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Making Money From Education

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:10:02 +0000

The American education company Kaplan has announced plans to open a profit seeking university in the UK. Although only a small beginning, this opens the way to a profit-driven higher education system. The first move was the government’s, who recently relaxed laws on who can award degrees. They are in effect trying to open up the concept of a degree to market speculation and commodification.

Kaplan is already prominent in the US, and they are not altogether alien to these shores either, having joint ventures with Nottingham Trent and Sheffield universities. It also owns the Dublin Business School. Kaplan generates revenues of over $1 billion per year, so it clearly knows how to squeeze a buck or two out of our public education system.

Those leading a campaign against the possibility of a profit driven university are likely to be the Coalition of Modern Universities, which represents about 30 ‘new’ universities in England. They have already criticised the government’s relaxing of laws on the awarding of degrees, because the changes could rob universities of vital funds and would unsurprisingly create an even more class-divided, elitist university system. A senior figure within the CMU said: “There has been absolutely no consultation on principle, mechanics or implications for sustainability.”

The group prides itself on being the biggest player in attracting students from poorer backgrounds to higher education. However, whatever the motivations and creation processes of the new laws, the introduction of profit-driven universities will open up the British higher education system to becoming more like American system, the most elitist and expensive in the world.

SAT scores

That the potential university will aim itself at the more wealthy customers is confirmed by its running of the SAT system for entry into such institutions. “The conventional wisdom is that the [SAT] test is just another leg up for rich kids who can shell out $1,000 for a test prep course. To some, the likes of Kaplan and Princeton Review have turned good SAT scores into a commodity, another saleable ticket into America’s Ivy League aristocracy,” says Kerry Howley, an American teacher. Once such a university comes into being over here, as is no doubt the government’s intentions, it would be in direct competition with public, established universities.

The law of the market would then be applied with ever greater force on our higher education system, and will inevitably erode what remains of its public character. In the light of this, the government’s plans to remove the cap on fees, allowing universities to charge as much as they like, are clearly a part of a larger plan. But it is not wise, even from a long-term capitalist perspective, to open up university education to speculation when this has recently proved to be so volatile as to threaten the entire world economy. Do we want the same logic that has lead to the food crisis and driven millions more into starvation, to also be applied to the way we learn? No way!

Military Recruitment at Schools and Colleges

tim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:15:45 +0000

Who’s the new guy in the leafy attire handing out fitness advice and wads of cash?

After moving the motion objecting to army recruitment at congress, confirming our solidarity with NUT and overwhelmingly supported by you all, our local campaign began in earnest this week. The Army have set up a stall in the drama hall during enrolment offering a £5000 bursaries to students to commit themselves to 4 years in the army after leaving college. With no other employers have been granted this privileged access,and no other organisation has been offered the opportunity to counter the one-sided propaganda; we were understandably concerned. Their material as one member put.. “ its like a promotional material for a sports centre for bird spotters”. Why has the army has been permitted access during enrolment week when students are making important choices about their future. Pressure, bribes or inducements from outside institutions are inappropriate in this context.

In response to UCU’s distribution, and in solidarity with our UNISON branch, we leafleted outlining our opposition to the army’s recruitment activity in the college during enrolment. As a direct consequence our college principal publicly lambasted our new branch secretary through a microphone in front of the assembled college, at a meeting called at the start of the year. The army had been distributing their literature unchallenged to all curriculum desks throughout enrolment. Our concern is for the welfare of our students, particularly the 16-18 year-olds, and a profound distaste that they are being recruited with inducements and under false pretences to an institution which is failing in its duty of care.

A recent independent report by the Rowntree trust has condemned the army for using false and misleading propaganda to recruit young people. A full-page article in yesterday’s Observer newspaper (‘Record numbers of ex-soldiers in jail as combat leaves mental scars’) supplies further evidence that the MOD are failing in their duty of care to soldiers, Soldiers comprise the largest occupational group in the prison system with the number doubling in the last 4 years to 8500. The Howard League for Penal Reform attributes this to ‘‘an inability to cope with civilian life, particularly for those who joined the services on leaving school’

Veterans in Prison argue that ‘‘they’re fighting in back-to-back conflicts, coming out and going back again; they haven’t got time to recover. There are not enough of them. They don’t have the right cover or equipment and they’re absolutely knackered’ ‘staff at [one prison] have become so concerned at the lack of support traumatised soldiers receive upon release that they have taken to issuing them with information packs giving details of mental health charities’

National and local public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our local community amongst others is struggling to deal with gun crime and violence, especially where it affects young people. As a community college we should oppose violence and should not be feeding our young people to the war machine. The UK has been criticised at the UN (Child Soldiers Global Report 2008) as the only country in Europe that recruits 16 year-olds into the armed forces. The army targets youth because they are more vulnerable to army propaganda, especially in areas of high poverty and unemployment where young people have fewer choices than in leafy suburbs. The Army is enticing young people with glossy propaganda that conceals the facts that:

- The Army is a racist, sexist and homophobic institution

- 20% of 16-23 year-old women recruits suffer sexual harassment (2006 Equal Opportunities commission survey), with 10% of new recruits report being bullied in the first 12 months (Army’s own figures, report arising from the recent Deepcut inquiry)

- Two thirds of people helped by Shelter, the homelessness charity, in 2001 were ex-armed forces

- Hundreds of soldiers have been sent to fight illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with defective or inadequate equipment

- Soldiers returning from the front-line are suffering record levels of mental breakdown, drug abuse and alcoholism as a result of the trauma that they have endured

The army own offices and seemingly unlimited funds for media advertising campaigns. They have mobile recruitment buses that have previously pitched up outside Tottenham Town Hall. Groups that oppose their activities are free to protest their presence in such spaces. But educational unions the NUT and UCU have taken the considered view that army recruitment activities should have no place in educational institutions, and this is a position that we intend to fight for. This is opposition to government policy, and trades unions have long fought for the right to express a political position. We plan to publicly express our position by having a protest outside our college on Wednesday lunchtime, 12.30 – 1.30pm.

Demonstrate at Tottenham Centre

UCU and UNISON have raised strong objections to management about the army in the college during enrolment, recruiting 16-18 year-olds under their FE Bursary Scheme. Although there are of course a range of views about the army within the UCU and UNISON, our common concern is for the welfare of our students and a profound distaste that they are being recruited with inducements and under false pretences to ease the army’s recruitment crisis.

Misleading Propaganda

The UK has been criticised at the UN (Child Soldiers Global Report 2008) as the only country in Europe which recruits 16 year-old into the armed forces. A recent independent report by the Joseph Rowntree Trust (www.informedchoice.org.uk) has condemned the army for using false and misleading propaganda to recruit young people. Army literature emphasises comradeship, active lifestyle, travel and training opportunities. It omits or obscures the risks of dying (estimated at one in 36 of those sent to Afghanistan), the long-term damage to physical and mental health, the legal obligations of enlistment and the demands of a military lifestyle.

Army Failing in Duty of Care

A full-page article in the Observer newspaper on Sunday (‘Record numbers of ex-soldiers in jail as combat leaves mental scars’) supplies further damning evidence of the damage that our students may suffer if we facilitate their signing-up. According to the article, ex-soldiers comprise the largest occupational group in the prison system, with the number doubling in the last 4 years to 8500. The Howard League for Penal Reform attributes this to ‘‘an inability to cope with civilian life, particularly for those who joined the services on leaving school’. Veterans in Prison argue that ‘‘they’re fighting in back-to-back conflicts, coming out and going back again; they haven’t got time to recover. There are not enough of them. They don’t have the right cover or equipment and they’re absolutely knackered’

The Contradiction of Choice from the Government

tim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:23:41 +0000

Buzzwords abound in the rhetoric of politicians and never more so than when the talk is of public sector reform. Of the current phrases spewing forth ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ are two of the favourites but whose choice and whose empowerment? And while MP’s try to frame these words as synonyms of ‘public benefit’, is choice always a good thing?

Health and education are the main areas where politicians see choice as the best way of improving services. Choosing where and what treatment to have and which school to send your children to are policies which both the Labour and Conservative parties are pursuing. This year’s Darzi review made patients’ rights the focus of change, proposing that patients’ views on the quality of care should have an impact on future funding, with bonuses for those GPs and hospitals providing the best services. Furthermore, the results of patient satisfaction should be published creating a form of NHS league table allowing patients to choose at which GP or hospital they wish to receive their treatment.

Parents are continually told that by being able to choose which school to send their children to they are getting a better deal from state education. Government ministers eulogise choice as the best way to match a child’s educational needs to the school that is best placed to cater for them.

Choice as prescribed by this government, however, leads to centralisation, destruction of communities, privatisation and the marginalisation of the poorest from the process. Their legacy of choice will be less choice.

Polyclinics are a perfect example of this. Patients are told that these super-surgeries will lead to more choice but one key choice will be removed: the choice to go to your community hospital or GP. Elderly patients, who frequently need to seek medical advice, will see their relationships with their doctor destroyed and will be forced to travel impractical distances.

NHS league tables, while appearing to increase patient choice, are in reality just another way of imposing more targets. Moreover, if patients do utilize them to make decisions about which hospital to go to they will find that choice is removed. A hospital which scores poorly in the table will receive less funding, therefore their results will get worse and fewer patients will choose them. As this spiral continues services will have to be closed down as they will no longer be efficient and then you no longer have a choice.

Choices can also be confusing, stressful and in the end you can always make the wrong one. When it comes to medicine my knowledge is possibly not as comprehensive as that of a qualified and experienced practitioner. I would, therefore, rather know that all hospitals and surgeries are clean and friendly and then allow my GP to refer me to the nearest one where I could receive the required treatment.

The government’s promise to give every parent a choice of secondary school for their child was proved a myth again this year with figures showing the number of pupils getting their first choice of school has dropped. As parents understandably clamour to get their children in to schools high up the league tables the idea of going to your local school is becoming a nostalgic notion, with over half of children not going to their nearest school. Commuting to school is detrimental to community development and the environment.

Worse still any benefits of the current policy are going to the wealthiest. A report by Bristol University found that disadvantaged families miss out in the current system and even in the same postcodes poorer families end up at the lower-performing schools. Expanding the better performing schools may not be possible as “giving popular schools the freedom to expand does not mean they will do so. To the extent that a school’s position in the league tables depends on the attainment of its intake, schools may be unwilling to increase and potentially to dilute the quality of their student body,” said Professor Burgess.

Whilst ‘good’ schools cream off the best pupils the rest are left with lower league table results and less people ‘choosing’ to go there. Some of the best teachers may leave and in worse case scenarios the school maybe closed. As with hospitals the choice is then removed. Furthermore, expanding the best schools and shrinking or closing the rest as suggested will result in huge institutions where education suffers. American researchers are leading the way in analysing the impacts of school size.

Craig Howley, of Ohio University, and Robert Bickel, of Marshall University, looked at whether smaller schools could reduce the negative effects of poverty on student achievement. They found that the correlation between poverty and low achievement was ten times stronger in larger schools than in smaller ones. “Everyone knows that there is a strong association between social class and achievement and that this association works very much to the disadvantage of economically disadvantaged students,” Bickel told Education World. “The California research, however, had the virtue of demonstrating that this disadvantage was exaggerated as school size increased.”

One in seven pupils in England are now in a secondary school with over 1,500 students and the number of pupils in schools of over 2,000 has doubled since 1997. Promoting choice is driving these figures ever higher. If you thought a change of government would bring about a change of direction then, like in most areas, the differences between Labour and the Conservatives are negligible. In a letter this week to local residents, Philip Dunne, Conservative MP for South Shropshire wrote: ‘We believe that the best way to enhance the power of patients is through choice.

We will allow patients to choose, in consultation with their GP, where they get their secondary care. And we will ensure that money follows the patient so that hospitals and clinics and other care providers are paid according to the results they deliver for that patient.’ Once again, it seems, Labour equals Conservative and the public is left without an alternative.

When ministers speak of choice what they really mean is installing the practice of privatised competition in the public sector. Not even the most ardent free-market Tory would openly pursue a fully privatised health or education service; it would be electoral suicide. All politicians know this so instead they are doing it under the radar masked by the promise of choice.

Genuine, useful choice and universal empowerment are great things which should be strived for but do not confuse them with current government policy. Next time you get excited by the prospect of politicians offering you a choice think again as it’s not always a good thing.

SATs fiasco- Labour’s failure

tim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:50:33 +0000

On August 15, the British Labour government’s regulatory body, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), terminated the contract of the company responsible for marking Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) school test papers (which are mandatory for all school children in England aged 11 and 14 years.)

The QCA had only signed the £156 million, five-year contract with ETS Europe (a branch of the US-based Educational Testing Service Global BV) in February 2007. However, a series of major problems with the administration and marking of the tests this year caused almost a month’s delay in publishing the majority of results for key stage two (11-year-olds) and three (14-year-olds). Key stage three results were not released until August 12, although some were still incomplete.

Not only was the deadline missed, but the accuracy of marking was severely compromised, with many schools reporting that inexplicable results in some cases suggested that the markers either did not understand the questions themselves or that there was not adequate time to check.

When ETS was awarded the contract to administer the SATs, it had boasted of a new method to ensure marking accuracy. Markers would have to sit online tests every time they had assessed 80 exam papers, supposedly to ensure they were marking to the given criteria. In practice, however, the markers were given no feedback other than a pass or fail and could not adjust their marking accordingly.

Not only was the marker training inferior to previous years, but markers did not receive papers in sufficient time, as they were sent from schools to a central depot and then on. This meant the papers had to be marked under tremendous pressure during school term time, further undermining accuracy. Papers/scripts that were near the borderline of grades were not double-checked, as was the case in previous years. On top of this, some markers received no papers at all, while others received papers for the wrong subject. Unlike in previous years, pupil registers had to be checked online and marks for every single question submitted online—an extremely time-consuming if not futile exercise, exacerbated by crashed websites and helplines that went unanswered.

Following the virtual collapse of the test paper marking system, the QCA and ETS Europe agreed to dissolve the contract with immediate effect. Under the agreement, ETS Europe is expected to pay back £24.1 million of the nearly £40 million it received to run this year’s testing process and is to be stripped of the five-year deal. Government agencies will now oversee the delivery of the last 30,000 results and the appeal process. ETS has been banned from contacting schools directly.

ETS Europe had hoped to prove itself in the English school system so as to expand elsewhere in Europe. It won the SATs contract despite a catalogue of past failures to deliver on its commitments. In 2002, software errors by ETS led to serious failures, including giving the wrong marks, in the graduate management admission test (GMAT) in the US. According to the New York Times, in 2004, mismanagement by ETS led to more than 40,000 teachers taking a flawed exam and ETS paying out millions of dollars in compensation.

From the very start of its contract in England, there had been problems with the delivery and collection of test papers from schools, the electronic registration and moderating system crashed, and markers and schools could not log on. The helpline was constantly engaged. Thousands of teachers dropped out of the marking scheme, and many other markers resigned. A backlog grew, forcing ETS to set up 24-hour emergency marking centres. According to the Guardian newspaper, at one point, the National Assessment Agency went in and found 10,000 unopened emails from increasingly desperate schools.

Now, the exams regulator, Ofqual, has asked Lord Sutherland to head an inquiry into the delays. Ofqual head Kathleen Tattersall said that if there is a significant rise in schools appealing over results, then all 1 million SATs results should be annulled. The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Mick Brookes, said that such appeals “are set to rocket.” He has urged the schools inspection body Ofsted to disregard SATs results when making a judgement on a school. Results that Ofsted deems poor could contribute to a school being placed in the failing category of “special measures,” in some cases resulting in heads and teachers losing their jobs.

State education given over to the market

While no parent, teacher or child in England will shed a tear on the departure of such a clearly incompetent company from schools across the country, the more fundamental issue exposed by this latest crisis is not the marking but the actual tests themselves. But rather than replace the testing system, as most teachers, educationalists and parents have been arguing—well before the latest marking fiasco—the government intends to replace one company with another in order to continue with the whole flawed testing enterprise.

Teacher unions have already cast doubt on whether a new contract could be awarded in time to deliver next year’s SATs and called on ministers to overhaul the system. Schools secretary Ed Balls said he was “open to reform long-term.” He floated “lower-intensity” testing but flatly ruled out suspending SATs for 2009.

The government has hinted that the data-handling firm Capita may be contracted to run next year’s SATs. Ken Boston, chief executive of the QCA, said it would launch an urgent tendering process and that he expected organisations that previously expressed an interest to bid again. ETS was one of five companies short-listed two years ago. According to the Guardian, two of the three other major exam boards have already ruled themselves out of the contract, on the basis that they did not believe there was a strong enough educational rationale for the SATs tests. Greg Watson, head of the OCR exam board, said it did not bid because the tests were used to measure schools against one another, rather than qualifying a child at a certain level and diagnosing skills. A second exam board, AQA, also said it had not bid because of concerns about the purpose of the tests.

One unnamed senior examiner said that the process was so educationally “vacuous” that it would actually be more suited to a company such as Capita, which is used to dealing with large-scale public sector data projects rather than educational examinations. So indefensible have the SATs now become that a former aide of Tony Blair admitted recently that they risked turning schools into “drab, joyless assessment factories” where preparation for tests crowds out real learning.

The disparity between the overblown election promises the Labour government made on education policy and the subsequent mess that it has made in the school system has been widely acknowledged. But the government and the media are seeking to conceal how and why this has happened.

The cash-starved and moribund education system that emerged after 18 years of Conservative-rule was the one of the most glaring examples of the socially regressive policies of the Thatcher and Major administrations.

In the absence of a mass socialist alternative to address this, the right-wing “new” Labour Party under Blair successfully capitalised on popular support for a radical break with the pro-market policies of the past and for a reduction in the levels of social inequality that rocketed following the speculative boom of the 1980s.

On taking office in 1997, Blair and then-chancellor Gordon Brown kept rigorously to Tory spending limits while introducing cosmetic changes in education—such as more classroom assistants and the introduction of learning mentors. Most significantly, however, the Labour government sought to introduce the most pro-business agenda in education for a generation. Virtually every area of education was opened up to corporate profit making; from the building of school infrastructure, the development of business-friendly “specialist schools,” the increase of “faith schools” and to the setting up of private “academies.”

State schools have become testing grounds for ever-more uninspired ways to narrow the already prescriptive national curriculum and force children through a selective testing system. The effects of teaching to the tests—as in the present SATs—on especially young children is to squeeze out the joy of learning that should be inherent in an imaginative, widely scoped, generously resourced syllabus. This contributes significantly to the growing levels of disaffection amongst pupils that has been confirmed by international reports on the levels of unhappiness amongst children in the UK.

Furthermore, teachers have been demoralised as they are turned into part-time administrators of prescribed curriculum, while being scapegoated and even publicly hounded by the government for its own policy failures. Many well-meaning teachers have found themselves grubbing for each test paper point instead of being free to open young minds to the exploration and discovery of the world around them. Crowning it all, each school faces the constant threat of government inspection whereby they are monitored, praised or punished on the basis of fulfilling increasingly arbitrary targets. Schools are encouraged to compete against one another—via league tables—in a desperate bid for decreasing resources. At the end of this process, parents are thrown into a scramble to get a place at the “best” school for their children.

The end result of the corporate-inspired curriculum and the assessment system—the implementation of which has been the mainstay of the Labour government’s education policy since taking office in 1997—is the straitjacketing of the intellectual and imaginative capacities of children in order to provide for the demands of big-business and industry.

The government’s education policies have long since alienated millions of parents, but such is the damage it has caused, the very corporate interests that it sought to serve have signalled their dismay at the results of the school system. After complaining about the low literacy and numeracy levels of school levers, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) announced recently that it was withdrawing its support for the government’s new diplomas, which were intended to replace the current A-Levels (taken at 18 years of age). Whatever new schemes Labour devises in response to such criticisms, its continued drive to redistribute wealth away from working people to big business and the super-rich, further fuelling social inequality, means it is incapable of arriving at a “better,” or more just education policy.

Smash School Privatisation

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Next Step In The Anti-Academy Campaign

Following last week’s actions against the privatisation of UK education in Wembley, North West London, a new call out by campaigners to re-squat the land and put another obstacle in the way of Blair’s profitable education program, centring the campaign against school privatisation right under the nose of the new Wembley Stadium.

For two years the Wembley Park Sports Ground site has been a constant pain in the butt for the local council, for the private investor, charity Ark, whose founder is multimillionaire French/Swiss financier Arpad “Arki” Busson, and for the UK Brown fronted government.

Now campaigners and activists not associated with the previous campaign are calling on people to converge on the sports ground, re-squat the site and put a halt to this, the latest corporate grab of UK education, sending a clear message to the investors and the government – hands off our schools and our children.

Residents and teachers have continually squatted the land, halting development, since 2006. In recent weeks local teachers, business owners and residents instigated direct action to draw attention to Ark gaining control of the public sports ground, in order to build their next privatised Academy school, one of six they plan to open by September 2008.

The previous campaigners have now been hit with huge costs and fines, are banned from the site for two years and face prison time for even remotely being involved in any further campaign against the Wembley Ark Academy.

The sports ground has been used by local schools and residents at £1 per session for decades, the local schools in the area do not have their own playing fields. The land is also home to protected trees and various wildlife, including colonies of bats.

When private investor Ark takes over they claim the use of the sports ground will be “affordable” and also claim their will be more amenities there for the local community.

But, as parents have been finding out while visiting the site, expecting to see a nice big shiny new school – the school is not built yet. In the meantime, from September 2008 60 pupils, 200 pupils by September 2009, will be temporarily housed while the school is built around them, leaving them in the middle of a construction site, breathing construction dust and put at risk from overhanging cranes and other construction machinery. And all the while, at the expense of people’s safety, private investor Ark will start raking in the profits, straight from the UK taxpayer.

Local residents have been continually lied to on all issues surrounding this development. The main argument by Brent Council and Ark for the need of the school was 200 children would have no school place, thus no education, if the Academy was not built. But Brent Council neglected to inform residents, and Ark themselves, that there were two other sites in the borough where the school was more needed and appropriate land was available.

Brent Council also neglected to tell residents there were other investor options in the school. Residents were only informed of the Ark investor.

Now it has come to light that Brent Council have been stealing children from other local schools, canvassing parents to change schools to the new Academy, thus reducing pupil numbers at the two remaining state schools in the area. As pupil numbers fall at the state schools, so does the funding, leaving those two schools under threat of closure, leaving only the privately-run school open for business.

Brent Council also promised to relocate all the small local businesses affected by the Wembley Academy development program. To date they are still waiting, despite their imminent eviction of current premises on 31 July 2008.

The age old question now sits on the mouths of those directly affected in the area, and more so by all across the country questioning UK school Academisation – if they are lying, deceiving and cheating at this stage, can these people be trusted to run UK schools?

Tony Blair set up the Academy school system in 2000, where private investors were asked to come up with £2 million investment to buy their very own state school. The further running and redevelopment costs of the school would be footed by the UK taxpayer, usually a fee of around £30 million per school. The government argument for this was with state education failing on many levels the only answer to save UK education was begin a process of “Academisation”, in other words, privatisation.

Now the £2 million is not being paid by the investors. Academy schools no longer have to follow the school curriculum. They are failing worse than the remaining state schools. Expulsion rates are sky-rocketing and the private interests are increasingly gaining control of what is being taught in their schools, leaving children’s education in the hands of some of the largest most powerful companies in the world, as well as some religious groups, which, looking at closely, can only be considered fundamentalist.

The Wembley Park Anti-Academy Camp will be open from this Sunday, 27 July 2008. The plan is to maintain a presence on the site and halt all preparations for the school, sending a clear message to local authorities, the national government, and the private investors, you are not welcome in our schools.

Join the campaign. Save our schools from the hands of the corporate elite. Smash School Privatisation. No to education for profit.

Details:
Wembley Park Sports Ground, Bridge road, Wembley, NW9
Nearest tube: Wembley Park (metropolitan and jubilee line)
Turn left out station, walk up to main junction of Bridge Road and Forty Lane, turn left, walk up to left-hand gate where car wash sign is and you’re there.

Buses:
From Mill Hill or Kensal Rise – 302 (get off at Blackbird Hill)
From Golders Green – 83 (get off at Wembley Asda or Wembley Park tube)
From Brent Cross – 182 (get off at Wembley Asda or Wembley Park tube)

SATS - New Labour's education failure in microcosm

Ellie Keen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:16:03 +0000

If you are looking for the reason why New Labour has spent more on education yet failed to improve it, look no further that the present entirely predictable crisis over SATS – Standard Assessment Tests. All the three notions that are wrong, and foolish, and muddled about government education policy are there:

First, the notion that if you hand anything at all over to the private sector, it will magically improve. Second, that if you want to make teachers and schools perform better, you set them arbitrary targets, and kick them if the targets aren’t met. And third, that everything in education can be measured in crude tick-box forms, which can be completed by anyone who can read, because no sophisticated judgements are required.

How else could we have got to a situation where schools have to revolve round the demands of simplistic little tests on their pupils; where those tests can be marked by people who have no qualifications or experience in education; and these people can be employed at a pittance by an American company to do work which could be done far better and with much greater understanding by experienced and qualified people whom the British taxpayer already employs?

And that is not the worst of it. Our government not only insists on finding someone – anyone – from the private sector to do work which the public sector could do better and cheaper; it then gives them a contract which means they can foul up as badly as they like, and still not be fired without a golden goodbye of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

SATs are the tests taken at ages five, 11 and 14, to chart the progress of both schools and their pupils. They have always been unpopular with teachers, pupils and parents, but popular with politicians, for whom they provide a source of meaningless statistics which can be deployed to prove more or less anything. The administration of these tests has been outsourced to an enormous multinational company called ETS, or Educational Testing Services. ETS have been given a five year contract which is apparently binding no matter how badly they foul up. Nice work if you can get it.

As schools break up for summer, almost one in five primary schools still does not have a full set of marks, and many of the results for 14-year-olds are likely to be delayed, perhaps until September. The results we have are clearly flawed, and teams of ETS employees are searching for thousands of test papers which have apparently been lost. We know of incomplete marking, of pupils wrongly marked as absent, of pupils’ work being left to moulder in the schools, and much more. Any school putting in this sort of performance would be in special measures, and rightly so.

We hear calls for the resignation of the education secretary, Ed Balls, but that will change nothing. What we need is what I fear we’re not going to get – a change of policy.

The Great City Academy Fraud

Ellie Keen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:52:55 +0000

book Review

The Great City Academy Fraud, by Francis Beckett

It is impossible to commend this book highly enough. When the whole City Academy saga started Brent was chosen as one of the first 3 proposed in the country. As local NUT Secretary I was intimately involved from the start. We witnessed the deceit, the spin, the secrecy, the bribery and the downright dishonesty and lying. I collected the papers and the evidence and thought of writing a book. In common with most people I never got round to it. I’m glad I didn’t, I couldn’t have done the job a tenth as well.

It’s an elegantly written book packed with killer quotes and facts. I have the rather desecrating habit of turning the ears of pages down if they have a particularly important or germane fact or quote. By the end of the book almost every other page had been dog-eared.

I read the book whilst camping out at the occupation ‘tent city’ we have set up to oppose an Academy on the Wembley Park site. You can imagine that I and my colleagues have been absorbed in studying and finding out as much information as possible about the academy programme, yet still I found out so many things I didn’t know and gained more insights into the depth and perfidy of these would-be state education privatisers.

Amongst many things, the book shows how Primary schools will not escape and will be included in the academies’ increasing trend to be all-through 3-18 schools (the bigger the school, the cheaper the cost per unit – sorry – child); how private schools are being allowed to become academies; how academies are now being built entirely with public money with so-called sponsors only being expected to make annual revenue contributions to the academy trust; how Local Authorities, as being responsible for education, are to be ended; how democratic consultation and procedures have been trampled into the dust and the legal goalposts bent, ignored and moved with the regularity and speed of atomic clocks; and how there is a determined plan by religious groups to turn the clock back.

So, to quote two brief extracts from the book, the first regarding the role of religion in education, and the second regarding the role of charity, or rather the role it shouldn’t have, in education (but if you use them I want you to promise me that you won’t do it without buying the book, because you’ll miss so many other good ones).

He points out that long before the academies became the vehicle for it (1995) a booklet from a Mr Burn and Mr McQuoid, now involved with the Vardy foundation, said, “In Britain the Christian churches were active in the field of schooling long before the state took over….in retrospect it is a matter of regret that the churches so readily relinquished control of education to the state….”. And there you have it says Francis, “the state must be driven out of education and it should be handed back to the churches, our function as tax payers should be confined to providing the money with which people like McQuoid and Burn can make sure we can bring up a generation in their own image”.

He quotes Clement Atlee, who was later to become Labour prime Minister in 1945, writing in 1920. He said, “If the rich want to help the poor then they should pay their taxes gladly. A right established by law, such as that to an old age pension, is less galling than an allowance made by a rich man to a poor one depending on his view of the recipient’s character and terminable at his caprice”. He quotes Robert Louis Stevenson who called taxes “the true charity, impartial, impersonal, cumbering none with obligation, helping all”.

“ Charity” , Atlee wrote, “is always apt to be accompanied by a certain complacency and condescension on the part of the benefactor and by an expectation of gratitude from the recipient which cuts at the root of all true friendliness”

Francis then writes, “For these reasons, in the early part of the 20th century it became the view of the Labour Party – and broadly speaking remained so until 1997 – that the rich should aid the poor through the tax system, rather than by charitable gifts; and that education, health care, social security – all the elements of the 1945 Atlee settlement – should be paid for from taxation”.

“What city academies represent, therefore, is a return to the idea, condemned by Atlee, that the rich should contribute voluntarily, rather than through the tax system. But there is a new twist. The sponsor can get all the things a nineteenth-century philanthropist could get, and which Atlee grudged him: control of how the money is spent, a ‘monument’ to himself, the gratitude of the recipients. But unlike the nineteenth-century philanthropist, he does not have to pay the cost of the thing he is ‘giving’ – or even a substantial contribution towards the cost”.

Francis, you have done a service to all of us, full credit to you. As you point out, “Each funding agreement contains conditions upon which the Academy can be returned to the public sector”. We should repay you by defeating this attempt to end state education. This means all out war to stop new academies being built, and campaigning and fighting by any and all means to bring all existing academies back into a fully integrated state education system. Over to you, readers. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. We have started and this is an excellent guide.

The Silent Conflict: Harlow College

tim — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:37:47 +0000

A year ago, teaching staff at Harlow College staged a five-day strike: an unprecedented action for them but one which reflected the desperation of the situation as a politically motivated principalship, led by Colin Hindmarch, played an ideologically driven game with the interests of learners in order to smash the union. The conditions imposed upon teachers included a massive reduction in wages for many with the introduction of a new unqualified ‘tutor’ role, the imposition of an effective 56-hour working week and reduction of holidays from 45 to 30 days a year. This was imposed despite the fact that Hindmarch created more management positions and raised their pay by 11%. However, on top of all this, around 40 experienced teachers were denied opportunities to continue working there because they were deemed to be opposed to the new Teaching and Learning Strategy. A further similar number of teachers opted for voluntary redundancy, unable to accept such a draconian and spiteful regime.

Since the headline-grabbing events of last June, there has been little said and even less printed on the state of affairs at Harlow College. This is not because it has settled down. On the contrary, the situation has become ever more desperate, in particular for the students.

But why the silence? The college principalship was suffering most due to adverse publicity and news reports which exposed its cruel, politically motivated initiatives; it cleverly contrived a situation which would stifle criticism, in particular from the one source which should have been the most vocal: the Universities and Colleges Union. After the redundancies and the failure to abide by the law to meaningfully negotiate the new contracts, huge pressure from the union and Bill Rammell MP was placed on the college to accept ACAS negotiations. The college accepted this with the proviso that UCU would never publicly criticise the college. This UCU foolishly accepted.

In the wake of this agreement, a Working Party was established to find a way forward, due to conclude at Christmas 2007. However, enjoying the continued silence of UCU, the college pushed back this deadline month after month. It is now set to conclude in September. Coupled with a new learner agreement which students were obliged to sign upon enrolment which also prohibited them from making public criticisms, this has meant that the College is now able to bask in relative silence. Only a Guardian article of 18th March 2008 exposed a hint of the appalling conditions at the college, thanks to the bravery of the president of the local NUS refusing to sign the learner agreement. However, UCU, like the principal, was tragically ‘unavailable for comment’. The college continues to hold its remaining teaching staff and students hostage to a never-ending working party which the union foolishly allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred into accepting.

Now we must turn to the details of what has been happening at the college, tucked away from public scrutiny. The staff turnover rate continues to be alarmingly high; one principal tutor in English resigning after little more than a fortnight in position, a sociology teacher sacked after a month and a psychology teacher given two hours to clear his desk after having joined UCU less than 24 hours previously.

The LSC and Ofsted published damning reports on the college last autumn. Ofsted was most scathing, pointing out their shock at an ICT class of 100 students being taught via a personal address system.

At a public meeting effectively forced upon the Principal and Bill Rammell, Colin Hindmarch claimed that the costs of redundancies were not high, at only around £150,000. When pressed to reveal the actual figures, some months later, he acknowledged that the cost was just under £1 million. Now seeking further clarification, corporation board minutes reveal it to be more like £1.3 million.

Some may argue that this could be justified if the college improves its service to students and achieves better results. But this is perhaps the most tragic story of all. In March 2008, the college delayed releasing its winter A-level exam results to students for almost a week. When finally revealed, no details of grades were published but only a paltry 58% of AS-level exams were passed – a huge decline on the previous year. Following this, the chairman of the Corporation Board, Martin Coleman, said in the local paper, “We are happy with the way things are going.” The significance of these results are that these students have only experienced learning under the Hindmarch regime, including his peculiar ‘subject days’ where students learn the same subject once a week but for the whole day.

The college also rigged the elections to the posts of student representatives on the corporation board. Realising that the NUS leader would have won any open contest, they contrived a complicated delegatory system to avoid any public debate and to insulate the corporation board from hearing real concerns and criticisms.

The college is also engaging in the practice of withdrawing students from their exams weeks before they are due to be held. The students are then transferred onto short ICT classes which they cannot fail to pass. This then serves to distort the ‘success rate’ data because the student will receive certification and the failure to complete the course which has occupied them for the rest of the year would not be revealed in any figures. Accounts of students begging to be allowed to sit the exams that they have been studying for months, under wholly inadequate conditions, have been rife. Many parents have had pay for private tuition and are bitter that this may be exploited by the college as they may still take credit for the results achieved.

The local MP and minister for the area, Bill Rammell, has been most reluctantly dragged into the dispute and now finds himself accused of complacency and expediency. He once criticised UCU publicly for their methods last year but refused to give details so they could be given an opportunity to justify themselves. He also disassociated himself from the article published in the Guardian but refuses to elaborate on those elements which he considered were untrue. He also claimed that academic opinion on ‘Subject Days’ for FE colleges were mixed, with some claiming they were a good idea. Can any reader enlighten us as to where subject days are deployed successfully?

Last month, Rammell and Hindmarch attempted to pacify critics by inviting a few select individuals around the college to see the wonderful new facilities. This may have made Rammell look good for the taxpayers’ money being invested but most concluded that the college could not blame poor resources for the college’s failures. Because of this, Hindmarch was subjected to wholesale criticism where he even conceded that ‘subject days’ were failing, citing the fact that May – a crucial month for exam preparations – has two bank holidays, depriving students of essential learning time for any course they study on Mondays. This was pointed out to him when he first tried to impose ‘subject days’ in March 2007, but he simply sacked those who raised such professional concerns.

Scandalously, Bill Rammell still opposes any calls for Colin Hindmarch to resign. He claims that to remove him would be the ‘populist’ thing to do but is not in the interest of the students. Even though Hindmarch has the LSC, Ofsted and the QIA almost constantly in residence, providing stabilisers for this child in blue braces who cannot ride his bike, Rammell insists on protecting him. His majority is only a tiny 97 votes and yet he has spoken up to protect Hindmarch’s position with far greater voracity than he ever did to protect the jobs of around a hundred teachers this time last year. No one believes that Rammell would ever send a child of his to an institution run by Hindmarch and most people are truly shocked at his attitude and downright complacency. The real reason why he will not call for Hindmarch to resign is because Hindmarch will ignore him. This will expose the reality of Rammell’s impotence and failure to properly act upon the incorporated status of colleges which allowed this wholly unaccountable situation to arise.

There is no end in sight for the conflict and it is foolish of Mr Rammell to continually search for the shortest route for a mystical Harlow College paper towel so that he can wipe his hands of the whole affair. The college faces a huge litigation bill when UCU goes to court for protective awards for the college’s failure to meaningfully consult over the redundancies, and there are cases for unfair dismissal and victimisation as well. Harlow College is a tragic saga and its full story will be known one day. This article provides just a glimpse of a curriculum’s worth of lessons that we could all learn from.

SATs school tests criticised by official report

tim — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:20:51 +0000

In May, millions of school children throughout England undertook their Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in English, mathematics and science.

The statutory tests are widely considered to be flawed and almost universally reviled by teachers and children alike.

Numerous educationalists are critical of the Labour government’s fixation with increased testing, which is distorting the curriculum and having a detrimental effect on the long-term education of children.

The recent Report by the House of Commons, Children, Schools and Families Committee—Testing and Assessment (Session 2007-2008) paints a disturbing picture of the climate generated by testing and target-setting in schools.

The report declares its commitment to “a system of national testing,” but then draws attention to a number of studies conducted in recent years, including one by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) published in 2003, that found “the use of test results for the purpose of school accountability had damaging effects on teachers and pupils alike. Teachers felt that the effect was to narrow the curriculum and distort the education experience of pupils.”

It adds that “excessive time, workload and stress for children [are] not justified by the accuracy of the test results on individuals.”

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) considered that Key Stage tests provide only “one source” of performance data for both students and teachers, and that it is “hazardous” to draw too many conclusions from this data alone. They argue that “A teacher’s professional knowledge of the pupil is vital—statistics are no substitute for professional judgment.”

The Association of Colleges stated that performance tables composed from examination results data do not adequately reflect the actual work of a school and that the emphasis on performance tables risks shifting the focus of schools from the individual need of the pupil towards performance table results.

“The fact that the results of these tests are used for so many purposes, with high-stakes attached to the outcomes, creates tensions in the system leading to undesirable consequences, including distortion of the education experience of many children,” the report acknowledges.

“In addition, the data derived from the testing system do not necessarily provide an accurate or complete picture of the performance of schools and teachers, yet they are relied upon by the Government, the QCA and Ofsted [the examinations board and the school inspectors body] to make important decisions affecting the education system in general and individual schools, teachers and pupils in particular.”

The City and Guilds awarding body is quoted as saying that “there is considerable obligation on the designer of tests or assessments to make them as efficient and meaningful as possible. Assessment opportunities should be seen as rare events during which the assessment tool must be finely tuned, accurate and incisive. To conduct a test that is inaccurate, excessive, unreliable or inappropriate is unpardonable.”

The present Key Stage tests fail on all these counts.

The National Curriculum in England is divided into four Key Stages, or areas of learning, for school children (Key Stage 1, 5-7-year-olds; Key Stage 2, 7-11-year-olds; Key Stage 3, 11-14-year-olds; and Key Stage 4, 14-16-year-olds). The government’s stated intention is to improve the average achievement across a school at the end of each.

Schools are given targets based on ensuring that children meet the expected levels for their age in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science. Key Stage tests are used to generate data on pupil performance, which is then collated and used, in the words of the report, to “measure trends across time, across schools, and by almost every conceivable characteristic of the pupils.”

The results for each school are aggregated into “performance tables,” which encourage comparison (and ultimately competition) between schools.

Government claims challenged

The report’s authors say that witnesses to its study have challenged the government’s assertions that its agenda of tests, targets and performance tables have helped “drive up standards.”

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) states that there is little evidence that performance tables have contributed to raising standards of attainment. The report also contends that “a growing number of international studies show that other comparable education systems, including those in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, have reached and maintained high educational standards without use of the performance tables.”

The NUT drew attention to the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information study (2004), which concluded that repeated testing and examination de-motivated pupils and reduced their learning potential, as well as having a detrimental effect on educational outcomes. Evidence showed that teachers adapt their teaching style to train pupils to pass tests, even when pupils do not have an understanding of higher-order thinking skills that tests are intended to measure and that National Curriculum tests lower the self-esteem of unconfident and low-achieving pupils.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), noting the government’s assertions of improving standards, questioned “whether this means that our pupils are learning more and better.” It referred to research at Durham University suggesting that pupils who reach the projected Level 4 at Key Stage 2 do not retain what they have learned over a period of six months to a year.

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) considers that the aggregation of individual test scores creates a high-stakes testing system that it says will inevitably create a false picture of “progress.” It argues that the government has produced no evidence to support the assertion that targets and performance tables have driven up standards, a contention that “has taken on the aspect of a dogma.”

Results are now used to inform school decisions about performance-related pay, to inform Ofsted decisions about whether schools should be given “light or heavy touch inspections” and, combined with targets, to inform judgments about the advisability of educational initiatives.

The government is criticised for putting in place “accountability structures” that are strongly based on pupil performance in national tests. The distorting effect of these changes places competitive stress on schools and worsens the educational opportunities for most children: “Test results are not the output of education, but a proxy for the education taking place every day in classrooms across the country.”

One of the most destructive effects of this approach is “teaching to the test,” whereby the curriculum is narrowed to those areas likely to be the subject of examination. The report notes, “The Association of Colleges stated that, whilst a pupil may have the necessary grades to progress to the next level, if that learning is shallow, focussed only on passing the test, they may not have a full grasp of the necessary concepts or sufficient intellectual rigour to deal with the demands of the next level. They conclude that ‘This raising of false expectations resulting in a sense of inadequacy may well account for the high drop out rate at 17.’ ”

By narrowing the taught curriculum to what is tested, it is also possible for schools to inflate test scores without actually improving the underlying education of children taking the tests.

The reports’ authors also take issue with the official language of “success” and “failure,” saying that it highlighted a problem with the “standards agenda which the Government’s reasoning does not address.”

The NAHT states that children learn at different rates and in different ways. Schools should focus on assisting children to reach the goals appropriate for them as individuals.

The authors conclude their study by endorsing “the Government’s view that much can and should be done to assist children who struggle to meet expected standards,” But they express concern “that the Government’s target-based system may actually be contributing to the problems of some children.”

Tested to Destruction

Coinciding with the release of the report, the BBC screened an episode of its Panorama documentary series titled “Tested to Destruction,” which highlighted the disturbing effects of increased testing on the education of primary school children in England.

It explained that the SATs regime has only illustrated the underlying social and economic inequality in England today. The better results are achieved in schools in the more prosperous suburbs, and children who live in areas of deprivation tend to achieve lower marks.

Panorama interviewed pupils at the Phoenix Primary school in Liverpool, and invited some of them to draw pictures based on their thoughts and feelings about tests. This produced some very dark and negative images, epitomised in one child’s “SATs Monster.”

Professor Wynne Harlen of Bristol University said that the tests were a “way of telling you that you are less worthwhile,” and that children’s confidence and self-esteem are constantly under threat with every practice test they take. Moreover, “the nearer to SATs the more education was narrowed down to maths, English and science.”

By way of rebuttal, School’s Minister Jim Knight made the claim on the programme that children “don’t even notice” they are taking SATs.

While the other subjects were sidelined in the SATs’ year group, the programme posed the question whether concentration nevertheless led to an improvement in core subjects tested. Specialists insist that the opposite is true. Professor Margaret Brown said that because teachers were teaching to the tests, this was to the detriment of learning. Whole areas of maths, for example, are ignored as education is reduced to practising solving short test questions.

Chief Inspector of Schools Christine Gilbert recently announced that one in five 11-year-olds leaves Primary school unable to read, write and add up, and that overall standards had stalled. According to Professor Brown, “the government have pointed to rises in the test results. Teachers are good at coaching children to the test and it’s got to a ceiling.”

Rather than admitting the failure of government education policies, Gilbert outlined a more punitive inspection regimen beginning in September 2009. Snap inspections are to be introduced with no notice to schools and parents. Evidence of “bored” children can also trigger an inspection. Schools judged either “satisfactory” or “inadequate” will be inspected within a three-year cycle, while those performing better will be inspected every six years.

The SATs exist alongside a whole raft of exams that children in England have to take, including tests at seven, 14, 16 and 18 if they stay on at school. In response to the unpopularity of SATs, the government is piloting a supposedly more “child-friendly” single-level test, to be taken when the teacher deems a pupil is ready. Teachers on the programme said these revisions would be for the worse, as the worry caused by the tests would be ever-present and not just in the run-up to SATs.

Barry Sherman MP, chairman of the Commons Select Committee, said that there was a broad range of evidence showing that SATs were de-motivating and spoiling children’s enjoyment of education. “Testing” he said, “is ever present in schools. The success of a child, teacher and school is linked to testing, testing, testing.”

Britain’s Teachers and Civil Servants to take One-Day Strike Action

Ellie Keen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

For the first time in 21 years, teachers in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) will come out on a one-day strike on April 24 in opposition to the government’s imposition of a 2.45 percent pay award. With the current rate of inflation running at 4.1 percent this represents a pay cut in real terms. To make things worse, the pay award offered in January runs for three years—with a 2.45 percent increase in September, and just 2.3 percent in each of the following two years.

Members of Europe’s largest teaching union will be joined by over 100,000 civil servants in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) covering ten government departments and further education college lecturers in the University and College Union (UCU) in more than 250 colleges in England. Over 20,000 Birmingham City council workers will also begin strike action on April 23.

The government claims that pay restraint is necessary in order to keep inflation down. Schools Minister Jim Knight went so far as to tell the Times Educational Supplement that “it is because teachers have mortgages too that I know that they understand the need for a pay deal that helps deliver low inflation, low interest rates and a stable economy.”

Workers need higher pay precisely because they are facing rising mortgage, food and fuel costs, as well as credit card debts.

Teachers and other workers are not responsible for the financial crisis of the banking system, or the looming recession. Yet, while the Brown government is making available between £50 billion and £150 billion to the banks to cover their bad debts, and has spent billions more on the military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, they are insisting that workers accept below-inflation pay rises for years to come.

The starting pay of a teacher in England and Wales, at September 2008 would be £20,627 and in London’s Inner/Outer/Fringe this only rises to £25,000/£24,000/£21,619.

Students and newly qualified teachers are beginning their working lives unable to afford a mortgage and with debts from student loans averaging £20,000. The interest rate on student loans has just been raised to 4.8 percent.

According to the BBC, “grants to cash-strapped teachers from the Teacher Support Network charity rose 70 percent in the first quarter of 2008,” and more teachers struggling with their mortgages sought help from the benevolent fund run by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT).

Chief executive Patrick Nash of the Teacher Support Network, which gives hardship grants in addition to advice to teachers who are struggling, told the BBC, “More of our callers are having to seek help simply to make ends meet, showing that the national credit crunch is having a very real effect on teachers in particular.”

However, the NUT is not mounting a serious challenge to the government’s pay award. This is a one-day token strike to provide a focus for the rising anger of its members, after which the union is merely asking teachers to lobby local councillors and MPs leading to a protest at parliament in June. The summer break takes place for six weeks in July/August, so nothing further is likely to take place until September when the pay rise comes into effect.

The very fact that the NUT has not led a national strike in 21 years testifies to its refusal to oppose the constant attacks on teachers’ wages and working conditions. Indeed, over the past two decades the union has collaborated with successive governments in a massive overhaul of education, which includes the following:

Implementation and extension of the proscriptive and unwieldy National Curriculum, without consulting teachers and with no reference to child psychology.

Statutory annual tests for children at all ages including SATS, which have made children in the UK amongst the unhappiest in Europe, according to a recent United Nations report.

The setting of arbitrary targets in line with continual testing of children, dressed up as “raising standards” and “inclusion” of children from poorer areas, which again bears no relation to how children develop. Teachers have to waste precious time that should be spent with children compiling meaningless test data about children as young as five years old. This information is sent to the government, to be used as a stick to beat teachers whose classes are not performing up to standard.

The introduction of Performance Management as a way to smuggle in payment by results. Newly qualified teachers no longer automatically climb up the pay scale with experience, but have to prove they are worthy of a pay increment by being monitored. This is reinforced by regular OFSTED inspections.

The drafting in of untrained classroom assistants, a so-called “army of mums,” as a cheap labour workforce on temporary contracts who can even replace, at the discretion of the school head, trained teachers in the classroom.

The merging of the departments of Education and Social Services, using the pretext of the tragic death of Victoria Climbie, that will pave the way for further cuts to the social welfare budget.

The introduction of privately run academies headed by dubious outfits such as the Vardy Foundation that favours the teaching of creationism.

Education has been used as an opportunity for big business to make huge amounts of money. Not only have schools been forced to run as businesses with their own budgets, but they have to buy in privately run services like school meals, repairs, educational psychology support, whilst the government hands over millions to the building industry in its Buildings Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

Alongside the lack of funds for school and support services, schools have been transformed into instruments for the social policing of children with severe social and psychological problems—with unqualified “mentors” substituting for trained social workers.

The role of the NUT in allowing this to take place is only eclipsed by that of the NASUWT and the smaller Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

The NASUWT has opposed strike action, with the spurious claim that its members are more concerned about their increased workload. Its members will be carrying out business as usual on Thursday, with no challenge from the NUT. The ATL have said that under no condition must their members take strike action. (The lecturers in further education are striking for pay parity with teachers that were promised to them four years ago!)

One must add that the National Union of Students (NUS), which is Labour controlled, will do nothing to support the lecturers or teachers. The only listing for April 24 on its website is for a Student governor “toolkit day.”

Essential lessons must be drawn from these experiences. The attacks on the pay and conditions of teachers since Labour came to power in 1997 have taken place in the midst of a boom. Today the UK and world economy stand on the brink of a recession after the eruption of a banking crisis that is routinely compared with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. This must herald an ever more savage assault on the public sector by Brown.

Organisations that could not defend their members under an expanding economy will never do so when the recession really bites.

The working class must build its own organisations of class struggle.

Teachers’ pay is only one aspect of a broader fight to defend education from its systematic undermining by Labour and its big business backers. For this to be successful demands that this struggle is taken out of the hands of the trade union bureaucracy through the creation of rank and file organisations of teachers that cut across the carefully-cultivated sectional differences that divide and weaken workers in education.

NUT members must do what their leadership has refused to—oppose the collaboration with the government by the NASUWT and ATL and campaign for joint action by all teachers. This should be extended to all other workers in education. At the same time, support must be built amongst parents to reject the claims by the government and the media that the teacher’s action is endangering children’s education.

Only when working people organize a mass, independent political movement and assert their own social and class interests can the immense wealth of society be utilized to provide high quality schools and public services for all.

English Primary Education Criticised

Ellie Keen — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:35:06 +0000

A major report has criticised the extent of testing imposed on primary school children in England and the trend to begin formal education at an ever-earlier age.

The report by the Primary Review, based at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge University, highlights how primary age children (under 11) in England are subjected to a regime of testing, testing and more testing—more so than their counterparts in other developed countries. It is part of an ongoing review of British primary education that is the biggest undertaken since the Plowden report was issued over 40 years ago.

The report noted the changes that have taken place in primary education in England since Plowden. One of the most significant is the reduction in the age that children start school from five years old to four. The number of primary schools has fallen by 3,000 in this period but the size of schools has increased by around 15 percent.

The report questions the assumed benefits of starting younger and having a longer school year. The authors say, “There is little evidence to support common-sense assumptions that spending longer in primary schools… results in higher attainment… The assumption that an early school starting age is beneficial for children’s later attainment is not well supported… and there are concerns about the appropriateness of provision for four-year-olds in schools.”

It is highly critical of the type of teaching meted out to four year olds when they first enter school. It notes, “It has been suggested that starting school at such a young age may be stressful for children… Several qualitative research studies have shown that young children’s opportunities to learn through play are curtailed in reception classes due to insufficient staff, lack of early years training, physical constraints… lack of equipment (especially sand and water and large play equipment) and adherence to primary school timetables.”

Under-fives are also to be subjected to a proscriptive curriculum and testing. Beginning in September of this year, The Early Years Foundation Stage will lay out standards to be reached in reading, writing and numeracy for under-fives. It prescribes no less than 72 learning goals.

The report also looked at the extent and level of testing used in English primary schools. From entering primary school, young children are faced with an assault course of testing. These include an assessment just seven weeks after beginning school, Key Stage 1 tests at the end of their second year and Key Stage 2 tests at the end of their sixth year. Children may also be subjected to additional tests at the end of years 3, 4 and 5.

The researchers compared the regime of testing in English schools to those in other parts of the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan. Whilst these other countries also set tests, the report comments, “The scale of assessment for the purpose of monitoring and accountability is of quite a different order in England compared to our other reviewed countries… There is more external, standard testing in England: it occurs more frequently and starts at a younger age; more subjects are covered by the statutory assessments; test results are published in league tables; testing is high stakes… assessment in England… is pervasive, highly consequential…”

The report on assessment in English schools concludes by stating that “the high-stakes nature of the assessments designed to make the system accountable compromises its potential benefits.”

Since the publication of the report last month, teachers and parents have joined in expressing concern about the pressure that the emphasis on testing is placing on children. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told the Independent, “The whole testing regime is governed by the need to produce league tables. It has more to do with holding schools to account than helping pupils to progress.”

Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, explained, “There are schools that start rehearsing for Key Stage 2 SATs [Standard Assessment Tests] from the moment the children arrive in September…other schools…rehearse SATs during Christmas week… They should be having the time of their lives at school, not just worrying about tests. It is the breadth and richness of the curriculum that suffers. The consequences for schools not reaching their targets are dire—heads can lose their jobs and schools can be closed down. With this at stake it’s not surprising that schools let the tests take over.”

An increasing number of parents are seeking alternatives to state primary schools. Around 50,000 children are being educated at home. A recent paper issued by James Conroy and colleagues at Glasgow University noted, “Both the numbers opting for home schooling and the range of motivations of those wishing to do so have expanded considerably in recent years. One substantial and growing group is comprised of those who have abandoned formal schooling because they believe it is too constrained.”

The new Early Years Foundation Stage will also apply to independent bodies offering childcare. Under the new curriculum every child will have to be tested at the age of five whatever kind of school they attend. The government will have the power to close schools, kindergartens or nurseries that do not comply with the Early Year Foundation Stage Curriculum. Even childminders who care for young children in their own home will be subject to the new curriculum.

It will in effect become illegal not to teach literacy and numeracy to under-fives. Parents at an independent Steiner school at Wynstone, near Stroud, Gloucestershire are opposed to its introduction. They are campaigning to force the government to exempt Steiner schools and kindergartens.

The Steiner schooling movement puts the emphasis on young children learning through play. Steiner kindergartens do not teach literacy or numeracy, which are not begun until the child begins school at the age of six.

At the same time the government is increasing fees for the registration of child care providers. A number of organisations involved in the care of under-fives recently wrote to the Times saying, “we are alarmed at the potential impact of these proposed increases upon parents and providers.”

Steve Biddulph, an Australian educational psychologist, speaking at a recent conference in London warned, “Forcing learning destroys that learning. It makes children go backwards. The harm may well be life-long,”

He cited evidence from an American study that showed that children’s language learning slows down in a formal academic setting, but speeds up the more they are allowed to interact through free play. The same relationship was observed in the development of children’s reasoning skills.

The government claims that its statutory approach is intended to ensure that children from poor backgrounds get the same educational start as children from better off families. Biddulph pointed out that this could be achieved more effectively through properly resourced programmes aimed at disadvantaged communities.

Penelope Leach, the childcare expert, called for home visits to assist disadvantaged families rather than a prescriptive approach.

Lilian Katz, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, presented evidence demonstrating that children who are pushed to read and write at an early age do less well in later years. This was particularly true of boys, she said, arguing against a “hothouse” approach to education.

“Research suggests the benefits of formal academic instruction for four and five-year-olds seem to be promising when they are tested early,” Katz said, “but considerably less so in the long term. When these children are followed over a period of three or more years, those who had early experience in more intellectually engaging curricula were more likely to do well in school than their peers, who had early exposure to academic instruction.”

Beverley Hughes, Labour Children’s Minister, has dismissed the protests of parents, child psychologists and educationalists as “unrepresentative.”

The Cambridge report confirms the picture presented by last year’s UNICEF report, which showed Britain to be one of the worst countries amongst the most developed economies in which to be a child. The high level of risky behaviour of children in Britain was a reflection of the psychological impact of their experience of childhood. The pressure of constant testing and loss of esteem of children failing to reach set standards can only add to the psychological pressure being imposed on young children.

Report Reveals UK Youth Abandoned by Education System

Ellie Keen — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:19:33 +0000

The Bow Group, a Conservative Party think tank, published a report on May 25 entitled Invisible Children. Using the government’s own statistics, albeit selectively, it paints a devastating picture of a whole generation of young people being abandoned by the current educational system.

The report states that up to 100,000 children and young people are losing out on an education. It indicts the Labour government for failing some of the poorest and most deprived young people in the country.

The benchmark that schools in England and Wales use to measure success is how many pupils pass five GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with grades A to C. In 2006, 59 percent obtained five good GCSEs, 14 percent more than in 1997. The report states that this has been achieved at the expense of less-able students. Almost a quarter (129,700) of all pupils taking GCSEs do not gain any grade above a C.

Whilst the number of pupils not gaining GCSEs has declined from 45,000 in 1996-1967 to 29,800 in 2006, this is misleading since many pupils are being kept out of the “no qualifications” statistics by achieving a single grade. The reports then add to this the number of those who do not turn up for exams, which is estimated at 70,000.

A closer look at this phenomenon, it continues, reveals that 43 percent “of pupils do not reach the expected level in reading, writing and mathematics when they leave primary school. The knock-on effect is that pupils are permanently playing catch-up.”

Between Key Stage 2 (age 7-11) and Key Stage 3 (age 11-14), 84,100 pupils make no progress or fall backwards in English—38,100 in math and 145,000 in science.

Almost a fifth of 14-year-old boys have the reading age of a seven-year-old.

This is in spite of various initiatives and strategies such as the literacy and numeracy hours in both primary and secondary schools, and numerous initiatives spent to combat truancy. The number of unauthorised absences has risen by 189,749 since 1997. These include persistent truants, which make up 60.9 percent of all truancies.

A substantial number of those who have “disappeared” from school are those who have been permanently excluded and who are not accounted for in the alternative education provision of a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). The numbers of those attending PRUs have dramatically increased “from 3,860 in 1997 to 7,080 in 2006.” Of these, only 56 percent are entered for a GCSE.

Britain ranks 37th out of 40 in a league table of major industrial nations of 17-year-olds staying in full-time education. But of particular concern to the Bow group are the numbers of pupils not in education, employment or training (NEET) at 16, which is currently one in six. A large proportion of these engage in crime or use of illegal drugs.

The figures produced are indeed an indictment of the Blair government’s education policy. But the Bow Group’s use of them is cynical. Its aim in focusing on the plight of vulnerable young people under Labour is to advance alternative proposals for education and training that will only worsen the situation.

The strongest condemnation within the report focuses on the money “wasted”—e.g., on areas such as PRUs (currently £263.3 million)—and the fact that young people are dropping out because they are “uninspired by what they see as an overly academic curriculum, or a curriculum that does not engage with what they want to do, or the way they want to learn.”

The authors of the report claim that the primary aim of the research is the setting up of a national database to track what happens to young people of school age. This has been planned by the current government since 2002. However, their proposals to address the massive underachievement that exists is the implementation of a weeding-out process, through streaming and setting—by ability—(which already takes place at 40 percent of secondary schools) at an earlier age so that those children can be identified for vocational courses and “hands-on learning.”

Current practice allows young people from 14 to opt for a vocational route of which three days are spent in school studying core subjects and two days on placement.

The main thrust of the report is “to raise the status and quality of practical learning in schools.” This is to be achieved not by giving schools more money to build the facilities necessary to carry this out, but by creating in every local authority “Enterprise Portals” run by small businesses—in return for an exemption on business rates.

One would normally expect a strong rebuttal of such a report by the Labour Party. Yet, even as a departing Prime Minister Blair boasts that education is one of the success stories of his administration, no reply has been made.

This is because the drive by the Tories for greater selection, channeling those deemed unsuitable for academic courses through setting and streaming and encouraging private investment, are policies Labour is in full agreement with and does not want to publicly reject.

The government is currently encouraging all schools to either become privately run academies (run by industrial or Christian organisations), or trusts, or to move to foundation status, which takes the school out of local authority control. Some of these will be able to establish their own admission policies; some will use selection.

Labour’s silence on the Bow report also suggests that, as so often in the past, it is already planning to adopt policies initially pioneered by the Tories. This time, what is at stake is the final reestablishment of a two-tier system, similar in all essentials to the old grammar schools and secondary moderns where, from at least the age of 14, academic education would be denied to millions of children.

New Labour Policies have Failed Schools

Ellie Keen — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:54:40 +0000

Gordon Brown showed his true colours on Wednesday of last week with his “get tough on school failure” speech.

It could easily have been written by Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. He threatened to close any school where fewer than 30 percent of pupils obtain five A* to C GCSE grades including English and Maths.

Because he made no distinction between schools serving different neighbourhoods, this is in reality a body blow against schools in the poorest areas. This target is child’s play in affluent suburbs, but an uphill struggle in poorer neighbourhoods.

Brown’s 30 percent would be fine as an aspiration, but it is disgraceful as a threat. And it is hypocritical from a politician who, as chancellor, was so slow to reduce child poverty and did next to nothing to reduce class sizes.

If you look at the examination scores in any major city, you will see the scope of Brown’s assault on schools. In effect, he has just declared half of all schools in cities such as Newcastle, Sunderland and Liverpool to be failing.

Birmingham is an important example. A few years ago it was hailed by the education inspectorate Ofsted as a resounding success. Tim Brighouse was praised for his leadership and asked to run the London Challenge.

Leaving aside a few grammar schools, Birmingham is England’s biggest education authority with 68 secondary schools. According to Brown 33 are failing. In fact 22 of these “failures” have been inspected in the past 12 months. Of these only four were judged inadequate, 12 were satisfactory and five good.

The prime minister threatens to close any school not reaching his target and privatise it as an academy. This could be an own goal if it wakens more teachers to the threat of privatisation.

The irony is that most existing academies fall below his target. In fact, of the 14 academies opened in 2002, 2003 and 2004, only one reaches Brown’s target. Will the rest be put back into local authority control?

Threats

Brown’s threats will do nothing to improve standards. Urban schools already find it difficult to recruit teachers. Who will apply to work there knowing they will suffer constant threats and interference?

Once again, schools will focus attention on pupils getting Ds to lift them into Cs, ignoring higher achievers and pupils who are really struggling.

Of course we all want educational standards to improve for young people, especially those growing up in poverty. This requires eliminating the blight of child poverty now, not in 2020. And teachers need the freedom to develop a curriculum which will re-engage disaffected young people.

Meanwhile, an official review of primary schools has raised serious doubts about New Labour’s interference in teaching methods and its strategy to “raise standards” in education.

As part of the national primary review, experts were asked to look at the literacy hour, imposed on schools ten years ago. The conclusion – £500 million was spent with almost no impact on reading levels.

Cambridge lecturer Mary Hilton had already shown how the key stage two SATs tests – for ten year olds – were simplified in the very year that the literacy hour was made compulsory.

Questions requiring interpretation were replaced by easier questions based on spotting simple facts.

Assessment expert Peter Tymms from Durham university then checked official SATs results against alternative tests. His conclusion – there has been only a slight improvement in reading.

Schools minister Lord Adonis continues to trumpet the fact that 84 percent of 11 year olds have the expected level four reading standard, compared with 67 percent ten years ago.

The truth is, David Blunkett promised to resign as education minister if the literacy hour didn’t work, so they made the tests easier.

Despite protests that the literacy hour was a great success, it was abandoned last year – in favour of an even worse regime.

The latest magic answer now is phonics. The government’s new

instructions reduce reading to matching a letter to a sound. This ignores the complexity of English spelling – you simply can’t make the sounds of the letters t-h-e, say it quicker and get the word “the”.

It ignores the way we recognise sentence patterns. It ignores the many tactics we use to make sense of what we read.

Limited

Phonics are an important part of learning to read, but only a part. When you concentrate on phonics too much, you forget about reading for enjoyment. You turn reading into a chore. This is particularly harmful to those children who haven’t had books read to them at home.

The government’s new phonics regime is based on extremely limited research, but primary school teachers in England are being expected to ditch their professional knowledge and experience and follow the latest orders.

Why do New Labour’s generals always think they know better than teachers? The last ten years have seen unprecedented central control.

Michael Barber, a chief adviser to Tony Blair on education, showed his contempt for teachers when he quoted Pascal, “If you want to teach the peasants to pray, force them down on their knees.”

New Labour is now defining schools as “failing” when it is they who have been pushing the policies driving schools to failure in the first place. Isn’t it time to say no?

Terry Wrigley is a lecturer in educational development at Edinburgh university and is author of Another School Is Possible, which is available from Bookmarks.