Michael Gove to speak at CES meeting

Michael Gove MP

Shadow Secretary of State for Education

will speak to a meeting of the Conservative Education Society

on Wednesday 21 October 2009 at 6.00pm

at the House of Commons, (Room to be confirmed nearer the date)

We are delighted that Michael will be speaking to us following his excellent speech at the Party Conference

Fringe Meeting at Conservative Conference

Fringe Meeting at Conservative Party Conference, Manchester

Tuesday 6 October 2009  -  5.30pm to 7.00pm

In Exchange Room 3 at Manchester Central Convention Complex

“Let’s Make Education Better”

Dr John Dunford,

General Secretary of the Association of School & College Leaders, will speak on

“Exam results getting better  -  how can we tell?”

Refreshments Provided

~~~~~~~~~

Preparations for a Conservative Education Bill

News stories published this week say that the party has begun drafting its first education bill ready for a rapid move by a new Conservative Government.

It will include, it is alleged, plans to fast-track new academies, to lessen the restrictions of the national curriculum and to do away with national pay deals for teachers.   A team of lawyers is said to be scrutinising recent Labour bills, and dafting a new bill which will set out the first parts of a reform programme for the education system.

While some in the national press will slam this as taking the election result for granted, it must surely be good management to be well prepared for what seems more and more likely to be a Conservative Government after the General Election.   It seems the education front bench team is trying to do as much as possible before the election so that they don’t have to spend a year working on these things once in government, but can proceed to legislation without undue delay.

The Party’s policy includes:-

making it easier for parents, charities and businesses to set up academies, including enabling them to use buildings such as former banks and offices;

Reforms to scale back the national curriculum and to move Sats from primary to secondary schools.

The scrapping of the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency and other quangos.

Allowing all schools to have freedom to set pay and conditions for teachers as academies do now, and making it easier for headteachers to dismiss under-performing staff.

The lawyers helping the Party have been asked to convert the policy into a bill and to identify existing legislation which will need to be scrapped to achieve it.

The Party is also drawing up guidance to schools on policies which will be withdrawn at once by a new Conservative Government.   An independent organization has already been set up to advise and help potential education providers on setting up “new academies”.

Officers re-elected at AGM

At the Annual General Meeting of CES held this summer, Chairman, Robert Pettigrew, was re-elected for a second year.   Vice-Chairman, James McMurray, and Hon Treasurer, Chris Everest, were also re-elected.

Reform Please – by John Redwood

John Redwood MP has kindly allowed us to reproduce this piece which he published on his own website yesterday.   As ever, he comes up with some views that are worthy of further thought and comment.

“Let me upset all those of you who think the state should carry on delivering services badly so we can all carry on grumbling about it but never fix it. As some of you are wedded to your poor badly run congested rip off state roads, how wedded are you to your state controlled LEA driven comprehensive schools?

I want everyone to go to an independent school. Of course I want free education for all, as we have today. I also want to end the huge divide between public school and state school. Money can buy rich families a better education. The way to tackle that is not to prevent all but the very very rich buying their way out of the state system, but to improve the free schools.

I would say to all state schools that they are to be freed of national and local government control. They could become educational charities, not for profit companies, teacher co-ops, ordinary companies or whatever they like. They would take over the buildings and equipment, and run them as they saw fit, as long as they carried on providing school places.They would only need state permission and face loss of their property or have to give the state its money back if they wanted to move out of education and do something else. Schools would rise, flourish and expand based on their own energies and success, attracting pupils as they showed how good they were. Bad schools which failed to attract pupils would change their management or close.

All pupils of school age would receive a grant to pay the fees, up to agreed maxima. This would be enough to guarantee a place at a good school. Some schools say they value the services the Local Education Authority provide. In that case they could buy them from the LEA out of the enhanced per pupil money they received. All the money would go through the school, instead of being routed via the LEA. That way they will buy the bureaucracy and back up they want, not be forced to take the bureaucracy Councils think they must have.”

Reproduced courtesy of John Redwood MP.

Read the original piece and more articles on John’s website here

 

“Large minority” of state schools not entering students for “traditional” academic subjects

Interesting to learn from several media sources yesterday that “traditional” academic subjects are not being offered at A-level at a “large minority” of state schools.

Obviously the large raft of 11-16 schools are unlikely to be doing A-levels at all, except perhaps a few gifted and talented students who took GCSE early and have already moved on to A-levels.   But no doubt the compilers of the figures only considered schools taking pupils post 16.    

The 2007 data forms the subject of the analysis as it is the latest year available.

One in seven schools, (264) did not enter any pupils for geography and a similar number did not enter anyone for physics.   10% of comprehensives did not enter any pupils for chemistry, 7% for biology, and 6% for maths.   8% did not enter anyone for history.

Now probably geography is not a top choice, but it seems strange that there are not more budding geographers.   The sciences and maths seem even more strange.

Since these figures are of schools rather than students one is forced to the conclusion that there are a significant number of schools where the teachers do not consider they have any pupils capable of passing an A-level in these traditional subjects.   If that is so, it is shaming since it implies that, although comprehensive in structure, there is no mix of student ability.   It also means that, having concluded they do not have suitable students, the schools are frightened to enter for these subjects since poor results would affect the league tables.

As a result, so the media sources claim, students are entered for “soft” subjects, which are listed as media studies, law and healthcare.   I suggest that law should not be in this list.   Clearly A-level law is not professional law or degree standard law, but neither would it be a “soft” subject.

Modern day Biggles flies into tree

Good friend of CES, Vince Hagedorn, ended up in hospital in Scotland after an amazing escape when his aeroplane crash landed.

Vince who spearheaded the groundbreaking mentoring scheme at Chelmsford Prison, which resulted in men who had never learnt to read and write being able to write to their families and to be trained to mentor others, came to one of the CES Saturday meetings to talk about the project, and has since taken a great interest in what the Society is doing.

Vince, who is a keen pilot, was on a trip to Scotland in his light aircraft last week when he was forced to crash land in a tree on a Dundee golf course.   One of his other loves is the Biggles adventure stories, and he drew on the plot of one of the books as he remembered how his fictional hero had run low on fuel in bad weather, and had managed to land safely.

Vince had planned to land at RAF Kinloss, but had to divert after encountering changeable weather conditions along his route.  He thinks several altitude changes he had to make may have increased the fuel consumption.  He tried to put down at Dundee Airport but that was not successful, so he found himself left with no choice but to make his first emergency landing at the golf course.  It was then he remembered the Biggles story, where our hero ends up with no height over a wood.  He flies into the wood, and as he does so he pulls the stick back to “pancake” on to the trees, so that’s what Vince did too.

Police, fire service and ambulances all rushed to the scene, and firefighters put a 44ft ladder against the tree to reach the stranded pilot, who was taken to hospital for a medical assessment but found to have only a minor head injury.

Tayside Fire and Rescue said the pilot was very lucky.  When they reached him he was conscious, able to speak and helped as much as he could with his own rescue.   Golfers on the course praised him for ensuring the aeroplane did not come down on nearby houses and roads.

Vince told TG:  “I feel I’m very lucky to walk away, but if I had an aeroplane, I’d be up there again tomorrow.”   He went on, “I know, I know, you all think I’d do anything for publicity!”

Lower entry standards might destroy whole university system

Over the last few days the question of standards for university entry has hit the headlines again.

Now Dr Andrew Cunningham, who is an English teacher and the former editor of “Conference & Common Room”, the magazine of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, has said that lower entry standards might destroy the whole university system. 

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, here, he says that the government’s new plans could mean that discrimination becomes embedded in the entire process.   Lord Mandelson wants students from poorer backgrounds to gain places on popular courses with much lower grades than candidates from high-performing schools. In his latest vision of access for all, disadvantaged applicants could be given a two-grade head-start.

But Dr Cunningham maintains that the route to a fair system of entry for higher education is to raise academic standards in all schools, including “bog-standard” comprehensives.   He says it is a crime that after a decade of Labour prioritising education, so many teenagers still lack essential skills in English, maths and science – let alone are capable of achieving the all-round excellence required for university courses.   He believes the government, instead of playing party politics and pandering to its core vote with phoney schemes like these, should be doing its utmost to ensure school standards are raised across the board.  Then the university system truly would be open to all.

The OU and its associate lecturers

The Times Higher Education Supplement recently published an article by Derek Rowntree, the former Professor of  Education Development at the Open University, on the methods by which that institution has achieved its success. Expert academics and first class course materials naturally feature strongly in his analysis. But the main key to the O.U.’s record in educational provision lies, in his view, in its network of part-time tutors who teach its courses, mark its students’ assignments and are available by telephone, e-mail and via the web to guide each group of students through the courses they have chosen. There is far more contact and positive feedback to students than in conventional universities. This innovation, he believes, “is crucial to its success”: other universities should consider recruiting part-time tutors as “a cost-effective means of providing” personalised contact.

Current and former Open University tutors or associate lecturers as they are now known will recognise the nature of this panegyric all too well. For the truth is that they have provided and do provide over-worked and under-paid teachers to this institution. They represent a kind of academic proletariat whose enthusiasm for teaching wanes quite rapidly as they come to understand the implications of submission deadlines, the propensity of students (most of whom are admirably motivated) to seek contact at inappropriate times and a growing willingness to challenge marks that the student considers to have been far too low.   The introduction of electronic marking on a widening range of courses has doubled the time it takes to mark assignments without any compensating financial reward.

There are important questions that Conservatives should be asking about the future of the Open University and of the whole higher education sector. Is it really of ‘university’ standing in the traditional sense? Would it and many of the other post-1992 universities not be more appropriately part of a college sector closely linked to further education? If its methods are as admirable as Derek Rowntree supposes, should they be adopted by other institutions outside higher education proper? Does the country really want to send 50 per cent of its 18-year olds into higher education when a very large proportion of them are not suited to academic education and would profit more by entry into the world of work? The questions are there and will inevitably be asked in private. They should be addressed more widely.

                                                                        Icarus 

(The author is an academic who has taught in ten U.K. universities including the O.U.)  

Home education – Mark Field’s view

CES members have shown an interest in home education.   Indeed, we have home educators amongst our members.   When the big brother thought police start on about parents having a legal duty to send their children to school, they need to be reminded that, at least as the law stands now, they do not.   Their legal duty is to ensure their children receive a suitable education, and that can be by home education if they wish.

Home educators work hard to ensure that their children receive as rounded an education as possible.   Sometimes they are able to provide far more than a hard pressed school can.

Now Mark Field, MP for Cities of London & Westminster, has written this piece for Conservative Home.   (thanks to Conservative Home for this) 

“Home education – the government casts aside another liberty

“Home educators’ fears came true yesterday when the government accepted the
findings of the Badman report which recommended that they register annually and
demonstrate to local authorities that they are providing a suitable education.
For anyone unfamiliar with home education, these are superficially reasonable
demands. But home educators I have spoken to believe that current anxiety over
child welfare failings is being manipulated by a government obsessed with
monitoring and targets to interfere in a sphere over which they currently have
little influence. Frustrated by review after review, the majority of home
educators feel that the government is simply incapable of trusting parents to do
the best for their children.
“Home educators will now have to conform to the state’s ideas of what constitutes
a ‘suitable’ education and jump through hoops to reassure local authorities that
they have their children’s best interests at heart. Understandably, home
educators are reeling at the prospect of justifying themselves to a state that
so often fails both in education and welfare.
“As Conservatives, we should be vigorously defending the rights of parents to
reject the state’s ideas on education and the constant testing, restrictive
curriculum and poor results that often stem from them. Home educators are
self-reliant, pursue excellence, cost the taxpayer next to nothing, believe the
parent, not the state knows best and firmly reject the idea that government has
the answers to everything. A home education can also be an excellent option for
those who cannot afford private schooling but have no confidence in a failing
local state school.
“The government must instead guard the sacred right of parents to educate their
children whilst vigorously tightening the current system when it comes to child
welfare. After that, it should look at its own ability to fulfil the Every Child
Matters objectives rather than continue to pursue those who put their faith,
time and passion into home education.
“To read the speech I made on this issue in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, click
here. This speech has attracted breathtaking support from home educators
nationwide and I have received emails from many non-Tories who have said they
feel so passionately about it that they will be voting Conservative at the next
election. As one mother said,
‘I was delighted you stuck up for home education in the face of all the lefties
who – as we all know – merely want to ensure that we are all grow up Marxists!
My father was a teacher for many years and can talk at length about the way the
left systematically destroyed education.’”