There is such a vast quantity of this material that you are faced with a choice. Do you:

1. Panic
or 2. Bury yourself in reading in detail all the instructions
or 3. Be reckless (and not look at it)?

That is the situation in which heads of schools in Britain now are, according to Amanda Spielman, Research and Development Director for Ark Schools which has opened eight academies. She gave a speech last night hosted by the Learning Skills Foundation. It was a superb speech because it described in detail the sort of regulation to which schools are subject, how the regulations are increasing in number and the damage that they do. There was no doubt that this was authoriative and balanced. This made it all the more grim. At the end one wondered why anyone would want to face the onslaught of instructions. It is against human nature to be, at once a leader of a school and, at the same time, a servant to myriad instructions from various levels of government.

She referred, for example, to EU procurement rules which "add enormously to the cost of business". Then - just as an example of one rule out of hundreds - there was the code that outlaws schools giving preference to siblings who have left a school. This is now actually illegal. Schools must have 'behaviour partnerships'. She commented that most of the rules were ones which one could see were in favour of desirable things. Co-operation is a good thing. But this has gone from being something desirable to being something obligatory.

Meanwhile there is an unending demand for data from government. The National Curriculum is prescriptive. The government insists schools should do social engineering in favour of equality. It demands schools have policies in favour of 'community cohesion'. She commented that this policy was originally intended to get schools in one town to integrate more with the rest of British society. But, because rules are rules, those schools which have a complete mix of children and thoroughly 'cohesive' are obliged also to follow the instructions and demonstate that they are doing so.

All this takes a great deal of time and paperwork and most of it does absolutely nothing to improve the education of children - the purpose of schools.

There are many adverse consequences.

- The time and effort of key personnel used on these things instead of on promoting education.

- Amanda Spielman said there was an element of intimidation. She referred to a talented and able head of a school being distressed and completely throwing out policy statements she had written because they were not liked by OFTSED inspectors.

- Barriers to entry. The bureaucratic jungle acts to deter anyone from trying to start a new school or academy - particularly those who are small in scale. In fact the big companies and organisations gain something from this barrier to entry - they know it keeps out small, new and perhaps innovative competitors.

What can be done?

She would like a tougher test for new regulations. At the moment, the test seems to be 'is this desirable?' If so, the regulation is put in place. Instead, she suggests, the test should be 'could we survive without it?"

She suggests that in a previous generation, legislation was to provide punishment for seriously bad things like murder. Now legislation aims at risk management - outlawing things that might have bad consequences.

A member of the audience who works in a school said that the government first wanted to insist on the introduction of expensive soft surfaces on playgrounds so that children do not injure themselves. Then the government came to think that learning about danger was a good thing for children and came to the view that adventure areas were good. This is an example of how schools are pushed this way and then that by government.

Amanda Spielman said there was a culture now whereby whatever the government decided was good became universally compulsory.

One of the audience was senior in a group of schools (which, to protect her, I will not name). She said that heads should ignore great swathes of the instructions. She said that the government left alone those ones which were doing well.

Amada Spielman said, separately, that if a business is in trouble, it goes back to basics and cuts out non-essential activities to get the main one right. But with schools in difficulty they could not behave like this. They were obliged to go on with all the government regulations even when their backs were against the wall.

I fear I have not done justice to an excellent and persuasive speech. I hope that she will go into print herself on this.

"Dear Sir,

Yesterday I called at 57 Pont Street to learn with deep regret the sudden passing of Mrs Beresford.

Of the many hundreds of people who graced the staircase during the two and a half years I was parlourmaid to her Ladyship, Mrs Beresford with her sweet naturalness was always outstanding in my memory.

I left her Ladyship to take over a small business on the 4th Sept. Unfortunately war broke out as everything was settled and so many people from whom I could buy are out of town. But faith is a conquering power which stands us in good stead even in the darkest hours.

Please forgive me Sir, for writing to you but I feel so inwardly urged to do so, and to accept my profound sympathy during these dark days through which you are passing.

With my best respects
I remain,

Yours truly
Ruth Craven"

The letter is evocative of that time in all sorts of ways. But what struck me most of all was the richness of the writer's expression. As a former parlourmaid, she was obviously from the poorer half of British society. I wondered, if she were alive today and came from the same relative social class, would she be able to write such a letter? I doubt it. The letter is not perfect but the second sentence contains 31 words (the number two and a half was written with figures) and starts with a long sub-clause which has a terrific image of many people on a staircase that she had seen in her work. That complexity and elegance of expression would be as much or more than you might hope these days from an Oxbridge graduate. I doubt that you would expect it from someone in her relative position. And remember, most adults now left school aged 16 or 18. Ruth Craven probably left school at 11 or 14.

I don't offer this letter as proof or even strong evidence that educational standards have dropped. It is only one letter and there could be all sorts of reasons why it was written as it was. But for those of us who already believe, due to a wide variety of accumulated evidence, that educational standards have dropped, the letter is a possible illustration of just what has been lost.

The study, by the independent House of Commons Library, shows violence against the person increased from 618,417 to 887,942 last year.

The devastating review comes despite repeated claims by the Government that violent crime has come down substantially since it took power.

It is the first time such a trend in police recorded crime can be made because a change was made in counting rules in 2002 which ministers have always insisted meant figures before that date were not, therefore, comparable.

Instead, they have always used a separate the separate British Crime Survey which suggests violence has dropped by more than 40 per cent since 1998.

The Tories, who requested the new research, said the findings make a mockery of such claims and reinforce the public's fear that violence is in fact rising.

The full story is here.

One story that came out about nine or ten days ago was mentioned in only a minority of newspapers (including the People, the Daily Telegraph and, from memory, the Daily Express). It was the news that two out of three people claiming Incapacity Benefit (now renamed Employment and Support Allowance) have been deemed fit for work under new, tougher tests.

This is extremely significant news. For the first time since Labour came to power here is concrete evidence that, finally, it is tackling the vast army of people who are wrongly being given Employment and Support Allowance. I have not seen the latest figures but the numbers who were on the old Incapacity Benefit were over two million. That is a vast number. This news suggests that over a million people will be taken off this benefit and required to seek work. Those deemed incapable of work, of course, are not required to seek work.

The consequences could be:

- a dramatic rise in the numbers 'unemployed' as defined by those getting Jobseekers Allowance. This rise may be considered by casual observers to be a rise in unemployment. In fact, to the extent it is due to people being moved off Employment and Support Allowance, it will be a revealing of unemployment that was previously hidden because so many were wrongly on incapacity benefit.

- a great increase in the numbers genuinely seeking work, since the money given to those on Jobseekers Allowance is significantly less than the money people used to get on Incapacity Benefit. Also they have a legal requirement to seek work.

- most important of all - a long term increase in the proportion of people genuinely seeking and doing work. This could make a great - though hard to measure - difference in the morale and culture of Britain.

- a reduction in the cost of the welfare state, as people are moved to a less expensive benefit and more of them seek work.

We are talking about over a million people whose lives are being changed. This is truly important. Yet it is barely written about at all.

Some of the best coverage was by the Taxpayers' Alliance, using the story in the People. Here is the Telegraph coverage. The Guardian, I find, has mentioned it. Naturally it is worried that the test is unfair and appears uninterested in the idea that people have been claiming billions of pounds for being incapable of work when, in fact, they are not. It is, of course, important that a test is fair. But why cannot the Guardian have any sense of injustice to those who pay tax or the importance of work to the creation of decent lives?

http://winstonsmith33.blogspot.com/2010/01/failing-to-scrounge-from-state.html

In an interview, Mr Graef, voiced his 'worries' that official crime figures did not reveal the true scale of violence affecting women and children.

He warned that attacks on children by other children not reported to police were absent from the official British Crime Survey (BCS) - other areas of unreported crime are included to get a wider picture of trends.

Mr Graef said: 'We did our own survey of 1,800 schoolchildren aged 14 and 15. One in three had been kicked or hurt. One in four admitted to kicking or hurting somebody else in a month and that's not recorded anywhere.'

He also pointed out the Home Office-compiled BCS did not include unreported assaults at hospitals and prisons.

And Mr Graef highlighted the limitations of official police crime records - based on his own research.

He said: 'We spent two weeks in Oxford and watched how much crime, how much violence, how much harm was happening.'

Out of 12 incidents that ended with the victim attending hospital, only seven were reported to police.

Mr Graef also disclosed how domestic violence goes unreported. 'Women's groups say that 35 assaults are made on the victim before they call the police. That means there's a dark figure of violent crime which we simply cannot know for sure.'

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said Mr Graef was 'absolutely right' to say the BCS was incomplete, and that 'some crimes will not end up on a police computer'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249094/Expert-backs-Conservatives-violent-crime-figures.html#ixzz0f2B2rKTX

This is yet another example of government statistics being unreliable or actually misleading. Please use the search facility on this website citing 'statistics' for more entries on the subject.

- Fewer than 500 state schools now offer any classical languages and much of this teaching is offered in the 'twilight' hours after most classes have finished.

- The government is not providing enough training of classics teachers to replace the ones who will retire.

- The numbers taking French GCSE have fallen by 100,000 since 2004.

- There is some difficulty in finding sufficient translators for the London Olympics.

- Generally speaking she was Left-wing and disliked private schools but she wished them to survive because they were the place in which language and classics teaching were continuing.

It certainly suits politicians to make exams easier to pass. Higher grades give the impression of successful education. Also if they make science exams easier, they calculate that more children will chose them than otherwise. This is politically useful because it slows down any flight in state schools from hard subjects to soft ones. Politicians wish to slow down this flight because it reveals the way that state schools are underachieving and this reflects badly on them.

However, teachers would not - one hopes - want to be associated with such political calculations.

Some, though certainly not all, have come to think that teaching children to think about science - or other subjects - is more important than teaching them a body of specific knowledge. On the surface, the idea has its appeal. I remember when I was compelled to learn Latin that the justification most frequently given for the task was that it would help me to think logically. It is also true that knowledge that is considered useful, important or up-to-date keeps on changing. But in most subjects, there is plenty of knowledge that does not change and more still that will not change for a few decades, at least.

But how did many teachers come genuinely to think that rigorously learning a body of knowledge, particularly in science, is of secondary importance?

Did it start with some theorist of teaching who then got taken up by politicians because they could see the ideas would help them? What were the mechanics of the dismantling of educational standards?

How important was the idea that tough science (and other subjects) are elitist because they are too difficult for less bright students? For those who feel like that, the appeal of the idea of teaching more accessible stuff about evaluation and problem-solving would be strong. But what they did not consider properly was how the clever state school students would be disadvantaged. With the debased science GCSEs, those bright state school students have their career prospects severely damaged.

This is a re-edited version of an entry posted earlier today. My apologies for re-writing it:

Origin of the idea: "teach skills, the knowledge will be irrelevant".

Unfortunately the dominant mode of thinking is that, if the argument makes sense, it is probably true. There is far too little "critical thinking" and use of evidence.

After hearing this line from the ATL union official a few years ago, I went through the GCSE science curriculum to see what could be "out of date" in 20 yrs.

Atoms? Elements? Cells? Expansion? Metals? Energy transfer? You get the picture: none of the basics will change. It's science!!! Its the way we explain the natural world.

On top of this there is clear and irrefutable evidence that trying to teach context-free "skills" does not work. They need to be learned in one context before they can be transferred somewhere else.

I detect an increase in "helplessness" from pupils who claim that the reason for their low marks is "the teacher was rubbish" rather than "I did no work".

I did not expect the dependence culture to get all the way down to the learning process - but I now meet so many "learning disabled" (backed up by "my rights" parents) I despair for them.

Mike

Fact-free science lessons

SIR – The Government has spent huge sums on a laudable campaign to increase state-school students’ interest in becoming scientists and engineers, while simultaneously distorting the curriculum to make it more “relevant” in ways that make it more difficult to learn enough science to follow it as a career.

Content has been steadily removed in the name of accessibility. That which remains is largely chosen to illustrate wider “societal” themes, without sufficient regard to the theoretical coherence of the science being taught. I am head of science at a comprehensive school and was told at a training day: “It’s all about skills now. They [the students] can look up facts on Google.” Would you want to be treated by a doctor who has spent five years honing evaluation skills instead of mastering tedious old anatomy facts?

The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), which does retain a coherent structure, isn’t offered in state schools as it doesn’t conform to the “Science Subject Criteria” (the very cause of the problem). Calls to offer the IGCSE are denounced as “elitist”.

A two-tier system is returning to British education. Are we happy with private-school students learning about electromagnetism, while their peers at comprehensives have to grapple with identifying “the use of evidence and creative thinking by scientists in the development of scientific ideas”?

Andrew Urwin
Umberleigh, Devon

The letter was in today's Telegraph.
(You have to scroll down to find it.)
See also this previous article on science GCSEs.

From an editorial in the Telegraph on GP out-of-hours services.

He found much to be appalled by in the slums but also much to admire and even envy.

Plague, cholera and TB abound, but its citizens are among the happiest and most beautiful I’ve seen.

This entirely echoes the discoveries of researchers in Britain when they got close to the removal of so-called slums here and their replacement by planned, architect-designed council housing. Michael Young, who had written the 1945 Labour Party election manifesto, joined by Peter Wilmott studied a slum in great detail and then also a council estate. They found that contact with extended families fell by as much as 75 per cent after the move to the estate.

George Orwell, another Left-winger, when he lived among the poor also found that much was lost when people moved to council estates. What are the most important things? I suspect that two are among them: a strong sense of community and family and a sense of being responsible for one's own actions. The idea of community and the benefit it gives is well known. What is less commented on is the impact of independent action. I struggle even to find a language to write about it.

It is illustrated at its best by the daughter of the family in the overcrowded, rat-infested slum building where McCloud stayed. She emerged looking immaculate each morning in her school uniform. She was evidently bright and one believed she would succeed when she said she aimed to be a lawyer. How did she come to be ambitious and work hard? Because she knew very clearly that if she did not work, she would never emerge from the slum and grim. long hours of manual labour. Compare her with the offspring of a household in Britain where no adult works but the flat or house is paid for by the state and they get income support. The children learn that you can get a tolerable life style without really bothering and if anything is wrong, in the house or the education or healthcare they get, it is all down to someone else. Life it not what they make it. It is what the state makes it. That takes away from them a self-respect and a sense of being able to make a difference to their own lives.

"Slumdog Millionaire" was a superbly made film and one can understand the power of the story of the TV quiz changing everything in the hero's life. But the more important story is of the thousands of girls like the one in Kevin McCloud's film who was going to change her life through a decision in her own mind to work. The state changes the condition of people's minds. That is the way it tends to do the greatest damage.

ps The name that was not mentioned, as far as I know, in the programme was Hernando de Soto who is a leader in this field and who has argued that the key thing for economic growth is to give property rights to slum dwellers.

pps Much more about the damaging effects of council housing - and their possible causes - is in the housing chapter in The Welfare State We're In.

However there is a hope that this time the measure is so obvious that it might backfire. The sight of St Paul's and Winchester and Westminster at the bottom of exam tables will strike all but the most prejudiced observer as being as ridiculous as placing Manchester United and Chelsea at the bottom of the Coca-Cola League Two.

Footnote: We have here another example of how civil servants have been turned into spokesmen for the Labour Party. When questioned about it, the spokesman does not confine himself to explaining government policy. He talks like a party fighter. He calls the argument for counting IGCSEs 'fatuous'. Note also the tone of scorn towards private schools. This is not the language of someone who wants the best for all children in Britain. It is the language of someone who has a political agenda that government schools are a good thing, government frameworks must be of prime importance and private schools deserve no consideration. Here is the final para of the article in the Telegraph:

But a spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "This is a fatuous argument. The IGCSE does not meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and so it is not approved for use in curriculum in state schools - it would make absolutely no sense for it to be included in the end-of-year tables just because some independent schools choose to offer them."