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Michael Gove spent £21m on consultants, claims teaching union

NUT says analysis of Department for Education figures shows £21m was paid to five firms between last April and February

  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 April 2011 20.16 BST
Michael Gove, the education secretary. Photograph: David Jones/PA

The head of one of the country's biggest teaching unions has accused the education secretary of spending £21m on consultants while he cuts school budgets.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said her union had analysed the Department for Education's spending based on figures published on its website.

Blower told her union's annual conference that the analysis showed Michael Gove had paid £21m to five private firms between last April and February. The union claims a further almost £5m was awarded to three other private companies.

Blower said she feared much of the £21m had been taken from state schools and used for free schools. Free schools are one of the coalition's flagship education reforms and are founded by parents, teachers, charities and companies. They operate out of local authority control.

A Department for Education spokesman said spending on consultants had been "slashed" under the coalition government. In 2009-10, more than £74m had been spent on consultants, he said. But, when figures are published for the last financial year, they will show spending on consultancy has been "significantly reduced", he added.

via guardian.co.uk

 

Church of England school policy could have 'biggest impact in generation'

Bishop of Oxford urges CoE school heads to allocate no more than 10% of places to practising Anglicans

            Friday 22 April 2011

Church of England school policy could have ‘biggest impact in generation’
Church of England schools are being encouraged to only limit 10% of places to practising Anglicans. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA

The Church of England plans to encourage its schools to offer more places to non-Christians. The Rt Rev John Pritchard, who is chair of the CoE's board of education and the bishop of Oxford, said he was urging headteachers to allocate no more than 10% of places to practising Anglicans.

At the moment, if a state-funded church school is oversubscribed, it can select pupils based on their and their parents' religious observance. If it is not oversubscribed, it must take those pupils who apply. The change could end the practice of parents attending services purely to secure their child a place at a popular CoE school.

Pritchard told the Times Educational Supplement that he wanted CoE schools to be "as open as they can be".

"Every school will have a policy that has a proportion of places for church youngsters … What I am saying is that the number ought to be minimised because our primary function and our privilege is to serve the wider community. Ultimately, I hope we can get the number of reserved places right down to 10%. It goes back to what we see the mission of the church as being. I don't think the mission generally is about collecting nice Christians into safe places."

About half of the 4,800 CoE schools set their own admissions criteria. The CoE cannot force its schools to change their admissions practices but it will issue guidance this summer designed to encourage them to do so.

Professor Anne West, an education expert at the LSE, said the change could have "the biggest impact on admissions to CoE schools in a generation".

Pritchard said offering a greater proportion of places to pupils whose families do not attend church might lead to a drop in CoE schools' exam results.

"We may not get the startling results that some church schools do because we get some very able children, but we will make a difference to people's lives," he said.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said Pritchard had become the first high-profile Anglican to admit that church schools achieved "league-topping results by using privileged admissions criteria to select the best pupils".

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of Accord, which campaigns to end religious discrimination in school admissions, said current practices had meant that religion and discrimination in schools had "become almost synonymous".

"Schools should be inclusive and tolerant and no state-funded school should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion for any of their teacher posts or any pupil places," he said.

The previous government tried to ensure that a quarter of all places at new faith schools were for pupils of other faiths or no faith, but lobbying from the Catholic church forced ministers to drop the plans.

via guardian.co.uk

 

Pupils are not your Facebook friends, net privacy expert warns teachers

Pupils are not your Facebook friends, net privacy expert warns teachers

Warning comes amid concerns over blurring of boundaries between school staff's professional and private lives

  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 April 2011 18.27 BST
Facebook
The NUT has recently issued guidance warning teachers not to befriend pupils on social networking site such as Facebook. Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features

Teachers are being warned not to "friend" pupils on Facebook amid concerns over the blurring of boundaries between school staff's professional and private lives.

In a fringe meeting at the National Union of Teachers' annual conference on Sunday, teachers were told that pupils are getting access to potentially embarrassing information about teachers on their Facebook pages, while headteachers and school governors are increasingly using information posted on social networking sites to screen candidates for jobs.

Teachers were also warned about the rise of a new site, Formspring, which enables users to post comments and questions without identifying themselves. Bullying posts appeared on the site before the suicide last year of 17-year-old Alexis Pilkington, from Long Island, New York, though her parents have played down suggestions of a link.

Karl Hopwood, an internet safety consultant and former headteacher, told the NUT fringe meeting: "The line between private life and professional life is blurred now because of social media."

He urged the audience to watch for unguarded comments that could have damaging consequences. In one case, Hopwood said, a teacher posted the status update: "OMG must stop pissing about and get my maths boosters planned as I go to teach kids it in about one and a half hours!!!!"

He also gave the example of a deputy head of a school, who found that photographs of him in a Superman outfit were put up on the school's bulletin board. The pictures, taken by a colleague who was a fellow guest at a birthday party, had then spread through his Facebook friendships with pupils, Hopwood said.

The NUT has recently issued guidance warning teachers not to befriend pupils on social networking sites, and to let school management know if they befriend parents or ex-pupils.

Teachers at schools in Kent were advised by the council to close down social networking profiles after a headteacher at a college in Dartford was criticised for posting a photograph with a caption boasting about the size of her breasts.

Hopwood said a headteacher in Wiltshire had banned staff from keeping a Facebook profile, but added: "I don't think that's the way forward." Instead he urged teachers to be more sophisticated in their internet use. "Don't friend pupils on social networking sites. Set up a group to link up with the orchestra or the rugby team."

There is also concern over the misuse of online information by potential employers.

In one case, a female teacher was advised by a head to look at her page on a social networking site – where she had a picture of herself balancing a pint glass on her head – after she struggled to find work. After she changed her settings and removed photos she got a job, he said.

The internet safety expert also said that he had been on an interview panel when the chair of governors handed him an envelope of printouts from Google searches of every candidate.

Amanda Brown, NUT assistant secretary for employment, conditions and rights, said there was "definite concern" that there had been an increase in schools looking for information online.

In the public sector there are rigorous appointment procedures, she said, adding: "If that's going to be undermined by headteachers and governors going on to Google to see what else they can find then that would be a problem."

An increasing proportion of young children are signed up to social networking sites. Last year, over a third of children aged eight to 12 had a profile on sites such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace that require users to register as being 13 or over, according to an Ofcom survey. The figure has risen from a quarter in 2009.

A website used by schoolchildren to spread anonymous gossip was closed down earlier this year, after what its owners said was abuse by a "minority of irresponsible people." Little Gossip, which started in November, had been criticised for failing to remove schools from a list of institutions users could gossip about.

Hopwood expressed concern about the potential misuse of the Formspring site, which he said had a "much bigger user base" than Little Gossip.

He said: "They think they can say anything on Formspring, but their online reputation can be damaged just as quickly as yours or mine can."

However he also praised social networking sites as a space for sharing positive information, giving the example of a memorial page for a teacher on Facebook. "Some of the stuff on there was wonderful."

via guardian.co.uk

 

Dream your way through


Fatma Ahmed Basharahil
Level – 3, Dept. of English
Faculty of Education
Al-Mahra

Have you ever come across a person having no dreams? Does this person really exist? Usually, we all claim of having dreams rather than a dream, but how can we differentiate between a dream and a wish? We always confuse between the two. 

As we know, a wish may or may not be fulfilled, and there isn’t much a person can do about it. However, dreams are part of our daily life, be it simple or hard to achieve, there is a great deal that we can do about it. Life without a dream is just akin to a boring process that keeps on consuming our strength for nothing. So, we can as well say that life is worth it if we keep on dreaming.

It isn’t enough just to dream. We need to work hard in order to achieve and make our dreams come true, that what makes the journey of life sweet. Without endeavoring and struggling to attain our dreams, the result is obvious, that is we’ll not accomplish anything in life.

Many people keep on complaining of whatever comes around and whatever happens, not keeping in mind that they have a role to play in it. These people live dreamlessly, and as a result don’t move a thing in order to make a difference.

Once again, if we imagine a person without dreams, we find out that his/her life lacks a lot of wonderful things. He/she always seems to be pessimistic, as well as living in hopelessness. He/she thinks of life as a negative experience. He/she cannot overcome the obstacles of life, for he/she is incapable of aiming for the best because he can’t dream, and as a result can’t achieve what’s best for him /her.

Dreams make us live in high expectations. If we have a dream, we tend to have an aim towards which we would work and put our efforts in order to reach our objectives. Without them we live in despair waiting for our indefinite destiny. Dreams make us feel the value of every moment in life; in fact, they make life precious and worth living.  

Yet again, dreams are like the fuel which reinforces us to pursue life and its difficulties. Life is full of adversities and obscurities which seem to some extent impossible to overcome. Though, when we have dreams, they make these hardships seem easy to overcome, thus making life flow smoothly and harmoniously. Moreover, they give us reasons and motifs for toiling and striving for the best.  

However, we have to be careful about our dreams. We should be alert about what we dream of, and not to be carried away with them, forgetting the fact that dreams come true only when we work hard to achieve them. Thus, we should have dreams that are achievable.      

Finally, we can say that dreams are integral elements of our lives. They are wedged to us just like our shadow, they follow us and we pursue them. But they are the spice which make our life tasty and without which our life will be bitter. So, let us have dreams of a new awakening which we can attain, let us have something to live for and make our lives worth living.

Arizona's new civil rights coalition

The attempt to outlaw the Mexican American studies 
programme in Tucson schools has mobilised a powerful new movement

Mexican American protest in Arizona against SB 1308/1309
Jose Olivas holds a drawing of a baby as he protests against Arizona's Senate bill 1308 and 1309 outside Arizona's Capitol building in Phoenix, Arizona, 7 February 2011. The two bills seek to overrule the 14th amendment of the US constitution by denying American citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. Photograph: Reuters/Joshua Lott
The students wanted to be heard and so they chained themselves. Thesymbolism at the emergency meeting of the Tucson Unified School Board – held, in effect, to destroy the nation's premiere K-12 Mexican American Studies programme – could not have been more powerful. And yet it was more powerful. Leading the charge of the mostly Mexican American students from the high school group Unidos was an African American and Native American student.
African American, Native American, Mexican American and Central American students intentionally chaining themselves, along with white students, too? Chains have a special meaning for people of colour: they oppress, imprison and dehumanise – and yet these students decided that after continually being silenced and after being subjected to years of continual attack, chaining themselves to the school board members' chairs was the means to achieve voice. And they were definitely heard.
The symbolism doesn't stop there. Akin to the Los Angeles high school walkouts of 1968, among the student leaders was also a Chilipina (Chicana and Filipina). Leaders in the years-long struggle include Yaqui, Tohono O'dham, Mexican and Chicana and Chicano students. This is the Tucson community.
The action this week has come after students and community members have testified before the state legislature, after having run from Tucson to Phoenix, after getting arrested en masse inside the state building, after having walked across the city, after countless protests, vigils, rallies and marches … and after having attended numerous school board meetings where the board members hear, but do not listen, and where they seemingly always act against the interests of the majority (about 80% of students being of colour).
While this was primarily a high school student planned and executed action, hundreds of middle school, high school, community college and university students and community members of all races and cultures laid siege to the TUSD headquarters. All risked arrest, but rather than getting arrested, they shut the meeting down.
The massive, yet peaceful takeover of the TUSD headquarters, was precipitated by the school board capitulating to the efforts to terminate ethnic studies statewide via HB 2281. The bill, shepherded by former state schools superintendent, Tom Horne (now state attorney general) and passed by the state legislature, was signed by the governor last year. On 3 January of this year and minutes before leaving office, Horne declared TUSD's highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) programme out of compliance with HB 2281. Per Horne – who claims to be guided by Martin Luther King Jnr's philosophy – the only means to comply is by elimination of the programme. Horne's successor, John Huppenthal, who campaigned to "eliminate La Raza" soon chimed in. His response has been to audit this highly successful programme, while leaving untouched the state's many failing programmes.
The initial response by the school board was to declare that the MAS-TUSD was already in compliance. However, after 3 January, the new mantra from the board is that it will do whatever it needs to in order to ensure that MAS-TUSD will be in compliance with HB 2281. This has culminated in a series of efforts, by what amounts to an apartheid-style school board, to appease the state. The latest move by the board is a resolution that calls for designating MAS courses as electives – as opposed to core curriculum courses. This would cause students to take double courses, which amounts to the first step towards elimination.
Despite the huge protest, the board meeting has been rescheduled for 5 May, yet the resolution has not been withdrawn.
The untold story here is the rise of youth community leadership; the takeover and occupation showed evidence of disciplined organisation. And now, added to this story is the solid support by the all-important Native and African American communities, which are denouncing the efforts to invoke the name of Martin Luther King to destroy ethnic studies. All communities of conscience appear to be coalescing against the state's efforts to demonise and dehumanise the brown peoples of this state. This includes the state's business community. The anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous ("racial profiling") laws attack the physical characteristics of brown peoples ,whereas HB 2281 is an assault on their intellectual and spiritual being.
It is no coincidence that in this struggle, it is the students who have invoked both the UN's declaration of human rights and the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. They see these as the moral and legal documents that guarantee and safeguard this embattled studies programme. But they also understand that no one gives human rights away; we may be born with them but it is up to people to assert them. In Tucson, in Arizona, they will continue to be asserted – with or without chains.

40% of school leaders plan to cut jobs


Funding cuts will force staff reductions, headteachers tell pollsters
Russell Hobby General Secretary NAHT
Russell Hobby: Job cuts will get worse over next four years
Almost four in 10 school leaders intend to reduce their school's workforce over the next year to cope with steep budget cuts, a poll shows.
A survey of nearly 1,500 headteachers and school business managers reveals that 37% expect to make redundancies or lose staff through "natural wastage".
The poll, conducted by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the Times Educational Supplement, finds that 40% of the heads and business managers expect their budgets to fall in the next year. Some 5% of these anticipate a cut of more than 10%.
The reductions are mainly the result of cuts to grants that fall outside the Department for Education's main allocation to schools. Schools will receive less for taking on a specialist status, as a maths and technology college for example.
Schools with a lower-than-average number of pupils on free school meals will also lose out because ministers want to transfer more money to primaries and secondaries with the highest proportion of poor pupils. The government has said school budgets will not be cut by more than 1.5%.
Speaking on the eve of the annual conference of the NAHT in Brighton, Russell Hobby, the association's general secretary, says he expects job cuts will only get worse over the next four years.
However, 35% of the school leaders polled believe their budgets will rise by up to 10% in the next year and 4% say they expect a rise of more than 10%. Some of the heads who expect to see a windfall have turned their schools into academies and received more than £500,000 as a result.
A spokesman from the Department for Education says ministers are increasing investment in schools by £3.6bn over the next four years. "We are protecting cash levels as well as putting money directly in heads' hands and cutting central bureaucracy to protect the frontline," he says.
"School budgets fluctuate every year as pupil numbers change so it is normal for some schools to get more, and for others to get less. In fact, this survey shows that around 40% of schools expect to see an increase in funding."
The poll covers heads in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, Hobby warns education ministers that they are repeating the mistakes of the financial crisis. He says the government seems intent on measuring schools by their results, but appears to ignore the sacrifices that are being made to produce these results.
"It is similar to the run-up to the financial crisis, when there were a lot of people who were measured by the profit they made, while the risks they were taking were ignored."
Hobby says ministers judge schools on crude data "that only tells a partial picture" and this is killing pupils' creativity.
"Our pupils are going to have several different careers and they will need to be adaptable. They will need to have had a broad education. The risk is that children won't be adaptable in the system we are creating.
"They will be able to recite facts, but they won't have the ingenuity or creativity to solve problems. There is not a right or wrong answer to many things – that is life."
In a speech to the conference on Sunday, Hobby will tell heads not to defend weak teachers. "We'll fail if it looks like we want to excuse under-performance or justify mediocrity; we'll fail if we ignore the worries and pressures that parents feel on behalf of their children," he will say.

Spare the state, spoil the child?

The coalition takes a Victorian approach to helping the poorest children – but there's more to inequality than acute child povert

David Cameron at a Staffordshire primary school
David Cameron at a Staffordshire primary school. Photograph: Jamie Wiseman /NPA Pool
The news from the OECD, the rich world's thinktank, that progress on tackling child poverty in Britain has stalled and social spending on families needs to be protected should come as a wake-up call to a coalition intent on slashing back the state.
Despite the rhetoric behind the government's strategy for tackling child poverty, ministers have already come under fire from charities this monthfor failing to fulfil their legal duties.
While the Child Poverty Act, passed with all-party support before the last election, was supposed to commit future governments to cut relative child poverty to 10% by 2020, the latest figures, from 2008-09, show that 2.8 million, or 22%, of children were living in relative poverty. Relative child poverty is defined as children living in homes with an income of 60% less than the median UK income before housing costs. It's not just the very poorest in society but inequality that parliament agreed to address.
This is a classic problem for the British state, which Labour attempted to constitutionalise with the act. Labour's thinking was that giving all children an equal chance in life was a basic entitlement that British citizens could expect. The best way of achieving this was to ensure that a large section of British society – those who find themselves below the middle classes – had a lock on the state's resources.
Note that Labour was not just talking about the very poorest. Money had to be found so that children from ordinary backgrounds could catch up with richer peers. Giving children the best possible start in life meant it is not just the poorest that need help, but the middle stratum of society too.
The social gradient is important to appreciate. Double the percentage of children in the top 10% of households get five or more A* to C grades, including English and maths, at GCSE than those in homes ranked in the top 20%-30% band of households.
This fact was recognised long ago on the continent – leading to the rise of the so-called Scandinavian solution: high taxes to pay so that the rich pay for the not so rich. This is anathema to Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. Instead, the coalition reaches for a classic Victorian solution – low taxes, small state – with a focus on the poor. So we have the pupil premium, a focus on how many free-school-meal kids get into Oxford, and extra money for health visitors for pre-school children in poor areas, in an attempt to get them to the starting line for formal schooling.
While no one doubts this will help, the point is that those struggling to keep a foothold on the second or third rung of society are being penalised as VAT goes up, universal benefits are potentially cut and a price slapped on previously free public goods. The question often asked by government is: is this fair? The answer for many just able to keep themselves afloat in Britain is: no.