Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Credit to OP, Esqui of Mailwatch.

A snowballing free school disaster from affluent Bournemouth. Worth reading the whole lot. £1 for every avoidable problem you spot.

Some may remember it opened a year late as they had trouble finding a place in the town, and then found an office block as a temporary site 'while a permanent site in Bournemouth town centre was secured'. And even then pupils were taught at a scouting centre for two weeks while they finished it off. Fast forward two years, their permanent site ends up being an old Air Traffic Control college several miles outside Bournemouth, right next door to the airport (I'm sure the jet fuels will do wonders for the kids). There is one road up to the airport, which gets very heavy with traffic already - but this was not considered to be a problem. And the asbestos in the building was considered to be a 'good thing' as it meant that some parts would need to be completely rebuilt. In May this year, an Ofsted inspection rated the school as "requires improvement", citing that the most able pupils were not achieving their potential, and that the staff were not properly monitoring teaching and being too generous in its own self-evaluation.

In June, it was revealed that there would be no contract for a school bus at the new site (due to open in September), meaning that pupils would have to rely on the public airport bus route to get to and from school at a cost of £650 per year (no subsidies). Shortly after, workers at the site discovered bats roosting in one of the buildings (because what is an initial survey?), meaning that work had to stop completely. It was later announced that the new site wouldn't be open for another year, leaving the kids in an office block and car pa- I mean, playground- for another 12 months.

My Mum is taking my brother and sister out of the school, and I understand a lot of other parents are doing the same. This could end up quite badly...

Nice bit of "most transparent government ever" too.

The Department for Education (publicly funded) can not comment on a "private" meeting between the Education Funding Agency (publicly funded) and Parkfield School (publicly funded).
Parkfield School is turning into a financial scandal, and no one can find out just how much taxpayers money has been wasted.

[E10 Rifle]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

I don't think anyone should give the Department of Education any more money until they've demonstrated A Commitment To Implement Reforms.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

What's Greek for this? The now deleted March school newsletter:

However, currently, there is a significant amount of asbestos in one of

the buildings. This is the large imposing building in the centre of the

site which, in the original design, was to accommodate the secondary

classrooms, the main hall and the dining hall. Following the surveys it

was decided that renovation of this building was not deemed to be

cost effective and that it would need to be demolished. This obviously

meant that the whole layout of the school had to be redesigned adding

to the delays in signing off the project.

One of the positive consequences resulting from the re-design is that

we will now have a new build main hall as well as the new sports hall

Didn't they pay for a survey before?

If I'm in charge at the DfE, they're told that they've wasted too much money already. The sports hall doubles as the main hall, and the kids can eat packed lunches in the classroom.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Oh yeah- the site is outside Bournemouth (where lots of the pupils will live and parents work) and along a road that's chocca at the best of times.

[Taylor]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

This isn't new, but I only just saw it: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2014/education-secretary-nicky-morgan-arts-subjects-limit-career-choices/

Quite a future we're building, isn't it?

[Lucia Lanigan]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Her fucking boss or whatever he is did a humanities degree.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

STEM subjects are for plebs, not for Cameron or Johnson.

No-one seems to know where the extra teachers would come from if Britain did what the minister presumably wants and turned away from arts subjects.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

I was treated to a nice bit of Sheriff Mike on my telly this morning.

When you see his mug on, you know someone's been fucking up. Who was going to get it in the neck today then?

Answer: early years providers. They're apparently not closing the gap between rich and poor kids. He didn't say what should be done about it. Though to be fair, he didn't call right out call them all lazy bastards, like he usually does with teachers.

The reporter added that 85% of early years providers are now rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted. Which didn't seem to fit with what we'd just been told.

Alas, Mikey wasn't asked to explain this odd state of affairs.

If I were an early years provider, I'd really zero in on my pupil premium kids now. Until Mikey gets out of bed on the other side, and says you aren't stretching the most able enough.

The report did have a nice ending though- some parents said the whole thing of pushing children this early was stupid. That's more scrutiny than Mikey normally gets.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Beating E10 to it:

This is a cracker.

"We don't really agree with government policy on academizing"- say academy chains.

https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/academy-sponsors-admit-schools-%E2%80%98are-not-a-panacea%E2%80%99

“They kept pushing us to take on more, to the point where we said we couldn’t accept any more schools,” the leader said. “They thought we had half the amount of academy orders we actually had.” The result was that some academy sponsors demanded that the DfE take back some of the schools.

Another head of a smaller academy chain, with just three schools, questioned where the additional capacity would come from to expand the programme, particularly as chains could only “top slice” about 3 or 4 per cent of funds to provide central services. The limited cash available made it harder to establish the back-office and support functions

Crikey. You mean those silly LAs weren't all that wasteful after all?

And they think the Education Funding Agency isn't up to the job at all.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Credit to OP(a school governor in the East Midlands)

I understand that one of our local Academies permanently excluded ten year 7 pupils last week. This will create a major headache for the other two nearby secondary schools because they will probably end up having to accommodate these pupils in September. Taking in new pupils at the start of Year 8 is a really pain because all the forms and teaching groups will have already have been sorted for September and then suddenly 5 or 6 pupils could turn up to throw all the plans into chaos. Academy chains clearly think that LEA's should exist to mop up all the kids that they don't want for whatever reason.

Well indeed.

What happens when they're all academies? Does Nicky Morgan or Nick Gibb rewrite the contracts with academies/free schools and force them to take these kids?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

The internet will be running out space soon.

Remember Woodhead's 15,000 teachers are crap? That was at least a fairly small proportion.

Sheriff Mike reckons 1/4 of secondary heads aren't up to the job. They aren't respected enough by their pupils.

And he's launching a blitz on "casual leadership" because "standards have stalled".

No failings of policy. It's personal failings in headteachers.

http://schoolsimprovement.net/wilshaw-1-in-4-secondary-school-heads-not-good-enough/

And he wants a "grammar school ethos" in every comprehensive school. Whatever that means.

[Glass Half Empty]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Only 25%? 100% of Ofsted heads are not good enough

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Do you propose a crackdown?

At least that crackdown might work. How does an Ofsted crackdown work? Do they all meet beforehand like the cops?

"Look at this photo from the Echo. The head looks a bit scruffy at that prize giving"

"I say we pay his school an Ofsted, Mike. Casual bastard"

Or do they just mark down schools they're inspecting anyway according to whether or not the kids stand up when the head comes in?

Anyone think they ought to have agreed what made a good school leader years ago, and inspected on that basis? How did all these casual headteachers evade detection before?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Questions in Parliament about the Bournemouth free school farce.

The minister tried to pretend that extending a lease on a temporary building for an extra year won't cost anything.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

School in Cramlington, Northumberland rated Outstanding by Ofsted four times in a row. Under Gove's legislation, converts to an Academy.

Confirmed today it's now Inadequate in every category.

Northumberland County Council (NOC, but a unitary, so some weight) isn't happy.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Major muck up here.

Related to things called "levels" in the National Curriculum. They've been used to measure progress, but they've been abolished.Leaving schools unsure what they're supposed to do to measure progress.

So the curriculum's been in a year already. They belatedly set up a group to look into assessment without levels. Due to report now so teachers could prepare for the new term. Report now seems to have been held back till next term.

Member of the DfE's own teacher advisory group seriously pissed off:

https://michaelt1979.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/how-dare-they/

[David Agnew]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

The Hewitt "Consultation" has been published. Anti-Academy campaigner Lynsey White has been tweeting her response: https://twitter.com/LynseyAnneWhite

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Cheers. This is good.



The answer why there's not a competition between trusts is that, outside London, there aren't anything like enough competent ones. But the DfE won't admit that, even though the number of schools to be taken over by trusts has been massively increased by the "coasting schools" bollocks.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Off your patch, DA, but might interest you.

Credit to OP (E10's mate on another board):

What looks rather like corruption to me in Birmingham. One of the "Trojan Horse" schools in special measures was inspected a few months ago, and found to be making decent progress towards getting out of special measures. It's now been inspected again, and got Inadequate.

Eagle-eyed observers noted that this inspection was under s.5- ie directed by the Secretary of State. Meetings have now been held with the ARK Foundation about the school, which Mike Tomlinson (appointed to oversee Birmingham schools) didn't attend.

ARK clearly fancy the school- if it was already improving that's perfect for them.

Who chairs ARK? Paul Marshall

What does he also do? Sit of the DfE Board

I call that very dodgy, and not unlike the influence Theodore Agnew had.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

More on Cramlington Learning Village, which has been found Inadequate all across the board.

It was a teaching school. If the Ofsted is accurate then new trainees have probably been picking up mainly bad habits.

The inspectors were outsourced ones, so could be more challenges to come from the school.

[David Agnew]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

The Inspiration Trust respond to the Consoltation:

http://www.inspirationtrust.org/latest/hewett_school_consultation_report_published/?feed=1

Also they print the "non-statutory" part of the consultation without irony considering that you could only submit the consultation with if you filled the "non-statutory" part in, which is an odd definition of "non-statutory"

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Lots of space given to the school's ethos there.

Set up for Nicky Morgan to hand it over to them and say "they've promised to preserve the ethos".

Some nice kickings though.

How effective do you think the school’s approach is to discipline? (354
respondents)
Very effective 10%
Effective 64%
Not very effective 21%
Ineffective 5%

How effective do you think the school’s approach is to bullying? (354
respondents)
Very effective 14%
Effective 62%
Not very effective 19%
Ineffective 4%

How effective do you think the school’s approach is to homework? (354
respondents)
Very effective 8%
Effective 66%
Not very effective 22%
Ineffective 5%

[Muukalainen]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Tubby Isaacs wrote: Credit to OP, Esqui of Mailwatch.

A snowballing free school disaster from affluent Bournemouth. ...[continues]

The school site is so close to the airport complex as to be practically part of it. The descriptions "right next to" and "adjacent" hardly do it justice. It's on the single access road to the airport terminal (which is just a short distance further on), and one of the apron taxi ways skirts the school site on the opposite side.

Access will likely be a nightmare. The traffic on the road past the airport is heavy but manageable, but the real problem is getting to that road, especially from the east, which is where most people from Bournemouth would be coming from.

I'm struggling to see the merits of such a location at the moment and am wondering whether some authority said to the school something like "this is all there is, take it or leave it."

[Tubby Isaacs]

Justine Greening/ Continuity Gove

Cheers for the info.

Normally it would take a few years to plan and get a school open. But it was always a race and numbers game with free schools, so they got approved without permanent sites.

I guess there just isn't anything available in Bournemouth. The LA, I presume, are Tory so motivated to help the government out of its mess.