NEWS FOCUS SecEd: On Your Side


A new low for the education minister Pete


Henshaw Editor SecEd


www.sec-ed.com


WHAT A thing to say to professional educators who have dedicated their lives to the young people of England – to tell them that they are the “enemies of promise”. This really is a new low for our secretary of state. He


has told a group of trained and committed professionals that they are “happy with failure”. It is such an unwarranted insult – an attack of this nature


really should be beneath an elected politician, never mind a cabinet minister. In his speech on academies last week (see In response,


below), Michael Gove accused those who are fighting the academisation process of being ideologues. He said they had prejudices and implied that they do not expect certain students, such as those in poverty or refugees, to succeed in their education. I think these comments verge on slander. Mr Gove is as much an ideologue as the people he


attacks. He is against a state-run education system and wants to open the door to business and market forces. But the difference is that Mr Gove knows much


less about education than many of these hard-working professionals, who have taken a measured decision to reject academisation because they do not believe it is right for their schools. Mr Gove on the other hand refuses to acknowledge that


there will be some schools – many schools – in the country for which being turned into an academy is not the right option. As the unions rightly point out, it has been more than a year and only 1,500 academies are open. More than 20,000 have opted not to convert. I am not against academies. A good school is a good


school, whatever you call it. But it is the professionals who make the school what it is and I remember Mr Gove promising the nation that his tenure as education minister would see a hands-off approach where powers are returned to the school leaders and teachers. But now, as with many other areas (national curriculum


and teacher standards) he is dictating and threatening the profession. There are so many highly successful schools which have not converted to academy status and do not want to. School leaders with years of experience have rejected the move. And what do they get. They get Mr Gove, after barely 18 months in post , labelling them “enemies”. It is disgusting.


Must do better...


LABOUR’S NEW education shadow minister Stephen Twigg chose an odd rallying cry when he addressed the North of England Education Conference last week. He called for schools to be run more like businesses,


with an extended school day. He also said that schools are run too much like factories, in that we teach pupils in “batches” based on their age and in separate “production lines”. He says students are too “rigidly separated”. He wants them taught in groups based on ability or interest, not on age. Some schools already do this to some extent, but either


way this is not a topic of conversation for a would-be education minister. Likewise, calling for schools to be run to business working hours is just daft. His logic is that it will prepare students for working life,


but he seems to forget that we are dealing with teenagers here. There is plenty of science to explain how their brains and bodies work at this precarious time of life and just why asking a 15-year-old to work eight or nine hour days is madness. And there are plenty of teachers who will explain to him just what kind of hell it would be trying to teach algebra to year 9 at 5pm on a Friday. This is not good enough Mr Twigg. It perplexes me


that at a time when deep cuts are damaging our education system and causing anger across a nation, you have chosen a very soft topic to tackle in a major speech such as this.SecEd


• Pete Henshaw is publisher and editor of SecEd. Email editor@sec-ed.co.uk or visit www.sec-ed.co.uk. Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SecEd_Education


The TA role


THERE SHOULD be a “fundamental rethink” in the way teaching assistants are used in schools, including ending the practice of asking them to concentrate on lower performing students or those with SEN. The claim comes from professors


at the Institute of Education (IoE) in London who have hit out at the way teaching assistants spend their time in the classroom. The three professors – Peter


Blatchford, Anthony Russell and Rob Webster – have released the findings of a five-year study which measured the impact teaching assistants had on 8,200 students. It found that students receiving


the most support from teaching assistants consistently made less progress than those who receive less support, partly because such pupils become separated from the teacher and the curriculum. They are now recommending


that teaching assistants should not routinely support lower attaining students or those with SEN. Prof Blatchford, who is a


professor in psychology and education, told SecEd that teaching assistants working with lower attaining students do not provide “additional” help – instead they are often seen as simply replacing the role of the teacher. He explained: “We surely need


to do more in schools than just contain certain pupils. The question to ask is what would the appropriate


Radical changes are needed in the way teaching assistants are deployed in the classroom according to a five-year study


which has involved more than 8,000 students. Daniel White reports


pedagogical input be for the pupil, and the balance of the teacher and the teaching assistant input. The teacher needs to have overall responsibility for all the pupils in the class, and this includes those with SEN. “The convenient separation of


pupils with SEN from teachers is not sustainable. We are calling for a fundamental rethink of the way teaching assistants are used because it lets down the most needy and disadvantaged pupils. “We use the idea of value added


to make the point that the teaching assistant should add value to the teacher’s input not replace them, which is unfortunately the system that often operates at the moment.” Prof Blatchford added that the


teaching assistant role is often more about task completion rather than learning. He also claimed that initial


teacher training should include how to work and manage teaching assistants, because currently teachers do not always get the


IN RESPONSE…


Education secretary Michael Gove this week sparked controversy after claiming that opponents of the academy conversion programme are “happy with failure”. Mr Gove said that those who


oppose the academy movement are the “enemies of promise” and said some local authorities are preventing students from achieving their potential by not embracing academy status.


Mr Gove: “Most local authorities are being co-operative and constructive. They recognise the benefits academies bring. Some, however, are being obstructive. They are putting the ideology of central control ahead of the interests of children. They are more concerned


with protecting old ways of working than helping the most disadvantaged children succeed in the future. Anyone who cares


about social justice must want us to defeat these ideologues and liberate the next generation from a history of failure. The same ideologues who are


happy with failure – the enemies of promise – also say you can’t get the same results in the inner cities as the leafy suburbs so it’s wrong to stigmatise these schools. What are they saying? If you’re poor, if you’re Turkish, if you’re Somali, then we don’t expect you to succeed. I utterly reject that attitude.”


Stephen Twigg, shadow education secretary: “As ever, Michael Gove puts all his eggs in one basket. He criticises others as ideologues, yet his ideological focus on a small number of schools ignores the need to improve standards in the majority of schools. Governance matters, but we shouldn’t obsess about it. What matters most is what happens in the classroom – good


leadership, discipline and quality teaching.”


Chris Keates, general secretary, NASUWT: “No one will be surprised that the first formal speech of the year made by Michael Gove was about academies, delivered in an academy. As it is clear that Mr Gove now considers himself to be the secretary of state for academies and free schools, rather than for education, questions need to be raised about who exactly is promoting the interests of the other 22,000 schools and the young people who attend them.”


Brian Lightman, general secretary, Association of School and College Leaders: “There are many highly successful schools working with their local authority and partner schools; they are not the ‘enemies of promise’ but professionals dedicated to improving the lives of young


people. The keys to school improvement are excellent teaching and leadership and a relentless determination to stamp out failure.”


Russell Hobby, general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers: “We recognise that if a school has been underperforming for many years, it needs something dramatic to shake things up and conversion to academy can certainly be one solution. It is not the only solution,


however, and other strategies work too. Local authorities are sometimes rightfully suggesting alternative approaches or pointing out where the raw data doesn’t tell the whole story; for example, where a school has already broken the cycle and is on the brink of change, or a new leadership team has just been put into place. They are right to do so.”


best out of them and have “very little time” for communication or feedback about pupils. The research, which has been


published in a book entitled Reassessing the Impact of Teaching Assistants: How research changes practice and policy, also recommends that schools should have a formal induction process for teaching assistants and more joint planning and feedback time for teachers and teaching assistants. However,


the authors


emphasised that the solution is not to “do away” with teaching assistants and instead that they should hold more of a “roving role” in schools that will enable teachers to concentrate on the students who need it most. Prof Blatchford continued: “The


aim would be to find alternative methods of deploying teaching assistants. For example, the teaching assistant working with other pupils, and having a roving role, while the teacher concentrates


on the pupils in most need, for at least some of the time. “The point is that the informal


drift toward teaching assistants routinely supporting the pupils in most need has to be questioned because our data show that pupils with the highest levels of support make less progress, even controlling for the reasons why pupils had more support such as lower attainment or SEN students. “This seems to be because such


pupils become separated from the teacher and the curriculum, and also because of the nature of the input from teaching assistants.” Christine Lewis, national officer


at UNISON, which represents teaching assistants, warned that it was dependent on circumstances as to how teaching assistants should be deployed. She said: “It is difficult to accept


the bald statement that teaching assistants should not routinely support lower attaining pupils and those with SEN. It really does depend on the child and circumstances. “Ofsted found that teaching


assistants were particularly successful at working with underachievers and those at risk of permanent exclusion, especially in linking with parents and carers. “The important point is that


teaching assistants should be deployed appropriately and professionally, are trained, graded and paid for the purpose.”


SecEd


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SecEd • January 12 2012


Photo: Lucie Carlier


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