If suddenly there’s £2.5 billion to spend on young people, I suggest any of:
- fix crisis in SEND
- invest in mental health
- mend some crumbling schools
- provide breakfast clubs
- address teacher recruitment crisis
Instead they want national service?
Thread: My take on school leadership, the DfE, reopening schools.
1. Since the beginning of the crisis schools have done some of the best, most important work we have ever done.
2. Most trust and school leaders have proved themselves to be true civic and community leaders
The government takes 31 hours from announcement to publish a list of key workers (at midnight) and gives exhausted school leaders 7 working hours to reconfigure schools for Monday on hugely bigger scale that we were led to believe.
Know of two trusts whose schools had the
@Ofstednews
call today & are being inspected tomorrow. 40C, national emergency, first ever red heat warning, school staff putting everything into keeping children safe, but it is still seen as appropriate time to inspect a school
Any member of school staff wanting a smile, go on
@Ofstednews
and scroll down the likes. Hundreds of tweets from parents thanking & praising their children’s schools. Powerful stuff.
My 14 year old daughter has pointed out that this is total nonsense. Surely this should be a multiplication rather than an addition! So if R is 1.5 the alert level is 219,001.5. If R is 0.5 the alert level is 219,000.5. It’s almost like it’s completely made up
Really looking forward to the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph’s coverage of school re-opening tomorrow. No doubt they will be full of praise for school staff for being back in the classroom with groups of 30 and teaching up to 150 different children per day.
First we had “the lost generation” and now a “generation lacking discipline and order”. The former from the media is unfortunate but not surprising, but we have to expect better from a govt minister. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this statement
Seems an appetite with some to use Danish schools as blueprint for return in England. Comparing UK stats to Denmark show this is dangerous nonsense.
Deaths per 1m: 🇬🇧 505 🇩🇰 94
Total deaths: 🇬🇧 34.5k 🇩🇰 543
New cases 16/5: 🇬🇧3.5k 🇩🇰 67
Tests per 1m: 🇬🇧 37k 🇩🇰 77k
🍏 🍏 v 🍐 🍐
I absolutely welcome rapid testing for secondary students in some areas in the South East - it is a big step forward and I hope it will keep children, staff and families safer. I am genuinely perplexed about why this was not available in Hull or other northern communities
I urge every school leader to read the
@IndependentSage
report on schools. Not because of the headlines in the media but because they are providing the level of information and practical guidance we need.
And above all else, every single person who is involved in education needs to abandon partisanship and slogan politics, get back to working together to keep pupils, staff and families safe and reopen schools more fully as soon as it is safe to do so.
At the start of covid the DfE scrapped league tables & Ofsted stopped inspecting. What did school leaders do the next day? Worked harder & collaborated more than ever. We have moved far beyond Ofsted’s limited institutional thinking. It is outdated & needs to catch up.
For all Y11 students: we would like to reassure you that we will be using the centre-assessed grades submitted by your teachers for all applications to Driffield Sixth Form.
Lee Hill is Headteacher of a school down the road and is a governor at one of my schools. He is held is the highest regard by the parents in the community he serves. He is hard-working, kind and incredibly generous to other school leaders.
Tonight's
@ofqual
blog is a kick in the teeth for school leaders and teachers. Please come out tomorrow & explain directly to schools the rationale for this new, onerous, bureaucratic waste of time that profession has already driven a horse and cart through tonight.
So....
- We want to re-open when it is safe for pupils, staff & families
- We don’t want lectures from people who have never worked in schools about safeguarding, lost learning and gaps. We live a breathe this stuff every day and night of our lives
Good to see so many schools focussing on the success of individual young people & how few are engaging in the nonsense of publishing out of context attainment data & competing with other schools. Here’s
@TEAL_Trust
’s media statement & why we’re not playing that game.
Can’t imagine how it must feel to be a Head who has lost their job and livelihood, or a teacher forced out of a school as part of our toxic accountability system, to watch the blame-shifting & refusal to take responsibility at the highest levels.
Amid all the “wtf” and “unbelievable” on my timeline right now, let’s note that lots of school staff and leaders started working with the now withdrawn guidance today in readiness for appeals opening Monday. No apology. No humility.
Endless carping? Who do you actually mean Mr Rees-Mogg?
The mother whose children can’t go to school?
The NHS nurse at home who can’t look after their patients?
The teacher at home who can’t go and teach their pupils?
The GP who can’t hold a surgery?
The disconnect between the rhetoric of Ofsted’s leadership & what happens on the ground is startling. Just needed a 2 day pause. Where’s the common sense? Where’s the decency & understanding towards schools? Where is the leadership?
Completely and utterly tone deaf from
@Ofstednews
It is absolutely not business as usual in schools. Heads are doing little else than dealing with the issue of COVID-19 and its huge and ever changing effects. The idea of an inspection team arriving in the middle is extraordinary
We’re operating business as usual across our inspection/regulatory work, in line with government advice. We’re monitoring the situation closely and in daily contact with DfE. (1/2)
As usual,
@TEAL_trust
schools will not publish overall data or releasing silly statements to the press. We are very proud of our students’ achievements & love watching them go on to their next stage in life. It is possible to celebrate them without lauding it over other schools.
It’s not her and her friends who set out to run 10k each, every week for 5 weeks and raised £4,000 for Young Minds. I am proud to work with this generation of young people, the most resilient, long-suffering, open-minded, tolerant and decent generation this country could wish for
Happy International Women‘s Day to Rev Gail Uttley, my mum. Widowed at 33, brought up 3 children by herself. In 1994 she was one of the first women ordained priest in the Church of England having campaigned for 11 years for the ordination of women.
So pleased that our former Head Boy and Politics A Level student used his maiden speech to Parliament to speak about the importance of SEND and the desperate need for better provision. Great speech, Keir.
I was delighted to deliver my maiden speech to Parliament last night.
I spoke about the urgent need for a SEND school in the Selby area, the constituency's rich history and sense of community, and the power of young people to make a difference in politics.
Full speech below ⬇️
I’ve been so impressed with my 14 year old daughter’s organisation, resillience and hard-work while working from home. Then I opened her “random school notes” book and the illusion was smashed 🙊
I have no doubt at all that senior leaders across the country, fresh from their 3+ hours of duties today will have got a big boost and real reassurance from this gingerbread person with some colourful words on it
Save the £800k & take these 3 cost-free steps if the DfE is actually serious about Headteacher wellbeing & mental health:
1. Pause league tables for next 3 years
2. Remove graded Ofsted judgements for 3 years
3. Pause further major reforms for 3 years
It flies in the face of what most teachers, school leaders and parents have seen. This is NOT a lost generation or generation lacking discipline. This is a generation of resilient young people who have got through the most challenging year imaginable.
When it’s your birthday and your big brother finds a 1993 version of the favourite bike you ever owned. Buys it, rebuilds it and gives it to you as a present. Taking me back to my youth and bad hair! Thank you
@AndyUttley
. You’re the best big bro I could have!
Sir Kevan Collins is a true person of integrity. He is, and always has been, a true champion of young people, particularly of those who need their schools & school staff the most. He speaks with real moral authority.
- Heads & CEOs are carrying a greater weight of responsibility than ever before
- We need calm heads; we need greater transparency; we need to dial down the rhetoric
- We need gtr honesty from govt about what is possible & about level of risk
- We need serious planning from govt
14. E.g. “pods” of 15 require min 2 staff and 1 room. That puts almost every school at max 50% capacity. That’s absolutely fine but be honest with parents & stop over-promising
15. Guidance reads less like a serious proposal and more like abdicating responsibly & handing to Heads
11. There is nothing in it that a group of competent school leaders would not (and have not already) come up with in a 60 minute meeting
12. There is no additional practical support
13. The rhetoric of all primary year groups before summer is far ahead of the reality
Thread: Lots of talk again about live v on demand lessons & all sorts of political hyperbole. 10 months from our first lockdown one thing hasn’t changed.
Every school age child in the country needs 2 things:
1. A decent laptop
2. Fast broadband to access lessons
18. This sets a trap for unions - refuse to work, take the blame & destroy the image of the profession
19. This began with trailing stories in the Mail on Sunday on 10/5/20
20. Unions refusing even to plan in schools are walking towards the trap
Tonight, as political leadership of the education system hits a new low, I have never been more proud of schools leaders & school staff whose refusal to accept this monstrous injustice has contributed hugely to changing a policy that was so patently wrong & damaged young people
When did they lack discipline? When they observed lockdown rules to the letter when many high profile figures didn’t bother? When they got up and studied for five hours every day in the most difficult conditions?
16. No serious proposal in such a grave situation would be published without consultation with NAHT & others
17. No serious proposal would make such a late change to Y10/Y12 between Sunday & Monday night or contain phrases like “further detail in the coming weeks”
His treatment over the last 24 hours is shameful. He was vilified by a former tabloid editor, a S*n journalist, a man who has failed to get elected to parliament 7 times & some sort of school shaming organisation. He is supported by parents & people who actually work in schools
3. This has been by always doing what we know is right for our communities; acting now and worrying later
4. For a range of reasons, the govt has been several steps behind us. Late guidance throughout; failure on FSM; late on IT etc
5. We have consistently filled the vacuum
9. This trust has come from us leading calmly and communicating honestly. It has not come from wading into one side or another of binary political debates
10. The government’s published guidance is NOT a detailed blueprint for re-opening schools
Schools being offered 26% rebate from
@AQA
. This is a joke. Playing the “we are a charity card” but £20 million gross profit in 2020, £25 million in 2019, £83 million cash in the bank in annual accounts.
@wjec_cbac
rebating 42%. Why the difference? What are projected profits?
6. Schools will reopen fully; we don’t yet know when and how
7. All school leaders want pupils, staff and families to be safe and well. We want to get this right
8. Schools, school staff & school leaders have never had a greater level of trust from parents & communities
When they sat tight while politicians messed up their exams? Or forgot to produce a Plan B? Or order enough laptops for schools? When they listened to adults whinge about not going to the pub while they were cut off from their own friends for best part of a year?
Our four secondaries are each running a summer school in the same week. Planning to visit each one so currently studying the lunch menus to help plan my diary.
I have no idea who this “generation lacking discipline” is. It’s not the young people I know or work with. It’s not my daughter and her best friend who walked outdoors, 2 metres apart, in the freezing cold, clutching coffee cups for warmth, every Sunday for 3 months
Really excited finally to have copies of my first book, co-authored with
@johntomsett
Putting Staff First. A Blueprint For Revitalising Our Schools
@JohnCattEd
When they came back to school ready to work and have behaved brilliantly? When they put sticks in their own throats and noses twice a week to help manage the spread of the virus and they could keep going to school.
Was a bit disappointed with the shabby dress of certain male members of my team on our video calls yesterday (myself included!) so decided to set a new standard today. Tuxedo Thursday
Brilliant stuff from
@vicgoddard
and Richard Sheriff. We all need to speak out about the reality of what schools are facing. Insufficient funding, spiralling costs & the approaching storm of child poverty
We could start by developing something that isn’t one big zero sum game; something that doesn’t require one school to go down if another goes up; something that doesn’t pit one school leader against another; something that doesn’t incentivise unethical decisions
@NickGibbUK
Schools minister
@NickGibbUK
has revealed the government is still deciding how schools' progress will be calculated through the Progress 8 measure in future after Sats were cancelled again this year
Get out of their bubble? Wow.
A generation of young people locked down for months, cut off from friends shut out of their schools with all that long term damage it caused. Followed the rules assiduously while Downing St partied.
They owe us nothing. We owe them.
At a fantastic
@OCMATtrust
school in Kent today. Behind this door is a brilliantly equipped Sure Start Centre that was closed & mothballed. It is sitting there unused. It should never have closed & needs to re-open. A generation of young people & families let down.
Anyone who knows me or had ever met me knows I don’t do labels. I find “trad” & “prog” tiresome. I think “warm-strict” sounds a bit silly & I don’t want to ban booths. I think engaging in debate is a good thing, as is listening to other views. I binary stuff is nonsense.
Possibly the boy’s dad died at aged 5 like mine & JL are depicting an amazing mum who raised 3 kids by herself (CEO, lawyer, nurse) became one of 1st women ordained in C of E & doesn’t engage in virtue signalling nonsense. Or maybe we’re getting rid of dads & elves on shelves
A few of my followers have pointed out there is no dad in the John Lewis advert.
That’s true.
I missed that.
And I have no idea why there is no dad.
Is that just what happens these days? We have got rid of dads?
For anyone wondering why I keep banging on about school leaders needing access to local R number. There are 14 places infection rates are increasing. I live in one.
Tired with the binary nonsense about schools & behaviour & this “find me a school in a tough community that does it as well as us” rubbish. Discussion should start with off-rolling, EHE & whether a school educates proportion of children with EHCPs that represents their community
Andrew Adonis has cast some extraordinary and seemingly unfounded aspersions on schools tonight and has written to
@Ofstednews
and
@amanda_spielman
. It also turns out he has exceptionally thin skin! Here’s what he said
Exactly what we are talking about in
@SchoolsWeek
today. We MUST stop forcing teachers to choose between being seen as a good teacher of feel like a good mum or dad.
Amid all of the challenges we are facing and some pretty nasty discourse, it is a source of real joy to see so many new teachers tweeting about gaining QTS and/or securing first teaching jobs. So many great people still excited to join the best profession in the world.
As we get ready for the next bit this is some of what we said to
@TEAL_Trust
staff yesterday. Stop the silly rhetoric. This is not a lost generation, children have not forgotten how to hold pens & we don’t need to stop teaching music. We’ll have a plan and we’ll crack
Staff across
@TEAL_Trust
worked with extraordinary skill and professionalism to produce thousands of centre-assessed grades at incredibly short notice. These grades were based on a very wide evidence base and knowledge of the students
New Blog:
Build Back Bolder: Five Choices All School Leaders Can Make
1. Stop playing the zero-sum game
2. Care as much about the young people in the school down the road as we do about the young people in our schools
Please give lots of Twitter love to our amazing little school. The school has been open for 150 years, serving the village of Naburn. We have 42 brilliant pupils and it’s got an amazing future.
Could not be more proud of staff and students across
@TEAL_Trust
. 6 schools, 6000 students, attendance at 98%. Thanks to parents for putting your trust in us. Make no mistake, the people who are reopening schools successfully are brilliant school leaders & brilliant school staff
Robert Jenrick this morning “schools will need 1 or 2 or 3 people to do the testing”.
DfE briefing on the same day, a school of 2000 students (and we have one in my trust) will need 24 people to do the testing.
On
#BBCBreakfast
Communities Minister Robert Jenrick says schools will go back in January, even those in Tier 4.
He explains what measures schools will be expected to do to keep students and teachers safe
I am incredibly excited that
@johntomsett
and I will be launching a new website to share free downloadable resources derived from our book Putting Staff First. We love hearing how leaders have applied the ideas in different contexts so please get in touch.
NEW THREAD: In 2020,
@jonnyuttley
& I published a book called “Putting Staff First”. Many school leaders have found the book helpful. Since then, the job of leading schools has become increasingly tough in ways which do not require cataloguing here. 1/3
When the school ended up with a few extras he offered them to other schools. His work led to him being nominated for East Yorkshire Key Worker of the Year. He is a devoted dad and a really kind, decent human being.
The government has more collective capacity than 3,500 secondary schools all working individually. Over the next 2 week
@educationgovuk
could launch a national appeal for volunteers, create a database & fast-track DBS. Train all volunteers remotely from 4 Jan and launch 11 Jan
More on the ludicrous and risible notion that
@Ofstednews
will use P8 & KS2 progress measures in 2022 as part of a judgement of quality of education in individual schools.
In 2019, Ofsted began refusing to look at schools' internal data due to concerns about its reliability.
Absolutely thrilled that alongside my role as CEO
@TEAL_Trust
, I will be a Visiting Fellow
@CfYoungLives
working to develop policy for a truly inclusive education system with the highest standards & best opportunities for all young people
I assume if, as expected, PM announces new restrictions & cases 3x higher than 1st week in Jan 21, HMCI will immediately say the only
@Ofstednews
inspectors setting foot in schools will be investigating serious safeguarding concerns or clutching their DBS & volunteering to teach
I have never been prouder to be part of the teaching profession, a member of school staff & a small part of this generation of school leaders. An enormous thank you to
@TEAL_Trust
staff. An exceptional group of kind and dedicated people who have gone above & beyond again & again
'There's a debate to be had about whether children should be exiting the school gates at 2:45pm or whether they should be in school later', says Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, adding there's a recognition that 'more needs to be done'.
£100 million taken from schools in pupil premium “cut” that would have been used to catch disadvantaged pupils up. £25 million given to Ofsted to check on how schools are catching pupils up. Nonsensical doesn’t even get close.
"It isn’t
#Ofsted
inspections that will help children to catch-up with lost learning caused by the pandemic but ensuring that schools and colleges have sufficient funding from the government to deliver recovery programmes at the scale required." says
@juliecmcculloch
When your fierce 16 year old daughter texts her grandma, who is one of the first women ever ordained priest in the Church of England, to tell her she's a "Girl Boss" on International Women's Day! Made my mum's day.
One of the good things to come out of the last few months has been the extraordinary support school leaders, schools & trusts have given each other. No competition, just the kind of genuine support and kindness that comes out of difficult times
At TEAL we tried to remove question on previous salary from application forms as it exacerbates gender pay gap. We use
@TES_jobs
@tes
& have been told it can't be tailored. We do NOT pass info to shortlisting panels but call on TES to scrap it
#WomenEd
@ViviennePorritt
Well, well. Ministers are now threatening us & telling us to get off our backsides. Let’s hope it doesn’t emerge tomorrow that they have emailed the wrong responsible body or trusts who have done the work & the DfE’s records are wrong. Now the would be humiliating.
The DfE appears to be warning schools it will name and shame them for not sending RAAC questionnaire back - as Keegan says 'publicity will make them get off their backsides' - 'them' being those schools...
Exclusive from
@jasminenorden
It will be lovely to see them focussing on cleaning & catering staff, lunchtime supervisors, TAs, admin teams who are on the front line & are crucial in keeping schools going. The coverage they give to all the schools with 97-98% attendance will be lovely to see
When I drove up to Northumberland to form a bubble with my mum, who is a retired vicar, I discovered the reverence with which she treats our book
@johntomsett
. Must be lockdown madness!
Twice in the last week I’ve bought beer in the supermarket while wearing a face mask and I haven’t been asked to remove it to check my age. I can only conclude I have a creased forehead and wrinkly eyes 😂
List of those calling for the removal of single word Ofsted judgements (I think):
· ASCL
· NAHT
· NEU
· NASUWT
· The Chartered College
· CST
· Forum Strategy
· The Education Policy Institute
· Centre for Social Justice
· Centre for Young Lives