SATs - 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.

 It only dawned on me recently that, when we selected the infant school for our kids, we hadn't actually looked at the junior school that it feeds into and that, seeing as they will be spending longer there than at the infant school, this was probably unwise. Anyway, last night the junior school had an open evening and I took my eldest along. And, boy, was I impressed! The head's presentation was far from slick - the remote broke down for the PowerPoint presentation and he had to keep bobbing up and down to move the slides on, and he only remembered to introduce himself a couple of minutes into his talk. But I think that says a lot - actually, he was more keen to tell us about his school and his children than about himself. He struck me as a really kind man who genuinly wanted the best for the children in his care. Everything he said was positive, everything was about building up children's self-esteem, everything was about the children.

The point at which he won me over completely was when he said; "We've tweaked the National Curriculum a bit. Well, actually, we've used it to suit our purposes." He went on to explain that, whilst the kids have full access to the NC, they are not bound by it. If a class shows a massive interest in, say, learning Russian, and the teacher can accomodate it, then they go with it. Despite this, SATs results (yawn) are excellent (I would argue it could also be because of this?).

The school is incredibly well cared for and well resourced - swimming pool, football pitches, library, ICT etc etc. The staff we met are friendly and approachable. They have links to about 8 countries, are committed to learning outside the classroom and have an excellent pastoral system. Yet, last year, when Ofsted made a (one day) visit, the inspector only deemed it a 'good' school with many outstanding features. The reason? SATs results had 'dipped' that year.

I have one question - what is more important? A positive learning experience that builds confidence and self esteem and teaches children to respect each other and their environment, or level 4 SATs? To me the answer is obvious.

Too many schools are coasting according to Ed Balls, and they will be added to those in the National Challenge that are not getting good enough results. Luckily, it seems that this time they will not be named and shamed, so that demotivating aspect appears to have been removed. But secondary schools that have been labelled 'satisfactory' and whose results lie in the middle of the average national results for GCSE grades A*-C are those that will be targeted. They will get support in improving standards and financial support as well. There is talk of sharing good practice and providing training. Sounds good. I'm all for improving standards. If you want to read more, go to this BBC article.

Interestingly, the school where I am governor (albeit an infant school) was accused of coasting at the last Ofsted inspection. I wasn't around at the time, and don't know if it was true or not. However, I do know that we have a new head teacher who has brought in lots of new initiatives and that SATs results have improved. We are now expecting another Ofsted this year, and interestingly a huge focus is on proving that we are not coasting. To me, the important parts of this proof include that staffing has changed, the lead teachers offer great support to others, good practice is regularly shared and that there are heaps of enrichment activities such as health week, music week, dance week. Children get to learn some French in year 2, there are loads of extra-curricular clubs and the children are happy and motivated to learn. They are polite, they show respect to each other and to members of staff. There are areas that could be improved, but any school that is worth its salt should be looking at how they can be doing things even better and I hope that we will be able to address them in future.

So, that's the good stuff. But interestingly, although our SEF (which I am working my way through at the moment to summarise the key points for the governors who have offered to meet the inspectors when they come) covers these in detail, the thing that comes up again and again is monitoring, assessing and SATs results. Part of this monitoring includes proving that the intake is not as good as one would expect in a leafy suberb such as ours. That's to say, showing that the kids aren't all that clever and many of them can't hold a pencil when they arrive, so actually their results are even better!! Whilst I am sure this is the case, I find it really frustrating that the head has to spend her time proving this, when any inspector should be able to come into the school and see that the expectations for learning and behaviour are high, that the children want to achieve, that they love to come to school and that it is most definitely not coasting.

But now I'm becoming negative, so it is a good time to stop!