The Mr Man exercise is cherry picked as Janet Downs observes, and is only one of a large number of exercises on the Active History web site. It may be appropriate, or it may be a bad piece of work. We don’t have to defend every piece of work on every web site. However what Gove does is to take a piece of evidence out of context to make his general case. This is invalid deduction. There are bad doctors. There are certainly bad hospitals. I live in Stafford, and the local hospital is a national scandal. But we do not condemn the NHS because of poor standards in particular areas. We try to improve the service – which is what the people of Stafford are seeking with their hospital.

In theory, Gove is doing the same for education. But what he does not practice is select a bad example and then say everything is awful. In this case, he is arguing “proper history of being crushed under the weight of play based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture….At GCSE level this infantilisation continues. One set of history teaching resources….” and off he goes. The full speech – May 9th at Brighton college is full of similar examples of making a general statement from isolated cases. It is intellectually invalid. His method always involves special pleading and the whole speech provides evidence of this polemical approach.

In this particularly rich case of how a career politician operates, Gove is also playing to the old Black Paper approach, used in the 1970s to great effect and never known to fail since, of saying everything is wrong so politicians must intervene. However in the Mr Man Example he plays to the old view that GCSE is rubbish – so teachers should adopt the IGCSE, or international GCSE, that state education is rubbish so schools should be modeled on independents, the root of the academy movement, and that They Do Things Better Abroad and we must catch up with the International Competition.

Except that the Active History site is run from an independent school, is an IGCSE site, and is located abroad – the International School for Toulouse. So it has ticked all the boxes and fails to match up to the Gove agenda. We may also note this is a teacher run resource, which is what Gove advocated in his April 25th speech.

There is no pleasing Mr Gove.

And indeed there is not. He is on a mission, and evidence is what fits his preordained case. In this context, critics are to be ignored and the evidence cherry picked to suit. This is not objective and balanced judgement, but a politically driven agenda which selects what is said to give the desired impression. On school History the objective assessment, supported by OFSTED reports – at least in the era before Michael Wilshaw took over – was that history is well taught, and universities regularly praise History, which is a Facilitating Subject. It is therefore profoundly disturbing that Michael Gove argues in this manner, and essential that we keep pointing to his partisan and illogical approach.

Trevor Fisher
Editor, Education Politics.

“… A 2011 report by Ofsted found that many primary school pupils ended up with ‘an episodic knowledge of history and their sense of time was unclear’,” a spokeswoman for the Department for Education (DfE) told the BBC.

But Gove was criticising historical knowledge among school leavers not primary children. So, what did Ofsted say about secondary history?

1 Most secondary pupils received successful, well taught lessons particularly at exam level;

2 The National Curriculum had led to “much high-quality teaching and learning”.

3 History was a popular optional subject although only 30% of maintained school pupils took history GCSE in 2010. In independent schools the figure was 48%;

4 Only 20% of pupils in academies took GCSE history in 2010.

Ofsted countered the view that British history was not widely taught:

“The view that too little British history is taught in secondary schools in England is a myth. Pupils in the schools visited studied a considerable amount of British history and knew a great deal about the particular topics covered. However, the large majority of the time was spent on English history rather than wider British history.”

The DfE spokeswoman continued:

“We are taking action to ensure all our children are given the first class education they deserve.”

But Ofsted has said there’s much first class teaching and learning happening in History already. Surely it’s better to build on that rather than replace it with something completely different?

She went on: “Our approach to the history curriculum has been supported by some of the country’s most eminent historians, including Prof David Abulafia, Prof Niall Ferguson, Dr David Starkey, Antony Beevor and Dr Amanda Foreman.”

But the proposed curriculum been criticised by other historians, academics and teachers.

The Royal Historical Society, senior members of the British Academy, History UK and the Historical Association have all made their opposition known.

An adviser on the history curriculum, Steven Mastin, said the proposals bore “no resemblance” to drafts he worked on. Mastin, who stood for the Conservatives in 2010, said “Between January and the publication of this document – which no one involved in the consultation had seen – someone has typed it up and I have no idea who that is.”

A letter in today’s Times* from the Historical Association reminded Gove that its criticism of the proposed history curriculum was based on the responses of teachers of different political views and from different types of schools.

So, Ofsted doesn’t support Gove’s assertion that English children aren’t taught enough English history. Gove’s roll call of academics supportive of the proposed history curriculum is countered by those academics, historians and teachers who oppose it. And an advisor on the history curriculum has no idea who wrote the final document.

Perhaps it was someone from UKTV Gold.

UPDATE: 15 May 2013

The Historical Association sent out questionnaires to all secondary schools about the proposed history curriculum.  It received 700 replies.  Only 12 teachers agreed of strongly agreed with the statement asking whether they were looking forward to teaching the proposed curriculum.  The overwhelming majority disagreed with Mr Gove.

UPDATE: 16 May 2013

The Ofsted link above no longer seems to be working.  A google search for the same report also linked to a broken link.  However, I found a summary here.  The summary contains this paragraph:

“One of the characteristics of weaker provision in secondary schools was the tendency for teachers to try to cover too much content and ‘spoon-feed’ students. As a result, teachers talked too much, lessons were rushed, opportunities for debate and reflection were missed and students lost interest.”

It’s unclear how Gove’s proposed history curriculum, stuffed full with facts, is going to address Ofsted’s concerns.

*not available freely on line. Subscription needed.

The topic of ‘electricity and magnetism’ is one that many GCSE science students find difficult and which may therefore be a common ‘turn off’. I liked to start my series of KS4 lessons on electromagnetism with some practical activities involving that most cognitively demanding phenomenon of electromagnetic induction. The following approach breaks all the (behaviourist) rules by starting with the difficult and complex, which real life always is, and then reaching down to seek a simplifying structure of explanations rather than the other way round. The first stage in such learning is therefore grounded in concrete experience and is therefore thoroughly Piagetian.

Our science classes usually contained 24/25 students. Groups of five, preferably of mixed ability within a setted class are about right even if there is enough apparatus for smaller groups. This is to facilitate essential social interaction and peer to peer discussion (Vygotsky) in response to the activity.

Each group has a demountable transformer of the sort designed for Nuffield physics in the early 1970s. Every school I taught in from 1971 to 2003 had this kit. The transformer consists of two identical insulated coils of enamelled copper wire and two laminated iron ‘C’ cores. One ‘leg’ of each ‘C’ core can be inserted into the centre of each coil. The cores are then butted together to make a continuous iron loop threading both coils. It is simple to show this in a diagram. Modern schools may have a different version of this kit that does the same thing, but for this activity to work the cores, each with its own coil, have to be separable. I have seen demountable transformer kits in the Phillip Harris catalogue where this is not case.

One of the coils is connected to the 12V ac output of a lab power pack. The other coil is connected to a 12V 24W car headlamp bulb in a holder.

The pupils are told to separate the cores then switch on the power pack. The coil connected to it and its core make a scary 50Hz buzzing noise and the core becomes a very powerful and noisy electromagnet. Let the students explore and experience the power of this magnet by encouraging them to play with some iron or steel objects. The very powerful buzzing electromagnet they have made is impressive and causes much excitement.

Next, with the power pack still switched on, ask a student to take one of the ‘C’ cores and coil in one hand and the other in the other hand and slowly bring them closer to butt the cores together into a continuous iron loop threading both coils. The student will feel a very powerful attractive force and will not be able to prevent the butt ends of the two cores crashing together. At this the 24W lamp suddenly lights brightly even though it is not electrically connected to the power pack. The student will not then be able to separate the cores, so strong is the attraction.

Then ask the student to switch off the power. The two cores will then separate and fall apart. Now for the astonishing bit. Ask the student to switch the power pack back on and repeat the experiment, but this time try to stop the cores finally coming together. This is very difficult and requires great strength. The idea is to get the cores within a centimetre of each other. There will be much buzzing and drama and the 24W lamp will begin to glow dimly even though the cores are not touching. If they crash together then the student can try again after switching the power pack off. All the students in the group should then try to make the lamp just glow while maintaining an air gap between the butt ends of the cores. This is massively exciting and engaging.

This activity will eat time and the students should be allowed to play and experiment with the phenomenon, without too much domination by the teacher, just a bit of help when necessary.

The students should be asked to discuss with each other what they have experienced reminding them that the lamp lights even when it is not connected by wires to the power pack, and it even glows when not even the iron cores are touching. The students will already be very familiar with lighting lamps by connecting them into electric circuits, but that is not what is happening here. Somehow energy is jumping between the two cores to make the lamp glow, but how and why?

If there is time they can try putting pieces of card between the cores and trying other experiments of their own. At the end of the lesson tell the students that they will not discover the full truth of what is happening until the end of the series of lessons on this topic, but the process of finding out will begin next lesson!

If I was to conduct this lesson for an OfSTED inspector I would likely fail – no three part lesson plan (in fact not much of a lesson plan at all), no lesson objectives written on the board, no worksheets and no final summary session bringing it all together (to tell the class what they should have learned).

The following series of lessons would proceed with the usual Michael Faraday style class experiments with appropriate references to the great man and pointing out that he was not a trained scientist but a lab technician who literally electrified the world by doing just what the class was doing.

It is important to use beefy amounts of power in such an experiment. A 24W lamp gets very hot and the surge of power when it lights through electromagnetic induction can be felt through many senses. The 50Hz buzz gives a powerful sense that something is vibrating and that this is significant in some way. It is important for pupils to experience phenomena directly through the senses whenever possible as this fertilises the mental soil for concepts to take root and have meaning for the individual learner. It is much harder for concepts to take root in sterile mental soil in a sterile school culture. Practical experiences and engagement are of value not so much for any factual knowledge gained, as at this stage that may be diffuse and uncertain, but for the personal cognitive development and engagement that the experience has stimulated in the learner.

Obviously the teacher needs to try this out first. There is a danger that a group may try to repeat the activity using 12V dc rather than ac. This is potentially very rewarding as surprisingly the lamp does not light even when the cores are together in a single iron loop and the magnetism is just as strong. Better still students might notice that the lamp flashes briefly when the power pack is turned on and off. The danger here is that on dc, the coil connected to the power pack may overheat, so experimenting with dc instead of ac probably needs another more controlled activity in a later lesson.

I offer this lesson suggestion not as a model, but as an example to be discussed and criticised. It certainly raises further pedagogical questions that I have never fully worked out. For example, how to manage such a lesson to get the best outcome for the girls in the class, whose excitement in such contexts may be less easy to stimulate than my own for a whole raft of complex reasons that women may be able to explain to me. Should the teacher dictate the make up of the groups, or let the pupils organise themselves? Should the teacher insist on mixed sex groups? Would this be counter-productive and just feed stereotypes on who does, and who watches?

I would hope that science teachers in a science department would be encouraged to develop their own ideas, like this one, for practical science activities and discuss and share them in science department staff meetings, along with other ideas for promoting deep understanding. If such meetings are always dominated by agendas passed down from the senior management team, or by issues of behaviour and discipline, then a lot of developmental work is needed amongst the staff as well as the pupils. The culture of behaviourist managerialism that has increasingly come to dominate school senior management teams, may simply not be up to this.

It certainly helps if the headteacher and senior colleagues are also leading practitioners in departmental teaching teams and recognised as such by teachers and pupils alike. If the current education system cannot facilitate this then there is something seriously wrong with the system.

2 The use of raw data to judge a school’s performance particularly when these results were not put into context.

Sir Mike felt the second concern was less of a problem now because more contextualised data was available which allows like to be compared with like.  But he said there’s a tendency for commentators, particularly politicians, to make judgements about school effectiveness based on one year’s results rather than a trend over a longer timescale.

The first concern, however, increased further after the introduction of short inspections in 2002. Inspectors spent less time in schools and subjects were judged by non-specialist inspectors. This seriously reduced both the quality and quantity of information about teaching in each subject, wrote Sir Mike. Reduced time together with an increased amount of test data meant the latter became the “dominant input” into Ofsted judgements.

England has a very autonomous school system, Sir Mike said, and accountability was crucial. However, he didn’t believe the balance in the current accountability system is the best possible. It is skewed so schools feel under increased pressure to increase test results. This leads to:

1 Teaching to the test;

2 So-called “safe” teaching;

3 A decrease in innovation;

4 A reduced emphasis on developing pupils’ enthusiasm for subjects.

Nevertheless, Sir Mike felt Ofsted had had notable successes:

1 It contributed to a rise in the quality of science teaching between 1995/96 and 2003/4

2 Ofsted’s concerns about Key Stage 3 pupils being taught science by non-specialists combined with the Wellcome Trust’s report on the professional development of science teachers led to the establishment of the National Science Learning Centre and 9 regional centres.

3 It contributed to the establishment of the National College for School Leadership in 1997 to improve school leadership.

4 Ofsted’s identification of good practice led to effective schools being linked to other schools. This had been a factor in the success of the London Challenge.

However, Sir Mike feared that changes to Ofsted in 2012 would “raise the bar for what is acceptable examination performance”. These changes are likely to increase the pressure on schools to raise test results “by all means possible”, he warned.

So, is Ofsted friend or foe?

The positive: quality of teaching in science had increased.

The negative: teaching to the test, over-simplified use of data, and the stifling of innovation.

Sir Mike concluded that the “weight of all the accountability measures needs to be reduced and test and examination requirements overhauled”. Ofsted should rely less on test data and more on direct observation.

This change would give teachers the room and the confidence to innovate and develop good teaching practices.

*Sir Mike Tomlinson’s essay, “Inspection: friend or foe?” is published in the Wellcome report Effects from Accountabilities (2013) available here.

The Board was set up in 2011 as a sector-led initiative to help Local Authorities (LAs) improve performance on adoption, tackling child sexual exploitation and learning lessons from child abuse cases. It received £10.5m from the Department for Education (DfE) in 2011/12 and £8m in 2012/13.

But the DfE has withdrawn promised funding for 2013/14. A statement from the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) said it was ‘wholly perplexed by the department’s volte face.”

Colin Hilton, the Board’s chairman, said, “We knew this funding was always going to be time-limited, but this announcement comes as a complete shock when we are already a week into the new financial year.”

“It leaves no time for contingency planning and puts at risk the good work carried out by the Children’s Improvement Board in supporting councils to improve their children’s services.”

“Since the ministerial announcement of our continued funding last autumn, we have worked with the DfE and agreed on plans for improving performance… This decision will now throw this important work into doubt.

“We know Whitehall intervention is not the answer to protecting vulnerable children and a sector-led approach is the best way forward. However, such work needs to be adequately resourced and it is untenable to throw the full weight of this on councils, which are already contending with government cuts to their budgets by a third.”

Chris Waterman, former CEO of ADCS*, went further. He described the sudden withdrawal of funding as “pure spite” and said:

“This is just one part of a deliberate strategy to further reduce local authorities’ capacity to deliver their statutory duties and to improve themselves. Mr Gove is working hard to destabilise and deconstruct the local authority infrastructure.”

A spokesman said the DfE would continue to “drive improvement across children’s services” and would help LAs by cutting “unnecessary bureaucracy”. Slashing red tape seems to be a catch-all justification covering everything from academy conversion to planning. Now it’s being used to defend cuts in funding. This could be summarised as, “You can cope with less money because you’ve got less paperwork.”

Some commentators questioned the timing of the funding axe just as Ofsted is planning to toughen oversight of the early years. And the DfE has said it will take “focused action in areas where performance across the country is not strong enough.”

At the same time, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, said the Government is removing the role of LAs in supporting local provision while pre-school training support had been cut by 40% in the last year and nursery workers were being expected to supervise 50% more children.

“While we welcome the aspiration of high-quality childcare” Leitch said, “without a rethink on policy and adequate funding from government, we struggle to see how a real improvement will be made.”

So, cut funding and send in inspectors working within a more stringent framework. It appears that LAs could be being set up to fail.

*Association of Directors of Children’s Services

“Up to 10 children are competing for each place at the Coalition’s flagship free schools amid intense competition for the most sought-after institutions, according to research,” trumpeted the Telegraph.

Its headline was, however, rather misleading: the “up to 10” fell to “2.97 applications per place” further down the page.

But surely nearly three applications per place is a sign of popularity, isn’t it? Not necessarily, because we don’t know how many of these applications were first choice. A parental preference ranked third is not a huge vote of confidence – it means the parent would accept a place only if the schools placed first and second were full.

We had the same story last year. The Independent revealed that 1,078 parents applied for the 120 places at West London Free School. But The Independent disclosed that only 250 of these applications were first choice. In Hammersmith and Fulham, where WLFS is situated, parents are allowed up to six choices. So the 828 parents who didn’t put WLFS down as number one could have placed the school anywhere between numbers two and six.

One of the schools which was said to be oversubscribed last year was former independent Batley Grammar School, an all-through school. Ofsted wrote:

“The number of pupils increased rapidly when the Free School opened. A significant number of pupils in the primary and secondary phase entered at other than the normal ages of admission. At the points of transition from primary to secondary, and to the sixth form, some pupils join and others leave. “

But Ofsted revealed that 107 of the 700 places were still unfilled.

Another school said to be oversubscribed last year was King’s Science Academy where, we were told, there were 704 applications for 160 places in Year 7. But Ofsted revealed there are only 140 pupils at the Academy spread over two years: Years 7 and 8.

It seems that these “oversubscription” numbers count every mention on the school admission forms completed by parents even if the school is ranked last. This is misleading.

Perhaps the UK Statistics Authority should investigate how these free school “oversubsription” figures are calculated and used.

Contrary to being a ‘powerful new … tool’ this is a crudely fashioned blunt instrument with the potential to further denigrate the work of schools and teachers. In the current febrile, high-stakes school performance climate it reduces the rich and varied complexity of schools and education to a set of simplistic statistics and spurious ‘analysis’. The embarrassing fact that the methodology had to be reviewed and the Dashboards updated within days of their release does not suggest a powerful tool that had been carefully thought through and quality assured.

How a school is performing in test and exam results is not the same as how effective it is. The School Data Dashboard is simplistic, misleading and lacks rigour whilst trying to create the impression of precision and clarity. It is an insult to both governors and parents to suggest that it is of any real value in helping them to understand and challenge their school effectively. Given that governors already have access to the far more comprehensive and sophisticated analyses in RAISEonline and both governors and parents have access to the annual performance tables this is hardly a ‘powerful … new tool’. It is however a dangerously powerful blunt instrument.

To my knowledge this is the first time that any individual school level KS1 data has been placed in the public domain. Many schools, particularly infant schools, will feel frustrated and disappointed with the nature of their debut into the national arena of data comparisons. How does comparing attainment at Level 2+ with national averages allow governors and parents to judge how effectively a school is performing? It is nothing more than a simplistic snapshot of one measure, stripped of any informative context. Without knowing the starting points of the pupils, or the context of the school it is impossible to make any judgements about how effective it is. A small ‘advantaged’ school which reported 100% of pupils at L2c would very likely be in a higher grouping (the Highest) than a large ‘disadvantaged’ school which reported 90% at L3 and 10% at L1. Which school is the more effective school?

A brief explanation of the methodology underlying the Dashboard is presented in the guidance (Ofsted School Data Dashboard Guidance, February 2013, No. 130062). Incidentally this guidance was updated in March after the errors in methodology were corrected and the Dashboards updated but the publication date is still February 2013. Unfortunately the methodology is far from fully explained which makes it difficult to fully assess the validity of the dashboards. However, there is sufficient information and data in the public domain to question their robustness as I have attempted below, focussing on Ofsted ‘quintiles’ and ‘similar’ schools.

Quintiles
The use of ‘quintiles’ for both national and ‘similar’ schools comparisons is an example of how the dashboard tries to create an impression of statistical precision. The quintiles appear to make a robust discrimination between the performance of schools but I suspect it may not be appropriate to apply a valid quintile analysis to the primary attainment and progress data as the results are concentrated in very narrow bands and the distribution of appears to me to be far too skewed to make such an analysis meaningful. In robust statistical analyses quintiles are five equal divisions of a data set with the 3rd quintile being the median. It is very difficult to see how these conditions have been achieved by Ofsted.

Another example of imprecision is where the guidance refers to schools with 97% being ‘in’ the second quintile.  Schools are not ‘in’ a quintile as quintiles are not intervals to score “in”. Scores can be “at” a quintile, above or below a quintile or between two quintiles, but not “in” a quintile.

Within the guidance for the ‘all schools’ comparison the quintiles are explained as having been calculated by taking all of the data of interest for all of the schools and allocating 20% of schools to each quintile using the following process:
a) The data for the specific measure and the group of interest, for example the percentage of pupils achieving expected progress in Key Stage 2 English in ‘all schools’, are selected.
b) The scores for all schools are then ranked.
c) The ranks are split into five sub-groups, each group representing 20% of the ranks in the whole group.

I find it difficult to work out how ‘five sub-groups, each group representing 20%’ can have been achieved given the distribution of the data and the constraint that ‘schools with the same attainment cannot be in different quintiles’.

Using the 2 Levels Progress in English data as per the example in the guidance, 2886 of the 14291 primary schools listed in the 2012 KS2 Performance Tables achieved 100%. This is in fact the most frequently occurring score in the distribution (the mode). All 2886 schools, 20.19%, must therefore be above the top national quintile, as schools with the same attainment cannot be in different quintiles. The 2nd national ‘quintile’ therefore has to be placed at either;
-18.45%, all 2637schools that achieved between 95-99%; or
-23.22%, all 6204 schools that achieved 94-99%.
As the median is 93%, and therefore 50% of schools are in the range 93-100%, this makes determining the range of the 3rd group problematic. To be placed in the 3rd group a school should strictly speaking have scored at or above the median but a quick search of the dashboards reveals schools with 91% are in the 3rd grouping for all schools. So the Ofsted ‘quintiles’ cannot possibly be five equal sized divisions with the 3rd quintile being the median.

If my assumptions and calculations are correct these are not ‘quintiles’. The use of the term quintile is intended to give an impression of statistical rigour yet the groupings are likely to be in five groups of roughly 20% as opposed to groupings determined by quintiles. It may be that Ofsted uses data of a greater precision to determine the quintiles, e.g. percentages to one or more decimal places. If this is the case then it contradicts the Dashboard FAQs which state that ‘The figures in the School data dashboard are drawn from RAISEonline and Department for Education (DfE) performance tables’. The relevant data in these sources is to 0 decimal places.

If the underlying dashboard data only uses whole number percentages the distribution of scores for 2 Levels Progress in English must be something similar to the ranges below if the groups each contain roughly 20% of the total number of schools:
Highest – 100%
2nd group – 95% – 99%
3rd group – 91% – 94%
4th group – 86% – 90%
Lowest – 0% – 85%

The average cohort size (mode) in the KS2 Performance Tables data is 30 pupils. In an average size school each pupil therefore contributes 3.33% to the total. Thus, an average sized primary school would be in the:
- Highest group if all pupils made 2 levels progress (100%);
- 2nd group if all but one did (96.7%);
- 3rd group if all but two (93.3%);
- 4th group if all but three (90.0%) or four (86.7%); and
- Lowest group if all but five (83.3%).

If my assumptions are correct the differences in quintile performance for a large proportion of primary schools will represent the difference in performance of one, or at best two pupils. The parameters are even more extreme should you be one of the 270+ schools nationally in 2012 with only 20 pupils in the cohort. If three of your twenty pupils did not make 2 levels progress (80.0%) then you will be below the bottom quintile. It is not even mathematically possible for you to be between the 2nd and 3rd quintiles as a whole number of pupils cannot possible score between 91% and 94%. Similarly, a school with only 10 pupils in the cohort (170+ such schools in 2012) can only possibly be in the top quintile, above the 4th or below the bottom as it is not possible to score within the ranges of the 2nd and 3rd quintiles. Even with a cohort of 60 pupils (twice the national average) the difference between being placed in the Highest and the Lowest groupings is dependent on the performance of just six pupils.

Similar Schools
Ofsted have decreed that for dashboard purposes each school has its own group of ‘similar schools’. These are defined as schools whose pupils have a similar average level of prior attainment. It is only prior attainment that is used in the model; contextual factors are not used. These are not similar schools in any sense that most people would use the term similar. These are very diverse and significantly different schools that happen to share a single characteristic at a single point in time.

Primary schools are compared with the most similar 110 schools on the basis of the overall Key Stage 1 Average Points Score (APS) of the cohort drawn from RAISEonline and Department for Education (DfE) performance tables.

However, APS data in both these sources is only calculated to 1 decimal place. As there are 400+ primary schools in the 2012 Performance Tables with the same KS1 APS of 15.9, I asked Ofsted how they narrowed down to groups of just 110 schools, given that no other criteria are used in the model. The reply was that in some cases they used APS scores up to 3 decimal places to determine what is classed as the same score. One thousandth of one APS appears to taking precision to a new level of spurious validity or even over the threshold of absurdity.

I happened to notice that the day after the Dashboard was published Ofsted updated their Subsidiary Guidance (Subsidiary guidance supporting the inspection of maintained schools and academies). Within this document there was a very helpful ‘ready reckoner’ for inspectors intended to guide them to ‘suitable ways of expressing gaps in average points scores using plain language and simple fractions.’ Thus for example 1 point is the equivalent of 1 term, one-third of a year and 4 months.

Using the equivalents in the table I have been able to calculate that by using APS to 3 decimal places Ofsted can now determine differences in attainment between primary schools to within 3 hours. To be more precise, differences of 2.880 hours (to 3 decimal places) or approximately 2 hours and 52 minutes and 52 seconds.

Interestingly, the Ofsted Subsidiary Guidance instructs school inspectors that when judging the quality of leadership and management they should consider whether governors ‘understand and take sufficient account of pupil data, or whether they are misled by ‘headlines’’. The Data Dashboard hardly makes an auspicious contribution to the avoidance of the latter.

In shaping my observations I have only used sources of information and data that are in the public domain and drawn what I feel are logical conclusions. But I am not a statistician and I may have made errors in my assumptions, interpretations and calculations. I apologise for any such mistakes.

The only way that the reliability and validity of the dashboard comparisons can be established is if Ofsted release full descriptions of their methodology and give public access to the full data they have used in the construction of the dashboards. To ensure fairness and transparency Ofsted should publish these as soon as possible, in line with the aims of the DfE Open Data Strategy (June 2012).

Aldborough E-Act. Good. Has surplus places. Ofsted said pupils will be allocated to the school when their local schools were full (shortfall of local places expected). Consequently, some pupils travel considerable distance to attend the school. Attendance rates need to be improved. Number of FSM pupils in line with national average.

Bristol Free School. Good with outstanding features. Glowing report. Oversubscribed. Number of FSM pupils below average. Ofsted said temporary nature of the site restricts quality of learning eg in D&T. The aim of the parents’ group behind the school to avoid their secondary age children from being dispersed around Bristol has been achieved.

Etz Chaim Jewish Primary. Good with outstanding features. Only has 76 pupils age 3-6. High turnover of staff. No FSM pupils.

Woodpecker Hall Primary Academy. Good with outstanding features. Age range of pupils currently nursery – Year 1. Pupils make excellent progress. Number of FSM pupils below average. However, small group of parents/carers had expressed concerns on Parent View about the management of the school. This was contradicted by a small, randomly chosen group of parents who met inspectors. (Parent View: 51 out of 120 parents responded. 29% said they wouldn’t recommend the school. 27% strongly disagreed with the statement that the school was well led. Same proportion said the school didn’t respond well to any concerns.)

Langley Hall Primary Academy. Good. Positive climate, bright and attractive. Number of FSM pupils below average. Breakfast and after-school meals were welcomed by parents but Ofsted concerned that these didn’t ensure pupils had a consistently healthy and well-balanced diet. (50 out of 182 parents responded to Parent View – overwhelmingly positive about the school.)

The above inspections raise questions about Parent View – how representative are the results? It’s possible that a group of parents could act collectively to post either positive or negative comments. And parents without access to computers are unable to comment. It was unwise of Ofsted to drop the system of giving questionnaires to all parents.

Free schools were supposed to be set up to meet parental demand. However, Ofsted reported that one of the above still had surplus places. And it’s surprising that one of these “flagship” schools should be having trouble with attendance.

Michael Gove said in July 2010 that the free school policy “follows the example of the successful Charter School movement in the US. The lives of disadvantaged children have been transformed by Charter Schools set up by teachers in deprived areas.”

So, how many disadvantaged pupils attend the free schools inspected so far? Nine were inspected although I could only find inspection reports for eight. Of those eight only one, King’s Science Academy, had a proportion of FSM pupils above the national average. One, Aldborough E-Act, had a proportion in line with national average. Three of the eight had a proportion less than the national average, and two (Batley Grammar and Sandbach School) had a proportion “well-below” the national average. One small free school had no FSM pupils.

The press release containing the Gove quote was updated on 28 February 2013. This is the second DfE press release that I have discovered has recently been updated. The other one contained the Prime Minister’s fulsome praise of free schools. But these press releases have been altered just as described in Orwell’s 1984:

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct… All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

Perhaps I’d better start printing DfE press releases

This is despite children entering the school with below average levels of literacy and numeracy (most children speak English as an additional language, and we have a higher than national average percentages with SENs and entitled to free school meals) and leaving with levels above average – for example, twice the national average achieve Level 6 in Maths SATs at KS2. In my view, the inspectors were told the result in advance, then sent in to find whatever evidence they could to fit it.

Before even reading the Ofsted report, and before even the staff and governors were informed, a hired contractor (“broker”) turned up at the school and said the DfE was going to force it into becoming an academy and choose its “sponsor”. She said that the only “decision” the DfE would allow the governors to make is on whether to become an academy at all, and in other cases where governors have voted against this, the DfE has dismissed them and replaced them with an Interim Executive Board appointed by the “sponsor”. The parents would get even less say – the “broker” said we were not to be “consulted” until after the governors’ “decision”, and this would consist of a presentation where we could ask questions but couldn’t change anything.

However, a wave of protests have forced the DfE to back off. There have been three large meetings at the school, each attended by over 100 parents, to discuss the Ofsted report and academy plans. At each meeting, the overwhelming majority was against any plan to become an academy. All the staff have signed a petition against academisation.

A Parents Action Group has been set up, a petition against academisation has been signed by hundreds of parents, and a large protest held outside school, reported in the Independent, Guardian, Standard, and local paper Kilburn Times. We have linked up with other schools in the same situation (notably Roke Primary in Croydon), forming Parents Against Forced Academisation, and got the public support of several Brent councillors and local MP Sarah Teather. Parents from Gladstone Park and Roke were on the NUT demonstration on 15th March and spoke on the BBC’s Sunday Politics show on 18th March.

Two self-imposed deadlines for the DfE to announce its proposed “sponsor” have come and gone. The original deadline for the governors’ “decision” following announcement of the “sponsor” was 28th February, but we have still heard nothing. It looks like the DfE are having difficulty finding a “sponsor” in the face of our determined and public opposition, and they also have their own widely-reported internal difficulties.

Gladstone Park Primary School is an excellent local community school (which is why it was targeted for academisation in the first place), and the majority of parents, staff and governors want it to stay that way. By sharing our experiences, we hope that we can encourage other schools in the same situation to stand up against DfE bullying and their not very well concealed programme of creeping privatisation.

Further information is on our blogspot: