PERFECT-STORM-brewing: these 'squalls' were thought to be contributing to a 'perfect storm' ahead in the politics of education. It is arguable whether much notice was taken. Or did they contribute to the sacking of Michael Gove, Secretrty of State for Education in July 2014 ?
28 May 2012 NUT and NASUWT JOINT AGREEMENT
The UK’s two biggest teaching unions, the NUT and the NASUWT have today launched an historic joint agreement committing the unions to work together to protect teachers and defend education. Representing over 85% of the teaching profession in England and Wales, the two unions are launching an unprecedented joint campaign to end the continuing assault on the teaching profession.
11 Sept 2012 NASUWT RESPONSE A-LEVEL REFORM CONSULTATION
The NASUWT is concerned by the amount of turmoil in the education system instigated by the Coalition Government with little grounds for the far-reaching and precipitous changes other than those of political ambition and prejudice.
22 November 2012: LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER FROM 22 PROFESSORS OF EDUCATION
We express grave concern at the way in which major educational changes are being introduced which we believe will harm the prosperity of our nation and limit the life-chances of our young people. A perfect storm is brewing …
2013 NEW VISIONS FOR EDUCATION GROUP
We are not, as a group, affiliated to any political party, but seek to realise our vision of a high quality equitable public education service, and urge government to pursue those policies and measures that we believe necessary to achieve this vision. We seek to do that by using our collective experience, our research and its findings, and the outcomes of relevant work and research carried out by others, here and abroad, to influence education policy-making by informing government, and other interested parties, about how their policies are working out in practice, and advising them on what we believe needs to be addressed if good practice is to be more widely spread and impediments to progress removed. {There 90 members. The latest ‘submissions’, as agreed by the Group, to Ministers, opposition parties and other policy making groups are: 15 April 2013 Government induced crisis in initial Teacher Education and 30 July 2012 Coherent Structures and Governance for Education: economy, accountability and improving educational performance]
http://www.newvisionsforeducation.org.uk/aims/ and http://www.newvisionsforeducation.org.uk/category/submissions/
20 March 2013 100 ACADEMICS LETTER IN THE INDEPENDENT AND DAILY TELEGRAPH
We are writing to warn of the dangers posed by Michael Gove’s new National Curriculum which could severely erode educational standards. The proposed curriculum consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of data will not develop children’s ability to think, including problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity. Much of it demands too much too young. This will put pressure on teachers to rely on rote learning without understanding. Inappropriate demands will lead to failure and demoralisation.
The Independent and Daily Telegraph letters pages 20 March
2 April 2013 NUT AND ATL VOTE ‘NO CONFIDENCE’ IN SECRETARY OF STATE MICHAEL GOVE
Teachers ended their conference season today by unanimously backing a motion of no confidence in Education Secretary Michael Gove – the first time in its 143-year history that the National Union of Teachers had taken such a step over a Secretary of State for Education.
It meant that the season both started and ended with a no confidence motion in Mr Gove – delegates at the traditionally moderate Association of Teachers of Lecturers passing a similar motion at the first of the Easter conferences of the teachers’ unions ten days ago.
Report in The Independent 2 April
15 April 2013 TEACHERS’ PETITION TO SELECT COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
More than 2,000 teachers have put their names to a petition condemning Michael Gove's proposed national curriculum reforms. … The teachers' main concerns are over the contents and direction of the new curriculum – specifically its return to more rigid rote learning – and what they perceive as Mr Gove's dismissive attitude towards his critics … The response shows the growing rift between the Government and the teaching profession over a raft of proposals including curriculum reform, plans to scrap annual pay increments for teachers (which have prompted strike calls by the two biggest teachers' unions), exam reforms which will see restrictions on resits at GCSE and A-level, and new tests for six and 11-year-olds which have prompted demands for a boycott.
Report in The Independent 15 Apr 13
16 April 2013: PRIMARY EDUCATION: STATEMENT OF CONCERN by ATL, NUT, NASUWT + 100 other organisations and individuals to Mr Gove
The proposed primary national curriculum will hold back the progress of many children and label others as failures by putting unrealistic and age inappropriate expectations on children. It will not raise education standards, and will fail to prepare primary-aged children for the future. The statement calls for a complete rethink of the national curriculum.
http://www.atl.org.uk/media-office/media-archive/Joint-press-release-Primary-national-curriculum-will-damage-children-s-education.asp
16 April 2013 POLITICIANS ‘SHOULD STAY OUT OF SCHOOLS’ Politicians need to relinquish control of school policy, the former head of the national curriculum said last night. Mick Waters said power had to be “wrestled away from meddlers and unelected advisers”.
7 May 2013 Think Tank DEMOS says TACKLE ‘TARGET-OBSESSED CULTURE’ IN SCHOOLS Demos proposes a fundamental shake-up of how schools and pupils are assessed in order to rescue an education system obsessed with targets and league tables. It argues for Ofsted inspections to be scrapped.
13 May 2013 ‘PICKING UP THE PIECES’: CAMPAIGN FOR STATE EDUCATION, SOCIALIST EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, FORUM, COMPREHENSIVE FUTURE AND ISCG LAUNCHED “A BETTER FUTURE FOR OUR SCHOOLS”
With less than two years before the next General Election, there is an urgent need to develop a new schools framework for a new government. The one thing we need to learn from Michael Gove and the Tories is the need to be ready for government, ready to hit the ground running to make the changes that will be so badly needed in 2015. That will need the development of a clear, principled agenda for action and the support of stakeholders of all kinds. We need to start to build this agenda now.
It is for this reason that a number of organisations have come together to set out the principles that will need to underpin “a better future for our schools”. The document identifies ten areas where the government is failing dismally. It then sets out the key directions that will need to be followed after 2015.
Underpinning our approach is the belief that that all aspects of the school system are connected and all contribute to the core aim of raising standards for all. So no part can be ignored. But under this government, everything is fragmenting as a crude marketization takes hold. That’s why we’ve given our campaign the title “Picking up the Pieces”
John Bolt’s blog at http://educevery.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/picking-up-the-pieces-a-better-future-for-our-schools/ and http://www.pickingupthepieces.org.uk/betterfuture.html
18 May 2013 NAHT VOTE ‘NO CONFIDENCE’ IN SECRETARY OF STATE MICHAEL GOVE
The Education Secretary was heckled and shouted down by delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers’ annual conference in Birmingham. Hostilities erupted after members of the 28,500-strong organisation passed a vote of no confidence in his education reforms, including the forced conversation of local authority schools into academies and the introduction of changes to the curriculum and examinations.
The union’s president, Bernadette Hunter, also warned that teachers and pupils had "never had it so bad", with morale in schools at an all-time low.
Report in Daily Telegraph 18 May
June 2013 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION
The major weakness in the system of education in the UK, clearly shown by international comparative studies of attainment, is evidenced by the 15 to 20 % of children, largely from disadvantaged families, who fail to meet our expectations. Most leave school at 16 insufficiently qualified to continue their education, undertake further training or to enter employment. The current proposals are based on the premise that to remedy this weakness the national curriculum must stipulate more statutory content earlier in children’s lives. This will simply be irrelevant to the needs of the vulnerable children, they will be confused by inappropriate learning targets and teaching methods. The artificial separation of curriculum and assessment is wholly unsound. National testing towards the end of Year 6 has a profound, limiting and damaging effect upon the curriculum.
nape.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/20123/07/NAPE-NEWS-Summer-2013.pdf
12 June 2013 HISTORY TEACHERS DENOUNCE PARTISAN VIEWS
In a letter to The Independent signed by more than 100 history teachers from a variety of schools - including independent, grammar and comprehensive, the claim is made that the draft history curriculum is in breach of the legal duty to avoid “the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school”.
15 June 2013 A CHARTER FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION Lambeth NUT and many co-signees
The Coalition Government is reforming education at break neck speed. The Secretary of State Michael Gove is ignoring research evidence – such as the highly respected Cambridge Primary Review – and he is refusing to engage with professional and parental opinion about what makes a good primary education. It is time our voices are heard. Following on from the successful Lambeth Primary Schools Conference in December 2012, we are launching this Primary School Charter.
Headings are: Children’s learning, Key skills, Values and citizenship, Culture and community,Management and measurement
http://primarycharter.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/primary-charter.pdf
14 July 2013: COMPASS EDUCATION INQUIRY FOR A NEW MODEL OF EDUCATION
Education is arguably the most important thing a society can provide. It has the potential to transform lives, build communities and support the economy. And yet our education system is increasingly looking to the past rather than building for the future. It is becoming more marketised and fragmented; it’s increasingly subject to political interference where parents, teachers and local councillors’ views are marginalized. …
The prevailing view of education as a private good rather than a civil and human right needs to be challenged. Great work is being done in schools – but this is despite ‘the system’ not because of it. …
Compass, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and many other organisations and individuals are coming together to establish an Inquiry into a New Model of Education.
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/education-inquiry/welcome-to-our-new-education-inquiry/
20 August 2013 NASUWT ON GGSE REFORM
… the DfE’s policy requirements for the development of revised arrangements for GCSEs are profoundly flawed and would, if implemented, place the future effectiveness of the qualifications system at genuine risk.
www.nasuwt.org.uk
3 September 2013 BERA Presidential address by Prof Ian Menter
Education is far too important to be left in the hands of ideologically motivated and personally ambitious politicians. www.bera.ac.uk/news/professor-ian-menters-presidential-inaugural-address-educational-research-whats-be-done
9 September 2013 14% FALL IN NUMBER OF ARTS GCSES TAKEN IN SCHOOLS The Cultural Learning Alliance
The number of children studying arts GCSEs has fallen since the introduction of the English Baccalaureate performance measure, with 14% fewer arts GCSEs being taken in 2013 than in 2010.
11 September 2013 LETTER IN TELEGRAPH OF ‘DEEP CONCERN’ FROM SAVE CHILDHOOD MOVEMENT WITH 127 SIGNATURES
We are deeply concerned about the impact of the Government’s early years policies on the health and wellbeing of our youngest children. The early years of life are when children establish the values and mindsets that underpin their sense of self, their attitude to later learning, and their communicative skills and natural creativity. …
Instead of pursuing an enlightened approach informed by global best practice, successive ministers have prescribed an ever-earlier start to formal learning. This can only cause profound damage to the self-image and learning dispositions of a generation of children. We as a sector are now uniting to demand a stop to such inappropriate intervention and that early years policy-making be put in the hands of those who truly understand the developmental needs and potential of young children.
Letter in Daily Telegraph 11 September from Wendy Ellyatt and 126 academics, teachers, teachers associations, children’s agencies and others.
23 September 2013 SOCIALIST EDUCATION ASSOCIATION fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference. Melissa Benn spoke powerfully about 'Education after Gove'
26 September 2013 ANTI ACADEMIES ALLIANCE continues to advocate need for a NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR EDUCATION (annual report)
September 2013 Prof Stephen Ball’s paper: EDUCATION, JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY: THE STRUGGLE OVER IGNORANCE AND OPPORTUNITY
“We have to reconnect education to democracy and work towards an educative relationship between schools and their communities. Put simply ‘we should recognize the centrality of education to larger projects of democracy and community building’. Among other things schools should have a responsibility to develop the capabilities of parents, students, teachers, and other local stakeholders; to participate, to discuss, to challenge and critique. It is time to get back to basics – to think seriously about what is the purpose of education and what it means to be educated, what schools are for, and concomitantly and crucially who should decide these things.” http://classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/education-justice-and-democracy
1 October 2013 THE TIMES (front page) PUPILS ‘BEING DAMAGED BY ENDLESS TESTS SET BY GOVE’ Letter from 198 signatories (academics and children’s writers including Malorie Blackman, Children’s Laureate and Carol Ann Duffy Poet Laurate) The new national policies around curriculum, assessment and accountability are taking enormous risks with the quality of children’s lives and learning. … Arrest change and seek consensus on the future of education. Second editorial discusses but ends supporting Gove!
2 October 2013 Derek Haylock's blog "It is incredibly arrogant of our Secretary of State for Education just to assume that his prejudices about education are necessarily right and thus to dismiss as worthless the views of those who have devoted their professional careers to researching and reflecting on the nature of learning and teaching, children in schools, curriculum theory, the aims of education, how to cater for the range of abilities and learnings styles, the nature of understanding, how to develop higher order learning, effective teaching methodologies, the promotion of positive attitudes and values, subject knowledge pedagogy, how to assess learning, creative and critical thinking, and so on." http://derek-haylock.blogspot.co.uk/
7 October 2013 #TRUST TEACHERS Michael Bassey’s 16 page booklet arrives to Common’s address of every MP. Based on tweets which posted earlier on Twitter. Sections: Trust Teachers not Politicians; The Excellence of our Schools; Education, Unotadice, Notacuide; Political Corrosion of Education; EducationalIdeology of Michael Gover; Challenges to Michael Gove; If … But Since Not … Time to Go!
www.free-school-from-government-control.com/trustteachers-tweets.html
20 October 2013 CLEGG TURNS ON GOVE OVER HIS 'IDEOLOGICAL' SCHOOL REFORMS front page article in The Observer "Unqualified teachers should not be allowed to teach in state-funded schools…. 'Parentsdon't want ideology to get in the way of their children's education'"
21 October 2013 TEACHER TRAINING FACES CRISIS letter in THE INDEPENDENT FROM 71 academics and union officials. Standards of education are being threatened by a serious and growing shortage of school places and an emerging crisis in recruitment to teacher training. … The Secretary of State should … secure universities central role in the development of well-trained and highly qualified teachers.
30 October 2013 SAVE CHILDHOOD MOVEMENT A DAY OF ACTION including delivering petition to House of Commons. THE OBJECTIVES OF THE CAMPAIGN ARE TO:
1. Re-establish the Early Years as a unique stage it its own right and not simply a preparation for school.
2. Protect young children’s natural developmental rights
3. Prevent baseline testing
The Campaign has a valuable list of other organisations concerned about early years education at http://www.savechildhood.net/related-campaigns.html (no longer accessible Jan2016)
3 November 2013 ENGLISH LIT MUST STAY A CORE SUBJECT Letter to Sunday Times Tens of thousands of children will be deprived of the canon of English literature under Michael Gove’s GCSE reforms, 36 leading writers, academics and teachers have warned in a letter to the Sunday Times
5 November 2013 LET'S BUILD A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IN ENGLAND Andy Chapman’s petition on 38 degrees website
1. We want to make the education system in England more democratic by involving students, parents, employers, professionals, unions and local communities in deciding what is to be taught, how and by whom.
2. We want to change the language with which education is discussed from that of management, measurement and accountability to trust, dialogue and local decision-making.
3. We must replace exams and inspections that each year write off as failures half the candidates and adopt a unified and inclusive approach which publicly recognises the talents of all students, the wider achievements of all schools and their contribution to the life of the communities they serve.
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/let-s-build-a-democratic-education-system-in-england
November 2013 Book published by Amazon: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT TEACHING : MICHAEL GOVE Ch1 Why teachers should read this book; Ch2 My teaching experience; Ch3 My preschool pick and mix; Ch4 Kicking off with kindergarten; Ch5 The perfect primary school teacher; Ch6 Dealing with parents; Ch7 Winning the junior school jackpot; Ch8 Why teachers admire me; Ch9 Secondary school solutions; Ch10 Off to Oxbridge. But every chapter contains only blank pages!
And another brilliant spoof: Clarence Fisher (an American educator) THE DICTATOR'S PRACTICAL GUIDE TO EDUCATION glassbeed@evenfromhere.org
7 November 2013 “Gove should resign” With opposition to his policies growing from across the political divide, Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of ATL calls on Michael Gove to resign. “You should really start worrying, Mr Gove, when you become a joke. The teaching profession, for so long cowed and resentful, has now started to laugh. If I were you I would retire with what shreds of dignity you have left. Things are not going to get better.” http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/blog/the-growing-opposition-to-michael-gove/#sthash.DxS0XgHA.dpuf
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Much else has happened since. Perhaps the most significant was this - as a headline of the London Evening Standard reported on 16 July 2014:
"Michael Gove axed as Education Secretary as ruthless David Cameron reshuffles Cabinet "
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May 2015 GENERAL ELECTION MB: "Last chance to save education from disaster!" Click on Ed Policies Lab/NUT at the bottom of the navigation bar.
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This page was updated on 9 November 2013 and on 13 March 2015