Gove gets worse

[Blissx]

Came across this article:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24653574

I am rendered speechless....

[Bakingnovice]

Very disturbing all round. If the head can refurb one of his own properties using school funds and not be prosecuted its obvious that there is a cover up. No doubt the chair of governors (also implicated in financial fraud by accepting payments) will now resign and this will be seen as having dealt with the matter. It's heartbreaking for the kids who attend. Many of whom thought they were being rescued from failing schools in their catchments. The demographic attending the school are mainly from deprived areas. They have been let down terribly. The head should go.

[straggle]

But the head founded the school. He is the academy. There are other free schools in Greenwich, Hounslow, etc. founded by such superheads too and they all got £1-2million in start-up funding too. The government bent over backwards to give Birbalsingh her school after she scratched around in three different boroughs looking for premises and pupils. How do we know this scope for corruption is not to be replicated elsewhere?

[rabbitstew]

Well, I'll bet the "Requires Improvement" rating of Kings Science Academy would have been an "Inadequate" if it weren't a newly set up school. Reading the report, the school sounds pretty hopeless at the moment. Sounds to me like they are being given the benefit of the doubt because they are new - whereas existing schools, even with entirely new leadership, would get hit with a tonne of bricks if they got as many negative comments as those in the Kings Science Academy Ofsted report. No way is that school what used to be considered "satisfactory," if the list of failings in the report are to be believed.

[rabbitstew]

It has the potential to be satisfactory, though...

[straggle]

Teachers haven't even been marking their own pupils' work let alone monitoring progress. Leaders' self assessment 'is not robust'. Governance is 'weak'. The LA has been providing support for training governors more recently and the school has joined a partnership with other local schools. So the LA is picking up the pieces for school improvement anyway. But no one seems to know what is going on with finances.

[Arisbottle]

An inspection in a new secondary school in September is very suspicious. Year 11 and 13 out, possibly 12 as well. Teachers have much more time to cover their tracks if they have not been doing their job as they should , as do the management team

[Talkinpeace]

Having dealt with the police on a fraud case this year - and the results of my labour being plastered all over the press - the police are utterly hopeless when it comes to fraud.
They really, really do not understand finance and controls and record keeping.
They kept changing 'lead officer' each time I confuddled them with what was blindingly obvious to anybody with any financial literacy.

And I suspect that the bright young things at the DfE are rather lacking in the common sense department as well.

[Bakingnovice]

Surely the head has to be charged with fraud?

[Talkinpeace]

baking
you'd think so, but just getting my case to the charging stage (and it ended up front page of the Fail) was a slog - I suspect its only because I had the ear of the commissioner and the head of the council that they did not drag their heels

seriously,
the police are CRAP at dealing with any sort of financial crime
they do not understand the evidence (invoices produced on word processors) so stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la till the next story comes up

[Blissx]

I just feel that all these millions going into free schools, could have gone into making the existing schools better. I had an INSET last year and the speaker was Scandinavian and he said the free schools over in Sweden have been shown, to have made no improvement over and above the pre-existing schools and the main provider there has folded. Trust Gove to have used inaccurate information to make a decision. It is almost as bad as using a SAGA survey as a reason to push forward his ideologies. Oh, wait. He did that too...

[OhBuggerandArse]

Here's a lovely story about some recent outright lies of Gove's in speeches and policy making (and a subsequent cover up)

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/10/dfe-confirms-gove-has-visited-schools-that-dont-exist/

[Blissx]

I am very grateful for the research carried out in that article, OhBuggerandArse. Seriously, we need to find some 'dirt' on this guy to remove him from his position. We need a Govegate.

[OhBuggerandArse]

Every day is Govegate. It's just that no one in the government is listening.

[morethanpotatoprints]

I feel so sorry for teachers, I really do.
It isn't just the parents who will have to pick up the pieces here.
So glad we went into H.ed
Gove is a huge incompetent ass.

[Bakingnovice]

Talkin I'm shocked. You'd think the police would be all over this. The head has admitted that invoices were completely fabricated. The police wouldn't even have to base a conviction on finding evidence based on this confession.

[Talkinpeace]

baking you have mail

[Talkinpeace]

www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/26/labour-lord-nash-false-data-free-schools

[straggle]

Their lies get bigger.

'All free school inspections have been under Ofsted's new tougher framework. Figures referring to all schools inspected – under both the old regime and the new tougher framework – do not provide a true comparison.'

Only 24 out of 79 free schools had been inspected by end of July, a third of them in July and without any reliable external testing or progress data. A small sample, and not including Al-Madinah.

Most inspections under the new framework have been reinspections of schools previously 'Satisfactory' or 'Inadequate' whereas 'Outstanding' schools only need an inspection every five years unless they are new schools. So it's not a true representative sample to look only at those inspected in the last year.

They're desperate aren't they?

[straggle]

And more myths debunked here:

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/09/10-myths-promoted-by-the-department-for-education/

[daphnedill]

The sad thing about incompetent government ministers is that they tend to hang on to their jobs, however useless they are.

However, if there were a hint of a sex scandal, they'd be given their marching orders.

I often wonder why we should worry more about MPs' personal lives than what they do to affect the whole country.

PS. Not suggesting that Gove is involved in a scandal - just considering priorities as part of my Sunday morning ponder.

[daphnedill]

straggle,

Unfortunately, the myths make it to the headlines, which everybody reads. How many people bother to follow up the sources or even read the next day when headlines/myths are debunked? The headlines stay in people's minds and get repeated ad infinitum as if they are truths and to justify other myths. As a journalist, Gove must know how it works.

[straggle]

You are absolutely right. Which is why in the last couple of years instead of taking media reports at face value, I have been looking at specialist blogs, written by people who do know what they are talking about, and looking at original sources. And I don't know whether to despair or get angry.

The thing is, I can't be alone in feelng this. There are often conversations on Mumsnet that are more enlightening than Newsnight interviews. I don't think his strategy fools all the people all of the time.

[lalsy]

straggle, you are not alone.

I have switched to specialist blogs and checking the sources too - it is surprising how many common assumptions are simply not borne out by the facts.

And I then email the BBC with my findings, pointing out that opening a pdf or two would have shown the lies holes in someone's statement - and they reply saying they need to make the subject understandable .

I don't know what the mainstream media is for on issues like education any more. The original sources and huge amounts of data are often publicly available nowadays, so we can check them ourselves. And yet the mainstream media often seem content with swapping set lines from the main players, pointless when the devil is in the detail of a complex policy area.

[straggle]

Newspapers are going down the pan - but online news pieces at least have comment threads below. The best reports on the Guardian are by Warwick Mansell but they are tucked away in the Education in Brief section and never on the front page. Instead we get Clegg wringing his hands about whether to send his child to the Oratory or Westminster. When the subjective opinionated handwringing comes from journalists themselves, who live in a middle class bubble, it's unforgivable that they should be paid for unresearched and subjective articles that lack balance.

[Talkinpeace]

In the case I was involved with, all of the press coverage was a C&P from the police report - which spelled my name wrong.
A simple check on linkedin would have shown the error
but
newspapers are too busy paying megabucks to "commentators" like la Toynbee
and making all true journalism and investigation be in the hands of unpaid interns
and
I had a hoo hah with one paper because I refused to send them a photo - I'm an accountant FFS, not a model.

discussion forums are better than papers every time