parents - Doubled Up

With schools being warned of the credit crunch hitting them,  I wondered what 2009 may bring for English education generally.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• More pupils. It has been predicted that people who would otherwise send their children to private school will cut back by sending their children to state schools instead.

• Less money for building. Building works are often initially financed by the private sector, which is finding it difficult to get credit these days.

• Another potential disaster regarding SATs marking. Although this is wishful thinking on my part as the prediction is that if Edexcel muck up in the same way as the previous contractors did, then SATS may be dumped altogether.

• Reviews of potential changes to the primary curriculum. Personally, I find this really exciting, so long as it will allow greater flexibility. At last, it seems that the people in charge are looking at skills as well as content.

• Moving towards on-line, real time reporting to parents. Secondary schools should really be getting going with this in 2009. (My previous blog was on this topic.

• Change in legislation to give schools the power to search pupils for drugs and alcohol.

• School reports. By this I mean giving schools grades. There is talk of giving schools an overall grade of A-F as a means of giving parents another way to judge schools (as opposed to just looking at exam results). The grade will cover all aspects of school life such as exam results, attendance, wellbeing of pupils, progress of pupils etc.

• Developments in getting parents more involved in their children’s learning. This seems to be an important issue to Jim Knight, and not before time in my humble opinion. I’m looking forward to seeing how schools will do this.

• Changes to governing bodies. I remember hearing rumours last year that GBs will become smaller and be more answerable to schools’ stakeholders
  

• I am absolutely sure there is more. Feel free to add anything I’ve missed.

I’ve been a bit slow catching up with this topic, but it is one that is close to my heart and I find myself agreeing with education minister Jim Knight (that in itself is quite a feat).

Last week, Mr Knight gave a talk to academy school leaders and in it he stressed the important role that parents have in their children’s academic success. He spoke of the fact that parents pass on their own “negative attitudes to education" to their children and that these attitudes have, in turn, been passed down by the grandparents. As a result, generations of children are being told that there is no point in trying to succeed at school.

He pointed out that the worst problem for this is in the poorest areas, but that there are cases in which work prevents parents from helping their children succeed. He wants a focus of education to be on the parents and to help raise their aspirations for their own children. "In some of the most challenging areas, negative attitudes to education have been fostered over generations, and passed down to children at school today," he said.

I find this really interesting – I have wanted to set up a parents’ forum in our school in which parents have somewhere where they can discuss their children’s education and where they can express their opinions about the school and make suggestions for improvement. I would then like to develop this into a means of discussing how to help your child succeed socially and academically, and to include parenting discussions. I think that it could be really successful and could help links between parents and the school (which are good already, but there is always room for improvement). For me, the issue is time. I don’t have it at the moment, and I know that with these things it is no good as a governor just having the idea, but that you have to be prepared to put your money (or at least your time) where your mouth is.

We have had a very surprising response to our latest open day. Because our head and chair of governors are so on the ball and pro-active, when they noticed that we may not fill all spaces in Reception next year, they asked the local paper to report on this and to give details of an open day for parents to see the school in action.

This was very successful and well attended and I was proud to show groups of parents around the busy, productive classrooms. The children, as we expected, behaved impeccably, and I had the bonus of seeing my two children in their classes so involved in what they were doing that they didn't even notice me!

Yet there have been a couple of letters to the press complaining that schools should not do this as it is 'poaching children' from other schools that need the numbers (in the past, children have come to our school from the other side of town because they recognise it as an excellent school ane we have a three form intake, so there has been the odd spare place). One even tried to sling mud at the school, suggesting there are reasons other than falling roles for our spare places.

I have to say that I found this astounding. A head teacher's responsibility is for their own school and the children in it and not to protect other schools locally. And if parents are to have a choice as to where they send their child to school, then knowing about school's with possible places can only be helpful. There was (and is) absolutely nothing stopping other schools from having their own open days if they so which and, as a parent myself, I wouldn't dream of sending my child to a school that I hadn't seen in action.