Topic: Education Secretary Wants A Slap

[Nessy76]

Has Richard Dawkins weighed in to blame the kid yet?

[Trada]

[CornerFlag]

Just watching Granada Reports, saw that Knowsley's going to have absolutely no provision for A-levels in the whole borough because the last academy is shutting them off for financial reasons.  That's abominable, an absolute joke.

[Nessy76]

Just watching Granada Reports, saw that Knowsley's going to have absolutely no provision for A-levels in the whole borough because the last academy is shutting them off for financial reasons.  That's abominable, an absolute joke.

It's shocking. Some will be able to study in Liverpool or Cheshire, but that's a lot of kids basically being written off.

[Mutton Geoff]

looking at her face i think she has had a slap

[Dowling10]

It's shocking. Some will be able to study in Liverpool or Cheshire, but that's a lot of kids basically being written off.

It's shocking. More fail A-Levels than any other qualification (BTEC etc) and with funding being based on success rates then more and more colleges are turning to vocational qualifications were the students who struggle, will still pass the course.

More and more students are being advised to study BTECs NVQs due to them being 'easier' to pass. But the majority of jobs are in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) which require A-Levels - or at least put you in a better position for university.

I think this government has done a lot of damage to education within this country over the last 5-6 years.

[Mutton Geoff]

It's shocking. More fail A-Levels than any other qualification (BTEC etc) and with funding being based on success rates then more and more colleges are turning to vocational qualifications were the students who struggle, will still pass the course.

More and more students are being advised to study BTECs NVQs due to them being 'easier' to pass. But the majority of jobs are in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) which require A-Levels - or at least put you in a better position for university.

I think this government has done a lot of damage to education within this country over the last 5-6 years.

I am interested if you have any stats to base your assertion on , because in my School the opposite occurs there are a very small number who do BTEC and Nobody does NVQ's these days.

We also run Stem Clubs for year 7 onwards!

Seems like the sample for this assertion can only be based solely around bog standard low ability FT classes in old fashioned colleges.

Hardly the majority of people in Education.

Seeing as you brought this up though this years 'year 12 are having massive problems caused by the Government changes with the A Levels and AS Levels that appear to have been created on the back of a fag packet as far as their logic goes. So you are partly right .

[TepidT2O]

I wouldn't worry about the year 12 Geoff... There have been guarantees  that the pass rate at each grade will be the same as the old system, so I suspect it will all work out ok..

The whole system is under tremendous strain though, the change to KS3/4/5 came in three years and with no additional funding (quite the opposite in my school's case).

This is further undermined  by NiMo's competence.  Academies?  It only came about because she couldn't think what to do next.  She's a very very poor education secretary.  People may have hated Gove (for some good reasons), but he had a clear strategy, and a clear direction. If you could provide clear evidence why something was wrong, he would often change it...
Gibb is driving much of the reform, but sadly he's about as reliable as a 9 pound note.  A few years ago (before they were in government), I caught him out telling lies in public.  We had a heated email exchange in which he repeated the lie, I eventually showed him evidence which he could not refute.... So he blamed it on labour.... Not a terribly nice chap, or a terribly good politician.

[Mutton Geoff]

I retire either this July or the next depending on if I want to carry on for the extra year, however my biggest worry is the increasing pressure we put on our students to pass everything with top grades only at an age when many cant cope with it. How many students these days have stress related problems seems to me for them the work life balance has vanished, year on year these pressures are ramped up and although I am a part of this process I look at the bigger picture and wonder at the lasting harm we are doing in the name of academic achievements ! Some might think it was always like this but I remember having more fun and laughter in my childhood than kids seem to have today! Are we forcing them to grow up too quickly and with that robbing them of their childhood?
I know this is a bit off the main theme but I have wanted to say this for a while

[Dowling10]

I am interested if you have any stats to base your assertion on , because in my School the opposite occurs there are a very small number who do BTEC and Nobody does NVQ's these days.

We also run Stem Clubs for year 7 onwards!

Seems like the sample for this assertion can only be based solely around bog standard low ability FT classes in old fashioned colleges.

Hardly the majority of people in Education.

Seeing as you brought this up though this years 'year 12 are having massive problems caused by the Government changes with the A Levels and AS Levels that appear to have been created on the back of a fag packet as far as their logic goes. So you are partly right .

Sorry - just my own eyes this one! I have been a lecturer within Knowsley and Merseyside FE colleges for nearly three years now. You're right, I am referring to old FE colleges typically in poorer areas.

[Mutton Geoff]

Sorry - just my own eyes this one! I have been a lecturer within Knowsley and Merseyside FE colleges for nearly three years now. You're right, I am referring to old FE colleges typically in poorer areas.

No problem we are all struggling with Politicians meddling with our education policies and you are at the sharp end of the bad policies in Education.

All sides of the house are as bad in fact i thought Gove was sometimes an upgrade from Balls with his flip flopping dictats and no clear direction.

[B0151?]

All schools WON'T be forced to convert into academies

[Nessy76]

All schools WON'T be forced to convert into academies

Yes they will. It will simply be done by other means.

[B0151?]

Yes they will. It will simply be done by other means.

Haha, I didn't mean to sound as though I was repeating a fact. Just that they've announces they're backtracking

[Nessy76]

Haha, I didn't mean to sound as though I was repeating a fact. Just that they've announces they're backtracking

Yeah, I saw the story, but once you get past the headlines it's clear that they are still trying to reach the same ends by different means. When the results of all their new tests come in and the kids fail as they've been set up to do, they'll have carte blanche to force academisation on so many that it will no longer be viable for LEAs to maintain the remainder.

[TepidT2O]

Brilliant news!!!

Fucking made up....

The work this decision has saved me, I can't tell you.... Hundreds of hours work which would have gained nothing.


Brilliant !!

[Andy @ Allerton!]

An interesting quote...

[CornerFlag]

Seen it from a few sources.  Good old modern education policies in free schools.  Fuck you Fuckwitted Pob lookalike Michael Gove you little cretin.

http://www. dailymail .co.uk/news/article-3713583/Superhead-claimed-Britain-s-education-broken-puts-pupils-detention-lunch-restricts-food-parents-failed-pay-school-meals.html

Superhead who claimed Britain's education was broken puts pupils in detention at lunch and restricts food if their parents have failed to pay for school meals

• Katharine Birbalsingh made a name for herself at a Tory party conference
  She is imposing 'lunch isolation' on pupils whose parents miss payments
  Children will be given a sandwich and a piece of fruit instead of a hot meal
  The students will also be made to sit on their own for the whole lunch hour
  Teacher said it was an attempt to encourage parents to 'change their ways'

A headteacher who made her name at a Tory party conference by claiming Britain's education was 'broken' is forcing children to eat by themselves and restricting food as a punishment for their parents failing to pay for school lunches.
Katharine Birbalsingh, a favourite of former education secretary Fuckwitted Pob lookalike Michael Gove, is imposing 'lunch isolation' on pupils whose parents are behind on payments.
Children who are put in lunch isolation are given a sandwich and piece of fruit instead of their usual hot meal with dessert, and made to sit on their own for the whole lunch hour.
Critics called the measure at Michaela community school, a secondary free school in Wembley, north London, 'stigmatising'.
But Miss Birbalsingh said it was an attempt to encourage parents to 'change their ways' and support their children.
She rose to national prominence when her speech at the 2010 Tory party conference about failing schools provided the backdrop to Mr Gove's sweeping education reforms.
The sanction emerged in a letter from deputy head Barry Smith to Dionne Kelly, who fell behind on meal payments for her 12-year-old son Reon. It read: 'The deadline for this term's lunch payments was 1st June 2016. 'You are currently £75 overdue. If this full amount is not received within this week your child will be placed into Lunch Isolation.
'They will receive a sandwich and piece of fruit only. Only when the entire outstanding sum is paid in full will they be allowed into family lunch with their classmates.'
Ms Kelly, an unemployed care worker, said she had already paid the money by the time the letter arrived, but Reon had received the punishment anyway.
She said: 'I found the letter quite threatening. Isolating children for their parents not paying upfront is degrading. It's embarrassing for poor families.' The letter appeared to be addressed to several parents, as it began with the address: 'Dear families', but the school would not say if others had received it.

Ms Kelly, a single mother, received the letter only two weeks after Reon had started at the school. She said she had not yet registered for free school meals, but planned to try to claim the money back.
The school charges meals at £2.50 a day, with payment required upfront. She has now moved Reon to another school.
The school has a traditionalist academic ethos with a long school day: 7.55am-4pm. Full lunch menus at Michaela, which markets itself as having a 'private school ethos' but with 'no fees', include meals such as vegetable bolognaise pasta bake and salad followed by chocolate crunch, or vegetable tikka masala in a jacket potato with iced sponge for dessert.

Miss Birbalsingh admitted that she and Miss Kelly 'did not see eye to eye', and insisted Miss Kelly had not paid for her son's lunches. Miss Birbalsingh added: 'The letter from Barry Smith…was sent in an attempt to encourage mum to change her ways and support her son by paying for his food.
'The vast majority of secondary schools use isolation to discipline children.'
Miss Birbalsingh added that the lunch isolation was part of half a day in isolation imposed because of poor behaviour the day before.
Sam Royston of the Children's Society, said: 'No school should punish and potentially stigmatise a child because a parent has not paid for, or is unable to afford, school meals.
'Schools should be doing everything they can to support parents who may be struggling with the costs of feeding their children.'
Miss Birbalsingh, 43, told the 2010 Tory conference that the education system was 'broken' and 'blinded by leftist ideology'. She lost her job in the backlash that followed and later started up her own free school.

Fuck's sake.  Nothing like a little stigma against poor people.

[TepidT2O]

No kid should be punished because of the actions of their parents.

It's explicitly stated in the (2010??) education act.

[Mutton Geoff]

No kid should be punished because of the actions of their parents.

It's explicitly stated in the (2010??) education act.

That something we can agree on , this superhead should be ashamed but I don't think she will. Is her next step to employ a beadle to supervise meal times

[TepidT2O]

Some other thoughts....

The letter is very poorly written, grammatical errors and addressed to 'families'.  How odd.

The school is charging parents for six weeks food ahead of time, it's little wider that parents might struggle to pay that.  There was no conciliatory comment about potential issues for payment and alternative methods for payment.  Very poor.

But the shaking of a child by making their parents debt into a punishment for them is really quite poor and goes against very principle of fairness (and debt collection).

Finally, going to the daily mail?  Why would you make the situation worse by doing that?  A stupid retaliation.

[CornerFlag]

Lube your schools up, the Tories are about to fuck them over big time. Again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38993715

Is school funding the next crisis?


After the NHS and social care, is the next funding crisis going to be in England's schools?

Like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls downhill, momentum is gathering around the warnings of school leaders about impending cash problems.

Head teachers have said a lack of cash might force them to cut school hours.

Ministers were forced by a Parliamentary question to reveal that more than half of academies lacked enough income to cover their expenditure.

And school governors - the embodiment of local civic worthies - have threatened to go on strike for the first time, rather than sign off such underfunded budgets.

Petitions and protest letters have been sent to MPs about cuts to jobs and school services - and warning letters from head teachers will have been sent home to alert parents.

Grammar school head teachers have gone a step further and warned that parents might to have to pay to make up the shortfall.

School leaders see themselves rather like look-outs on the Titanic shouting out that there's a great big iceberg ahead - backed by the National Audit Office's finding that schools face 8% real-term spending cuts, worth £3bn, by 2020.

The spending watchdog says costs for schools are outstripping the budgets allocated by the government.

The missing piece in this debate has been any real sign of movement from the government - other than to keep repeating that school funding is at record levels.

But plenty will be going on behind the scenes, and there is no shortage of "insiders" with views on what's happening.

It's claimed that ministers can't sign a birthday card without getting clearance from 10 Downing Street.

So education ministers are unable to give any indication of funding changes, in part because a consultation is still taking place and more particularly because it isn't in their gift to decide.

But there are options thought to be under discussion.

The government has announced a new formula for allocating funding to schools, responding to years of complaints about regional inequalities.

But a number of Conservative MPs in rural and suburban areas have been energetically lobbying that this slicing up of the cake is still too much in favour of the inner cities.

If the formula was shifted around a little, such as putting less emphasis on deprivation, it could shift funding from London and the big cities towards the shires.

This would not have much electoral cost for the Conservatives as their support is not in these inner-city areas.

But it would be a big call in terms of political purpose to cut funding from areas of deprivation.

Another approach would be to start including pupil premium money - targeted at deprived children - into the general funding equation.

This really would mark the formal detonation of the last pillars of the Cameron and coalition era, for which the pupil premium was a moral touchstone.

There are other more creative possibilities.

It was revealed that of the money earmarked for the ill-fated plan turn all schools into academies, £384m had been taken back by the Treasury.

This £384m has been claimed as being enough to make sure that there are no losers in the funding formula shake-up.

If this cash could be "rediscovered" in a virtual shoebox in the Treasury, it could come back into play, getting the government off a funding hook - without actually having to find new money.

The apprenticeship levy, about to be introduced, has also been seen as a potential pot of money. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says by 2019-20 it will be raising £2.8bn from employers - but only £640m is set to be spent on apprenticeships.

The Department for Education has so far not been able to explain where the rest of this money might be heading.

Of course, another option is that the government refuses to move and schools have to operate within their budgets.

What would this mean in practice?

To take a real-life example shown to the BBC, what happens when a secondary school faces a shortfall of £350,000.

The only way to make such savings is to cut staff - heads and governing bodies will be making such tough decisions.

Which subject should they stop teaching? Which teachers should they make redundant? Should they get rid of counsellors for mental health problems? Should they merge classes? And who gets to lose out on the quality of their education?

This has left head teachers furious.

There has always been a well-developed moaning culture in education, but there is no escaping the outrage among school leaders about the lack of political response to funding worries.

They were even more livid when they found that the government had found money to expand grammar schools - and have written angry letters asking which services they should cut in their own schools.

They see ministers and MPs rather like untrustworthy children who won't take responsibility for their decisions.

There is also brinkmanship on both sides. Will schools really send home children because of a lack of cash?

And the government will worry that if they crack over schools, it would start a feeding frenzy of other demands on public spending.

A Department for Education spokesman said that school funding is already at its highest level - more than £40bn for 2016-17.

And the department says that it has grasped the nettle of introducing a long overdue national funding formula.

"Significant protections have also been built into the formula so that no school will face a reduction of more than more than 1.5% per pupil per year or 3% per pupil overall.

"But we recognise that schools are facing cost pressures, which is why we will continue to provide support to help them use their funding in cost effective ways, including improving the way they buy goods and services, so‎ they get the best possible value."

[TepidT2O]

Lube your schools up, the Tories are about to fuck them over big time. Again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38993715

The 8% cut has been known about for ages..

Lots of schools have made redundancies to accommodate this...

Things are really straining at the seams now though...

[So… Howard Philips]

In my area schools have been warning about lost teaching posts for a couple of weeks.

Austerity is just a Trojan horse to rein in choice for the less well off.

[McrRed]

The 8% cut has been known about for ages..

Lots of schools have made redundancies to accommodate this...

Things are really straining at the seams now though...

There was a website that shows the loss - or gain! - for each school or area. I've lost the bookmark, anyone have it?

[TepidT2O]

There was a website that shows the loss - or gain! - for each school or area. I've lost the bookmark, anyone have it?

You can get it from the dfe website.

You are taking about the national funding formaula adjustemebrs.

This is in addition to the 8% cut in real terms funding..


Justified in some ways as some schools have lived on fumes..

[McrRed]

Didn't realise it was in addition.

Those fumes are becoming vapours...

[Andy @ Allerton!]

And still the people of the UK think the Tories are doing 'a good job'

[TepidT2O]

And still the people of the UK think the Tories are doing 'a good job'

The fairer funding formula is probably a good thing..  some schools (particularly rural schools) were ridiculously underfunded.

Fur example, schools in some parts  of London revived more than twice as much money per pupil as other schools.  Now there are reasons for this, but the differential has become so great as to become ridiculous, with poorer schools barely able to heat the building..

[Andy @ Allerton!]

The fairer funding formula is probably a good thing..  some schools (particularly rural schools) were ridiculously underfunded.

Fur example, schools in some parts  of London revived more than twice as much money per pupil as other schools.  Now there are reasons for this, but the differential has become so great as to become ridiculous, with poorer schools barely able to hear the building..

Got loud buildings down there have they?

[TepidT2O]

Got loud buildings down there have they?

Oh bugger!

[TheShanklyGates]

The fairer funding formula is probably a good thing..  some schools (particularly rural schools) were ridiculously underfunded.

Fur example, schools in some parts  of London revived more than twice as much money per pupil as other schools.  Now there are reasons for this, but the differential has become so great as to become ridiculous, with poorer schools barely able to heat the building..

The answer to that is clearly the give the underfunded schools more money without cutting the budgets of the well funded schools but this is the Tories we're talking about.

[Nessy76]

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/you-somehow-imposed-your-own-prejudices-education-one-primary

[12C]

Apparently ms Greening was heckled  by Headteachers during her speech to their conference today, but BBC say they weren't allowed to film her speech because ...(put excuse here)
Trump tactics from the nasty party?

[TepidT2O]

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/you-somehow-imposed-your-own-prejudices-education-one-primary

I fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of this article. 

[McrRed]

I fundamentally disagree with the vast majority of this article.

So there's some bits you like? [emoji3]

[CornerFlag]

They're closing an academy local to me, I went there too.  Used to be the Wallasey School.  Never a high-achieving school but one that's vital to the local community.

[TepidT2O]

They're closing an academy local to me, I went there too.  Used to be the Wallasey School.  Never a high-achieving school but one that's vital to the local community.

why are they closing it?

And when you say they are closing it, are they opening a new school on the same site?

[CornerFlag]

why are they closing it?

And when you say they are closing it, are they opening a new school on the same site?

Numbers have dropped, never had many good Ofsted reports, essentially ticks a lot of boxes.  According to a few people it's a sure thing now, the first sign was them cancelling a sixth-form intake a couple of years ago.

I got the original info from a mate who spoke to a local councillor who confirmed it, Angela Eagle's seeking a meeting and another councillor (Chris Blakeley) said that they're 'minded' to closing it.  No idea on the last point.

[McrRed]

why are they closing it?

And when you say they are closing it, are they opening a new school on the same site?

What happens when they close an academy? The end? Another academy? Free school? Kids commuting (charter style)? None of the above?