The Keystone Education guide of the week’s press releases from Government sources.

The new Primary Curriculum has now been approved by QCDA and the government are putting law forward to change it. WATCH THIS and Conservative response.

Some news from the high profile Black Country Challenge and their work with the American Embassy.

Following the OFSTED Inspection of Cornish Children’s Services the DCSF has taken over services in the county.

1) We will give schools extra cash so that infant classes can be cut to private school levels of only 15 children.

2) We will introduce a Pupil Premium increasing the funding of the poorest children to private school levels, enabling schools to give them the extra support they need.

3) We will replace the National Curriculum with a more flexible Minimum Curriculum Entitlement offering greater choice and room for innovation. If a college offers a more suitable course for a 14-19 year old, they should have the right to study there.

4) We will create a General Diploma which will use GCSEs and A-Levels and high quality vocational qualifications as building blocks, enabling pupils to mix quality vocational and academic learning.

5) We will pass an Education Freedom Act banning politicians from meddling in the day to day life of our schools and create a fully independent Education Standards Authority with real powers to stand-up to ministers.

6) We will build on the best of the Academies model, while correcting its defects. Our model of Sponsor Managed Schools, which would be commissioned by local authorities, allows educational charities and private providers to be involved in delivering state education, but without the flaws of the Academies system such as control from Whitehall, and ending the un-level playing fields on issues such as funding

7) We will scrap tuition fees for full and part-time students taking their first degrees.

8) We will support adult learners by scrapping FE fees and helping them with their living costs.

9) We will re-focus the money committed to the employer led Train to Gain programme on individual adult learners so that they can access the training they need.

We will expand the number of adult apprentices and fully fund them, easing the burden on employers.

I am trying to find someone who can help me deliver a social media strategy for my small publishing company.

You must understand facebook, twitter, blogging and be able to see the next big wave!!

‘Heavily edited’ speech from Michael Gove given at Centre for Policy Studies, 6^th November 2009

David Cameron has already made clear, that if we are fortunate enough to be entrusted with office after the next general election the most important areas of domestic policy where radical reform is required are welfare, the family and schools.

The need for action to reform welfare, support the family and radically change our schools flows from our determination to make opportunity more equal in our society.

The central mission of the next Conservative Government is the alleviation of poverty and the extension of opportunity. And nowhere is action required more than in our schools.

We want to see a radical shift in power – away from the educational establishment – from Whitehall and the bureaucratic organisations it sponsors – and down towards, schools and parents. We want, crucially, to see heads and teachers given greater freedom from bureaucracy and parents given more control over their children’s education.

So our mission is to improve standards – with a determined focus on the poorest.

And our task is the creation of a world class education system, which embodies the best contemporary wisdom about how to drive improvement and foster innovation, which is decentralised, adaptive, flexible and responsive – in which new networks of empowered individuals shape their future rather than simply accepting what the bureaucracy dictates.

PRIORITY NUMBER ONE – RAISING THE PRESTIGE, ESTEEM AND PROFESSIONALISM OF TEACHING

1) It will no longer be acceptable to enter teacher training with just a ‘C’ grade in English or Maths GCSE. Candidates will need to have at least a ‘B’ in English and Maths.

3) And to ensure that every teacher entering primary school is equipped to teach literacy properly we will introduce new specialist training courses in phonics and maths so that every child can get the specialist teaching that is available to richer children in private schools.

4) We will also raise the bar by refusing to fund any student who wants to enter postgraduate teacher training who has only a ‘third’ class degree.

5) And it’s also vital that schools have flexibility over pay so that they can reward teachers for longer hours. Schools must be able to organise their timetables to be able to offer more children from disadvantaged backgrounds these opportunities and therefore they need the flexibility to reward teachers appropriately.

6) We would fund the expansion of Teach First into areas where it’s currently prevented from going, like the North-East of England.

8) We will end the current ridiculous bureaucratic ban on Teach First teachers working in our very worst schools – those in Special Measures.

9) We will support a new Teach Now programme to make it easier for those who have been professional successes in other areas to transfer rapidly into teaching, training on the job, like with Teach First, instead of having to spend another year or more in college.

10) And because we want school teachers to be fully integrated into the academic and intellectual life of the nation, just like university teachers, we will make it easier for teachers to deepen their subject knowledge and pursue higher level qualifications, such as masters and doctorates, in their chosen subject.

11) This is why we would also expand two programmes which have grown out of Teach First; Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders, which help train future Heads of Department and aspirant Head Teachers.

1) We will replace the current “Use of Force Guidance” which imposes many restrictions on teachers and discourages them from removing disruptive children from the classroom.

2) The presumption will be that teachers should not be suspended unless there is a clear prima facie case for disciplinary action or criminal charges. If no disciplinary action or criminal charges have been brought within a month, the case will be automatically dropped.

4) We will give headteachers a general legal power to ban, search for, and confiscate any items they think may cause violence or disruption.

5) We will reverse the legal obligation on teachers to prove that their search and confiscation is legal.

6) We will abolish the Guidance whereby the Government “strongly advises” teachers not to search children if they object to being searched.

7) We will abolish the legal requirement of 24 hours’ legal notice for detentions.

8) We will have “no notice” Ofsted inspections so that inspectors can investigate schools with serious behaviour problems.

9) Any school with persistent serious bad behaviour that the headteacher cannot sort out will have its leadership replaced.

10) We will end the right to appeal against exclusion to independent panels, which have sent children expelled for knife crime back to the school from which they were expelled. There will be a right of appeal to the Governors only and this must be completed within one month.

11) We will abolish the Government’s new rules forcing good schools to take pupils expelled from bad ones (“one in, one out”).

12) We will abolish the rules which impose a financial penalty on schools that expel children.

13) We will ensure that those organisations with a track record in turning young lives round are given the opportunity to do more, through reforms to Pupil Referral Units and the creation of Boarding Academies

PRIORITY NUMBER THREE – RADICAL REFORM OF THE CURRICULUM AND QUALIFICATIONS

1) We will provide training and support to every school in the use of systematic synthetic phonics. BUT We will not mandate that every school follows existing proven methods. Heads will be free to pioneer their own programmes if they wish.

2) We will have a national reading test after two years of school to see if children are decoding fluently. Those schools which have failed to get their pupils reading will have to account to parents for this failure.

3) To help parents, schools will be required to publish information on their reading scheme on their website and will be inspected by Ofsted on the methods they use – which, extraordinarily, it does not do now.

4) We will establish a free online database of exam papers and marking schemes, from the past, and from other nations, so that parents, teachers, and academics can see for themselves how our current exams compare.

5) We will, in parallel, allow those schools which wish to the chance to offer their students more challenging exams. We would allow all state school pupils the freedom to do the same high quality international exams that private schools offer.

6) We will give universities and employers power over A Levels and vocational qualifications to reverse their devaluation.

7) We will match our reform of qualifications with an overhaul of the national curriculum. We will slim it down to remove prescriptive programmes of study and concentrate on outlining a basic guarantee of the core knowledge children should be able to enjoy at every age.

8) This process will be opened up to public scrutiny, with all the hearings, work and documents which contribute to the shaping of the curriculum accessible to the public, unlike now.

9) The expectations we will set of what children should know will be more ambitious and based upon global evidence concerning what knowledge can be introduced to children at different ages; it must be a floor, not a ceiling, it must allow schools to benefit from the top educational institutions are allowing students to view their content free online. Lectures from institutions such as Oxford, Caltech or MIT for free.

10) A new Curriculum must not be re-written every year to reflect political fads.

11) Which is why we need to reform league tables so we increase the range, and authority, of the data that is available to parents.

12) We will publish all the exam data now kept secret by the DCSF so that web-based applications can create many new and different sorts of tables.

13) We also need to reform vocational education to ensure there are more credible and respected qualifications available to those who want a more practical education.

14) We will stop the “academic” Diplomas immediately. We are discussing with the scientific community and businesses how the vocational Diplomas might be salvaged.

15) We would treble the number of Young Apprenticeships and lift the cap on schools offering this valued course.

16) We will also build a new generation of Technical Schools to teach high quality vocational courses.

1) We will let any school apply to be an Academy and the most successful schools will be automatically approved to become Academies.

2) We will extend the Academy programme to primary schools, allowing them to innovate and flourish.

3) We will immediately begin the process of replacing the leadership of any school that has been in Special Measures for over a year by the end of the next school year. These schools would all be reopened as Academies by September 2011. and continue to replace all schools that stay in Special Measures for a year with Academies.

4) In order to better identify those schools which are in need of change we will overhaul Ofsted. We will work with Ofsted to draw up a new framework that focuses on the core activities of schools: teaching and learning. Schools will be assessed in four areas: (1)the quality of teaching, (2)the effectiveness of leadership, (3) pupils’ behaviour and safety and (4) pupils’ achievement.

5) We will facilitate the creation of a new generation of independent, free, and non-selective primary and secondary Academies. They will be funded by taxpayers but run by teachers and responsible to parents.Our long-term goal is that Academy status becomes the norm.

6) We will make it much easier for educational charities, groups of parents and teachers, cooperatives and others to start new Academies. We will remove the huge amount of red tape which bureaucrats use to stop new schools, from planning laws to building regulations. These schools will receive the same government funding as other schools in their community for every pupil they teach.

7) We will give extra capital funding, on top of the annual per pupil funding, to fund new Academies in the most deprived areas.

8) We will help secure the leadership these new schools need by providing funding for Teach First, Teaching Leaders, and Future Leaders to begin work on an “incubator”. That incubator can work with established Academy chains to form new Academy management teams to take over schools identified as ‘failing’ by a revamped Ofsted, and also work with their own alumnae and parent groups on the foundation of new schools.

9) We will give all parents control of the taxpayers’ money that the government spends on each child – now an average of at least £5,000 per pupil. Parents will have the power to take their child out of a state school, apply to a new Academy, and automatically transfer the ‘per pupil’ funding from the old school to the new Academy.

10) Because the need to improve standards is most pressing in poorer areas we would give parents from poorer backgrounds another advantage. The amount the state would pay for a poorer child would be increased – a Pupil Premium – so that schools will work particularly hard to attract them.

1) We will spend less on vast centralised IT databases which always go expensively wrong, such as the misguided effort to log every child in the country through the Contactpoint system.

3) We will reduce the number of staff at the DCSF, and the number of things they regulate, monitor and issue decrees on.

4) We will give schools more control of their own budgets, pay scales and investment strategies and secure some of the best results in the world in the process.

5) As part of our plans to respect local autonomy we would end the ‘clawback’ process whereby the DCSF suddenly seizes schools’ surpluses.

6) We will shift towards a system in which there is a simplified amount paid by the taxpayer per pupil (with the Pupil Premium on top).

7) And through greater transparency on funding we will help hold bureaucracies better to account. We intend to let every parent know how much their local authority receives to spend on their child’s education and then how much less is passed on to local schools.

8) We will accompany this information with details on the academic performance of local schools. And details of the academic performance of other schools with comparable intakes or levels of funding which are doing much better.

9) We will give all parents the accurate, robust, factual information which will enable them to challenge under-performance.

10) And we will help any parent unhappy with the quality of local provision and interested in seeing a new school set up to get in touch with other parents and with organisations like the New Schools Network which now exist to help new schools become established.

According to the latest BECTA Survey on the use of the Harnessing Technology Grant schools are needing to buy computers (especially laptops) to replace old ones as well as updating wireless and wired access in schools.

The survey also shows that just 12% more schools got a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) in 2008/9 and the government is unlikely to meet its target for all schools having one by 2010.

With an election coming up, and politicians wading into education as well as much talk of a boycott of National Tests we wanted to give you an update on the main political parties (and unions) views of National Tests and Assessment.

The Conservatives have commissioned Sir Richard Sykes to report on Assessment and thought his complete report has not been presented yet there are some highlights.

As you might expect from the ‘third’ party we have a combination of the two!

The NAHT and NUT are petitioning for an end to National Tests at all Key Stages.

Let us have your views on testing and which set of policies would work in your school or for your kids. You don’t have to tell us how you are going to vote though!

It’s has been six months since the Expert Group on Assessment reported and National Tests remain high up the political and education agenda. We are now some way into the school year so what do these changes really mean.

There is a handy new website: https://ncatools.qcda.gov.uk/ to help you do all the test administration and ordering. You will need to get a password to access the site but once there it’s a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all your end of Key Stage needs.

The only change at Key Stage 1 is the introduction of ‘cross-phase’ moderation of Teacher Assessment. This means that as a Year 2 teacher you should ensure that pupil achievement is moderated with a Year 3 colleague.

There is no advice currently on how this works with a separate Infant School and Local Authorities will vary but we suggest that you arrange a meeting with a Year 3 colleague from a feeder school to review teacher assessment judgements of Year 2 pupils during June and early July.

From 2010 schools will no longer have to prepare and administer children for National Tests in Science at the end of Key Stage 2. There will be a sampling exercise and if your school is selected then you will have to carry the test out but this will be a small selection of schools only.

Tests will take place between 10^th-13^th May (English on Monday/Tuesday and Maths on Wednesday/Thursday).

Despite the ending of National Tests, Key Stage 3 Teachers are still required to provide an ‘end of Key Stage’ assessment of students to Local Authorities and Parents.

There are New Optional Tests for Year 9 – these are available from the QCDA via the NCA tools website above.

A New Target for secondary schools. From 2011 Secondary Schools will be measured on the number of students making 2 levels of progress in each Key Stage in English and Maths. The target is the number of students achieving 2 Levels of progress AND a grade C or above in BOTH subjects. So if you get 100% of students to a Grade C in English but none in Maths then the score is 0%!

The Keystone Education guide of the week’s press releases from Government sources.

TPIAG group reports and local authorities encouraged to do more to combat teenage pregnancies.

Various measures now law including extending apprenticeships and allowing 6 year cycle for Ofsted inspections.

Ed Balls advises parents to report ANY bullying incidents, launches an anti-bullying song and Anti-bullying week (16-20 November).

18 different punishments for Judges to choose from when sentencing young offenders including fostering and curfews.

Government listening to grand-parents and adding their views to Families Green Paper.

The Keystone Educatio guide of the week’s press releases from Government sources.

£6m found to support children and young adults from families with complex social problems.

FIP = Family Intervention Project – 20 funded projects in LAs throughout UK.

Outline of the new PHSE guidelines. PHSE compulsory but schools and governing bodies have right to deliver it according to needs of their students.

Roll out of website containing information of all?? (not clear) children to support carers, educationalists and other professionals understand the whole picture of (especially) at risk children. Schools may have to provide details to Contact Point – again not clear from Press Release.

Advice for teachers who are planning school trips. Simplified form filling promised.

Employer-based education failing in Key Skills, getting employees to complete training in time and getting employees to A-Level equivalent qualifications.

Parents don’t have the contact they desire. Push towards online reporting of children’s achievement but also attendance.

new one

and another

Ordered by Post Title (Ascending)

10 Point Liberal Democrat Policy On Education

Cut Infant Class Sizes to Private School Levels. Pupil Premium. A Minimum Curriculum Entitlement. Setting Schools and Teachers Free. Sponsor Managed Schools – Replacing Academies.
Higher and Further Education. Scrap Tuition Fees.

BECTA Survey Shows Schools Spending ICT Budget on “Kit” not Software

The survey also shows that just 12% more schools got a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) in 2008/9 and the government is unlikely to meet its target for all schools having one by 2010.

Brown says primary Sats must stay

National Tests and Assessments – political views

Changes to Testing and Reporting Arrangements 2010

Conservative Priorities For Government

‘Heavily edited’ speech from Michael Gove given at Centre for Policy Studies, 6th November 2009.
David Cameron has already made clear, that if we are fortunate enough to be entrusted with office after the next general election the most important areas of domestic policy where radical reform is required are welfare, the family and schools.

KEG Week 45

* Ed Balls responds to Admissions Tzar.
Pilot projects to support families with complex problems
Celebrating Success in the Black Country
***PHSE compulsory from 2010/11
*Contact Point rolling out – one stop shop for children
**Health and Safety Advice to schools for school trips
**2009 National Test Review
*Train to Gain Reviewed by Ofsted
*Report into parental access of information from schools

KEG Week 46

Consultation on birth certificates and naming both parents
** Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act now LAW!
* Ed Balls launches Anti-bullying week with N-Dubz song
New Sentencing Formula for Youth Offenders
Cross-government summit on changing role of grand-parents
**Retail Qualifications Overhauled
*Celebrating success of Colleges in UK
New Home Access Suppliers Announced

KEG Week 47

KEG – Week 47
The Keystone Education guide of the week’s press releases from Government sources.
DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families)
**** New Primary Curriculum approved and sent to Parliament
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2009_0219
The new Primary Curriculum has now been approved by QCDA and the government are putting law forward to change it. WATCH THIS and Conservative response.

*Black [...]

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I am trying to find someone who can help me deliver a social media strategy for my small publishing company.
You must understand facebook, twitter, blogging and be able to see the next big wave!!
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Conservative Priorities For Government

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