Richmond Borough Schools Chat 8

[muminlondon2]

This thread follows on from Richmond Borough Schools Chat 7.

News and opinions on all the changes to schools in Richmond borough.

There's also the Researchers in Schools programme which offers PhD graduates up to £40k and that's described as a salary not a bursary.

Even £30k doesn't sound that great if you're ratcheting up £9k in tuition fees at the same time on top of the £60k you've already incurred as an undergraduate. Better for a maths graduate to join a bank or accounting firm, get a higher salary and the training paid for you. Numbers of modern languages graduates and university departments have fallen dramatically so they need to persuade many more of them to take up teaching. No bursaries for DT teachers either yet they only filled 40% of those places last year. There's just too much ground to cover and the government has failed to keep up for four or five years on the run now.

Those top rate 30K training bursaries are only available to physics graduates with a first class degree or PhD.

There are other attractive career choices for science and maths graduates.

I think people who choose a career in teaching do so because they love it as a vocation. It's sad that so many decide to leave the profession.

New [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36054909 research ]] reveals that......

'The least wealthy families have less than half the chance of the wealthiest of sending a child to a top-rated school, analysis from Teach First says.

The teacher training group adds poorer families' children are four times more likely to be at weaker schools.'

News on primary school offers:
83% of Richmond borough parents were offered 1st choice, which is the best statistic for 5 years, and about two classes fewer in-borough applicants than last year.

But as there's clearly still demand in and out of borough, Matthew Paul has announced a free school application from the trust that runs Thomson House (where he has acted as governor) to open in Teddington from 2018. If it's the Livingston House site that would give Turing House two more academic years to get planning permission and build a school. Otherwise, we'll have to watch out for site news.

It also looks like the Stamp Education Trust is planning to submit a proposal in Surbiton, too - where GEMS originally applied, although now GEMS has an office block in Kingston town centre.

This is bad: twitter.com/sampancheri/status/722439564925788161

Research advising academies to 'exclude poor quality students' in order to improve.

The office block in Kingston, if it is Swan House, is yet another dreadful site

Reply received from Tania Matthias MP in response to my email to her about forcing all schools to become academies. She seems to mainly parrot the government line but then flings in a final para about how she realises the timescale is much too fast and that schools should only become academies if that is what the teachers, parents and governors want i.e. the opposite of what the government is proposing:

Thank you for contacting me about academies.

As you are aware from the Chancellor's recent Budget statement and the White Paper 'Education Excellence Everywhere' set out by the Education Secretary, the Government has made a proposal that, by the end of 2020, all schools will be academies or in the process of becoming academies, and by the end of 2022, local authorities will no longer maintain schools.

Over the last five years, the academies and free schools programmes have allowed thousands of headteachers and leaders to drive improvement in their own schools and across the system. Autonomy and accountability come together in academy trusts, where leaders have more control over budgets and teachers' pay, can take decisions they believe will improve standards and are held to account for the outcomes.

2015 results show that primary sponsored academies open for two years have improved their results, on average, by 10 percentage points since opening, more than double the rate of improvement in local authority maintained schools over the same period. 2015 GCSE results show that “sponsored” academies – that is, poorly-performing schools which have been taken over by an academy trust – are improving at twice the rate of comparable local authority schools.

The aim is to have a system in which all state-funded schools are academies will deliver better results for all children through empowering great teachers and leaders with better leadership structures. The system will prioritise responsiveness and clear accountability over an arbitrary requirement for all schools in a local area to be run by the same body, regardless of its effectiveness. There will also be a new role for local authorities, who will move away from maintaining schools and focus on championing pupils and parents. It is also important to dispel some of the suggestions that have been made about academies – they are not allowed to run for profit; they are run by charitable trusts, not private companies; and they cannot sell or change the use of publicly funded school land without government approval.

Nevertheless, whilst I support the principle behind what the Government is proposing to do, I recognise that academy status is not the solution to all the problems experienced by schools, including in our local area, and I am concerned that the arbitrary deadline of 2020 will have an adverse impact on schools’ budgets and management at a time when both are already under significant strain. I am not convinced by the timetable for these changes and will be making the case to the Government to ensure that any further conversion to academy status is made with the cooperation of teachers, parents and governors, rather than forced upon schools against their will and based on restrictive timescales.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

Best wishes,

Tania Mathias

Dr Tania Mathias
Member of Parliament for Twickenham
0207 219 4696 (Westminster) 0208 622 4426 (Constituency)
T: @tania_mathias F: fb.com/tania4twickenham W: tania4twickenham.co.uk

Snap, LProsser - I've received word for word the same reply as you.

The Telegraph today noted a distinct lack of support in the Commons today from Tory backbenchers.

That's encouraging muminlondon2 - let's hope for a U turn despite the fact that it might cause George Osborne "further suffering"! I can't believe there are Tory MPs saying that they want to support it but can't understand why it's being done or what the benefits are. Don't they have any capacity for independent thought whatsoever!

LB Richmond hasn't said it wants to run it's own MATs yet but maybe that will happen. Still don't really understand what's meant to happen to religious schools - the C of E locally still doesn't seem to be springing forward and saying all the C of E schools will be forming a MAT.

I doubt Tania Matthias has any idea about the sort of people behind GEMs and Bellevue as revealed by your research. Makes me very cross to hear her talk about charities with no reference to the creaming off of funds to companies providing services. Ditto saying primary sponsored academies have improved their results by so much more than state schools when locally there are no children who have progressed to the results stage in academies - they can't have got any further than year 2 or 3. Nationally those statistics are clearly disputed.

Hope you are going to reply muminlondon2 and share it with us of course!

The paper you posted WhittonMum1 is pretty shocking - is there a link to it on the internet? - I've had a brief search but couldn't find it. Would like to cite that in my reply to TM.

I certainly think there should be some serious investigation into who is running these Education Trusts and why is it all been covered up

Still don't really understand what's meant to happen to religious schools

It looks like Catholic and CoE schools have a get-out clause

LProsser - the report you are looking for is here

Thanks bluestars. That article really shows how badly this has been thought through - sounds as though community schools can now be forced to be academies whereas religious schools can't - although no mention of Muslim, Jewish etc. I assume they will be given same right of refusal. This comment from a disgruntled teacher implies some dioceses intend to bring schools back under their control in religious MATs so maybe we will get an announcement about that locally:

"This is a stitch up between the church and the DfE. I attended a briefing for head teachers last week by our local diocesan educational board, where we informed that all of our schools would be forced to join a diocese run MAT. This will be 106 schools, making it by far and away the largest MAT in the country. Not one of the heads or chairs of governors wanted this. This is a massive power-grab by the Church of England and return to a situation that we have not had in this country since the mid-nineteenth century. Expect many resignations. Mine included."

I wonder what difference that will make in practice to religious schools? More discrimination in admissions and recruitment?

bluestars - thanks for the the link to the report but doesn't work.

Sorry about that, try the link at the bottom of this article

LProsser, the FT is already reporting a u-turn yesterday and today.

I'm fairly sure yesterday's article said something a bit different originally, along the lines of expecting concessions such as allowing 'top' LAs to form their own trusts. However, that's worse than a u-turn when it's just allowing things to drift, the idea dangling in the air with no retraction or apology, hoping to intimidate councils and schools into jumping into the acid-bath before they are pushed.

And having our schools to be put into a trust run by Achieving for Children is still not the same as the freedom individual schools have as LA maintained schools - i.e. they manage their own budgets (not swallowed up in a chain, resources diverted to other schools or funding the inflated salary of the CEO), with the oversight and accountability that brings.

This must have been prompted also by reporting of the National Audit Office adverse opinion on the DfE accounts:

'An adverse opinion indicates that he considers the level of error and uncertainty in the statements to be both material and pervasive. He has also qualified his opinion because the Department has exceeded one of its expenditure limits authorized by Parliament.'

Other useful information is on the Local Schools Network here, which debunks the cut and paste arguments Dr Mathias has been told to use. For example, in saying that primary academies improve their results faster or by more percentage points than LA schools, they are comparing schools that have gone into special measures and have a dip in SATS (for explainable reasons) with schools like Barnes Primary or St Elizabeth's, which already have 100% achieving level 4 and obviously can't improve further!

Schoolsweek has summarised the findings in the NAO report.

One point of note is the £10k bonus for a very young director friend of Michael Gove who appears already to be earning more than our Nick Whitfield. I'm not entirely sure what Tom Shinner does, but a couple of months after his appointment in 2014, the free school co-founded by the then 28-year-old in Greenwich managed to gain the 'Requires Improvement' rating.

Schools Week has DfE writes off £10m losses on free schools and academies:

. . The losses were revealed in the department’s annual accounts that were finally published on Wednesday, four months later than usual . .

More than £1.5 million . . was lost when planning permission for the Tauheedul Islam Boys free school was overturned . . The Liverpool LowCarbon and SuperPort university technical college (lost) more than £850,000 . . Manchester Studio School, which spent almost £500,000, closed in August 2014 because of low pupil numbers – a common theme for the studio schools model; 14 of 47 have closed since its conception in 2010.

Another heavy loss came after Durham Free School had its funding terminated in March last year . . (cost): more than £400,000.

A spokesperson for the department said . .

Tom Shinner profile - says that he is a qualified history teacher, ex-adviser to Michael Gove, ex-management consultant working with public and private sector clients in the Middle East (perhaps a link there to GEMS Education? Or PetroSaudi, the 'oil tycoon' backer of Bellevue Education?).

One of his main jobs is:

'leading the department’s strategic and financial planning, including overseeing the DfE’s contribution to HM Treasury spending reviews.

Ah, OK. As successful in finance as he has been in education.

The Observer reports: Tory MPs call for compulsory academies plan to be dropped from Queen’s speech:

. . With anger over the proposals rising in Tory ranks, Morgan has been asked to appear before the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers before the Queen’s speech on 18 May, with many of the party’s own MPs demanding that she goes back to the drawing board to avoid a parliamentary bloodbath.With a majority of just 17 in the Commons, Tory whips believe legislation on “forced academisation” would have no chance of passing through parliament unless the policy was watered down and the compulsory element removed . .

Really good to see such a positive new OFSTED for Hampton reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ELS/136103. We discussed that we could not know what was happening in terms of the transition but.....

From the time of the last inspection until November 2015, the school received very limited external support from the Learning Schools Trust beyond a few days of consultant support, mainly focused on the sixth form. However, this changed in November 2015 when the leaders of Waldegrave and Teddington schools began working with the school. The Learning Schools Trust are fully supporting and cooperating with the transition arrangements. With the local authority, a six-week in-depth review of the school was undertaken to establish the scope and need of support. The local authority is now actively working with the school and providing support. For example, in mathematics, a consultant is working to support leadership and develop new schemes of work. Highly effective and extensive support from the headteachers and specialist staff at the new partner academies is already demonstrating impact. The new sixth form co-leaders have received extensive support from the director of sixth form at Waldegrave School to assist them in their new roles

It mentions closer links with the sixth forms at Waldegrave and Teddington for pupils too.

Middle leaders, including of mathematics and English, are benefiting from the experience and expertise of colleagues in good and outstanding schools. This is helping them to have higher expectations and improve monitoring of teaching quality and follow-up in their areas.

The new Head is clearly on board with the more rigorous planning as well Under your skilful and determined leadership, and support from the associate principal and other senior leaders, improvement is being secured. You have successfully stabilised staffing and recognise that retaining staff, together with removing the remaining inconsistencies in teaching, is key to the school’s journey to good. The action plan is comprehensive, sharply focused on the improvement areas and based on accurate self-assessment. Timescales, success criteria, performance indicators and milestones all provide a road map for improvement. Rigorous and triangulated monitoring and evaluation systems enable the school leaders to check impact and make adjustments as needed.

There was an announcement that OFSTED Inspectors were visiting Twickenham as well though that has disappeared perhaps along with the Head.......

That is great news for the parents of Hampton. Lets hope something similar can come out of Twickenham Ac soon.

Today research showed that local authority schools outperform academies.

This report just proves that case:

'the current trust’s actions have not been effective ... governance provided by the Learning Schools Trust continues to be ineffective' BUT 'The local authority is now actively working with the school and providing support.'

Highlights:

'Staffing is now stable.'
'Skilful and determined leadership'
'more pupils are now making better than expected progress.'
'Behaviour has improved'
'Teachers talk less now and lessons are more interesting.’
'Morale is high'

Great news.