Maria Montessori would have backed revival of phonics

John Bald writes in praise of...Fiona Millar

Hats off to Elizabeth Truss for her riposte to the collection of early years specialists, academics and pundits who have  tried yet again to persuade us that the root cause of educational failure is too early a start to school.

As Ms Truss points out, the seeds of educational failure for poor children are sown early, and the later education starts, the more they will lose out. One of the ironies of the letter is that so many signatories are connected with the Montessori movement, whose key idea is to create a highly-structured environment that builds an educational outcome into whatever a child chooses to do.

Play it may be, but it is play on adult terms, and could not be further removed from the neglect that seals the fate of too many children before they have started school. Montessori, moreover, was an early and effective advocate of phonics as a means of teaching reading, and English Montessori schools were active in the phonics revival of the early nineties. Maria Montessori would probably have had more in common with the government than with its critics.

Sponsored Academies Week: The remarkable transformation of Grampian Primary School

Today we return to Derby for another sponsored academy success story. This time it has been delivered by the CfBT Schools Trust and has taken place at the Grampian Primary School in Sinfin.

Two years ago only 54 per cent of pupils at the school were reaching the expected basic standard in English and maths - the "floor" all primary schools are required to reach is 60 per cent. The result this year was 100 per cent. The conversion to an academy and the move to replace teaching assistants with teachers were both initiatives opposed by the unions.

Chris Perkins, the headmaster, says:

Sponsored Academies Week: Competition is driving up standards in Croydon's schools

Gavin Barwell is Conservative MP for Croydon Central

When Conservatives regained control of Croydon Council back in 2006, attainment in our secondary schools was below national average. Labour blamed this on some parents choosing to send their children to one of the outstanding independent schools in the borough or the high-attaining grammar schools across the border in Bromley and Sutton (about one in three parents who chose to send their child to a Croydon primary school did not go on to choose a Croydon secondary school and it was many of the most able pupils who were leaving the system).

But this was a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The truth was that many of our secondary schools simply weren’t good enough. In several of them, only a quarter of pupils were achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths.  So we took the decision to close five schools - Stanley Tech, Coulsdon High, Ashburton, Haling Manor and Selsdon High - and replace them with new academies, two sponsored by Harris, two by Oasis and one by our top-performing local school, Coloma Convent Girls School.

Today - in Croydon at least - closing a poor-performing school is relatively uncontroversial, provided you find the right sponsor. But back in 2008, this was a hugely controversial decision.  It was opposed by the teaching unions of course but also by Andrew Pelling, my predecessor as the Member of Parliament for Croydon Central; by Croydon Labour Party (including my Labour opponent at the last Election who bizarrely called Ashburton a "good community school" despite the fact that it’s results were shocking and hardly any local parents sent their children there); and by some parents, who despite the fact that their child’s school clearly needed drastic improvement understandably worried that change might make things worse before they got better.

Trying hard to educate Yorkshire

John Bald reviews the Channel 4 series Educating Yorkshire

After Vic Goddard's tolerant approach to pupils' negative attitudes in Educating Essex, we have Jonny Mitchell trying to deal with what look like much more difficult problems at Thornhill Academy in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. Educating Yorkshire will remain on C4 for eight episodes, on Thursdays at 9pm..

Five o'clock shadow apart, I found myself liking Mr Mitchell, who is trying to raise standards, disapproves of misbehaviour, and uses the word "punishment". The cliff he has to climb is nevertheless very high, and we can't be sure that he will make it to the top. In the first episode, we see three pupils in his office for tormenting neighbouring pensioners in their home, calling the lady a "white-haired bastard" and knocking her husband's glasses off with snowballs.

One had made up a story about being called a "paki" when it looked as if he had started a fight,  and a girl, placed in internal exclusion for smoking, refused to go, saying the head thought "he could do what he f.ing well liked", and didn't care if she was excluded for the day.

Sponsored Academies Week: Brooke Weston Trust boosts standards in Northants and Cambridgeshire

Today we focus on Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire - with the tremendous contribution to driving up school standards by the Brooke Weston Trust.

In 1991 the landowner, Hugh de Capell Brooke, and Garry Weston, the owner of Associated British Foods founded a City Technology College, now called the Brooke Weston Academy. The school was officially opened by the Prime Minister John Major. This was one of the 15 CTCs introduced after the reforms of Ken Baker. It has consistently achieved excellent results.

Now we are seeing these high standards at other schools that have become part of the Brooke Weston Trust. They are: Corby Business Academy, Corby Technical School, Beanfield Primary Academy, Gretton Primary Academy, Kettering Science Academy and Thomas Clarkson Academy in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

In Thomas Clarkson Academy this year 60 per cent of pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at A*-C including English and maths. Just a couple of years ago this figure was only 24 per cent. One of the most alarming aspects was that the school was in denial about the position it was in.

Sponsored Academies Week: The pursuit of excellence in Nottingham

Barry Day, the chief executive of the Greenwood Academies Trust, is a heroic figure in British education who deserves to be much better known than he is. His particular role has been to help children from deprived backgrounds in Nottingham achieve outstanding academic results.

Last week Michael Gove included in his list of the attacks on teaching, the claim that it couldn't make any difference as socio-economic factors are dominant over life chances - that academic expectations or the quality of teaching are negligible in their impact.

Mr Day's accomplishments help Mr Gove's case in repudiating such defeatism. Previously Mr Day was headmaster of Greenwood Dale School.  The school was outstanding and it was allowed to take over a failing school in the city called Elliot Durham, the third worst performing school in the country in 2007. The new combined school, Nottingham Academy, had 95 per cent of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C. The figure including for English and maths was 58 per cent.  Back in 2007 just seven per cent of pupils at Elliot Durham School achieved five or more GCSEs at grade C or above including English and maths.

The Greenwood Academies Trust now has 21 academies across the East Midlands:

The Nottingham Academy, 3-19
The Nottingham Girls' Academy, 11-19
The Skegness Academy, 11-19
The Weston Favell Academy, in Northampton, 11-19
The Stanground Academy, in Peterborough, 11-19
The City of Derby Academy 11-16
The City of Peterborough Academy Special School, 3-19 (This is a Free
School project)
The Ingoldmells Academy, 4-11
The Houghton Regis Academy, 9-13
The Mablethorpe Primary Academy, 3-11
The Mansfield Primary Academy, 3-11
The Skegness Infant Academy, 3-7
The Skegness Junior Academy, 7-11
The Queensmead Primary Academy, 3-11
The Sunnyside Primary Academy, 4-11
The Woodvale Primary Academy, 3-11
The Kingswood Primary Academy, 3-11
The City of Peterborough Academy, 11-19 (This is a Free School project)
The Corby Primary Academy, 4-11
The Kingswood Secondary Academy, 11-19
The Skegby Junior Academy, 7-11

The City of Derby Academy opened in June. The school was previously Sinfin Community School, a council run comprehensive with poor results. The response of the teaching unions to the introduction of new management was to call a strike. The Labour council offered "vehement opposition."

Mr Day said of his approach:

We want pupils, no matter what their age or ability, to be proud to belong to the new academy and be proud of their achievements. Whatever pupils' backgrounds, we want to ensure they reach their full potential, with no limit to what they can achieve. Our aim is for pupils at the new academy to be in the best possible position to move on to a successful life beyond school – whether it is in education, training or employment....

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award is a central part of what we do. It is therefore very pleasing that Sinfin already runs a thriving award programme.

We believe in traditional values and so pupils in our academies wear a smart and affordable uniform and are expected to behave to the highest standards. We will consult pupils, staff and parents to decide what the uniform for the new academy will be. We will ensure that parents are not financially disadvantaged due to the introduction of any new uniform.

Several more schools are due to come under the wing of the Greenwood Academies Trust in the coming months.

Sponsored Academies Week: Outwood Academies

The challenge of starting a new school with its own distinctive character has been met by some remarkable pioneering social entrepreneurs in the free school movement. Another 93 free schools opened last week.

However, it is also a great challenge, perhaps an even greater challenge, to take over a failing school and turn it around. Typically, such new management will be resisted by the unions, by the local council (especially if Labour-run), by many of the existing governors, and the staff usually including the incumbent head. They will shout and shake their fists. Thus these are forced takeovers; what in the corporate world would be caused "hostile takeovers".

At the time of the last election, 203 schools were sponsored academies. There are now 858 - including over a hunderd more from last week.

For secondary schools if fewer than 40 per cent of pupils are achieving five GCSEs of grade C or above in subjects including English and maths that is the trigger for a takeover. Next year the trigger will be 50 per cent. Under Labour it was 30 per cent.

Under Labour there were no sponsored academies in the primary sector. There was no threshold which meant they would be put under new management. Just carry on failing. Now a primary school with fewer than 60 per cent of pupils achieving the basic standard of level 4 in reading, writing and maths (that increases to 65 per cent next year), and fewer pupils than average making the expected levels of progress between KS1 and KS2 will be taken over.

Raising standards for school leavers in English and maths is crucial

John Bald says a grade D in English is a "near miss" - Gove is right not to give up on the young but to make them persist

Three years on, we are moving from sorting out Labour's mess to building the foundations of Conservative success. The phonics check for six year olds, that attracted so much leftist hostility last year, has passed without much comment second time around. The new spelling and grammar test for eleven year olds has been prepared to an excellent standard, as set out in this technical paper, and the new provision for teaching multiplication tables by the age of eight, for most pupils as crucial to success in maths as phonics are to success in English, has not attracted the widespread criticism that our opponents expected.

The national curriculum for languages, which introduces a balanced approach, based on brain research, that uses all channels of communication to build learning, has had a very good professional reception.

The latest development is the commitment to raising standards for school leavers in English and maths, in response to the Wolf report that exposed fake vocational qualifications. Christine Blower of the NUT said that on Radio 4 that there was no hiding the importance of English and maths, but that there was also no point in "marching young people in and out of the examination room."

Hands off London Oratory School

One of the many fantastic schools in my borough of Hammersmith and Fulham is the London Oratory, a Roman Catholic boys secondary school. It has been much sought after, not just by local parents but those elsewhere. Nick Clegg's son starts there next month. Tony Blair, Harriet Harman, and Ruth Kelly are among the Labour politicians to have chosen it. If the school just selected the Roman Catholics living nearest to the school then Mr Clegg would not have had a hope of getting his son in.

Nor would Mr Blair who was living in Islington at the time his eldest son was awarded a place. His predecessor Lord Kinnock expressed some reservations, remarking to Alastair Campbell:

"How can Blair address education policy when he sent his own son to the SS Waffen Academy?"

Of course Lord Kinnock never managed to convince the British electorate that his judgement was sufficiently balanced to be entrusted as Prime Minister.

So far as the Roman Catholic parents I represent in the Ravenscourt Park Ward are concerned they would be pleased if preference was given to their sons for places at the school rather than being nabbed by Islington socialists.

John Bald: This year, as ever, Labour has failed on exams

After a mixed result with last week's A levels, which showed a rise in entries for maths, physics and chemistry (up around 20 per cent overall since 2010), but a serious fall in languages, with German down to just over 4000 entries, there is much better news in yesterday's GCSE results. Single science entries are up, only by a few percentage points, but to their highest level in 16 years, media studies down by about the same proportion, and language entries up by 50,000 in response to Michael Gove's excellent idea of the EBacc. Clearly, Labour's mess has to be sorted out from the bottom up.