Michael Gove meeting now on 21st October

We are so sorry that we have had to postpone our meeting with Michael Gove, (Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools & Families), once again.   Michael’s huge commitments mean that he cannot make the Tuesday 23rd June meeting, which is therefore cancelled.

Michael has given us a new date, which is Wednesday 21st October, at 6.00pm, at the House of Commons.   The room number will be confirmed nearer the time.

Education officials are at it too – expenses, that is!

Not all the attention on expenses has been limited to MPs.   There have been some examples of “luxury” expenses claimed by local government officials and by officials of quangos.

Now Nick Seaton, who leads the Campaign for Real Education, and is himself a member of CES, has written this piece on Conservative Home.

Nick says the behaviour of quango and council chiefs shows their disregard for the taxpayer.

He highlights the £100 million claimed by universities for lost students who they fail to recruit or who drop out, and the astonishing case of Sussex Downs College whose £8 million refurbishment was turned into a proposed £175 million rebuild when Learning and Skills Council officials told the College Principal it was a “once in a lifetime opportunity”.

National newspapers have reported claims by council chief executives for chauffeurs, food and travel.   The chief executive of the Teacher Training and Development Agency spent £3,000 on a leadership conference in Rome, and flew to Melbourne for an education conference, spending £5,820 on business class flights without his other expenses whilst there.   Nice work if you can get it!

And there’s more in Nick’s article.

 

 

 

CES Meeting – Monday 11 May

REMINDER OF TOMORROW’S MEETING

Monday 11 May

6.30pm 

House of Commons, Committee Room;  please ask at reception for Room number.  

Speaker:  Maria Miller MP, Shadow Minister for the Family in the Children, Schools and Families front bench team,

who will be speaking on Early Years.

 

New Date for Michael Gove meeting

We very much regret that Michael Gove has been forced to postpone his visit to CES.  

The Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools & Families was to speak to us at the House of Commons on Tuesday 28th April.   Unfortunately he now has other shadow ministerial duties which take him away from the Commons on that evening, so our meeting has been cancelled.

Michael has kindly given us a new date.   He will now be with us on Tuesday 23rd June, also at the House of Commons, at 6.00pm.   His subject will be “Making Opportunities More Equal”.

_____________________________________

Just a reminder that there will be another meeting before that.   On Monday 11th May our speaker will be Maria Miller MP, Shadow Minister for the Family.    The meeting will be at the House of Commons at 6.30pm.

The CES Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday 27th June at CCHQ, 30 Millbank, London SW1.   It will start at 11.00am, and will be followed at 11.30 by a speaker meeting.   John Bercow MP  will speak on his review of SEN, and the Royal Masonic Trust will tell us about their work in helping people to access education.

Michael Gove says government’s children’s department made catastrophic mistake on number of pupils

David Willetts has already slammed the government over the college funding shortfall.  

 Now Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, has joined in, demanding immediate clarification, and saying that schools are extremely concerned as this will affect their Sixth Forms’ budgets.   He said that Ed Balls’s department had made “a catastrophic mistake” on the numbers of pupils staying in education after the age of 16.

Read more of what Michael Gove has to  say here:

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/04/Gove_demands_answers_over_college_funding_shortfall.aspx

David Willetts slams the government over college funding crisis

David Willetts has criticised the Government for not taking responsibility for the college funding crisis, following the resignation of the Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

Mark Haysom has stepped down following problems with the LSC’s further education capital programme.

David, the Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, highlighted that ministers must have been aware of the funding problems.   To read more of what he has to say, follow this link:

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/03/Labour_slammed_after_college_funding_fiasco.aspx

Church schools lead the Primary Schools league table

League tables for Primary Schools are published today showing the results of the curriculum tests for children aged 11 taken last summer.   The tests examine progress in English, Maths and Science, and the measure looked for is a Level 4 pass as that is the standard believed necessary to do well at secondary school.

The bad news is that half of primary pupils fail to attain the basics in English and Maths before they leave to go on to their secondary schools.   There is further evidence that boys do worse than girls.  In two schools not a single child achieved Level 4 in both English and Maths.

The interesting list is the top 15 primary schools in the country.   There are 7 Church of England schools, 3 Roman Catholic schools, 1 Jewish school, and 4 others.   So, of those 15 schools, 11 are church schools, (I dislike the term faith schools).   Why?  

Well, it has a lot to do with parental support and discipline.   Church schools generally run a tighter ship and the pupils are expected to behave.   The head of a tertiary college told me that, when students enter at 16, the ones that really run amok are the ones from a catholic girls’ school who are enjoying their first taste of freedom!   The primary school pupils will have had it made clear to them from the start that there are boundaries, and that rules are necessary in any institution.   They will have been guided into an atmosphere of learning, and disrespect for teachers will not have been tolerated.    Equally, because of the pressure to obtain a place at a church school, the parents will be very keen to give their support, and not just in terms of running the summer fete, but in making sure their children do work and do take advantage of sport and extra curricular activities.   They certainly want to avoid their child being excluded!

Speaking about the results, Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools Minister, said:-  “It’s vital that children get a good grasp of English and Maths by the end of primary school.   Many of the problems with behaviour and discipline in secondary schools are made worse by the fact that many children have already fallen so far behind.”

How true.

Caveat  -  Because of last summer’s problems when the contractor ETS lost hundreds of test papers, schools had to award marks on the basis of internal assessments, but they are not permitted to be included in the league tables.   So the tables are not complete as the figures for some schools give only partial results, or nothing at all.

Were there good reasons for a high-achieving grammar school to be put in special measures?

Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education writes today about the OFSTED report on Stretford Grammar School, which has been put into special measures, the first grammar school to suffer this fate.    Nick’s piece is on Conservative Home, here, and tells us quite a bit about OFSTED’s findings, which seem to concentrate on those trendy new subjects, citizenship and PSHE, together with  music and drama (said to be excellent), and PE.   Not much about maths, languages, the sciences, etc.

There are a good few comments on Nick’s piece, and at least one of them has taken the trouble to call up the OFSTED report and read it.   That commentator says that there is serious criticism of leadership and governance, of career development, and that both the headteacher and an assistant headteacher are on long term sick leave.

So, two sides to this story.   Nevertheless, Nick makes good points in comparing how this grammar school, with its high level of success at GCSE, has been treated, and the treatment of nearby comprehensives with a GCSE record of 14% and 15% of five A* to C at GCSE.

What do you think?

Fraser Mitchell – we will miss him

We have learnt with great sadness of the death of Fraser Mitchell, our Vice President. Fraser had been having many health problems, with walking, with heart problems, and with his breathing which had been diagnosed as being the result of inhalation of asbestos.    He had remained very cheerful, although all the problems were getting worse.   He was still involved with most of his interests.   He had given up governorship of the Further Education College, but was still on the local Schools Forum, and was heavily involved with the Solihull Conservative Association and its premises. For the last few months he had been in constant pain.   He had renal failure, and a heart valve problem had been found.   He was taken to hospital a couple of weeks ago, and had been given emergency dialysis.   He had just started regular dialysis, and had begun a dialysis session last Thursday, when he went into a light coma.   He died on Friday 6th March.   His wife, Pamela, and their son and daughter were with him at the time. There is to be a small, private, family funeral next week, and then a thanksgiving service later. Fraser Mitchell will be very much missed by CES.   At every meeting someone said “how is Fraser?”.   He was one of the founders of the Conservative National Education Society after the demise of the old Education Advisory Committees.    He was largely responsible for drawing up the constitution under which we still operate.   He served a double stint as Secretary/Treasurer, and then a three year term as Chairman from 2002 to 2005.   Until ill-health intervened in the last few years, he was very much the public face of the Society. We send our sincere sympathy to Pamela and her family.

Douglas Carswell outlines his thoughts on a Conservative education policy

“This country has a serious problem:  a large number of people leave the education system functionally illiterate, lacking the basic skills they need to lead an ordinary contented life.”   This was how Douglas Carswell began his recent talk to the Conservative Education Society.

Douglas Carswell is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Harwich, is a member of the Education Select Committee, and recently co-authored a book entitled “The Plan:  Twelve Months to Renew Britain”.   The book includes his views on education policy, and what he thinks a new Conservative government must do to improve the system.

Enlarging on his theme, Douglas said that the country is in this situation despite the millions of pounds poured into the education system.   For example:  Bishop’s Park College, in his constituency, cost £16m and is the third worst school in the country.

He believed that it should not be the job of government to work out what the best system of education is; governments have tried to do this many times before and it has not worked.   For example:  educationalists are currently trumpeting synthetic phonics, because it happens to be fashionable at the moment.   Public policy should be self-designing  -  best practice should spread itself.

We need to give power to the consumers of the public services.   Control needs to be given to the unit on the ground, the school or college.   But if the government cedes control to schools, it would also need to put mechanisms in place for parents to choose between them.    He did not believe in a voucher system because it would need a central agency to run it, and when unaccountable quangos are appointed to administer anything, more often than not they have a centre-left bias.

Douglas Carswell’s proposal is to put two Bills through Parliament:  the School Freedom Act, which would allow governors to vote by a majority for free school status, and would then free them from the National Curriculum and the schools would be run as the governors wish;  a second Act which would give every parent in the country the legal right to receive their share of the money allocated to the education system.

 Douglas said that four reasons are usually quoted as to why parents should not be given this choice.

1.   The public are not clever enough to decide, to make a properly informed decision.

Answer  -  The market regulates itself;  there only needs to be a minority of people who are experts in the system.

2.   The postcode lottery.

Answer  -  There is already a postcode lottery;   a free system would improve people’s ability to choose.

3.   Inequity.

Answer  -  There is already inequity;  the market is good at ensuring standards, government isn’t.

4.    Government involvement is needed to ensure high standards.

Answer  -  Why?   Professional institutions control other types of qualifications, for example vets and architects, and maintain high standards. 

Douglas Carswell said school examinations needed reform, with an end to the state-run system.   Public examinations for schools were formerly successfully controlled by the universities.   Under the current regime, there is competition amongst the examination boards, but the league table culture stops bad boards from going under as schools choose easier exams to improve their position in the league tables.   International Baccalaureates are attractive and regarded as worth having, so people are willing to pay for them.

Douglas ended by saying that claims are always made that there would not be enough places in good schools for a system of choice to work, but, if there were unsatisfied demand, new schools would open.

We would welcome comments on the above, which we will pass on to Douglas Carswell.