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Education Select Committee’s Chairman’s statement on Home Education Report

Posted on Thursday, 17 June, 2010 by cnes4education

Here is the press release which Graham Stuart MP has just published on the OFSTED report on Home Education:-

“  Ofsted Home Education Report Seriously Flawed Says Graham Stuart MP

“Graham Stuart MP, who last week was elected to take the Chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, today condemned Ofsted’s report on home education, “Local Authorities and Home Education” as “an unpleasant hangover of the last government: a manifesto for more state power at the expense of dedicated home educators and their children”.

“Mr Stuart went on, “It is astonishing that the Chief Inspector of Schools should stray onto home education and get it so wrong. In Ofsted’s official press release she says that “it is extremely challenging for local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure children have a suitable education”, when they have no such duty. Parents, not the state, have the statutory duty to ensure that their children have a suitable education.

““I find it deeply concerning that, after months of work, the Chief Inspector should make such a basic mistake and so utterly confuse the duties of local authorities and parents. Parents who home educate deserve our respect and awe at their dedication and achievements, not the relentless suspicion of an over mighty state.”

“Under section 436A of the Education Act 1996, inserted by the Education and Inspections Act 2006, local authorities have a duty to identify children who are not receiving a suitable education in their area, so far as it is practical to do so. As the 2007 Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities make clear, however, ‘local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis’ and are only required to intervene if it appears that parents are not providing a suitable education.

“Mr Stuart went on, “As local authorities do not have the power to demand access to home educated children and cannot insist on parents registering with them, the obvious and correct answer is for local authorities to improve their support for families so that more families make contact with them voluntarily. If they did this and made sure that they employed sympathetic staff who built good reputations, then the number of “unknown” children would be reduced. Such a positive approach would respect the primacy of parents in determining the education of their children and put the onus on local authorities to serve and support, rather than catalogue and monitor, families who home educate.

““Ofsted’s report has little to say about improving local authority support for home educated children and says only that the Department of Education should “consider” funding an entitlement for home-educated children to take public examinations. Ofsted’s report is seriously flawed and damaging to the confidence of home educating parents who had hoped that the relentless disinformation and bullying of the previous regime was over.””

Graham Stuart was last week elected Chairman of the Education Select Committee.

Filed under: Home education, OFSTED | 16 Comments »

Home education report out today

Posted on Thursday, 17 June, 2010 by cnes4education

Graham Stuart MP draws to our attention that the Ofsted report on Home Education is out today.   Quote from Chief Inspector: “The report also found that current legislation around elective home education means it is extremely challenging for local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure children have a suitable education.”

Filed under: Home education, OFSTED | Leave a Comment »

Harlow leading the way with Engineering Apprenticeships

Posted on Tuesday, 15 June, 2010 by cnes4education

Our friend, Robert Halfon, the newly-elected Member of Parliament for Harlow, has drawn our attention to an article in today’s Guardian about Essex County Council’s Engineering Apprenticeship Scheme, where Harlow College is one of the providing institutions, along with Colchester Institute and the Basildon campus of the South Essex College.   Here is the link to the article.

Rob is a great champion of apprenticeships, giving much attention to schemes in the Harlow area.

This is another example of the innovation which has marked Essex County Council in recent years.   Noting that, (under the last Labour Government’s scheme), employers can recoup only training costs and not salaries of new unskilled recruits, and only for those aged 16-18, Essex decided to do something itself to help the situation.  It has decided to pay the salaries of 140 new engineering apprentices itself.

Its reasoning is that there is a huge gap in the provision of technical skills, and that research has shown that engineering training costs more than any other sector, and it takes longer to see a financial return from training someone.  By setting itself up as a training agency, the County Council is undertaking the project with over £600,000 of matched funding from the European Social Fund.

The Council found that most apprenticeships in Essex were in things like hairdressing and motor mechanics.   This scheme, concentrating on engineering, could lead to a real career path into higher paid employment.   Already local companies are seeing the attraction of the project, and are signing up more apprentices, including companies that have never had them before.

As the Guardian says,  “This isn’t just about training for young people, however, it’s also about saving an industry whose ageing workforce means that if skills aren’t passed on, a whole sector’s expertise could be lost.”

Filed under: Apprenticeships, Essex County Council, Further Education & Skills, Robert Halfon | 1 Comment »

Vote Conservative Today

Posted on Thursday, 6 May, 2010 by cnes4education

Filed under: CES General | Leave a Comment »

Good luck to all our Candidates

Posted on Wednesday, 7 April, 2010 by cnes4education

We wish the very best of luck to all members, supporters and friends standing for election on 6th May  -  in the General election, of course, but also in local government elections.

Filed under: CES General | Leave a Comment »

More support for the “free” schools idea

Posted on Saturday, 20 March, 2010 by cnes4education

Cristina Odone came to prominence when she was Editor of the Catholic Herald, and now she is Deputy Editor of the New Statesman.  But the views she expresses in a critique of  “An End to Factory Schools” are hardly likely to endear her to the New Statesman.

Instead she writes approvingly of the publication just out from the Centre for Policy Studies, which is by Anthony Seldon, the Headmaster of Wellington College, and calls for the education system to be turned round.   Mr Seldon says that every state school should operate as a business, should be independent of government, free to raise its own capital, make a profit, decide on the best staff, best pupils and best services, and set their own curriculum although there would need to be some core subjects.   Even inspections by HMI or OFSTED would be removed from the best schools. 

Actually quite a lot of that sounds very familiar.   Someone called Gove has been promoting such a system for some years!   Apart from the profit bit, the Conservatives have got there first and it is a major plank of education policy.

Ms Odone’s piece is headed “Our schools turn out unemployable blockheads”.   I, together with most Conservatives, would not wish to condone that phraseology.   Young people must not be called blockheads just because the system has failed them.   Yet she repeats statistics which all of us must find of concern:-

“British school children ranked 22nd out of 27 developed countries on schooling last year.   In maths, they were ranked 24th, and in literacy 17th.   An OECD report found that 10% of 15-19 year olds were not in education, training or employment.  And one CBI survey found that half of employers found young people were inarticulate and could not follow written instructions.

“Pretty bleak, really, considering that this mess gets £30 billion a year from government, and is presided over by a blob-like educational establishment stuffed to the gills with quangos, schemes, gimmicks, all with employees with an index-linked pension.”

Filed under: "Free" Schools | Leave a Comment »

What works in Education Reform? asks Eamonn Butler

Posted on Friday, 19 March, 2010 by cnes4education

Dr Eamonn Butler has written this piece on the Adam Smith Institute website, which looks at proposals to change the system of schools, and asks, “What works in EducationReform?”

He seems to like the Swedish system suggested by Michael Gove, but notes no selection is allowed, and asks why can’t the providers make a profit.   He says:-

“In Sweden, the average cost of a municipal education follows the choices of parents. Even if they send their kid to a private school, that budget – about £6,500 – follows. To get the money, private schools are not allowed to charge top-up fees, and there is no academic selection.  But it’s easy to get a licence to enter this system, and 1,100 new schools have sprung up because of it. Most, about 800 of them (Gove please note), are profit-making. Many are small schools but in big chains (some with turnovers of £100m and more), which actually have a successful model for organising and running schools, and take that successful brand to one school after another.”

Noting that in the UK it might cost £25m to set up a new school, he says in Sweden it costs the state nothing because parents, teachers, companies and others raise the money they need – and usually work out ways to do things far cheaper than the state can. He points out the new schools have 20% better educational outcomes.   Dr Butler ends by saying:-

“There seem to be four lessons from all of this. (1) Make it easy for new people to come in and provide education. Standards, yes, but allow people to start small, maybe renting empty office or warehouse space, rather than insisting that everything has to be built and run as the state builds and runs it. (2) Allow profit making, because that is what drives the investment and the risk-taking. (3) Don’t keep subsidizing failure, but reward success. (4) Let people spread their success. That is what makes the Swedish system work: it’s about knowing how to deliver education effectively, and taking that expertise far and wide.”

Filed under: "Free" Schools, Education Funding, Parental choice, Provision of new schools | Leave a Comment »

No university places for 50,000 with good grades

Posted on Wednesday, 17 March, 2010 by cnes4education

The Times reports here a warning from the new head of Ucas that at least 50,000 more sixth-formers with good grades will fail to get on a course this autumn compared with last year, and that students should forget about finding a place through clearing..

Applications are already up by 23 per cent — or 106,389— this year, but the number of places has been cut by 6,000. Last year, 30,000 good students failed to get into university.

Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter, predicted that more than 200,000 would be disappointed, saying some would do poorly in their exams, but tens of thousands would be turned away despite achieving the appropriate grades.

The number of over-25s applying has swelled by 63 per cent this year, and those rejected last year are getting in early before sixth formers know their exam results.

By January 22 this year, Ucas had received 570,000 applications, compared with 464,000 at the same time last year. By last summer it had received more than 639,000 applications. This year there are just 443,000 places available and universities face fines if they take on too many students

The Conservatives said last night that if the current rise in applications continued this summer then 718,000 would be fighting over 443,000 places, meaning that overall 275,000 students would miss out.

Filed under: Higher Education, Ucas, University admissions | Leave a Comment »

New Schools – a popular policy and successful in other countries

Posted on Thursday, 25 February, 2010 by cnes4education

The main plank of the Conservatives’ education policy is giving parents and others the chance to set up new schools, which, though funded by the state and not charging fees, are independent schools, free to set their own curriculum and manage their own admissions.

It is clear from polls and public reaction that the idea is popular with parents.   It is said to be the most popular of all announced Conservative policies.   But there has been much scepticism, and criticism, from the education establishment and, of course, the opposition parties.   Perhaps there is also a lack of knowledge out there as to what such a scheme would be about.

The Guardian, not by any stretch of the imagination a Conservative newspaper, nevertheless published this article by Rachel Wolf who is director of the New Schools Network, a charity which seeks to improve education  -  particularly for the most deprived  -  by facilitating the creation of new independent state schools.

Ms Wolf says that two academics at the LSE have argued this week that increasing parents’ choice of schools would not change the UK’s “status quo” because there is “already much school choice and a diversity of provision”.   She challenges that by stating that choice in England at present is largely a myth.

Ms Wolf produces examples to show that the development of new schools in other countries has resulted in huge improvements in learning and the erosion of inequality, and asserts that we should be giving children here that same chance.

Filed under: "Free" Schools, Parental choice | Leave a Comment »

Some recent education stories from press and internet

Posted on Thursday, 11 February, 2010 by cnes4education
The lasting guarantee of a decent education  -  We owe our national curriculum to Matthew Arnold.   It would be folly to lose it, says David Conway in the Daily Telegraph (4-1-10)

Conway, the author of ‘Liberal Education and the National Curriculum’, published by Civitas, says critics of the national curriculum  seem curiously unaware that the first person to propose such a curriculum for England was Matthew Arnold.  Arnold was an elementary schools’ inspector for 35 years, and was asked by parliamentary commissions to tour Europe and inspect educational arrangements there, reporting back with recommendations on how schooling in England might be improved.  Arnold recommended that England should introduce a common curriculum similar to those that he had seen in France and Prussia. He proposed that, during the junior years of secondary school, pupils should study “the mother-tongue, the elements of Latin, and of the chief modern languages, the elements of history, of arithmetic and geometry, of geography, and of the knowledge of nature.”   Arnold believed liberal education should be the prime aim of all schooling beyond the most elementary and crudely vocational. “The aim and office of instruction… is to enable a man to know himself and the world… To know himself, a man must know the capabilities and performances of the human spirit… [which is] the value of the humanities… but it is also a vital and formative knowledge to know the world, the laws which govern nature, and man as a part of nature.”

Read the article here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6929735/The-lasting-guarantee-of-a-decent-education.html

Why does Labour hate faith schools? -   Asks Christina Odone in the Daily Telegraph (11-1-10).  

She says Government ministers are playing politics with a valuable national asset.    She features Sir John Cass School in Tower Hamlets where 100% of pupils gained five or more good GCSE grades last year and the  school is continually ranked “outstanding” by Ofsted.  In most cases the pupils do not have English as the first language, and the school has 75% of children on free school meals.    Yet the Government ignores what is clearly a highly successful school.  Perhaps, she says, the school is lucky as many faith schools encounter outright interference and/or hostility.

Read the article here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6969468/Why-does-Labour-hate-faith-schools.html

Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites could become part of the school curriculum under plans for a new English GCSE.

 The qualification, called “English Studies: Digital Communication” would require pupils to understand the sites often cited by teachers as a distraction to study. Teenagers could take the course as a stand alone subject or alongside traditional English language and literature GCSE papers.  (12-1-10)

University students have an average attention span of just 10 minutes, a survey has found.

Many are ill-equipped to deal with either academic life or the world of work, the poll of 1,000 students discovered. A third blamed the fact that they could only concentrate for 10 minutes in lectures on being overworked and a consequent lack of sleep.   (12-1-10)

Teachers will be forced to ask pupils’ permission before altering the curriculum and length of the school day under new plans.

All state schools in England and Wales will be legally obliged to seek children’s views on major policy changes to make them feel more valued. The new duty will cover the changes to the curriculum to ensure lessons are more “relevant” to their lives, as well as any moves to restructure the timetable and reforms to school equality rules. Schools already have to include pupils on major decisions involving behaviour policies.  Rules coming into force in September this year will cover secondary and primary schools – forcing head teachers to consult pupils as young as five.   (12-1-10)

More than 30 universities could be forced to close amid “terrifying” Government spending cuts of up to £2.5 billion, leaders of Britain’s top institutions have warned.

Representatives from the Russell Group, which comprises 20 leading universities, say the cuts risk destroying 800 years of progress in British higher education.   Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, who oversees higher education, last month told universities they faced a £135 million cut in funding next year, which would be on top of £180 million of cuts unveiled last year by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and a further £600 million of longer efficiency savings to be made from 2012. It would be a major blow to the government’s pledge to ensure that 50 per cent of school leavers go on to higher education – a central plank of Labour’s education policy.  (13-1-10)

Hundreds of thousands of children are effectively going backwards in the three-Rs at secondary school, official figures suggest.

Data published for the first time reveals that many pupils gained worse grades in English and maths tests taken at 16 than in comparable exams at 11.  The disclosure follows claims that too many comprehensives are failing to cater for the needs of bright pupils in mixed-ability classes.  One particularly worrying finding is that the number of children from immigrant families unable to take GCSEs because of poor language skills has almost doubled in four years from 1,314 to 2,542.  (13-1-10)

Will the Gove schools be so successful that the Scots and Welsh adopt them?  - 

 James Forsyth in the Spectator Coffee House (23-1-10) reckons Gove’s plans promise to transform education, but only in England as the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales will not be affected.   But he thinks there will be significant pressure from voters to force Holyrood and Cardiff Bay to adopt the plans.

Read the article here http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5727218/will-the-gove-schools-be-so-successful-that-the-scots-and-welsh-adopt-them.thtml

How to set up a school  - 

 James Forsyth again in the Spectator Coffee House (3-2-10) reports that the New Schools Network, a cross-party charity set up to promote the establishment of new schools, has published a proposed application form for those who want to set up a school.   Forsyth says “The Gove schools agenda is the most radical and exciting domestic policy initiative the Conservatives have.  But it is crucial that new schools are set up as early as possible so we can see how they raise standards across the board by providing choice and competition.”

Read the article here http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5748488/how-to-set-up-a-school.thtml

The single best reason to vote Tory  - 

Fraser Nelson in the Spectator Coffee House  (1-2-10) says there can be fewer more powerful untapped resources in Britain than the desire of parents to place their children in a good school, and that the single best reason to vote Tory is that they will set up a new system to harness this power, and allow anyone to set up a state school either by themselves or, more likely, in collaboration with the many companies offering to run new schools.  He reports that 350 requests to open a new school have already been made.

Read the article here http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5743813/the-single-best-reason-to-vote-tory.thtml

 We don’t need no ed-u-cay-shun  - 

Susan Hill in the Spectator (14-1-10) has been reading “A Headmaster’s Diary” the record of John Rae’s time as Headmaster of Westminster School.  She draws a contrast with the announcement that Ed Balls wants to introduce a new law which will grant pupils the right to tell teachers what they want to learn.   As she puts it, ‘It’s me ‘uman right to do texting studies instead of maths.’

Read the article here http://www.spectator.co.uk/susanhill/5705098/we-dont-need-no-educayshun.thtml

All children should study Mandarin says Ed Balls  (4-1-10)  Schoolchildren are spending the equivalent of a year sitting and revising for exams, according to a report. (6-1-10) Children should use Google and Yahoo to improve their essays,

 according to the official exams watchdog, but should avoid Wikipedia. Ofqual said putting keywords into internet search engines was a “good starting point” when researching pieces of coursework and dissertations. (6-1-10)

Head teachers should be given more power to scrutinise lessons in an attempt to weed out incompetent staff, according to Michael Gove, Shadow Schools Secretary.  

He said  current rules placing strict curbs on the inspection of teachers were “misplaced”.  Under existing legislation, heads are only allowed to sit in on classes for three hours in the academic year.  They must also give the staff member formal notice and tell them which aspects of the lesson will be observed.  (8-1-10)

Almost 300 secondary schools could face closure after failing to hit Government exam targets, official league tables will show.

The schools  will have until 2011 to make improvements or be shut, taken over or merged with a successful school.   The list is believed to include around 40 of Labour’s flagship academies, which are semi-independent state schools run by churches, charities, entrepreneurs and universities.  (8-1-10)

Faith schools are increasingly being robbed of the power to select children on religious grounds following an overhaul of admissions rules, according to Christian groups.

In the last six months alone, more than 30 faith schools have been subjected to investigations by England’s admissions watchdog after being accused of breaching the strict code.  (10-1-10) 

Labour has been accused of tying schools in red tape amid plans to give every child a legal “guarantee” of a good education.

Under a new education Bill, all schools in England will be forced to meet a series of 38 promises covering one-to-one tuition, extra PE, more cultural visits and  a pledge to provide healthy eating. Parents will be able to shop schools to the Local Government Ombudsman and even seek court action for failing to provide the detailed list.  (11-1-10)

Filed under: "Free" Schools, Admissions, Education Funding, Examinations & Results, Expenditure, Higher Education, Parental choice, Provision of new schools, Teaching, The curriculum | Leave a Comment »

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