I love the film Catch me if you can. It is probably Leo's best role. The art of blagging it and conning people in plain sight kind of reminds me of our current government...
But I also love this line from the film - “People only know what you tell them.”
This resonates with me at this moment in time. The press is so full of negative news about our children and our schools and it is time the narrative is changed. Some of you may have seen my thread this morning and I feel compelled to write about it again - this time in my blog.
I am getting so angry about the narrative around schools at the moment. Firstly, the phrase catch up. What does that even mean in education terms? To catch up indicates that you have fallen behind something. What have these children fallen behind? Some arbitrary progression of skills set by people who do not know the children? An expected point at this moment in time, like learning follows a linear model? Does this catch up rhetoric take into account at school buildings may have been closed, but that does not mean learning has stopped? The vast majority of children still accessed learning and schools became much more adept at this in the second lockdown? I know that my team pulled out all of the stops to ensure all children accessed lessons that were relevant and useful.
This disingenuous phrase does not give enough credit to children, parents and school staff. The time in lockdown for the vast majority of children was not them sat playing on their consoles or chatting on social media. They were completing work. At my school we ensured we set tasks which were reinforcing previously taught content and were then incrementally built upon. Was the pace of the curriculum the same as it would have been in school? No it was not. Was that a bad thing? No it was not. What we noticed was the children who needed to rehearse these skills actually got the time to do this without always feeling like they are behind their peers. Teachers could give discrete, small group support and all children were able to access the learning. The children who did not need the rehearsal were given mastery tasks within the same objective to really embed and secure their understanding. Therefore, what we have seen is yes, the children are behind when it comes to the taught curriculum, but they actually have a much more secure base to build future learning on.
This point clearly highlights a weakness in the English education system. We have overloaded it with too many objectives. We try to cram too much in so that the learning is not always secure. There is no wonder our secondary colleagues say "Have they not been taught this before?" The amount of content covered, and then revised for SATs, is never going to stick. Surely, now is the time to revisit our curriculum and decide what is important to create solid building blocks for the future.
When the government appointed Sir Kevan Collins to be the "Catch Up Tsar" I have to admit I was really disappointed. We did not need a champion for catch up, we needed a champion for schools. This pandemic was the perfect time for the government to step back and re-evaluate education. It was the time for fresh thinking, for being brave to change things. It is not a time for more of the same - putting sticking plasters over a breaking system. The education system in this country is, quite frankly, on its knees. We have school leaders close to breaking point, teachers looking to leave, funding at pitiful levels and an over reliance on testing and judgemental accountability. It also does not help that we have the most incompetent fool in charge of the DfE. I have never seen a man so out of his depth and clueless as our Gavlar. The sooner he leaves, the better for all of our children.
When Sir Kevan began to release his ideas for "Catch Up" I was sceptical with some of the ideas, but more supportive of others. The over reliance on using tuition was, in my opinion, a mistake. There is a time and place for tuition and additional support, but it should not have been the cornerstone of this programme. The fact that the government have chose tuition as the only thing they will pay for makes it clear to me it was wrong - when was the last time they got it right with education? The National Tuition Programme is, in my opinion, a disgraceful waste of money. Billions of pounds being pumped into companies, who quite frankly are using this to make money. They have quickly appointed a number of "tutors" who are not up to the job. We did use it this time round as I felt that if the government are subsidising this by 75% we should give it a go, but it has been a waste of money. The children see their tutor once a week, the feedback we receive is rubbish, the tutor is quite rude and the children hate going to their sessions. Will I do this again? No chance. The vast amount of money pumped into this would surely have been better going into schools to employ their own tutor to support their children. This will not happen, because unfortunately the government do not trust us to not use the money to plug our ever widening deficits...
Moving on to the idea of an extra thirty minutes in school. Surely if it was that easy, we would have all been doing it anyway? Learning is not like a boxset on Netflix that can be crammed. You cannot press play, put the children in front of it to watch and hope it sticks. Learning takes time. It takes a slow build up skills that interlink and weave together like a magical jigsaw. We all know how exhausted the children are at the end of the school day. What benefit will the children get from being in school for 30 more minutes? Not a lot from what I can see, and even the Education Endowment Foundation's evidence says that it has "Low impact, for moderate cost". For the sake of an extra thirty minutes per day, the government would have to the spend a fortune and alter every single teachers' terms and conditions. It really isn't worth it.
What I did like was all of the language Sir Kevan used when talking about the lost opportunities our children have missed - such as sports, the arts, educational visits and social activities. This, alongside additional support for mental health is what is really needed. When the government released their paltry £1.4billion packaged to put money into the private companies running the NTP I was disheartened. However, for once it was great to see a person with integrity, morals and values standing up for what he believed in. Sir Kevan did this and left the government's soundbite grabbing strategy in tatters. I salute you Sir Kevan - my respect for you moved to a whole other level.
I have offered my services on Twitter to be the new "Catch Up Tsar" which would soon be retitled! I am not holding my breath expecting anybody from the DfE to contact me. The only time I hear from those useless pencil pushers is when they try to concoct reasons as to why my successful school should join a MAT... but that is another story!
If I were to become the "Champion for Schools" my manifesto would consist of the following (which is why the DfE would never speak to me!)
Core school budgets to increase by £250 per pupil. There are currently around 8.8 million children in English schools, so this equates to about £2.2 billion. Even in a small school like mine that would give us around £20,000. That is enough to bring in an additional part time teacher to provide some amazing support.
Increase Pupil Premium by £300. The latest figures show about 2 million children are eligible for this, so this is budgetary cost of £600 million
Double the PE and Sport Premium and take away some of the bizarre conditions of use (such as capital projects). I would expect all schools to provide all children with 60 minutes of activity per day (this can include active lunch times, breaktimes and daily mile type activities). This would cost an additional £320 million
Provide all schools access to counsellor and mental health support for their children. This would be calculated on an average of 1 counselling day for every 100 pupils. So a small primary would be able to access a counsellor one day a week, but a large secondary may be able to have 3 or 4 counsellors every day. This is the biggest expenditure of my plan coming in at around £2.5 billion.
Support schools to offer after school activities to support all children. I would give a £500 million pot to schools to run after school support sessions, clubs and wrap around care for the children most in need.
I would fund and support all children to go to amazing educational experiences. I would develop a set of national partners who provide school visits, including coach companies, to enable trips to happen at a much more reasonable cost. I would allocate £350 million to support this aim.
Commission a curriculum and exams review to see how the curriculum can be slimmed down, become more focussed and reduce constant treadmill of trying to keep up that currently exists. I would ask the Chartered College of Teaching to lead this work for me as it has such a wide selection of experts from the education world.
Constantly release good news stories about our schools and about our children. We need to change this narrative of negativity into positivity. This would actually have a massive impact at no cost. The DfE would be wise to learn from this!
In short, I know my manifesto is idealistic, people will be able to pick holes in it, but it is affordable (only costing about £6.5 billion) and would have a positive impact on our schools and our pupils.
To wrap it up with another quote from Catch Me If You Can - “An honest man has nothing to fear, so I'm trying my best not to be afraid.” I honestly believe my vision for a better system - I hope the government also believe in theirs!
Let me know your thoughts on Twitter!
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