Author: Richard Adams

Ministers rejected school reopening plan recommended by Sage experts

Richard Adams

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School leaders said the government’s publication of scientific advice failed to make a convincing case for the early reopening of schools in England, as the government’s chief scientific adviser said an effective testing and tracking system was necessary for more pupils to return to the classroom.

After pressure from teaching unions, the government published 12 documents presented to its Sage committee of scientific advisers looking at the effect of coronavirus on children and how schools could safely reopen to more pupils.

But union leaders said they found little in the documents to reassure staff or parents that reopening primary schools in England by Boris Johnson’s stated target of 1 June was a safe decision.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union said the evidence was “inconclusive”, while Geoff Barton, leader of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the government “must be able to show very clearly that its five tests have been met before it gives the green light to any wider opening from 1 June”.

Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said on Friday that Sage had been very clear that an effective “test, track and trace” mechanism was necessary in the event of schools reopening, and the sooner in place the better in order to make changes to England’s lockdown.

Roach said it remained his union’s view that no schools should reopen more widely until it was safe to do so, and that the publication of the Sage documents would only add to the uncertainty.

“[Sage] states that large-scale community testing is needed to better understand and monitor the prevalence of and susceptibility to Covid-19 in children, yet the government’s plans for the reopening of schools from 1 June are premature whilst a widespread community testing system will not be in place,” Roach said.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said the Sage papers showed that “the phased, cautious return of a limited number of pupils to classrooms has been a carefully considered decision based on the best scientific and medical advice”.

“My department continues to engage with the school, college and nursery sectors and I am enormously grateful for all the planning and preparation they are doing, alongside local authorities and academy trusts,” Williamson said.

A number of local authorities have said their maintained primary schools will not be ready to reopen, while others – including Staffordshire county council, which covers Williamson’s own constituency – have left the decision up to individual schools.

The papers revealed that a low-risk scenario where pupils in England would attend school on alternating weeks was presented to the government as the most likely way to gain popular support, before ministers instead settled on their plan for a widespread reopening on 1 June.

One paper prepared by Sage’s modelling and behavioural subgroups on 16 April warned that, as a result of school closures, some children would have “experienced a shock to their education which will persist and affect their educational and work outcomes for the rest of their lives”.

A period of home learning, the experts added, would reinforce existing inequalities between children, while months off school would mean emerging learning difficulties were missed.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/22/ministers-rejected-school-reopening-plan-recommended-by-sage-experts

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Behaviour battleground: isolation booths divide opinion among teachers

Richard Adams

By: Richard Adams.

From a ‘lose the booths’ conference to ‘warm-strict’ policies, teachers are divided on how to tackle unruly pupils

The use of isolation booths in state schools has become one of the most contentious issues among teachers in England, even if public concern over pupil behaviour has faded from the headlines since the 1990s.

Social media has become an almost nightly battleground between teachers with conflicting views on behaviour management and the use of internal exclusion or removal rooms within schools, where disruptive pupils are taken out of class and sent to study elsewhere under supervision.

What the debate reveals is that the more than 20,000 state schools in England have wide variations in discipline and behaviour policies.

In some cases pupils are sat at booths, similar to cubicles used in call centres, with a desk and three high sides. It is the use of this furniture that has become controversial within the profession, to the extent that a “lose the booths” conference for teachers is being held this weekend in Leeds.

“Learn how to remove the booths from your school and still have great outcomes,” says the publicity for Lose The Booths Live!, which promises a conference with “children’s rights at heart”.

But in practice the use of “consequence rooms” or removal spaces, is just one potential tool in a school’s armoury. While some regularly use internal exclusion as a formal policy for misbehaviour, others reject it – highlighting the autonomy enjoyed by headteachers.

At one end of the scale are schools practising “warm-strict” behaviour management, which their critics deride as “zero tolerance”, with clear rules and sanctions. Those rules can be at a level of detail some parents may find disturbing: not only the lengths of skirts or type of shoes but also maintaining complete silence when moving between classes, and sanctions for what some regard as petty issues such as failure to bring a pen to class, or not keeping eye contact with the teacher during lessons.

But the defenders of this approach, including schools such as the Magna Academy in Dorset or King Solomon Academy in Paddington, say that a well-structured behaviour policy is liberating for teachers. By cutting out the background buzz of what the former Ofsted chief inspector Michael Wilshaw called “low-level, persistent disruptive behaviour”, the whole class can then concentrate on learning.

One maths teacher who moved to a recently opened “warm-strict” free school said he was astonished by the difference a successful behaviour policy can make.

“I’d worked at four schools before, but this is the first time I’ve been actually able to teach for the whole lesson. At the other schools pupils would arrive making noise and jostling, and take five or 10 minutes just to settle down. Here there’s none of that,” he said.

But on social media teachers regularly spar over the need for such detailed rules and sanctions for what in other, more relaxed schools would be minor infringements.

There’s little in the way of research to say which approach is more effective in terms of pupil behaviour or academic attainment – although supporters point to the strong GCSE results produced by the Michaela Free School in Brent, one of the flagships of the stricter approach.

While it is impossible to say if pupil behaviour has improved in recent years, statistics show that the rates of expulsions from state schools are well below their peaks of the 1990s. In the 1993-94 school year, more than 12,000 pupils were permanently excluded. By 2017-18, the latest year for which we have figures, just 7,900 were permanently excluded, although the proportion of pupils being excluded has been rising slowly over the previous five years.

But many teachers remain unconvinced by the stricter approach. The most recent annual conference of the National Education Union held a hostile debate over zero tolerance policies, with one delegate labelling the use of booths as “inhuman”, while others blamed budget cuts for the loss of school support staff.

But union surveys have also found that many teachers feel unsupported by their school’s management over tackling bad behaviour, with behaviour frequently cited as a key reason for leaving the profession.

The Conservatives went into the most recent general election vowing to improve school behaviour, seeing it as a vote winner. Its policies included giving school inspectors extra time to examine bullying and behaviour, while documents obtained by the Guardian before the election showed the government preparing to “back heads to use powers to promote good behaviour including sanctions and rewards” including the use of “reasonable force”.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/17/behaviour-battleground-isolation-booths-divide-opinion-among-teachers

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Surge in demand for schools leaves councils struggling to cope

Richard Adams

By: Richard Adams. 

Thousands of pupils in England denied place at their preferred secondary school

Councils across England are struggling to keep pace with rising numbers of applications for secondary school, leaving thousands of pupils without a place at any of their preferred schools.

More than 600,000 families across England and Wales were told on Friday which secondary school their children would go to in September – but in many areas there was disappointment, with shrinking proportions receiving their first choice.

According to some estimates, as many as one in four families did not get their first preference in England. Labour blamed the government policies that took the power to create new schools away from local authorities.

The problem appeared most acute in London, the south-east and other big cities such as Bristol and Birmingham, where the twin impacts of the post-2006 baby boom and population inflows have been most keenly felt.

Nick Gibb, the schools minister for England, said: “This government is determined to create more choice for parents when it comes to their children’s education and we have created 825,000 school places since 2010, and are on track to see that number rise to a million by 2020.”

But Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said: “In the years ahead, more and more children will miss out on a secondary school place unless we urgently provide new places across the country. The Tories have made it harder for councils to act on their legal obligation to provide new school places, with an inefficient free schools programme making it harder for them to create new places where they are needed.”

In Greater London, less than two-thirds of children received their first preference of school as the total number of applications rose again. This year 95,300 requests for places were received by the 33 London boroughs, compared with about 80,000 five years ago.

The number of families in London who failed to received a place at any of their named choices rose by 12%, with 7,250 either offered another school or unallocated.

Nickie Aiken, the leader of Westminster council and the London councils’ executive member for schools, said London’s boroughs had provided a preferred place for 92% of applicants. “It is vital that all children in London have access to a high-quality education, and London boroughs are working with their local schools to respond to increased demand across the capital,” she said. “We are also committed to working with central government to continue our good work in addressing school place pressures.”

Lambeth supplanted Hammersmith and Fulham as the hardest borough for parents to obtain their first choice, with just 55% doing so this year. Havering had the highest proportion of first-choice allocations with 77%, while rising demand for places in Newham caused a fall in the percentage of first choices being filled from 70% to 65%.

In the south-east, Essex county council reported a fall in the numbers gaining their first preference – to 84%, down from 88% two years ago. The fall was in spite of three new secondary schools opening in September.

A similar picture was seen in Birmingham, where the increasing number of children moving from primary to secondary school led to the proportion getting their first preference dipping below 70%. The number of those without any of their choices jumped by 40% to more than 850.

In Bristol, nearly 500 of the 5,000 families applying for a secondary school place didn’t receive any of their named choices and were allocated an alternative by the council, while only 72% of applicants received their first preference.

Outside the big cities, many local authorities could boast of first-choice allocations above 90%, including Devon, Cumbria, Somerset and the East Riding of Yorkshire, where the councils reported that 94% of families had received their first preference.

In Cardiff, the proportion receiving their first choice rose to 88%. That figure could rise if some families turn down places at community high schools in favour of faith schools.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/01/surge-in-demand-for-schools-leaves-councils-struggling-to-cope
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