Having started this blog 3 years ago under the guise of an “Aspiring Head” at Blogger, I guess I have now aspired! I even have my photo on the website.
On Tuesday, term started at St. Joseph’s In The Park. I’m the Head. The buck stops with me. And that’s about it.Â
Except I wasn’t quite anticipating just how exciting it is. Let me say at this point, however, I am fully aware how difficult it may get in the future. Indeed there are issues that are not pleasant to deal with right now. Yet overall, the sense of purpose and the delightful unceratinty of what may come is thrilling. I work with a diverse, dedicated set of people and their enthusiasm for what they do each day is clearly represented in the delightful children that leave the school each day.
Well I would say that, wouldn’t I? But its not because of me. I’ve only just arrived on the scene. These are the bare facts & it would be easy to march in & destroy everything by imposing a new regime. And that is the challenge & where the excitement originates. It is the process of personally absorbing what makes St. Joseph’s so successful and deciding what is necessary to move it forward.   Enhancing the learning experiences of the children and ecouraging the staff to develop in a direction with which they are comfortable.
Forgive me for being an anorak, but I felt that I had to get to the bottom of the conflicting reports last week from the Guardian & BBC. So I went on a hunt for the data upon which the reports were based. The trail lead me to a wonderful corner of the DCSF website, the Research & Statistics Gateway, that one could quite easily lose oneself in for, oh, minutes!
Anyway, to cut a long story short, after compiling some data on pupil numbers, I managed to produce the following pictoral evidence (thanks to the wonderful Zoho suite of online applications). Indeed, the numbers in Independent Schools remain healthy. I calculated the number of pupils at Independent schools as a percentage of the total number of pupils in full time education in the UK. For the raw data, this is the link to the Zoho database table.
…demographic factors mean the 431,650 fee-paying pupils are a marginally higher proportion of the school population than they were in 2004.
 So are numbers at Independent Schools in decline?  In real terms yes but just because there are fewer school-age children in the population doesn’t mean that independent schools are under any kind of threat. In actual fact our “market share” has risen. This article from the BBC - Private Schools’ Market Share Up - is an excellent counterpoint. However:
 …stability among families able to afford private education means that independent secondary school numbers have remained almost constant, while there has been a fall of about 6,000 in primary.
There in lies the rub. We have known for sometime that the next 10 years will see a marked demographic shift, with proportionally fewer children being born, which will impinge up the Primary Independent schools first.
I posted an item on this in May 2005, when the Guardian was then on about rising school fees. Back then, the link between fees and falling numbers was again a tenuous one as the Maintained Sector was experiencing a greater drop in numbers relative to the Independent Sector.
So the point is? While the statistics appear threatening, it is articles such as this that are potentially damaging to the stability of the relationship between schools and their parent bodies and prospective parents. We don’t need headlines like this. It patently does not give the real picture.
The ISC’s blog has a post on the proposed regualtory changes that would essentially put independent schools’ inspections in the hands of OfSTED. To quote the blog:
In essence, the proposals will mean that Ofsted, rather than the Secretary of State, becomes accountable for regulating the whole independent sector. That doesn’t mean inspecting schools directly. That area will remain with The Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). But it would mean that Ofsted would become the interpreter of regulation for the ISI and therefore dictate the inspection agenda. Â
 However, if you take a moment to read through the proposals, what is on the table is a system whereby independent schools have the opportunity to prove the quality of there provision on a far more regular basis. We are, at present, inspected every 6 years by ISI. Under the new proposals we will be inspected every 3 years for a shorter period of time (the 2-3 day model: the light touch, critical friend approach), following the guidelines set out for maintained sector schools.Â
As a governor of a small mainatined sector school and a deputy head at a large independent prep I have experienced both forms of inspection. The streamlined model used by OfSTED lasts 3 days and is customised through the use of self-evaluation data. This opportunity to regulary go through a self-evaluation process is a far more professional tool for school management in the 21st century. It ensures that staff are continually aware of development goals and focused on maintaining standards in learning and teaching.
Centralised control is anathema to Independent Education. However, by ensuring that we have an effective and efficient process of inspection and review then we can become far more confident of our standards in the wider educational world.Â
The Independent Schools Council is now blogging.  We will see what this precipitates. Will the collegiality of blogging encourage the usually detached Independent Sector to discuss its own issues?
This is an event that, if it hasn’t already begun its descent, will surely get the ball rolling.
The Symposium on Public Benefit on March 6th 2008 will hopefully all bring us up to speed on the guidance for fee-charging chaities. Hopefully it will also give independent school managers a chance to network & find out just what each other is up to & share some good ideas!
The ever watchful Andy Ross has written about the contradictory reports emerging from the Press & the Government. From Andy’s Blog:
Newspapers: One in seven children are unable to write their own name or recite the letters of the alphabet by the age of five, according to government figures. The results, based on teachers’ observations of more than 500,000 children throughout England as they start their formal schooling, also concluded that a third failed to recognise simple words such as “dog” or “pen”, while 15% could not write “mum” or “dad” or their own name from memory.
Government: This year’s Foundation Stage Profile (FSP) results show an upturn in the number of children reaching a good level of development in communication, language and literacy and personal, social and emotional development (PSED). The total has increased by one percentage point from last year to 45%, meaning that an additional 7,500 children achieved a good level of development this year.
So what is reality? How is a school to respond when parents, Governors & teachers are being fed such contradictory & inflamatory information?  For me it is down to clear communication about the situation on the ground. That all agents within the community are clear about how its own children are coping under the weight of expectation with which they are saddled today. So it is a case of being aware of the spin from both Government and the press and providing a transparent window on what the school is up to.
I never got round to watching this when Peter Ford posted about the impact of the slam poetry of Taylor Mali.
From the star of my career I’ve been able to spend some time around the American education system and understand why there is this passion about the education of young people. Mali’s observation about what it is that a teacher does ought be the first thing that student teachers see at the start of their courses.
