What sort of Academy now?

Martin Field's picture
 114
Has anyone come across a case where a school has been approved for Academy status by Gove but just days before it becomes an Academy it is put into special measures by OfStEd? What now? Can it scrape into its original Academy status along with the "Good" schools it was partnering or will it be forced to be a sponsored Academy like other "failing" schools.
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Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sat, 14/04/2012 - 09:36

I'd like to suggest some other reasons for Mossbourne's success which would be difficult for schools in deprived areas of the UK to replicate. All thought and comments are invited.


Firstly - Mossbourne clearly has a substantial refugee population. It may well have been that their families had respected professions and positions in their former lives and that in their early schooling their attainment has been delayed by issues of language and the turbulence of their life at that time.

Secondly - these are the children who have escaped, who have left their worlds behind. When a child escapes they have little to focus on but their own study and progression and they can rise fast.

The child in a deprived and remote area of the UK is deeply rooted in their community and it it is very hard for them to be more than their parents were. They do not expect to be. The school has to instill that in them. Refugees and early generation immigrants are more easily set free from these psychological burdens because they live with people who have suffered much and who expect their children to do better than they have done because they are not facing the same issues.

Thirdly: Geography:
London offers plenty of opportunities in terms of work, intellectual and academic opportunities which are there for them to touch and are realistic for them.

These are missing in many areas of the UK. We also have to grapple with the issue that our brightest and best children do not want to go away to university as they do not want to leave their families for months at a time to cope without them. This is not a barrier to progress for children in London.



I'm not trying to make excuses - these points are raised for discussion and contradiction which is warmly invited.

A guest's picture
Sat, 14/04/2012 - 11:14

This is a reply to Rebecca's 14/4 comment about refugees etc. I think you have made a very good point Rebecca and have observed the same effect with my post 16 students outside London. Students who had come here as asylum seekers or refugees (or even because their parents have come to work here and then stayed) have usually been very focussed on their studies. Many were on full rate EMA but their parents often had degrees or qualifications that were not being used or even recognised in this country. I have never felt that FSM was necessarily a totally reliable indicator for disadvantage. Some friends once decided to work part time and in their own business and earned so little that the children were eligible for FSM. They had three degrees (inc a PhD) between them and their children were high achievers. . When we selecting students for Aim Higher in the past this was done on whether parents had higher qualifications.

I have always wondered whether schools like Mossbourne have done well because they have attracted aspirant parents and that the FSM level is a bit of a red herring.
My students need to do placements. The ambitious ones find their own, will travel anywhere in the city and will try new things. Many students, however, want to go to a local provider and regard getting two or even one bus somewhere further afield as too difficult. These are usually the students who have hardly ever left their local estates and have narrow views of the world. We do succeed in getting them to apply to local unis but it is very difficult to get them to apply elsewhere in the country.
I think someone's financial situation can be an indicator of disadvantage and lack of aspiration but it is not always. Since schools are going to be better funded through the pupil premium on the basis of elegibility for FSM I wonder if high profile schools that do not recruit from their local area and have requirements like expensive uniforms and an expectation that parents will contribute to extra curricular activities will attract poor + aspirant families/students rather than poor + unambitious students and hence will appear to be doing better.

A guest's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 10:05

I have looked at West Lakes Academy on the DFE site. Yes the A-C passes is 44% but for the intake it should be higher. Only 50% make expected progress in English and 37% make expected progress in Maths. (LA average 68.1% and 60%). the 'Best 8 value added' is975.9 and no disadvantaged pupils achieve 5 A-C GCSE passes.
For high attainers the number of GCSE passes drops to 7.4 from 11 when equivalents are taken out.

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 15:53

Agreed, WLA is not good enough. But it has improved quickly. Under previous management it went from bad, to slightly better, and then to worse over an entire decade.


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:32

Aye lad - it has improved greatly from just over a decade ago when I remember being one of 8 for interview at for a main scale post and the previous head of maths was the highly respected leaders of the the OU's maths education department to the current position where they advertised for head of maths 3 times and couldn't get a field to interview.


A guest's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 19:42

But it does not appear to have improved Ricky.


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:36

But it's been turned into an academy so it has improved guest. Because when you make a school an academy it improves. Because it is then an academy. Because when you swap 'community high school' for 'academy' the results get better. Because you've swapped 'community high school' for 'academy'. Is that clear now?


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 13:11

It's hard to get great results when your school has to shut because it is collapsing and so you can't teach and when you can't get applicants for key posts such as head of maths.


A guest's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 15:19

I am not sure whether that is a reply to what I have written Rebecca. I was trying to point out to Ricky that I am not sure the current results for West Lakes are all he claims them to be.
Whether their 'improvement' is due to the school being an academy is another moot point.
And yes I agree it is hard for schools who go into special measures etc. to get good results.
Where I live we had a local school ( several years ago) that had a very poor reputation and people lost confidence in it. The LEA effectively shut it and reopened it on the same
site with a new name, head teacher and new staff ( although some old staff got jobs there). Now it is thriving and oversubscribed. Its raw A-C results are not very high but its value added is always high and all children are valued there. It is not an academy since this happened prior to even the first academies being established. It was a 'fresh start' school and it worked.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 16:24

What 'improvement'? Ricky is comparing the results from Ehenside (which had a very severely problematic catchment) with the results from West Lakes Academy (which has a much better catchment - because the students from Ehenside merged with a much more advantaged catchment in a ratio of about 1:3. Ricky is obfuscating the data to make it look like it says something it doesn't for his own purpose. I don't know why. I'm not making any particular point. I'm just chatting.


A guest's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 18:58

I agree with you. I didn't know the history of the school or the change in catchment but even looking at the current data on the DFE site there does not seem evidence to support what I thought was the point of Ricky's post ie academies are responsible for changes which could not be achieved by a LEA supporting schools.


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 16:59

The only reference I can find to exclusions from Mossbourne is here - which says that in one year where data was requested there were not permanent exclusions. So full credit to them for that:
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/02/revealed-academies-exclude...

K Campbell's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 17:14

Janet,

As you have stated the five reasons for Mossbourne's apparent success is not limited to academies.

However, I have heard that at Mossbourne they have at least 13 full time teachers in both the Maths and English departments. For cohorts of 180 pupils, with a sixth form, the standard allocation would be eight teachers.

So before I can begin to compare performance levels, I would need to know if Mossbourne's income per student is the same as other schools in inner London.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 17:32

"13 full time teachers in both the Maths and English departments. For cohorts of 180 pupils, with a sixth form, the standard allocation would be eight teachers."

I don't think this can be true K Campbell. You're right that 8 teacher would be about the norm. 180 pupils = 6 classes per year = 30 classes in KS3 and KS4. If each class gets 4 hours of a subject each week that's 120 hours teaching, which requires less than 5 staff if each teacher teaches 26 hours per week (that gives you 130 hours). Then you need your 6th form teaching - if we generously say you need 3 sets each year and give each 6 hours of teaching, that's another 36 hours, so we end up with 6 full time member of staff needed to cover the teaching.

If some have wider responsibilities including management and perhaps some teaching of other subjects and you have 7 sets instead of 6 at KS4 you would rapidly end up with 8 teachers and that would be perfectly normal.

But if you actually had 13 teachers we'd be talking about there being tiny classes and opportunities which are in a different world to normal schools.

Could you check your source please?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 17:44

!!!!!!! Found it !!!!!!!
You're right K Campbell - well spotted - there it is under 'The Learning Area'
http://www.mossbourne.hackney.sch.uk/assets/pages/our_academy/documents/...

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You give me 13 decent full time maths teachers and year groups of 180 and I will give you absolutely incredible maths results - so much becomes possible it's really overwhelming to begin to think about it.

But how on earth do they pay for it?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 17:48

"The department is placed in the top 1% of departments, nationally"

And the top 0.01% for how it is resourced- i.e. I strongly doubt there is another state school which comes remotely close.

Can you tell how jealous I am?

K Campbell's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 17:59

Rebecca,

So is this due to extra funding or the excellent use of the same income allocated to inner London schools?

Perhaps they might not have been given extra funding but they have saved money on the running costs of their new academy building because it is more energy efficient than older school buildings?

K Campbell's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 18:11

Rebecca,

Or extra funding and money gained? LOL

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 19:50

I dunno K but what is means is each time they are teaching 180 kids, that head of maths has 8 state of the art classrooms, a computer room and 11 or 12 specialist teachers at their disposal.

My mouth is drooling and my eyes are watering. This is beyond a head of maths' wildest dreams. I would surrender all my personal freedom and dignity to work with resources like that and what this means, in reality, is that they will have their pick of the best maths teachers in London.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Sun, 08/04/2012 - 20:04

The drooling mouth and watering eyes were probably TMI, weren't they.... sorry about that. I'm off to cheer myself up by eating more chocolate and chatting the to people in the Free Schools Group on Linked In.

and of course....

laughing at this.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&ix=sea&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=t...
http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/15482

Now I have warned and warned and warned about what's going on but just to summarise. If any party wants to look credible and intelligent in their response to this what they should do is call for an 'Independent Commission' to examine not only the law Osted is obliged to (as will have to happen after the Furness Academy judgement) but also the way in which our best regulators interpret the law.

They might as well call for this because it is what's likely to happen anyway so they'll look credible and intelligent if they get it right and because it really will lead to substantially better Ofsted.
Here are the details again (in the article and the discussion which follows).
http://www.libdemvoice.org/a-serious-blow-to-goves-red-guard-how-will-th...

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 13:46

Oh for heaven's sake, just look at Fiona Millar's Parliament Hill School.

It's a community school. It has roughly the same number of pupils (171 at end of KS4 in 2011, compared to Mossbourne's 181.)

Parliament Hill's maths department also boasts "a suite of eight designated classrooms equipped with interactive whiteboards and active learning resources". They have 10 full time members of the department, including head of dept and two TLR2Bs.

Okay, so 10 isn't 13, but PHS is an all girl's school. There's still a gender gap in Maths at A-level, so at least some of the difference is probably attributable to that.

Are you seriously suggesting that the huge gaps between PHS's and Mossbourne's performances (a 40 point gap for low attainers achieving the L2(inc M&E))... is down to a difference of perhaps one or two maths teachers? If so, then the academy argument is strengthened, because if community schools were relieved of some of the compulsory parts of the NC, they could reallocate the money to maths.

Actually, I suspect you are evading the main point, as before.
More important than catchment or resources is the quality of teaching.

The lesson of Mossbourne is that with good teaching you can be in a catchment with the highest proportion of people living in deprivation in England and still succeed. The lesson of Ehenside (and maybe West Lakes too) is that you can have a nice view of the fells, have never seen a Somali refugee or asylum seeker, and still fail, if the teaching isn't right.

K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 14:23

Ricky,

I would suggest that 3 extra teachers in any department would have a huge impact on performance and get the class sizes below the 20 that you commented on earlier.

I believe that Mossbourne doesn't select students that are placed in band E ( the lowest band) in their CAT admission's test. If that is the case, then that would also have an impact on their performance outcomes. How many students at PH school attained less than a 3,3,3 in their SATs?

What part of the NC is compulsory for state schools to teach? What are the compulsory subjects to be taught in state schools? What is the income per student?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:20

Levels of resourcing which are completely unimaginable for the vast majority of schools do not guarantee good teaching or good results.

There needs to be good management too.

I'm still delighted by what Mossbourne have achieved.

But I'm rather concerned by Mossbourne's video about how it has achieved it's results. It's fine and dandy and interesting in its own right and useful inspiration for schools as they create visions of their futures. What worries me is Gove and Wilshaw's political agenda of sending improving schools by force and threat. These men clearly want all schools to be have highly structured environments and it seems to me that this video is open to be misinterpreted by people who think that if ordinary overcrowded schools with half the resources and half the staff follow the principles in the video without the money they should be able to produce the same results which is, of course, completely ludicrous.

I've been watching closely the behaviour of Ofsted recently because I've been so worried by Michael Gove's seeming inability to understand the many complex systems which used to be in place for school improvement which he has substituted with a belief in the benefits of punishment and threat. I'm hearing reports of ludicrously ignorant teams of inspectors turning up to put secondary schools in tough areas into special measures and it strikes me that these are inspectors who have no personal experience in secondary schools in challenging areas and that their only experience is having watched the Mossbourne video. It's really hard to find any other coherent explanation for the extreme combination of arrogance and ignorance they are showing.


If you gave me the maths dept resources Mossbourne have, Ricky, I could give you the best results for a state school in England whether the leadership ethos was highly structured, incredibly progressive or, as would be my preference an intelligent ICT empowered synergy of the two (http://mathseducationandallthat.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/yin-and-yang-of-m...) provided it was intelligent, well organised, caring and was generally there. I'd also need a fairly dense population nearby so I could cherry pick the best staff and ideally on or more HE institutions nearby so we benefited from the many things schools near them get.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:40

In Cumbria, Ricky, everyone wears cotton smocks. They skip around talking to rabbits, live on farms and have highly educated parents and exceptionally high career aspirations. Drugs, alcohol, incest and racism haven't been invented yet. Cumbria is the Lake District and the Lake District is Cumbria. They are one and the same. We don't need teachers or classroom or technology to teach because we have inspiring views of the fells which I have to say are absolutely blooming wonderful. I love the way schools always seem to put their maths departments on the third floor :)


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:43

Is this kind of resourcing level common in London? I've never come across anything like it!


K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:32

Rebecca,

In as far as this new OFSTED regime is concerned, to have outstanding teaching you must be able to demonstrate in your lesson that all students are making outstanding progress.

If we consider the example of a student that achieves a level 4 at KS2, then at the end of KS4 satisfactory progress is a grade C, good progress is a grade B and outstanding progress is a grade A.

How many schools/ academies in this country have a grade A average, in any subject, for their level 4 students?

K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 19:21

Bullseye.


Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 19:36

You're right. Except for the drugs and racism not having been invented yet. Cleator Moor must be one of the most racist places in the UK. If memory serves me aright, it even got a government grant under Labour to combat its endemic racism, despite not having any Black or Asian people. It must have taken some chutzpah to apply.


Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 19:41

"If you gave me the maths dept resources Mossbourne have, Ricky, I could give you the best results for a state school in England .."

But if I gave you the same resources Parliament Hill School has - same 8 rooms; same 8 interactive whiteboards; same computers; but three fewer teachers and maybe 60 fewer pupils........ then what?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:45

That's right Ricky.

If you take away a particular ethnic minority racism disappears. People are only racist because that particular ethnic minority exists. It's been shown through history that exterminating the particular ethnic minority being bullied at any one time ends bullying.

****** buries head in hands and weeps *******

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:49

I'd give you great results too. But the key to being able to cream off the best teachers is having the best of everything so it might be a bit harder.

I'm not sure If I'd be interested though - it depends on the intake. Soft option intakes don't really interest me. I'm not saying it's a soft option intake - I don't know. I've learned to love being on the real front line. The transformations which happen and the energy involved completely inspire me.

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 21:00

It wasn't a question of "taking away" any ethnic minority, Rebecca. There had never been one for them to practise their racism on. They had never met anyone to be racist towards. I remember John Denham's people scouring the Copeland stats for a way to justify the grant. There wasn't even a single asylum seeker. Not one. Zero. Finally, they found a figure they could spin. There had been (not in Cleator, but in Copeland generally) a significant increase in the Black/African/Caribbean population. The percentage looked impressive. But if you looked more closely, the increase for the whole borough was from 30 to 37. So, Cleator Moor won the cash and became an "anti-racism priority action area" or somesuch. And you wonder why we have a deficit and can't afford more maths teachers?


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Thu, 12/04/2012 - 09:22

No Ricky, I don't.

My main complaint is that the teachers who know how to teach in ways which fix all children so that they will not end up burning cars are not being listened to.

It's not a complaint about money, except in the case where ludicrous amounts of money are being spent to generate incredible results in one school in order to support one particular ideology which is over important but limited value and that model is then enforced on all schools (based on it having achieved incredible results which are in fact due to spending levels unimaginable to normal schools) with the effect of even further silencing, marginalising and punishing the ordinary teachers who know how to prevent riots despite their very limited resources.

Kids in deprived areas are interested in cars. So my husband and I drove his old red Mercedes convertible into the Market Place in Frizington with the top down and we sat and chatted to the teenagers there who had been so unteachable the previous week. They were drunk, they were disaffected but they were also really friendly and interested and they enjoyed chatting to my husband about his car. As ever we refused their please for us to get them some alcohol from Paul's Wines.

He hit the accelerator as we departed, the car gave a big throaty roar and the exhaust gave way just round the corner out of site..... We giggled. But it's that kind of connection which means that the posh cars don't get burned Ricky. It's because they know that the people who own them are the same people who care about and bother with them.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Thu, 12/04/2012 - 09:36

It's not just about meeting the kids out of school by the way - there's a heck of a lot more to it than that. Do feel free to ask.


K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 13:38

Rebecca,

Now imagine your school's outcomes if they were able to replicate that staffing across the core subjects.

Another point, just looking at the teacher cost per student:

Stoke Newington's is £3360
Mossbourne's is £4450

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:20

Could you explain how you've calculated your figures K?


K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:46

Total teaching cost divided by the total number of students.


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:40

Where do you get the total teaching cost?


K Campbell's picture
Tue, 10/04/2012 - 14:49

It's on the DfE website.


Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 14:16

.... and Parliament Hill School's is £4148 (on average salaries of £45900).

The difference between the total teachers bill for Mossbourne and PHS is only around £126k.

But then PHS employs 51 support staff, while Mossbourne employs only 37. If PHS reduced its support staff to Mossbourne levels it could easily have a maths department of the same size and its teacher cost per student would go up.

Different schools make different choices, so it's wrong to imply that any difference must represent an inequity.

K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 14:33

Ricky,

What do these support staff do? How does the number of teaching assistants compare?

What is Mossbourne's income per student?

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 18:21

Could you explain how you've calculated your figures please Ricky?


Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 15:11

I'm not sure what all Parliament Hill School's support staff actually do, but they include:

* a Media, Communications & Publicity Manager
* a 3 person Data Team
* an attendance Team Leader + 2 attendance officers
* a Seclusion Room Manager + 2 seclusion room assistants
* a Behaviour Assistant, 2 counsellors and a Kids Company Facilitator
* a Home/School Liaison Officer
* a Personnel Officer + Personnel Assistant
* a Sauna Officer + 2 sauna assistants


.... actually I made that last one up, but you get the picture.

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:06

Same way as KC: average salary X number of teachers (FTE) divided by number of pupils.


Rebecca Hanson's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 20:38

I just wanted to check that Mossbourne figure because it is so high. It's more than our total cost per child on everything up here!

How did you find out that all the maths teachers at Parliament Hill are full time?

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 21:37

From the bit where it says "there are 10 full time" etc. here:

www.tes.co.uk/Upload/Attachments/.../Maths-Dept-Information.pdf

But then, it doesn't say whether there are any part timers on top of that. There may be.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Thu, 12/04/2012 - 09:34

I'm afraid none of that stacks up Ricky.

You see my local school is a maths specialist college which offers a wide range of courses and has a substantial autism unit - so surely it should come close to comparing with Mossbourne - especially since it has 20% more students than Mossbourne.

But it doesn't have as many maths teachers - only 12 and I don't think they are all full time.

It's renowned for producing incredible results in maths - it really does take children going in with level 3s through to B grades at GCSE, but of course it won't have the rooms either because it's severely overcrowded.

Ricky-Tarr's picture
Thu, 12/04/2012 - 10:57

Rebecca

You say Cockermouth has "only 12" maths teachers. Earlier in this thread you were gasping in wonderment at the fact that Mossbourne had 13. That, you thought, was a level of resourcing that was 'unimaginable'.

Yes, Cockermouth is bigger. But it still works out that where Mossbourne has one Maths teacher to every 14 pupils in the KS4 cohort; Cockermouth has one for every 18.

Higher up at 08/04/12 at 5:32 pm, you said that 8 teachers would be the usual level, which would be one for every 23.

Reading what Cockermouth has to say about its own Maths department and especially about its achievements, it's pretty clear that far from "not stacking up" , my point about schools offering additional and further maths tending to have more maths teachers was spot on.

Rebecca Hanson's picture
Thu, 12/04/2012 - 16:32

I'm lost. I'm telling you 12 teachers for 20% more kids than Mossbourne is a very highl number of staff for a school which specialises in maths - running lots of courses, gets brilliant results and has an autism unit.

I don't understand what point you're making. I'm finding you the most luxuriously resourced (far better than any other school I know) comparison I can. At Mossbourne levels they've have nearly 16 staff.

K Campbell's picture
Mon, 09/04/2012 - 15:21

Ricky,

LOL

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