In School at half term

In school today with Mrs Mann, Mrs Chivers, Mrs Godfrey, and Mrs Millin together with several other staff. It would be good for the general public to know how much 'holiday' time staff actually spend in school working away to prepare for the next term and make it a successful one for our children.
Our Rainbow Garden is flourishing and is the first of several gardens in school which the children through the School Council are helping to develop.

The blackboard

Children in our twin school, the Desai Memorial Primary, Nairobi, moved from one rented ste to another in 1998 taking anything they could carry with them. Peter James took this photograph, and then the boys walked straight into a stall scattering all and sundry. They were very excited about the school surviving.

4 + 4

Moving into the term break we are fully staffed for September with four new teachers from a high quality field.

Rwanda and back

Bev Mann, Deputy Head, is shortly on her way to work with a school in Rwanda. She will be there for twelve weeks as part of a NAHT/VSO national pilot: 'International Extended Placements for School Leaders'. The staff and children are looking forward to hearing about her experiences.

The FA Cup Final

The one day of the year I have to be collected by my daughter, Zoe, after enjoying the annual tradition of a few drinks and a good lunch with football mates in a pub in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Last year's Final was the best for many seasons so Man Utd and Chelsea have something to live up to.

Heidi and Andy commit again

Heidi and Andy repeated their recent West Country wedding vows in Andy's local Dunfermline Abbey. It is always good to visit Fife and next day we went to Pittenweem and saw the trawlers in the harbour. These were back from unimaginable hardships during fishing trips around the Faroe Islands. I adore Cod, but we take for granted our fishing heritage. The demise of the fishing fleets also comes from coping with land-based hardships as in quotas and financial pressures. We live in fast-changing times.

The telephone call

Telephoned by a colleague Head and NAHT member (this happens between 4-5 times a month). Having a real difficulty with over zealous and misguided Governors failing to support her. They should back the professional judgment of the Head. The Head has legal responsibility for the day-to-day organization and management of the school within strategic policies agreed by the Governors (not individual Governors!). A good relationship between Head and Governors is essential to the positive development of schools. Heads have an exposed position, yet are key to children's attainment and achievement. The Governors need to show a duty of care towards the Head.

Interviews

Yesterday was the start of 'Interview season'. In a rare occurrence (even with a 430 pupil Primary) we have more than one vacancy as some staff are moving (New Zealand, Stoke-on-Trent, Bournemouth, Spain) mostly to live with partners. Their expressed sadness at leaving is quite genuine and we shall miss them. So its Job Specs, expensive adverts in the TES (Times Educational Supplement) and less expensive adverts online (e-teach).
Interviews include Governors as a key part of the process. Each short-listed candidate has to demonstrate the practical craft of teaching as well as an in-depth interview searching theoretical understanding, practical approach, and most importantly attitude and emotional literacy.
The last is vital in that we can teach people the skills and craft of teaching, but what is far more difficult is to change attitudes to the positive, to have team players, and to develop children’s attitudes in the same way: to encourage a love and thirst for learning, and being independent learners.
We have started to grow our own teachers now with a route of personal endeavour and fulfilment. Carmen’s journey included City and Guild's in English and Maths Level 2, NVQ2, NVQ3, Foundation Degree, B.Ed (Hons), and now Graduate Teacher Programme. Shortly, she will be a fully qualified teacher with several years experience as a teaching assistant, and higher-level teaching assistant. The girls football team she helps out with have just won the schools’ league. Her work with young children is electric, and the children in her class will make very good progress.
This illustrates what Goddard Park is all about: everybody learns, everybody cares.

Choir

Miss Davis and Miss Biston were working with the school choir after school. Just as I entered the Hall to see what they were singing I heard the dulcet tones of 'Oh Shenandoah'. The children were surprised to see me joining in. I first sang this as a fifteen year old in the legendary David Shepherd inspired pantomimes at Kingsdown Comprehensive, Stratton St Margaret in the mid-1960's. The choir followed this with 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor,' another timeless sea shanty and one which they clearly enjoyed.

Superstars

A brilliant set of letters from some children in Years 5 and 6 to tell me how much they are enjoying using and being challenged by a new computer program: educationcity.com A collegue Head in Wigan put me on to this and the pupils agree.

Gay Meadow

Last night's Shrewsbury v Milton Keynes Dons League Two play off game was the final match to be played at Gay Meadow before a move to their new stadium. I remember travelling with my family when Swindon Town played there in the 1950's. We went by Rimes Coaches with the other fans including a refreshment stop in each direction. When the ball went over one stand it landed in the River Severn and a man went out in a coracle to collect it.
I went there this season with my wife, Veronicah, and we were pleased to come away with a 2-1 win. Although I am sure the facilities, access, seating and sightlines will be much improved, the working-class heritage of the Gay Meadows of English football are often missed, in the move to slightly soulless 21st Century arenas. Perhaps in time they will develop their own style and character.

The first three hours

6.00-6.30am Watch BBC Breakfast to check on the school issue of the day (sadly, its child cancer today)

*7.45am Arrive at School
Say ‘Hello’ to Breakfast Club
Switch on computer and connect new printer lead
Find 27 e-mails and deal with six most pressing ones
Speak to three Class teachers
Receive breakfast of All Bran and raisins
See Site Supervisor to check on any weekend concerns and arrange setting up of new television
Check SAT papers are intact
Go to coffee bar and see Family Support Worker
8.40 children start school. Greet Year 1 and 2 children.
8.45 See Parent and friend about alleged playground issue
9.00 Go to Year 6 and give pep talk to our 60 pupils before first of
KS2 SATS tests with Science Papers A and B
9.30 Meet with Deputy Head, Assistant Head (Extended Services),
and Bursar to go through the week’s school business
10.00 Go to each of the four early years education and daycare rooms.
Real confusion in the Butterflies room as some children say, ‘Hello Mr Welsh’, but as my grandson, Miles, is in the room he calls me ‘Bampy’ as now do some of the other three year olds – goodness knows what will happen with this increasingly clever lot when they get to Nursery and Reception. One child went as far as ‘Mr Bampy Welsh’ last week! Staff could hardly contain themselves.
Congratulate member of staff on brilliant ‘sea’ display.
10.20 Check and sign twenty two authorisations for curriculum,
premises, catering and extended services expenditure and invoice payments
10.30 Coffee while writing letter to Parent about premises concern
*10.45 Observe breaktime.
Many short conversations and telephone calls along the way.

Left school at 6pm
Read and write for two hours.

Mother's Day

Florence Lilian Edith Welsh was born in August 1909 in Swindon, daughter of George Wiiliam Price and Florence Agnes Price. She was second oldest of eleven surviving children. My Mum went to Clarence Street School. As a child she was both clever and adventurous, coming down the steep Victoria Road on a bicycle with no brakes. She left school on a Friday and on the Saturday became the under under Chambermaid in the Gloucester Hotel on the front at Weymouth. In the early 1930's she met my Dad, Arthur James (Jim) Welsh when he was in the Royal Navy in Portland. They married, and after Dad went off to serve in WW11 she eventually moved back to swindon with my brother Jimmy. As the men were absent from many posts in the Great Western Railway, women took over several rail jobs. My Mum became part of a team cleaning engine boilers. At another stage the family took in evacuees. After the War and having had me as part of the baby-boomer generation Mum continued with her career as a Cook with long-term work in Swindon's Isolation Hospital and later The Crown, a Berni Inn. She brought up my niece Carol as my sister from the age of four days old. I remember Mum had beautiful 'copperplate' handwriting. She also enjoyed snooker and darts on the tv having herself been a Swindon Ladies Team Darts Champion. She was a great supporter of Swindon Town Football Club. As a grandmother she loved seeing her grandchildren. Mum died in 1988. She is much missed, but never forgotten. Keep cycling Mum!

'Fracture'

Anthony Hopkins is always a good performer, and in his latest film, 'Fracture', he doesn't disappont. It is though that rather intelligent, clever personna, of a driven 'Lecter-style' character. The plot is in itself clever, with only a small fall in pace in a couple of places. Josh and his Dad were on their way to 'Spiderman', so it was, "Hello, Mr Welsh" and a big smile, which I always find pleasing. They joined a very long queue!

Teachers TV

Teachers TV were filming in Goddard Park this week. They interviewed children, staff and parents trying to gain a view on whether Every Child Matters and our Extended Services had measurable impact on our children's attainment. The outcome was that there was no simplistic relationship with say SAT results. The most encouraging material was based around individual case studies of where progress by children had been directly related to either high quality early years education and daycare or engagement by parents with family learning programmes. Other positive work is attached to the work of specific staff as with speech and language therapy and the removal of obstacles to learning. A whole day's filming will probably result in 10 minutes programme content. As usual the children simply cotinued with their work. They are very used to visitors! Channel 4 are coming later in the month.

Official opening of the Year 5/6 Suite by the Mayor

Speech to NAHT National Conference May 2007

The NAHT calls upon the Government to reword its priority for the next Comprehensive Spending Review as ‘Schools, Schools, Schools’.
To achieve this it needs to:
1. See standards now rise even further through a reduction in the
command and control of central prescription and structural change.
2. Reduce the amount of wasted expenditure in the failed regimes of major consultancies and ‘quangos’.
3. Lever up school-based expenditure, and reduce disparities amongst schools throughout the country. Enable school leaders to ensure that every child has the opportunity of attending a good school. That is real parental choice.

SATs SIPs Early Years Foundation Stage Trust Schools Performance Management 14-19 Curriculum 21 Education Acts in 21 years Extended Schools Modern Foreign Languages
Academies New Primary Strategies Schools Sports Partnerships FMSIS
RAISE online new OFSTED, and 47 new Initiatives facing Primary Schools, and 54 facing Secondaries. The command and control of central prescription is ever present and increasing. It is now causing many schools and children untold harm. High-stakes testing is one example. It doesn’t have to be this way.

In her address to the International Confederation of Principals in Auckland in April, Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand ruled out national assessments and consequent ‘teaching to the tests’ as derogatory to good educational practice. Not many DfES Ministers or senior civil servants were around to listen.

This command and control mentality affects local authority services as well. One of countless recent examples is where some auditors are now expecting Governing bodies to produce minutes that record which individual Governor said what in order to prove financial probity.
Where is the Trust?

There is no doubt that we have to congratulate the Government for the resources they have put into the education system and that schools have had real rises.

It is also true that we as a Country expect much from our schools. It is a pity we do not expect more from our parents.

On the debit side of Government, lack of transparency, double counting, and new initiatives poorly thought out and ill-resourced, and even more structural change continue unabated. This is no longer acceptable.

It could be persuasively argued that in its first phase central prescription through the production of national curricular and standards was of significant assistance to the education of our children. This is now no longer the case. Sir Ken Robinson has spoken of the great need to allow schools to be creative. True personalization cannot be introduced by decree. Isn’t it amazing that we have to have a national Implementation Review Unit at all? Schools have become the testing ground for the latest wheezes of Ministers/senior civil servants/and of the major consultancies.

In his Easter address, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor criticized modern Britain’s ‘now generation’ culture. Too often people expected everything ‘almost instantaneously’, he told an Easter vigil at Westminster Cathedral. It was noticed that not many DfES Ministers or senior civil servants were found to have taken part in the vigil.


There is now the prospect of businessmen and women being fast-tracked into school leadership. What is the first thing they will do?
Surround themselves with PA’s rather than TA’s. We must strive to
win control back so that the education of our children is a partnership of teaching and learning.

Government is now wasting substantial resources in centralized prescription. As the rate of educational spending is due to slow significantly from 2008 it is vital that they recognize that schools raise standards not sanctuary buildings – a very apt address for the DfES.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Let us now look at those who have plundered educational expenditure to date. Over half of such expenditure fails to find its way into schools. Why? Well what does the data tell us?

Examples include a culture of not trusting schools, so for Extended
Schools we have the former NRT - now TDA Development Group requiring local authorities to employ people to send back compliance traffic lights on how many schools are signed up and working on the
Extended Schools agenda.
Or the £12 million given to SERCO those well-known prisons to military hardware group to lead a consortium to raise capacity in local authorities to support Extended Services. Talk about the unspeakable leading the unknowable. Place your trust in schools.

According to data I gained through the Freedom of Information Act,
the DfES has 43 Centrally Managed Consultancy Frameworks and it just so happens that between April and December 2003 43 major contracts were issued.
However, in 2005 this had increased to 124,
and in the financial year just finished there were 181.

If it was Desert Island discs the major consultancies might choose the following as their favourite song:
‘You’re just too good to be true’.

Price Waterhouse Coopers, KPMG, Ernst and Young and the others must be rubbing their hands with glee.
I am not saying that perhaps some of those working in the consultancies used to work in the DfES.
I’m not saying that some of those who work in the DfES used to work in the major consultancies.
I’m not even saying that they went to the same school or belong to the same club.
I am just saying our children deserve those resources.

Less central prescription and less reliance on the major quangos and consultancies would enable school-based expenditure to be levered up.

This would in turn assist in addressing the need to reduce the significant disparities of how schools are funded between different authorities and within those authorities themselves.
Why is a child worth so much less in some areas than others?
Clearly, there are particular needs in London and the major conurbations, and also to address special educational needs and social deprivation, but why so many other disparities?

The following examples are from George Phipson’s Section 52 analysis (for the year to March 2005) are for Primary pupils, but a similar picture is present for Secondaries.
Lincolnshire £2527
Swindon £2593
Dorset £2690
against a National Average of
£2823.
A 250-pupil school in Dorset would receive an extra £34,000 if funded at the National Average. In Swindon this would be an extra £57,000. In Lincolnshire, this would rise to £75,000. There are many similar examples.
Why so great a disparity across the Country. Doesn’t Every Child Matter?

We need creativity not control.
We need quality not quangos.
‘It is time to trust schools.’
Mike Welsh

Swindon Town get promotion

As fans of teams in the playoffs nervously watch each 90 minutes (and sometimes extra time and penalties) there is a sense of accomplishment in Swindon gaining automatic promotion back to League One. This was not one of the great seasons for the Town, but we made it at the last. For once it was our defence, with Jerel Ifil outstanding, who brought us through.

It is interesting to see that the previous season's relegated teams filled the first four places in the league. Is there a new gulf opening? I feel for the supporters of Boston and especially Torquay who have drifted into an ever-competitive Conference. Great to see the almost village-supported side of Forest Green staying in the Conference. A good new ground as well.
The Premiership may have the money, but we have real football and usually much more penalty area incidents. Still with Liverpool in the Champions League Final - and the last occasion was one of the best games of all time - the FA Cup Final, and the play-off Finals still to come I'm looking forward to some good action and exciting matches. Paul my son-in-law, a Notiingham Forest fan - home and away - will be following the play-offs to se if they can make it to the Championship: good luck Paul! Forest's manager, Colin Calderwood, a former Swindon Captain, has taken them to the brink. Some tough matches to navigate.

With Oxford losing in the semi-final of the Conference play-offs (apologies to my friend Ian Foster) it is sobering to think of the days of Robert Maxwell's crass idea for a Thames Valley Royals outfit. Look at Reading's astounding progress in comparison to Oxford.
Well it will be interesting to see how Paul Sturrock remodels Swindon to take on League One opposition.

Teaching Applicants

Reading Goddard Park teaching applications in preparation for shortlisting.

Brown begins campaigning

'Education is a passion'. The NHS is a priority over coming months.

South West NAHT

I gave reports from last weekend’s National Conference in Bournemouth, and Swindon Branch. Skipton Financial Services made a presentation. The meeting took place at The Tiverton Hotel. Colleagues come from as far as Cornwall, Bournemouth, Dorset and Gloucestershire.