britain where people are recreating the culture of their ‘home’ country and making no attempt to integrate. That is not enriching for either party.

I believe that adults should be free to practice whatever religious/spiritual practices they desire. But they should not inflict these superstitions on children.

For these reasons I am opposed to all religious schools on principle. I do not believe they should be legal at all, let alone encouraged and resourced from the state.

My reasons are simple:

  1. We should integrate into British culture and not live in enclaves.
  2. We should never indoctrinate children.

Religious schools create separate cultures, prevent integration, prevent the assimilation of British culture and values, and facilitate the indoctrination of children which I consider to be child abuse.

I would also shut down Sunday Schools, Madrassas and other religious indoctrination programmes.

Your Unreliable Brain

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The unreliability of the brain is worrying. We reinvent our memories. Make up things that we think are real. Create Gods, It is most worrying in courts of law. Nobody is an impartial witness. We recreate our memories!!

Opher’s Books – If you want the inside story of an outstanding Headteacher or are just interested in education then this may interest you.

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A passion for education

I was in education for thirty six years. For four successive Ofsted inspections every aspect of my responsibilities was deemed outstanding. Yet I did what I believed was right for my students not what Ofsted wanted. I did it differently and it was highly successful.

This is my story. This is my passion. Find out why this government and Ofsted have got it all wrong!