Teachers back a boycott of Sats

The union representing a majority of teachers in England’s primary schools has backed a plan to ballot them on boycotting next year’s Sats tests.

The annual conference of the National Union of Teachers decided a ballot should be held if “all other reasonable avenues have been exhausted”.

It hopes the National Association of Head Teachers will adopt a similar course at its conference next month.

The government said it would be unlawful not to administer the tests.

It is urging NUT members to vote against a boycott.

Autumn action?

The most “high stakes” tests are those taken by 11-year-olds whose results form the basis of the annual league tables.

Tests are also used to bolster the assessments that seven-year-old pupils’ teachers make of their progress. The results are not published but the unions’ attack includes those tests.

The proposal which the NUT conference adopted refers to the whole 2009-10 academic year, not just the tests themselves which are held mainly in May and affect some 600,000 children in each year group.

NUT general secretary Christine Blower said a great deal of preparation work was done by teachers during the year – and there was no statutory obligation on them to do that.

Although nothing has been decided yet, it raises the possibility of action beginning following a ballot in September.

If there were any serious question about the lawfulness of action involving a boycott of Sats we wouldn’t be proposing it Graham Clayton, NUT solicitor Have your say: Sats debate

Proposing the boycott motion, Hazel Danson, a member of the NUT executive, said testing narrowed the curriculum and did not raise standards, but damaged children’s learning.

She called it “educationally barren.”

She said that as a primary school teacher she spent her life trying to ensure that every child achieved their full potential, and she could be trusted to know what needed doing.

The league tables, derived from the results, forced schools to focus their efforts on developing pupils who were just below the required attainment level.

They were “tantamount to wholesale government-funded cheating”, she said.

Max Hyde, who seconded the motion, said Sats must end.

“At best they are detrimental and skew the curriculum and at worst, especially for the most vulnerable children, they are perilously close to a form of child abuse.”

‘Cruelty’

Sasha Elliott is a London teacher who for nine years has taught Year 6 classes – the year group who take the Sats, at the end of their primary schooling.

HOW CHILDREN ARE TESTED Sats and official attainment tables now exist in England only In Wales children take cross-curricular “skills tests” in numeracy, literacy and problem-solving aged nine or 10; results remain within schools. In Northern Ireland there are statutory tests, marked within schools Scottish pupils sit assessments in reading, writing and maths when their teachers feel they are ready, marked in schools School tests: Who takes what

She said she was convinced the children made more progress in the two months following the tests than in the nine months beforehand, when she was having to teach them a “Gradgrind curriculum” in the test subjects – English, maths and science.

“Stop the cruelty,” she said. “Boycott the Sats.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “It is regrettable that the NUT leadership and their conference, in voting for a boycott, are setting themselves against the clear wishes of parents and the need to raise standards in every school and in every child.

“Not only is a boycott unlawful and causes great disruption to the schools; it also sends entirely the wrong message to children and young people an undermines the standing of the teaching profession.

“The unions representing the majority of teachers do not support the approach being urged by the NUT leadership and we urge the NUT to think again.”

The other unions that represent classroom teachers – primarily the NASUWT and the ATL – have not backed the joint campaign being mounted by NUT and NAHT leaders.

Some NUT members say Sats make children nervous

The NUT’s Christine Blower said they did not, however, support Sats and league tables any more than her union did.

The NUT conference is being held this year in Cardiff – where the Welsh Assembly Government scrapped the Sats in its schools between 2002 and 2005.

The NUT says this absence of testing in Wales has not resulted in an upsurge of “barbarian hordes”.

However, the Welsh inspectorate, Estyn, has expressed concern that the proportion of five to seven-year-olds with good levels of reading and writing has stopped rising over the past five years.

Some of the NUT delegates held a small demonstration in the Cardiff sunshine outside their conference venue, wearing red T-shirts with the slogan No Useless Tests (NUT).

One, David Clinch from Devon, said: “Sats are like cigarettes. They’ve got no benefit to the human body whatsoever.

We want to scrap the Sats now. We know they’re bad for children NUT member Sara Tomlinson

“What they do is make children very nervous about their learning in fact they are not learning they are being coached to do particular tests which have no benefit to them at all,” he said.

“The key benefit is to the state to make schools compete against one another and to put schools into league tables, which is not what we think, we believe in collaboration and innovation in teaching.”

Another, Sara Tomlinson from Lambeth in London said: “We want to scrap the Sats now. We know they’re bad for children.

“Every report, every survey that’s done by expert groups says they are damaging to children.”

She said there was no problem with having a bank of materials to assess children, but there was a problem with the top-down imposition of test targets.

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Of all the schools in London, Michelle Obama chose us. That makes us feel pretty special, I tell you.’

When the girls at London’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school turned up last Thursday, they had no idea that they were about to play host to America’s first lady. Carole Cadwalladr hears how, in a week in which all the talk was of her fashion choices, Michelle Obama showed her own political colours and inspired staff and students with the only public speech of her UK visit

Michelle Obama with pupils at London's Elizabeth Garrett school

 

There was a strange stillness last week in Islington’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College on the last day of term. It wasn’t just that the school had finished a day early and it was a training day for staff and a revision day for pupils soon to take their GCSEs. Nor even that the sun had finally decided to shine for the start of the Easter holidays.

It was that, 24 hours earlier, an event so surprising and extraordinary had happened in this very ordinary-looking London school that the few people milling around its lobby had the air of having experienced some freak natural phenomenon – a hurricane, perhaps, or a tidal wave or, as actually happened, a visit by the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.

At the culmination of the Obamas’ first visit to Britain, she visited the school on Thursday and, the next day, staff and students all seemed to be suffering some sort of post-traumatic international celebrity icon syndrome. In the hallway, I met Nuria Afonso, 15, and Shereka Phipps, 15, both wearing the dazed expressions of people who still can’t quite believe what has just happened.

“She hugged us!” said Nuria. “Can you believe that? She. Hugged. Us! It was amazing. Amazing.” And she shook her head. They were both in the school choir and had spent the past few weeks rehearsing for a performance in front of what they’d been told would be “a very special guest”.

“We didn’t know she was coming! It was complete shock. We only found out on the day. Nobody knew. The staff didn’t know. We had to guess. And we guessed pretty much everybody. And it wasn’t until she was there, on stage, that we found out. It was mental.”

It was, in a whole host of ways. Because in a week in which Michelle Obama managed to dominate almost every news bulletin, and in which her wardrobe, or at least discussion of her wardrobe, threatened to eclipse the entire G20 summit, she somehow managed to rise above the role that the combined forces of the Anglo-American media seemed determined to create for her.

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic endlessly commented on her clothes, her shoes, her fashion choices, the “controversial” blue plaid cardigan that she wore to visit the school, even though the only remotely “controversial” aspect of it was that certain female, waspish fashion writers decided not to like it and, which, according to Google, has so far drawn 1,925 news articles all its own, including one from the Huffington Post, which gave it the inevitable moniker “Argyle-gate”.

And yet, what the fashion commentators nearly missed was that the visit to the school not only produced the most emotional moments of her entire visit, but that the speech was also a profoundly moving, very personal statement of her political purpose and the new role that she is still in the process of creating as the president’s wife.

It was the only speech she made during her trip, and the school had, apparently, been deliberately chosen: girls-only, inner-city, its pupils, of whom 20% are the children of refugees or asylum seekers, speak a total of 55 different languages and 92% of whom are from a black or minority background. It was her first speech, she pointed out, as first lady on a foreign visit; she mentioned it several times, in fact, as if she was having problems believing it herself. And then, carefully, using personal stories and anecdotes, she drew parallels between her life and those of the girls in front of her, at times appearing close to tears.

“I want you to know that we have very much in common. For nothing in my life’s path would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first lady of the United States of America. There was nothing in my story that would land me here. I wasn’t raised with wealth or resources of any social standing to speak of…

“If you want to know the reason why I’m standing here, it’s because of education. I never cut class. Sorry I don’t know if anybody here is cutting class. I never did. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I loved being on time. I loved getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world.”

A day later, those words were still buzzing in the air. “I definitely agree with that,” said Shereka. “Being smart is cool. I want to work hard and do really well and then I want to go to university and become a criminal justice lawyer.”

Why a lawyer?

“Because I believe that everybody has rights.”

Both Nuria and Shereka closely followed the US presidential election and said that, even before her visit, Michelle Obama had inspired them both, girls born thousands of miles away, personally.

“You can relate to her story. She said, ‘I’m a working-class girl.’ And more or less all of us are working-class. She made it. And it made me think: if she can do it, so can I.”

For a lesson in how to empower young women, you could do no better than to listen to Michelle Obama’s speech in its entirety. The news bulletins picked up its highlights, the point where, very close to tears, she said: “When I look at a performance like this, it just reminds me that there are diamonds like this all over the world. All of you are jewels. You are precious and you touch my heart. And it’s important for the world to know that there are wonderful girls like you all over the world.”

Why do you think she was so moved, I asked Nuria and Shereka.

“Well, I mean, we was fabulous,” said Nuria. “We was really good.”

“I think she saw a bit of herself in us,” said Shereka.

Even a day on, it’s impossible not to be heartened by how much these girls were touched. Brenda Mensah, 16, who sang the solo, said her parents only found out from watching the news, “and my dad was just screaming and screaming and my mum had two mobile phones pressed to her ears and we had relatives in Ghana who’d seen me and my uncle from the States rang and he’d seen me”.

She was nervous, she said, and then she wasn’t. “When I saw her there, my eyes popped. They were like eggs. And then she gave me this encouraging smile and my confidence just went up, it went sky-rocketing. I’m still flying now.”

But then, this is what the speech, what Michelle Obama’s political agenda, is all about. It’s about trying to promote a role for women, particularly young women, that goes beyond discussions of the relative merits, or not, of Argyle cardigans. More than anything else, it was an attempt to imbue them with the confidence to make good choices.

What’s interesting, of course, is the way in which she so naturally filled the Diana role, a role that, until now, we seemed to have forgotten we needed, or that ever existed. Gill McLay, the school’s receptionist, who is as starry-eyed as any of the pupils, said some of the staff were crying, “and I almost was. She’s just got that human touch, hasn’t she?”

She has. She had already “hugged” the Queen – their hands had rested momentarily on each other’s backs. Or as the Daily Mail put it, “an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: a breach of centuries-long protocol … ” and which the New York Daily News noted was last attempted by Paul Keating, the Australian prime minister in 1992, which promptly landed him with the nickname “The Lizard of Oz”.

She had been the star of a spouses’ dinner hosted by Sarah Brown and attended by what a Downing Street spokesman called “the cream of British womanhood”, including JK Rowling, and Dame Kelly Holmes. And she had visited Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre at Charing Cross Hospital, where another of her unscheduled hugs had occurred with Trudi Cogdell, a 38-year-old mother of five, who has advanced breast cancer.

There’s no denying that she has a Diana-ish effect. Cogdell told reporters that she’d been told Michelle Obama would stand “a few metres away. But as soon as she walked in the door, she came and sat down right next to me. She said, ‘Come on, big hugs’, and she cuddled me and my children.”

But for all the hugs, Michelle Obama is no Diana and it was her visit to the school, and more particularly the speech that she delivered there, that thwarted the attempt by the Anglo-American press to reduce her Democratic politics and feminist principles into nothing more than a fashion cypher whose sole purpose is to have her clothing choices beatified by their mutual consent.

She’s as much an ideologue as her husband and, while Barack Obama is having to make hard choices in an ever-worsening economic climate, what the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson speech demonstrated is how Michelle Obama has become the political yin to his yang; the up to his down.

Jo Dibb, the headteacher, isn’t quite sure why, out of all the schools in London, hers was picked. “A piece of paper landed on my desk saying, ‘Would you like a talk from the US cultural attaché on civil rights?’ and I gave it to the librarian and said, ‘Don’t feel obliged’. But she went ahead and organised it and he was apparently very impressed by the quality of the girls’ questions.

“And then the next thing I know, I’m coming back from lunch, and my PA says, ‘You’d better sit down. The US embassy has just called and asked if you’d like to have Michelle Obama give a speech at the school.’”

There’s no doubting the huge sense of achievement that everyone at the school feels. Or the pride they take in it. Brenda Mensah said: “We are always involved in good things. Islington schools always get a bad press. But EGA is getting better and better by the day. We all come together as a team. I’m so proud of it. Definitely.”

But Islington schools do get a bad press. For years, Islington’s schools have been held up as textbook examples of both Labour’s failures and the hypocritical double standards of some of its politicians. And it’s hard not to wonder if there was any Downing Street input into the choice of location for Michelle Obama’s speech.

It’s not just Tony Blair who refused to send his children to the borough’s schools. Emily Thornberry, the local Labour MP, who lives a couple of streets away, sends hers to a grammar school 13 miles away in Potters Bar; Margaret Hodge, MP and former Islington council leader, sent hers to schools in neighbouring Camden; and, most recently, Boris Johnson spoke of “extracting” his children from the state system “because I live in Islington”.

“Did he really say that?” Dibb asks. “If he did, I think that’s very, very sad.”

In its last Ofsted inspection, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was declared “outstanding” and, although it sits in a network of streets dominated by council estates, just a few hundred yards away are the Georgian villas of Barnsbury, including Richmond Avenue, where the Blairs used to live, now the haunt of City lawyers and bankers, all of whom refuse to send their children to the local school.

Islington schools have always been what Dibb calls “a hot potato”. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson opened in 1960 as Risinghill Comprehensive, one of the country’s first, but was shut down five years later for being “too liberal”. After years of bad press, it has picked itself up and is outperforming all expectations: it’s just that the middle classes, who live nearby, refuse to believe it.

Is there a political analogy in here? That the government has delivered on education but we’re all just too stubborn to believe it? Or is it just a coincidence that, out of all the schools in all of London, the one closest to Tony Blair’s old house just happened to be picked, the one that Boris refuses to send his daughter to?

Or is it the reverse? A stark illustration of the claim by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, that the type of social mobility so dazzlingly embodied by Michelle Obama has actually worsened under Labour. How much more damning can it be that it takes an American politician to find something so positive and inspiring in a school shunned by its own MP?

Whatever. Brenda Mensah has formed her own conclusions: “I mean out of 2,500 schools in London, Michelle Obama chose us. That makes us feel pretty special, I tell you.”

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Abuse of teachers by parents and pupils on the rise, says survey

Research on abuse comes after head of teachers’ union launches devastating attack on parents, accusing many of failing their children and undermining schools

Teachers are facing increasingly abusive behaviour from parents and pupils, according to research revealed today.

More than a third (39%) of teachers have been confronted by an aggressive parent or guardian, and nearly a quarter of teachers have endured physical violence from a student.

The research, from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), comes after the head of the union launched a devastating attack on parents, accusing many of failing in their responsibilities and undermining schools. Writing in yesterday’s Observer, Mary Bousted said that children were arriving at school ill-prepared by their parents, with a lack of respect for authority and lacking basic social and verbal skills.

The survey of 1,000 school and college staff, published to coincide with the start of the ATL conference in Liverpool today, found incidents of insults, derogatory comments and intimidation by parents swearing at or threatening teachers.

In most cases, parents became aggressive because their child was disciplined in class or received poor grades and students often copied their behaviour.

Although 87% of staff had told their school about the aggression, a fifth felt they did not receive adequate support.

Teachers made over 200 personal insurance claims cases to the union for damage to property by pupils over the last two years – 69 incidents of malicious damage to vehicles, such as “keying” of cars, and 146 of damage to property.

A secondary teacher in Bristol, questioned for the survey, said: “Lack of support of teachers by parents is the most disheartening part of this profession and the thing most likely to make me leave it.

“Poor student behaviour reflects the standards that they see at home and children cannot be held completely accountable for the values, or lack of, instilled in them at home.”

Some 40% of teachers surveyed said student behaviour had got worse over the past two years, while 58% said it had worsened over the past five.

Nearly all (87%) of staff said they had dealt with disruptive pupils already this year, mostly low-level disruption such as talking in class, not paying attention or horsing around.

But over a third of primary teachers reported incidents of violent student behaviour such as punching and kicking, compared with 20% of those in secondary schools.

Bousted said: “It is distressing that poor student behaviour continues to be a widespread problem in schools, and shocking that over a third of teaching staff have experienced aggression from students’ parents or guardians.

“ATL firmly believes that no member of staff should be subjected to violent behaviour by either students or parents, who should be acting as good role models by supporting staff and helping them create a more positive learning environment for their children.”

Teachers at the ATL conference will debate violence and malicious intrusion of teachers’ private lives.

Maxine Bradshaw, proposing the motion from ATL’s north Wales branch, will say: “We live in a time now where anything goes and young people know all their rights but have no idea of their responsibilities. Parents and teachers seem powerless to discipline children for fear of repercussions or, worse still, prosecution.

“The irony of the situation is such that many teachers who chose this caring profession have been subjected to a distinct lack of care by their employers and law enforcement agencies in terms of protecting their privacy and property.”

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GCSE basic skills pledge scrapped

The government has dropped the key part of its pledge to improve teenagers’ functional English and maths skills.

It had promised employers that no-one in England would be able to get a good GCSE grade without knowing the basics.

But qualifications advisers have said that making GCSE results dependent on a separate skills test could bring the qualifications into disrepute.

Ministers have accepted their advice and say they will just encourage young people to take separate skills papers.

‘Relentless drive’

In 2005, the then education secretary, Ruth Kelly, had said it was totally unacceptable that people could obtain a grade C or above in English or maths but be weak in basic literacy and numeracy, echoing a long-standing complaint from employers.

We accept that we should not make a link between the functional skills assessments and the GCSE
Schools Minister Jim Knight

She said there would be a “relentless drive” to improve those basic skills.

She announced that pupils taking GCSE maths and English would have to pass a test in functional skills, such as writing a letter or working out their family budget.

Without passing this test they would not be able to gain a grade C in these exams.

That was the plan, and the qualifications regulator for England, Ofqual, has been investigating ways of realising it.

In a letter to the Department for Children, Schools and Families – sent last October – Ofqual chair Kathleen Tattersall said that having a basic skills “hurdle” that was separate from the main GCSE “causes problems with the perceived fairness of the outcomes, as well as technical difficulties”.

It might mean, for instance, that the same script could be awarded different grades in England and Wales.

“That outcome would be unacceptable and would risk bringing the qualifications into disrepute.”

Incentives

Ofqual recommended having separate tests of functional skills but finding other incentives to get students to take them than linking them to their GCSEs.

The department has finally written back accepting this advice.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said it wanted functional skills to be at the heart of all its 14-19 changes.

Newly-published criteria would mean that new GCSEs to be taught from September 2010 would test functional skills extensively, he said.

“So, for now, we accept that we should not make a link between the functional skills assessments and the GCSE”.

In the meantime schools would be encouraged to give young people opportunities to take freestanding functional skills qualifications.

This is the approach adopted in Wales and Northern Ireland, where having the skills qualifications is not a condition for getting good GCSE grades.

The Association of School and College Leaders welcomed the change. Its general secretary, Dr John Dunford, said the exam system was “overburdened”.

He said the tests would be useful, but “school and college leaders will need to feel confident that the tests will be valued by employers before they decide to enter all students”.

The change means the government accepts the impracticality of its promise that youngsters should not get a good GCSE without demonstrating functional numeracy and literacy.

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Over-16 school funds deficit row

A funding shortfall for sixth forms and colleges in England was caused by a “catastrophic miscalculation” on pupil numbers, say the Conservatives.

Michael Gove, the children’s spokesman for the party, is writing to the Children’s Secretary Ed Balls demanding clarification on budgets.

Earlier this week, head teachers and principals warned they faced funding cuts of up to 4% from September.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said the government would find the funds.

This follows complaints from schools and colleges that they were facing reductions in funding levels for pupils staying on after the age of 16.

Mr Gove said that MPs “have been contacted by schools who are desperately concerned at the effect this decision will have on their budgets, their teachers and their students”.

“ It was misleading to say that these were final rather than provisional allocations ”
Learning and Skills Council

He has asked Mr Balls for details of the extent of any reduction in funding and how many schools and colleges will lose out.

The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) sent out letters early last month, giving schools what it called “final” allocations of money.

But it was later forced to reduce the budgets, after admitting that it had under-estimated pupil numbers.

On its website the Council said it apologised for the “confusion and concern” caused by the letter.

“It was misleading to say that these were final rather than provisional allocations,” it said.

‘Children will suffer’

The Grammar School Heads’ Association has said the move caused “disbelief and anger”, with some schools looking at losses of more than £120,000.

In a letter to the Times on Saturday, co-chairmen Simon Everson and Shaun Fenton said cuts and redundancies among their 130 members were “inevitable”.

“Both the scale of the cut and the timing have placed schools in an impossible position. Children of all ages will suffer,” they said.

“ Because of the effect of the economy, and the problems in the economy, we have got a much bigger surge in demand for learning than we had previously been anticipating ”
Schools Minister Jim Knight

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the Association of Colleges have said the allocated funds will not cover current numbers, let alone an expected rise.

They said this made little sense in a recession, and not least when the government wanted more young people to stay on in education and training after the age of 16.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Mr Knight said: “We guarantee that every young person who wants a place at school or college in September will get one. We are working hard and we will let schools know by the end of the month exactly what the position is.

“Because of the effect of the economy, and the problems in the economy, we have got a much bigger surge in demand for learning than we had previously been anticipating.”

Record investment of more than £6.7bn was already planned in education for 16 to 18-year-olds from September, which would pay for a record 1.5 million students, the minister said.

He added: “We continue to consider options for further funding, including meeting emerging pressures from the impact of the recession and recruitment during the year.”

The LSC would write again to schools at the end of April following the discussions on possible extra funding, he said.

“ There will be considerable anger among schools and colleges, which are effectively being financially penalised for increasing participation ”
Dr John Dunford, Association of School and College Leaders

Funding letters received by school and colleges this week showed sixth forms faced shortfalls of up to 4% and colleges faced shortages of up to 2% for the next academic year.

ASCL said a sixth form of 250 pupils would be £50,000 to £55,000 worse off next year, while a sixth form college of 3,000 would lose around £350,000.

The association has written to Chancellor Alistair Darling, claiming the Treasury had not made the necessary funds available to the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

In his letter, general secretary Dr John Dunford said there was “widespread disappointment and considerable anger” that funding allocations had been limited.

“Schools and colleges have responded magnificently to the government’s policy to increase participation post-16,” he said.

“They have an even more critical part to play during the recession, when more young people are likely to stay in full-time education.

“They now find that they are not even being funded for the actual number of students they currently have enrolled.

“There will be considerable anger among schools and colleges, which are effectively being financially penalised for increasing participation.

“This surely cannot be right and sends a very bad signal to schools and colleges in relation to their role in raising participation to 100% by 2013.”

Chief executive of the Association of Colleges, Martin Doel, said colleges would struggle to maintain the quality of service that students deserved.

“The increase in student numbers is hardly surprising given the state of the job market – means must be found to enable funding to keep pace with the growth in numbers unless government wants to exacerbate youth unemployment.”

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