“In the context of an ad for an education provider, the claim “outstanding academic results” was likely to be interpreted as referring to a current Ofsted rating; a rating which we understood had not been awarded by Ofsted to the Maharishi schools (primary and secondary) located in Lancashire. In the absence of such a rating, we concluded the claim “[Maharishi Free Schools] Have proven outstanding academic results” was misleading and had not been substantiated.”

The Trust defended itself by saying that a 2009 Ofsted inspection of the independent Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment, which became the Maharishi Free School in September 2011, used the term “outstanding”. However, this inspection was a light-touch Independent School inspection which is not the same as one for a state school.  And it doesn’t apply to the Maharishi Free School which hasn’t been inspected yet.

The ASA was not impressed with the school’s defence:

“The ASA noted the academic results of the students, which demonstrated they had achieved very good exam results, and we recognised that “outstanding” was a common descriptor used to denote achievement in many industries. However, we considered that parents of school-age children would be aware of Ofsted and its rating system and that “Outstanding” was its highest rating for overall quality of education.”

It’s not the first time the Maharishi Schools Trust has been in trouble. The ASA ruled against it in relation to marketing of the Maharishi Free School last year. The Schools Adjudicator twice ruled against the Admission Criteria of the Maharishi Free School in 2012. And the School failed to enter pupils for Key Stage 2 Sats despite the Funding Agreement making it clear that it should do so.

The Maharishi Schools Trust hopes to open a second free school in Suffolk which will “follow the successful model of the Maharishi Free School in Lancashire.” It’s to be hoped that that doesn’t include admission criteria which fall foul of the Schools Admission Code and misleading marketing.

Toby Young has just hosted a conference for free schools at WLFS and obviously he is a very influential figure in the movement, having set up the flagship free school. That’s why his example is important; if his school has a genuine social mix, then maybe other schools will follow. The anxiety is that the policy overall doesn’t lend itself to fair and open admissions. As the British Humanist Association has pointed out a third of English state schools have faith-based admissions which basically allow covert and overt selection, the net result of which is that wealthier students are siphoned off into them, leaving poorer students to languish in schools which are rather too like secondary moderns in character. The free schools policy looks set to exacerbate an already bad situation with roughly a third of free schools being faith-based in character. Toby’s argument on the podcast is that a great many free schools are based in socially deprived areas; well, yes, this may be the case, but look a school like Canary Wharf College which is situated in one of the most deprived areas in the country, the Isle of Dogs, and yet has fewer than 5% of pupils on FSM. Many of these schools are being set up deliberately to cater for exclusive social, ethnic and religious groups; there’s a genuine worry about ghetto-isation. Particularly troubling for me is the apparent desire for some schools to become military-style boot camps for children from deprived areas while other schools like the Steiner schools are clearly aiming for the liberal, wishy-washy creative market. It’s the worst kind of class stereotyping: boot camps for the poor, “yobby” kids, and frolicking in fields for the rich, arty ones. This policy lends itself to these things happening unless it’s regulated very tightly — which it isn’t being at the moment.

As Fiona Millar pointed out in a recent article for the Guardian, fair admissions only happen when schools lose the autonomy to pick and choose students, and an local body, like a local authority, has control over it. As I say on the podcast, I don’t think the Labour Party are going to change the free schools or academies policies of this current government, but they could tighten up the rules over admissions for ALL schools. One positive thing this government has done is to institute the Pupil Premium which at least gives schools an incentive to admit children from poorer backgrounds because they get more money.

Does WLFS’s attitude towards admissions mark a sea change in attitudes? If someone as right-wing as Toby Young can embrace a fair admissions’ policy, then maybe his example can persuade other schools who are playing the admissions system?? At the moment, without a coherent admissions policy in place, this is all we can hope for.

Increase focus and transparency of funding for disadvantaged students.

Schools have to say how they use the pupil premium. Results of disadvantaged pupils are included in Performance Tables. (The Sutton Trust Toolkit helps schools decide the most effective interventions – many of their recommendations contradict Government policy.)

Encourage high quality teachers to move to the most disadvantaged schools.

Schools Direct allows schools to “grow” their own teachers (It’s unclear how teachers who “grow” to fit one particular school could move easily to a different type. Schools Direct is not confined to disadvantaged schools so does nothing to encourage teachers to move to these schools. ATL argues that Schools Direct is “training on the cheap” and threatens University Initial Teacher Training. )

Teach First aims to put top graduates into challenging schools for at least two years. The Government wants to triple Teach First participants to 1,500 by 2014/15. (Teach First is not without criticism.)

Enhance user choice by proscribing use of residence criteria in admission to state schools.

(In theory, parents can state a preference for any school providing they pay transport costs if the school is not the nearest. It is only when schools are oversubscribed that distance is taken into account. If distance from schools were banned then other methods of choosing pupils would need to be put in place. The Government has ruled out ballots. It’s difficult to see how this recommendation could be implemented unless Local Authorities (LAs) were required to pay transport costs. This would place a greater burden on already cash-strapped LAs.)

Encourage entry of new schools even if it temporarily creates excess capacity.

(Some free schools have been established in areas with overcapacity. LAs have a statutory duty to manage school place supply. LAs would eventually have to deal with oversupply as permanent excess capacity especially during a period of austerity is not viable. This could lead to school closure although it’s unclear which organisation would be responsible for closing an academy or free school.)

Give LA maintained schools the same opportunity for hiring staff and negotiating wages.

Heads and Governing Bodies of LA maintained schools already have control of staff recruitment.

Author’s comments:

What is interesting about the OECD’s response is that it appears to have come from the Government (eg schools “growing” their own teachers is from the DfE). The Government, of course, wants to be seen to have acted on the OECD recommendations. BUT the Government’s proposed examination and accountability reforms go against OECD recommendations by increasing the focus on tests. The Government is bringing in performance-related pay even though there’s no evidence that it increases performance. Finance for statutory entitlement for pre-school hours for 2-year-olds comes from another part of the early years’ budget. £1 billion has been overspent on the academies programme which cost over £8 billion in total. Most of this went to schools already “good” or “outstanding”. £1 billion is allocated to free schools while there is a pressing need for places in primary school “hot spots”. And the Academies Commission* has highlighted concerns about social inclusion, educating hard-to-place children and the fragmentation of the education system.

The Government appears to have spun their policies to appease the OECD. The reality is different.

*seeThe Academies Commission 2013: what did the Commission say? in faqs above. The Academies Commission report was published in January. The Government is yet to respond.

Focus pre-schooling resources more strongly on disadvantaged pupils.

2 year olds will be entitled to 15 hours of free early education (BUT schools minister Elizabeth Truss wants staff to look after more children).

Government has refocused Sure Start centres on improved outcomes for young children with particular focus on disadvantaged children (BUT Sure Start centres have been closed and money has been diverted from early years to pay for statutory entitlement for 2 year-olds and the Government’s adoption strategy).

Lessen the extensive use of grades to measure performance. Further develop value-added indicators.

The Government announced an improved approach to national science sampling tests (BUT it has increased the use of tests: a phonics screening test (although this is theoretically not a performance measure) and a spelling, punctuation and grammar test for 10 year-olds.  Schools minister David Laws talks of “good” Level 4 passes.  The Government’s proposed accountability measures increase reliance on GCSE scores.  And there is still a focus on high stakes tests at 16 when most of the developed world has graduation at 18*).

Value-added measures showing progress between key stages are included in Performance Tables (BUT the Government abolished Contextual Value Added which OECD had said was a step in the right direction. The Ofsted Dashboard uses the wrong data and the expected progress measure is flawed).

Give stakeholders greater say in school leaving qualifications.

The Government wrote to Ofqal re A level reform (BUT universities were reluctant to be involved, the Government has ignored CBI (and others) who want exam focus to move to age 18 and Ofqual has reservations about the timetable for GCSE reforms.)

Review effects of school reforms eg free schools on equity and fair access.

Free schools introduce greater choice and provision in response to local demand (BUT demand is not the same as need, some free schools eg Beccles Free School have been established in areas with surplus capacity). 50% of first-wave free schools were located in the 30% most deprived communities and 45% of second-wave free schools in the 25% most deprived. (These figures are disputed.)

The revised Admissions Code (2012) has been introduced with the aim of making admissions fairer and clearer. (BUT the Academies Commission found that many academies were manipulating their admissions. The Admissions Code requires all schools to publish their admissions criteria for the year of admission (eg 2014/15 is the current requirement). However, many schools have not done so. This means it is impossible for complaints to be made by the deadline of 30 June. It is beyond the remit of the Schools Adjudicator to check whether schools comply with the deadline**).

The Government has “streamlined” the process for establishing academies making it easier for Local Authorities (LAs) to open them. (LAs now have no choice if they need a new school. All new schools have to be academies or free schools. This “ease” is actually compulsion.)

Author’s comments:

There seems to be a mismatch between what the OECD has been told and what is happening in reality. This will more fully be discussed in Part 2.

*see faq above What are the examination systems in other countries?

**email to author from the Office of the Schools Adjudicator (OSA) 7 May 2013.

The festival’s main focus seems to be political issues. Leading political commentators like Tony Benn, Tariq Ali, Owen Jones, Danielle Obono, and Laura Penny are talking about a whole host of vital topics: the austerity cuts, the media’s attack on benefit claimants, the Palestinian and Middle East crisis, the current direction of the Left, and capitalism’s stake in warmongering.

There’s an education panel too which is entitled “Fighting Gove from playpen to PhD: imagining a better education system”: John Westmoreland, Henry Parkyn Smith, Alex Kenny and Faduma Hassan are speaking. Gove has thrown down a gauntlet to the Left. Putting aside his inflammatory rhetoric about Marxists and “enemies of promise”, most would agree that the most radical and dangerous thing he’s done is to increase the marketisation of education, which, as has been many times discussed on this site, has exacerbated unfairness in our education system and the wider society. And yet, I can’t help thinking that the Left has possibly misplayed its hand by being overly negative in its response. Perhaps it could respond more creatively. For example, while I don’t agree with the overall policy of free schools, I can’t help thinking that if the unions did set up their own free schools this could be a place where good practice could be modelled. Or perhaps if they’re not keen on this, as Fiona Millar has suggested, a blueprint for co-operative schools could be established and put forward as a proper alternative. Is more nuance and less posturing required?

I like the way some artists have responded to the dangers of these dangerous times. The event that I’m really interested in going to is ‘Culture Shock! Artist as Activist’, at 6pm on Saturday,  which Peter Kennard, Cat Picton Phillipps, and Season Butler are appearing in. It seems to me that these artists are responding creatively to the difficulties of our current political situation by questioning existing hegemonic structures connected with gender, money, social class, politics, privilege and, of course, education. And they’re doing it in a really thought-provoking, hard-hitting and witty fashion. I love this photograph which forms part of Season Butler’s art work:

This is a performance installation which has the sub-heading:

“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for a gentle disaster for two. Three courses, three times a night. It will be our pleasure to serve you.”

The humorous, oblique approach offers a powerful critique of the customer/salesperson relationship, and made me think of the ways in which teacher identity is being re-configured in these days of rampant capitalism. We are becoming like waiters to our pupils, who in the neo-liberal, free-market model of education are like customers expecting to be served up good grades on a plate. Art is unique in the ways which it can undermine the dominant ideologies of an age; I think it’s no coincidence that the current government has been so determined to downgrade its importance in the school curriculum.

I think it’s only by forging a new aesthetic way of thinking that we’ll really start to think of truly dangerous ideas about education. Education is really so much more than school. I gave a talk about this at the Goldsmiths graduate festival; as part of my PhD in Creative Writing and Education I’ve been trying to formulate a theoretical framework for developing what I call “aesthetic education”, that is an educational approach which fosters a love of life and beauty, which engages not only the intellect but the body.

You can watch the whole talk here if you’re interested.

Hidden deep within one of the older topics in which I had a particular interest, however, was this link to a petition regarding the setting up of free schools. The key line of the petition is that “Free schools should not be approved by the Department for Education in areas where there are a surplus of places in existing schools”

It would seem to me that individuals on all sides of the free school argument would want to sign up to this. Cases, as in North Devon, where there are attempts to set up free schools when the demographics work against the idea must surely damage the whole concept of free schools and give them a bad press.

As an observation on 4 weeks of postings it struck me how much contributors still consider Mr Gove might be interested in children’s education. Catching up on these pages and items of wider political impact it would seem to me that his attention is focussed 24/24 on becoming the next leader of the Conservatives and all his pronouncements should be viewed in that context.

Isn’t it obvious that children with Special Needs are best catered for in Special Schools, and mainstream children benefit from not having their time wasted by the extra attention needed by their less fortunate peers? And it goes without saying that children that are insufficiently able to get an A*-C grade in academic subjects like history, French, English literature and pure sciences are much better off, and will cause less trouble, doing easy vocational alternatives.

If school pupils are so badly behaved that they disrupt lessons and ignore their teachers then it is also obvious that more rigid discipline is needed with zero-tolerance punishments for the miscreants and more rewards for the compliant.

According to Michael Gove’s Free School model, all that is needed to improve schools is to take power from professionals and give it to parents demanding ‘common sense’ school policies.

This further strengthens the market-based approach and extends it to how subjects should be taught as well as to how pupils should be dressed, grouped and managed. By such means ‘common sense’ should reign supreme and standards will rise as a result of the universal power of market forces.

The 1977 Nobel laureate economist James Meade who died in 1995 wanted the following epitaph inscribed on his tombstone: “He tried to understand economics all his life but common sense kept getting in the way”. As for economics, so for education, and no more so than in England in the Michael Gove era.

There is no educational issue where this is truer than that of mixed ability teaching, which has been extensively researched over the last 40 years. There is no consensus on the effects of mixed ability grouping on the attainment of the most able, but there is conclusive evidence that all pupils benefit when taught alongside more able peers.

The Cognitive Acceleration approaches of Shayer and Adey and others stress the importance of the social context of learning, and especially peer-peer interactions. This does not rule out setting by ability but CA and other developmental approaches do not involve pupils sitting in silence, in isolated rows, absorbing information.

The English education system has for some time been in the grip of fear of indiscipline in schools, for which common sense dictates ever more severe punishments and authoritarian control. Early on in my headship school, when we abandoned a rigid disciplinary regime based on punishment and rewards, replacing it with a programme of planned teaching of the skills of inter-personal relationships, on the Bloom affective taxonomy model, behaviour improved and both fixed term and permanent exclusions dropped to zero. This was sustained over many years.

T H Huxley, ‘Darwin’s bulldog, that great Victorian defender and advocate of Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, believed that science was ‘merely the application of Common Sense’. No scientists believe this today. I like to think that Huxley was just confusing ‘common sense’ with logic. We now know that science teaches us that the truth is frequently profoundly counter-intuitive.

Lewis Wolpert’s excellent 1992 book ‘The Unnatural Nature of Science’, contains many examples of the ‘common sense’ fallacy, some of which feature in the following list.

If a piece of string was to be tightly fitted around the 25,000 mile circumference of a smooth globe the size of the earth and then lengthened by a yard, how far from the surface of the globe would the string then stand out? (Answer: about 6 inches).

What happens to the pressure in a balloon as you inflate it? (Answer: it gets less).

If you fire a bullet from a gun horizontally across a flat field and simultaneously drop an identical bullet from the same height, which will hit the ground first? (Answer: they will both hit the ground at the same time).

If you empty a glass of water into the sea and allow it to mix with all the oceans in the world then after this mixing has taken place, dip it in again to refill it what are the chances of retrieving some of your original molecules? (Answer: very high).

When you burn a piece of magnesium ribbon ending up with a pile of white ash how does the weight of the ash compare with the weight of the original piece of magnesium? (Answer: it is heavier).

If you toss a coin five times and it falls on heads each time what is the chance that it will fall on tails on the next toss? (Answer: 50:50)

If you add some ice cubes to a tumbler of water what happens to the water level in the tumbler as the ice melts? (Answer: it stays the same)

Adey and Dillon’s ‘Bad Education’ (2012) contains many more examples on this theme. I fear that misplaced ‘common sense’ populism is threatening to do great damage to the English education system.

It was a good-natured affair and quite hard to see much difference between the two men, and the “One Nation” concept as articulated by them did seem to be a very “blokish” affair with lots of references to male politicians and political theorists.

Mr Gove kindly name-checked the Local Schools Network from the platform. I think this was really a sideswipe at the unions. He was claiming that debate about the future of education policy was not taking place in the professional organisations but amongst the grass roots and in the blogosphere.

So on one side there were bloggers like Andrew Old and someone called Tom Bennett, who Mr Gove said made the case for his reforms better than he (Gove) could. On the other side, he named the Head Teachers Roundtable and the Local Schools Network, responsible for incisive and well-argued opposition.

When it came to schools and “One Nation” the discussion seemed to boil down to governance. Mr Gove, unsurprisingly, focused on his free schools policy as an example of how teachers were now empowered to set up institutions serving their local communities in the same way that many other professionals had been free to do for years.

I was given the chance to ask a question at the end so I asked Mr Gove how he could reconcile his rhetoric of community, and local empowerment, with the fact that the last 25 years have seen a massive power grab by central governments of both colours away from local communities.

Before the 1988 Education Act the Secretary of State had three powers of direction over schools, after the 1988 Act he was given 250 powers and he now has over 2000. Several thousand academy schools are now directly contracted to the DFE.

The Secretary of State’s argument (a bit weak I thought) was not to deny my central point but to ask whether heads and schools would feel they were more or less interfered with than in the past. I suspect that if the audience has been made up of heads and teachers, there would have been an immediate, not altogether positive, response to that point.

But Lord Glasman’s answer was interesting and similar to a comment he had made in his opening remarks. I can’t provide a direct quote as the transcript isn’t available yet and I was too busy listening to take detailed notes.

But in essence he said that “we” which I took to mean Labour (or maybe he meant Blue Labour) believed in  “ a third, a third, a third” – the three way split of ownership/governance of public institutions and in schools this would mean parents, teachers and “the funders” which in the case of the free schools is of course the government.

I was surprised for two reasons. Firstly, even as a committed activist with a fairly well known interest in schools policy, I wasn’t aware that Labour had a policy on this, or was even thinking along these lines, which may say something about how policy is being developed and the extent to which members are involved.

But more importantly the sort of model he described is in fact the same as the long established “stakeholder” model of governance, in which elected parents and teachers are represented on a governing body alongside community (or foundation in the case of Trust, VA and faith schools) and the local authority, which is the funder in the maintained system.

This system is still used in maintained schools, which in spite of the DFE spin make up the vast majority of schools in this country, and is quite at odds with the academy/free school model in which the Secretary of State has a commercial contract with the sponsor who then appoints all the governors.

I for one would be very glad if Labour is planning to reinvent a modernized version of the stakeholder model of governance. Maybe a co-operative or community trust school could be the default structure for new schools in the future?

It is just not true to suggest, as the government frequently does, that only the academy model of governance can succeed. There are thousands of examples of very successful schools with this sort of “stakeholder” representative governance arrangement and also examples of academies that are failing. In either case there is provision for the removal of a failing governing body.

But the “stakeholder” model  is a real example of community activity, democracy and localism in practice. In my area, the London Borough of Camden, where no school has yet converted to academy status, we have a mix of stakeholder governing bodies, as there are a lot of faith schools and two non-denominational VA secondary schools.

Nearly every school ( and 100% of the secondary schools) is good or outstanding in Ofsted terms. The governors association, of which I am vice chair, is active and works with the LA. The Camden Partnership for Excellence also includes representatives from parent groups, the LA, governors and the wider community.

There are many examples of this type of devolved power and collaborative work emerging across the country as schools recognise that in fact they want to be part of a community, rather than a free floating institution in an atomised market driven system. Michael Gove did cite this fact as evidence of how his academies policy was creating new types of One Nation structures.

A return to stakeholder governance raises much bigger questions about what happens to schools with the existing academy governance model and I hope the Labour Party will invite those of us outside the blokes’ inner circle to discuss these wider questions before too long.

But in the meantime I feel cautiously encouraged that something along these lines might be possible.

Regular readers of Local Schools Network will know Janet’s work well. She is renowned for digging out obscure facts and wading through long reports to discover useful nuggets. Indeed she has a dedication to use of evidence that would be rather useful in a Secretary for State for Education. This post is a tribute to some of my favourites from Janet’s posts:

Recent Critiques of Gove and DfE from Janet

Gove: “survey after survey” display “disturbing historical ignorance” among teenagers. No they don’t. Janet reveals that the UKGold survey quoted was based on all adults and not just teenagers. Further surveys are dissected here. Best of all is her FOI debate with DfE.

Gove: In Far Eastern countries “School days are longer, school holidays are shorter,” Not according to OECD data, found Janet.

DfE claims Free schools are over-subscribed. Or are they, asks Janet – finding that many “oversubscribed” schools have spare places

Are 20% of school leavers functionally illiterate? No, argues Janet based on ONS definitions..

Other Recent Posts from Janet

21st April: Trouble at two academy chains: AET banned from expanding and E-Act gets a warning

8th April: £3.5 million extension for secondary free school with only 90 pupils in area with 700 surplus places

1st April: Parents critical of Government’s education policies, YouGov poll reveals

17th March: A third of free schools inspected by Ofsted “require improvement”

12th March: What do high-performing school systems have in common? OECD guru summarises PISA findings

And that is just a sample. Browse through the Views page on Local Schools Network to get a sense of the range of posts.

Other Research

Janet is also responsible for almost all the very thoroughly-researched FAQs on this web site. Find the answers to these questions, and others, here – always based on the data and the evidence:

• What did the Public Accounts Committee say about the Academies Programme in 2013?
• Is it true that schools with more autonomy tend to achieve better results?
• What did the National Audit Office (NAO) really say about academies in 2010?
• Do market forces in education increase achievement and efficiency?
• What do schools systems which score highly in PISA have in common?
• What are the examination and assessment systems in OECD countries?
• What are the examination systems in other countries?
• What are the key factors of a school accountability system? The OECD lists ten.
• Would Performance-Related Pay improve educational outcomes?
• Has there been grade inflation in GCSEs and A levels?
• Are 20% of school leavers illiterate?
• What about maths? How many school children leave school innumerate?

I’m a supporter of the Accord Coalition.

I prefer to see the faith school debate focused calmly and intensively on issues of access and fairness, because when it strays into the territory of Secularism v Religion it quickly becomes hyperbolic, and the politicians and other influencers are scared off.

The Free School policy has certainly been divisive. However, I think it will have some great successes as well as some monumental failures. I prefer to judge each Free School proposal on its own merits, and in its own local context.

Many people on this Network assume ‘Local Authority Knows Best’. However, in our area the (Conservative) Council has made a very unpopular, controversial and expensive decision. The Free School policy has allowed local people to focus their frustration and energy into creating something positive to mitigate against that decision, and in that sense it has been ‘a good thing’.