Academisation failing to boost miserable standards in the North

[noblegiraffe]

Sir Michael Wilshaw, ex chief of Ofsted has made a speech slating the government's record on school improvement in the North of England, saying that the academies programme has been a failure there.

"Speaking in Leeds on Friday, Sir Michael said: “Academisation doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference in the North and the Midlands. Doncaster, where every secondary school is an academy, has a miserable attainment score and progress scores.”
He added that: “Practically all the worst performing academy trusts preside in the North and in the Midlands, with a dozen or so so bad that they have effectively been closed down, with their constituent schools handed to other trusts.”"

I heard George Osborne talking about this on the radio the other morning. Yes, George Osborne talking about education in the North. I don't recall hearing much from Justine Greening about it even though she's from Rotherham. I guess some of her opportunity areas would count.

What can Damian Hinds do about it? Wilshaw suggests that he should set up shop in the North instead of hanging around London like the rest to at least show willing.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/wilshaw-academisation-failing-boost-miserable-standards-north

PS
Yes, London is massively dominant financially
but the Crossrail 2 has cost more than the infrastructure budget for the rest of the country.
Spending the HS2 money on HS3 instead would help rebalance the economy away from the South East
and reduce the support for Brexit

London Schools get twice the cash that Hampshire schools do -
and you are Northerners to us

The flipside to the huge inequality in London is that students do see success, and may get the idea that you can achieve these things if you work hard enough (this idea may be very well supported in some immigrant families). It's also much easier to expose students to all sorts of things in the capital.

In Bradford, or, say, Cornwall, do students see these opportunities at all?

I do think whatever the answer is, it has to start at primary level. I think by year 7, the gaps between the highest and the lowest achievers can already be too big. Setting means that the well motivated children who have ideas about what they can achieve are often in a totally different class to the children with low motivation and aspiration. If there were less gaps at 11, and students could be taught more subjects in a roughly mixed ability way, they might have more exposure to positive role models from their peers as well.

That's the easy bit to come up with, though. I don't know what we do in primary school to help all children reach a certain level by 11!

I do wish Londoners would give over on the levels of deprivation they face.
According to this map dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/idmap.html
which shows "indices of multiple deprivation"
the poorest part of London is Hackney 018B in Hackney Wick
it is the 586 out of 32844 most deprived locations

Portsmouth, Southampton, Thanet, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull
all have MUCH poorer areas
(the poorest 5 are in Blackpool, Essex, Blackpool, Thanet and Blackpool again)

London scores low on deprivation because it has

• transport
• jobs
• education options

all of which are funded much more generously than the rest of the country

Transport is interesting in London. Londonista's right. It took me two hours to get from one suburb to another the other day, discounting the walking.

It's all immaterial, though. The impact assessments (of Brexit) that have been leaked today suggest to me that whatever we think might be the answer to raising achievement across the UK, there isn't going to be the money for it. An £80 billion hit to public finances + drop in GDP of as much as 16% in the North East ... I think we're going to be looking at the situation, right now, as a relative Golden Age by comparison.

Sorry. I feel really bleak and sad about this. It's really sad to think of how this is going to impact on schools and children that are already disadvantaged.

TalkinPeace The reason I go on about it is because I work with children who really are disadvantaged. They tend to get forgotten when people want to paint a picture of London as swimming in money.

I find it actually unbearable. Their disadvantage is very real. They have very little voice and their reality is dismissed and overlooked. Somehow, I mange to care about them, accept the reality of their deprivation and that of children (and adults) in other parts of the country.

In quite a few of the schools I've worked in, the majority of children have never travelled on the underground, in one school, the majority had never even travelled on a bus. You have to think really hard about homework because children won't have access to glue and scissors, let alone IT. The North East or London - deprivation in this day and age is not OK.

The North East or London - deprivation in this day and age is not OK.
Too right.
DH has worked with kids who have never left their council estate in Portsmouth ......

But sadly those making the decisions do not give a shit frankly

Before I left teaching I worked in a school 9 miles from Leeds City centre. It was in an old mining area. There were many, many year 10, 11 and sixth formers who had several been to the city centre. They technically live in Leeds, but had never been. They saw as 'otherly'.

It was ex-mining, mostly white working class. Very sheltered. The aspirations of students were low. It was hard to convince them to apply for university, or university beyond Yorkshire. Parents told them to go an train for a job, rather than study a subject they loved.

I live in the area still and to take my children to school, 1.5 miles away when I couldn't drive/walk (surgery) it used to take me 2 hours round trip on the bus. We have two bus companies and many journeys require me to buy two day tickets at £4.50 each. And take hours.

I used to work in London and live in Hertfordshire - travel then was much quicker, cheaper and easier.

Please can we move away from the anti-London thing?

It's depressing, it's divisive, and it gets us nowhere.

It's facilitated a massive underfunding of all schools - which was in no-one's interests - rather than an increase of funding to schools that needed more investment.

I think it leaves us in a poor place to be unified in fighting the further cutbacks that are surely coming as the UK's GDP falls post-Brexit.

Sorry yes. What I also meant to say is the pupils at my school in the main be classed as deprived. But their aspirations were low. So it isn't just about deprivation.

Housing in many areas in the North and Midlands cost significantly less than London. So why don’t good teachers want to work in areas where houses are better value? Their salaries would go a lot further. One can only assume that the schools in the SE are better run. They are more attractive. They are better places to work. So the other LAs and MATs need to up their game and get better teachers into the schools.

Aspiration is a difficult one to crack. I get the distinct impression that if you are born in the North, you stay in the North if you go to university. There are great jobs all over this country but you cannot live at home and expect to get them! The difficulty is the young people who have few options due to lack of educational attainment so this group in particular need to upskill. However we keep hearing how we need certain skills for the future of this country but are these young people going to be good enough to fill the gaps? History tells us they are not. They don’t want the available jobs and they don’t have the skills for something better. It all very gloomy!

I don’t think the improvement of schools in London has wholly been down to money. It’s partly down to wanting it more. Getting the best people into the schools and being aspirational.

I always feel the “North” is defeatist. Let’s get rid of HS2 and get the North connected. People sleepwalk into accepting what is offered to them without thinking what might be better. No-one now is putting forward a coherent argument for the North and Newcastle didn’t even want a Mayor when asked. There is no coherent policy and if Brexit leads to a greater loss of GDP, these areas need to think how they will cope - they voted for it after all.

You don’t necessarily need brilliant transport links in rural areas. People I know love Cornwall because it’s not connected to anywhere else. They cannot have it both ways. It cannot be remote and connected! It is perfectly possible to have great schools and be rural. Again, it’s down to leadership and high quality teaching. It’s how we get that everywhere is the great challenge.

The report doesn't at all indicate that the teachers outside London/SE are not as good though does it? There may well be other reasons for lower attainment and progress in particular geographical areas. It would be surprising if there was a difference in quality of teachers.

Agree about the need to teach young people the skills we're going to need though. That is not easy though - for instance the difficulty in recruiting stem teachers eg computer science. You would require a massive increase in salaries to compete with what they can earn elsewhere. How do other countries produce their computer scientists, I wonder?

I don't think I believe that teachers in London/SE are better than those in the North. I can well believe that there are areas in the North where retention/recruitment are an issue - but is that the case here? I don't know the figures on that. And I suspect the reasons for retention/recruitment (if that is a thing and if that is even a factor in pupil outcomes) will be complex.

I continue to suspect the answers will be found in factors lying outside the schools.

Perhaps we need to attract some of those high-ambition immigrants to northern cities so their children can help boost results and lift aspirations. But I suppose if there so job opportunities that won’t work.

It would be in be interest of the whole country for the north to be given some kind of boost. No way can teachers fill the role of parents and social workers as well as their own jobs and I think it’s the parents who are the issue in some cases. For reasons that aren’t necessarily their fault and are to do with post industrialisation and loss of local pride.

the reason that London schools are blooming is also in no small part due to the initiative that many london head teachers pushed for and promoted some 10/15 years ago, I can't remember what it was called , something like London Schools initiative. Yes it was funded, but it involved a huge amount of work by teachers , governors ,local authorities and head teachers, working in clusters of schools examining what worked in their schools, being honest about what didn't , sharing good practice, observing in other schools, planning together, putting in training both in school and encouraging teachers to develop their knowledge by further study. Looking at issues like mobility of pupils, teacher retention etc. It was very hard work, required huge levels of commitment but has paid dividends both in the schools themselves and by the way it improved relationships between schools.I have always been surprised that it has not been adapted and used for other regions.

You don’t necessarily need brilliant transport links in rural areas.

We're not asking for "brilliant" transport links, but we do NEED a system where it's feasible to actually travel. Due to crap public transport, it takes just as long to get 90 miles from my city to another by train, as it takes to get 250 miles to London by train. 3 hours to travel just 90 miles between cities is simply not acceptable. Not to mention that most of that 90 mile journey is on drafty uncomfortable 40 year old trains usually without heating nor a working toilet (and don't even think about asking if it has catering facilities or Wifi). 3 hours in a cattle truck basically!

My son has to leave home to get to school in the city just 5 miles away at 7.15 in the morning. Due to a hourly bus service and long walks at each end of the journey. We don't live on a hill top, we live on a major A road which used to be the main North/South road before the motorway was built, on the direct route from a major town to the city.

We're not talking sleepy villages in the middle of nowhere. We're talking high population areas. There's simply no excuse for such poor public transport, and then you get the usual suspects whinging about people causing congestion by driving! They havn't a clue about the reality of life outside the South and major cities.

Perhaps we need to attract some of those high-ambition immigrants to northern cities so their children can help boost results and lift aspirations. But I suppose if there so job opportunities that won’t work.

Plenty of high ambition 3rd generation immigrants in the Northern towns. They're the ones who usually go into training as doctors, so yes there are jobs for them, as there are for nurses, teachers, emergency services, etc, in the North as you have to have them where they are needed. Their wages also go a lot further in cheaper Northern areas, eg nurses and teachers are well over local average wages in my city.

I understand though that there are some towns and cities where immigration is below national average? Redcar and Cleveland, for example.

But yes, I’d have thought the standard of living for a doctor or nurse would be higher in terms of house affordability for example.

Some friends we have live in gorgeous properties that would be almost millionaire residences in London.

Viques Was it Beacon schools? Or was that earlier?

I think the latest Ofsted Annual report (16/17) the first by the new Head of Ofsted, highlights all the problems faced by the worst performing schools. They have identified 50 secondary schools that have never been “good” since 2005. Continual RI or Inadequate.

The main barriers to improvement are discussed in detail. Briefly, improvements are not maintained because of high turnover of leadership and teachers. MATs are, on average, 5 schools and don’t have enough expertise for the problem schools and improvements are too slow. Governors are not good enough. Leadership is weak and over generous on self assessment of the school. Leadership doesn’t tackle ineffective teaching; performance management is under developed and there is no accountability for weak pupil progress. There is deprivation. There is poor attendance and poor behavuour. There is plenty more, but I suggest everyone should read it.

Now the analysis has been done, it will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with the solution as to how to improve these schools that can be sustained. It seems pretty obvious that it’s Governors and Leadership that count together with the MATs having enough expertise to drive up standards. However teachers have a massive role to play and issues such as assessment, lesson planning and accountability are all discussed.

Of course the fact that academisation is not an educational philosophy but an economic and political policy might have something to do with it. By which I only mean that there is no reason turning a school into an academy should have any effect on performance at all, since there is no educational justification for it. In the early days, when LAs were failing to improve certain schools, the original academy model was an outside cash boost and an external impetus for change. Now it is simply a way of removing control from the LA and, as a result, some schools will do better, some the same and some worse. So the problems, such as they are, in schools in 'the North' (which sounds like a very big area to squeeze into two words) won't necessarily be alleviated by a shift of managerial control or less LA oversight of funds.

@thecatfromjapan. I have googled, it was called The London Challenge.

Yes yes to Talkin's comments with bells on.

The difference is away from London there are hoards without glue and IT to do homework too. Sadly due to budget unfairness which London doesn't see there are serious shortages of the basics e.g. glue and IT in schools on top. Libraries have also closed down so no joy there and with crap broadband, £7 a bus ticket every hour at best to your nearest city or anywhere,limited education and aspirations many families in poverty and just above are disadvantaged in a far greater way.

But still the focus will be on London. This has been said over and again,it never changes.

It's not about individual good teachers. It's about systems and, as viques said, honest and open analysis and challenge. Forced academisation can in fact work against that I think. I work on an area where all secondarirs are academies. So are autonomous and some are part of MATs, but there are lots of local level partnerships which work to the benefit of all the schools. The outcomes in the region have risen considerably.

The Ofsted report is also really saying that there are not enough good practitioners to go round and change the 52 schools that haven’t been good in 13 years. In London there was expertise and it was harnessed. Why don’t people in the North manage to get these skills and use them to bring about sustained improvement in these schools? Surely skills and expertise isn’t just the preserve of people in London? There are huge opportunities for Governors to change schools with Heads. Why aren’t there decent Governors? There are many retired people who have superb skills and could help. Why don’t the more highly educated in society become Governors? London got to grips with their problems and there are other areas that could do the same if they really wanted it.

Abra: some 2 bed flats are £1m in London! There are opportunities for a good standard of living in the North. Working for local government, teaching, or for the government isn’t a bad option when housing is cheap. If there were people who demanded more from the schools and put more into them, there might be change.