Each of our news pages covers a whole month, so you may find it useful to click "Edit/Find + your search term" in your browser.

Taking Time Out to Talk

Janina Aitken has seen results at Burlington Danes improve dramatically and the school come out of special measures since she joined the staff as a newly qualified PE teacher two years ago.

As it becomes an academy, she believes the small school idea can now take it as stage further.

It will mean sharing office space with maths, science and design technology teachers from the same small school, dramatically broadening her contact with colleagues.

“Under the old model I didn’t find much time at all to sit down and talk to teachers of other subjects,” she said.

“As a PE teacher, lunchtime and after school clubs meant you didn’t tend to leave the department.”

Miss Aitken is also looking forward to having the opportunity to observe lessons in other subjects for the first time.

“I will be able to see how a teacher deals with a certain student that I might be having particular issues with in PE and see strategies and practice that I can take forward. I think it will be really good.”

The management structure should also help. Each small school has a head with no teaching timetable and a deputy who teaches only half of the time.

Administrative duties are left to the academy principal.

This gives teachers someone senior to turn to, who knows about their pupils and has the time to help if things go wrong.  (TES – 8.9.06)

Quartersize my School

A large comprehensive is dividing itself in four because staff want to get to know their pupils better.

An experiment that could transform the working lives of secondary school teachers and the fortunes of urban schools starts in Burlington Danes academy this week.

The idea is simple. Pupils from tough inner city backgrounds need a lot of pastoral support but are unlikely to receive it in large anonymous institutions.

Now the west London secondary is addressing the issue by splitting into four smaller schools within the academy, with around 300 pupils each.

Each school will have its own head and deputy and around 15 teachers. The hope is that they should be able to get to know their pupils individually, something virtually impossible in schools of more than 1,000.

Spokey Wheeler, the academy’s principal, said: ”In this inner city area, every supportive and aspirational message we can give our pupils is absolutely crucial.

“They are getting messages from outside about what their chances are and they are living cheek by jowl with some of the most privileged kids in the country.”

And he believes staff will benefit as much as the students. “It is about giving teachers back their essential role as pastoral leaders of children,” he said.

“As a teacher here you will be part of a definable team with a loyalty to a small group of staff with lots of opportunities to work together.”

Jay Altman, education director of Ark, the charity co-sponsoring the academy with the Church of England, became enthusiastic about small schools when he began researching how to improve inner city education in the United States.

“I wanted to know how the education of the few become the education of the many,” said Mr Altman, a former independent school teacher in America.

He drew up the basic set of principles being adapted to Burlington Danes after touring the best state schools serving poor areas in cities such as Boston, New York and Oakland.

As well as schools having no more than 300 on their rolls, the measures also include encouraging aspiration among pupils, clear expectations of good behaviour and a focus on staff professional development.

“Not just about training but about staff meeting regularly to solve problems,” he explained,

Mr Altman put these principles into practice in a charter (state funded independent) school for 11 to 14-year-olds that he set up and ran in a poor black area of New Orleans.

Its record was impressive: pupils who arrived up to two years behind their age group left with results matching the state average.

But after he joined Ark last year Hurricane Katrina struck. He returned to New Orleans to find the original school “wiped out”. It has been flooded to the ceiling and had mould growing on the walls.

It has, he admits, been “an intense time”.

But his passion for schools has been excited by the freedom to innovate offered by the seven academies that Ark, backed by financiers, hopes to open in England eventually.

“As an American it has been inspiring to be involved in British education at this time,” he said.

He thinks that it is going through a renaissance that could have the same dramatic effect on the opportunities for inner city pupils as 19^th century sanitation had on public health.

Mr Wheeler agrees. He caught the small school bug accidentally as head of a Forces school in Dortmund that suddenly lost its pupils when the Berlin Wall came down and the British Army left Germany.

By the time numbers had fallen to 180 he realised he has something special on his hands. He said: “As a head I knew every child in my school. There was no way that anyone could be left languishing for six months.”

Now he hopes that breaking down big schools into bite-sized chunks will replace the “fallacious” model that relies on failing inner city schools being turned round by heroic heads.

“You can’t keep doing it all the time,” he said. “What happens when the hero has a heart bypass? He asked.

“Our interest is in a sustainable achievement over the lifetime of a school, not the lifetime of the Headteacher.”

Taking Time Out to Talk

 Janina Aitken has seen results at Burlington Danes improve dramatically and the school come out of special measures since she joined the staff as a newly qualified PE teacher two years ago.

As it becomes an academy, she believes the small school idea can now take it as stage further.

It will mean sharing office space with maths, science and design technology teachers from the same small school, dramatically broadening her contact with colleagues.

“Under the old model I didn’t find much time at all to sit down and talk to teachers of other subjects,” she said.

“As a PE teacher, lunchtime and after school clubs meant you didn’t tend to leave the department.”

Miss Aitken is also looking forward to having the opportunity to observe lessons in other subjects for the first time.

“I will be able to see how a teacher deals with a certain student that I might be having particular issues with in PE and see strategies and practice that I can take forward. I think it will be really good.”

The management structure should also help. Each small school has a head with no teaching timetable and a deputy who teaches only half of the time.

Administrative duties are left to the academy principal.

This gives teachers someone senior to turn to, who knows about their pupils and has the time to help if things go wrong.

(TES - 8 September 2006)

Blogger Frank quits ‘scum and drugs’

“The Kids are thick, the parents are scum, there are drugs everywhere and half the girls are giving birth. Who wouldn’t want to be a teacher?”

Frank Chalk does not mince his words describing life as a supply teacher working in an inner-city comprehensive in England.

His witty warts-and-all descriptions have won him hundreds of teacher fans visiting a weblog he started last summer, and are now to be published in a book.

But just as his persona is gaining more fame and notoriety, the anonymous maths teacher has decided to quit the profession, worn down by poor behaviour and management incompetence.

“There was no dramatic tipping-point,” he said. “It was more like the coastal erosion the kids don’t learn about in geography anymore.

“Someone else can have my job as crowd-controller.”

Mr Chalk, who is in his early 40s, was approached by a publisher less than four weeks after beginning his website. He insists on anonymity, however, because his wife and many of their close friends continue to teach.

His book, It’s Your Time You’re Wasting: A teacher’s tales of classroom hell will be published next month. It is scathing in its description of some of his former colleagues and pupils whose names have been changed.

Characters include Wayne, a Year 10 student, who had been expelled from a previous school for stealing a teacher’s handbag then selling her house keys to a burglar.

“Wayne is well known as a local drug dealer, so is one of the few with a grasp of fractions,” Mr Chalk writes. “Lovely lad.”

Then there is Mr Morris, the ineffectual Headteacher who staff nickname “the ostrich” for his ability to ignore problems; Mr Duncan, the alcoholic geography teacher, and Miss Wade, the timorous science teacher who goes off on long term stress leave, citing bullying.

Mr Chalk insists that all the incidents he describes in the book are true and not exaggerated.

Several chapters give blow-by-blow accounts of difficult supply lessons, including the verbal abuse from teenagers and pupils’ tricks, such as bringing vodka into class in water bottles.

Mr Chalk began teaching as an idealistic 20-something. He said it had taken him so long to quit the profession because some of the teachers had worked with were inspirational.

He had also become attached to the profession “in the same way kidnap victims develop an attachment to their kidnappers”.

His tone is decidedly un-PC.  In the book’s glossary of educational terms, he defines pupils with learning difficulties as “thick”, the learning impaired as “really thick” and special needs as “yet another way to avoid using the word ‘thick’’.

Mr Chalk’s book is the latest in a growing line of classroom-misery lit. Previous examples include Francis Gilbert’s I’m a Teacher - Get Me Out of Here, which has attracted praise for its accuracy from some teachers and accusations from others that it disparages the profession.

Look, learn and know your enemy

Frank Chalk’s rules for supply teaching include:

Do judge by appearances

Just as an airport penny-dreadful book announces itself by its appearance, so will problem kids.

Use sarcasm

A favourite weapon of mine ever since my PGCE (teacher training) days when, naturally, we were expressly forbidden to use it.

Use mystery and unpredictability to your advantage

Practise a slightly lopsided, serial killer’s smile for when your first meet the pupils at your new school.

Do not be gullible

Ben Dover, Phil McCavity and Roger Rubshaft are not real pupils.

Know your enemy

Get the troublemakers’ names from your colleagues, along with descriptions.

The prison hint

“Accidentally” drop into the conversation a hint that you may have served time in prison and then quickly change the subject.

Remember that you are God

‘No, he can’t read books, let alone minds’

In his book, Frank Chalk describes getting pupils to enter one of his supply classes, after he has lined them up outside:

I stand, arms folded, by the door. Speaking calmly, I say: “We are on nine minutes now. You know you have to be quiet before you go into my lessons. If it gets to 10 minutes, I will fetch your head of year and you will all do a half-hour detention.”

(No they won’t, I think to myself).

“No we won’t!” yells one boy, near the back of the line. “You can f*ck off!”

Is that kid telepathic?

No, he can’t read books, let alone minds.

However, just in case, I form a mental image of me strangling him.

It seems to work: there’s a moment of quiet.

Right, that’ll do. Seize the moment, like a drowning man grasping at a passing branch.

“OK, in we go. Remember coats on hooks.” They like to keep their coats on at every opportunity, regardless of the ambient temperature, as they provide useful places to conceal things like crisps, phones and spliffs.

I remain in the doorway so that they can only go in one by one.

They push and shove each other, or pull on each other’s bags and coats, completely oblivious to my presence.

I glare at my watch. We’ve wasted 10 minutes already. There is nothing unusual about this. It’s a scene that’s being repeated all over the school, although usually inside a classroom.

TES (18 August 2006)

Revolt over Forced Worship

Head is suspended at ‘too Catholic’ college as over-16s fight for right to shun faith activities

A Catholic sixth-form college principal who invited a radical pro-life campaigner from the US to lecture students and excluded teenagers for skipping Mass has been suspended.

The local council has now launched an investigation into St Luke’s college in Bexley, south London, following a revolt by students who accused it of being “more concerned about religion than education” and criticism of teaching standards by Ofsted.

It brings to a head a troubled few months for the college, only formed last year following the closure of two school sixth forms.

Earlier this year more than 100 teenagers signed a petition protesting at a decision by Maria Williams, the principal, to invite Barbara McGuigan, an American evangelist, to lecture students about Christian family values.

It is claimed students were forced to attend a series of talks by Ms McGuigan-founder of Catholic charity, Voice of Virtue International-about abortion, sex outside marriage and homosexuality.

One18-year old girl, who has just finished exams at the college, told the TES: “it was just disturbing and went too far. We were shown pictures of foetuses aborted after 12 to 20 weeks-it was met with disgust. Some people were crying and walking out.”

Students also complained after taking part in a procession, in which they were asked to carry a statue of the Virgin Mary around the college while singing hymns.

Last month Mrs Williams excluded 17 students for a day after they refused to go to mass and then called them into college for a “re-entry” interview.

An 18-year old boy, who was among those suspended, said: “I don’t think people should be forced to go to Mass. A small group of us decided to walk through the gates but were stopped and suspended the next day.”

Campaigners said the punishment raised the question of whether over-16s should have to attend religious ceremonies. Collective worship is compulsory at St. Luke’s and all other state schools and sixth-form colleges.

This week Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, confirmed that the Government has no plans to relax the laws on compulsory worship and, although parents have the power to pull children out, that right will not be extended to pupils themselves.

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: “legal advice we have indicates that the inability in law of older pupils to withdraw themselves from collective worship contravenes their rights under the Human Rights Act.”

Mrs Williams told the local press students at St Luke’s had “signed up” to attending Mass, one of only two compulsory acts of worship a term, and had been suspended for being “openly defiant”.

But last month Mrs Williams herself was suspended on full pay by the college’s governors after an inspection by Ofsted found standards at the college to be “inadequate”, and criticised teaching. It has now been given a “notice to improve” after inspectors judged it to be “performing significantly less well than it could be reasonably expected to”.  Staff also passed a vote of no confidence in the principal.

In a statement, Father Tim Finigan, chair of governors, denied accusations by students that the college is “too Catholic”.

“There are many committed Catholic staff at the college and they support the Catholic life of college,” he said. “Non-Catholic staff have also been actively involved in its pastoral and spiritual life.”

Mrs Williams was unavailable for comment. (TES 14.7.06)

Renaissance Education – great teachers for day-to-day supply

Thousands Will Retire With Zero Pension

Around 20, 000 teachers are heading towards retirement without a pension, government-commissioned research reveals.

The study of supply teachers in England found that more than half are not paying into any pension fund. The research by academics from London Metropolitan and Glasgow universities surveyed a sample of more than 40, 000 supply teachers estimated to be working in England, of which 85 per cent were not contributing to a pension. For supply staff in their 20s the figure was much higher, at 87 per cent.

The main reason is that private agency staff are not eligible to pay into the Teachers’ Pension Scheme. A few agencies offer pension schemes but take up are limited, the research found. But even where teachers worked directly for councils or schools, and so could pay into the Teacher’s Pension Scheme, around 40 per cent under 60 did not do so.

Mary Bousted, Association of Teachers and Lecturers general secretary, said: “By putting newly-qualified teachers into schools encumbered by student debt, who feel they cannot afford pension contributions, we are only storing up problems for the future.”

The study also reveals that the vast majority of schools and teachers are ignoring a government scheme to guarantee the quality of supply agencies similar to the Kitemark scheme.

It found that the “most challenging” schools are getting fewer qualified and experienced supply staff despite often being charged more by agencies and using them more than other schools.

The DfES introduced its Quality Mark for supply agencies in May 2002 to boost confidence in the industry following the scandal over Amy Gehring, a Canadian supply teacher who admitted having sex with a 16-year-old pupil. Yet its research reveals that only 8 per cent of schools look for the mark when choosing an agency.  (TES 9.6.06)