“
Take One Picture” – that’s the challenge set by the National Gallery to primary schools across the country. Last year’s picture was 'The Family of Darius before Alexander' by Paolo Veronese. Prints of the painting were given to teachers attending a one-day Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course at the Gallery. The teachers left with a challenge:
“Use the image imaginatively in the classroom, both as a stimulus for artwork, and for work in more unexpected curriculum areas”.
Downhills Primary School rose to the challenge. Pupils responded enthusiastically and posed many questions which covered maths, science, architecture and drama as well as art. One child asked, “Are we doing Maths, Art or Science?” Integrated learning at its best.
The pupils made a living picture which involved two groups: the Sewing Squad, who designed and made the costumes, and the Construction Crew, who made the scenery and props. The cross-curricular work was supported by two artists-in-residence and culminated in a “
tableau vivant” performance.
Similar projects took place nationally and work was submitted to the National Gallery which chose the best for display. Downhills was one of 17 schools which were selected for the high standard of their work. The full list of schools is
here.
Downhills is under threat of enforced conversion because Secretary of State, Michael Gove, says the school is failing. He has imposed a sponsor, the Harris Federation, forcibly removed the school’s board of governors and inflicted an unwanted interim executive board in its place. Parents from Downhills are seeking a judicial review of the controversial decision which was made despite overwhelming opposition from the parents and local community. A recent consultation found that 94% of parents opposed the move.
A spokesperson from the Department for Education told the
Tottenham Journal, “Harris, a not-for profit educational charity, will give the school the leadership and expertise it needs to improve.” The quality of work displayed in the National Gallery, the rising SAT results last year and the tremendous support of parents demonstrate that Harris’s “leadership and expertise” are not wanted or needed.
Details of the Save Downhills campaign are
here.
Comments
It took Michael Gove 45 minutes after this was published to sign the funding agreement, effectively handing the school over to major Tory party donor and 'close friend' of David Cameron, Sir Philip Harris.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/06/05/jenny-turner/not-yet-for-profit/
‘I work in the City,’ Berryman said. ‘I know what these people are like. It might well start out as philanthropy, but sooner or later they want to make money from it. They do it without even realising it. That’s just what they’re like.’
'These people....'? Philip Harris doesn't work in the City and never has. He's a semi-retired carpet retailer from South London. He's been making substantial philanthropic donations to educational causes for more than two decades without ever trying to personally profit. He'll be 70 years old in September.
The Rich List estimates that Harris has a personal fortune of some £220 million. He is reported to have already given £100 million to charities. He is reported to have given £1million to Prince William and Prince Harry’s charity, another £1million to Westminster Abbey’s appeal and has made a series of seven-figure donations to research into prostate cancer. Recently he sold the holiday home he has owned on the French riviera and given the proceeds to his education charity. He has also sold his luxury yacht and given the equivalent of its former running costs to medical research.
The idea that Harris has a selfish agenda and is secretly plotting to make profits out of schools is absurd.
Your conspiracy fantasies are grotesque.
In my experience motives are rarely unselfish.
https://www.duedil.com/company/06228587/harris-federation
As Harris Federation is now an exempt charity it will not be possible to look at its accounts on the Charities Commission website.
Any not-for-profit can be lucrative for those who run the organisation if they pay themselves high salaries. I've no idea how much the CEO Sir Dan Moynihan earns, have you?
There's also a subsidiary: - Harris Academies Project Management Limited, which, according to Duedil, has a single shareholder; Harris Federation of South London Schools (aka Harris Federation). According to Duedil, it made a small gross profit of about £24,000.
https://www.duedil.com/company/05887355/harris-academies-project-managem...
His seeming concern for Downhills pupils is cancelled out by his actions. His concern was also unwarranted - the September 2011 Ofsted proved that. And so does the excellent work done by Downhills pupils.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/107850/response/268894/attach/3/Do...
It's interesting that one of the emails (29 January 2012) from the Inspections Unit at the DfE asks about when the Department would receive Ofsted's January 2012 report because it "clearly" couldn't be given to Gove before the school had seen it. The email asks if Wilshaw was "planning on sending something".
It is also interesting that the correspondence demonstrates that the DfE did indeed influence the time table of Ofsted and the DfE interfering in the processes of Ofsted isn't commented upon by either party - almost as though it happens all the time.
Ofsted is beginning to lose all credibility (see thread below).
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2012/07/is-it-time-to-call-time-on...
Nice work if you can get it.
Education of the whole child - the kind of thing celebrated by the National Gallery - is not valued as much as a school's ability to exceed an arbitrary benchmark in just two subjects. That's not to say that these subjects aren't hugely important - they are - but the stress is shifting from their individual value (ie to each child) to their value as a performance device. In such an atmosphere schools are likely to play safe and reduce the integrated work as exemplified by "Take One Picture" and concentrate on practice exercises which will ensure the production of technically correct but utterly uncreative work.
As Professor Stephen Ball said as long ago as 2004:
"We need to move beyond the tyrannies of improvement, efficiency and standards, to recover a language of and for education articulated in terms of ethics, moral obligations and values."
Surely, the benefits of a good foundation become evident as children develop into confident, independent and interested learners throughout their schooling and life?
The current agenda is based on an ideology that learning to read, write and do basic maths is good enough for those from more disadvantaged social and economic situations, whilst music, art, literature and self-expression - even at primary level - should be the preserve of the privileged.
It's almost as though there's a deliberate plan to narrow the horizons of a proportion of society as early as possible, so they'll be happy serving the lattes in the National Gallery cafe rather than being engaged in what goes on there.
The government does not believe that SATS are the be-all and end-all of primary education. Achieving level 4 is a floor, not a ceiling. It's an irreducible minimum that is asked of a school.
The problem is that when a school like Downhills cannot even deliver this modest, bare minimum - pretty basic literacy & numeracy - after seven years of schooling, then there is surely good grounds to doubt the quality of everything else that it does.
If Downhills cannot even get the basics of maths and English right - why should we trust what it does in terms of art, literature, self-expression etc.?
Getting its pupils to level 4 in M&E is (or, should be) the easy bit.
It's interesting that you believe that the govt doesn't believe that SATS are the be-all and end-all of primary education - I can't find reference to anything else on their own performance tables and their whole academy agenda has been focused on discussions about 'floor targets'. Please do point me in the direction of information that suggests that their evaluation of primary education is based on something broader.
Schools like Downhills don't educate the same children for 7 years - there's a phenomenal amount of mobility.
I would suggest that the runners of the Take One Picture project know quite a lot about art and self-expression, which is why they selected the work of the Downhills children to be exhibited in the National Gallery over the whole Jubilee and Olympic period. Have you seen it? What did you think?
I'm interested that you think that getting pupils to achieve L4 E & M is the easy bit. I wonder why then, very, very few schools do this consistently and there isn't a LA in the country that gets over 90% of its children to this level. You don't suppose that it maybe isn't that easy for children with SEN, who have had breaks in their education or who have various social and economic disadvantages outside school, do you?
Marigold - I always find it surprising when people refuse to see the evidence of their own eyes. The National Gallery chooses the work of Downhills pupils to display with outstanding work from other primary schools - the excellent work is shown on the website linked in my original post. But apparently Downhills can't be trusted for "art, literature, [and] self-expression" because its results in 2011, which actually exceeded the benchmark, are regarded as poor.
It just shows what you can do with the help of two artists in residence spending two days per week with a Year 3 class for a whole term, and with the aid of a £10k-£15k budget.
And seeing the alert and engaged faces of the children makes it all the more unbelievable that they would not - given three more years schooling - be able to raise the standard of their maths & English from Level 3 to Level 4.
Indeed, it would take a school as incompetent as Downhills to prevent them doing so.
By your reckoning, thousands of schools throughout the country are 'incompetent' ie have poorer KS2 results than Downhills. Do you think the government should give these schools to their friends too?
If by "their friends" you mean generous and capable people like Philip Harris, who will run them better, then....YES!
Do you have any awareness of your own lack of ability in this area?
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