Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

[Tubby Isaacs]

Page 11 of the NUT Teacher Mag Nov/Dec. 2017:



Meanwhile, academies around me are busy sacking/pushing out/not replacing all manners of staff (from caretakers to language teachers to Special Needs specialists) or compressing 5-teacher departments into 4 or 3 for instance or scrapping whole subjects altogether, + cutting costs left right and centre on vital provisions + freezing "expensive" teachers professional progression for dubious reasons etc. while the headteacher Academy Chief Executive and his minions' pay packages rise 5-10% year on year, sometimes over £200K + "perks".

Sir Daniel Moynihan (Harris Federation) up to £550,000 package now.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Good luck with the rest of the year, hopefully it's easing off a little at this time of the year, particularly in June, especially if you teach GCSE/A level.

I thought you were in Turkey (up to a few months ago I mean), I'm an old Newbie here as I only "reactivated" my OFT account last year so I must have missed a few episodes.

Been back in the UK since October 2012 and after doing day to day supply and then long term cover I've been at my current school for nearly four years. It's really depressing as it does not have to be like this.

Our school, like most I'm sure it's data driven, and at the heart of it is Progress 8. So it's a game to get the best Progress 8 scores you can and keep OFSTED off your back. Very simple rules and easy to do if you don't focus on other things. Unfortunately our school has decided that the EBACC is important so our Progrees 8 scores are horrendous. We could be doing three soft GCSEs and getting decent results but we don't.

The next bright idea is to make teachers record the marks students get in each exam question so they can analyse the data. A reading exam in a language has 50 questions on a past paper, we're being asked to record individual scores for each student on each question, 50 times 30 in a class three times a year. We're not teaching but inputting data. Fucking bonkers. No wonder teachers are leaving in droves.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Earlier I wrote that Ofsted were incompetent, it wasn’t just me ranting, it is actually a Fact, recognised by Ofsted themselves, in 2015:

Ofsted purges 1,200 'not good enough' inspectors

Ofsted is ditching 1,200 school and college inspectors after assessing them as not good enough to judge schools.

National Association of Head Teachers general secretary Russell Hobby said: "You look back and say, for the last few years we've been inspected by a group where 40% weren't up to the job

So for years just after the Tories took over, at least 40% of inspections were conducted unprofessionally and their reports not worth the paper they were written on. For years, thousands of staff lost their jobs because of incompetent inspectors. For years, pupils were let down because of Ofsted's incompetence. Etc.

It's actually probably far more than 40% as if Osted admit to that number, you can bet your boots that the real figure is far higher. FFS, I was twice inspected by people who had NEVER ever taught in their life (lay inspectors, no longer used I think but used until recently. Basically, people "with managerial experience" who paid thousands of pounds to be "trained" by Ofsted, who were given a licence to print money by the gvt). It so happened that they both gave me a good grade but it could easily have gone the other way round as it was clear talking to them later that they knew very very little about teaching MFL, about the MLF curriculum, about the pupils I was teaching when they observed me etc. It's a fucking lottery, they're playing with people's lives. I could give you dozens of examples of excellent and competent teachers, senior teachers and headteachers who've been hounded out on the back of Ofsted actions for the most ridiculous reasons. These were very dedicated, extremely competent people. The system is totally sick to the core.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The management "guru" was inspecting lessons? I can understand them having some input into evaluating the school management but lessons? Lessons?

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Been back in the UK since October 2012 and after doing day to day supply and then long term cover I've been at my current school for nearly four years. It's really depressing as it does not have to be like this.

Our school, like most I'm sure it's data driven, and at the heart of it is Progress 8. So it's a game to get the best Progress 8 scores you can and keep OFSTED off your back. Very simple rules and easy to do if you don't focus on other things. Unfortunately our school has decided that the EBACC is important so our Progrees 8 scores are horrendous. We could be doing three soft GCSEs and getting decent results but we don't.

The next bright idea is to make teachers record the marks students get in each exam question so they can analyse the data. A reading exam in a language has 50 questions on a past paper, we're being asked to record individual scores for each student on each question, 50 times 30 in a class three times a year. We're not teaching but inputting data. Fucking bonkers. No wonder teachers are leaving in droves.

Bollocks, I've just burnt myself while cooking a rhubarb and raspberry crumble... God, I would have been hopeless working in a restaurant.

This ridiculous Data obsession is one way of controlling people, it's one of the reasons why I left (I was actually very lucky with the timing as it coincided with the LEA offering statutory redundancy pay to voluntary leavers, so I cashed out).

When I worked in a (bog standard) comp, we were asked to predict what 11-year old kids would get at GCSE... 4 years later, I was HoD, it drove me and my staff crazy, on top of all the shit we would spend our time filling in excel tables, sometimes with up to 10 fucking categories of kids (Free School Meals, Gifted and Talented, Forces Pupils etc. etc.). SLT were constantly on your back demanding to know why little Johnny didn't get predicted a C in Spanish when he was predicted a B in fucking Media Studies. It takes a lot out of you to stay diplomatic in such situations.

Every fucking body in my department worked their socks off, 80 hrs a week on average was common. I had young teachers telling me that they were spending the weekend in school doing this that or the other (usually data, marking, displays - "Ofsted-approved displays" - prep etc.). I kept telling them to go out and enjoy themselves but deep down I knew how they felt. We got the results but it was never enough. If we were graded "Good", SLT (the bosses) wanted us to be "Outstanding". If we managed to get "Outstanding" after lots of observed lessons in the dpt by SLT, they told us to be "beyond Outstanding". The fuckers were never happy, or not for long. My line manager (when I was HoD of Languages) was... a maths specialist. She knew fuck all about MFL obviously but thought she knew it all. Etc etc. etc.

The end result is that lots of teachers cheat in schools, huge taboo in the profession but it is a rampant practice. People have no choice but to cheat TBH, I would say that every body was at it one way or another in my school, in particular people in exam subjects, which must have been 75% of teachers, they were driven to cheating to get the grades, not out of pleasure - with coursework, it's easy. If you didn't cheat, you were in trouble, and "capability" proceedings were never far away (that's basically one step away from being pushed out and losing your job and even your career as the all-important references would have been pretty shit after resigning following a period of capability (and there are many ways to find out, even if you do not divulge such info). People are not sacked as such in 95% of cases after a failed capability period, more likely they are pushed out or "persuaded" to resign, basically their job is made impossible until they resign, usually pretty quickly. Nobody wants to end up teaching almost only bottom set Year 8-9-10 on Friday afternoons for the rest of their teaching careers. Trouble is, this (being pushed out, or "managed out") happens to plenty of very decent teachers who are good but deemed "too expensive", i.e on the Upper Pay Scale, for which you have to work bloody hard to get on. It's the irony of the system: you work hard to get onto the "meritocracy" pay ladder, and when you're on it, some fucking jumped-up line manager will try to get rid of you within 1 year or 2 because of "efficiency savings", most schools being in the red.

Pupils were disapplied left right and centre too "so the pass rates would look good", every trick in the book was used to cheat and massage the results, you had to go along with it, the pressures were immense if you didn't. An ex colleague of mine even committed suicide in his own classroom, on a Baker day - training day (he survived - he implicated headteacher in his suicide note, she kept her job, he resigned after a long WRS - work related stress - period).

[Pérou Flaquettes]

The management "guru" was inspecting lessons? I can understand them having some input into evaluating the school management but lessons? Lessons?

Is your Q to me tubby? If so, not sure what you mean.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Christ almighty. That last bit's grim, even by the standard of the rest. But all absolutely essential reading.

I don't want to interrupt but here's a quick tangent.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/watford-ut...ce-to-improve/

Another UTC (Watford) in trouble, financial notice to improve. What a disastrous policy this has been.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is your Q to me tubby? If so, not sure what you mean.

Yes, it was. I was very struck that somebody who'd been recruited to Ofsted as a non-teacher who know a bit about management, that they'd be inspecting teaching.

Say it aint so, Mikey Wilshaw.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Christ, the Schoolsweek news front page is carnage.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/university...er-3m-deficit/

University of Chester Academies Trust warned over £3m deficitAlix Robertson | 16:45, May 11, 2018
1University of Chester Academies Trust warned over £3m deficit
The University of Chester Academies Trust (UCAT) has been told to get its finances in order after racking up a £3 million deficit.

The shortfall in the chain’s latest financial forecast breaks the terms of its funding agreement, which insists it returns a balanced budget. This has led to an official financial notice to improve from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

The trust runs three primary and four secondary schools across Chester, Warrington and Staffordshire. Two of its schools are rated ‘good’, three ‘requires improvement’, and two ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted. It was set up in 2009 and is backed by the local university.

The logical result of a "football manager" culture around heads. Trusts overspending trying to get into the "Premier League". And everyone must have felt so clever in 2009, "University setting up a school, this'll sort all those plodding teachers out".

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Christ almighty. That last bit's grim, even by the standard of the rest. But all absolutely essential reading.

I don't want to interrupt but here's a quick tangent.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/watford-ut...ce-to-improve/

Another UTC (Watford) in trouble, financial notice to improve. What a disastrous policy this has been.

OK thanks, will have a look later (am actually watching Midsomer Murders at the minute, or trying to, have got TV in my office).

Re that suicide attempt, actually the local paper ran the story so I'm putting the link below as said teacher is not named (I wasn't teaching in that school but knew the man very well as I had worked with him in another school. He was a dedicated and experienced teacher who got very good results in a tough school - difficult catchment area. I won't go into the ins and outs but he was another victim of the system, deemed "too expensive" etc.).

Teacher sends note to bosses before classroom suicide attempt

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Yes, it was. I was very struck that somebody who'd been recruited to Ofsted as a non-teacher who know a bit about management, that they'd be inspecting teaching.

Say it aint so, Mikey Wilshaw.

It was very common under Wilshaw (hiring lay inspectors, I think they've more or less stopped but am not 100% sure).

This man was an absolute disgrace. I take it you know how the cunt signalled himself to the job:

A good head would never be loved by his or her staff, he [Wilshaw] added: "If anyone says to you that 'staff morale is at an all-time low' you know you are doing something right."

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, Wilshaw was appalling. That stuff about being a "sheriff", for Christ's sake. He ought to have walked once Gove made it clear he couldn't inspect academy chains like he wanted to.

This was his locus classicus.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...ted-chief.html

‘Good citizens’ should be given financial incentives to knock on their neighbours’ doors in the morning to make sure they are getting their children to school, says Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw

Social work being well known as a piece of cake.

[ursus arctos]

There was a recent episode of Talking Politics where Runcimann and his colleagues were speaking with the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, who is Canadian and has spent most of his career in North America.

The Brits were decrying the current obsession with league tables, “data” and “students as consumers”, all of which they believed to have come from America. They seemed genuinely shocked when he told them that he had never seen anything quite like it anywhere else in the world.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Bollocks, I've just burnt myself while cooking a rhubarb and raspberry crumble... God, I would have been hopeless working in a restaurant.

This ridiculous Data obsession is one way of controlling people, it's one of the reasons why I left (I was actually very lucky with the timing as it coincided with the LEA offering statutory redundancy pay to voluntary leavers, so I cashed out).

When I worked in a (bog standard) comp, we were asked to predict what 11-year old kids would get at GCSE... 4 years later, I was HoD, it drove me and my staff crazy, on top of all the shit we would spend our time filling in excel tables, sometimes with up to 10 fucking categories of kids (Free School Meals, Gifted and Talented, Forces Pupils etc. etc.). SLT were constantly on your back demanding to know why little Johnny didn't get predicted a C in Spanish when he was predicted a B in fucking Media Studies. It takes a lot out of you to stay diplomatic in such situations.

Every fucking body in my department worked their socks off, 80 hrs a week on average was common. I had young teachers telling me that they were spending the weekend in school doing this that or the other (usually data, marking, displays - "Ofsted-approved displays" - prep etc.). I kept telling them to go out and enjoy themselves but deep down I knew how they felt. We got the results but it was never enough. If we were graded "Good", SLT (the bosses) wanted us to be "Outstanding". If we managed to get "Outstanding" after lots of observed lessons in the dpt by SLT, they told us to be "beyond Outstanding". The fuckers were never happy, or not for long. My line manager (when I was HoD of Languages) was... a maths specialist. She knew fuck all about MFL obviously but thought she knew it all. Etc etc. etc.

The end result is that lots of teachers cheat in schools, huge taboo in the profession but it is a rampant practice. People have no choice but to cheat TBH, I would say that every body was at it one way or another in my school, in particular people in exam subjects, which must have been 75% of teachers, they were driven to cheating to get the grades, not out of pleasure - with coursework, it's easy. If you didn't cheat, you were in trouble, and "capability" proceedings were never far away (that's basically one step away from being pushed out and losing your job and even your career as the all-important references would have been pretty shit after resigning following a period of capability (and there are many ways to find out, even if you do not divulge such info). People are not sacked as such in 95% of cases after a failed capability period, more likely they are pushed out or "persuaded" to resign, basically their job is made impossible until they resign, usually pretty quickly. Nobody wants to end up teaching almost only bottom set Year 8-9-10 on Friday afternoons for the rest of their teaching careers. Trouble is, this (being pushed out, or "managed out") happens to plenty of very decent teachers who are good but deemed "too expensive", i.e on the Upper Pay Scale, for which you have to work bloody hard to get on. It's the irony of the system: you work hard to get onto the "meritocracy" pay ladder, and when you're on it, some fucking jumped-up line manager will try to get rid of you within 1 year or 2 because of "efficiency savings", most schools being in the red.

Pupils were disapplied left right and centre too "so the pass rates would look good", every trick in the book was used to cheat and massage the results, you had to go along with it, the pressures were immense if you didn't. An ex colleague of mine even committed suicide in his own classroom, on a Baker day - training day (he survived - he implicated headteacher in his suicide note, she kept her job, he resigned after a long WRS - work related stress - period).

Apart from the suicide attempt all of this is my experience.

OFSTED are fucking useless, the wool is so easily pulled over their eyes. In one school I worked in, on adoption leave cover for a year, we had an OFSTED and they wrote quite a bit about my department in their report. Now in those two days I never met nor spoke to a single inspector nor was ale to provide any documents, data or information yet they judged the provision of my then department to be inadequate.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I've worked with teachers/student teachers from at least 20 different countries in England (who had settled down in England from Australia, N-Z etc. or were in England on secondment, or doing a year in the UK/job swaps etc., or simply as Language assistants, researchers etc.) and they have all been genuinely shocked at what they saw and experienced in England (and as visitors many didn't have to do half of what an ordinary teacher would have had to do, no exam classes etc. as too risky, you can't give exam classes to people who are just visiting for a year, Ofsted routinely put schools in "Special Measures" if your results are down by a few %, so "visitors" are treated very differently. Anyway, there are fewer and fewer foreign visiting teachers these days, nobody has time to look after them and teach them the ropes. Many requests from abroad are answered negatively, I myself had to turn down many requests from France and Spain, very very regrettably). I don't think there is currently a system comparable to the England & Wales system on the planet.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

There was a recent episode of Talking Politics where Runcimann and his colleagues were speaking with the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, who is Canadian and has spent most of his career in North America.

The Brits were decrying the current obsession with league tables, “data” and “students as consumers”, all of which they believed to have come from America. They seemed genuinely shocked when he told them that he had never seen anything quite like it anywhere else in the world.

I've worked with teachers/student teachers from at least 20 different countries in England (who had settled down in England from Australia, N-Z etc. or were in England on secondment, or doing a year in the UK/job swaps etc., or simply as Language assistants, researchers etc.) and they have all been genuinely shocked at what they saw and experienced in England (and as visitors many didn't have to do half of what an ordinary teacher would have had to do, no exam classes etc. as too risky, you can't give exam classes to people who are just visiting for a year, Ofsted routinely put schools in "Special Measures" if your results are down by a few %, so "visitors" are treated very differently. Anyway, there are fewer and fewer foreign visiting teachers these days, nobody has time to look after them and teach them the ropes. Many requests from abroad are answered negatively, I myself had to turn down many requests from France and Spain, very very regrettably). I don't think there is currently a system comparable to the England & Wales system on the planet.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Apart from the suicide attempt all of this is my experience.

OFSTED are fucking useless, the wool is so easily pulled over their eyes. In one school I worked in, on adoption leave cover for a year, we had an OFSTED and they wrote quite a bit about my department in their report. Now in those two days I never met nor spoke to a single inspector nor was ale to provide any documents, data or information yet they judged the provision of my then department to be inadequate.

How many more years to you have to do?

[bloody hell, that murdering drone in Midsomer Murders... I want one like that]

[ursus arctos]

As far as I am aware, the only schools that come at all close are some of the most extreme “charter schools” (particularly those funded by Silicon Valley types or hedges). But those are a literal handful of institutions in the context of a country of this size (nor are they as extreme).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Wales has devolved Education, Kev. As the Tories delight in reminding people when PISA scores come out.

[Tubby Isaacs]

As far as I am aware, the only schools that come at all close are some of the most extreme “charter schools” (particularly those funded by Silicon Valley types or hedges). But those are a literal handful of institutions in the context of a country of this size (nor are they as extreme).

This is one of our highest profile academy chains, ARK, founded by hedgers. They seem to have a head of data and a head of assessment for their 17 schools.

http://arkonline.org/blog/reducing-l...n-and-analysis

[Tubby Isaacs]

The head of assessment lasted all of 4 years in the classroom before leaving to tell everyone else how it should be done. She also blocked me on Twitter though I might not have been at my most polite.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Yeah, Wilshaw was appalling. That stuff about being a "sheriff", for Christ's sake. He ought to have walked once Gove made it clear he couldn't inspect academy chains like he wanted to.

This was his locus classicus.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...ted-chief.html

Social work being well known as a piece of cake.

Yep, that's classic Wilshaw.

As Antepli says, Ofsted really are useless a lot of the time, as I wrote it's often a fucking lottery and so much rides on the results it's insane. But producing good results with kids is not like churning out hoovers or cars, it's not an assembly line and two exam cohorts are rarely the same, so many factors can make some years less successful than others (hence the amount of cheating in high schools, as a way to compensate all the extraneous stuff. It's exam-based since last year though, no more "controlled assessments" - coursework - so the cheating culture is changing, or so I'm told by insiders).

I'll give you an example. There's a high school near me that for about 15 years was consistently given "Outstanding", 4 times running I think. Pretty impressive. I don't really like their ethos but obviously, they were doing something right, decent results in an average catchment area. In 2013, again, they got Outstanding. They were so deemed so good that they were a Beacon Ofsted school. So when other schools in the area were rated "Requires Improvement" or "Inadequate", that Cramlington High school was roped in to show them how it should be done basically. A bit humiliating for the "Inadequate" school teachers who'd been teaching for donkeys to be told by people next door how to do their job etc. but that's the way it works, you have to swallow your pride and "follow their lead" until Ofsted puts you out of Special Measures, which can take 2 years (you're visited and observed all the time during those two years, never been in that situation but it's extremely stressful). If they think you've made little or no progress, they kick everyone out and may even shut the school down and you've lost your job or your career. (Good luck finding a teaching job coming from an Inadequate school shut down by Ofsted.)

Anyway, Ofsted went back in 2015, because results were down a little I think (as normally Outstanding schools only get done once every 4-5 years but inspection frequencies have kept changing over the last 2 decades). This time this 4-time running Outstanding Beacon school was rated... "Inadequate"! (Ofsted rates 'outstanding' Cramlington academy as failing).

"Inadequate" is the worst possible rating (it's also called "Special Measures" by teachers). How on earth did that Outstanding-rated school 4 fucking times on the trot suddenly become "crap" (according to Ofsted) within not even 2 years? With the same staff (very low turnover in those schools), the same catchment area (no other comprehensive school in Cramlington), the same headteacher etc. It just doesn't make any sense. Staff were totally dumbfounded by it. I met one of their teachers, he was shell-shocked. They never really got to the bottom of the Ofsted decision, Ofsted explanations didn't make much sense, but it boiled down to lower GCSE results I think although they never tell it like that as they don't want to appear "obsessed by results" (but they are), particularly for the foundation sets (less able kids), and, according to Ofsted, "poor provisions" for Special Needs kids. The same provisions which had been rated Outstanding two years before! (and had not changed in the meantime).

In truth, it's often political with Ofsted, they or the chief inspector has an agenda and more or less sticks to it. If they feel that there are "too many" Outstanding schools in one particular area, they will downgrade you. If they feel that there aren't enough "Inadequate", they will downgrade you etc.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

As far as I am aware, the only schools that come at all close are some of the most extreme “charter schools” (particularly those funded by Silicon Valley types or hedges). But those are a literal handful of institutions in the context of a country of this size (nor are they as extreme).

I remember reading (about 3 or 4 years ago, can't remember where) that teaching unions in California were very powerful and teachers' statuses were very protected as a result. Do you know anything about that?

Wales has devolved Education, Kev. As the Tories delight in reminding people when PISA scores come out.

OK, thanks, I wrote England & Wales as they are usually lumped together in terms of system, exams etc. How different is the education system in Wales then?

[Tubby Isaacs]

There are no academies in Wales, for a start. And of course Welsh Language medium education. I don't know much about it, seems permanently under the cosh for PISA scores. They've invited PISA in (Scotland did that a few years earlier) and PISA seem to be backing the government strategy while saying implementation needs to be managed better. Wales is a bit like that overall, as a poor part of the UK, things are not always the most dynamic.

[ursus arctos]

Teachers' unions are quite powerful in most progressive states (and not in red states, thus all of the recent strikes), but their status in California hasn't protected them from the Proposition 13-related ravages on educational funding.