Showing posts with label Michael Rosen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Rosen. Show all posts

Wednesday 17 August 2022

A fascinating Brent Exhibition on our links with colonialism, and our multi-racial and mixed heritage history - and you can visit without leaving home!

 

'By The Cut of Their Cloth' is a virtual exhibition that enables you to explore the story of Brent's multi-racial and mixed heritage history (1) and the links with colonialism (2).

You can browse different exhibits and go deeper into topics that interest you by clicking on the images that you will find on the website at: 

https://mixedmuseum.org.uk/BTCOTC/

These are some of the images that lead you deeper into the virtual exhibition:


 

(1)   In her note at the front of her book  'MIXED/OTHER' (Trapeze) Natalie Morris explores terminology and concludes:

I'll briefly lay out why I stuck with 'mixed' over some of the other possible descriptions that I considered. First, bi-racial: this term is too limited for what I am exploring in this book, as some people who are mixed have more than two different ethnicities in their heritage. Next, multiracial: this covers the different possible groups, but I want to avoid language that overtly uses 'race' as part of that description. Dual heritage, again has limits in focusing on duality. Multiheritage: this is defintely a viable alternative option, but my unfamiliarity with the term and the fact that it isn't commonly used in the UK discouraged me.

What follows  is a subtle discussion of the mixed experience in the UK and how attitudes towards mixed people has changed over recent decades. Enriched by many interviews with a diversity of people it is clear that this is a multi-dimensional topic with a multitude of different histories and viewpoints. Thorny topics such as 'colourism' and 'passing' are tackled.



(2) For an accessible account of colonialism I strongly recommend the graphic story by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Cole Henley, 'You're Thinking about Tomatoes' (Unbound).  On a class trip to a stately home a primary pupil, who isn't doing well at school is bored with the worksheet he has to complete.  A voice calls from a classic painting and turns out to be a Black girl, concealed from the public, who steps out to guide him through Chiltern House, accompanied by other characters, and shows him the true history of colonialism.  

Rosen's story is engaging, never preachy, and aided by the lively illustrations, imparts an awful lot of knowledge in a throughly entertaining but thoughtful way.

The book is published by Unbound, the world's first crowdfunding publisher, established in 2011.  It is a platform that brings together readers and authors. Hundreds of people contributed to crowdfund 'You're Thinking About Tomatoes'.

I recommend that every Brent primary school orders a copy.

Saturday 23 July 2022

Bear hunters spotted on Olympic Way and Chalkhill allotment

 


I could not resist posting these photographs of what is developing into an annual event from community group Daniel's Den. The pictures by professional photographer Amanda Rose capture the joy and fun of the event.  Michael Rosen, author of the picture book Going on a Bear Hunt was so impressed that he retweeted them.

Saturday 23 April 2016

Michael Rosen speaking at Parents Defending Education


Parents launch campaign to defend education with Michael Rosen as patron


Today's message was clear
A new campaign, ''Parents Defending Education' was set up this afternoon at a well-attended meeting in London addressed by several parent groups. The campaign was launched in reaction to the Government's White Paper on education which includes the forced academisation of primary schools and removal of parent governors, and increasing parental concern over the impact on children of high stakes testing.

Speaking for the NUT, Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney, said that the NUT had not always 'got it right with parents' in the past but wanted to work with them in the current crisis. It was nonsense that parents had no democratic say in whether their children's school should academise or in the decision about which academy provider to was chosen if academisation went ahead.

He stressed that any parents' campaign should be completely independent of teachers and should not be directed by them.  It was clear to me that the angry and articulate parents who spoke at the meeting would be fiercely independent.

The launch statement made an initial five points:
  • No forced academies - no privatisation
  • No more 'high stakes' testing - take the pressure off our children
  • No more cuts - don't impose austerity on our children
  • Ensure a good school place for every child - with a properly qualified teacher
  • Defend parents; democratic rights - in schools and at local government level
It was announced that children's author, Michael Rosen, Professor of Children's Literature and a parent would be the campaign's first patron.

This is the full launch statement:
The recent publication of the education White Paper has lifted the lid on government plans for education. The plans concealed from us before the election are now menacingly clear. We have had enough! We want out children to enjoy and love learning. So we want to rescue our schools from the grip of a series of policies which have affected every aspect of education, from testing to funding, from nurseries to post-16. We also want an end to privatisation and austerity in schools.

Our schools don't belong to the government. And our schools don't belong to the trusts, charities and academy chains. They belong to our children, to the community, to the parents, to the teachers and support staff and future generation.  We recognise government has an important role but it cannot impose its vision on our children without our consent.

Therefore, we are launching a 'Parents Defending Education' campaign today in order to reassert the rights of parents and engage in the debate about what sort of education we want for our children. None of the plans outlined in the White Paper were put to the electorate at the last election. The government has no mandate. Accordingly we intend to campaign to defeat the White Paper and other key aspects of the government's education policy. Parents need to stand up for education, stand up for themselves and stand up for our children.

Initially we have five main points:
  • No forced academies - no privatisation
  • No more 'high stakes' testing - take the pressure off our children
  • No more cuts - don't impose austerity on our children
  • Ensure a good school place for every child - with a properly qualified teacher
  • Defend parents; democratic rights - in schools and at local government level 
We know there are other very important and connected issues, such as the impact on children with Special Educational Needs and from economically and socially disadvantaged families. We will work with parents to develop a response to these areas of concern.

We intent to create a delegate based steering committee which will help us unite and focus our campaigning work together to maximise its impact across the country. We also intend to broaden the basis of our campaign as quickly and widely as possible. We want to work with all groups and organisations who share similar objectives. We will also discuss plans for a national campaign conference for parents and the possibility of a national demonstration.

We are delighted to announce that children's author, Professor of Children's Literature and parent, Michael Rosen, has agreed to be our first patron. We urge parents in every school, in every village, in every town and in every city to meet, discuss and get organise din the next 4 weeks. We will provide resources to support this as quickly as possible via our Facebook page.

For further information about this statement and to register for the steering committee on 21st May pleas email: parentsdefendeducation@gmail.com  Facebook: Parents Defending Education

If you can help, please contact us.
Meanwhile a parent campaign for a children's strike on May 3rd is receiving much support on social media.

Monday 28 March 2016

Michael Rosen spatchcocks SPAG

Government testing demands create a testing industry


Michael Rosen, broadcaster and children's author, has offered the text below to anyone campaigning on the current revised SATs and curriculum for primary schools.  I know SPAG is causing great stress for pupils and teachers, as well as those parents trying to help their children:

Nick Gibb has been on talking about how they've brought grammar back into schools. Please feel free to use any or all of the below as part of any campaign to oppose the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar tests. 

1. Grammar was hardly taught in state primary schools in the 1950s. it was saved till secondary schools and then it was mostly in grammar schools,and top stream in secondary modern schools i.e. for about one third of all pupils, max.The most that was taught in primary schools, when I was at school, was noun, verb, adjective, adverb - not even subject, verb, object. I publicly call on him to show otherwise, by referring to the 11plus exams of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. (I have now provided an example of these in another post here on Facebook. It confirms that many of the terms used in the SPaG were not used in the 1950s and that the questions were, as I remembered them, 'filling in the missing word' and identifying words that exemplified the most common terms.)

2. The grammar that was taught in grammar schools in the 1950s and early 60s was discontinued because after 25 years of O-level exams no evidence was found that teaching that kind of grammar was helping school students to write better. The evidence for this was in the O-level exam results themselves where no correlations were found between the 'grammar question' and the 'composition' question.

3. The grammar that Nick Gibb et al have introduced into schools is not there because anyone can or has shown that it improves children's writing. All it can ever show is that pupils incorporate elements of the grammar into their writing in formulaic, mechanical ways e.g. by random and artificial insertion of 'fronted adverbials', 'embedded relative clauses' and 'expanded noun phrases'.

4. The grammar they have introduced was only introduced because the Bew Report of 2011 said that it produced right/wrong answers in test situations. This is not true. It doesn't, as evidenced by the number of questions that produce several possible answers.

5. This kind of grammar is not directly related to how children and adults are using words and language as a whole. A good deal of it is made up of artificial sentences which children have to use to spot parts of speech. There is an alternative to this. It involves observing real language in use, how writers and speakers are using it to communicate and express themselves. It then can involve a combination of imitation, adaptation, invention and a limited amount of naming of parts.

6. Several of the categories in this government directed grammar are heavily disputed by grammarians. It's dishonest to pretend to children and teachers that they are not. It is also dishonest to pretend to children, parents and teachers that there are people who produce a fault-free way of speaking and writing. We all make errors and slips. We vary from each other in how we speak and write. That is because language is one kind of human behaviour so there is no reason to expect that it will be any more uniform than our clothes or our ways of dancing.

7. Our children are being put under stress to get difficult, abstract concepts learned off for these tests. It is very doubtful that many of them will understand the concepts being taught. This is evidenced by the fact that people who write the test papers and the homework booklets themselves don't appear to understand all the concepts involved. Part of the problem here is that the concepts themselves are nowhere near as watertight as it is claimed. `Language is far from suitable as a site for coming up with yes/no, right/wrong categories. Most linguists know this.

Sunday 3 January 2016

Tory Education policy: Preparing today's pupils for the past

Twitter and Facebook have been buzzing following the announcement of times table tests for 11 years to be introduced and integrated into the Key Stage 2 high stakes testing. So many interesting comments deserved a Storify slide show. Thanks to all the contributors - especially Michael Rosen and TeacherROAR


Sunday 11 October 2015

Three passionate voices on the education crisis

I tweeted the above open letter, first published in the TES, yesterday on both @WembleyMatters and @GreenEdPolicy and it has been retweeted many time, including by the writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen. The letter clearly resonates at a time when many teachers are leaving the profession.

Michael Rosen posted this on Facebook earlier today:
On the Guardian thread about teacher shortages and how they could possibly have come about, I posted some government policies to keep teaching recruitment and retention down:

1. Encourage the press to run stories saying that teachers are lazy and that there are thousands of bad ones.
2. Get the head of Ofsted to say the same.
3. Keep this up for decades. (both main parties)
4. Bring in hundreds of measuring and assessment systems, levels, targets, tests, exams, which then breed more 'rehearsal' tests and exams.
5. Bring in a punitive, rapid, unsupportive inspection system which ignores the fact that scores are attached to children so that if you're in a school where there has been turnover the inspectorate say that has nothing to do with us.
6. Run a new kind of school where the salaries of management are not open to public scrutiny.
7. Allow interest groups to open schools which take on proportionally fewer SEN, EAL and FSM pupils than nearby LA schools.
8 Allow covert selection and exclusion process to take place around these new kinds of schools because the LA schools have to pick up the pieces.
9. Use international data as if it is holy writ and ignore evidence that suggests that comparing countries does not compare like with like, that some countries which are 'top' are selecting. Obscure the differences between the countries by only talking about 'places' in the table, without ever making clear whether these differences are 'significant' or not.
10. Use China as an example of utopia in education without making a comparison between the two societies - as if education exists separately from the societies that produce the respective education systems.
11. Make sure that very nearly all the people running the state education system from government have no, or very little, state education experience themselves.
Yesterday, Kevin Courtney (who also retweeted the letter as @cyclingkev ) Deputy General Secretary of the NUT spoke at the London Green Party Annual General Meeting on 'Fighting for the Education our young people deserve.' This is an extract from his speech that was delivered with as much passion as demonstrated by Colin Harris and Michael Rosen.

Things have got to change if our education system is to survice as fit for purpose.



Thursday 2 July 2015

United campaign against Baseline Assessment calls for support from parents and teachers


England’s leading early years organisations have united with teaching unions in opposing the September 2015 introduction of Baseline Assessment.



In response to the government’s announcement on approved Baseline Assessment providers leading organisations, including the Save Childhood Movement, the Pre-school Learning Alliance, The British Association for Early Childhood Education (Early Education), TACTYC:The Association for Professional Development in Early Years and the National Association for Primary Education (NAPE) have launched a new joint campaign, Better without Baseline, opposing the introduction. They have been joined by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) – which between them represent the majority of primary teachers in England.


The campaign is also supported by leading academics, including Dr David Whitebread, Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Education, University of Cambridge, and Dr Pam Jarvis, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Childhood and Education, Leeds Trinity University. Other high-profile figures who have voiced their opposition to the plans include: Wendy Scott, OBE, President of TACTYC; Professor Cathy Nutbrown [Chair of The Nutbrown Review into Qualifications for Early Years workers]; Sue Palmer, literacy expert and author of Toxic Childhood; Dr Richard House, Founding Fellow of The Critical Institute and children’s authors Philip Pullman and Michael Rosen.


A Change.org petition against the tests has already attracted more than 6,500 signatures.

Despite considerable expert opposition, and against the recommendations of the government’s own consultation process, the schemes are being introduced as an accountability measure to ‘help school effectiveness’ by scoring each pupil at the start of reception. 


Schools were initially asked to choose from a list of six approved commercial providers, which have now been reduced to three. Although the tests will remain optional, the campaign is concerned that there has been significant pressure on headteachers to adopt a baseline scheme to mitigate against the risk of punitive measures if their schools do not reach the government’s raised floor standards when the Reception cohort reaches the end of Key Stage 2. It also queries the statistical comparability and validity of such different approaches.


Although some schemes take a more observational approach, the joint alliance fundamentally disagrees with their use as tools of school accountability.


The DfE requires that the assessments be carried out for all children within six weeks of starting Reception, on a “pass/fail” basis for each scoring item, and with a narrow set of results being condensed to a single score. The alliance questions the validity and predictive value of the results, and is concerned about teacher time being diverted away from helping children with settling in and learning. Opponents of baseline assessment also question the value for money of the scheme, which is expected to cost around £4 million.


Similar baseline tests were introduced by the Labour government in 1997 and abandoned in 2002 because it was an “ineffective and damaging policy” (Cathy Nutbrown, The Conversation, Jan, 2015). They were also introduced by Wales in 2011 and withdrawn in 2012 as “time consuming, ill-thought through and denied children and teachers essential teaching time” (NUT comment 2012)


Under current plans, the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP), which is not a test but a rounded assessment of children’s development based on observation over time, will become optional from September 2016. Members of the alliance believe that the loss of this data will:


1) undermine the Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) project, introduced by this government to assess the longer term impact of early years experiences

2) damage current work with colleagues in the health and social services who make use of the EYFS Profile in bringing together services for children and families

3) compromise the longitudinal data needed for the government to assess the impact of the Early Years Pupil Premium, and

4) remove one of the few available indicators used by Ofsted to measure the effectiveness of children’s centres


The campaign now has a new website www.betterwithoutbaseline.org.uk and petition, and is calling for the support of parents and teachers in challenging government policymaking that fails to respond to the recommendations of democratic consultation, and that continues to prioritise school accountability over the best interests of the child.


QUOTES


“Baseline Assessment is a bad policy, badly implemented. The DfE promised schools that by 3rd June they would know who their providers were, so that on 1stSeptember they could begin assessments. Schools have only just been told. At the same time, the TES reports that the DfE is considering changing the way in which ‘progress’ is measured.  Out would go baseline assessment at ages 4/5. In would come a new baseline – in the form of the restoration of SATs at key Stage 1. Amid such incoherence and uncertainty the case for baseline assessment gets weaker by the day.”

National Union of Teachers (NUT)


“Baseline assessment does not support learning, in fact, it takes teachers away from teaching and so wastes learning time. It is not in the interests of young children, whose learning and other developmental needs are better identified – over time – by well-qualified early years practitioners who observe and interact with young children as they play.”

Professor Cathy Nutbrown, The Conversation, Jan 2015


“The difference between 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds as a percentage of life experience is one fifth – which equates to testing a 10 year old against an 8 year old and finding the 8 year old ‘wanting’ in some way. Or even finding a 20 year old lacking in adult life skills as compared to a 25 year old, or, at the other end of the scale, expecting a healthy 80 year old to be no different in any way to a healthy 64 year old.”

Dr Pam Jarvis, Leeds Trinity University, Too Much Too Soon Campaign


“The Association of Teachers and Lecturers is very worried that the new baseline testing of four and five year olds will undermine these children’s transition to school, by reducing our children to data points on spreadsheets. Of course teachers will assess children as they start school, in order to plan learning that supports and challenges each individual child. However, this new national baseline system has been designed to provide numerical scores rather than useful information for teaching. Nicky Morgan assured teachers before the election that she would give ‘more notice’ of any changes to assessment and accountability measures. Fewer than four weeks before the end of term is surely not enough time for teachers to prepare for tests which will be the first experience of school for many children, the results of which will define their journeys through school. Baseline is a bad policy, poorly implemented.

Nansi Ellis (Assistant General Secretary), ATL


“Unlike the existing early years assessment – the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile – the majority of the baseline tests that have been approved by government have a narrow focus on language, literacy and mathematics, with little or no reference to other fundamental skills such as physical development, and personal, social and emotional development. Equally concerning is the fact that most of the tests are computer- or tablet-based, and rely heavily on a ‘tick-box’ approach to assessment. Early learning should be about much more than just those skills that are easy to measure. To introduce an assessment that is more concerned with collecting data to compare and rank schools than it is with supporting child development is to do our children a grave disservice.” 

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance.

Saturday 26 July 2014

Jon Snow and Michael Rosen speak out for the children of Gaza

Jon Snow speaks about the Children of Gaza on returning home from reporting the onslaught



Michael Rosen read his poem 'Don't Name the Dead Children' at today's Rally for Gaza


followed by 'Then what?'

 

Demonstrate for Gaza and its children today: Noon, Israeli Embassy, Kensington High Street


Writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen will be one of the speakers at today's rally for Gaza in Parliament Square. This is a poem published on his blog LINK earlier this week. The names of Gazans, including children,  killed by the Israeli Defence Force can be found HERE

Assemble today at Noon opposite the Israeli Embassy (Kensington High Street) and then march to rally in Parliament Square.

Don't Name the Dead Children

Israel bans radio advert listing names of children killed in Gaza (Guardian 24.07.14)

Don't mention the children.

Don't name the dead children.

The people must not know the names

of the dead children.

The names of the children must be hidden.

The children must be nameless.

The children must leave this world

having no names.

No one must know the names of

the dead children.

No one must say the names of the

dead children.

No one must even think that the children

have names.

People must understand that it would be dangerous

to know the names of the children.

The people must be protected from

knowing the names of the children.

The names of the children could spread

like wildfire.

The people would not be safe if they knew

the names of the children.

Don’t name the dead children.

Don’t remember the dead children.

Don’t think of the dead children.

Don’t say: ‘dead children’.

Sunday 27 April 2014

Will breathing be allowed in Birbalsingh's primary school?


The editor cut my reference to"almost 'no breathing'  allowed"  in the letter published on April 10th  in the Kilburn Times (see below) about Katharine Birbalsingh's Michaela Free School. Maybe she was not familiar with Michael Rosen's wonderful poem.

I was trying to make a point about Birbalsingh's strictures on 'installing (sic) impeccable behaviour', children sitting in rows, traditional education and her rejection of any idea that teachers facilitated learning. She has a model of 'private education' which is very old fashioned and out of touch with the real private schools that I come across.

The comments were about her secondary school, which is yet to open, but this week she was on the front page of the Kilburn Times trying to gather support for her bid to open a primary school to feed into Michaela and again, getting the word right this time, of her determination to 'instil impeccable behaviour in pupils while offering a non nonsense approach to learning which will deliver a private standard of education'.

Birbalsingh was quoted as saying, 'We need to show the Department for Education that our primary school will be as popular as our secondary school'. In fact Michaela has been struggling to fill its Year 7 and resorted to advertising in local chicken shops. Its public meetings for potential parents were very poorly attended. As reported here some parents allocated the school by the Council have turned down the offer. Nationally 70% of free school have unfilled places after being open for two years.

As a former primary teacher I shiver at the thought of her 'strict' educational philosophy being imposed on primary aged children.

Birbalsingh says she is seeking parents 'with a professional background' to get involved in her bid. I hope that before doing so they thoroughly research Katharine Birbalsingh's controversial professional background. This includes losing her deputy headteacher job when she used photographs of children at her then school to castigate the comprehensive school system at a Tory Party fringe meetiing and her free school bid being opposed by two other London boroughs.

In the Wembley Ploan space has been earmarked for a new primary school  close to Arena House and North End Road in the Wembley Regeneration area on land which is currently occupied by small industrial and commercial units. Originally this would have been a local authority primary school funded by Section 106 funds as a result of Quintain's redevelopment of the area and the new housing planned.

Meanwhile plans have been approved for a new four form entry primary unit in the grounds of Wembley High School, a new primary unit has opened at Preston Manor High School and additional classes provided  at Preston Park Primary and Park Lane Primary. Ark Academy across the road from Arena House includes a primary department.




Tuesday 22 April 2014

Caroline Lucas backs parents fighting academisation

From Caroline Lucas' blog (posted last week):

Parents from Hove Park School, many of whom live in my constituency, have been in touch this week to ask for my support for their campaign to oppose plans for the school to become an Academy. I was happy to give it. 

When the Academies Bill was being debated in Parliament I expressed my opposition to removing schools from the control of parents, teachers, the local authority and the local community.

 I warned that one inevitable consequence of numbers of schools becoming Academies in a local area is that there will be less funding to support other, non-Academy schools for provisions such as special educational needs, free school meals, music services and library services. The risk being, that unless the Academies buy into the Local Authority Services, these could be become unsustainable.

The children’s author Michael Rosen has highlighted that asset stripping is also happening every time a school becomes an Academy. The local authority has to hand over the title deeds of a school to whoever runs sponsors or owns the Academy. Those title deeds are worth roughly £5 million per school - yet the Secretary of State has kept no central records and nobody has strategic oversight of who owns our nation’s schools.

The Secretary of State’s not keeping track of how many unqualified teachers are in free school or academy classrooms either. And if Hove Park School becomes an Academy it may not have to tell you, because a growing number of Academies are protected from Freedom of Information laws on the grounds of commercial interests. This also has implications for financial transparency. National education campaigner Fiona Miller reckons between £1-7 bn is being given to schools that are completely unaccountable.
There’s already a vast body of evidence that points to the ways in which Academies and other free schools are letting our children down. Academies are part of how this Government, building on the foundations laid by previous governments, is promoting a marketised model of education, pitching schools and colleges against one another as they compete for funds. This isn’t good for schools, their staff or local communities. It’s definitely not good for our children and I think those at Hove Park School deserve better.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference is taking place in Brighton this coming weekend and I am looking forward to speaking to teachers there. I know from my mailbag and inbox that huge numbers of them are also opposed to what’s happening to our schools in the name of choice. Teachers who, despite the changes foisted upon them, are getting on with inspiring their pupils.  

So I’ll be saying a huge thank you to every single local teacher that’s still in the profession. That’s still committed to our children. That still believes in education as a force for change. And I’ll be standing alongside them, and alongside the parents and pupils of Hove Park School, to demand a fair, accountable education system that puts the best interests of children centre stage.

If you want to support Hove Park School staying within local authority control, please sign this petition.

Friday 24 January 2014

Towards a National Campaign for Education



This week's Education Question Time in Hammersmith which was organised by the Anti Academies Alliance and the group Towards a National Campaign for Education, arose out of a desire to bring together the various campaigner groups under one umbrella. Sharing experiences and strategies and building an alternative model for the organisation and content of education area clearly a formidable task but this meeting, attended by more than 400 people, made a start.

The need for such a campaign was made even more urgent by the news that Hammersmith and Fulham Council had voted to close the high achieving and popular local Sulivan Primary School in order to sells its site to a Fulham Boys' Free School. LINK

There will be a similar meeting in Brixton, South London on February 27th:

A chance to debate and ask questions about the key debates in education

Chaired by broadcaster and journalist Fiona Phillips.

The panel includes:
Professor Gus John, Institue of Education Jenny Landreth, Writer and local parent David Wolfe, Barrister, Matrix Chambers Lib Peck, Leader of Lambeth Council Jess Edwards, Teacher and coordinator of Charter for Primary Education

Register for tickets here: http://educationquestiontime.ticketsource.co.uk/
To ask questions in advance email us: TowardsNCE2014@virginmedia.com  or Direct message @nce2014 with hashtag #edqtime

Wednesday 22 January 2014

RECLAIM OUR SCHOOLS! Hammersmith.Tonight.

Tonight's Education Question Time at St Paul's Church in Hammersmith could be the start of a significant fightback against neoliberal policies in education. It is a chance to bring together teacher unions, parent groups, community organisations and governors in a concerted campaign to defend progressive child-centred and democratically accountable schools with broad educational aims from privatisation and narrow aims centred on international commercial competition.

Nothing could illustrate the current battle more than the fate of Sulivan Primary School, a walk away from tonight's venue. Hammersmith and Fulham Council has voted to close the successful Sulivan Primary School (ostensibly a merger with a nearby primary academy) and handing over its unique site to a boys' free school.

Staff, parents and pupils have all campaigned for their school and their views have been ignored.

Here are some of the questions tweeted for tonight. Add your own: #edqtime @nec2014


Sunday 19 January 2014

Greens should support national campaign for education

I have long argued on this blog that because of the broad and fundamental attack on education by Michael Gove and the Coalition that we need a national campaign which both exposes that policy and proposes an alternative.

I hope that the Green Party will be part of the campaign given that we have progressive policies on education which I hope will be strengthened at Spring Conference.

Towards a National Campaign for Education has been formed to promote such a campaign and they have organised a meeting on January 22nd to which they invited the London Green Party. I will be attending and I hope other Greens will come too.

You can order free tickets for this event and a similar one due to take place in Brixton on February 27th HERE

You can Tweet questions with #eqtime @NCE2014

The Campaign has its aims on its blog: LINK:
This blog is aimed at anyone who uses, works or is just interested in our education system. It has two main purposes.

The first is to expose the faultlines in the 'neo-liberal' education reform movement and in particular to target the weaknesses, errors and political ideology in Gove's education policies.

The second is to develop a discussion that hopefully leads towards building a National Campaign for Education. There are many excellent education campaigns in the UK (see our Links page). There are also several different unions representing teachers and support staff. There are governor and parent organisations and a raft of specialist organisations dealing with subjects or specific areas such as SEN. This creates a complex network of organisations and individuals. The danger is that their work is duplicated and their impact is dissipated.

For some time now, people have been arguing that we need a National Campaign for Education (NCE). The NUT and UNISON unions have conference policy calling for the creation of such a campaign. At its last National Steering Committee the Anti Academies Alliance agreed to work towards creating an NCE by engaging in wider discussion and debate, hence this blog.

The argument is fairly simple. Gove's attacks on education cover almost every aspect of education. It is not just about academies and free schools. It reaches in to the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It also affects the provision of school places and teacher education. It is about when and why our children are educated. On all these issues, the Coalition government have launched an all out attack. The breadth of their attacks require a coordinated and sustained response.

The idea for an NCE is modelled on the 1963 National Campaign for Education. This was an unprecedented education campaign that helped change the education landscape in the early 1960's. More on the history of the 1963 NCE will follow. But we want to make 2014 a year for education, a year of a National Campaign for Education.

For now this blog, will carry articles on a range of education issues with a view to engaging in a debate about how to defend education but, more importantly, about what sort of education system we want, about what sort of system is in the best interests of all our children.

This blog is not about replacing other campaigns. But it will argue more 'synchronicity' between different campaigns. Together we can build a campaign that halts the attacks and outlines the sort of education system that provides a good local school for every child.

Friday 14 June 2013

Jean Lambert MEP urges Gove to listen to teachers and children on primary curriculum


 LONDON MEP Jean Lambert has called for Education Secretary Michael Gove to stop the ‘surveillance’ culture in primary schools – and instead listen to teachers and children themselves about how best they should be run.
The Green MEP also called for primary schools to teach problem solving, and to recognize that the arts, humanities, physical education and citizenship are as important as maths, science and literacy.

Ms Lambert, herself a former teacher, will make her comments at the launch of the Charter for Primary Education at the University of London Union tomorrow.

Speaking alongside children’s author Michael Rosen and National Union of Teachers’ Deputy Secretary-General Kevin Courtney, she will say:
Primary schools have become obsessed with tests and surveillance of pupils’ ability to retain a number of facts and abilities in a small range of ‘core’ subjects like literacy, maths and science.


Of course eventually passing exams in these subjects is important, but the focus of primary schools should be on offering a well-rounded education, and that means regarding the arts, humanities, physical education and citizenship as just as important – and recognizing that ‘play’ can be learning.


Michael Gove wants to take our schools in exactly the wrong direction, and he really must start listening the experts: teachers and the children themselves.

 The Charter for Primary Education can be found HERE

Monday 10 June 2013

Education: The battle of the Michaels about control, curriculum and creativity

Michael Gove's ideas on education and schooling have been taken on by two other Michaels this weekend. Michael Rosen's You Tube interview goes to the heart of the issues around competition and curriculum while Scottish Education Secretary, Michael Russel, demonstrates the dialogue with teachers that is entirely missing in England. LINK



SCOTLAND'S Education Secretary Michael Russell  has accused his Westminster counterpart of running a school system in England so centralised that it rivals the control of teachers during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Scottish Education Secretary Michael Russell addressing the AGM of the EIS teaching union in Perth yesterday Photograph: Alan Richardson
Russell's comments, during a speech to the annual general meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) teaching union, follow an attack by Westminster Education Secretary Michael Gove on the Scottish school system.

Gove, who was schooled in Scotland, accused the new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms of lacking rigour and urged Russell to remove the "Nationalist blinkers", and learn from what he described as an international trend in education towards more testing.

Describing the attack as a "badge of honour", Russell said criticising the CfE was tantamount to attacking everybody in Scottish education who had been working so hard to deliver it over the past decade.
"His definition of the word 'rigour' is essentially systematised rote learning in which you politically decide the content of the curriculum and apply what one might describe as 19th-century teaching methods to it. That is not where we are going in Scotland and it doesn't work," he said.

"A lot of his approach is based on a misunderstanding and he doesn't even know how the Scottish system works. It has changed quite a lot since he was in Aberdeen."

Russell said the approach to CfE in Scotland was collaborative, which he contrasted with the top-down model in England where there has been continual conflict with teaching unions.

"Conflict doesn't work and we know that too clearly from looking south of the Border. Two weeks ago my counterpart condemned the English teaching unions as Marxist because they opposed his education reforms, but I fear even the most ideologically driven education system in the world – that is probably in the Cultural Revolution in China – involved less prescription."

The row with Gove came as Russell became the first education minister to address the EIS annual general meeting for 167 years.

This week, EIS delegates backed strike action before the end of the year to protest over their growing workload associated with the roll-out of CfE, and Russell was attacked in a number of speeches.
However, he was greeted with respectful applause when he stood up to deliver his landmark speech and only a small minority of members briefly heckled him on the issue of workload, with one shouting "rubbish" when he told them support materials were in schools.

Russell, who said later that he did not think strikes were helpful, went on to promise that "needless red tape" would be stripped from teachers' workload.

He also told the meeting in Perth that the Scottish Government would work closely with the EIS and other key players as part of a new group to identify the key issues and come up with ways to reduce "needless workload and bureaucracy".

"My ambition and the ambition of the Scottish Government is to allow teachers the flexibility to plan and deliver high-quality learning and teaching," he said.

"The Curriculum for Excellence is about freeing up teachers to deliver the best-quality education to help young people succeed in the global workplace and assisting in the development of skills. It is not about burdensome paperwork."

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan welcomed the commitment, saying: "Much of what he had to say was well received by teachers and lecturers in the hall and we welcome his comments on bureaucracy and pension negotiations.

"Overall, although delegates clearly did not agree with everything that the Cabinet Secretary had to say, it is positive that he was willing to speak to teachers and lecturers directly and also to listen to their concerns about education in Scotland."

Friday 7 June 2013

Gladstone Park governors decide to pursue CfBT academisation

Gladstone Park Primary School's Chair of Governors has written to parents today to inform them that the governing body has agreed to work with the CfBT (Centre for British Teachers) Schools Trust, a charity, as their preferred academy sponsor and that the Department for Education is happy with the proposal. CfBT runs academies, free schools and private schools.

Parents and pupils reject academisation
Anne Kinderlerer, chair of governors reported that at her meeting with Michael Gove; where she was accompanied by the Governing Body's Chair of  Finance, Angus Hislop; they had 'emphasised the school's many strengths' and this was acknowledged by Gove. In turn Kinderlerer and Hislop agreed that Ofsted had identified specific weaknesses. Michael Gove ackowledged the progress made in addressing the weaknesses identified by Ofsted.

Her concluding paragraph in the Gove meeting report does not in itself imply academisation:
We also agreed that the school needs rapidly to identify a secure, robust future governance arrangement, but that the Department would work constructively with the school to take this forward.
The Parents Action Group are likely to argue that this could have been done without academisation. I agree with them.

However the Governing Body is now waiting for CfBT to undertake 'due diligence' to make sure that the school is a a financially and structurally secure state and say they will provide further information for staff and parents during this process, including meetings with CfBT and governors.

Parents and unions will be looking closely at what say they will have on academy conversion. Will they have a secret ballot including the option of non-conversion and remaining with the local authority?

Ann Kinderlerer states:
The outcome of this process, if all goes well, will be the development of a preferred option for academy conversion on which parents and staff can be consulted before the Governing Body considers any final decision to apply to the Secretary of State for an academy order - which in turn would be considered by the Secretary of State.
This seems to indicate 'consultation' which will be taken into account but not a ballot. The only option appears to be 'a preferred option for academy conversion' rather than staying with the local authority,  a federation or some other arrangement.

The focus will now be on digging a little deeper into CfBT's credentials.

The Chair of the Trustees is Philip Graf former Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror PLC and now CVhairman of the Gambling Commission and Vice Chair of CRISIS.

The Director of Education is Sir Jim Rose.This is what the CfBT website says about Rose. The spelling mistakes are CfBT's:
Jim Rose was formerly Her Majesty’s Inspector (HMI) and Director of Inspection for the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). He retired from Ofsted in July 1999 and has since acted as a consultant to the Department for Children, Schools and Families on nursery and primary education, and workforce training. At the request of the Secretary of State, he chaired the 1999 Independent Scrutiny of the National Assessment Tests for Primary Schools. He also led the independant Reviews of Teaching of Early Reading (2006), of the Primary Curriculum, and of Dyslexia (2009), and published an independant review of the primary curriculum in April 2009.

Before joining HMI, Jim held headships of two large, inner-city primary schools. His senior posts within HMI include Chief Inspector of Primary Education (3 to 13), responsibilities for Special Educational Needs (SEN), the education of ethnic minority pupils, and initial teacher training (ITT). He has advised several overseas governments on school inspection, and has considerable international experience of school educational systems. He is President of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).

Rose has clashed with children's authors Michael Rosen and Michael MoLINK . He was one of the 'Three Wise Men' (the others were Chris Woodhead and Robin Alexander) appointed by the Conservative Government in the 1990s to report on primary schooling. John  Major used the findings to attack child-centred education and increased centralised control over teaching.
rpurgo over the teaching of phonics

Tuesday 5 March 2013

The story behind Harris's academy aspirations

George Monbiot has given national prominence to the forced academy issue LINK which has attracted many comments on the Guardian website.

This comment sums up the issues very well:
 
Our local secondary schools were taken over by Harris, essentially forcibly. It's no coincidence that Harris is a donor to the Tory Party, and the Tory party are now repaying him. There's no clear information on how much money is now being channelled through Harris for these schools, but if you take an average secondary school budget of £3m-£4m depending upon numbers, you can start to see what big business this is. Harris is fast approaching £100m of taxpayers' cash.

Of course, much of this goes to the schools. But Harris also has set up two profit-making companies which he can instruct his schools to use for provision such as buildings and maintenance. I'm sure that there are also "preferred suppliers" for other services. In addition, Harris provide some services centrally - of course they would claim not to make a profit, but in 2011, the average cost of each member of the Harris Federation staff was over £80,000. His chief executive, and pet Gove advisor, Daniel Moynihan, paid himself a quarter of a million pounds. This came from school budgets. That's the salary of 3 headteachers, or nearly 10 new teachers.

This is just one academy chain. Dig into the others and you will find some equally odious developments.
We need to recognise what this is. Under the guise of Gove and Wilshaw's blatant lies about "falling standards", "dumbing down" and "failing schools", and aided and abetted by a mendacious Tory press happy to repeat obvious nonsense about academy status granting "freedom from LEA control" in areas in which the LEA never had any control, we are witnessing the outright privatisation of our education system.

Our schools are being handed on a plate to rapacious businessmen under the guise of school improvement, yet the real agenda is to marketise the system, remove schools from any local accountability, and allow businesses to reap huge profits from siphoning off money which we paid in taxes for our children's education. Gove and the Tories know this would never obtain public approval, so the lie is pushed again and again that this is a benign process to raise standards, but the events at Roke, at Downhills, at Kelsey Park and Cator Park, to name but a few, give the lie to this. This is a sell-off.

Labour have cowered on this issue because it was them who started this nonsense about academy status being the universal panacea, to cover up what they were really doing, which was rebranding difficult "sink" schools to try and change the intake. That policy worked up to a point as long as the intake changed. But it was always a nonsense to suggest that there was any connection between academy status and results - plenty of academic studies have now demonstrated this link is simply bogus. They are now facing the result of their own propaganda, and to stop this sell-off, they will need to face up to their own lies and mistakes, and admit that this is never what academies were about. Can you hear Twigg saying that ? No, I didn't think so.

Michael Rosen has also commented on the forced academies issue in his latest 'Dear Mr Gove' letter LINK

Saturday 19 January 2013

Taking the Michael reaches new heights

By some means not yet revealed,  Michael Rosen's satirical letter to Michael Gove has appeared on a semi-official website which specialises in government contracts LINK

In case it disappears I reproduce Michael's advice below:

For the start of the year, I’m sending you some helpful ideas, from how to keep student numbers down to keeping teachers in check.

I thought I would try to be positive and lay out a set of modest proposals for you to consider in 2013.

1 Universities
It’s imperative to keep down the number of students. “Graduate” is really another name for people who think they’re entitled to be paid well. We are in an era when we must all pull together to ensure that workers work more and earn less (or as employers call it, “keeping labour costs down”) and large numbers of graduates swimming around the economy are an impediment to this. What’s more, three years of independent living and discussion have the potential to turn many of these young people into dissenters and trouble-makers. There is an argument for saying that it is the job of government to enable a population to increase its cultural capital, raising the level of education of as many people as possible. You must portray this sentiment as a utopian fantasy of a long-lost past.

So, let’s put into practice a set of clear policies:
a) You and your colleagues (and Eric Pickles) need to put a lot of effort into mocking and rubbishing university courses. Don’t worry about consistency here: pick on both vocational courses and seemingly obscure academic ones: “A degree in leisure management, ha ha ha”; ‘A degree in medieval German literature, ha ha ha”.
b) Suggest at every opportunity that academics and students are spongers and skivers. Contrast their use of public money, long holidays and low hours of work with MPs’ honesty, diligence and industriousness.
c) Make a big deal out of things like the “knowledge economy”, “what Britain does best”, “centres of excellence” and “world-class universities”. Rely on journalists to put this inflated waffle (which you don’t believe in anyway) on their front pages while relegating the cuts to a one-inch column on page 11.
d) It is absolutely vital to boast about making it possible for the “disadvantaged” to go to university while making it harder for them to do so. Fees of £9,000 a year are already much too low and some students from poorer families are slipping through the net and going to university. We must discourage them from doing so. I suggest fees in the region of £20,000 a year. One scholarship a year per university would serve the purpose of looking as if you’re being “fair”.
I am so glad that your colleague David Willetts has highlighted the problems of white working-class boys going to university. Given your party’s electoral precariousness at the moment, it is vital that you and your colleagues present a narrative which suggests that Britain today is a place where white people can’t get on and black people are given incredible advantages.

2 Ebacc
There is a real danger that you’re about to be stabbed in the back by your predecessor Kenneth Baker. He has come up with a plan to abolish exams at 16, create higher schools and training places for 14- to 18-year-olds. With utmost urgency, you must dig up anything you can on Baker to suggest that he is either an out-of-touch old backwoodsman fart and/or he is in thrall to Trotskyists.
For you to be able to push through what is fast becoming an exam that will be a major impediment for most young people to develop as learners, you must:
a) ignore all evidence on adolescents and learning;
b) make misleading comparisons with the old O-levels;
c) keep talking about “rigour” without explaining what you mean by that word;
d) rubbish teachers by saying that, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

3 Primary school exams
The phonics screening check and the spelling, punctuation and grammar – Spag – test.
You must resist all demands to provide evidence that these tests will improve reading and writing, as there is none. Avoid public debate about this. Potential problems coming up are:
a) that many more children failed the phonics test than learn how to read using the old mixed methods;
b) many good readers failed the phonics test;
c) some children are being told they have “failed” and so can’t proceed to “real” books.

Rely on ill-informed newspaper editors to keep these stories off the front pages. When it comes to the grammar test, I predict that there will be real problems, with teachers not knowing how to teach for it and hardly any children understanding what is being tested. Therefore you must keep up the campaign of rubbishing teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.
In a key speech, make the suggestion that most British children are ignorant, illiterate, stupid and badly behaved.

4 Academies programme
Stop trying to be nice. Step in now, and make every state school in England an academy. Hail this termination of public accountability as a triumph of “freedom from control”. Make sure that your own burgeoning powers of control over the nation’s teachers and young people is never mentioned. It is crucial that whenever an academy fails an inspection, you must rubbish the teachers, showing how, unlike MPs, they are lazy and misuse public money.

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to keep tabs on all the academies, so I suggest that you create a set of regional committees to manage them. These must not be called “local” in case people compare them to local authorities and the management committees must not be elected, but made up of people appointed by you.

5 Teachers
Abolish all teacher training. In a key speech, try to whip up people’s bad memories of individual teachers (who were usually just people trying to implement what governments made them do) by saying how “we all hate teachers”. Play to people’s feelings that it is always other people’s children who are “bad influences” on their own, and what is needed is a “firm hand”. This should enable you to usher in the replacement of teachers by ex-military personnel who can do the job of patrolling past the computer terminals (equipped with News Corporation syllabuses), which all children will be looking at all day in the exciting schools of the future.

6 History
You must work even harder on the history curriculum, ensuring that all our children in England are proud of our country’s history. I’m not absolutely sure what this means if Scotland becomes independent, but I’m sure you’ve figured out what “our country” means better than me. Meanwhile, can we make sure that dead white men are celebrated the most? All attempts to show either that some dead white men did bad things, or that there are some important things done by dead white women, dead black men and even dead black women, must be eradicated. We need to have our classrooms filled with pride. After all, thanks to your government, more and more children are arriving at school with empty bellies, so at least let’s fill them with pride, eh?

7 Business
All schools must be turned into limited companies. Headteachers should be employers (“school company directors”) while compulsorily non-unionised teachers and pupils are the workers. Schools should be required to make goods and sell services for money and become places that offer car-cleaning, photocopying, fruit-picking, biscuit-making and the like at highly competitive rates.

8 Your job
The moment it looks as if staying in your job is an impediment to your long-term objectives of becoming leader of the Conservative party, make it clear to David Cameron that you’ve never been very interested in education and you have outlived your usefulness.

I hope that these proposals will be of use to you throughout the year.