Worthing Borough Council meeting 18th December

The following motion regarding Worthing High, will be debated at Worthing Borough Council, in the Town Hall, on Tuesday 18th December at 6 pm. Anyone is free to observe this debate from the public gallery.

"That this Council:

(a) welcomes

 the news that Worthing High School has converted to Academy
status, and

(b) further welcomes the handing back of control of teaching to teachers and
parents, and

(c) is disappointed that a minority of Members of the Council were seen
supportive of industrial action that may have had a detrimental effect upon
the education of students and on the overall reputation of the Academy."

http://www.adur-worthing.gov.uk/media/media,105423,en.pdf

Join us for a festive drink

Come and join us for festive drinks, a catch up and to chat about the group's plans for the future: from 8pm on Tuesday 18th December, at Thomas A Becket pub, Rectory Road Worthing, BN14 7PJ. Hope to see you there!

Michael Gove's education policies are "an irrelevance and a monumental waste of money"

Guardian, Peter Wilby, 7th December 2012

Michael Gove is hailed as a rising star. He does not deserve it

In a government of disasters, unfulfilled promises and U-turns, one minister continues unflustered, unturned and largely uncriticised. While NHS reforms have stuttered – and their architect, Andrew Lansley, has been jettisoned from the health department – and doubts grow about the practicality, equity and affordability of Iain Duncan Smith's universal credit, Michael Gove's plans for education steam majestically ahead. The Daily Mail has hailed the education secretary as "the cabinet's greatest success story". In his autumn statement, the chancellor, as well as giving the go-ahead for the abolition of teachers' national pay scales, praised Gove for cutting 1,000 jobs at the Department for Education – a quarter of its workforce – and handed him an extra £1bn, mainly to fund new academies and free schools, the standard-bearers of his policies. Downing Street briefings are clear: Gove is top of the class. When Tory MPs discuss future leaders, he is mentioned as often as Boris Johnson.

Gove's policies for schools are almost as far-reaching as Lansley's for health, amounting to a Whitehall takeover of a service that, for well over a century, has been run by local authorities. Private providers, accountable through contracts with Gove and his successors, will play a central role. The curriculum and examinations will be transformed, restoring the traditional academic diet that characterised the 1950s grammar schools. Such grand schemes are necessary, Gove argues, because English schools are failing and must be released from falling standards, obstructive unions, "trendy" teachers and the "dead hand" of local authorit. Yet there is scant evidence that English schools face any kind of crisis or that Gove's policies will deliver improvements. stellar rating rests on little more than a journalist's talent for telling a good story (he was a news editor and columnist for the Times) and some distinctly dodgy statistics.

Continue reading...

Welcome one and all - as long as you're the right sort

TES, 7th December 2012

Five free schools found to be in breach of admissions code

"Every child should have the choice to go to an excellent local school," education secretary Michael Gove said this autumn, as he announced a second wave of free schools.

But only a year after the first batch of free schools opened, it has emerged that not every child is getting that choice. Five of the 24 free schools that opened in 2011 have already been found to have been in breach of the School Admissions Code.

The embarrassment for the free school movement follows the revelation last week that the number of objections to schools' admissions policies submitted to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) in 2011-12 was up by almost a quarter on the previous year.

Chief adjudicator Elizabeth Passmore criticised school sixth forms for having admissions policies that favoured current students above applicants from other schools.

Dr Passmore also warned that local authorities are concerned that it may prove difficult to create extra secondary-school places if academies - which are responsible for their own admissions - do not want to expand.

Of the five free schools found to be in breach of the code, the Maharishi Free School in Lancashire, where pupils are expected to learn transcendental meditation (TM), was censured for wrongly prioritising places for pupils who had attended specified fee-paying schools that use meditation. The school also breached the code by implying that at least one of each pupil's parents should learn TM.

Another of the free schools, the Priors School in Warwickshire, was criticised last month for claiming that places for children with a special educational needs statement were "dependent on the school having sufficient resources available". The code specifies that children with a statement naming the school must be given a place.

Alison Ryan, policy adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said there was a risk of widespread "ignorance" among free schools about their responsibilities. "There could be more schools that are flouting the code, but are not being complained about," she said.

"There is also concern there could be deliberate flouting. Governors should know the admissions code and schools should follow it."

Langley Hall Primary Academy in Berkshire was found to have wrongly given priority to children who attended a fee-paying nursery on site, while Barnfield Moorlands Free School in Luton was censured for late publication of its admissions policy.

The other free school that breached the code was the West London Free School set up by journalist Toby Young. The school allocates 10 per cent of places by musical aptitude but had failed to tell parents they would get the results before the general admissions deadline. It also breached the code by asking for a copy of applicants' birth certificates before they were offered a place.

Margaret Tulloch, secretary of the Comprehensive Future campaign for fair admissions, said: "The schools are all supposed to abide by the admissions code, but it seems that the only way breaches come to light are when people go to the trouble of complaining."

In her first annual report as chief adjudicator, Dr Passmore revealed the number of objections to schools' admissions arrangements for 2011-12 was 156, up from 127 the previous year.

She also criticised the "unacceptable" failure by schools and local authorities to publish their admissions policies online by 1 May. Of 50 websites the OSA checked, only 14 had complied.

BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION

24 free schools opened in 2011

5 have breached the School Admissions Code

Overall objections to school admissions policies

127: 2010-11

156: 2011-12.

There is no "academy effect"

Local Schools Network, 6th December 2012

There is no “academy effect” – Henry Stewart’s research upheld by academics

Labour’s academy programme has been praised by the present Government who claim that academy status raised school performance especially when academies were sponsored by chains. This alleged rise in results is used to justify academy conversion even to the extent of forcing schools to become academies if the Government judges them to be “failing”. But research into academies set up under Labour by academics from Leeds and Manchester Universities found:

1 Academies rely heavily on “equivalent” exams (ie non-GCSE exams which are given GCSE equivalence).

2 Disadvantaged pupils do no better in academies than in non-academy schools.

3 Academies are not improving faster than non-academies with similar characteristics.

4 Some of them were on an upward trend before becoming academies.

5 1 out of 7 of Labour academies falls below the “floor target”, the benchmark used by the Government to claim that a school is “failing” in terms of academic attainment. The comparative figure for all maintained secondary schools is 1 out of 34.

6 It’s a myth that most Labour academies replaced low achieving schools in disadvantaged areas. Around a third do not fit that description in terms of pupil composition, and about a half have intakes with a higher attainment level than in the predecessor school the year before closure.

7 On average, academy pupils are only half as likely to achieve the Government’s expected number of EBacc subjects (GCSE A*-C in English, Maths, two sciences, History or Geography, and a foreign language). In a quarter of academies not one pupil reached this standard.

8 Attainment data for academy chains is similar to academies in general.

9 Academies in chains make higher use of GCSE “equivalent” exams than other academies and much higher use than in other maintained secondary schools.

10 Disadvantaged pupils in academies sponsored by chains do better on the 5A*-C (including Maths and English, GCSEs only) measure than in other academies but below the national average for maintained, non-academy secondary schools.

11 Results vary considerably among academies run by chains so it is difficult to believe that such sponsorship helps increase performance.

There is no “academy effect”, the researchers found. Instead, they confirmed the findings of PriceWaterhouseCooper 2008 that raising school improvement was ‘a more complex and varied process of change’ (see faqs above).

The report concluded: “Overall, this research provides detailed evidence to reinforce findings contained in the recent National Audit Office report (2010) that there is no academy effect but considerable variability, and that disadvantaged young people generally do no better in academies than in other schools”.

Worthing High is an academy

Worthing High converted to an academy on 1st December. We wish the school well.

Our group will be watching very carefully for evidence of the benefits of academy status for the students and staff at the school.

Thank you to everyone who has supported and got involved in our campaign. Our next public meeting will be a festive one, in a pub. Date and venue tbc. Cheers!