SecEd

The ONLY weekly voice for secondary education

Inside this issue

Teachers gear up for the education election

SecEd conference puts the spotlight on Diplomas

We report from the Fifth National Delivering Diplomas Conference, hosted last week

by Delivering Diplomas, SecEd’s

sister title

Pages 3 and 6

The future of ICT

Don’t miss out Managing ICT special this week, focusing on what the future holds for ICT in education

Pages 10 to 13

SecEd competition

Your last chance to win ICT equipment worth more than £5,000 in SecEd’s latest giveaway

Page 16

The holidays are upon us – at last!

It has been a long term, but we’re almost there! This is the final SecEd before Easter and we would like to thank our readers for all their support. Have a great break and we’ll be back on April 15. If you do want to keep up-to-date, then visit www. sec-ed.co.uk or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ SecEd_Education

by Chris Parr

Education has already established itself as one of the key battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election. Today, SecEd officially launches

its Election Watch coverage, which in the coming weeks will bring you all of the key secondary education debates and discussions from the three major political parties. The Labour Party’s one-to-one

tuition pledge, The Tories’ Swedish schools model, and the Liberal Democrats’ stripped down national curriculum are just three of the policy announcements that have grabbed the national headlines on a regular basis in recent weeks, as ministers and shadow ministers hit the campaign trail in earnest. In addition to our news cov-

erage, we have also collected a number of key questions from you, our readers, which we have taken to the top education spokesmen for each of the major parties. In the next issue of SecEd (April

15), we will publish their answers in detail, but today we can exclu- sively reveal some of the headline responses. Peggy Farrington is headteacher

at Hanham High School near Bristol, which falls under the jurisdiction of South Gloucestershire Council. On a per-pupil basis, it is the second worst funded authority in England. She wants to know how this

issue would be tackled following the election. Michael Gove, the Tory shad-

ow education secretary, told us: “The per-pupil funding formula for schools is impenetrable – it operates

according to formulae kept secret by the Department for Children, Schools and Families – so it is impossible to know precisely how schools are funded. The complexity makes the waste worse and under- mines accountability – nobody knows who is responsible for how much money. This must change. “Because the need to improve

standards is most pressing in poorer areas we would give parents from poorer backgrounds a key advan- tage. The amount the state would pay for a poorer child would be increased – a ‘pupil premium’ – so that schools will work particularly hard to attract them.” In another question, Dr Bernard

Trafford, head at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle, wanted to know if the new government will “listen to the views of the profession, rather than pandering to the Daily Mail- reader kind of mentality, and get rid of league tables and SATs?”

International School Award

44 OBC British Council copy 1.in44 44

Ed Balls, secretary of state for

children, schools and families, answered: “If you read most of the things written about me in the Daily Mail, it would be difficult to believe I was pandering to them. “On testing, I listened to what

heads told me about key stage 3 SATs and how they believed more flexibility in the curriculum would help them to teach pupils when I made the decision to scrap them. “Key stage 2 SATs are differ-

ent, because while parents look at GCSE results as a measure of per- formance for secondary schools, the only externally validated measure of performance for children in pri- mary schools is currently key stage 2 tests. I’ve always said that the cur- rent system is not set in stone. He added: “The real issue here is

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Developing and celebrating the international dimension

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having a smarter and fairer account- ability system. The new School Report Card will ensure that we properly recognise all of the great

things that schools do. I hope it will shift the focus away from the very narrow view of performance based on the attainment of the average pupil – which is what the current league tables do – by looking at a broader picture.” Paula Roe, English teacher at

Redhill School in Stourbridge and a member of the NASUWT union’s national executive, had concerns about the teacher pension scheme. She claims that teachers feel their

pension provision is being threat- ened while MPs continue to receive a more generous package, and bank- ers receive bonuses “for failure”. David Laws, the Liberal

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Democrat education spokesman, said: “We do believe that some of the highest earners at the top of the public sector have received very substantial pension pay-offs which are very difficult to justify in the present economic climate. That includes MPs and we have

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UK news n Independent thinking n NQT diary n Managing ICT n CPD page n Union address n At the chalkface

Issue 244 • March 25 2010 Price £1.00

www.sec-ed.com

stated that our own scheme is first to be reviewed. “If elected, we would imme-

diately establish an independent commission, along the lines of the Turner commission which looked into state pensions issues a few years ago, to examine the long-term future of public sector pensions, and to make recommendations. “We would also reform the

existing rigid and bureaucratic National Pay and Conditions rules, to give schools and colleges more freedom, including offering finan- cial and other incentives to attract teachers – particularly in shortage subjects and in schools with the most challenging catchments.” We put all of these questions,

and many more, to Mr Balls, Mr Gove and Mr Laws. You can read their answers in detail in the next edition of SecEd, which is pub- lished on Thursday, April 15, fol- lowing the Easter break.

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