School - BBC 2 - 9 pm

[HollowTalk]

Anyone watching?

Just watched last nights episode. The staff and kids are all being failed it’s heartbreaking.

I’ve just watched too. I really don’t know what to say about that episode. It was utterly depressing to watch.

Yes. the PE teachers maths lesson looked dreadful. He couldn't explain a simple concept, all the kids looked bored and confused.

No wonder that there was a mother was complaining about her son not having a proper maths teacher and going from a level 4 to level 2 in his most recent GCSE mock.

Sad for the pe teacher as well who was actually teaching himself at the same time

Watched it last night. I'm a teacher in a large semi rural comp and we have been through Requires Improvement (level above special measures) some years ago (doing well now). So much of this rang true. The lack of funds, the constant and demoralising observations, the loss of excellent staff etc. Just so hard. And at the core of it all, the kids - who only get one crack at education - and who are suffering. Cash is not the magic bullet in a struggling school, but it really does make a difference.

I felt the deputy was ill-served by the editing. She seemed quite well-liked in the staffroom which tells us a lot, and her closing comments about the kids and the vocation showed warmth and a desire to do the right thing. She is a real loss to the profession in my judgement. Yes, the feedback appeared cold but we don't know what else she said and it is a funny one, feedback of a experienced teacher, as this is a colleague and friend,but it has to be a formal meeting so feels false.

The head about broke my heart at the end. Poor guy. He could have been more dynamic, I suppose; and he could have stood up to the CEO (& the kids?) a bit more but he was just a guy, doing his best in impossible circumstances and the staff clearly liked and respected him. It's shit.

I also teach secondary, albeit in a school with a very different context (urban, tiny number of white British students, single sex, faith, outstanding Ofsted). I also think the deputy head suffered in the editing. It was very clear she was well liked by the staff in general. The Head came across as a nice guy but his decision making was not good IMO. He seemed to me to have very low expectations of behaviour and his unwillingness to exclude kids for quite serious behaviour will be a big contributing factor in the wider issues with discipline. Their teachers can’t teach properly if kids are consistently off-task and disruptive. I can’t see how they’ll crack their other issues until they deal with the low-level disruption that is ruining lessons.
I did feel bad for the teacher being observed but the truth is that there is no way that lesson was good enough (and I mean for the kids, regardless of what rating HMI might give it). I don’t think it really the teacher’s fault because kids can’t learn in an environment where that kind of disruption is the norm and that ultimately comes down to management.
When he started talking about making classes of 46 is was clear that his judgement was way off, although that may well be due to the immense pressure he was under.

This is one of the saddest documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. What a lovely, caring man that headteacher was. My two are both pre schoolers but this makes me scared for their education. I went to an ordinary comprehensive in the 90s with average results and I feel I had a mainly very good education at secondary level. I had two fantastic, inspiring female maths and Chemistry teachers for A Level. I feel lucky to have been taught by such knowledgeable people. I studied medicine and didn’t feel at a disadvantage compared to my expensively educated, public school peers.

Even my MIL is wavering a bit in her ‘money can’t fix everything, it’s all the fault of feckless parents’ stance after watching this.

I agree that the head could have been more dynamic but I suspect he was completely ground down by how relentlessly difficult it all was. I have huge sympathy because it very much mirrors how many in the NHS are feeling at present.

bad ofsted = lower intake = no money = cuts = staff leave = cant replace staff = poor results = repeat whole cycle

Eventually (after a different head every year for ~5 years) the school gets 'closed'. Then they re-open it with a different name, hoping that'll fix the problem.

The problem is really that given the choice parents will choose to send their child to the best available school, so there is always 1 sink school that has to spiral around the drain. I am not sure there is a solution to this - I don't believe shotgunning money at the school is the fix.

It's next week's that's going to terrify me with the state of SEN - and believe me, I'm under no illusions how bad it is - I'm a "supply teacher" (I use the term loosely as there's no bloody work because there's no bloody money), a school governor and a parent of a child with SEN whose provision is being cut to non existent.

Watching that Geography teacher basically break before your eyes is the side of teaching the nice shiny adverts doesn't show you.

To those saying it's so grim they don't want to watch anymore - this is reality, it's reality for schools everywhere that they're being expected to do more and more with less and less and the limits of what can be saved in terms of shopping around, cutting costs everywhere so the kids aren't affected have been reached - and now we're at the point where the only things left to cut ARE the things that will really really do the damage - the teachers and TAs and pastoral structures. And even those teachers looking so massively ground down on the programme will have fought back tears to talk honestly to the cameras, then gone to the loo, wiped their faces, and gone back out and put on the whole teacher persona for their next lesson as if nothing else mattered but the kids in that classroom - I think that's the part they've not really got across in terms of the editing of the programme.

Marlwood is a school that was considered outstanding in the not too distant past. It has just gone into a massive downward spiral.

Part of the problem is having Castle School two miles away on one side and alternative options in Bradley Stoke & Bristol on the other. I went to Castle's Open Evening for year 7 Parents and I have never seen so many people. I did wonder whether some of Marlwoods' parents were jumping ship.

The other massive change is the Academy system taking over Castle and Marlwood.

I have also noticed Castle going rapidly downhill in the last year or two. Is it the funding cuts or is it the Academy system? Or is it a bit of both?

I am a school Governor. I have 2 secondary and 2 primary ages children. This documentary is the sad reality facing a significant number of schools. I will be removing my primary DC in September and sending them privately. My eldest two are at grammars which don't face the same difficulties with fluctuating numbers which then has a huge impact on financial stability. Our education system is failing our children. Even those in "good" schools are impacted by the limitations of the curriculum. It makes me frustrated, sad and angry.

Why don't Grammars suffer in the same way as Comps?

Other than the stable intake; is it because they have been used to lower budgets in the past and are not seeing a sudden drop?

Are schools with poorer intake doing fine, because of the new fundign formula?

That was a bloody sad episode. I have to say not everything is about money. For example, the way the deputy head conducted herself in the observation was fucking awful. She just glared. It was so patronising and demoralising. The kids will have picked up on that as well, which isn't great for encouraging respect to teachers. Her feedback wasn't constructive so I'm not sure how this was contributing to teacher development. I've been observed in a number of schools and couldn't have stayed in a school which took it basically as an opportunity to put you down rather than help you develop.
Moreover Ofsted made a comment about assessment not contributing to raised achievement (something like that). My dc's school was pulled up on that years ago. It doesn't take tonnes of money to improve that surely. Mr Pope seemed lovely but I think that's quite a fixable thing that doesn't cost a lot.

Amoeba Grammar schools will never have a problem filling places, so holes in their budget due to falling pupil numbers won’t happen to the same extent. And by their selective nature, they have a far easier job than comps who have to take all comers. Grammars won’t be supporting complex learning difficulties, or challenging home environments to anywhere near the same extent.

Poorer schools are not doing fine, but if they are large and well managed they are not faced with making decisions at the same level of criticality as small or rural schools. A large school could reduce a teaching assistant or even a teacher and save on salary; small schools don’t have those economies of scale.

Fundamentally I don’t think Mr Pope was up to the job. He might have been fine inheriting a well run, financially stable school, but he was out of his depth in a school like Marlwood. And therein lies the issue. The only thing that turns around a school is a great head. Academies do not have some magic source of good headteachers, and more money can help paper over the cracks.

No one has a solution for magically producing excellent school leaders. But reversing the political crap that schools have to deal with now, and giving them sufficient resources so that they don’t spend every waking moment thinking about the bottom line would go a long way to encouraging potential future heads to stay in education. Academies just suck an extra layer of cash out of the system, for no demonstrable improvement.

I caught up with the third one yesterday.

The end confused me a bit.

I knew they head would leave he seemed to have no where to go. No solution to the problem at all.

Yet the update at the end said it had seen an increase on kids attending results were ok and they managed to balance the books without increasing the class sizes.

Well what did the new head do they the old head didn't then? If there was a solution it would have been done wouldn't it?

That smug head if the aren't chain almost looked like he was enjoying it tbh. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if it turned out he was sitting on several.million.poundshe could easily have given them to sort things out but chose not to . There was something very off there

Those teachers had lost the kids though. Every one of them. I think they were clearky at the end there . Very sad viewing they all looked ill

Even though I am from the area my child is in primary so not following secondary so closely.

Am I correct in thinking the new headmaster only started the summer of this year so all results were under his watch so to speak?

It's an interesting question as to whether this is an academy problem, a funding problem or both

Another academy in South Glos is also perceived as being not so good as to what it was before, or so I have been told. I am thinking of what was The Ridings for anyone who lives in the area.

I have also been told that KLB (my old school) is now an academy but that one is still performing well, so well I have been told that they are shrinking the catchment so Wotton kids will be out of catchment.

This I do not get as Wotton is in Glos, the same as the school but the main catchment will be in South Glos?

How does cross catchment between counties work when it comes to funding?

Schools get £x per child on roll (role?). It doesn't matter where they come from.

The Headteacher of Marlwood had an impossible job. I can't blame anything he did financially (unless there are things we didn't know about), he has to balance the books.

I it truly saddening to see these, while there is of course an element of a TV program with a point to make I have no doubt that this really is how things are in our schools.

We're not far away and my son moved up to secondary in September. It's been a really odd year for admissions here. People who historically would have had no problems getting into the schools they put on Thier forms have been disappointed.

As someone has already mentioned the Ridings school which isn't that far away has had a lot of issues, typically oversubscribed this year I know several families who we allocated places from quite a distance away having not got any of their (usually realistic) preferences and the roumers are that it's not full.

Lots of the local primary school have either expanded or have bulge classes so the couple of schools which currently are not popular will gradually fill over the next couple of years.

THis is the best documentary on secondary schools I have seen for a long time. It deserves to win some awards. The Educatimg Essex etc series were ok, but a tad gimmicky. I felt that this one is a true reflection of what is actually going on in state secondary schools and they’re looking at it from all angles.

It is grim viewing. All parents and future parents should watch this. And get angry. I wish anyone who voted the Tories in would sit and watch how they have helped to destroy our education system.

Agree curlyhairedassassin - message is clear: do not vote Tory if you rely on education or healthcare.

Catchment is about distance not county, SoSadToWatch - KLB is based in Kingswood (tiny village) but next to Wotton and a little further in the other direction is Charfield (S Glos). There was some stuff in the press that because of influx of new houses and families in Charfield villages further away than Wotton (Glos) may not get in. But KLB itself said Wotton would still be fine as closest main residential area (I live in the heart of Wotton and am less than a mile away). It's the villages like Hawkesbury and Hillesley that may be affected.

Also, KLB is (so far!!) not an academy. It's a fantastic school, please god let it stay that way!

Thanks for the clarification, I was from a near by village so went to KLB. Happy to hear it isn't an academy. Some one told me it was and I didn't bother checking.