Janet Goodall. A lecturer in Educational Leadership and Management with particular expertise in parental engagement with children's learning Janet is a lecturer in Educational Leadership and Management. She has been an active university teacher and researcher for a number of years, working on a wide range of issues, such as federations of schools, the evaluation of the impact of CPD in schools, the implementation of workforce reform, and a multisector project looking at organisations which perform beyond expectations in education, sport and business. Her most recent work has mainly been around parents’ engagement in their children’s learning, particularly as a means of school improvement. The recent DFE literature review of Best Practice In Parental Engagement , on which she is first author, takes an overview of the field and suggests practical ways forward for schools.
Book/s Harris, A., Goodall, J. Book Sections Goodall, J., 2015. Articles Goodall, J., 2015. Goodall, J. and Johnston-Wilder, S., 2015. DFE RR156. What me, progressive? Six beliefs about schools and learning. Osborne’s academy plan is smashing Thatcher’s legacy. In 1959 a young MP gave a rousing maiden speech in parliament, imploring local government to allow the press into its meetings. So passionate, and correct, was her plea for transparency that it stands alone as the only maiden speech ever to create a law. Through subsequent iterations, it helped to create an openness that today reaches into hospital and transport bodies and grants access not only to the press but the public. It is dismaying to learn that the government’s proposal to convert all schools to academies pushes the public back outside.
One might consider such a move – excluding the masses in order to favour a powerful elite – to be typical of the Conservatives. But that original agitator of transparency back in 1959 was of the party, and George Osborne, the man who announced the all-academies policy, considers himself her heir apparent. The law Thatcher created requires any body acting on powers “delegated” from elected people to follow a clear set of rules. Why the caginess? Nicky Morgan’s views on local democracy - NAHT. The former TES journalist writes for NAHT on current education issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of NAHT Nicky Morgan's views on democracy Just before Easter, as controversy was building over the government’s plans to turn all state-funded schools into academies, Nicky Morgan made what I think should be seen as very odd comments in a newspaper interview. With ministers under pressure to justify taking schools out of the local democratic arena by transferring them to academy trusts, the Education Secretary seemed sweepingly to say that local democracy does not matter in relation to schools.
In doing so, Ms Morgan seemed to be disregarding more than a century of history in the oversight of state classrooms, where some local municipal involvement, connecting local taxpayers to the institutions they help fund, has generally been regarded as necessary. So in her interview with the Guardian, Ms Morgan was reported as follows. The Education Secretary says, again, that: Axing parent governors in schools is the opposite of Cameron’s ‘parent power’ | Warwick Mansell. Do “the parents, the governors and the headteacher” really end up “in full control” of schools when they become academies, as David Cameron told parliament during prime minister’s questions last week?
The claim was made in response to a question by Caroline Lucas, the Green party’s MP, asking why residents near her Brighton constituency, who had rejected the academisation of Hove Park school, would see their views count for nothing with all schools now forced to become academies. The very next day the latest white paper on education was published, which included a promise that academies would no longer have to have any parent governors.
This would be the culmination of years of policymakers, perhaps led by the private equity tycoon who is now in control of state-funded schools as academies minister, Lord Nash, saying English school boards should be more businesslike. No parent got to vote on this plan as a whole, as it wasn’t in the Tory manifesto. Consultants? A Bright future ends. We must not freeze parents out of the academies revolution PTA UK - PTA UK and the National Association of School Business Management (NASBM) - new guidance for schools. PTA UK and the National Association of School Business Management (NASBM) are delighted to announce the publication of new guidance for schools on engaging parents to improve their school. Download here: Engaging parents and other stakeholders to improve your school.
Specifically targeted at School Business Managers and Bursars, this guidance is packed full of insight, advice and tools to help schools work in partnership with parents and other stakeholders to advance education for the benefit of all children. Bethan Cullen Business Development Director at NASBM says: “We are pleased to launch this guide which has been developed alongside PTA UK to highlight the importance of stakeholder and parental engagement and to provide some practical ideas for schools to consider and develop. The guide responds to the activities outlined in the NASBM Professional Standards under the marketing discipline. PARENTS WEEK: Four pleas from a parent | @restart_ed. In Parents Week (details here if you’d like to contribute a post), we are presenting the views of parents about education.
This one is by Ben Gibbs, a Cambridgeshire-based member of the Labour Party, former governor of ten years, director at a charity focused on teacher wellbeing, and a parent to two school-aged children, aged 8 and 12. There’s a lot of noise at the moment about how the recent White Paper proposes to disenfranchise parents in relation to their schools; to do away with parental representation on governing boards unless individuals can bring ‘professional’ skills. Teachers’ unions are all over this, speaking on our behalf. That’s fair enough, I suppose. So, plea one: don’t get too distracted by fighting for parents. Which leads nicely to the next plea. So plea two: please find your collective voice, stand together, and stand tall. Plea three: please don’t strike. In fact, naïve or not, doing what’s right for children is my fourth and final plea. Parent power! The opportunity is there. It’s now down to us to grasp it. The DfE's recent White Paper - Educational Excellence Everywhere - truly had something for everyone.
Its proposal to transfer £billions of assets out of direct state control and use an unproven structural model to organise and improve our state schools is ambitious at best. Unsurprisingly, it has attracted criticism from all quarters, and has achieved the dubious distinction of being opposed by a developing cross-party consensus (including influential Tories), stimulating a national strike, and providing reason for the teachers' unions to finally consider working together. Similarly controversial is the proposal to disenfranchise parents, allowing multi-academy trusts (MATs) to run their schools without the need to involve parents as governors at any level.
As yet, outside of Mumsnet, the idea appears not to have seriously roused a rabble, although this is probably because parents - again, as yet - lack a representative body to aggregate and promote their interests. Theconversation. In what circumstances can you judge that a parent is “not good enough”? Apparently when they are a school governor. In its latest set of reforms in education, the government plans to scrap mandatory elected parent representation on school governing boards, so ending a democratic form of governance that has been in place since the late 1970s.
With this move, the government has gravely misunderstood not only what elected parents contribute to school governance, but also the legitimacy and credibility their involvement lends to the process of governing schools. The fact that parents are democratically elected onto boards epitomises the principles underlying a democratic system of education. Parents were first brought onto governing bodies of schools after the 1977 Taylor report. Yet with breathtaking arrogance, the government’s new white paper dismisses the role of elected parents as “tokenistic” and their role as purely “symbolic”. The role of parent governors Hard to quantify. About Us – Let Our Kids Be Kids. We’re a group of Year 2 parents who’ve had enough… enough of endless testing, enough of teachers not being trusted to teach, enough of an Ofsted driven, dull, dry curriculum aimed solely at passing National Curriculum Tests (SATs). We want our kids to be kids again and enjoy learning for learning’s sake not for Ofsted results or league table figures.
Bring back the creativity and the fun – say goodbye to repetition and boredom! In May children in Year 2 sit a whole weeks’ worth of exams.. these children are 6 or 7 years old!!! All year their curriculum has been centred around comprehension and arithmetic in order to pass these tests. We can’t see any point to these exams and want an end to them.. we want our kids to be kids again. Petitions have been signed, letters have been written but no one is listening… this government seems determined to destroy our children’s childhoods and turn education into another privatised commodity.
Like this: Like Loading... Should we be worried about controversial government plans to do away with parent governors in schools? The government recently announced a series of changes to the oversight and governance of schools, with the most controversial concerning the ‘academisation’ of all English secondary schools, and what may amount to the abolition of the role of the parent governor. Here, Andrew Wilkins casts his eye over the changes – and in particular the latter, arguing that we now have an opportunity to think seriously about building capacity to harness the creative energy of families and communities as co-producers and co-creators of education services.
In a new white paper published on 17 March 2016 the British government outlined its vision for state education over the next five years. In an ambitious move that is likely to see the wholesale transfer of public resources and power to private hands, the government issued plans to transform all state-funded schools into academies (‘state-funded independent schools’) by 2022 at the latest. Depoliticisation Conceding authority to ‘experts’ The Fuss about Academies | Future Proof Your Child. If you’re not steeped in education speak, you may have felt nonplussed by the news last week that all schools were to become Academies. You may be aware of people who feel very unhappy about it and others who don’t see the problem. What seems to be lacking in the debate is clear information for parents. As usual. Like any school, there are good and bad academies. Born out of New Labour, the academy programme was introduced to ‘rescue’ failing schools.
The idea was that by bringing in fresh management, often new buildings, and freedom to innovate, schools might turn themselves around. It’s a bit of a myth that academies gain control of the land and buildings when they take them over, or that they are a form of privatisation, free to make a profit. There are two kinds of academy – converter and forced. The other type of academy, however, is one that has been forced to leave local authority control and be taken over by a sponsor. Like this: Like Loading... Author: debrakidd. The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Schools. Or “Of Course It’s Bloody Privatisation” | Disappointed Idealist.
This week, Nicky “I’m not Michael Gove, Honest” Morgan and her chum George “I’m not Satan, Honest” Osborne, announced that every school in England would be forced to become an academy by 2022. This has proved, to put it mildly, a little controversial. Opponents of academization, both forced and unforced, have generated a petition of more than 100,000 signatures already, while unions, teachers, politicians and Mumsnet(!)
Have united in fairly vitriolic opposition. Even Tristram Hunt and David Blunkett came out against this, which tells a remarkable story in itself. However, the “Glob“, as Francis Gilbert termed the very vocal and influential minority who actively support Gove’s privatisation agenda, has been predictably active too. More chaff has been thrown out by supporters of this policy in the last week than the RAF chucked out of its bombers over Germany in 1944, and all with the same intent: to obscure the real target. And here’s the thing – they’re right. An Educational Acid-Bath.
Accessing pupils' information. Pupils attending any type of school have a right of access under the Data Protection Act 1998 to their own information. This is known as the right of subject access. When a child cannot act for themselves or the child gives permission, parents will be able to access this information on their behalf. If the child attends a maintained school, parents have an independent right of access to their child’s educational record, under separate education regulations.
As a parent, what sort of information can I access? If your child attends a maintained school, you have a right to access your child’s educational record. This covers information that comes from a teacher or other employee of a local authority or school, the pupil or you as a parent, and is processed by or for the school’s governing body or teacher, except for information the teacher has solely for their own use. What if my child attends an academy or a free school in England, or an independent school? How long should this take?
Axing parent-governors is a cynical move – and a disaster for schools. No doubt there will be some headteachers giving a quiet cheer at the announcement that parent-governors are to be ushered gently towards the exit. For some, the parent with a seat at the governing table has doubtless been an unwanted pain: regularly passing on complaints they have picked up in the playground, when they’re not whineing about there being too much (or too little) homework or insufficiently tasty food at lunchtime – all based on data no more scientific than the experience of their own precious child. But others will surely lament Thursday’s decision – and be cynical as to its motives. For the allocation of places on the governing body – or governing board, in today’s preferred terminology – to parents elected by their fellow parents has entrenched what was once seen as an essential part of running a public service: the voice of the user.
Of course, for a school, that voice should really belong to the children themselves. And it does make you wonder. Parents | @MichaelT1979. Michael Tidd is deputy headteacher of a primary and nursery school in Nottinghamshire, and a Labour Party member in Derbyshire. He was a member of the selection committee that appointed the trustees of the College Of Teaching. As I went to start writing this blog, I couldn’t recall the name of the shadow education secretary.
That can’t be a great sign, surely? While there are plenty of things happening that might keep education politics out of the news, surely I should be able to put my finger on that name? But what have we heard from Lucy Powell, lately? Perhaps it’s just that teachers’ gripes don’t make for great headlines outside the education press – and that’s fair enough. I’ve moaned plenty about the state the DfE has got primary assessment into, and I see endless worries about the mess of Key Stage 4 preparations for the new GCSE. Where Did Education, Education, Education, Go Wrong? | Trivium21c. Future Proof Your Child. ‘There’s something rotten in the state of school admissions – and it’s affecting poor kids the most’ Desforges. Organized Parents Can Transform Education-Indeed, It Won't Happen Without Them. Meet the Parents starts a welcome grassroots movement: local people speaking up for their schools. Worried about education? Get stuck in and change it | Zoe Williams.
Great teacher = great results? Wrong | Jack Marwood. Ducking the issue – Distant Ramblings on the Horizon.